Dante is exiled from Florence
On this day poet and politician Dante Alighieri is exiled from Florence where he served as one of six priors governing the city.Dantes political activities including the banishing of several rivals led to his own banishment and he wrote his masterpiece The Divine Comedy as a virtual wanderer seeking protection for his family in town after town.Dante was born to a family with noble ancestry that had fallen in fortunes.He began writing poetry in his teens and received encouragement from established poets to whom he sent sonnets as a young man.At age nine Dante first caught a glimpse of Beatrice Portinari also nine who would symbolize for him perfect female beauty and spiritual goodness in the coming decades.
Despite his fervent devotion to Portinari who did not seem to return his feelings Dante became engaged to Gemma Donati in 1277 but the two did not marry until eight years later.The couple had six sons and a daughter.About 1293 Dante published a book of prose and poetry called The New Life followed a few years later by another collection The Banquet.It wasnt until his banishment that he began work on his Divine Comedy.
In the poems first book the poet takes a tour through Hell with the poet Virgil as a guide.Virgil also guides the poet through Purgatory in the second book.The poets guide in Paradise however is named Beatrice.
The work was written and published in sections between 1308 and 1321.Although Dante called the work simply Comedy the work became enormously popular and a deluxe version published in 1555 in Venice bore the title The Divine Comedy.Dante died of malaria in Ravenna in 1321.
