Dante Alighieri, who has always been known by his Christian rather than surname (partly owing to the Italian predilection for Christian names, and partly to the unsettled state of patronymics in his time), was the son of a lawyer of good family in Florence, and was born in that city on the 14th of May 1265 (sixty-three years before the birth of Chaucer).

Cacciaguida married a lady of the Alighieri family of the Valdipado; and, giving the name to one of his children, they subsequently retained it as a patronymic in preference to their own.

It would appear, from the same poem, not only that the Alighieri were the more important house, but that some blot had darkened the scutcheon of the Elisei; perhaps their having been poor, and transplanted (as he seems to imply) from some disreputable district.

The arms of the Alighieri (probably occasioned by the change in that name, for it was previously written Aldighieri) are interesting on account of their poetical and aspiring character.

Some less melancholy face, some more intelligible courtship, triumphed over the questionable flattery of the poet's gratuitous worship; and the idol of Dante Alighieri became the wife of Messer Simone de' Bardi.

Of the exile's family, three sons died young; the daughter went into a nunnery; and the two remaining brothers, who ultimately joined their father in his banishment, became respectable men of letters, and left families in Ravenna; where the race, though extinct in the male line, still survives through a daughter, in the noble house of Serego Alighieri.

He entitled his poem, arrogantly enough, yet still not with that impiety of arrogance, "The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, a Florentine by nation but not by habits."

[Footnote 23: The Vision; or, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, of Dante Alighieri, &c. Smith's edition, 1844, p. 90.]

SEE La vita nuova di Dante Alighieri R67734.

v. 3-4. © 25Oct22, A683910; 11Dec22, A690579. R66991-66992, 11Sep50, The W. H. Anderson Co. (PWH) LA VITA NUOVA DI DANTE ALIGHIERI; edited with introd., notes and vocabulary by Kenneth McKenzie.

SEE Dante Alighieri.

SEE Dante Alighieri.

d'Antoinette Huzard, née Antoinette de Bergevin] (A) <pb id='216.png' /> DANTE Alighieri.

SEE La vita nuova di Dante Alighieri.

The inferno, from the Divine comedy. SEE Dante Alighieri.

SEE Dante Alighieri. LOCKRIDGE, RICHARD.

SEE Queen, Ellery, pseud. DANTE ALIGHIERI. La Divina commedia.

The divine comedy of Dante Alighieri. SEE DANTE ALIGHIERI.

The divine comedy of Dante Alighieri. SEE DANTE ALIGHIERI.

The divine comedy of Dante Alighieri. SEE DANTE ALIGHIERI.

The divine comedy of Dante Alighieri. SEE DANTE ALIGHIERI.

SEE QUEEN, ELLERY, JR., pseud. DANTE ALIGHIERI.

The divine comedy of Dante Alighieri.

SEE QUEEN, ELLERY, pseud. DANTE ALIGHIERI.

SEE DANTE ALIGHIERI.