A Florentine beginning
Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in 1265. His family belonged to the lesser nobility and was not especially wealthy or powerful. Florence was then a thriving commercial city, rich from banking and the cloth trade, and run by a republican government. Much of what we know about Dante’s early life comes from his own writings, and from later biographers, so some details are uncertain.
In his early work, the Vita Nuova (New Life), Dante describes first seeing a girl named Beatrice when both were children, and he writes of his love for her in a series of poems linked by prose. Most scholars think Beatrice was a real woman, usually identified with Bice Portinari, who died in 1290. Dante married Gemma Donati, a match arranged when they were young, and they had children. The poet rarely speaks of Gemma in his writings.
Learning and politics
Dante was well read in Latin literature, especially Virgil, and he studied philosophy and theology, partly through the Dominican and Franciscan schools in Florence. He was influenced by the thought of Thomas Aquinas and by earlier Italian poets, including Guido Cavalcanti, who was a close friend. Some accounts say he spent time in Bologna, one of the great medieval universities, but the details are uncertain.
He also served the city. In 1289 he is reported to have fought with the Florentine cavalry at the battle of Campaldino. Later he entered politics. To take part in public office, one had to belong to a guild, and Dante joined the guild of physicians and apothecaries, which also included booksellers. He held several posts in the city’s councils and in 1300 served for two months as one of the priors, the chief magistrates of Florence.
Guelphs, Ghibellines and the road to exile
Dante’s world was divided by party. Italian cities had long been split between the Guelphs, who generally supported the pope, and the Ghibellines, who generally supported the emperor. In Florence the Guelphs prevailed, and then they themselves split into two factions, the Whites and the Blacks. The quarrel turned on power in Florence and on how far the pope should interfere in the city’s affairs. Behind it were wider questions about the Holy Roman Empire and about papal supremacy, which Pope Boniface VIII was pushing in these years.
Dante belonged to the White side, which resisted outside control. In 1301 the pope’s ally, Charles of Valois, entered Florence, and the Blacks took power. In early 1302 a court controlled by the new regime found Dante guilty of corruption and similar charges, which he always denied, and fined and banished him. A later sentence is said to have threatened death by burning if he returned. He never saw Florence again.
The years of exile
For the next two decades Dante lived on other people’s hospitality. He stayed at the courts of northern Italian lords, including Verona, and later in Ravenna. The exact route is not fully documented, and some stops are traditional only. He wrote bitterly of the experience, saying that bread tastes salty in other men’s houses and that the staircase of a stranger is steep. These phrases appear in the Paradiso, a part of his great poem.
Exile pushed him to think hard about politics. In his Latin treatise Monarchia he argued that the emperor and pope each had separate roles, an opinion some church officials later disliked. He placed hope for a time in Emperor Henry VII, who came to Italy in 1310 and died in 1313, ending that hope. He also wrote on language and poetry. His unfinished treatise De vulgari eloquentia discussed which form of Italian was best for poetry, and so supported writing in the Italian vernacular.
The Divine Comedy
Dante began the Divine Comedy probably around 1306 to 1308 and finished it near the end of his life. He called it simply the Commedia. The adjective “Divine” was added by later readers. It tells of a journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, guided at first by Virgil and later by Beatrice. It has one hundred cantos, written in a rhyme scheme called terza rima.
The poem is theological, but also personal and political. Dante meets people from his own life and from history, and his judgments are sharp. He assigns popes, rulers and fellow Florentines to Hell, and he gives the sinners vivid voices. Many readers have found the best-known part to be the Inferno, with its detailed pictures of medieval hell, but the poem as a whole moves toward hope and light. It draws on the Christian ideas of purgatory and heaven, which were taking shape as doctrine in the thirteenth century.
It also helped define a language. By choosing Tuscan for a major work, Dante gave it prestige. Over time, the Tuscan of Florence became the basis of standard Italian, though that took centuries and had many causes besides one poem.
Last years and legacy
In his final years Dante lived in Ravenna, under the protection of its ruler. He went on a diplomatic mission to Venice and, on the way back, fell ill, probably with malaria, and died in September 1321. He was buried in Ravenna, where his tomb remains. Florence later tried, and failed, to bring his remains home.
His reputation grew quickly. Within decades, Florence was arranging public lectures on the poem, and Boccaccio wrote a short life of him. Today he is read around the world, and his poem is regarded as one of the central works of medieval literature. It remains a single man’s vision, shaped by the quarrels of a particular city in a particular time.