‘Help me!’ cried Dante. ‘Whatever you are – man or spirit.’

The shadowy figure replied, ‘No, I am not a man. Though once I was. I lived in Rome, during the reign of the good Augustus Caesar, in a time of false and lying gods. I was a poet, who sang of Troy…’

‘Canst thou be Virgil? The very one who has inspired me throughout my own life as a poet?’

‘I am he.’

‘Oh, save me from this ferocious wolf.’

‘She lets no one pass, and devours all her prey. She will gorge on all who try to get by her, until one day the Greyhound will come. He will hunt her through every city on earth. In the end he will drive her back to Hell, whence she escaped after Envy set her free.’

Then Virgil continued: ‘I think for your own good that you should follow me. Let me be your guide, and pass with me through an eternal place, where you will hear the hideous shrieks of those who cry out to be released, those who beg for a second death but are damned to torment for evermore. Next you will come to another place and gaze upon those who are happy amidst the fire, because they know that one day they will be purged and rise to take their place amongst the blessed. Then, if you wish, you too can see this blessed realm and its Emperor, to which I cannot lead you, because I was a rebel against his law. From that point on, only another spirit, far worthier than I, can lead you through Paradise.’

Dante replied: ‘Poet, I implore you in the name of that God you never knew, lead me through that place you have described, as far as St Peter’s Gate, which stands at the entrance to Paradise.’

So Virgil moved on, and Dante followed him.

In a drastic break with tradition, the poem is written in the Tuscan dialect of Dante’s native Florence. At that time, all serious communication and learning was written in the Latin used by the Church, scholars and the educated classes. By writing in dialect, Dante was making his poem available to all. Even those who could not read were able to understand his words if they were read aloud. Indeed, Dante’s poem would play a significant role in establishing Tuscan as the basis of the Italian language which is written and spoken today, causing him to be seen by many as the father of the Italian language.

Yet for all its virtues, The Divine Comedy undoubtedly has its dark and vicious side. In 1300, some eight years before Dante began writing his masterwork, he had been elected to the signoria, the council of nine who ruled Florence. Yet within two years of serving his two-month term of high office, he had fallen foul of the rackety ‘democracy’ which prevailed in the deeply divided city. Consequently, he was sentenced to perpetual exile from his native land, with the warning that if ever he returned he would be burned at the stake. Not surprisingly, several members of the opposing political faction which brought about Dante’s downfall would feature in the Inferno (Hell), the first of the three major sections of The Divine Comedy. Typical of these was Filippo Argenti, who in life had been a tall, silver-haired aristocratic figure, notorious for his wrath. A contemporary commentator mentions that he had once slapped Dante’s face in public, a major insult to which Dante would probably have had no recourse. Argenti’s brother is said to have seized Dante’s possessions after the poet’s banishment, and Filippo’s family were most vociferously opposed to those who sought Dante’s pardon and recall from exile.

Argenti makes his appearance early in the Inferno, as Dante and Virgil are being rowed across the River Styx, in the fifth circle of Hell, which is reserved for those who succumbed to the sin of wrath. Even though Argenti is covered in filth, Dante recognizes him. Virgil explains that, in the world of the living, Argenti had been a man filled with pride, ‘and there is no act of goodness to adorn his memory. He must live for ever like a pig in muck.’ The sight of Argenti reminds Dante of the humiliation he suffered at his hand. Dante is filled with anger, and exclaims to Virgil: ‘How I would love to see him submerged in this filth.’ Virgil assures him that this will happen before they reach the other shore. Later, Dante sees Argenti being torn to pieces by his fellow wrathful damned. And such is Argenti’s own wrath that he even turns on himself, biting at his own flesh.

In a further indication of Dante’s birth date, he at one point alludes to the fact that he was born under the astrological sign of Gemini, which was approximately 11 May to 11 June in the Julian calendar of the day. Gemini is the sign named for the twins Castor and Pollux of Greek mythology. The characteristics of someone born under this sign are said to include intelligence and a thirst for knowledge. However, their inclination to adaptability can lead to them appearing fickle or disloyal.

Although astrology is nowadays dismissed as a superstitious pseudoscience, during Dante’s time many regarded it as inseparable from astronomy. The sign of the zodiac under which one was born played a significant role in determining one’s character and fate. Around a millennium previously, the great Christian philosopher St Augustine had perceived that the determinism implied by astrology conflicted profoundly with the Christian doctrine of our individual free will. Nonetheless, the pre-eminent medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas, who was a contemporary of Dante, sought to reconcile astrology with Christian doctrine by appealing to the authority of the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. According to Aristotle, the stars governed the course and fate of our ‘sublunary’ body, while it was God alone who had charge of our souls. An ingenious but fraudulent argument – as much so then as it is now. (Just over two centuries later, the notorious but immensely gifted Italian polymath Girolamo Cardano would push this anomaly to its logical conclusion by drawing up a horoscope of Jesus Christ, and would be cast into jail by the Inquisition for his temerity.) Even so, despite Dante’s profound powers of intellectual discrimination, where astrology was concerned he was evidently willing to go along with the tide of contemporary superstition, which retained a deep-rooted belief in such matters.

However, such astrology should not be entirely dismissed. This practice did in its own way contribute to the advancement of genuine human knowledge. Although misguided and based upon false assumptions, astrology acted as an aid to the ancient philosophical injunction ‘Know thyself ’. As we have seen in the case of Gemini, the characterizations of astrology were no simple matter, being imbued with a distinct subtlety of their own. And here lay its legacy: in astrology’s muddled attempts to categorize human personality, it was a forerunner of modern psychological practice.*

Dante’s father was a small-time moneylender, who occasionally speculated in plots of land. His mother was from the distinguished, ancient Abati family, but died when Dante was still a child. This fact may explain a certain austerity and lack of emotion in his character. Dante’s father would die when he was eighteen, leaving him to make his own way in the world.

By this time, Florence had risen to become one of the more prosperous city-states in the Italian peninsula, largely through its involvement in the trans-European wool trade and in banking, two trades which were intimately linked. In the days when almost every large European city issued its own currency, there was much confusion and room for chicanery in international trade, with more than a little debasement, forgery and ‘clipping’ of coins. The authorities themselves were liable to reduce the precious-metal content of their currency during hard times, and unscrupulous citizens would clip off the edges of the coins to gather sufficient metal with which to manufacture counterfeits. The introduction of coins with raised edges, often with milled or inscribed circumferences, was intended to overcome such practices.

When Florence coined its own fiorino d’oro in 1252, the authorities guaranteed each coin would contain fifty-four grains of pure gold, and instructed merchants to carry their coins in leather pouches to avoid the wear and damage which facilitated clipping and forgery. The coin, which became known as the florin, was soon a trusted item in trade throughout Europe and beyond, from the Baltic to the Levant. This reflected well on Florentine bankers and the city’s burgeoning wool trade. The latter involved importing wool from England and Flanders (Holland and the northern part of modern Belgium), by trade routes down the Rhône valley and over the Alps. Later this would be supplemented by sea trade, with galleys being sailed and rowed from the Flanders port of Bruges around Spain to the Tuscan ports of Pisa or Livorno, and thence inland to Florence. Here, skilled wool combers and dyers turned the raw material into fine, tastefully coloured cloth garments and costumery, which could be exported as luxury goods.

Florence was a republic, its citizens proud of their democratic government. Its florins bore the head of no king or ruler – only the lily, the city’s emblem, with an image of St John the Baptist (the city’s patron saint) on the other side. At the time of Dante’s birth, Florence had a population of approaching 80,000 – compared with 80,000 in London and 200,000 in Paris. But although Florence was nominally a democracy, in practice only a select number of its citizens had the right to vote. To qualify, one had to be male, over thirty years old, and a member of one of the city’s guilds. Owing to continuing rivalry between the city’s leading families and factions, the constitution of Florence underwent a number of short-term modifications during this period. These changes would eventually evolve into a more lasting form.

At elections, the names of all members of the town guilds who had not recently held office and were not in debt were placed in a number of leather pouches. The first eight names to be drawn from these pouches served on the signoria, the ruling council, with a ninth name being given the role of gonfaloniere (literally ‘flag-bearer’), the ruling chairman of the council and titular head of the city. Like his fellow members of the signoria, he ruled for just two months. This cumbersome form of government met Aristotle’s requirements for a democracy, in that it elected its rulers to limited terms of office, thus preventing a dictatorship. Yet the very frequency of the elections led to a lack of continuity, which in turn led to manipulation by the more powerful families in the city, who worked in their own vested interests despite being in almost permanent rivalry.

After Dante’s father died, he was placed under the guardianship of the sixty-two-year-old Brunetto Latini, a renowned local scholar who also maintained a position in the public life of the city. Latini would be sent on a number of important missions for Florence, travelling as far afield as Spain and Paris. Dante is known to have formed a close bond with his guardian, who in turn proved to be a formative influence on the young man’s reading and continued education. Latini translated works by Cicero and Aristotle; but most significantly he wrote in French a work called Li Livres dou Trésor (The Treasure Books). This is a compendium of medieval knowledge, regarded by some as one of the earliest encyclopedias. Despite Dante’s deep fondness and admiration for his guardian, in The Divine Comedy he would place Latini in the seventh circle of the Inferno, which is reserved for those who have sinned against God and nature. Dante is filled with sorrow when he encounters Latini amongst his fellow damned, ‘branded by flames, their flesh covered with old and new scars, all wailing at their torment’.

The usually reliable contemporary Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani thought highly of Latini, writing: ‘He was a worldly man, but we have made mention of him because it was he who was the beginner and master in refining Florentines and in teaching them how to speak well, and in how to guide and rule our republic according to policy.’ This refinement of the Tuscan dialect is precisely what Dante set out to achieve in his poetry – so why is Latini damned?

The clue lies in Villani’s opening words. The word ‘wordly’ covertly alludes to the fact that, for all his virtues, Latini was well known in the city for his sodomy. To modern sensibilities, Dante’s conflicted emotions when he encounters Latini serving out his eternal punishment in Hell may appear somewhat convoluted, not to say suspect. If he loved and respected Latini so much, why did he place him amidst the excruciating and everlasting torments of Hell? The fact is, Dante profoundly believed in the immutable laws of God. Here, his temperament is utterly medieval. For him there is no gainsaying the punishment meted out to those who commit a ‘sin against nature’ – a mortal sin – no matter how distinguished their life might otherwise have been.

It is telling to compare Villani’s description of Latini with his characterization of Dante:

Despite Dante’s aloofness, the most significant and lasting event of his life was one of passion (though he certainly would have disavowed this vulgar description). The love of Dante’s life was a woman called Beatrice Portinari. He fell in love with her early, and would remain so even after he married and had four children.

Dante wrote that he first set eyes on Beatrice when he was nine years old, and she was almost a year younger. This happened when Dante’s father took him to a May Day party at the house ...