Popes and Priest in Hell When writing or discussing any great work such as The Divine Comedy written between 1308-1321, by Dante Angileri, not only is it important to consider the political and social period at the time, but also the artist’s inspirations. This is particularly true for Dante because the evidence suggests that the losses in his life were direct inspirations for his scholarly and artistic pursuits. Dante experienced crisis, deep despair and had gone from being a renowned author, and poet of his time, to being excommunicated by the changes of power in Florence, Italy. Directly before his excommunication, Dante was very active in politics and was responsible for “banishing several rivals” Dante is Exiled from Florence, …show more content…
He had been a faithful believer and a follower of the Church’s teachings and practices only to be betrayed. He had been an active participant in political circles and traveled at the direction of the Church. He was seen as a strong, very capable ambassador of sorts, and while he was negotiating peace, he was being exiled all at the same time. This act was perhaps the last straw for Dante as is evident in the following passage, “In all truth I have been a ship without sails and without a rudder, drifted into various ports through diverse channels by the fruitless winds which poverty breathes forth.” Dante, "Convivio," quoted in Thomas Caldecot Chubb, Dante and His World (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1966), …show more content…
Having to deal with such significant losses in his life and the turmoil between church and state in Italy at the time, it would be reasonable to not only question one’s existence and mortality, but to also seek answers. One of those questions had to be how could he forgive those who had sinned against him without sinning himself? He was depressed and at times lost, and for a deeply religious Christian at that time, those feelings were considered sinful. During difficult times, Dante did what many artists do, which is work through their troubles and pain through their vice of expression. In this case, it was expression through the written word. Dante was extremely intelligent and forward thinking according to historian, Eric Auerbach, “It is generally acknowledged that the Renaissance represents a unit in the history of European culture and that the decisive element of its unity was the self-discovery of the human personality; and it is also generally recognized that, despite Dante’s medieval view of the world, the discovery began with