Benedict FlynnA Life of Dante The Italy of Dante’s time was lively, vigorous, occasionallydangerous but certainly bold. The central mediaeval period—the Dark Ages, asthey are traditionally called—were over, and the first stirrings of theRenaissance could be detected. It was a time when learning, kept alive withinthe Church during those difficult centuries after the collapse of the RomanEmpire, was being rediscovered by the aristocracy; and the growing class ofmerchants flourished in this profitable period of trade and commerce, wherepowerful guilds were growing and benefiting from the new trading routes. With the help of translations from the Arabic, the works andthoughts of classical Greece —in particular Aristotle—were beginning to cast aninfluence once more; and music and poetry, through the troubadours, andpainters were transforming the artistic lives and environment of late 13thcentury Italy.Of course, the Church continued to be the primary singleinfluence—often in matters of state as well as religion. In Constantinople, the Byzantine Empireruled over its people in a stricter alliance between church and state,continuing the traditions of the Roman empire of the Caesars. In the West,however, and in particular in the Italian peninsular, there was no longer sucha neat homogeneity. The city-state was the primary unit. Florence, Venice,Ravenna, Pistoia, and Siena—the citizens felt loyalty to the place of theirbirth. The loyalty was defined by their home town, rather than their nation ortheir language; and politics and the rule of law was dictated by constantlyshifting alliances, making the Italy of the 13th and 14th centuries anunpredictable place to be. And only too often, if there wasn’t a dominant politicalor military power, foreign kings or princes would be called upon to involvethemselves in local disputes for spoil, lands or political benefits. The onlysingle personage to hold some measure of national control over Italy was thePope—through his religious power. This was reflected in the two main political factions. TheGhibellines—who looked towards the Holy Roman Emperor as their principalprotector, represented the aristocratic party. The opposing party wasrepresented by the Guelfs (among them, powerful bankers) hoping for moredemocratic rule, which looked towards the Pope as their principal figure. This was the background of Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) as hegrew up in Florence. It is important to have some idea of this setting, foralthough The Divine Comedy may be set in another world, and meant as acommentary for mankind for all time, it was, paradoxically, placed verystrongly in Dante’s own time. Many of the characters that appear in theInferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso were contemporaries or near contemporaries ofDante himself. This is why, when he enters into conversation with them, intheir enduring trials, he often talks about matters other than their ‘sins’ orthe actions that led them to their place of penance or reflection. We need thefootnotes to explain the background, but Dante’s contemporaries would haveknown about them directly. This is also why he wrote in Italian rather than Latin, theaccepted custom of the time. He wanted The Divine Comedy to be read by a wider audiencethan offered by Latin, a language not necessarily studied by many of the newmerchant families. Dante also makes the point that writing in Italian wouldhave allow greater access to the poem by women. So, the life of Dante, and the background against which hewrote, is essential to a reading of The Divine Comedy. He was born into a Guelffamily. His natural aptitude for learning and poetry was recognized, and hebecame active in the state life of Florence, becoming one of the Priors, whichexercised considerable influence on the running of the city. But however ableas a man of letters, he seemed less adept at operating in the darker shadows ofpolitics and intrigue, and came out the worse after infighting between two sections of the Guelf party, the Blacks and the Whites. In1302, while away from Florence, he was condemned to the stake and had no choicebut to go into exile. It proved to be a bitter life sentence, not helped by hischanging political views, which resulted in him being known as Dante the Ghibelline. This was the public part of his life. The more private(though it became very public...) was his reverence for a girl he saw from adistance when he was nine. The encounter with Beatrice Portinari was totransform his inner life and propel him along the road of poetry, which was tosustain his life as an exile. Nine years after that initial sight of her, hemet her at a party and they exchanged a few words. A little later, they metagain, but she had heard some ‘scandalous’ reports about him and snubbed him.He was heartbroken. He saw her at a distance once more before she died in 1290. Despite—perhaps because—he seems to have had a reputationfor leading a passionate life, Dante described his feelings for Beatrice veryclearly as ‘most chaste’. Passion travels easily (and even simultaneously) downboth secular and sacred routes, and, for Dante, Beatrice became the symbol ofpurity, a constant star that his uncertain life so needed. She provided the impulse for his poetry. His learning andhis awareness of political and commercial life were unusually combined with anenergy for living and the spiritual search. Out of all this and hishomelessness, emerged The Divine Comedy. Notes by Nicolas Soames John SprapnelBorn in Birmingham and brought up in Manchester, JohnShrapnel joined the National Theatre (under Laurence Olivier) playing manyclassical roles including Banquo and Orsino. With the Royal Shakespeare Companyhe has appeared in classical Greek theater as well as numerous Shakespeareanplays. His television work varies from Stoppard’s Professional Foul and VanityFair to Inspector Morse and Hornblower. Films include Nicholas and Alexandra,One Hundred and One Dalmatians and the role of Gaius in Gladiator.