summoned him for some offence, Dante, who disliked the man for riding in
an overbearing manner along the streets (stretching out his legs as wide
as he could, and hindering people from going by), did intercede with the
magistrate, but it was in behalf of doubling the fine in consideration
of the horsemanship. The neighbour, who was a man of family, was so
exasperated, that Sacchetti the novelist says it was the principal cause
of Dante's expatriation. This will be considered the less improbable,
if, as some suppose, the delinquent obtained possession of his derider's
confiscated property; but, at all events, nothing is more likely to
have injured him. The bitterest animosities are generally of a personal
nature; and bitter indeed must have been those which condemned a man of
official dignity and of genius to such a penalty as the stake.[22]

That the Florentines of old, like other half-Christianised people, were
capable of any extremity against an opponent, burning included, was
proved by the fates of Savonarola and others; and that Dante himself
could admire the burners is evident from his eulogies and beatification
of such men as Folco and St. Dominic. The tragical as well as "fantastic
tricks" which

"Man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,"

plays with his energy and bad passions under the guise of duty, is among
the most perplexing of those spectacles, which, according to a greater
understanding than Dante's, "make the angels weep." (Dante, by the way,
has introduced in his heaven no such angels as those; though he has
plenty that scorn and denounce.) Lope de Vega, though a poet, was an
officer of the Inquisition, and joined the famous Armada that was coming
to thumb-screw and roast us into his views of Christian meekness.