700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri

by Stefania Severi

We end our brief encounters with Dante by recalling his masterpiece, the Comedìa, to which Giovanni Boccaccio later attributed the adjective "Divine". In the Comedìa, which we now call Comedy, Dante narrates his journey in the three realms of the afterlife starting from Hell and then facing the mountain of Purgatory and, from its summit on which the Earthly Paradise stands, ascending to Paradise.

In the first two kingdoms he is guided by the poet Virgil, while in Paradise Beatrice accompanies him, embodying Sophia, Divine Wisdom, transporting him between the heavens and into the Empyrean, where for an instant he can grasp the light of God. He is therefore a journey of purification for both the author and his readers. 

The poem is divided into three cantiche, each of 33 cantos, except the Inferno which has 34, as there is a proem canto; each canto is made up of a variable number of verses collected in triplets. The verses are 14.233 in total. Three is the number that recurs throughout the poem and is the perfect number of the Trinity. Recently, studies on numerology in the Comedy have multiplied and of particular interest, in this sense, were the conferences of the prof. Franco Nembrini released by SAT 2000. The connections are not only numerical but also conceptual, for example the VI cantos of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, are the political cantos in which Dante speaks respectively of Florence, Italy and Empire. Another connection is the word "stars" with which all three canticles end: coming out of Hell Dante exclaims «And then we went out to see the stars again»; cleansed in Purgatory he is "pure and willing to ascend to the stars"; in Paradise he manages for an instant to have the vision of God "the love that moves the sun and the other stars".

Dante indicates the beginning of his journey on March 25, which was recently chosen as Dante's day, the day dedicated to him, in the year of the first jubilee in history, proclaimed by Pope Boniface VIII, 1300.  The writing of the text took place over several years, from the early 1300s to around 1319, and, little by little, the language was refined until it reached, in Paradiso, the form of an illustrious vernacular. 

How did the structure of the Comedy and all the references contained in it arise? Dante drew from numerous sources, primarily the Bible, sometimes transforming them, but he also created absolutely original situations. 

The choice of Virgil as a guide is interesting, in fact Dante sees in him not only the refined writer of the age of Augustus but also, and above all, his prophetic interpretation, typical of medieval culture which, in his IV Eclogue of the Bucolics, identified the prediction of the birth of Christ. Furthermore, Virgil in the Aeneid speaks of a journey to Hades, that of Aeneas to be able to speak with his father Anchises and draw hopes for the future of Rome. 

Many of the elements of Hell were suggested by the depictions of the Last Judgment that adorned the churches of the time. In particular, Dante saw the mosaic of the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence, where Coppo di Marcovaldo had depicted Lucifer with three mouths with which he crushes as many damned people. The image promptly returns to Hell where the three damned are Judas, the traitor of Christ, Brutus and Cassius, the traitors of Julius Caesar. 

In the Comedy there are influences of the thought of Plato, of Aristotle and his Nicomachean Ethics, of the Fathers of the Church and above all of Saint Thomas. A vast culture emerges from Dante's verses in which political passion, the depth of theological thought, philosophical knowledge, historical annotations, literary memories are harmoniously merged in an elegant verse that is linked to the Dolce Stil Novo. With the Comedy, the first masterpiece in Italian was born.