Dante Alighieri 1265-1321
Italian poet, author of the Divina Commedia ('Divine Comedy')

Dante was born in Florence, the son of a lawyer of the noble Guelf family. He was baptized Durante, afterwards abbreviated to Dante. According to his own account, he first set eyes on his lifelong love, Beatrice Portinari (c.1265-1290), at the age of nine in 1274. There is no evidence that she returned his passion; she was married at an early age to one Simone de' Bardi, but neither this nor the poet's own subsequent marriage interfered with his pure and Platonic devotion to her, which intensified after her death. The story of his boyish but unquenchable passion is told with exquisite pathos in La VitaNuova (c.1292).

Shortly after, Dante married Gemma Donati, daughter of a powerful Guelf family. They had seven children, six sons and one daughter, Beatrice, a nun at Ravenna. In 1289 he fought at Campaldino, where Florence defeated the Ghibellines, and was at the capitulation of Caprona. He was registered in the City Guild of the Apothecaries, being entered as 'Dante d'Alighieri, Poeta'. In 1300, after filling minor public offices, and possibly going on some embassies abroad, he became one of the six priors of Florence, but for only two months. It was towards the 'White Guelfs', or more moderate section, that his sympathies tended. As prior, he procured the banishment of the heads and leaders of the rival factions, showing characteristic sternness and impartiality to Guelf and Ghibelline, white and black, alike.

In 1301, in alarm at the threatened interference of Charles of Valois (1270-1325), second son of Philip III of France, he was sent on an embassy to Rome to Pope Boniface VIII. He never returned from that embassy, nor did he ever again set foot in his native city. Charles espoused the side of the Neri or Blacks, and their victory was complete. Dante was banished from Florence in 1309 and sentenced to death in his absence. From then on he led a wandering life, first in Verona, in Tuscany, in the Lunigiana, near Urbino, and then Verona again. He eventually settled in Ravenna (1318), where for the most part he remained until his death. He was buried with much pomp at Ravenna, where he still lies, having been restored in 1865 to the original sarcophagus there.

His most celebrated work is the Divina Commedia, begun around 1307, his spiritual testament, which narrates a journey through Hell and Purgatory, guided by Virgil, and finally to Paradise, guided by Beatrice. It gives an encyclopedic view of the highest culture and knowledge of the age, all expressed in the most exquisite poetry. The Divina Commedia (which Dante began in Latin) established Italian as a literary language. The next most important work is the fragment called Il Convivio, or 'The Banquet', which takes the form of a commentary on some of the author's canzoni, or short poems, of which there are only three, though the work, if completed, would have contained 14. The De Monarchia (in Latin) expounds Dante's theory of the divinely intended government of the world by a universal pope. Another unfinished work, De Vulgari Eloquentia, discusses the origin of language, the divisions of languages, and the dialects of Italian in particular. Canzoniere is a collection of short poems, canzoni, sonnets, etc; there are a dozen epistles addressed mainly to leading statesmen or rulers; and there are also some Eclogues and other minor works, as well as several of doubtful authenticity.

Bibliography: W Anderson, Dante the Maker (1980); T C Chubb, Dante and His World (1966); E Auerbach, Dante, Poet of the Secular World (1961).