Dante Alighieri

From Conservapedia

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) was an early Renaissance poet, born to a prominent family in Florence. The Italian town of Florence was considered the cradle of the Renaissance by 1425, but Venice and Rome became just as successful by the early 1500s.

Dante was politically active, part of the physicians, apothacaries, and book dealers guild and later one of the 6 priors of Florence. Florence was divided into factions, the Papal Guelphs, the “Whites”, with Pope Boniface VIII, and the Ghibellines, the Holy Roman Empire party, the “Blacks”, with King Philip of France and later King Henry of Luxembourg. Dante was exiled from Florence about 1302, living with sympathetic patrons for the remainder of his life. It was during this exile that he traveled, studied philosophy and theology, and wrote several works, including The Divine Comedy.

Dante wrote in the Italian language of the time (the vernacular) rather than ancient Latin. Dante described the path of a soul to salvation in "The Divine Comedy," in which Dante travels through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso). In this journey, Dante is first guided by the Roman epic poet Virgil, and then he is later guided by girl he loved as a youth, named Beatrice, who had tragically died.