Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri was an Italian poet and political figure born in Florence around 1265. Active in the city's civic life, he served among its priors; he left on an embassy to Pope Boniface VIII in late 1301 and, amid the Guelph factional struggle, was condemned in absentia in 1302 and never returned. The remaining two decades were spent moving among northern Italian courts, including the Malaspina lands of the Lunigiana, where he acted as a procurator in 1306, Verona under the della Scala family, and finally Ravenna, where he died in 1321. He wrote in the Tuscan vernacular as well as Latin. His works include the "Vita Nuova," the treatises "Convivio" and "De Monarchia," and the long narrative poem "Commedia," later called the "Divine Comedy," which recounts an imagined journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise.