“The magnanimous cavalier placed the dead body of Dante, adorned with poetic insignia, upon a funeral bier, and had it borne on the shoulders of his most distinguished citizens to the place of the Minor Friars in Ravenna, with such honour as he deemed worthy of such a corpse And here, public lamentations as it were having followed him so far, he had him placed in a stone chest, wherein he still lieth.  And returning to the house in which Dante lately lived, according to the Ravennese custom he himself delivered an ornate and long discourse both in commendation of the profound knowledge and the virtue of the deceased, and in consolation of his friends whom he had left in bitterest grief.  He purposed, had his estate and his life endured, to honour him with so choice a tomb that if never another merit of his had made him memorable to those to come, this tomb should have accomplished it.

“This laudable intent was in brief space of time made known to certain who in those days were most famous for poetry in Ravenna; whereon each one for himself, to show his own power and to bear witness to the goodwill he had to the dead poet, and to win the grace and love of the signore, who was known to have it at heart, made verses which, if placed as epitaph on the tomb that was to be, should with due praises teach posterity who lay therein.  And these verses they sent to the glorious signore, who, by great guilt of Fortune, in short space of time lost his estate, and died at Bologna; wherefore the making of the tomb and the placing of the verses thereon were left undone.  Now when these verses were shown to me long afterward, perceiving that they had never been put in their place, by reason of the chance already spoken of, and pondering on the present work that I am writing, how that it is not indeed a material tomb, but is none the less—­as that was to have been—­a perpetual preserver of his memory, I imagined that it would not be unfitting to add them to this work.  But in as much as no more than the words of some one of them (for there were several) would have been cut upon the marble, so I held that only the words of one should be written here; wherefore on examining them all I judged that the most worthy for art and for matter were fourteen verses made by Messer Giovanni del Virgilio the Bolognese, a most illustrious and great poet of those days, and one who had been a most especial friend of Dante.  And the verses are these hereafter written: 

  “’Theologus Dantes, nullius dogmatis expers,
  Quod foveat claro philosophia sinu,
  Gloria musarum, vulgo gratissimus auctor,
  Hic iacet, et fama pulsat utrumque polum,
  Qui loca defunctis, gladiis regnumque gemellis,
  Distribuit, laicis rhetoricisque modis. 
  Pascua Pieriis demum resonabat avenis,
  Atropos heu letum livida rupit opus
  Huic ingrata tulit tristem Florentia fructum,
  Exilium, vati patria cruda suo. 
  Quem pia Guidonis gremio Ravenna Novelli
  Gaudet honorati continuisse ducis. 
  Mille trecentenis ter septem Numinis annis,
  Ad sua septembris idibus astra redit.’"[1]