Dante -born in 1265 -died in 1321

Domenico di Michelino -1465 Santa Maria del Fiore, Firenze

Florence

ITALY AND TUSCANY

Dante’s house in Florence

The Baptistery in Florence where Dante was baptized was the

cathedral at that time.

The dome of the Baptistery is covered with mosaics, which depict devils, angels, and after death punishments.

• Santa Maria del Fiore

• built between 1296 and 1436

Santa Maria del Fiore,  cupola (1420-1434)

• Dante was born in 1265 in Florence.• As a young man in 1289, he fought in the

battle of Campaldino which marked the victory of Dante’s Guelph party.

• In 1295 he began his political career.• He was exiled from Florence (Firenze) in

1302. • He started writing the Divine Comedy in

1306 when he was in exile.• He died in 1321 in Ravenna.

Dante’s Statue in Florence

Santa Croce, S. Croce, Firenze, Italy; 1294-1442; by Arnolfo di Cambio

Firenze - Ponte Vecchio

What Florence and New Orleans have in common:

giglio – symbol of Florence

The year 1300

• Pope Boniface VIII proclaims the Jubilee Year. • Dante is 35 years old. • June 15-August 14: Dante is named a Prior, one

of the six highest magistrates in Florence.• Easter time: Fictional date of the journey of the

Divine Comedy • Beginning of the factional struggles between the

Cerchi and the Donati (Bianchi and Neri)

Tuscany

The Guelphs supported the Roman Catholic Church.

Pope Boniface VIII sent Charles of Valois to Florence in 1300 to end the feud between the Black and White Guelphs. In 1302 Dante was exiled.

The statue of Boniface VIII is at The Museum of the Opera del Duomo in Florence.

The castle of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II is located in Prato, just north of Florence. It was built between 1237 and 1248.

The Ghibellines supported the Holy Roman Empire.

Political Division in Tuscany•In Florence the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, which represented rival families, fought from 1215 to 1278 when Florence became the head of the Guelph league in Tuscany.

•Siena was Ghibelline, because it sought the support of the emperor against the Florentines and against the rebellious nobles of its own territory.

•Lucca was Guelph because it needed the protection of Florence.

•Prato was Guelph

•Pisa was Ghibelline

•Arezzo was Ghibelline

The political parties in Florence and Tuscany • The Ghibellines supported the Holy Roman Empire.• The Guelphs supported the papal party.• The two parties fought between 1215 and 1278.• The Guelph party took over.

– Dante was a Guelph (Guelfo).• Around 1300 the Guelphs split into Blacks (Neri) and

Whites (Bianchi).• The Whites opposed the tyrannical power of the Pope

and started siding with the Ghibellines.• Dante was a White.• The Whites ruled until 1302. • While Dante was sent as an ambassador to the Pope, the

Blacks took control of the city.• He could not return to Florence.

SIENA was ghibelline, therefore enemy of Florence

The Cathedral of Siena

Arezzo was Ghibelline.

In Canto XXIX Dante meets Griffolino of Arezzo, who was punished for alchemy.

Prato, located close to Florence, was and still is an important industrial town for the manufacturing of textiles.

The Cathedral of Prato

• Pisa, a stronghold of the Ghibellines, was a powerful maritime republic at war with the Guelph league and with Genoa.

Lucca

• Etruscan origin• Wealthy on silk and banking • Mantained its independence

Pistoia, a ghibelline town, was overtaken by Florence’s Guelph party in 1254. In cantos XXIV, 97 and XXV, 1

Dante mentions Vanni Fucci, a black Guelph who stole holy objects from the Cathedral in Pistoia.

May 7 1300: Dante is sent as ambassador to San Gimignano to

persuade its citizens to join the Guelph party.

San Gimignano

San Gimignano

PIENZA

Tuscan countryside

Once an undeveloped marshy area along the southern part of Tuscany, after a project of land reclamation, it is today one of the most beautiful unspoiled areas in Italy.

Inferno XIII –” the wilds between Cecina and Corneto “

Tuscan coast in Maremma

PRATO

Dante’s Tomb in Ravenna

CANTO 1

Lost in a wood, Dante

meets a leopard, a lion,

and a wolf who block

his path. The leopard is

the symbol of lust or

excessive passion,

the lion of pride and

violence, and the

she-wolf of fraud

and betrayal.

The First Circle or Limbo

• Here the innocents will remain forever with no hope of ever seeing God.

• Dante and Virgil join in conversation the great poets of the classical times: Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan.

• It is a rather pleasant landscape with light and green meadows, like the Elysian Fields described by Virgil in the Aeneid.

Charon ferrying the souls across the Acheron to the first circle

Michelangelo Charon (detail from the Last Judgement, Sistine Chapel), 1536-41

Upper Hell and the Sins of Incontinence

• Second Circle– Lust: Paolo and Francesca

• Third Circle– Gluttony: Ciacco

• Fourth Circle– Avarice and prodigality: Popes and cardinals

• Fifth Circle– Wrath: Filippo Argenti

The Styx and Phlegyas

Sixth Circle: the Heretics

• This is the first circle inside the City of Dis.

• Farinata and Cavalcante are punished here by burning forever in open coffins.

Illustration by William Blake

The river of boiling blood:

the Phlegethon

(Salvador Dali’)

The Seventh Circle• Here the violent are punished in three rings.

• 1) Violent Against their Neighbors (tyrants and murderers). These souls are plunged into a river of boiling blood: the river Phlegethon. They are watched over by the Centaurs.

• 2) Violent against Themselves (suicides). It is an unnatural forest with leafless trees. These trees are the souls of the suicides. Dante talks to Pier delle Vigne, personal secretary of Frederick II. The trees have no leaves because the Harpies keep plucking them as they sprout. Among the trees Dante sees the souls of the squanderers, chased by bitches.

• 3) Violent against God and Nature. These ring is divided into three zones: blasphemers, sodomites, and usurers. Virgil talks to Capaneus stricken by Zeus's bolt for his rebellion. Then Dante talks to his teacher Brunetto Latini, and later he sees three Florentines, at the edge of the circle. The usurers who have sinned against God’s laws of nature are also punished here.

Canto XIV, 79-80From the Phlegethon, small streams pour out, like the sulphurous waters of the Bulicame near Viterbo, north

of Rome…

Inferno (xviii, 29) - Dante compares the sinners passing along one of the bridges of the Malebolge in opposite directions, to the crowds crossing the bridge of the Castel Sant' Angelo on their way to and from St. Peter's in Rome during the Holy year of Jubilee in 1300

Castel Sant’ Angelo

Le MalebolgeThe eight circle of hell is divided into ten sections.

Each “bolgia” is a depression in the ground similar

to a ditch. The “bolge” are connected by bridges

that span over the ditch and lower to the next level.

Canto 18 - Le malebolge

There is a place in hell, called Malebolge,All of stone and iron of color,Like the circle that all around surrounds it.In the very middle of the evil fieldAppears a well, rather large and deep.Of whose location I will explain.That circle which remains, then, is round Between the well and the foot of the tall hard wallAnd the bottom is divided into ten valleys.Just as, where to protect the wallsMany and more ditches surround castles,The part where they are, makes a figure,Same image here those were forming:And like in these forts from their rampartsSmall bridges go to the outside shore,So from the rock juts are projected to connect the levees and the ditches, Until the well which cuts and connects them.

• First bolgia – The Panderers and Seducers• Second bolgia – The Flatterers• Third bolgia – the Simoniacs• The Fourth bolgia – the Fortunetellers• Fifth bolgia –The Barrators or grafters• Sixth bolgia – the Hypocrites• Seventh bolgia – the Thieves• Eighth bolgia – The Evil counselors• Ninth bolgia – The Spreader of discord • Tenth bolgia – the Falsifiers

» Of metals» Of persons» Of coins» Of words

• Bertrand de Born exemplifies the law of contrapasso in canto 28.

The contrapasso

• The punishment fits the crime. The souls are condemned to endure the perpetuation of their behavior or its opposite.

• For example, the Fortunetellers have their heads on backwards and must walk "backwards" for all time. In life, they attempted to "see" the future, now in death they must see the past.

Dante compares the giants who guard the ninth circle to the castle of Monteriggioni outside Siena (Inferno canto XXXI, vv. 40-45 )

Canto 31 – The GiantsBologna’s Towers

“della Garisenda and Degli Asinelli”

Dante compared Anteus to the Garisenda

The ninth circle is divided into four sections.

•Round 1: Caina (those who betrayed their relatives)

•Round 2: Antenora (those who betrayed their country)

•Round 3: Ptolomea (those who betrayed their guests)

•Round 4: Judecca (those who betrayed their benefactors)

Pisa and Count Ugolino

• Pisa was a town divided between power of the church and state.

• To obtain power Count Ugolino, a Ghibellin, betrayed his party.

• By siding with the Guelphs, he gained control of the city.

• Ruggieri was an archbishop who at first supported count Ugolino, but then betrayed him.

• Count Ugolino was imprisoned with his children and let die of starvation.

PISA LUNGARNO

TORRE DELL’ OROLOGIO IN PISACanto 30 CONTE UGOLINO was imprisoned here and let die of starvation

PISA

William Blake

Inferno's characters from history and arts, from mythology, from Dante's real life

• The guardians of Hell

• Dante’s contemporaries

• Historical figures and literary characters

Dante’s contemporaries• Beatrice – personifies “pure and absolute love” • Ciacco – the glutton who must have known Dante • Paolo and Francesca - two lovers who were killed by the Francesca’s husband • Filippo Argenti – a Black Guelph, Dante’s enemy, found among the Wrathful in the

river Styx. • Farinata - A prominent leader of the Ghibelline party who saved Florence from

destruction when the Ghibellines won in 1260. He is punished among the heretics. • Cavalcante de’Cavalcanti - father of Dante’s friend, Guido de Cavalcanti• Pier della Vigna - Former advisor to Emperor Frederick II who committed suicide

when he fell into disfavor at the court. • Brunetto Latini – a poet and political leader whose ideas influenced Dante• Pope Boniface VIII - Dante’s enemy accused of simonism• The Navarrese barrator - who tricks the devils causing them to fall in the sticky tar• Vanni Fucci -  of the Black party, a thief punished in the Seventh Pouch of the

Eighth Circle of Hell who prophesies the defeat of the White Guelphs.• Guido da Montefeltro -  A Ghibellin advisor to Pope Boniface VIII• Bertran de Born (1140-1215): was a troubadour poet who carries his decapitated

head by the hair• Geri del Bello - Dante's cousin, a troublemaker who caused the feud with the

Sacchetti family• Gianni Schicchi – impersonated Buoso Donati, who had just died, and dictated a

new will in favor of Buoso’s nephew Simone. • Count Ugolino - betrayed Pisa and was betrayed by the Archbishop Ruggeri who shares his punishment in the lowest circle of hell 

Characters from history or literary works• Pope Celestine V: Became Pope in 1294. Withdrew from the world

and renounced the papacy, allowing Boniface to become pope. He is with the “uncommitted.”

• The poets Homer, Horace, Ovid, Lucan in Limbo• The philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in Limbo• Dido, Achilles, Helen, Paris among the lustful• Attila and Alexander among the tyrants• Tiresias and Chalcas among the soothsayers• Ulysses and Diomedes among the False Counselors• Mohammed who caused the division between Christianity and Islam • Caiaphas: Jewish high priest; head of council which condemned

Jesus.• Sinon the Greek who lied to persuade the Trojans to bring the

wooden horse inside the town • Judas who betrayed Jesus• Brutus and Cassius who betrayed Cesar

The Guardians of Hell• Charon (circle 1)• Minos (circle 2)• Cerberus (circle 3)• Plutus (circle 4)• Phlegyas (circle 5)• The Furies (circle 6)• The Centaurs and the Minotaur (circle 7)• The Harpies (circle 7, ring 2)• Geryon (circle 8)• The Giants (circle 9)

At the beginning of second circleMinos judges the souls and assigns them to their place.

Cerberus, the three-headed dog guards the gluttons punished in the third circle.

Plutus, Roman god of wealth

William Blake  1757-1827

Phlegyas is the ferry man who transports Dante across the river Styx in the fifth ring of hell.

The Furies

• They guard the gates of the city of Dis at the sixth circle.

• They have serpents in their hair.

The Centaurs, guardians of the 7th circle where the violent are punished

Floor Mosaic in Ostia Antica

The Minotaur also in the seventh circle 7

A bull-headed

man who

lived in Crete

He was

imprisoned in

the Labyrinth

and killed by

Theseus

The Harpies (7th circle)

• Half women- half birds

Geryon

A monster who helps

Dante and Virgil to

reach the eight circle by

carrying them on his

back

Canto 31- The GiantsBotticelli

His face appeared to me as long and large

As is at Rome the pine-cone of Saint Peter's…(Inferno, Canto XXXI)

The bronze pinecone is located in one of the Vatican’s courtyards.

Map of he Purgatorio

Map of Paradiso

Dante and the Italian Language

The poetry

The Divina Commedia is composed in terza

rima, a three-line stanza called terzina,which

uses chain rhyme in the pattern

a-b-a, b-c-b, c-d-c, d-e-d.

Each line contains eleven syllables.

Therefore each terzina contains 33

syllables.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vitami ritrovai per una selva oscuraché la diritta via era smarrita.

Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa duraesta selva selvaggia e aspra e forteche nel pensier rinova la paura!

Tant'è amara che poco è più morte; ma per trattar del ben ch'i' vi trovai,dirò de l'altre cose ch'i' v'ho scorte.

Nel /mez/zo /del /cam/min /di /no/stra/ vi/tami /ri/ tro/vai/ per/ una/ sel/va/ o/scu/raChé/ la/ di/rit/ta/ vi/a/ era/ smar/ri/ta.

Terzina

The language of the Divine Comedy

Dante’s use of his native Tuscan dialect inThe Comedy helped to unify the Italian language, which is rooted in Tuscan more than in any other Italian dialect. Before Dante, major literary works were almost always written in Latin, the language of the Roman Empire and the Catholic Church; no one had considered the vernacular capable of poetic expression of the caliber of Virgil’s Aeneid,for example.

In defense of this language Dante wrote De Vulgari Eloquentia.

Dante himself felt compelled to defend the

legitimacy of literature written in the mother tongue

in his treatise De Vulgari Eloquentia

("Of Literature in the Vernacular," 1304-1306).

Paradoxically, Dante wrote this treatise defending

the literary legitimacy of the vernacular in Latin, not

Italian, because he wanted it to be taken

seriously!