Biography of Dante
Dante was born in Florence in 1265. The poet came from
an ancient “noble family.” However, the Dante family long ago lost the
feudal appearance, already the father of the poet belonged, like himself, to
the Guelph party. When he reached adulthood, Dante signed up in
1283 in the shop of pharmacists and physicians, which also included
booksellers and artists and belonged to the seven “senior”
shops of Florence. Dante was educated in the volume of
the medieval schools, which he acknowledged scarce, and sought to
make up for his study of French and Provencal languages,
opening He had access to the best examples of foreign literature,
but along with medieval poets young Dante
carefully studied also the ancient poets, and first of all
Virgil, whom he chose, in his own words,
his “leader, lord and teacher.”
The main passion of the young Dante was poetry. He early
to write poetry and already in the early 80-ies of the XIII century. wrote many
lyrical poems, almost exclusively of love
content. At the age of 18 he experienced a great psychological
crisis-a love for Beatrice, the daughter of the Florentine Folco Portinari, a
friend of his father, who later married a nobleman and
died in 1290. The story of his love for Beatrice Dante was laid out in a
small book, New Life, which brought him
literary fame.
After the death of Beatrice, the poet occupied himself with intensified study of
theology, philosophy and astronomy, and also learned all the subtleties of
medieval scholasticism. Dante became one of the most learned people of
his time, but his scholarship was of a typically medieval
character, as he obeyed theological dogmas.
Dante’s political activity began very early. As soon as he
reached adulthood, he took part in the military
enterprises of the Florentine commune and fought on the side of the
Guelphs against the Ghibellines. In the 90’s, Dante
city councils and performs diplomatic assignments, and in
June 1300 he was elected a member of the board of Florence that ruled Florence
six priors. After the split of the Guelph party, he adjoins the
Whites and fights vigorously against the orientation toward the papal curia.
After the Blacks were defeated by the Whites,
Pope Boniface VIII intervened in their struggle, summoning to the aid of the
French prince Carla Valois, who entered the city in November
1301 and punished the supporters of the White party, accusing
them of all sorts of crimes. In January 1302, the blow fell on the
great poet.
Dante was sentenced to a large fine on a fictional
charge of bribery. Fearing the worst, the poet fled from
Florence, after which all his property was confiscated. All the
rest of his life, Dante spent in exile, wandering from
city into the city, quite learned, “like the bitter bread of a stranger,” and never
again saw Florence, dear to his heart, “a beautiful
sheepdog where he slept with a lamb”.
Life in exile significantly changed
Dante’s political beliefs. Full of anger against Florence, he came to the conclusion that her
townspeople had not yet grown to independent defense of their
interests. At first Dante hoped that White would be able to
forcefully defeat Florence from the Blacks, for which he entered into an alliance with the
exiled Ghibellines, in no way sharing their aristocratic
prejudices. But soon Dante is disappointed in his
political allies, scornfully calls them “a rabble
monsters and fools “and proudly declares that he alone makes up his
party. The more and more the poet is inclined to believe that only the
imperial power can pacify and unite Italy,
giving a decisive rebuff to the papal authority. Hope for the implementation of
this program he placed on the emperor Heinrich VII, who appeared
in Italy in 1310 allegedly to establish “order” and to liquidate the
internecine strife of Italian cities, in fact, with the aim of
robbing them. But Dante saw in Henry the desired “messiah” and
agitated for him, sending out everything to him Torons Latin
letters. However, Henry VII died ‘in 1313, failing to take
Florence.
Florence twice deleted his name from the list of amnestied,
for she saw in him an irreconcilable enemy. The
proposal he made in 1316 to return to Florence under the condition of humiliating
public repentance, Dante decidedly rejected. The last years of
his life the poet spent in Ravenna with Prince Guido da Polenta, the nephew of
Francesca da Rimini. She was the daughter of Guido da
Palenta Sr., the lord of Ravenna. She was married in a fraud for the
lame and ugly signor Rimini for political calculations. On the
wedding instead of the lame Rimini attended by his brother
Paolo, a young and beautiful. Francesca and Paolo fell in love with each
other. Signor Rimini killed both of them.
Here he worked on completing his great poem
written during the years of exile. He hoped that poetic glory would
give him an honorable return home, but did not live to see
it. Dante died on September 14, 1321 in Ravenna
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