Dante Alighieri

Lore & Background

Dante was born in Florence, likely around May 1265, deduced from autobiographical allusions in the Divine Comedy. His family was loyal to the Guelph political faction, which supported the papacy. He claimed descent from ancient Romans, but the earliest relative he could name was his great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida degli Elisei. His father was Alighiero di Bellincione, a businessman and moneylender, and his mother was Bella, probably of the Abati family. She died before Dante was ten, and his father remarried Lapa di Chiarissimo Cialuffi, who bore Dante's half-siblings Francesco and Tana.

Dante first met Beatrice Portinari when he was nine and she eight, claiming to have fallen in love at first sight. At age 12, he was promised in marriage to Gemma di Manetto Donati, with whom he later had three children: Pietro, Jacopo, and Antonia. He fought with the Guelph cavalry at the Battle of Campaldino in 1289 and later joined the Physicians' and Apothecaries' Guild to participate in public life. His education included study of Tuscan poetry, the Sicilian School, Provençal troubadour poetry, and Latin writers such as Cicero, Ovid, and Virgil.

Reader's Guide

Dante Alighieri's significance lies in his revolutionary use of the vernacular for serious literary and scholarly work. At a time when Latin dominated, his De vulgari eloquentia was one of the first scholarly defenses of writing in the vernacular, and his Divine Comedy, written in the Florentine dialect, helped establish that dialect as the basis for modern Italian. His work set a precedent for later Italian writers and influenced English authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, John Milton, and Alfred Tennyson. Dante is credited with the first use of the interlocking three-line rhyme scheme known as terza rima. His depictions of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven inspired Western art and literature broadly. In Italy, he is called il Sommo Poeta ('the Supreme Poet') and, along with Petrarch and Boccaccio, forms the tre corone ('three crowns') of Italian literature. His legacy as the 'father' of the Italian language endures.

Did You Know?

• Dante's Divine Comedy was originally titled Comedìa and later called Divina by Giovanni Boccaccio.
• He is credited with the first use of the interlocking three-line rhyme scheme called terza rima.
• Dante claimed to have fallen in love with Beatrice Portinari at first sight when he was nine and she eight.
• He fought with the Guelph cavalry at the Battle of Campaldino in 1289.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"In that book which is My memory...

On the first page That is the chapter when I first met you Appear the words...

Here begins a new life." — Dante Alighieri "Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi." — Dante Alighieri "Behold a God more powerful than I who comes to rule over me." — Dante Alighieri "Chapter I (tr. Barbara Reynolds); of love." — Dante Alighieri