The Mediterranean in the 14th century

Dante Alighieri

Dante was born in Florence in 1265 to a family pertaining to the Guelph bourgeosie. Commited in various political matters, he occupied diverse offices in the Florentine judiciary and diplomacy. He lived intense rivalries among the Guelphs; the Black faction was in favor of a papal alliance, and the White lobbied for independence from the power of both the Pope and the emperor. Belonging to the White faction, Dante tried to broker a peace with the mediation of Pope Boniface VIII, but was imprisoned. After his political opponents occupied part of the city Dante was obliged to go into exile.

An amnesty was declared in 1316 and Dante was invited to return, but the writer rejected the proposition and continued his life in Ravenna. After a trip to Venice in 1321 he succumbed to a fever, dying in the same year.

Dante’s literature was marked by the figure of his loved one, Beatriz Portinari, the Florentine noblewoman to whom he dedicated almost all of his works. Among them we find New Life (Vita Nouva,1294), the book which reflected the current troubador poetry; and his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy (1307-1321), a journey with the poet Virgil through Purgatory and Hell which ends in Paradise by the side of Beatriz. Others of Dante’s works in which he enters into questions of style and politics are On the Eloquence of the People (De vulgari elocuentia, 1304-1307) and On Monarchy (De monarchia,1310-1314.)