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Dante Beginning
Dante Alighieri, considered the father of the Italian language, has become famous through his countless works,
including: “Il Convivio“, “Il De Vulgari Eloquentia“, “De Monarchia“, “Vita Nova” and his most famous and majestic work entitled: “The Divine Comedy“.
Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in 1265.
While still a child he lost his mother Bella and shortly thereafter he also lost his father Alighiero di Bellincione.
He attends the schools where he receives the common education based on the seven arts:
grammar, rhetoric, dialectics; arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy.
In 1274 he meets Beatrice for the first time (Bice di Folco Portinari),
who will write in his opera Vita Nova as the angelic woman of the stilnovisti.
Three years later, in 1277, his marriage to Gemma Donati was decided.
They will actually marry a few years later and have 4 children. In 1290 Beatrice died.
The death of Beatrice causes a profound religious crisis in Dante,
which leads him to undertake rigorous philosophical and theological studies.
At the same time he deepens his poetic culture by reading the Latin poets,
in particular Virgil, whom he considers his “teacher”, then Ovid, Lucan and Stazio.
Starting from 1295, political experiences are added to these cultural experiences.
Dante and The Divine Comedy Interlude
In those years Florence was tormented by internal struggles between the white Guelphs and the black Guelphs,
Dante sided with the white Guelphs and, in the following years,
held public offices of increasing importance until in 1300 he was elected Prior, the supreme city magistracy.
While Dante is in Rome as ambassador to Pope Boniface VIII, the black Guelphs have the upper hand,
take over Florence and unleash persecutions against the defeated side.
Dante is sentenced, under false accusation, to exile for two years, to pay a fine of five thousand florins and to be banned from public office.
He disdainfully does not show up to clear himself.
Two months later another sentence condemns him to the stake.
At first he joins the exiled white Guelph comrades who have joined the exiled Ghibellines with the intention of returning to Florence by force.
But after a miserably failed attempt, Dante prefers to be part for himself.
The sad and long exile begins for him. Certain stages of these first years of exile include those in the Verona of the Della Scala,
in the Treviso of Gherardo da Camino, in the Lunigiana of Moroello Malaspina.
In the meantime he composes the Convivio and the De vulgari Eloquentia,
while starting from 1304 he begins to compose the highest work on which he will work for the rest of his life, the Divine Comedy.
Between Arrigo’s appearance on the Italian scene and his death,
the poet systematically re-elaborates and orders his political principles,
with particular regard to the problem of the relationship between the authority of the emperor and that of the pope,
writing the treatise De Monarchia in Latin language.
Conclusion
Having sided openly in favor of Arrigo’s enterprise aggravates the conditions of exile for Dante.
In 1315 he indignantly rejects an amnesty that has as its price the recognition of his guilt and public humiliation.
The death sentence for Dante and his children is therefore confirmed.
In recent years the poet first settles in Verona at Cangrande della Scala,
to which he is linked by a deep friendship, then in Ravenna at Guido Novello da Polenta, with whom he composes the Eclogues.
Guido Novello da Polenta also entrusted him with some missions, including an embassy to Venice.
Upon returning from this embassy, the poet contracted malaria, dying in the night between 13 and 14 September 1321.
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