Florentine/Italy What-If

Vivisfugue

Banned
What if, instead of writing the Divine Comedy in exile, Dante successfully rallied his faction of the Guelphs and recaptured Florence? He was big for the power of the Holy Roman Emperor in Italy, and I can think of all sorts of potential butterflies for the Papacy, the HRE, the Crusades, and eventually the age of Discovery. At the very least, he had the potential to be an earlier Savonarola, or perhaps a very much earlier Luther (Dante really didn't like the contemporary Popes - to the extent of having the damned in Inferno asking "Is that you, Boniface?" at his approach). Or even still an extremely early Garibaldi, at least for Northern Italy. That's it ladies and gentleman (or at least gentlemen;))...AH.com's first DanteWank!
 
What if, instead of writing the Divine Comedy in exile, Dante successfully rallied his faction of the Guelphs and recaptured Florence? He was big for the power of the Holy Roman Emperor in Italy, and I can think of all sorts of potential butterflies for the Papacy, the HRE, the Crusades, and eventually the age of Discovery. At the very least, he had the potential to be an earlier Savonarola, or perhaps a very much earlier Luther (Dante really didn't like the contemporary Popes - to the extent of having the damned in Inferno asking "Is that you, Boniface?" at his approach). Or even still an extremely early Garibaldi, at least for Northern Italy. That's it ladies and gentleman (or at least gentlemen;))...AH.com's first DanteWank!

I believe that some cities of this era had a kind of government called a "Commune" correct?

So Dante-in-Exile, instead of writing the Divine Comedy, writes the Treatise on Communism which is strange political animal, claiming that Imperial authority derived from the people, and thus creating what later historians would call "Imperial Communism". His ideas end up getting some traction among Italian intellectuals, and his own successful seizure of power in Florence (done mainly through his large following among the city's lower classes, called the "Mechanic's Coup") is followed by other "Mechanical" uprisings across Northern Italy. These uprisings are all lower-class in origin and pro-Guelph in political nature. The Emperor of the time supports them in his bid to gain control over Italy, and ends up spreading the ideas in Germany, gaining popular support for his rule through "Imperial Communism". This policy works for some time, but since the Emperor's have largely transferred political legitimacy from noble or princely support, to popular support, they leave themselves open to further claims of power from the Communes popular assemblies. "Communists" those who support the rights of the Communes against the Emperor (dominated by large merchants and bankers), and "Democrats" (so-called by their Communard opponents) who support the Emperor (mainly small merchants and landowning peasants).

This is a little ASB, but I have taken a liking to speeding up the political history of Europe. So "Imperial Communism" it is.
 

Vivisfugue

Banned
Dante the politician

I dunno 'bout Dante-as-Lenin. He was a believer in Imperial authority in Italy (at least insofar as it diminished the secular power of the Papacy), and I don't think he had any real populist leanings. I have to stress that in the course of this thought experiment, I want Dante to remain recognizable as himself...I don't remember if he wrote his political treatise (Monarchia) before, during, or after the Comedy. The thing that intrigues me about him is that he did have a degree of power as a prior of Florence (a sort of city councilman), and if he had parleyed that into something more, he could pretty much have butterflied away a good deal of the Renaissance and subsequent history.

Other ideas - if Italy north of the Papal States could be unified (either alone or under Henry VII-the HREmperor in whom Dante reposed the most hope in his time of exile) such a state could strong-arm Venice into financing a Tenth Crusade - it doesn't have to take Jerusalem, just piss away Europe's finances and energy just as its getting ready to start exploring (gaining Jerusalem only to lose America). Genoa, fr'instance, would be part of such a state.

-Maybe have all-out warfare between our Dante-based Tuscan superstate and the Papacy, leading to monarchs all over Europe taking charge of their national churches a la Henry the VIII of England. Or alternately, for a three-sided European war between the French, the Germans and Italians, and the Pope). And peace coming just in time for the arrival of the Black Death.

-The Medicis might never rise to prominence, so not so much art or architecture, at least outside of the Vatican. Leonardo da Vinci has to keep his day job.:( Or instead of David he has to build a Herculean sculpture of Dante, the Great Dictator in the Piazza della Signoria.

-I can picture life in a state ruled or strongly influenced by Dante as being very scary (requiring absolute secular obedience to the state and absolute religious obedience to the church).

-I'm not sure all of this could possibly take place within the space of one lifetime (Dante was exiled in 1301 and died 20 years later-maybe add five years or so given that he won't suffer the discomforts of having to move around a lot).
 
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