This Ghibelline theory was in flat contradiction to Boniface's theory, just as the Imperial creed had always contradicted the papal creed. In Dante's time the two conflicting theories seemed to have become mere ghosts; when of a sudden the Imperial theory started up in reality. A new king of the Romans, Henry VII, announced that he was coming into Italy to take his Imperial crown. The Ghibellines welcomed him with boundless enthusiasm. Dante, in undeserved exile from Florence, flushed with the hope of return to his dearly beloved city, wrote a circular letter to all the princes of Italy:-- "Behold now is the acceptable time, in which arise signs of consolation and peace. For a new day begins to shine, showing the dawn that shall dissipate the darkness of long calamity. Now the breezes of the East begin to blow, the lips of heaven redden, and with serenity comfort the hopes of the peoples. And we who have passed a long night in the desert shall see the expected joy. "Rejoice, O Italy, pitied even by the heathen, now shalt thou be the envy of the earth, because thy bridegroom, the comfort of the world and the glory of the people, the most merciful Henry, Divus, Augustus, Caesar, hastens to thy espousals. Dry thine eyes, put off the trappings of woe, O thou Fairest; for he is at hand who shall free thee from the prison of the ungodly, who shall smite the malignant, and destroy them with the edge of the sword, and shall give his vineyard to other husbandmen, who will render the fruits of justice in the time of harvest."