How did Henry VII’s arrival in Italy affect Dante Alighieri’s political hopes?

The arrival of Henry VII in Italy initially electrified Dante Alighieri, who viewed the emperor as the realization of his long-held ideal: a leader pledged to restore peace while maintaining spiritual subordination to religious authority. Dante, a staunch imperial proponent, saw this as a divinely ordained moment to remedy the chaos in Italy caused by the lack of sufficient imperial law and the papacy's craving for worldly power.1

However, Henry’s failure to quickly consolidate power and his subsequent struggle against factions—most notably the commune of Florence—plunged Dante into deep disillusionment. As Henry was forced into an exclusive alliance with anti-Guelf factions and the papacy eventually turned against him, Dante’s hopes for a peaceful restoration of imperial order dissolved. This bitter experience directly fueled Dante’s writing of On Monarchy, in which he vehemently argued against papal claims of superiority over political rulers, asserting that the empire derived its authority independently of the pope.12