today I learned that in 2008, the city council of florence overturned dante’s sentence of execution if he returned from exile. yes, dante’s inferno dante, who died in 1321.
but the funniest part of this is not that they were debating the exile of a man who has been dead for over 500 years.
the funniest part is that the vote was 19-5. five people voted to uphold dante’s exile.
The objectively funniest part of this is actually that the city that holds his remains, Ravenna, refused to give his remains back. This was a ploy from florence to have his remains moved back for the tourist money and its been ongoing for a long time. Florence had a fake tomb built in the city to trick people into visiting, and have tried to force the return of the remains.
His actual caretakers have been very steadfast in keeping them hidden, moved, or generally out of reach to respect his choice in life to never, ever, ever return to florence, even when he was first offered the chance to return. This is at this point an almost millenium long feud that florence is really, really mad about losing
so basically the five people who wanted to uphold his exile were in the right
You're completely skipping over how funny this actually was. So Florence was actually using Catholic law to try and get Dante back, cause technically you're supposed to be buried at the church you were baptised in. So when a Medici, the ruling family of Florence, became pope Leo X he ordered Dante's bones to be returned. He slso ordered Michelangelo to build a mausoleum.
Anyway Ravenna couldn't refuse the pope and handed Dante's casket over to Florence. Another part of Catholic law is that opening someone's casket is desecration and a one way ticket straight to hell. So Florence was skeptical that Ravenna send them Dante and decided to do the unthinkable and opened his casket. It was empty, but Florence couldn't say so because if they called out Ravenna they'd have to admit to desecrating the corpse of their so called beloved poet. So they just pretended it didn't happen till Dante's bones were found behind a wall a couple hundred years later and again interned in a crypt in Ravenna.
Also a friend of Dante had his original grave in Ravenna inscribed with the text:
parvi Florentia mater amoris
Translation:
Florence, mother of little love
