Monarchia

Dante's point of view is known on this problem, since during his political activity he had fought to defend the autonomy of the city-government of Florence from the temporal demands of Pope Boniface VIII.

[2] According to most accepted chronology, Monarchia was composed in the years 1312–13, that is to say the time of Henry VII of Luxembourg's journey to Italy; according to another, however, the date of composition has to be brought back to at least 1308; and yet another moves it forward to 1318, shortly before the author's death in 1321.

Philosophers Works Monarchia is made up of three books, of which the most significant is the third, in which Dante most explicitly confronts the subject of relations between the pope and the emperor.

Dante first condemns the hierocratic conception of the pope's power elaborated by the Roman Church with the theory of the Sun and the Moon and solemnly confirmed by the papal bull Unam sanctam of 1302.

[3] A translation by Donald Nicholl titled Monarchy and Three Political Letters was published in 1954 in London by Weidenfeld and Nicolson[4] and in 1955 in New York by The Noonday Press.