Dante Alighieri was born in May 1265 in Florence, Italy, into noble Florentine ancestry. His father worked as a moneylender and landlord, and his mother died when he was only seven years old. In 1274, at the age of nine, Dante met and fell in love with Beatrice Portinari when she was eight years old. He would never abandon his unrequited love for her, even when he was informally engaged to Gemma Donati just three years later. He and Gemma married in 1283, shortly before Dante’s father died.

Dante joined the Bianchi Guelphs, a political faction in the fractured Italian government, and served as a cavalryman for a short period in the Battle of Campaldino. He returned to Florence only to learn that his beloved Beatrice, who was married to another man, had died. The poet threw himself into writing and published his first collection of poems, La Vita Nuova (1292), in memory of his lost love. The volume celebrated his so-called muse as a spiritual inspiration to his writing and, ironically, Dante never wrote the same about his wife Gemma, with whom he fathered four children. Determined to build a career in Italian public office he joined the Apothecaries, a group for philosophers. At the turn of the century Dante held several positions within the local government including ambassador and prior for two months. Thereafter, however, his life as a politician quickly deteriorated.

In 1302 the rival Neri Guelphs assumed control and banished the Bianchi Guelphs, including Dante, from Florence and threatened them with death by burning if they appeared in the city again. Dante’s wife and children did not accompany him on his journeys through Italy during his exile. He fled to other … [During his two decades in exile he wrote … his most famous work, La Divina Commedia.] … prominent Italian cities, including Verona and Ravenna, and lived with wealthy benefactors who sponsored his writing. Much of Dante’s work reflected his belief in unifying the Italian provinces through literature written in the language of its readers as opposed to the traditional Latin. During his two decades in exile he wrote De Vulgari Eloquentia (1307), Il Convivio (1307), De Monarchia (1313), and his most famous work, La Divina Commedia. The three-volume epic consisted of one hundred cantos and depicted the three realms of the afterlife: the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso. The first of the three was printed singularly in 1314 and, afterwards, Dante began to write the two later books. He published the collection as a whole just before his death in Ravenna on September 13, 1321.