In the eye of Dante the influx of these rural nobles was a reason of the city’s misfortune. “Ever was the confusion of persons the origin of the city’s ills,” are the words which he put into the mouth of his ancestor Cacciaguida. Cacciaguida in the _Comedy_ compares the state of Florence as it was in Dante’s time with what it had been a century and a half before, and he deplores the increased luxuriousness of the Florentines. In those simpler days “Bellincion Berti went about in leathern belt with bone clasp, and his dame came from the mirror unpainted.”
This Bellincion Berti and his wife were the parents of the lady Gualdrada, through whom not the Casentino, as Villani recorded, but the valuable Ravignani property in Florence near the Porta San Piero came into the possession of the Guidi. Gualdrada was the second wife of Count Guido, surnamed il Vecchio, and the epithet _buona_ which Dante bestowed on her she doubtless owed to her attempts to soften her husband’s fierceness. For Guido Vecchio in the eyes of the chronicler of Faenza was the direct opposite of his father; knightly dignity and pride with him took the form of wilfulness and overbearing.
The incidents which led up to the marriage and its outcome are worth recording. Guido Vecchio began as the loyal supporter of the Imperial cause; he entertained Frederick Barbarossa in his castle at Modigliana, in 1167, and with the Imperial troops he marched on Rome, where Frederick succeeded in establishing the anti-pope. But the desire for municipal freedom was awakening in the smaller cities of Italy, and in order to frustrate the Emperor’s influence they began to form alliances among themselves and supported Pope Alexander. A struggle ensued which lasted seventeen years and in which Guido sided with the Emperor, thereby finding himself repeatedly plunged into war with Florence, and into supporting her rival Siena. When the Emperor and the Pope finally made peace at Venice, the relations between the cities of Tuscany were readjusted. Among the representatives of Florence who arranged the peace between this city and Siena was Bellincion Berti, the father of Gualdrada. In what year Guido married her is unknown, but he divorced his first wife Agnes in order to do so. His attitude towards Florence underwent a complete change in consequence. Henceforth there was friendship between them.