Today Is...The Publication Of The Divine Comedy

Jean-Paul Sartre said Hell was being locked forever in a room with your friends but then all his mates were French so it was probably true for him but Dante had his own version of hell and it included Pope Boniface VIII.
The Middle Ages weren’t exactly a time when arts and culture flourished, tales of the black death, witch burning's and the joys of cooking with turnips were not exactly best sellers but Dante was inspired to write The Divine Comedy, the literary masterpiece of the medieval period and it is all thanks to a Pope making a real dick move.
As a diplomat during a time of political turbulence in Florence between the Pope and Rome, Dante was invited to the Popes home as the representative of Florence to stay a while as his personal guest and while he was away, the Pope sent an armed militia to overthrow and execute the Florence government and install a more Pope-friendly regime who in turn, banned Dante from going back home to Florence.
Then he ordered all Dante's belongings in Florence destroyed, gave him a massive fine for being in Rome and then when he said he couldn't pay it on account of all his stuff either being ashes or sitting on the bottom of several Florence rivers, he exiled him for non payment of the fines.
Hell hath no fury like a wordsmith scorned so rather than sulk away quietly, he reached for the sweetest plum in the up-yours basket and wrote 14,233 awesome rhyming lines of blistering papal burn following the characters of Dante and Virgil as they travel to the centre of Hell, passing through the nine circles of Hell where in the eighth circle sits a demon who bears a tremendous likeness to Pope Boniface.
As The Divine Comedy became one of the most widely read and influential works of literature in the Western world, i'd say he got his own back.