Florence hosts 're-trial' of Dante, convicted and banished in 1302 Is justice delayed justice denied, or is it a case of better late than never? The poet Dante, author of the "Divine Comedy," is being given a re-trial designed to posthumously clear his name. Dante Aligheri was banished from the city of his birth when he found himself on the losing side of a struggle to control Florence Jurists at a symbolic "re-trial" conference on Friday sought to revoke Florence's medieval 1302 conviction of Dante Alighieri that forced him into exile before his book "Divine Comedy" won him acclaim as Italy's "Supreme Poet."