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- Nov 22, 2023
- 9 min read

Dante Alighieri and his Divine Comedy

Updated: Mar 15

Italy's national poet

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) was one of the greatest poets in the Western literary tradition and is considered the national poet of Italy. His work had a decisive impact on the development of Italian literature with significant contributions to the beginning of the renaissance. Many of his ideas and themes were developed by later writers, artists, and thinkers.

He helped shape the poetry of the period and decisively changed the direction of Western literature. Dante (short for Durante) helped elevate the Tuscan dialect to the national literary language of Italy. He established the vernacular (vulgar) languages as literary languages and demonstrated that great writers did not need to use Latin. Perhaps this was his greatest contribution to humanism and the renaissance.

A great admirer of the Sicilian school, he helped to popularize the sonnet, its most important style of verse. He also helped to popularize the themes of Provençal poetry in Italy. This type of poetry emerged in Provence, in southwestern France. Provençal troubadours celebrated chivalry and especially courtly love, a style of poetry that praised an unattainable love, very influential in the Italian renaissance. His work helped to spread the ideas of courtly love throughout Europe from the 14th to the 16th century.

Separation between Church and politics

Although the theme of The Divine Comedy (1308–1320) is religion and salvation, its publication is often seen as the beginning of the renaissance and the end of the late medieval period in Italy. It seems contradictory that the spirit of the renaissance, which exalted the pleasures of this world and the individual, began with a work focused on religion. But, for Dante, this world had its value and merits and was not an antechamber to the other world.

He did not think it was wrong to be happy and enjoy this life. According to him, eternal salvation and earthly happiness were compatible. Contributing to civic and political life was indeed a virtuous stance. This idea proved to be very influential on later humanists, who played a crucial role in the development of the renaissance.

Dante influenced great thinkers like Machiavelli. In his main political work, he argued that there should be a separation of church and State. This contributed to renaissance political thought.

This separation between Church and State ensured that the humanists who succeeded him felt free to focus on the secular world, that is, on the condition of those who live in the century, between the things of the world and life; the opposite of the religious state, typical of those who took vows. He also made clear that involvement in the secular world was compatible with his hopes for future salvation.

Politics for him was a skill and should not be restricted by theological precepts. His ideas also influenced some of the leaders of the Reformation. The exiled Florentine helped change the discourse on the role of religion in Europe. A great poet and religious theologian, his conception of the double nature of man, one earthly and the other eternal, was decisive in the development of his political doctrine.

Dante's political thoughts and actions

Dante was also involved in the political life of Florence, a region of Tuscany. In 1300, he was elected prior, one of nine members of the local government, for a period of two months. This position was the cause of his misfortune. He, like his family, belonged to one of the city's main factions whose politics were often bloody.

At that time, Italian cities were constantly on the brink of a civil war between the Guelphs, close to the Pope, and the Ghibellines, favorable to the Holy Roman Empire.

The poet fought in the Battle of Campaldino (1289) when the city's Guelph faction defeated the Arezzo Ghibellines. After the victory, the Guelphs changed the constitution and, to remain a citizen, Dante had to enroll in a Guild, an association of merchants.

However, as was typical of rebellious politics in late medieval Italy, the Guelphs soon split along ideological lines and became two mutually hostile factions, the White Guelphs (Dante's party) and the Black Guelphs. Initially the whites were in power and expelled the Blacks from Florence, but Pope Boniface VIII planned a military occupation of the city.

A delegation of Florentines, with Dante among them, was sent to Rome to ascertain the Pope's intentions. While he was in Rome, the Black Guelphs destroyed much of the city and established a new government.

In 1302, based on false and fabricated accusations, a judge ordered Dante and his allies to be burned alive if they attempted to return to Florence. The charges included fraud, extortion, corruption and even sodomy with a young man. Dante received news that his assets had been confiscated and that he was considered a fugitive and sentenced to perpetual exile.

When the Pope allowed Dante to return to Florence, the city was under the rule of Charles Valois, an ally of the Pope. In the same year, he was sentenced to a heavy fine on charges of corruption in the public office he held.

In 1315, the military officer controlling Florence granted amnesty to Florentines in exile, but the city government insisted that returning expatriates must pay a large fine and do public penance. Dante refused, preferring to remain in exile.

The Divine Comedy – his masterpiece

In The Divine Comedy, his most relevant work, Dante completely changed the rules of the game. He was the first poet to write a book of such impact in the Florentine vernacular (vulgar language), in the 14th century. This allowed the book to reach a much wider audience, contributing to global literacy.

The poem represents the journey of the soul towards God. In the epic, the shadow or spirit of the great Roman poet Virgil guides Dante. It is an attempt to demonstrate how humans can align themselves with the love of God, seen as the fundamental force of the Universe.

Contrary to what many think, the poem is called Comedy not because it uses humor. In fact, this term is the opposite of tragedy. The name of the poem itself indicates that the story will have a successful conclusion for the protagonist.

At first, the work was simply called Comedy and later received the adjective Divine, through the poet Giovanni Boccaccio. Considered the first work of Italian and world literature, its greatness is not limited to its content but to its form, the quality of its poetry and its extraordinary rhymes.

Between 1200 and 1300 Italy was a nation divided into several small city-states. In each of them, different dialects were spoken, called vulgar languages, that is, the language commonly spoken by the population. Everything was written in Latin and the vernacular was only used to write things of little importance.

The importance of The Divine Comedy for the renaissance

In the culture of the Middle Ages, Latin was considered the only language suitable for literary and philosophical works. Dante believed that vernacular languages were valid vehicles for literary expression and suitable for certain genres such as comedy, poetry, and prose.

As we have already said, Dante wrote The Divine Comedy in Florentine, but he borrowed other regional Italian dialects and even Latin. Dante's magnificent work helped make Florentine the literary language of Italy. Dante's influence during the renaissance spread to the rest of Europe.

This persuaded many writers and poets, such as Francesco Petrarca and Giovanni Boccaccio, to abandon Latin and write in their native language. This change had consequences that went far beyond the literary world. This is how the Florentine vernacular became not only the most popular dialect in Italy but also the most famous and prestigious. So much so that in the rest of Italy speaking Florentine was considered a sign of great refinement. This helped to develop a national consciousness during the high renaissance, which is evident in the works of Machiavelli.

To this day, the epic poem is seen as a reference for writers, editors, and screenwriters, being considered one of the masterpieces of all history. Unlike the epic poems of Homer and Virgil, which recounted the great historical deeds of their people, Dante's Divine Comedy is an autobiographical work, set in the time in which he lived and populated by contemporary figures.

Guided first by the character of Virgil and then by his beloved Beatrice, Dante wrote about his own path to salvation through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise offering philosophical and moral judgments along the way.

Dante took advantage of The Divine Comedy to settle scores with many of his enemies, including Pope Boniface VIII, for whom he reserved a place in hell. Due to the monumental influence that the work had on countless artists, Dante is considered one of the greatest writers who ever lived. As the poet TS Eliot wrote: Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them, there is no third.

Dante's long exile

Due to strictly political problems, Dante was accused of administrative improbity and sentenced to pay a fine of five thousand guilders, to remain confined for two years and banned from holding public office for the rest of his life (1303). As he refused to pay the fine or justify himself, he was sentenced to death, beginning his long life in exile. From Siena he went to Verona and then to Bologna (1304-1306).

Exile may have been difficult, but it made him extremely productive. He vehemently believed that his relevance on the literary scene would be enough for his exile to be revoked and for him to return to Florence. However, no matter how successful he was, his exile was never ended.

Dante accepted an invitation from the ruler of Ravenna to stay in that city. It was in Ravenna that the poet finished the last of his great works and died in 1321, victim of malaria contracted in the Venetian swamps. In Ravenna he was buried with great honors. His remains were never returned to Florence.

Marriage and platonic love

Beatrice Portinari, who appears in The Divine Comedy, was his great platonic love. He was just nine years old, and she was almost the same age when they met. Beatrice was adopted as an inspiring muse in all his work. When she turned sixteen, he met her again, presenting her with the first of his love sonnets.

However, at the age of twelve, Dante married Gemma Donati, a wife who bore him three children. A frequent practice at the time, Dante and Gemma's marriage was already arranged between their families when they were both still children.

In 1290, Beatrice died. With the early death of his beloved, he took refuge in his studies, dedicating himself to reading Christian and classical authors such as Boethius, Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle, Ovid, and Lucan, going through a period of maturation that led him to several changes in his artistic production. Two years later, Dante wrote Vita Nuova as a song of praise for his true love.

Literary and philosophical works

La Vita Nova (The New Life) - prose and verse account of Dante's love for Beatrice Portinari, written in the first person. The narrative begins from the moment he saw her for the first time when he was nine years old, and she was almost the same age as him. In the prose text and poems Dante describes his feelings on several occasions.

After Beatriz's death, in 1290, the story continues narrating the suffering due to the irremediable loss and the poet's doubts and anguish until he decides to say nothing more until he can talk about her “as has never been said about any woman”.

De Monarchia (The monarchy) – important political treatise written in Latin. It was unique for the time because Dante advocated a Universal Monarchy and the separation of Church and State. The work is made up of three books, but the most significant is the third, in which Dante more explicitly confronts the theme of relations between the pope and the emperor.

The Symposium – Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio are also called "the three fountains" or "the three crowns". Let them come and let us all sit together at one table for the Banquet! Written in his final days, it presents many of his most cogent thoughts about how a life of maturity and civility should be led.

De vulgari eloquentia (On vernacular eloquence) – essay written in Latin, initially thought of as four books, but abandoned in the middle of the second. The first book deals with the relationship between Latin and the vernacular, and the search for an illustrious vernacular in Italian territory. The second is an analysis of "canto", or song, a literary genre.

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