Dante Alighieri (also written ALDIGHIERI, ALAGHIERI, and otherwise), 'that singular splendour of the Italian race,' as Boccaccio, his first biographer, calls him, was born in May 1265, the exact day being unknown. The house in which he was born is still shown in the Piazza di San Martino at Florence. His father was a lawyer, his mother, who was his father's second wife, was named Bella, but her surname is not known. The future poet was baptised with the Christian name of Durante, afterwards contracted into Dante, in the beautiful baptistery of Florence, towards which in his later years the tenderest thoughts of the hopeless exile turned (see Inf. xix. 17; Par. xxv. 1-12). The fancy of the old biographers loved to dwell on the appropriateness of both names, 'the much-enduring,' and 'the giver.' As with many other great men, a halo of legend surrounds the circumstances of his birth and early years. But the curtain is first lifted on his actual history, and that by himself, in his Vita Nuova, the New (i.e. probably Early) Life, when he relates how he first set eyes on 'the glorious lady of his heart, Beatrice,' he being then about nine years of age, and she a few months younger. To Boccaccio, and to his statement alone, we owe the generally accepted fact that she was the daughter of Folco Portinari, for Dante himself never gives the slightest clue as to her family name. Owing to his reticence on this point, combined with the extraordinary and, to modern notions, almost unintelligible amount of idealisation in Dante's language about her, some critics have (as might be expected) denied that she was a real person at all. That chance meeting in May 1274 determined the whole future course of the poet's life. The story of his boyish but unquenchable passion is told with exquisite pathos in the Vita Nuova. There is no evidence that any similar feeling was aroused in the heart of Beatrice Portinari. She was married at an early age to one Simone de' Bardi, but neither this nor the poet's own subsequent marriage interfered with his pure and Platonic devotion to her. This became even intensified after her death, which took place on June 9, 1290, when she was in her 24th year. Shortly after this Dante married Gemma Donati, a member of one of the most powerful families of the Guelph faction at Florence. According to Boccaccio, this marriage was recommended by his friends, alarmed at the condition of his health through overmuch sorrow. It has commonly been assumed that the marriage was an unhappy one. This, however, is merely a conjecture, supported mainly by the fact that after Dante's exile in 1301 he never appears to have seen, or cared to see, his wife again.
In 1289 Dante took part in the battle of Campaldino, in which the Florentines and their Guelphic allies defeated the Ghibelline league of Arezzo. The flight and death of Buonconte, who fought on the opposite side, is the subject of one of the most splendid episodes in the Divina Commedia (Purg. v.). Later in the same year he was present at the capitulation of Caprona, as he himself tells us in Inf. xxi. 94. With these experiences his military life seems to have closed. Soon after, we find him beginning to take part in politics, and according to the custom of the times, he first became registered in one of the city guilds—viz. that of the Apothecaries, he being then thirty years of age. It is interesting to note that he is there entered as ‘Dante d’Aldighieri, poeta.’ It should, perhaps, have been mentioned that we know little of his early education, except that he is said to have studied at the then celebrated university of Bologna, and that he was certainly for some time a pupil of Brunetto Latini, of whom he speaks with the utmost veneration and affection, though a stern sense of justice compels him to place him in Hell (Inf. xv.). At the outset of his public life his sympathies were with the Guelph party, to which he would naturally have been attached by family ties both through his father and his wife. After filling minor public offices, and possibly going on some embassies abroad (though, doubtless, not all of those which later writers in their admiration have attributed to him) in the ever-memorable year 1300, the mezzo cammino of his own life, when he was thirty-five years old, the beginning of a new century, the year of the first Jubilee at Rome, the assumed year of the great poetic vision of the Commedia, he attained to the dignity of one of the six priors of Florence. That singular office, lasting for only two months, seems (as Mr Lowell suggests) to have been invented by the Florentines ‘apparently to secure at least six constitutional chances of revolution in the year.’ It should be explained that this was a very critical and stormy period at Florence. Not only was the eternal feud of Guelph and Ghibelline in full force, but a new excuse for party hatred had been found in the distinction of Black and White Guelphs, the latter being the more moderate party, who tended to verge towards the Ghibellines, and under certain circumstances to make common cause with them. So far as Dante could be called ‘a party man’ at all (see Par. vi. 100-3; xvii. 68-69), it was towards this section that his sympathies tended. His office as prior lasted from June 15 to August 15 in the year 1300. He distinguished his brief tenure of office by procuring the banishment of the heads and leaders of the rival factions by which Florence was torn asunder. He carried out this process with characteristic sternness and impartiality on Guelph and Ghibelline, White and Black alike, unmoved by any considerations of relationship, friendship, or political sympathy. Shortly afterwards the leaders of the Whites were permitted somehow to return. The partiality thus shown was a prominent feature in the accusation against Dante; but he had a complete answer in the fact that he was no longer in office at the time that it occurred.
In the following year, 1301, and probably in the autumn, in alarm at the threatened interference of Charles of Valois, who had now crossed the Alps, Dante was sent on an embassy to Rome to Pope Boniface VIII., under whose instigation Charles was acting. From that embassy he never returned, nor did he ever again set foot in his native city. For meanwhile had occurred the dreaded advent of Charles, nominally as peacemaker, on November 1, 1301. He espoused the side of the Neri or Blacks, and for three days the fight raged in the streets of Florence. Finally, the victory of the Neri was complete, their opponents were slain or banished, and their houses sacked. Soon after, in January 1302, the sentence of banishment went forth against Dante and others, nominally on the charge, an utterly baseless one, of baratteria, or malversation in the office of prior in 1300. This was followed by a yet severer sentence on March 10, condemning them to be burned alive if ever caught, which was repeated again on September 2, 1311, and yet once more on November 6, 1315. We need not attempt here to follow the wanderings of his exile of twenty years. He made at first one or two hopeless attempts to return, but abandoned them, partly in disappointment at their failure, partly in disgust at the kind of associates with which such proceedings linked him (see Par. xvii. 61-69).
His principal halting-places seem to have been—first Verona, under the protection of one of the Della Scala family, described by him as ‘gran Lombardo’ with much eulogy in Par. xvii. 71. Then in succession he sojourned in Tuscany (with Count Salvatico), in the Lunigiano (with Mornello Malaspina), near Urbino (with Uguccio della Faggiuola), and then at Verona again. During this period he is said to have visited Paris; but though there seems little doubt that he was actually there at some time of his life, yet some of his biographers connect this visit with the period of his early education. Among these is Serravalle, who wrote, it should be noted, as late as 1417, and who is also the sole authority for Dante’s alleged visit to England and Oxford. Those who, like Boccaccio, take him to France during his exile, suppose him to have been recalled to Italy and politics by the election of Henry of Luxemburg as emperor, and his visit to Italy, where no emperor had set foot for more than fifty years (see Purg. vi. 105, &c.). The exile’s hopes were now roused to the highest pitch, and he addressed an epistle to Henry, couched in language borrowed largely from Scripture, which to our ears sounds extravagant. His hopes were once more and finally crushed by Henry’s unexpected death on August 24, 1313, after which Dante took refuge in Romagna, and finally in Ravenna, where for the most part he remained, under the protection of Guido Novello da Polenta, until his death. This took place on September 14, 1321. The precise cause of it is unknown. He was no doubt utterly broken in spirit and in health. He had been employed by his patron in an embassy to Venice, which proved unsuccessful, and he died very soon afterwards, as some biographers say, from grief and annoyance at his failure at Venice, and as others, with more probability, assert, from the effects of a fever, aggravated if not originally caused by the unhealthy marshes which he had traversed on his return to Ravenna by land, the Venetians having harshly refused to allow him to make the journey by sea.
He was buried with much pomp by his friend Guido at Ravenna, and there he still lies. At some unknown period, by unknown hands, and from a motive still unexplained, his body was removed from the sarcophagus in which it lay, and was walled up in the neighbouring church of St Francis, in a rough box, inscribed Dantis Ossa. There it was discovered by pure accident on May 27, 1865, and after the bones had been identified beyond possibility of doubt, they were replaced in the sarcophagus, from which it was found they had been abstracted. Dante had seven children, six sons and one daughter, Beatrice, who was a nun in a convent at Ravenna. His family, however, became extinct in the 16th century. His personal appearance is too well known to need much description. Fortunately, a cast was taken from his face after death, so that we have an absolutely authentic record of his features. Boccaccio also, writing not very many years after his death, has preserved numerous personal details, such as that he was of moderate stature, stooping when he walked, slow and dignified both in gait and speech, reserved and taciturn in habit, but, when he spoke, keen, sarcastic, and often contemptuous. That he was devoted to music and painting appears from many passages in his works, as well as from current tradition.
The dates and sequence of his various works are a matter of conjecture, and are still very much disputed. Doubtless the Vita Nuova is the earliest. By far the most celebrated is the Divina Commedia, the pre-eminent greatness of which has tended to eclipse his other writings, which do not generally receive the attention they deserve. In this poem he purposes, and assuredly fulfils his purpose, 'to say of Beatrice that which never yet was said of any woman' (end of Vita Nuova). In this vision of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, we have, as it were, an encyclopedic view of the highest culture and knowledge of the age on philosophy, history, classical literature, physical science, morals, theology. All this, moreover, is expressed in the sublimest and most exquisite poetry, and with consummate power and beauty of language. The Divina Commedia, indeed, may be said to have made the Italian language, which was before so rude and uninformed that Dante himself hesitated to employ it on such a theme, and is said to have commenced his poem in Latin. No work probably in the world, except the Bible, has given rise to so large a literature. To say nothing of nearly six hundred MSS. in which it was copied before printing became common, there have been published about three hundred editions; it has been no less than a hundred times translated into various European languages; and of commentaries, introductions, essays, and monographs there is no end. About fifty years after Dante's death, a public lectureship on the Divina Commedia was established at Florence, to which Boccaccio was first appointed.
The next most important work (and one throwing much light on the Commedia) is the fragment called the Convito, or Banquet. It takes the form of a commentary on some canzoni, or short poems, of the author, of which there are only three, though the work, if completed, would have contained fourteen of these 'courses,' as the author calls them. Its contents are almost as encyclopedic as those of the Commedia. The De Monarchia (written in Latin) expounds Dante's theory of the right, and, as he held, divinely-intended, government of the world, by a universal emperor acting in harmony with a universal pope, respectively administering, without conflict or interference, the temporal and spiritual affairs of mankind. Another work, again unfinished, since it consists of two books only, when four were promised, is the De Vulgari Eloquio. It also is written in Latin, and is a discussion of the origin of language, the several divisions of languages, and the numerous dialects of Italian in particular. A considerable collection of short poems, canzoni, sonnets, &c., is also preserved under the title of the Canzoniere, and finally, we have about a dozen epistles addressed mainly to leading statesmen or rulers, and dealing with the most urgent political problems of the day. There are also some Eloques and other minor works, as well as several of doubtful authenticity which are sometimes assigned to him.
The editions most to be recommended are as follows: For the Commedia, Brunone Bianchi, or Fraticelli, are the most serviceable for ordinary students; for a more thorough and critical study, Scartazzini (3 vols.) is indispensable; for the De Monarchia and the Vita Nuova, also the Commedia, the editions of Witte; for all the works, Fraticelli; for all except the Commedia, Giuliani. The Oxford Dante, a complete text (3 vols.), was published in 1894 by the present writer, who has also written Dante and his Early Biographers (1890). Scartazzini's Prolegomeni della Divina Commedia (1890) represents the labours of fifteen years; and on it is based the German Dante Handbuch, translated by Butler (1894) as A Companion to Dante. Butler has also published Dante, his Times and his Work (1895). The invaluable Bibliografia Dantesca of Colomb de Batines was continued by Carpellini (1845-65) and by Petzholdt (1865-80). L. G. Blanc's Vocabolario Dantesco is very valuable; and for a general introduction to the life, character, and works of Dante, A Shadow of Dante, by Maria Francesca Rossetti, is strongly to be recommended. The principal English translations in verse are by Cary, Wright, Cayley, Pollock, Longfellow, Plumptre, Hazelfoot, Rossetti, Sibbald, and Musgrave (the last three the Inf. only); and in prose by Dr John Carlyle (Inf. only), Butler, and C. E. Norton.