Corso Donati

In the late thirteenth century, power in Florence and the other Tuscan cities was divided between the Podestà, an outsider who served as chief magistrate, and the guildmasters.

In 1289, as captain of the people in Pistoia, he led a group of soldiers in a cavalry charge at the Battle of Campaldino, in which the Guelphs defeated the Ghibellines and cemented their control over Florence.

One of the exiled was the famous poet Dante Alighieri, who by marrying Gemma Donati had become a distant relative of Corso.

In 1308 Corso was accused of plotting to overthrow the Florentine commune and take power as lord of the city with the aid of his father-in-law Uguccione della Faggiuola, a Ghibelline, and was condemned as a rebel and a traitor; he died on October 6, 1308, while attempting to flee the city after having been besieged in his house by an angry mob.

Corso Donati is also the subject of a play by nineteenth-century writer Carlo Marenco, who was inspired by Dante's works.