Dante Alighieri changed the world of literature with his epic journey through the afterlife, but his real life was just as dramatic as his vision of Hell. While most people know him as a poet, he was also a soldier, a politician, and a man whose stubbornness led to a life of lonely wandering. For instance, he wrote his masterpiece in a language that scholars considered "vulgar" to prove it could match the beauty of Latin. Furthermore, he spent seven centuries technically under a death sentence from his home city. Prepare to enter the dark wood with the author of the Divine Comedy.
Dante Alighieri
Dante never saw his wife or children again after his exile. Although he married Gemma Donati and had several children, he spent the last twenty years of his life alone in various Italian cities. He never mentioned his wife by name in any of his writings, leading some to believe the marriage was purely a political arrangement.
He saved a baby from drowning in a baptismal font. In his book Inferno, he mentions an incident at the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence. He had to break the stone of a baptismal basin to save an infant who was trapped inside and suffocating, proving that he was a man of action as well as words.
His famous nickname “Dante” is actually a shortened version. His birth name was Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri, but he preferred the diminutive form. “Durante” means “enduring” or “steadfast,” a name that fit his personality perfectly as he refused to back down from his political beliefs.
He fell in love with Beatrice at the age of nine. He only met his muse twice in his entire life, once when they were children and again nine years later. Despite their minimal contact, she became the central figure of his poetry and the woman who guided him through Heaven in his masterpiece.
He was a pharmacist solely to further his political career. Florence passed a law in 1295 requiring nobles to join a professional guild if they wanted to hold public office. Dante joined the Apothecaries’ Guild, though he likely never mixed a single medicine or filled a prescription for a patient.
The city of Florence sentenced him to be burned alive. After the Black Guelph faction seized power, they accused Dante of corruption and banished him. They declared that if he ever returned to his beloved city without paying a massive fine, he would face death at the stake.
He invented the “Terza Rima” rhyme scheme. To create the unique flow of the Divine Comedy, he developed an interlocking three-line stanza pattern. This structure ensured that the poem moved forward like a chain, and it remains one of the most difficult poetic forms to master in any language.
His bones went missing for several centuries. When he died in Ravenna, Florence eventually realized their mistake and tried to reclaim his body. However, the monks in Ravenna hid his remains inside a wall to keep them, and workers only found the bones by accident during a renovation in 1865.
He used his poetry to get revenge on his political enemies. In the Inferno, he placed many real-life figures who had wronged him into specific circles of Hell. He even placed Pope Boniface VIII in the eighth circle for corruption while the Pope was still alive.
Legend says his son found the final chapters in a dream. When Dante died, his children realized the last thirteen cantos of the Divine Comedy were missing. His son Pietro claimed his father appeared to him in a dream and pointed to a hidden panel in a wall where the manuscript lay.
He possessed a legendary photographic memory. A famous story tells of a man who asked Dante what he had for breakfast, to which he replied, “Eggs.” A year later, the same man walked by and asked, “How?” Dante immediately answered “With salt,” without skipping a beat.
He was the first writer to use the word “modern” in Italian. He felt his era was a turning point in history and consciously used the term moderno to describe the changing world around him. He believed his choice to write in the common tongue would make literature accessible to everyone.
The number three appears as a secret code throughout his work. He obsessed over the Holy Trinity, so he divided his poem into three books with 33 cantos each (plus one intro). Even the beast Satan has three heads, mimicking a dark version of the divine number.
He died of malaria after a diplomatic mission. While returning to Ravenna from Venice, he had to travel through the swampy lands of the Comacchio. He contracted the fever and passed away just a few days after finishing the final lines of his epic poem.
Finally, Florence only officially pardoned him in 2008. Nearly seven hundred years after his death, the city council finally voted to rescind his exile and death sentence. They held a ceremony to apologize to the poet who had become the greatest symbol of Italian culture.
