on their lips and in their hearts the image of the lady-love whom they
had chosen to serve and to whom they had pledged loyalty and fidelity:
they strove to be chaste in body and soul and as a tower of strength for
the protection of this spirit of chastity, they were taught to venerate
the Virgin Mother Mary and cultivate toward her a tender devotion as the
purest and holiest ideal of womanhood. This spirit of chivalry is the
ruling spirit of Dante's life and the inspiration of some of his
sublimest flights."

All these high achievements of Dante's century are all the more notable
in view of the fact that war with its horror and destruction was never
absent from those times. Every European country was involved often in
war and Asia and Africa were not free from its devastation.

In such stirring times, Dante was born at Florence. A city of flowers
and gay festivities, the home of a cultured pleasure-loving people, it
was the frequent scene of feuds and factions handed down from sire to
son. The hatred they engendered and the desolation they caused may be
understood from the reading of Romeo and Juliet, a tragedy whose scene
is laid in Verona in the year 1303 and to the families concerned in
which Dante makes allusion in the sixth canto of his Purgatorio. But
Verona and Florence were not the only cities involved by the militarism
of the age. Especially in northern Italy were strife and bloodshed
common. Province, city, town, hamlet and even households were torn by
internal dissensions, which only complicated the main conflict of that
day, viz., the world struggle for supremacy of pope and emperor.

The imperial party called Ghibellines, composed mainly of aristocrats
and their followers, aimed to break down the barriers which kept the
German Emperor out of Italy, their object being to have him subjugate