Dante: Italian, Florentine and undeserved exile

Dante Alighieri in 1331, in Epistle V to the Kings of Italy and to all Italians, defines himself as follows: Italian, Florentine and undeserved exile. Let’s see why

Dante’s house, his neighbourhood

Dante was born in the district of San Pier Maggiore, the most important of Florence at that time.
Here is Dante will meet politics, friends and love.
In fact, his neighbours are the protagonists of the political life of the city: Vieri de’Cerchi (head of the Guelfi Bianchi Party) and Corso Donati (head of the Guelfi Neri Party).
His friends are Guido Cavalcanti and Forese Donati, prominent exponents of the culture of the time and members of Florence high society.
His loves are his wife, Gemma Donati and his muse, Beatrice Portinari.

All within a 5-minute walk of his house.

Education
His training is long and thorough: after elementary school (doctor puerorum), he goes to the grammar school to learn the liberal arts of the trivio (grammar, rhetoric, dialectics) and the quadrivio (astrology, mathematics, geometry and music). He then studies epistolography (how to write political letters) from Brunetto Latini and later goes to the University of Bologna. Furthermore, he approaches Aristotelian philosophy in the convents of Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce.

Politics

In 1297 he enrolled in the art of doctors and apothecaries so to be ready to become part of the city government (enrollment in an art was a prerequisite for obtaining a public office).
He becomes prior of Florence (the highest office in the city) from April 15 to June 15 1300 and faces one of the most complicated periods in Florentine history: the clash between the White Guelphs, the POPOLANS (merchants and those who work) and the Black Guelphs, the POWERFUL (the knights and those who do not work for a living) reaches the final moment.
Blacks with the help of Pope Boniface VIII and Charles of Valois (France) take power and Whites are driven out. Dante is one of them.
From 1301 Dante will be banned, in exile.

The divine Comedy

In his most important work, the Comedy – then Divine- Dante repeatedly underlines the problems of Italy and what politically drives hime crazy. He can’t tolerate that il Bel Paese – his beautiful country (as he called Italy) is torn apart by factional struggles. He hopes that Italy, “ship without helmsman” will find one and be pacified to regain its leadership role in the world having been the seat of the Roman Empire and being the seat of the Papal State – heir of Christ

Dante the Father of the Italian language

Dante writes the Comedy using the Florentine vernacular to allow his work to have greater diffusion. This way, on the one hand he gives dignity to the vulgar and, on the other Dante makes clear that the vulgar can express not only the lowest level but can also reach very high levels. The linguistic registers that Dante uses are so varied that for this reason Dante can be called the Father of the Italian language.

Italian language so unknown

Tullio De Mauro, the famous linguist, tells us that unfortunately nowadays Italian is not so widespread and well known. Despite 99% of Italians can read and write in Italian and therefore “know” Italian, this knowledge is only superficial.
Only 29% of Italians can understand a written text of medium difficulty and can manage to elaborate a somewhat complex speech.
This means that 71% of Italians are functional illiterate.

Dante: Food for thought

Is Dante’s political idea about Italy old? Unfortunatelly not. 700 years after Dante’s death, the Italian political situation is still very tangled and his verses on the “brothel” Italy are unfortunately very topical.
And what about the language he invented?
Unfortunatelly it not so diffused and known as it should deserve.