which the Florentine Guelphs soundly de-
feated their rivals in the Ghibelline fac-
tion.
Dante was a devoted student of the
ancient Roman poet Virgil as well as Ci-
cero, a famous Roman politician and ora-
tor. Drawn to poetry, he studied the an-
cient Latin poets as well as the songs of
the troubadours of Provence (southern
France). He began composing love sonnets
as a young man. An encounter with a
young noblewoman, Beatrice Portinari,
who struck him as an ideal of beauty and
grace, inspired many of his poems. Her
death at an early age in 1290 moved him
to collect his poetry in Vita Nuova,or
“New Life.” The poems and prose passages
of this book, which was completed by
1294, were written in Italian, and not
Latin, and represent one of the earliest ef-
forts by any Italian writer to express him-
self in the vernacular (everyday language)
of his homeland.
Dante involved himself in the civil
struggles that were then dividing Florence
into two hostile camps. He joined the doc-
tors and apothecaries guilds (guild mem-
bership was required for anyone who
sought high public office), and a few years
following the appearance ofVita Nuova,
he became a member of the city council
of Florence. When he traveled to Rome as
Florentine envoy to Pope Boniface VIII in
1301, his opponents in the Guelph party
who remained behind had him banished
from the city, seized his property, and
threatened him with execution should he
ever return. For the remaining twenty
years of his life, Dante lived in exile, wan-
dering from town to town and never re-
ceiving a pardon from the city of Florence
that would allow him to return. He lived
in Verona, Bologna, and Paris, taking ref-
uge in the homes of patrons and nobles
who either admired his works or who
shared his political beliefs. He became a
supporter of Emperor Henry VII in the
latter’s drive to reunite the Italian city-
states. In 1310 an invasion of Italy by
Henry temporarily gave Dante hope for a
return to Florence. These hopes were
ended with the death of the emperor while
on campaign in Tuscany in 1313. Dante’s
letters to Henry angered the Florentine
leaders further; when the city offered him
a pardon with certain strict conditions,
Dante refused the offer and was afterward
condemned to death.
While in exile, Dante wroteDe Vul-
garii Eloquentia, a treatise on Italian as a
literary language, and On Monarchy,a
work on politics in which Dante supported
the idea of a king to unite and control the
many squabbling political factions of Italy.This fresco by Luca Signorelli depicts “Dante
Meeting Manfred in Purgatory,” a scene
from the third canto of Dante’s “Purgato-
rio.”
Alighieri, Dante