The Studium Generale, established by the Florentine…

The Studium Generale, established by the Florentine Republic in 1321, is the first university in Florence.

Dante completes his poetic masterpiece, La Divina Commedia, (“The Divine Comedy”)—originally entitled simply Commedia—shortly before his death on September 14, 1321.

A an epic poem composed in “terza rima” (Dante's invention, a three-line stanza form: aba, bcb, cdc,...) and divided into three parts, the “Comedy” helps establish his native Tuscan dialect as the literary language of Italy.

Divided into one hundred cantos (more than fourteen thousand lines), the vivid scenes and sharply drawn characters of the surface narrative conceals a subtle allegorical compendium of the prevailing moral and scientific world view, with the pilgrim poet as a figure of Everyman.

The narrative’s three main sections follows the poet's imaginative journey from the "dark wood" in which he finds himself in middle age; through the nine circles of the damned in the Inferno and the rim of the mountainous wasteland of the Purgatorio, with the poet Vergil—a tribute to Italy's classical past—as his guide; to his final brief comprehension of God’s plan of justice in the heavenly Paradiso, aided by his beloved lady Beatrice.

Dante draws on a wealth of scriptural, patristic, classical, and medieval sources, as well as his own experiences, employing rich imagery and flexible vernacular language to infuse the work with the emotional and intellectual ardor of medieval Catholicism.