70 Fun Facts About Dante Alighieri

Which Roman poet guides Dante through Hell and most of Purgatory?

He represents human reason, and his Aeneid is praised in the poem with language Dante otherwise reserves for Scripture.

Who takes over from Beatrice as Dante's guide for the final cantos of Paradiso?

The Cistercian abbot stands for contemplative mysticism and devotion to Mary, and he leads Dante to the vision of God.

Into how many cantos is the whole Divine Comedy divided?

Each of the three parts has 33 cantos, and a single introductory canto brings the total to a round hundred.

What is the interlocking three-line rhyme scheme of the Divine Comedy called?

Its lines run ABA BCB CDC, in eleven-syllable lines, so each tercet holds 33 syllables, matching the canto count of each part.

Who first attached the adjective 'Divine' to the poem Dante had simply called Comedy?

He used it in a treatise in praise of Dante written in the 1350s; the first edition to print Divina Comedia on its title page came only in 1555.

Which single word ends each of the three parts of the Divine Comedy?

The device ties the whole journey to the heavens: each cantica closes with the pilgrim looking upward.

In what year is Dante's journey through the afterlife set?

The pilgrim is 35, halfway through the biblical lifespan of seventy, which is how scholars work back to Dante's own birth date.

On the eve of which Christian holy day does the poem begin?

The whole journey runs to the Wednesday after Easter, and Dante and his guide reach Purgatory on Easter Sunday itself.

Which three beasts block Dante's path in the dark wood at the start of the poem?

They are usually read as the three kinds of sin that also organise Hell: the self-indulgent, the violent and the malicious.

How many circles does Dante's Hell have?

Each realm follows the same pattern of a special ten: the circles then Lucifer at the bottom, the rings of Purgatory then Eden, the heavens then the seat of God.

The inscription over the gate of Hell famously ends with which words?

Just inside, the Uncommitted, who took no side in life, chase a wavering banner for eternity while wasps sting them.

Dante's shade who made 'the great refusal' at Hell's entrance is usually identified as which pope?

He abdicated the papacy in 1294, clearing the way for the pope who became Dante's great enemy.

Who ferries souls across the river Acheron and at first refuses to carry the living Dante?

Dante's guide silences him with the formula 'It is so willed there where is power to do that which is willed'.

Which classical judge of the dead assigns each damned soul to its circle by coiling his tail?

Every soul must confess its sins to him at the entrance to the Second Circle, where Hell proper begins.

Which three-headed beast guards the gluttons in the Third Circle?

Dante calls him 'the great worm', and the gluttons he mauls lie in freezing, putrid slush under an endless icy rain.

Francesca da Rimini, whom Dante meets among the lustful, fell in love with which man?

Her deformed husband Gianciotto surprised the pair and stabbed them both to death sometime between 1283 and 1286.

Francesca says she and her lover yielded to their passion while reading about which legendary couple?

She calls the book and its author a 'Galeotto', a go-between, after Gallehaut, who encouraged the two lovers in the romance.

Farinata degli Uberti, whom Dante meets in a flaming tomb, is punished in the circle of which sin?

The Ghibelline leader is remembered for protesting the proposed destruction of Florence after Montaperti; he was posthumously condemned as an Epicurean.

In the first round of the Seventh Circle, murderers and tyrants are immersed in what?

Centaurs patrol the bank, shooting arrows at any sinner who rises higher out of the Phlegethon than his guilt allows.

Which winged monster of fraud carries Dante and his guide down the cliff to the Eighth Circle?

He has the face of an honest man, hairy arms, a reptile's body and a scorpion's sting: fraud with a pleasant front.

What is the name of the Eighth Circle, a funnel of ten concentric ditches for the fraudulent?

The name means 'evil ditches'; each bolgia holds a different kind of fraud, from panderers and flatterers to counterfeiters.

Which Greek hero among Dante's counsellors of fraud tells of a last voyage past the Pillars of Hercules?

The voyage is Dante's own invention: the crew drowns within sight of Mount Purgatory, having sailed for knowledge without wisdom.

Count Ugolino, frozen in the Ninth Circle, eternally gnaws the head of which man?

The two conspired to seize Pisa in 1288, then the archbishop turned on him and locked him in a tower to starve with his sons.

What is the Ninth Circle of Hell, home of the traitors, made of?

Its four rounds are named Caina, Antenora, Ptolomaea and Judecca after four archetypal traitors, and the worst sinners are sealed completely in ice.

Who is chewed in the central mouth of Lucifer at the very bottom of Hell?

The two side mouths hold Caesar's assassins, whose crime, to Dante, was destroying a divinely appointed unified Italy.

How is Lucifer positioned at the centre of Hell?

His six bat-like wings beat uselessly, and the icy wind they raise is what freezes the lake around him.

Where does Dante place the Mountain of Purgatory?

It rose from rock displaced when Satan fell to earth, and it is the only land in the southern ocean; the Garden of Eden sits at its summit.

Which pagan Roman is the guardian of the shores of Purgatory?

His presence there puzzled commentators for centuries, since he was a suicide and no Christian.

At the gate of Purgatory an angel carves which letter, one for each deadly sin, on Dante's forehead?

It stands for peccatum, sin; one mark is brushed away by an angel's wing as Dante leaves each terrace.

How many terraces does Mount Purgatory have?

Below them lies Ante-Purgatory, holding the excommunicated and the late repentant, and the Garden of Eden crowns the summit.

Which Roman poet, author of the Thebaid, joins Dante and his guide on the upper slopes of Purgatory?

He explains that the mountain trembles whenever a soul knows it is ready to ascend, and that he was a secret Christian.

Which excommunicated king of Sicily does Dante meet on the lower slopes of Purgatory?

The excommunicate wait at the base of the cliff for thirty times the length of their defiance of the Church, unless the living pray for them.

Which sphere of Heaven holds Piccarda Donati and others who broke their vows?

Its waxing and waning made it the natural home of the inconstant, who lacked the virtue of fortitude.

In which sphere of Heaven does Dante meet the Emperor Justinian, who says 'Caesar I was and am'?

It is the home of the ambitious, whose earthly glory pales beside God's just as the planet pales beside the sun.

Which crusader ancestor of Dante prophesies his exile and tells him to write what he has seen?

He served in the Second Crusade and is the earliest relative Dante could name, born no earlier than about 1100.

What lies beyond the heavenly spheres at the very top of Dante's cosmos?

The ninth sphere below it, the Primum Mobile, holds the angels; above it is the very essence of God.

Which theologian's Summa most shaped the Divine Comedy, earning it the nickname 'the Summa in verse'?

He appears in person in Paradiso alongside Bonaventure, introducing Dante to Heaven's wisest souls.

In which year was Dante most likely born?

He is thought to have been born under Gemini, and Florence's council celebrated the 750th anniversary in 2015.

How old does Dante claim to have been when he first met Beatrice?

He said he fell in love at first sight, apparently without speaking to her; she was eight, and it was at a May Day party.

Whom did Dante actually marry, a woman he never once mentioned in his poetry?

They were betrothed when he was twelve, and she bore him three children before his exile.

The historical Beatrice, Bice di Folco Portinari, was married to which man?

The only hard evidence of her life is her father's 1287 will, which names her as the banker's wife.

In which year did Beatrice die, sending Dante into a period of Latin study and philosophy?

He recorded his grief and his early poems for her in the Vita Nuova a few years later.

Which guild did Dante join to qualify for public office in Florence?

Apothecaries also sold books, which may explain the choice for a poet with philosophical interests.

Dante fought as a front-line cavalryman in which 1289 battle?

He rode with the Florentine Guelphs against the Ghibellines of Arezzo as a feditore, one of the men responsible for the first charge.

Dante belonged to which faction of Florentine politics?

Both Guelph factions had backed the papacy, but the Whites wanted more freedom from Rome; the Blacks seized the city in 1301.

Which pope kept Dante waiting in Rome while Charles of Valois and the Black Guelphs took Florence in 1301?

Dante had gone to Rome as part of a delegation to talk the pope out of sending Charles; he never lived in Florence again.

What punishment awaited Dante if he had returned to Florence without paying his fine?

He was accused of corruption during his two months as city prior; Florence formally rescinded the sentence only 700 years later.

Which Holy Roman Emperor did Dante hail as a new Charlemagne when he marched into Italy in 1310?

Dante wrote a Latin treatise arguing for universal monarchy under him; the emperor died of fever in 1313 and Dante's hopes with him.

Which lord of Verona sheltered Dante in his later exile and was rewarded with a place in Paradiso?

Dante's letter to him explaining how to read the Comedy, whose authenticity is disputed, is the source of the poem's four levels of meaning.

In which city did Dante die and where do his remains still lie?

Florence built him a tomb in Santa Croce in 1829, but the custodians of his bones refused to hand them over, at one point hiding them in a false wall.

What killed Dante in 1321?

He caught it returning from a diplomatic mission to Venice on behalf of his host, Guido da Polenta.

In 1329 a cardinal declared which of Dante's works heretical and tried to have his bones burned?

The Latin treatise argues for a universal monarchy independent of the Church; local allies intervened to save the poet's remains.

What was Dante's only major work written before his exile, telling the story of his love for Beatrice?

It mixes sonnets and songs with prose commentary, and, unusually for the time, even the commentary is in the vernacular rather than Latin.

Which of Dante's treatises was one of the first scholarly defences of writing in the vernacular?

Ironically, the defence of Italian was itself written in Latin, and it was left unfinished.

Where and when was the Divine Comedy first printed?

Of the 300 copies, fourteen survive, and the original press is still displayed in the town.

Who was the first American to translate the Divine Comedy?

Later poet-translators include Seamus Heaney, Robert Pinsky, John Ciardi and W. S. Merwin.

Which scientist is known to have lectured on the geography of Dante's Inferno?

Some historians suggest the exercise fed into his own thinking about mechanics and the strength of structures.

Which poet declared 'Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third'?

Borges went further, calling the Comedy 'the best book literature has achieved'.

Miguel Asín Palacios argued in 1919 that Dante borrowed from which tradition's accounts of the afterlife?

The Kitab al Miraj had been translated into Latin around 1264, possibly reaching Dante through his mentor Brunetto Latini.

Which 2023 album by Hozier draws its structure from Dante's epic?

Liszt wrote a Dante Symphony and Rodin's Gates of Hell sculptures also spring from the poem.

How many lines long is the Divine Comedy?

Its verse is hendecasyllabic, eleven syllables to the line, arranged in interlocking tercets.

In what year did the city of Florence formally apologise for expelling Dante?

A symbolic virtual re-trial in May 2021 posthumously cleared his name as well.

Verses in Paradiso suggest Dante was born under which zodiac sign?

He writes of revolving 'with the eternal twins'; in 1265 the sun was in Gemini from about May 11 to June 11.

What was the profession of Dante's father, Alighiero di Bellincione?

Dante's mother Bella died before he was ten; his father then had two more children, Francesco and Tana, with Lapa Cialuffi.

At what age was Dante formally promised in marriage to Gemma Donati?

Child betrothals with notarised contracts were common; before his 1301 exile the couple had three children, Pietro, Jacopo and Antonia.

Which Bolognese poet did Dante call his 'father' in Purgatorio XXVI?

Dante coined the term dolce stil nuovo, the 'sweet new style', for the poetic movement he led with Cavalcanti and others.

Which prince invited Dante to Ravenna in 1318, where he spent his final years?

He caught his fatal malaria returning from a diplomatic mission to Venice on the prince's behalf.

How did Ravenna's custodians once foil Florence's demands for the return of Dante's remains?

Florence built an empty tomb for him at Santa Croce in 1829, inscribed 'Onorate l'altissimo poeta'.

What kind of vessel was Italy's first, named Dante Alighieri and completed in 1913?

Eight years later Pope Benedict XV marked the 600th anniversary of Dante's death with the encyclical In praeclara summorum.

Which of Dante's works discusses the arrangement of Earth's dry land and oceans?

Il Fiore and Detto d'Amore, sometimes credited to him, both draw on Le Roman de la Rose and would be his earliest works.