The civic politics of Florence during Dante's life were dominated by the strife between two rival factions, the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. In general, the Guelphs represented ordinary citizens and were aligned with the papacy; the Ghibellines sided with the emperors. Dante came from a family of Guelphs, but he himself came to favor the Ghibelline cause, especially their promise to bring Florence within a stable empire.
The Guelphs and the Ghibellines were divided on the political issue of empire. Among Italy's city-states, Florence provided the leading Guelph opposition to the idea of a pan-European state. The city fought to maintain and increase its own independence. Meanwhile, Dante was convinced that only under the wider authority of an empire could human beings enjoy the fullest freedoms and most moral lives. The sort of Christian empire favored by the popes in Rome did not appeal to Dante, however, primarily because he thought that the church was greedy, corrupt, and ambitious. In Dante's Inferno, the fourth circle of Hell, reserved for the greedy, is filled with nothing but churchmen; the part of the eighth circle reserved for barratry (graft, including the buying and selling of church positions) is dominated by popes.
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