Dante Alighieri

File:Casa di dante 01.JPG

File:Bargello - Kapelle Fresko 2a.jpg, in the chapel of the Bargello palace, Florence.{{Sfn|Santagata|2016|p=6}} It was painted {{Circa|1335}} and has been restored.{{Cite journal |last=Gombrich |first=E. H. |date=1979 |title=Giotto's Portrait of Dante? |url=http://www.jstor.com/stable/879612 |journal=The Burlington Magazine |volume=121 |issue=917 |pages=471–483 |jstor=879612}}]]

Dante was born in Florence, Republic of Florence, in what is now Italy. The exact date of his birth is unknown, although it is believed to be around May 1265.{{cite encyclopedia|url=https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/dante-alighieri_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/|title=Alighieri, Dante|encyclopedia=Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani|first=Siro A.|last=Chimenz|volume=2|year=1960|publisher=Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana|language=it|access-date=February 22, 2022|archive-date=March 17, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220317041529/https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/dante-alighieri_(Dizionario-Biografico)/|url-status=live}}{{Sfn|Santagata|2016|p=3}}{{Sfn|Took|2021|p=28}} This can be deduced from autobiographic allusions in the Divine Comedy. Its first section, the Inferno, begins, "{{lang|it|Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita}}" ("Midway upon the journey of our life"), implying that Dante was around 35 years old, since the average lifespan according to the Bible (Psalm 89:10, Vulgate) is 70 years; and since his imaginary travel to the netherworld took place in 1300, he was most probably born around 1265. Some verses of the Paradiso section of the Divine Comedy also provide a possible clue that he was born under the sign of Gemini: "As I revolved with the eternal twins, I saw revealed, from hills to river outlets, the threshing-floor that makes us so ferocious" (XXII  151–154). In 1265, the sun was in Gemini between approximately May 11 and June 11 (Julian calendar).

Dante claimed that his family descended from the ancient Romans (Inferno, XV, 76), but the earliest relative he could mention by name was his great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida degli Elisei (Paradiso, XV, 135), born no earlier than about 1100. Dante's father was Alighiero di Bellincione, a businessman and moneylender,{{Sfn|Santagata|2016|p=21}} and Dante's mother was Bella, probably a member of the Abati family, a noble Florentine family. She died when Dante was not yet ten years old. Alighiero soon married again, to Lapa di Chiarissimo Cialuffi. It is uncertain whether he really married her, since widowers were socially limited in such matters, but she definitely bore him two children, Dante's half-brother Francesco and half-sister Tana (Gaetana).{{cite dictionary|dictionary=Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani|publisher=Enciclopedia Italiana|url=http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/dante-alighieri_(Dizionario-Biografico)/|title=Alighieri, Dante|first=S.A|last=Chimenz|year=2014|bibcode=2014bea..book...56.|language=it|access-date=March 7, 2016|archive-date=March 8, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200308070357/http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/dante-alighieri_(Dizionario-Biografico)/|url-status=live}}

During Dante's time, most Northern Italian city states were split into two political factions: the Guelphs, who supported the papacy, and the Ghibellines, who supported the Holy Roman Empire.{{Sfn|Shaw|2014|p=14}} Dante's family was loyal to the Guelphs. The Ghibellines took over Florence at the Battle of Montaperti in 1260, forcing out many of the Guelphs.{{Sfn|Santagata|2016|p=14}} Although Dante's family were Guelphs, they suffered no reprisals after the battle, probably because of Alighiero's low public standing.{{Sfn|Santagata|2016|p=19}} The Guelphs later fought the Ghibellines again in 1266 at the Battle of Benevento, retaking Florence from the Ghibellines.{{Sfn|Santagata|2016|p=14}}{{Sfn|Shaw|2014|p=14}}

File:Dante alighieri, Palazzo dei Giudici.jpg

Dante said he first met Beatrice Portinari, daughter of Folco Portinari, when he was nine (she was eight),{{Cite web|url=https://www.florenceinferno.com/beatrice-portinari/|title=Beatrice and Dante Alighieri > A Love Story|date=December 14, 2016|access-date=January 13, 2022|archive-date=January 13, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220113235750/https://www.florenceinferno.com/beatrice-portinari/|url-status=live}} and he claimed to have fallen in love with her "at first sight", apparently without even talking with her.{{cite book |title=Delphi Complete Works of Dante Alighieri |edition= Illustrated |volume=6 |first=Dante |last=Alighieri |publisher= Delphi Classics |year=2013 |isbn=978-1-909496-19-4}} When he was 12, however, he was promised in marriage to Gemma di Manetto Donati, daughter of Manetto Donati, member of the powerful Donati family. Contracting marriages for children at such an early age was quite common and involved a formal ceremony, including contracts signed before a notary. Dante claimed to have seen Beatrice again frequently after he turned 18, exchanging greetings with her in the streets of Florence, though he never knew her well.

Years after his marriage to Gemma, he claims to have met Beatrice again; he wrote several sonnets to Beatrice but never mentioned Gemma in any of his poems. He refers to other Donati relations, notably Forese and Piccarda, in his Divine Comedy. The exact date of his marriage is not known; the only certain information is that, before his exile in 1301, he had fathered three children with Gemma (Pietro, Jacopo and Antonia).

Dante fought with the Guelph cavalry at the Battle of Campaldino (June 11, 1289).{{cite book|last=Davenport|first=John|title=Dante: Poet, Author, and Proud Florentine|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MWWKW15MjqMC&pg=PA53|year=2005|publisher=Infobase Publishing|isbn=978-1-4381-0415-7|page=53|access-date=March 7, 2016}} This victory brought about a reformation of the Florentine constitution. To take part in public life, one had to enroll in one of the city's many commercial or artisan guilds, so Dante entered the Physicians' and Apothecaries' Guild.{{Cite book |last1=di Serego Alighieri |first1=Sperello |title=The Sun and the other Stars of Dante Alighieri |last2=Capaccioli |first2=Massimo |publisher=World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. |year=2022 |isbn=9789811246227 |location=Singapore |pages=48}} His name is occasionally recorded as speaking or voting in the councils of the republic. Many minutes from such meetings between 1298 and 1300 were lost, so the extent of his participation is uncertain.

File:DanteFresco.jpg, Florence, by Andrea del Castagno, {{Circa|1450}}]]

Not much is known about Dante's education; he presumably studied at home or in a chapter school attached to a church or monastery in Florence. It is known that he studied Tuscan poetry and that he admired the compositions of the Bolognese poet Guido Guinizelli—in Purgatorio XXVI he characterized him as his "father"—at a time when the Sicilian School ({{Lang|it|Scuola poetica Siciliana}}), a cultural group from Sicily, was becoming known in Tuscany. He also discovered the Provençal poetry of the troubadours, such as Arnaut Daniel, and the Latin writers of classical antiquity, including Cicero, Ovid and especially Virgil.{{cite web |url=https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/dante-alighieri |title=Dante Alighieri |author= |website=poets.org |publisher=Academy of American Poets |access-date=December 20, 2019 |archive-date=April 17, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190417061211/https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/dante-alighieri |url-status=live }}

Dante's interactions with Beatrice set an example of so-called courtly love, a phenomenon developed in French and Provençal poetry of prior centuries. Dante's experience of such love was typical, but his expression of it was unique. It was in the name of this love that Dante left his imprint on the {{Lang|it|dolce stil nuovo}} ("sweet new style", a term that Dante himself coined), and he would join other contemporary poets and writers in exploring never-before-emphasized aspects of love. Love for Beatrice (as Petrarch would express for Laura somewhat differently) would be his reason for writing poetry and for living, together with political passions. In many of his poems, she is depicted as semi-divine, watching over him constantly and providing spiritual instruction, sometimes harshly. When Beatrice died in 1290, Dante sought refuge in Latin literature.{{cite book |title= Names and Naming in Young Adult Literature |series=

Scarecrow Studies in Young Adult Literature |volume=27 |first= Alleen Pace |last=Nilsen|author2= Don L.F. Nilsen |location=Lanham, MD |publisher= Scarecrow Press |year= 2007 |isbn= 978-0-8108-6685-0 |page= 133}} The Convivio chronicles his having read Boethius's {{Lang|la|De consolatione philosophiae}} and Cicero's {{Lang|la|De Amicitia}}.

File:Dante and beatrice.jpg, by Henry Holiday, inspired by La Vita Nuova, 1883]]

He next dedicated himself to philosophical studies at religious schools like the Dominican one in Santa Maria Novella. He took part in the disputes that the two principal mendicant orders (Franciscan and Dominican) publicly or indirectly held in Florence, the former explaining the doctrines of the mystics and of St. Bonaventure, the latter expounding on the theories of St. Thomas Aquinas.{{cite book |title= The Paradiso of Dante Alighieri |url= https://archive.org/details/paradisoofdantea00dantrich |first= Dante |last=Alighieri |editor= Philip Henry Wicksteed, Herman Oelsner |edition= 5th|publisher= J.M. Dent and Company |year= 1904 |page= [https://archive.org/details/paradisoofdantea00dantrich/page/129 129]}}

At around the age of 18, Dante met Guido Cavalcanti, Lapo Gianni, Cino da Pistoia and, soon after, Brunetto Latini; together they became the leaders of the {{Lang|it|dolce stil nuovo}}. Brunetto later received special mention in the Divine Comedy (Inferno, XV, 28) for what he had taught Dante: "Nor speaking less on that account I go With Ser Brunetto, and I ask who are his most known and most eminent companions".{{cite book |title= Critical Companion to Dante |first= Jay |last=Ruud |publisher= Infobase Publishing |year= 2008 |isbn= 978-1-4381-0841-4 |page= 138}} Some fifty poetical commentaries by Dante are known (the so-called Rime, rhymes), others being included in the later {{lang|it|Vita Nuova}} and {{lang|it|Convivio}}. Other studies are reported, or deduced from {{lang|it|Vita Nuova}} or the Comedy, regarding painting and music.{{citation needed|date=January 2021}}

{{further|Guelphs and Ghibellines}}

File:Statue of Dante Alighieri (Uffizi).jpg]]

Dante, like most Florentines of his day, was embroiled in the Guelph–Ghibelline conflict. He fought in the Battle of Campaldino (June 11, 1289), with the Florentine Guelphs against Arezzo Ghibellines;{{cite web |title=Guelphs and Ghibellines |url=http://www.dantemass.org/html/guelphs-and-ghibellines.html |publisher=Dante Alighieri Society of Massachusetts |access-date=December 30, 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151212042335/http://www.dantemass.org/html/guelphs-and-ghibellines.html |archive-date=December 12, 2015 }} he fought as a {{ill|feditore|it}}, responsible for the first attack.{{Sfn|Santagata|2016|p=62}} To further his political career, he obtained admission to the Guild of Physicians and Apothecaries around 1295.{{Sfn|Santagata|2016|p=95}} He likely joined the guild due to association between philosophy and medicine,{{cite journal|last1=Sandor|first1=Vlaicu|last2=Dumitrascu|first2=Dinu I.|last3=Bojita|first3=Marius T.|last4=Dumitrascu|first4=Dan L.|title=Medicine and Pharmacy in the Works of Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)|date=April 2022|journal=Medicine and Pharmacy Reports|volume=95|issue=2|pages=218–224|doi=10.15386/mpr-2451|doi-access=free|pmid=35721038 |pmc=9176311}}{{Sfn|Shaw|2014|p=17}}{{Sfn|Took|2021|p=47}} but also may have joined as apothecaries were also booksellers.{{Sfn|Barbero|2022|p=138}}{{Sfn|Santagata|2016|p=78}} His guild membership allowed him to hold public office in Florence.{{Sfn|Shaw|2014|p=17}} As a politician, he held various offices over some years in a city rife with political unrest.

After defeating the Ghibellines, the Guelphs divided into two factions: the White Guelphs ({{Lang|it|Guelfi Bianchi}})—Dante's party, led by Vieri dei Cerchi—and the Black Guelphs ({{Lang|it|Guelfi Neri}}), led by Corso Donati. Although the split was along family lines at first, ideological differences arose based on opposing views of the papal role in Florentine affairs. The Blacks supported the Pope and the Whites wanted more freedom from Rome. The Whites took power first and expelled the Blacks. In response, Pope Boniface VIII planned a military occupation of Florence. In 1301, Charles of Valois, brother of King Philip IV of France, was expected to visit Florence because the Pope had appointed him as peacemaker for Tuscany, but the city's government had treated the Pope's ambassadors badly a few weeks before, seeking independence from papal influence. It was believed Charles had received other unofficial instructions, so the council sent a delegation that included Dante to Rome to persuade the Pope not to send Charles to Florence.{{cite web|url=https://www3.nd.edu/~italnet/Dante/text/Chronology.html|title=Chronology|website=Renaissance Dante in Print (1472–1629)|publisher=University of Notre Dame|access-date=December 25, 2023|archive-date=December 25, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231225174529/https://www3.nd.edu/~italnet/Dante/text/Chronology.html|url-status=live}}{{cite book

|title=The Oxford Handbook of Dante

|year=2021

|page=343

|isbn=9780198820741

|publisher=Oxford University Press

|editor=Elena Lombardi |editor2=Francesca Southerden |editor3=Manuele Gragnolati

}}

File:Dante Alighieri Florence Firenze JBU01.JPG in the Piazza Santa Croce in Florence, Enrico Pazzi, 1865]]

Pope Boniface quickly dismissed the other delegates and asked Dante alone to remain in Rome. At the same time (November 1, 1301), Charles of Valois entered Florence with the Black Guelphs, who in the next six days destroyed much of the city and killed many of their enemies. A new Black Guelph government was installed, and Cante dei Gabrielli da Gubbio was appointed {{Lang|it|podestà}} of the city. In March 1302, Dante, a White Guelph by affiliation, along with the Gherardini family, was condemned to exile for two years and ordered to pay a large fine.Dino Compagni, Cronica delle cose occorrenti ne' tempi suoi Dante was accused of corruption and financial wrongdoing by the Black Guelphs for the time that Dante was serving as city prior (Florence's highest position) for two months in 1300.{{sfn|Harrison|2015|pp=36–37}} The poet was still in Rome in 1302, as the Pope, who had backed the Black Guelphs, had "suggested" that Dante stay there. Florence under the Black Guelphs, therefore, considered Dante an absconder.{{sfn|Harrison|2015|p=36}}

Dante did not pay the fine, in part because he believed he was not guilty and in part because all his assets in Florence had been seized by the Black Guelphs. He was condemned to perpetual exile; if he had returned to Florence without paying the fine, he could have been burned at the stake. (In June 2008, nearly seven centuries after his death, the city council of Florence passed a motion rescinding Dante's sentence.){{cite news|first=Malcolm |last=Moore|url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2145378/Dante%27s-infernal-crimes-forgiven.html |title=Dante's infernal crimes forgiven|newspaper=The Daily Telegraph|date= June 17, 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080622172200/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2145378/Dante%27s-infernal-crimes-forgiven.html |access-date= June 18, 2008|archive-date=June 22, 2008 }} In 1306–07, Dante was a guest of {{ill|Moroello Malaspina|it}} in the region of Lunigiana.{{sfn|Raffa|2020|p=24}}

File:Antonio Cotti - Dante a Verona.jpg

Dante took part in several attempts by the White Guelphs to regain power, but these failed due to treachery. Bitter at the treatment he received from his enemies, he grew disgusted with the infighting and ineffectiveness of his former allies and vowed to become a party of one. He went to Verona as a guest of Bartolomeo I della Scala, then moved to Sarzana in Liguria. Later he is supposed to have lived in Lucca with a woman named Gentucca. She apparently made his stay comfortable (and he later gratefully mentioned her in Purgatorio, XXIV, 37).{{sfn|Santagata|2016|p=208}} Some speculative sources claim he visited Paris between 1308 and 1310, and other sources even less trustworthy say he went to Oxford; these claims, first made in Giovanni Boccaccio's book on Dante several decades after his death, seem inspired by readers who were impressed with the poet's wide learning and erudition. No longer occupied with the day-to-day affairs of Florentine politics after his exile, Dante deepened his engagement with philosophy and literature, as seen in the intellectual rigor and thematic scope of his prose works from this period. Yet, while his ideas traveled widely, there is no definitive evidence that he ever left Italy. Dante's {{Lang|la|Immensa Dei dilectione testante}} to Henry VII of Luxembourg confirms his residence "beneath the springs of Arno, near Tuscany" in April 1311.{{sfn|Santagata|2016|p=249}}

In 1310, Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII of Luxembourg marched into Italy at the head of 5,000 troops. Dante saw in him a new Charlemagne who would restore the office of the Holy Roman Emperor to its former glory and also retake Florence from the Black Guelphs. He wrote to Henry and several Italian princes, demanding that they destroy the Black Guelphs.Latham, Charles S.; Carpenter, George R. (1891). [https://archive.org/details/translationofdan00dant A Translation of Dante’s Eleven Letters]. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin. pp. 269–282. Mixing religion and private concerns in his writings, he invoked the worst anger of God against his city and suggested several particular targets, who were also his personal enemies. It was during this time that he wrote {{Lang|la|De Monarchia}}, proposing a universal monarchy under Henry VII.Carroll, John S. (1903). [https://books.google.com/books?id=uAd8Kp0gmoUC Exiles of Eternity: An Exposition of Dante's Inferno] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230326164811/https://books.google.com/books?id=uAd8Kp0gmoUC |date=March 26, 2023 }}. London: Hodder and Stoughton. pp. xlviii–l.

File:Dante Luca.jpg's fresco in the Chapel of San Brizio, Orvieto Cathedral]]

At some point during his exile, he conceived of the Comedy, but the date is uncertain. The work is far more assured and ambitious than anything he had written in Florence. It is likely that he would have undertaken such a project only after accepting that his political ambitions, which had been central to him before his banishment, may have been indefinitely disrupted. It is also noticeable that Beatrice has returned to his imagination with renewed force and with a wider meaning than in the {{Lang|it|Vita Nuova}}; in {{Lang|it|Convivio}} (written {{Circa|1304}}–07) he had declared that the memory of this youthful romance belonged to the past.{{cite book |last1=Wickstool |first1=Philip Henry |title=The Convivio of Dante Alighieri |date=1903 |publisher=London : J. M. Dent and Co. |page=5 |url=https://archive.org/details/convivioofdantea00dantiala/page/4/mode/2up |quote=And in that I spoke before entrance on the prime of manhood, and in this when I had already passed the same.}}

An early indication that the poem was underway is a notice by Francesco da Barberino, tucked into his {{Lang|la|Documenti d'Amore}} (Lessons of Love), probably written in 1314 or early 1315. Francesco notes that Dante followed the Aeneid in a poem called "Comedy" and that the setting of this poem (or part of it) was the underworld; i.e., hell.See [http://www.bookrags.com/tandf/francesco-daccorso-tf/ Bookrags.com] and Tigerstedt, E.N. 1967, Dante; Tiden Mannen Verket (Dante; The Age, the Man, the Work), Bonniers, Stockholm, 1967. {{dead link|date=June 2016|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}} The brief note gives no incontestable indication that Barberino had seen or read even the Inferno, or that this part had been published at the time, but it indicates composition was well underway and that the sketching of the poem might have begun some years before. (It has been suggested that a knowledge of Dante's work also underlies some of the illuminations in Francesco da Barberino's earlier Officiolum [c. 1305–08], a manuscript that came to light in 2003.{{cite web|url=http://www.spolia.it/online/en/argomenti/letterature_romanze/filologia/2003/barberino.htm|title=L{{'}}Officiolum ritrovato di Francesco da Barberino|first=Fabio M.|last=Bertolo|year=2003|work=Spolia – Journal of Medieval Studies|access-date=August 18, 2012|archive-date=April 22, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230422231658/http://www.spolia.it/online/en/argomenti/letterature_romanze/filologia/2003/barberino.htm|url-status=live}}) It is known that the Inferno had been published by 1317; this is established by quoted lines interspersed in the margins of contemporary dated records from Bologna, but there is no certainty as to whether the three parts of the poem were each published in full or, rather, a few cantos at a time. Paradiso was likely finished before he died, but it may have been published posthumously.{{sfn|Santagata|2016|p=339}}

File:Monument to Dante (Verona).jpg

In 1312, Henry assaulted Florence and defeated the Black Guelphs, but there is no evidence that Dante was involved. Some say he refused to participate in the attack on his city by a foreigner; others suggest that he had become unpopular with the White Guelphs, too, and that any trace of his passage had carefully been removed. Henry VII died (from a fever) in 1313 and with him any hope for Dante to see Florence again. He returned to Verona, where Cangrande I della Scala allowed him to live in certain security and, presumably, in a fair degree of prosperity. Cangrande was admitted to Dante's Paradise (Paradiso, XVII, 76).{{Cite web |title=Cangrande della Scala – 'Da molte stelle mi vien questa Luce' |trans-title=Cangrande della Scala – 'This light comes to me from many stars' |work=dantealighieri.tk |access-date=February 1, 2021 |url=https://www.dantealighieri.tk/paradiso/i-canti-di-cacciaguida/cangrande-della-scala/ |language=it |archive-date=February 5, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220205184530/https://www.dantealighieri.tk/paradiso/i-canti-di-cacciaguida/cangrande-della-scala/ |url-status=dead }}

During the period of his exile, Dante corresponded with Dominican theologian Fr. Nicholas Brunacci (1240–1322), who had been a student of Thomas Aquinas at the Santa Sabina studium in Rome, later at Paris,{{cite web |url=http://www.brunacci.it/s--tommaso.html |title=Le famiglie Brunacci |website=Brunacci.it |access-date=March 27, 2017 |archive-date=February 24, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210224220400/http://www.brunacci.it/s--tommaso.html |url-status=live }} and of Albert the Great at the Cologne studium.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sVP3vBmDktQC&q=brunacci&pg=PA85 |title=History of Italian Philosophy: VIBS |first=Eugenio |last=Garin |page=85 |access-date=March 27, 2017|isbn=978-90-420-2321-5 |year=2008|publisher=Rodopi }} Brunacci became lector at the Santa Sabina studium, forerunner of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and later served in the papal curia.{{cite web|title=The testimonies of the chronicles|url=http://www.e-theca.net/emiliopanella/lector12.htm|website=E-theca.net|access-date=May 9, 2011|archive-date=March 24, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120324032825/http://www.e-theca.net/emiliopanella/lector12.htm|url-status=live}}

In 1315, Florence was forced by Uguccione della Faggiuola (the military officer controlling the town) to grant an amnesty to those in exile, including Dante. But for this, Florence required public penance in addition to payment of a high fine. Dante refused, preferring to remain in exile. When Uguccione defeated Florence, Dante's death sentence was commuted to house arrest, on condition that he go to Florence to swear he would never enter the town again. He refused to go, and his death sentence was confirmed and extended to his sons.{{cite web |last1=Burdeau |first1=Cain |title=Dante Gets a Bit of Justice, 700 Years After His Death |url=https://www.courthousenews.com/dante-gets-a-bit-of-justice-700-years-after-his-death/ |website=courthousenews.com |publisher=Courthouse News Service |date=May 21, 2021 |access-date=August 28, 2022 |archive-date=August 28, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220828040604/https://www.courthousenews.com/dante-gets-a-bit-of-justice-700-years-after-his-death/ |url-status=live }} Despite this, he still hoped late in life that he might be invited back to Florence on honorable terms, particularly in praise of his poetry.{{sfn|Santagata|2016|pp=333–334}}

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Dante's final days were spent in Ravenna, where he had been invited to stay in the city in 1318 by its prince, Guido II da Polenta. Dante died in Ravenna on September 14, 1321, aged about 56, of quartan malaria contracted while returning from a diplomatic mission to the Republic of Venice. He was attended by his three children, and possibly by Gemma Donati, and by friends and admirers he had in the city.{{sfn|Raffa|2020|pp=23–24, 27, 28–30}} He was buried in Ravenna at the Church of San Pier Maggiore (later called Basilica di San Francesco). Bernardo Bembo, praetor of Venice, erected a tomb for him in 1483.{{Cite news|url=https://www.theflorentine.net/2017/04/10/dante-ravenna-florence-battle-of-bones/|title=Dante: the battle of the bones|date=April 10, 2017|website=The Florentine|last1=Pirro|first1=Deirdre|access-date=April 30, 2021|archive-date=April 30, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210430112703/https://www.theflorentine.net/2017/04/10/dante-ravenna-florence-battle-of-bones/|url-status=live}}{{cite web |url=https://www.italymagazine.com/news/dantes-tomb |title=Italy Magazine, Dante's Tomb |website=italymagazine.com |date=October 31, 2017 |access-date=July 22, 2019 |archive-date=July 22, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190722190530/https://www.italymagazine.com/news/dantes-tomb |url-status=live }}

On the grave, a verse of Bernardo Canaccio, a friend of Dante, is dedicated to Florence:

{{Verse translation|

{{lang|la|parvi Florentia mater amoris}}

|

Florence, mother of little love}}

In 1329, Bertrand du Pouget, Cardinal and nephew of Pope John XXII, classified Dante's Monarchia as heretical and sought to have his bones burned at the stake. Ostasio I da Polenta and Pino della Tosa, allies of Pouget, interceded to prevent the destruction of Dante's remains.{{sfn|Raffa|2020|p=38}}

File:Dante.deathmask.jpg

Florence eventually came to regret having exiled Dante. The city made repeated requests for the return of his remains. The custodians of the body in Ravenna refused, at one point going so far as to conceal the bones in a false wall of the monastery. Florence built a tomb for Dante in 1829, in the Basilica of Santa Croce. That tomb has been empty ever since, with Dante's body remaining in Ravenna. The front of his tomb in Florence reads {{Lang|it|Onorate l'altissimo poeta}}—which roughly translates as "Honor the most exalted poet" and is a quote from the fourth canto of the Inferno.{{cite news |url=https://www.thelocal.it/20190904/dantes-tomb-italy-ravenna-florence/ |title=Dante's last laugh: Why Italy's national poet isn't buried where you think he is. |first=Jessica |last=Phelan |newspaper=The Local Italy |date=September 4, 2019 |access-date=June 8, 2021 |archive-date=June 8, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210608202220/https://www.thelocal.it/20190904/dantes-tomb-italy-ravenna-florence/ |url-status=live }}

In 1945, the fascist government discussed bringing Dante's remains to the Valtellina Redoubt, the Alpine valley in which the regime intended to make its last stand against the Allies. The case was made that "the greatest symbol of Italianness" should be present at fascism's "heroic" end, but ultimately, no action was taken.{{sfn|Raffa|2020|pp=244–245}}

A copy of Dante's death mask has been displayed since 1911 in the Palazzo Vecchio; scholars today believe it is not a true death mask and was probably carved in 1483, perhaps by Pietro and Tullio Lombardo.{{cite web |url=https://www.florenceinferno.com/dante-death-mask/ |title=Dante death mask |website=florenceinferno.com |date=July 2013 |access-date=July 22, 2019 |archive-date=July 22, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190722194116/https://www.florenceinferno.com/dante-death-mask/ |url-status=live }}

{{clear}}

File:2 Euro, Italy.jpg

The first formal biography of Dante was the {{Lang|it|Vita di Dante}} (also known as {{Lang|it|Trattatello in laude di Dante}}), written after 1348 by Giovanni Boccaccio.{{cite web|url=http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04628a.htm|title=Dante Alighieri|publisher=The Catholic Encyclopedia|access-date=May 2, 2010|archive-date=August 19, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230819050159/https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04628a.htm|url-status=live}} Although several statements and episodes of it have been deemed unreliable on the basis of modern research, an earlier account of Dante's life and works had been included in the {{Lang|it|Nuova Cronica}} of the Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani.{{cite book|last1=Vauchez|first1=André|last2=Dobson|first2=Richard Barrie|last3=Lapidge|first3=Michael|title=Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages|year=2000|publisher=Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers|location=Chicago|page=1517}}; {{cite book|last=Caesar|first=Michael|title=Dante, the Critical Heritage, 1314(?)–1870|year=1989|publisher=Routledge|location=London|page=xi}}{{ISBN?}}

Some 16th-century English Protestants, such as John Bale and John Foxe, argued that Dante was a proto-Protestant because of his opposition to the pope.{{Cite book|last=Boswell|first=Jackson Campbell|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zfyxtVZVI_sC|title=Dante's Fame in England: References in Printed British Books, 1477–1640|date=1999|publisher=University of Delaware Press|place=Newark|isbn=0-87413-605-9|page=xv|language=en|quote=After John Foxe's enormously influential Ecclesiastical History Contayning the Actes and Monumentes was published (1570), Dante's role as a proto-Protestant was sealed.}}{{Cite web|title=Catholic Encyclopedia: Foxe's Book of Martyrs|url=https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02681a.htm|access-date=January 13, 2022|website=www.newadvent.org|archive-date=January 13, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220113153616/https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02681a.htm|url-status=live}}

The 19th century saw a "Dante revival", a product of the medieval revival, which was itself an important aspect of Romanticism.{{Cite book|title=19th Century: A History of English Romanticism by Henry Augustin Beers|chapter= 3: Keats, Leigh Hunt, and the Dante Revival |chapter-url=http://www.online-literature.com/henry-augustin-beers/nineteenth-century-romanticism/3/ |access-date=August 18, 2022 |via=online-literature.com |archive-date=March 26, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230326025924/http://www.online-literature.com/henry-augustin-beers/nineteenth-century-romanticism/3/ |url-status=live }} Thomas Carlyle profiled him in "The Hero as Poet", the third lecture in On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History (1841): "He is world-great not because he is worldwide, but because he is world-deep… Dante is the spokesman of the Middle Ages; the Thought they lived by stands here, in everlasting music."{{Cite book |last=Carlyle |first=Thomas |title=On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History |year=1841 |chapter=Lecture III. The Hero as Poet. Dante: Shakspeare. |chapter-url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1091/1091-h/1091-h.htm#link2H_4_0004 |access-date=August 18, 2022 |archive-date=October 23, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221023071731/https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1091/1091-h/1091-h.htm#link2H_4_0004 |url-status=live }} Leigh Hunt, Henry Francis Cary and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow were among Dante's translators of the era.

File:Dante Park td (2019-06-18) 18 - Dante Alighieri Statue.jpg in Manhattan, New York City]]

Italy's first dreadnought battleship was completed in 1913 and named Dante Alighieri in honor of him.{{Cite web|date=July 21, 2019|title=Italian dreadnought battleship Dante Alighieri (1910)|url=https://www.naval-encyclopedia.com/ww1/Italy/dante-alighieri|access-date=January 25, 2021|website=naval encyclopedia|language=en-US|archive-date=January 30, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210130150403/https://www.naval-encyclopedia.com/ww1/Italy/dante-alighieri|url-status=dead}}

On April 30, 1921, in honor of the 600th anniversary of Dante's death, Pope Benedict XV promulgated an encyclical named {{Lang|la|In praeclara summorum}}, naming Dante as one "of the many celebrated geniuses of whom the Catholic faith can boast" and the "pride and glory of humanity".[https://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xv/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xv_enc_30041921_in-praeclara-summorum_en.html "In praeclara summorum: Encyclical of Pope Benedict XV on Dante"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141109070054/https://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xv/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xv_enc_30041921_in-praeclara-summorum_en.html |date=November 9, 2014 }}. The Holy See. Retrieved November 7, 2014.

File:Busto de Dante Alighieri (detalle), en el Parque La Alameda.jpg, donated in 1922 by the Italian community of Quito, Ecuador{{Cite journal |date=2006 |title=Ecuador en el Centenario de la Independencia |url=https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=ed_itw&id=GALE%7CA201610627&v=2.1&it=r |journal=Apuntes |volume=19 |issue=2 |via=Gale Academic OneFile}}|193x193px]]

On December 7, 1965, Pope Paul VI promulgated the Latin {{Lang|la|motu proprio}} titled {{Lang|la|Altissimi cantus}}, which was dedicated to Dante's figure and poetry.{{cite web|url=http://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/la/motu_proprio/documents/hf_p-vi_motu-proprio_19651207_altissimi-cantus.html|title=Altissimi cantus|access-date=March 21, 2021|website=Vatican State|language=Latin, Italian|archive-date=March 21, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210321152229/http://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/la/motu_proprio/documents/hf_p-vi_motu-proprio_19651207_altissimi-cantus.html|url-status=live}} In that year, the pope also donated a golden iron Greek Cross to Dante's burial site in Ravenna, on the occasion of the 700th anniversary of his birth.{{cite web|url=https://www.turismo.ra.it/cultura-e-storia/dante-alighieri-tomb/?lang=en|title=Dante Alighieri's tomb|location=Ravenna|access-date=March 21, 2021|archive-date=March 21, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210321150250/https://www.turismo.ra.it/cultura-e-storia/dante-alighieri-tomb/?lang=en|url-status=dead}}{{cite web|url=https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2020-10/pope-francis-the-fascination-of-god-makes-its-powerful-attracti.html|title=Pope Francis: The fascination of God makes its powerful attraction felt|website=Vatican News|date=October 10, 2020|archive-url=https://archive.today/20201016151611/https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2020-10/pope-francis-the-fascination-of-god-makes-its-powerful-attracti.html|archive-date=October 16, 2020|url-status=live|access-date=March 21, 2021}} The same cross was blessed by Pope Francis in October 2020.{{cite web|first1=Sara|last1=Pietracci|url=https://www.ravennanotizie.it/0-copertina/2020/10/11/papa-francesco-annuncia-alla-delegazione-ravennate-la-preparazione-di-un-documento-pontificio-su-dante/|title=Papa Francesco annuncia alla delegazione ravennate la preparazione di un documento pontificio su Dante|language=Italian|trans-title=Pope Francis says to the delegation from Ravenna he his working to a pontifical document related to Dante|location=Ravenna|date=October 11, 2020|access-date=March 21, 2021|archive-url=https://archive.today/20210321150903/https://www.ravennanotizie.it/0-copertina/2020/10/11/papa-francesco-annuncia-alla-delegazione-ravennate-la-preparazione-di-un-documento-pontificio-su-dante/|archive-date=March 21, 2021|url-status=live}}

In 2007, a reconstruction of Dante's face was undertaken in a collaborative project. Artists from the University of Pisa and forensic engineers at the University of Bologna at Forlì constructed the model, portraying Dante's features as somewhat different from what was once thought.{{cite news|first=Philip|last=Pullella|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSL1171092320070112|title=Dante gets posthumous nose job – 700 years on|work=Statesman|agency=Reuters|date=January 12, 2007|access-date=November 5, 2007|archive-date=July 30, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230730035856/https://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSL1171092320070112|url-status=live}}{{cite journal | last1 = Benazzi | first1 = S | year = 2009 | title = The Face of the Poet Dante Alighieri, Reconstructed by Virtual Modeling and Forensic Anthropology Techniques | journal = Journal of Archaeological Science | volume = 36 | issue = 2| pages = 278–283 | doi = 10.1016/j.jas.2008.09.006| bibcode = 2009JArSc..36..278B }}

In 2008, the Municipality of Florence officially apologized for expelling Dante 700 years earlier.{{Cite web|url=https://www.upi.com/Entertainment_News/2008/07/29/Florence-sorry-for-banishing-Dante/23851217358714/|title=Florence sorry for banishing Dante|website=UPI|access-date=April 30, 2021|archive-date=June 19, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210619102936/https://www.upi.com/Entertainment_News/2008/07/29/Florence-sorry-for-banishing-Dante/23851217358714/|url-status=live}}{{Cite news|url=http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1828023,00.html|title=A City's Infernal Dante Dispute|last=Israely|first=Jeff|date=July 31, 2008|magazine=Time|access-date=September 25, 2018|issn=0040-781X|archive-date=November 8, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181108140537/http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1828023,00.html|url-status=live}}{{Cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7461459.stm|title=Florence 'to revoke Dante exile'|last=Duff|first=Mark|date=June 18, 2008|publisher=BBC|access-date=September 25, 2018|archive-date=September 26, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180926014308/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7461459.stm|url-status=live}}{{Cite news|url=http://www.repubblica.it/2008/05/sezioni/spettacoli_e_cultura/dante-riabilitazione/dante-riabilitazione/dante-riabilitazione.html|title=Firenze riabilita Dante Alighieri: L'iniziativa a 700 anni dall'esilio|date=March 30, 2008|work=La Repubblica|access-date=September 25, 2018|archive-date=September 26, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180926014649/http://www.repubblica.it/2008/05/sezioni/spettacoli_e_cultura/dante-riabilitazione/dante-riabilitazione/dante-riabilitazione.html|url-status=live}} In May 2021, a symbolic re-trial was held virtually in Florence to posthumously clear his name.{{cite web |url=https://www.dw.com/en/florence-hosts-re-trial-of-dante-convicted-and-banished-in-1302/a-57607273 |title=Florence hosts 're-trial' of Dante, convicted and banished in 1302 |website=DW |date=May 21, 2021 |access-date=May 21, 2021 |archive-date=May 21, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210521195013/https://www.dw.com/en/florence-hosts-re-trial-of-dante-convicted-and-banished-in-1302/a-57607273 |url-status=live }}

A celebration was held in 2015 at Italy's Senate of the Republic for the 750th anniversary of Dante's birth. It included a commemoration from Pope Francis, who also issued the apostolic letter {{Lang|la|Cando lucis aeternae}} in honor of the anniversary.{{cite web |url=http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2015/05/04/0333/00726.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150504193814/http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2015/05/04/0333/00726.html |archive-date=May 4, 2015 |title=Messaggio del Santo Padre al Presidente del Pontificio Consiglio della Cultura in occasione della celebrazione del 750° anniversario della nascita di Dante Alighieri |publisher=Press.vatican.va |access-date=October 21, 2015}}{{cite web |url=http://www.microsofttranslator.com/BV.aspx?ref=IE8Activity&a=http%3A%2F%2Fpress.vatican.va%2Fcontent%2Fsalastampa%2Fen%2Fbollettino%2Fpubblico%2F2015%2F05%2F04%2F0333%2F00726.html |title=Translator |publisher=Microsofttranslator.com |access-date=October 21, 2015 |archive-date=September 20, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180920121823/http://www.microsofttranslator.com/BV.aspx?ref=IE8Activity&a=http%3A%2F%2Fpress.vatican.va%2Fcontent%2Fsalastampa%2Fen%2Fbollettino%2Fpubblico%2F2015%2F05%2F04%2F0333%2F00726.html |url-status=live }}

{{see also|Category:Works by Dante Alighieri}}

File:Alighieri - Divina Commedia, Nel mille quatro cento septe et due nel quarto mese adi cinque et sei - 2384293 id00022000 Scan00006.jpg

Most of Dante's literary work was composed after his exile in 1301. {{Lang|it|La Vita Nuova}} ("The New Life") is the only major work that predates it; it is a collection of lyric poems (sonnets and songs) with commentary in prose, ostensibly intended to be circulated in manuscript form, as was customary for such poems.{{cite web|url=http://www.danteonline.it/english/opere.asp?idope=5&idlang=UK|title=New Life|publisher=Dante online|access-date=September 2, 2008|archive-date=25 September 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140925225539/http://www.danteonline.it/english/opere.asp?idope=5&idlang=UK|url-status=live}} It also contains, or constructs, the story of his love for Beatrice Portinari, who later served as the ultimate symbol of salvation in the Comedy, a function already indicated in the final pages of the {{Lang|it|Vita Nuova}}. The work contains many of Dante's love poems in Tuscan, which was not unprecedented; the vernacular had been regularly used for lyric works before, during all the thirteenth century. However, Dante's commentary on his own work is also in the vernacular—both in the {{Lang|it|Vita Nuova}} and in the {{Lang|it|Convivio}}—instead of the Latin that was almost universally used.{{Cite journal |last=Scott |first=John |date=1995 |title=The Unfinished 'Convivio' as a Pathway to the 'Comedy' |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40166505 |journal=Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society |volume=113 |issue=113 |pages=31–56 |jstor=40166505 |access-date=March 15, 2023 |archive-date=March 31, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230331184706/https://www.jstor.org/stable/40166505 |url-status=live }}

The Divine Comedy describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso); he is first guided by the Roman poet Virgil and then by Beatrice. Of the books, Purgatorio is arguably the most lyrical of the three, referring to more contemporary poets and artists than Inferno; Paradiso is the most heavily theological, and the one in which, many scholars have argued, the Divine Comedy{{'s}} most beautiful and mystic passages appear.{{cite web |last1=Kalkavage |first1=Peter |title=In the Heaven of Knowing: Dante's Paradiso |url=https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/08/heaven-knowing-dantes-paradiso.html |website=theimaginativeconservative.org |date=August 10, 2014 |publisher=The Imaginative Conservative |access-date=August 28, 2022 |archive-date=August 28, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220828040956/https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/08/heaven-knowing-dantes-paradiso.html |url-status=live }}{{cite web |last1=Falconburg |first1=Darrell |title=The Way of Beauty in Dante |url=https://www.dappledthings.org/deep-down-things/17487/the-way-of-beauty-in-dante |website=dappledthings.org |publisher=Dappled Things |access-date=August 28, 2022 |archive-date=August 28, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220828040956/https://www.dappledthings.org/deep-down-things/17487/the-way-of-beauty-in-dante |url-status=live }}

With its seriousness of purpose, its literary stature and the range—both stylistic and thematic—of its content, the Comedy soon became a cornerstone in the evolution of Italian as an established literary language. Dante was more aware than most early Italian writers of the variety of Italian dialects and of the need to create a literature and a unified literary language beyond the limits of Latin writing at the time; in that sense, he is a forerunner of the Renaissance, with its effort to create vernacular literature in competition with earlier classical writers. Dante's in-depth knowledge (within the limits of his time) of Roman antiquity, and his evident admiration for some aspects of pagan Rome, also point forward to the 15th century.

File:Domenico di Michelino - Dante Illuminating Florence with his Poem (detail) - WGA06423.jpg Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita in a detail of Domenico di Michelino's painting, Florence, 1465.]]

He wrote the Comedy in a language he called "Italian", in some sense an amalgamated literary language predominantly based on the regional dialect of Tuscany, but with some elements of Latin and other regional dialects.{{Britannica|151164|Dante}} He deliberately aimed to reach a readership throughout Italy including laymen, clergymen and other poets. By creating a poem of epic structure and philosophic purpose, he established that the Italian language was suitable for the highest sort of expression. In French, Italian is sometimes nicknamed la langue de Dante. Unlike Boccaccio, Milton or Ariosto, Dante did not really become an author read across Europe until the Romantic era. To the Romantics, Dante, like Homer and Shakespeare, was a prime example of the "original genius" who set his own rules, created persons of overpowering stature and depth, and went beyond any imitation of the patterns of earlier masters; and who, in turn, could not truly be imitated.{{Citation needed|date=February 2020}} Throughout the 19th century, Dante's reputation grew and solidified; and by 1865, the 600th anniversary of his birth, he had become established as one of the greatest literary icons of the Western world.{{cite web |title=An Italian Icon |url=https://www.fu-berlin.de/en/featured-stories/research/2021/dante/index.html |website=fu-berlin.de |date=September 14, 2021 |publisher=Freie Universität Berlin |access-date=August 28, 2022 |archive-date=August 28, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220828041311/https://www.fu-berlin.de/en/featured-stories/research/2021/dante/index.html |url-status=live }}

File:Rafael Flores - Dante y Virgilio visitando el Infierno.jpg visiting Hell, as depicted in Inferno, painted by Rafael Flores, 1855]]

New readers often wonder how such a serious work may be called a "comedy". In the classical sense the word comedy refers to works that reflect belief in an ordered universe, in which events tend toward not only a happy or amusing ending but one influenced by a Providential will that orders all things to an ultimate good. By this meaning of the word, as Dante himself allegedly wrote in a letter to Cangrande, the progression of the pilgrimage from Hell to Paradise is the paradigmatic expression of comedy, since the work begins with the pilgrim's moral confusion and ends with the vision of God.{{Cite web|url=https://www.dantesociety.org/publicationsdante-notes/epistle-cangrande-updated|title=Epistle to Cangrande Updated|website=www.dantesociety.org|access-date=June 9, 2021|archive-date=June 9, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210609232053/https://www.dantesociety.org/publicationsdante-notes/epistle-cangrande-updated|url-status=live}}

A number of other works are credited to Dante. {{Lang|it|Convivio}} ("The Banquet"){{cite web|url=http://www.danteonline.it/english/opere.asp?idope=2&idlang=UK|title=Banquet|publisher=Dante online|access-date=September 2, 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080927102913/http://www.danteonline.it/english/opere.asp?idope=2&idlang=UK|archive-date=September 27, 2008|url-status=dead}} is a collection of his longest poems with an (unfinished) allegorical commentary. {{Lang|la|Monarchia}} ("Monarchy"){{cite web|url=http://www.danteonline.it/english/opere.asp?idope=4&idlang=UK|title=Monarchia|publisher=Dante online|access-date=September 2, 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080927104525/http://www.danteonline.it/english/opere.asp?idope=4&idlang=UK|archive-date=September 27, 2008|url-status=dead}} is a summary treatise of political philosophy in Latin which was condemned and burned after Dante's deathAnthony K. Cassell

[https://web.archive.org/web/20151208162106/http://cuapress.cua.edu/BOOKS/viewbook.cfm?Book=CAMC The Monarchia Controversy]. Monarchia stayed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum from its inception until 1881.Giuseppe Cappelli, [https://books.google.com/books?id=_ssFAAAAQAAJ&pg=RA1-PA28 La divina commedia di Dante Alighieri], in Italian. by the Papal Legate Bertrando del Poggetto; it argues for the necessity of a universal or global monarchy to establish universal peace in this life, and this monarchy's relationship to the Roman Catholic Church as guide to eternal peace.{{cite journal|last=Lepsius|first=Oliver|title=Hans Kelsen on Dante Alighieri's Political Philosophy|journal=European Journal of International Law|year=2017|volume=27|issue=4|page=1153|doi=10.1093/ejil/chw060|doi-access=free}} {{Lang|la|De vulgari eloquentia}} ("On the Eloquence in the Vernacular"){{cite web|url=http://www.danteonline.it/english/opere.asp?idope=3&idlang=UK|title=De vulgari Eloquentia|publisher=Dante online|access-date=September 2, 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080927104520/http://www.danteonline.it/english/opere.asp?idope=3&idlang=UK|archive-date=September 27, 2008|url-status=dead}} is a treatise on vernacular literature, partly inspired by the {{Lang|ca|Razos de trobar}} of Raimon Vidal de Bezaudun.{{cite journal|last=Ewert|first= A.|jstor=3716632 |title=Dante's Theory of Language|journal=The Modern Language Review|volume=35|issue= 3|date=1940|pages= 355–366|doi= 10.2307/3716632| ref=pp. 355–366}}{{cite book |first1=Uc |last1=Faidit |author1-link=Uc de Saint Circ |first2=Raimon |last2=Vidal |first3=François |last3=Guessard |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JIoSAAAAIAAJ&q=%22raimon+vidal%22 |title=Grammaires provençales de Hugues Faidit et de Raymond Vidal de Besaudun (XIII^e siècle) |edition= 2nd |location=Paris |publisher=A. Franck |year=1858}} {{Lang|la|Quaestio de aqua et terra}} ("A Question of the Water and of the Land") is a theological work discussing the arrangement of Earth's dry land and ocean. The Eclogues are two poems addressed to the poet Giovanni del Virgilio. Dante is also sometimes credited with writing {{Lang|it|Il Fiore}} ("The Flower"), a series of sonnets summarizing {{Lang|fro|Le Roman de la Rose}}, and {{Lang|it|Detto d'Amore}} ("Tale of Love"), a short narrative poem also based on {{Lang|fro|Le Roman de la Rose}}. These would be the earliest, and most novice, of his known works.{{Cite book |last=Lansing |first=Richard |title=The Dante Encyclopedia |publisher=Garland |year=2000 |isbn=0815316593 |location=New York |pages=299, 334, 379, 734 |language=en}} {{Lang|it|Le Rime}} is a posthumous collection of miscellaneous poems.

The major works of Dante include the following:{{cite journal | url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/432861 | jstor=432861 | last1=Wilkins | first1=Ernest H. | title=An Introductory Dante Bibliography | journal=Modern Philology | date=1920 | volume=17 | issue=11 | pages=623–632 | doi=10.1086/387304 | hdl=2027/mdp.39015033478622 | s2cid=161197863 | hdl-access=free | access-date=April 12, 2021 | archive-date=August 3, 2020 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200803072828/https://www.jstor.org/stable/432861 | url-status=live }}Bibliothèque nationale de France {BnF Data}. "[https://data.bnf.fr/en/11898585/dante_alighieri/ Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210527122254/https://data.bnf.fr/en/11898585/dante_alighieri/ |date=27 May 2021 }}".

• Il Fiore and Detto d'Amore ("The Flower" and "Tale of Love", 1283–87)
• La Vita Nuova ("The New Life", 1294)
• {{Lang|la|De vulgari eloquentia}} ("On the Eloquence in the Vernacular", 1302–05)
• {{Lang|it|Convivio}} ("The Banquet", 1307)
• Monarchia ("Monarchy", 1313)
• Divine Comedy (1320)
• Eclogues (1320)
• {{Lang|la|Quaestio de aqua et terra}} ("A Question of the Water and of the Land", 1320)
• Le Rime ("The Rhymes")

File:Purgatory (Purgatorio).jpg|Illustration for Purgatorio (of The Divine Comedy) by Gustave Doré

File:Gustave Dore XIV.jpg|Illustration for Paradiso (of The Divine Comedy) by Gustave Doré

File:Paradise (Paradiso) II.jpg|Illustration for Paradiso (of The Divine Comedy) by Gustave Doré

Dante's works reside in cultural institutions across the world. Many items have been digitized or are available for public consultation.

• {{ill|Casa di Dante|it|lt=Dante's House Museum}} (Florence, Italy) opened in Dante's residence in 1965 and was refurbished in 2020.{{Cite web |title=Dante's House Museum |url=https://www.museocasadidante.it/en/dante-house-museum/ |access-date=December 12, 2023 |website=Museo Casa di Dante, Firenze |language=en-US |archive-date=December 12, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231212124724/https://www.museocasadidante.it/en/dante-house-museum/ |url-status=live }}
• Princeton University Library (New Jersey, US) holds 160 volumes of Dante's works and books about his life, including two 15th-century editions of the Divine Comedy.{{Cite web |title=Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) {{!}} Princeton University Library Special Collections |url=https://library.princeton.edu/special-collections/topics/dante-alighieri-1265-1321 |access-date=December 12, 2023 |website=library.princeton.edu |archive-date=December 12, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231212124721/https://library.princeton.edu/special-collections/topics/dante-alighieri-1265-1321 |url-status=live }}
• University College London Special Collections (London, UK) holds {{circa}} 3,000 volumes of material by and about Dante, including 36 editions of the Divine Comedy. The collection was bequeathed to the university by the scholar Henry Clark Barlow in 1876.{{Cite web |last=UCL Special Collections |date=August 23, 2018 |title=Dante Collection |url=https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/special-collections/a-z/barlow-dante |access-date=December 12, 2023 |website=UCL Special Collections. |language=en |archive-date=September 20, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220920172555/https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/special-collections/a-z/barlow-dante |url-status=live }}
• The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (Yale University Library, Connecticut, US) holds a manuscript edition of the Divine Comedy (c. 1385–1400).{{Cite web |date=March 23, 2021 |title=Divina Commedia, MS 428 [between 1385 and 1400] |url=https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/collections/highlights/divina-commedia-ms-428-between-1385-and-1400 |access-date=December 12, 2023 |website=Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library |language=en |archive-date=December 12, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231212124723/https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/collections/highlights/divina-commedia-ms-428-between-1385-and-1400 |url-status=live }}

• Dantedì
• Dante Alighieri Society

{{reflist|group=lower-alpha}}

{{Reflist|30em}}

{{refbegin|30em}}

• {{Cite book |last=Barbero |first=Alessandro |title=Dante: A Life |date=2022 |publisher=Pegasus Books |isbn=9781643139142 |translator-last=Cameron |translator-first=Allan |orig-date=Italian original publication: 2021}}
• {{cite magazine |last=Harrison |first=Robert |date=February 19, 2015 |title=Dante on Trial |magazine=NY Review of Books |pages=36–37}}
• {{cite book |last=Raffa |first=Guy P. |title=Dante's Bones: How a Poet Invented Italy |publisher=Belknap Press |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |year=2020 |isbn=978-0-674-98083-9}}
• {{Cite book |last=Santagata |first=Marco |title=Dante: The Story of His Life |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2016 |isbn=9780674504868 |translator-last=Dixon |translator-first=Richard |orig-date=Italian original publication: 2012}}
• {{Cite book |last=Shaw |first=Prue |title=Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity |publisher=Liveright |year=2014 |isbn=9780871407801}}
• {{Cite book |last=Took |first=John |title=Dante |date=2021 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=9780691208930}}

{{refend}}

{{refbegin|30em}}

• {{cite book |last=Allitt |first=John Stewart |title=Dante, il pellegrino |publisher=Edizioni Villadiseriane |language=it |location=Villa di Serio (BG) |year=2011 |isbn=978-88-96199-80-0}}
• {{cite book |last=Anderson |first=William |title=Dante the Maker |publisher=Routledge Kegan Paul |year=1980 |isbn=978-0-7100-0322-5}}
• Barolini, Teodolinda (ed.). Dante's Lyric Poetry: Poems of Youth and of the 'Vita Nuova'. University of Toronto Press, 2014.
• {{cite book |last=Gardner |first=Edmund Garratt |author-link=Edmund Garratt Gardner |title=Dante |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=London |year=1921 |oclc=690699123 |url=https://archive.org/details/dantedante00gardrich |access-date=March 7, 2016}}
• Guénon, René (1925). The Esoterism of Dante, trans. by C.B. Berhill, in the Perennial Wisdom Series. Ghent, NY: Sophia Perennis et Universalis, 1996. viii, 72 p. N.B.: Originally published in French, entitled L'Esoterisme de Danté, in 1925. {{ISBN|0-900588-02-0}}
• {{cite book |last=Hede |first=Jesper |title=Reading Dante: The Pursuit of Meaning |publisher=Lexington Books |location=Lanham |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-7391-2196-2}}
• {{cite book |last=Miles |first=Thomas |editor-first=Jon |editor-last=Stewart |title=Kierkegaard and the Patristic and Medieval Traditions |publisher=Ashgate |year=2008 |pages=223–236 |chapter=Dante: Tours of Hell: Mapping the Landscape of Sin and Despair |isbn=978-0-7546-6391-1}}
• {{cite book |last=Musa |first=Mark |author-link=Mark Musa |title=Advent at the Gates: Dante's Comedy |publisher=Indiana University Press |location=Bloomington |year=1974 |isbn=978-0253301406}}
• {{cite book |last=Raffa |first=Guy P. |title=The Complete Danteworlds: A Reader's Guide to the Divine Comedy |publisher=University of Chicago Press |location=Chicago |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-226-70270-4}}
• {{cite book |last=Scartazzini |first=Giovanni Andrea |author-link=Giovanni Andrea Scartazzini |title=La Divina Commedia riveduta e commentata (4 volumes) |year=1874–1890 |oclc=558999245}}
• {{cite book |last=Scartazzini |first=Giovanni Andrea |title=Enciclopedia dantesca: dizionario critico e ragionato di quanto concerne la vita e le opere di Dante Alighieri (2 volumes) |year=1896–1898 |oclc=12202483}}
• {{cite book |last=Scott |first=John A. |title=Dante's Political Purgatory |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |location=Philadelphia |year=1996 |isbn=978-0-585-12724-8}}
• {{cite book |last=Seung |first=T.K. |author-link=T. K. Seung |title=The Fragile Leaves of the Sibyl: Dante's Master Plan |publisher=Newman Press |location=Westminster, MD |year=1962 |oclc=1426455}}
• {{cite book |last=Toynbee |first=Paget |title=A Dictionary of the Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante |publisher=The Clarendon Press |location=London |year=1898 |oclc=343895 |url=https://archive.org/details/adictionaryprop00toyngoog |access-date=March 7, 2016}}
• {{cite book |last=Whiting |first=Mary Bradford |title=Dante the Man and the Poet |url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924011891698 |publisher=W. Heffer & Sons |location=Cambridge |year=1922 |oclc=224789}}

{{refend}}

{{Sister project links|s=Author:Dante Alighieri|wikt=no|voy=no|b=no|n=no|v=no|d=Q1067}}

• {{StandardEbooks|Standard Ebooks URL=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/dante-alighieri/}}
• {{Gutenberg author |id=507}}
• {{Internet Archive author |sname=Dante}}
• {{Librivox author |id=1189}}
• [https://onemorelibrary.com/index.php/en/search-results/author/dante-alighieri-381?order=loc&ord_t=asc Works by Dante Alighieri] at [https://onemorelibrary.com/index.php/en One More Library] (Works in English, Italian, Latin, Arabic, German, French and Spanish)
• {{cite SEP |url-id=dante |title=Dante Alighieri |last=Wetherbee |first=Winthrop}}
• The [http://www.museocasadidante.it/en/ Dante Museum in Florence]: his life, his books and a history & literature blog about Dante
• The [https://web.archive.org/web/20170830160755/http://www.worldofdante.org/ World of Dante] multimedia, texts, maps, gallery, searchable database, music, teacher resources, timeline
• The [http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/index.html Princeton Dante Project] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090603094521/http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/index.html |date=June 3, 2009 }} texts and multimedia
• The [http://dante.dartmouth.edu/ Dartmouth Dante Project] searchable database of commentary
• [http://www.danteonline.it/english/home_ita.asp Dante Online] manuscripts of works, images and text transcripts by Società Dantesca Italiana
• [http://dante.ilt.columbia.edu/ Digital Dante] – Divine Comedy with commentary, other works, scholars on Dante
• [http://oyc.yale.edu/italian-language-and-literature/ital-310 Open Yale Course on Dante] by Yale University
• [http://perunaenciclopediadantescadigitale.eu/dantesources/en/ DanteSources] project about Dante's primary sources developed by ISTI-CNR and the University of Pisa
• [https://research.bowdoin.edu/dante-today/ Dante Today] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180111043549/https://research.bowdoin.edu/dante-today/ |date=January 11, 2018 }} citings and sightings of Dante in contemporary culture
• [https://repository.upenn.edu/bibdant/ Bibliotheca Dantesca] journal dedicated to Dante and his reception
• [https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/special-collections/a-z/barlow-dante Dante Collection] at University College London (c. 3000 volumes of works by and about Dante)

{{Dante|state=uncollapsed}}

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