Dante Alighieri

Biographical Notes
1265-1321

Dante Alighieri was born in Florence, Italy, in 1265.  His family was noble but not wealthy or distinguished.  His mother died when he was a child, and his father died before 1283.  Little is known of Dante’s formal education: there are hints that it may have included study with the Dominicans, Augustinians, or Franciscans in Florence, or the university in Bologna.  In his youth, Dante Fell into debt, apparently mis-spending some of his time with friends like Forese Donati.  He formed beneficial relationships, however, with the poet Guido Cavalcanti and the learned scholar Brunetto Latini, as well as numerous other poets, musicians, and artists of his day.

At about the age of twenty he married Gemma Donati, and their marriage produced two sons, Pietro and Jacopo, and a daughter, Antonia.  Of Beatrice, the love of Dante’s life and the subject of  La Vita Nuova (The New Life), not much can be verified.  He produced La Vita Nuova in the early 1290’s and began his best-known work, the Commedia (The Divine Comedy)  In 1295 Dante entered Florentine politics.  In the Summer of 1300 he became one of the six Priors of Florence.  In 1301 the political situation forced Dante and his party into exile.  He was never to return to his beloved home.

For the rest of his life he wandered through Italy and perhaps went as far as Paris or Oxford.  Depending for refuge on the generosity of various nobles, during these years he performed diplomatic and legal tasks and wrote many impassioned letters asking or demanding support for his often controversial ideas.  Throughout all of this, Dante continued to work on The Divine Comedy.  Late in life he took asylum in Ravenna where he completed the Commedia and died, much honored, in 1321.

La Vita Nuova (The New Life)
De Vulgaria Eloquentia (On the Common Language)
De Monarchia (On the Monarchy)
Il Convivio (The Banquet)
Commedia (The Divine Comedy)
 Inferno (Hell)
 Purgatorio (Purgatory)
 Paradiso (Paradise)