Alas, Messer Farinata, your pitiless love caused violence and craft to take arms against the city and cost the lives of ten thousand Florentines!
Yes, my affection for my city was as strong as that, Fra Ambrogio. And the deeds it inspired me to perform are worthy to serve as examples to our sons and our sons' sons. That the memory of them might not perish I would write of them myself, if I had a head for writing. When I was young, I composed love-songs, which ladies marvelled at and the clerks put into their books. With that exception, I have always despised letters as greatly as the arts, and I have no more troubled to write than to weave wool. Let every man follow my example and act according to his rank in life. But you, Fra Ambrogio, who are a very learned scribe, it is for you to relate the great enterprises I have led. Great honour would it bring you, if you told them not as a monk, but as a noble, for they are knightly and noble deeds. Such a story would show how active I have been. And of all that I have done I regret nothing.
I was exiled, the Guelfs had slain three of my kinsfolk. Sienna received me; of this my enemies made such a grievance that they incited the Florentines to march in arms against the hospitable city. For the exiles, for Sienna, I asked the aid of Cæsar's son, the King of Sicily.
It is only too true: you were the ally of Manfred, the friend of the Sultan of Luceria, of the astrologer, the renegade, the excommunicated.