ty of its body, in which the rays of the Sun can
find no end wherefrom to strike back again as in the other parts." In
the second canto of the Purgatorio, Beatrice opposes that opinion,
whence it may be inferred that Dante had learnt better, and he speaks
of this again in a later canto (the twenty-second) as a former
opinion. This leads to an inference that the Second Treatise was
written before 1300.

Attention is due also to a passage in the third chapter of the First
Treatise (on pages 16 and 17 in this volume), in which Dante speaks of
his long exile and poverty. The exile and the wanderings of Dante
began after the year 1300. He was befriended by Guido da Polenta in
Ravenna, by Uguccione della Faggiola in Lucca, by Malaspina in the
Lunigiana, by Can Grande della Scala in Verona, by Bosone de'
Raffaelli in Gubbio, by the Patriarch Pagano della Torre in Udine. In
1311, when the Emperor Henry of Luxembourg went to Italy, Dante had
some hope of return, which passed away in 1313 when that Emperor died
in Buonconvento. Dante remained in exile. In 1321 his patron, Guido
Novello da Polenta, sent him on an embassy to Venice, in which he was
unsuccessful. The sea way being blocked, he had to return by land, and
he was struck by the malaria which caused his death by fever on the
14th of September in that year, 1321. This reference to long exile
leads to an inference that the First Treatise was written much later
than 1300.

But, again, there is a passage in the third chapter of the Fourth
Treatise (on page 171 of this volume) that points to an earlier date.
Frederick of Suabia is named as the Emperor who

held,
As far as he could see,
Descent of wealth, and generous ways,
To make Nobility.

Dante calls him "the last Emperor of the Romans," and adds, "I say
last with respect to the present time, notwithstanding that Rudolf,
and Adolphus, and Albert were elected after his death and from his
descendants." This last of the Romans was that famous Frederick II.,
who died in 1250, and of whom Dante said in his Treatise on the
Language of the People: "The illustrious heroes, Frederick Caesar and
his son Manfredi, followed after elegance and scorned what was mean;
so that all the best compositions of the time came out of their Court.
Thus, because their royal throne was in Sicily, all the poems of our
predecessors in the Vulgar Tongue were called Sicilian." Rudolf I. of
Hapsburg, founder of t