In 1294, Boniface VIII ascended to the papal throne.
What did he do if Dante would send him to Inferno only a few years later?
Dante was also a White Guelph politician, half for the emperor half for the Pope.
His imperial half did not want to give soldiers the Pope,
To receive the papal peace keeper Charles of Valois in Florence.
So his bad companions sent the poet as ambassador to Vatican City and got him out of the way.
The Hohenstaufen had fallen and there was not an emperor any more,
There was the Pope and would have been forever.

Paolo Giuseppe Mazzarello

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/aai-the-origins-dante/