Abstract
Dante studies in recent decades assume and inertially repeat that the moment in which Dante breaks with his fellow-exiles, whom years later he would define “wicked and senseless company", and becomes “a party by himself " (Pd XVII 61-69), coincides with the so-called battle at La Lastra, that is the failed attempt of the exiled Whites and their allies to conquer Florence on July 20, 1304. The article aims to check if this assumption is well founded. In particular, the article aims to check whether it must be held that Dante wrote the letter Popule mee, quid tibi feci?, asking for forgiveness to the Comune of Florence, and thus becoming an enemy and traitor to the White Guelph party, soon after the battle at La Lastra. If that were the case, it would be difficult to admit that Dante, during the same period, lived in Bologna, a White Guelph Comune. On the other hand, many clues internal to these two treatises seem to prove that he wrote most of the Convivio and the entire De vulgari eloquentia precisely in Bologna from mid-1304 until the early months of 1306. The critical review of the current ideas on the subject shows that these ideas are based on several misunderstandings and offers a different view of Dante’s political biography from 1303 to 1306.