Dante and the Divine Comedy

Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in 1265 into a family aligned with the Guelph faction, and around 1285 entered an arranged marriage with Gemma Donati; far more central to his poetry, however, was his devotion to Beatrice, usually identified with Beatrice Portinari, whom he first saw as a child and who died young in 1290. Dante was active in Florentine political life as a White Guelph, and when the rival Black Guelphs seized power in 1302 with the backing of Pope Boniface VIII, he was condemned to exile on trumped-up charges and never set foot in Florence again, dying in Ravenna in 1321. That experience of unjust banishment shapes the moral architecture of his masterpiece, the Divine Comedy, in which Dante freely places friends, enemies, and contemporary Florentine politicians among the damned, the penitent, and the blessed.