Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, better known as
Dante Alighieri or simply
Dante, (c.
June 1 1265 –
September 13/14,
1321) was an
Italian Florentine poet. His
greatest work, la
Divina Commedia (
The Divine Comedy), is considered the greatest literary statement produced in
Europe during the
Middle Ages, and the basis of the modern
Italian language. The
Dante Alighieri Society, founded in Italy in 1889, continues to promote Italian culture and language around the world in his name.
Early history and family
Dante was born in
1265 and he tells us he was born under the sign of
Gemini, placing his birthday between May 18th and June 17th. As an infant, Dante may have been originally christened 'Durante' in Florence's
Baptistery, and the name Dante could be a shortened version of that name.
He was born into the prominent Alighieri family of Florence, with loyalties to the
Guelfs, a political alliance that supported the
Papacy, involved in complex opposition to the
Ghibellines, who were backed by the
Holy Roman Emperor.These factions fashioned their names after the ones of opposing factions of German Imperial politics, centered around the noble families of
Welfen and Weibelingen, but adapting their meaning to the Italian political arena. After the defeat of the Ghibellines by the Guelfs in 1289, the Guelfs themselves were divided into White Guelfs, who were wary of Papal influence, and Black Guelfs who continued to support the Papacy. Dante (a White Guelf) pretended that his family descended from the ancient Romans (Inferno, XV, 76), but the earliest relative he can mention by name is
Cacciaguida degli Elisei (Paradiso, XV, 135), of no earlier than about 1100.
Dante's father, Alighiero de Bellincione, was a White Guelf who suffered no reprisals after the Ghibellines won the
Battle of Montaperti. This suggests that Alighiero or his family enjoyed some protective prestige and status.
The poet's mother was Donna Gabriella degli Abati. She died when Dante was 5 or 6 years old, and Alighiero soon married again, to Lapa di Chiarissimo Cialuffi. (It is uncertain whether he really married her, as widowers had social limitations in these matters.) This woman definitely bore two children, Dante's brother Francesco and sister Tana (Gaetana).
When Dante was 12, in 1277, he was promised in marriage to Gemma di Manetto Donati, daughter of Messer Manetto Donati. Contracting marriages at this early age was quite common, and involved a formal ceremony, including contracts signed before a
notary.
Dante had several sons with Gemma. As often happens with famous people, many people later claimed to be Dante's offspring; however, it is likely that Jacopo, Pietro, Gabrielle Alighieri, and Antonia were truly his children. Antonia became a nun with the name of Sister Beatrice. Another man, Giovanni, claimed to be his son and was in exile with Dante, but some doubts were advanced about his claim..
Education and poetry
Not much is known about Dante's education, and it is presumed he studied at home. We know he studied
Tuscan poetry, at a time when the
Sicilian School (
Scuola poetica siciliana), a cultural group from
Sicily, was becoming known in Tuscany. His interests brought him to discover
Provençal minstrels and poets, and
Latin culture (with an obvious particular devotion to
Virgil).
It should be underlined that during the "Secoli Bui" (
Dark Ages),
Italy had become a mosaic of small states, so
Sicily was as far (culturally and politically) from Tuscany as
Provence was: the regions did not share a language, culture, or easy communications. Nevertheless, we can assume that Dante was a keen up-to-date intellectual with international interests.
When 18, he met
Guido Cavalcanti,
Lapo Gianni,
Cino da Pistoia, and soon after
Brunetto Latini; together they became the leaders of
Dolce Stil Nuovo (The Sweet New Style). Brunetto later received a special mention in the Divine Comedy (Inferno, XV, 82), for what he had taught Dante. Other studies are reported, or deduced from
Vita Nuova or the Divine Comedy, regarding painting and music.
When he was nine years old he met
Beatrice Portinari, the daughter of Folco Portinari, with whom he fell in love "at first sight", and apparently without even having spoken to her. He saw her frequently after age 18, often exchanging greetings in the street, but he never knew her well, as he was setting the example for 'Courtful love' (hardly spoke to her, but still loved her). It is hard to decipher of what this love consisted, but something extremely important for Italian culture was happening: as it is in the sign of this love that Dante gave his imprint to the Stil Novo and would lead poets and writers to discover the themes of Love (Amore), which had never been so emphasized before. Love for Beatrice (as in a different manner
Petrarca would show for his Laura) would apparently be the reason for poetry and for living, together with political passions.
When
Beatrice died in 1290, Dante tried to find a refuge in
Latin literature. From the
Convivio we know that he had read
Boethius's
De consolatione philosophiae and
Cicero's
De amicitia.He then dedicated himself to philosophical studies at religious schools like the Dominican one in
Santa Maria Novella. He took part in the disputes that the two principal mendicant orders (
Franciscan and
Dominican) publicly or indirectly held in Florence, the former explaining the doctrine of the mystics and of
San Bonaventura, the latter presenting Saint
Thomas Aquinas' theories.His "excessive" passion for philosophy would later be criticized by the character Beatrice, in
Purgatory.
Florence and politics
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Statue of Dante at the Uffizi, Florence |
Dante, like many Florentines of his day, became embroiled in the
Guelf-Ghibelline conflict. He fought in the
battle of Campaldino (
June 11,
1289), with Florentine Guelf knights against
Arezzo Ghibellines, then in 1294 he was among those knights who escorted
Carlo Martello d'Anjou (son of
Charles of Anjou) while he was in Florence.
To further his political career, he became a doctor and a pharmacist; he did not intend to take up those professions, but a law issued in 1295 required that nobles who wanted to assume public office had to be enrolled in one of the
Corporazioni di Arti e Mestieri, so Dante obtained quick admission to the apothecaries' guild. The profession he chose was not entirely inapt, since at the time books were sold from apothecaries' shops. As a politician, he accomplished little of relevance, but he held various offices over a number of years in a city undergoing some political agitation.
After their defeat of the Ghibellines, the Guelfs divided into two factions: the White Guelfs (
Guelfi Bianchi), Dante's party, led by Vieri dei Cerchi, and the Black Guelfs (
Guelfi Neri), led by
Corso Donati. "Colours" were chosen when Vieri dei Cerchi gave his protection to the Grandi's family in
Pistoia, which was locally called
La parte bianca (the white party); Corso Donati had consequently protected the rival (
parte nera), and these colours became the distinctive colours of the parties in Florence.
Being engaged in politics was not easy when
Pope Boniface VIII was planning a military occupation of Florence, because this involved issues which transcended the city, and were beyond the scope of a local official. In 1301,
Charles de Valois, brother of
Philippe le Bel king of
France, was expected to visit Florence because the Pope had appointed him peacemaker for
Tuscany. But the city's government had already treated the Pope's ambassadors badly a few weeks before, seeking independence from papal influences. It was thought wise to consider the hypothesis that Charles de Valois could eventually have received other unofficial orders. So the council sent a delegation to
Rome, in order to ascertain the Pope's intentions. Dante was the chief of this delegation.
Exile and death
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Statue of Dante in Florence |
Boniface quickly sent away the other representatives and asked Dante alone to remain in Rome. At the same time (
November 1,
1301)
Charles de Valois was entering Florence with Black Guelfs, who in the next six days destroyed everything and killed most of their enemies. A new government was installed of Black Guelfs, and Messer Cante dei
Gabrielli di
Gubbio was appointed
Podestà of Florence. Dante was condemned to exile for two years, and to pay a large sum of money. The poet was still in Rome, where the Pope had "suggested" he stay, and was therefore considered an absconder. He could not pay his fine and was finally condemned to perpetual exile. If he were ever caught by Florentine soldiers, he would have been summarily executed.
The poet took part in several attempts by the White Guelfs to regain the power they had lost, but these failed due to treachery. Dante, bitter at the treatment he had received at the hands of his enemies, also grew disgusted with the infighting and ineffectiveness of his erstwhile allies, and vowed to become a party of one. At this point he began sketching the foundations for the
Divine Comedy, a work in 100 cantos, divided into three books of thirty-three cantos each, with a single introductory canto. Thirty-three cantos were because three was a sacred number due to the Holy
Trinity. Certainly his literary work reflects his weary contempt for the banality of most men.
He went to
Verona as a guest of Bartolomeo Della Scala, then moved to
Sarzana (
Liguria), and after this he is supposed to have lived for some time in
Lucca with Madame Gentucca, who made his stay comfortable (and was later gratefully mentioned in Purgatorio XXIV,37). Some speculative sources say that he was in
Paris, too, between 1308 and 1310. Other sources, even less trustworthy, take him to
Oxford.
In 1310
Henry VII of
Luxembourg,
King of the Romans (Germany), was invading Italy; Dante saw in him the chance of revenge, so he wrote to him (and to other Italian princes) several public letters violently inciting them to destroy the Black Guelfs. Mixing religion and private concerns, he invoked the worst anger of God against his town, suggesting several particular targets that coincided with his personal enemies.
In Florence Baldo d'Aguglione pardoned most of the White Guelfs in exile and allowed them to come back; however, Dante had gone beyond the pale in his violent letters to
Arrigo (Henry VII), and he was not recalled.
In 1312, Arrigo assaulted Florence and defeated the Black Guelfs, but there is no evidence that Dante was involved. Some say he refused to participate in the assault on his city by a foreigner; others suggest that his name had become unpleasant for White Guelfs too and that any trace of his passage had carefully been removed. In 1313 Arrigo died, and with him any residual hope for Dante to see Florence again. He returned to Verona, where
Cangrande I della Scala allowed him to live in a certain security and, presumably, in a fair amount of prosperity. Cangrande was admitted to Dante's Paradise (Paradiso XVII, 76).
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The death mask of Dante Alighieri (in Palazzo Vecchio, Florence) |
In 1315, Florence was forced by Uguccione della Faggiuola (the military officer controlling the town) to grant an amnesty to people in exile. Dante too was in the list of citizens to be pardoned. But Florence required that, apart from paying a sum of money, these citizens agreed to be treated as public offenders in a religious ceremony. Dante refused this outrageous formula, and preferred to remain in exile.
When Uguccione finally defeated Florence, Dante's death sentence was converted into confinement, at the sole condition that he go to Florence to swear that he would never enter the town again. Dante didn't go. His condemnation to death was confirmed and extended to his sons.
Dante still hoped late in life that he might be invited back to Florence on honourable terms. For Dante, exile was nearly a form of death, stripping him of much of his identity. Dante addresses the pain of exile in Canto XVII (55-60) of Paradiso, where Cacciaguida, his great-great-grandfather, warns him what to expect:
. . . Tu lascerai ogne cosa diletta più caramente; e questo è quello strale che l'arco de lo essilio pria saetta.Tu proverai sì come sa di sale lo pane altrui, e come è duro calle lo scendere e 'l salir per l'altrui scale . . .". . . You shall leave everything you love most: :this is the arrow that the bow of exile:shoots first. You are to know the bitter taste:of others' bread, how salty it is, and know:how hard a path it is for one who goes:ascending and descending others' stairs . . ."
As for the hope of returning to Florence, he describes it wistfully, as if he had already accepted its impossibility, in Canto XXV of Paradiso (1-9):
Se mai continga che 'l poema sacro al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra, sì che m'ha fatto per molti anni macro,vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serra del bello ovile ov'io dormi' agnello, nimico ai lupi che li danno guerra;con altra voce omai, con altro vello ritornerò poeta, e in sul fonte del mio battesmo prenderò 'l cappello . . .If it ever come to pass that the sacred poem:to which both heaven and earth have set their hand :so as to have made me lean for many years :should overcome the cruelty that bars me:from the fair sheepfold where I slept as a lamb,:an enemy to the wolves that make war on it,:with another voice now and other fleece:I shall return a poet and at the font:of my baptism take the laurel crown...
Of course it never happened. Prince Guido Novello da Polenta invited him to
Ravenna in 1318, and he accepted, finishing
Paradise and finally died in 1321 (at the age of 56) while on the way back to Ravenna from a diplomatic mission in Venice, perhaps of
malaria. Dante was buried in the Church of San Pier Maggiore (later called San Francesco). Bernardo Bembo, praetor of
Venice, in 1483 took care of his remains by organizing a better tomb.
On the grave, some verses of Bernardo Canaccio, a friend of Dante, dedicated to Florence:
parvi Florentia mater amoris:"Florence, mother of little love"
Eventually, Florence came to regret Dante's exile. In 1829, a tomb was built for him in Florence in the basilica of
Santa Croce. That tomb has been empty ever since, with Dante's body still remaining in its tomb in Ravenna, far from the land he loved so dearly. The front of his tomb in Florence reads
Onorate l'altissimo poeta - which roughly translates as
To honour the most exalted poet.
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Dante, poised between the mountain of Purgatorio and the city of Florence, displays the famous incipit Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita in a detail of Domenico di Michelino's painting, Florence 1465. |
The Divine Comedy describes Dante's journey through
Hell (
Inferno),
Purgatory (
Purgatorio), and
Paradise (
Paradiso), guided first by the Roman epic poet
Virgil and then by his beloved
Beatrice. While the vision of Hell, the
Inferno, is vivid for modern readers, the theological niceties presented in the other books require a certain amount of patience and scholarship to understand.
Purgatorio, the most lyrical and human of the three, also has the most poets in it;
Paradiso, the most heavily theological, has the most beautiful and ecstatic mystic passages, in which Dante tries to describe what he confesses he is unable to convey (e.g. when Dante looks into the face of God: "all'alta fantasia qui mancò possa" - "at this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe", Paradiso XXXIII.142).
Dante wrote the
Comedy in his regional dialect. By creating a poem of epic structure and philosophic purpose, he established that the
Italian language was suitable for the highest sort of expression, and simultaneously established the Tuscan dialect as the standard for Italian. In French, Italian is nicknamed
la langue de Dante. It often confuses readers that such a serious work would be called a "Comedy". In Dante's time, all serious scholarly works were written in Latin (a tradition that would persist for several hundred years more, until the waning years of the Enlightenment) and works written in any other language were assumed to be comedic in nature. It is also the case that the word "Comedy," in the classical sense, referenced works which subscribed to an ordered universe, in which events not only tended towards a happy or "amusing" ending, but an ending influenced by a Providential will that ordered all things to an ultimate good.
Other works include
Convivio ("The Banquet"), a collection of poems and interpretive commentary;
Monarchia, which sets out Dante's ideas on global political organization;
De vulgari eloquentia ("On the Eloquence of Vernacular"), on vernacular literature;
Assurdità ("Absurdity"), a recently discovered Dante work documenting his personal and private struggles with the church; and,
La Vita Nuova ("The New Life"), the story of his love for
Beatrice Portinari, who also served as the ultimate symbol of salvation in the
Comedy. The book contains love poems in Tuscan, not a new thing; the vernacular had been used for lyric works before. But it also contains Dante's learned comments on his own work, and these too are in the local language, instead of the Latin that was almost universally used.
Note: References to
Divina Commedia are in the format (book, canto, verse), i.e. (Inferno, XV, 76).
Dante and
The Divine Comedy have been a source of inspiration for countless artists for almost eight centuries. As one of the most well known and greatest artistic works in the Western tradition, its influence on culture cannot be overestimated. Some examples are listed in the
related article.
*Bonghi, Giuseppe.
Glossario de Italiano Medioevale.
*Riccardo, Merlante.
Dizionario della Divina Commedia. A dictionary of words used by Dante. Medieval Italian and Modern Italian.
*Gustarelli, Andrea.
Dizionario Dantesco, per lo studio della Divina Commedia. Casa Editrice Malfasi, 1946. A dictionary of those words in the
Divine Comedywhose meaning in Medieval Italians differs from that in Modern Italian.
*
Free ebook of Dante Alighieri at
Project Gutenberg*
"Digital Dante" – A resource page dedicated to Dante and his works.
* The
Princeton Dante Project* The
Dartmouth Dante Project*
Danteworlds at UT Austin
* Read
Dante Alighieri's works on
Read Print – Free books for students, teachers, and the classic enthusiast.
*
Henry Holiday's 'Dante and Beatrice'*
"Dante Alighieri on the Web", about his life, time, and (complete) work.
*
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry*
English translation of The Comedy by Anthony LaPorta
*
Società Dantesca Italiana (bilingual site) contains among other info a database of all the earliest manuscripts of Dante's works, with (for some) transcription of the text and page images
*
Guardian Books "Author Page", with profile and links to further articles.
*
Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy*
Dante Ravenna Tomb*
Dante Cenotaph Tomb*
Dante Alighieri's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
Dante Societies around the World
*
Head Office - Rome Dante Alighieri Society*
Sydney Dante Alighieri Society*
Massachusetts Dante Alighieri Society *
Paris Dante Alighieri Society *
Vienna Dante Alighieri Society *
Berlin Dante Alighieri Society 
