Posuit."

His work of reparation and of adornment was carried out by Pietro
Lombardo who was already at work in Ravenna for the Venetian republic,
the sculptured effigy of Dante in relief being also from his hand.

But Florence was by no means at the end of her resources. In 1509
Ravenna had passed into the hands of the pope. In 1519 Leo X., a
Medici, being on the throne of Peter, the Accademia Medicea of
Florence petitioned the pope (among the signatories of the petition
was Michelangelo, who offered to "make a worthy sepulchre for the
divine poet in an honoured place" in Florence), to be allowed to carry
away the bones of Dante from Ravenna to the City of Flowers. The pope
gave the Florentine envoys the permission they required as was
expected. They proceeded to Ravenna and opened the sarcophagus; but
when they lifted the lid, they found it empty, save for "a fragment of
bone and a few withered leaves of the laurel which had adorned the
poet's head." From that time till our own day the resting place of
Dante's bones has been a complete mystery.

It is recorded that in the middle of the seventeenth century the
Franciscans rebuilt and repaired the so-called chapel of Braccioforte
at S. Francesco, which till then had been joined by a portico to the
tomb of Dante. In 1658 this portico among other alterations was
removed, and the exterior of the tomb itself was reconstructed with an
entrance into the Piazza, as we see it. The interior of the tomb was,
however, left in some confusion so that the papal legate determined
himself to repair it. In this he met with much opposition from the
friars who claimed, as of old, jurisdiction over the sepulchre.
Nevertheless he completed the work, and in 1692 placed the following
upon the tomb:

Exulem a Florentia Dantem Liberalissime
Excepit Ravenna.
Vivo fruens Mortuum colens
Magnis cineribus licet in parvo magnifici parentarunt
Polentani Principes erigendo
Bembus Praetor Luculentissime extruendo
Praetiosum Musis et Apollini Mausoleum
Quod injuria temporum pene squallens
E. mo Dominico Maria Cursio Legato
Joanne Salviato Prolegato
Magni civis cineres Patriae reconciliare
Cultus perpetuitate curantibus
S. P. Q. R.
Jure Ac Aere suo
Tanquam Thesaurum suum munivit
Instauravit ornavit
A.D. MDCXCII.

Outside the tomb he placed his coat-of-arms, and on either side that
of the legate of the province and that of the Franciscan Order. In
1760 the