DANTE Dante, son of Alighiero, was born in Florence in 1265, two years before Giotto, into a guelph family. ("Guelphs" were named the supporters of the Pope; "Ghibellines" the supporters of the Emperor of the Sacred Roman Empire, the only two forces that contended the primate of central power in those times.). He is considered the father of the Italian language. His work, and the "Divine Comedy" in particular are still basic study material today in Italian schools. Expelled from his native city in 1302 ( The Guelphs named above had themselves divided into two opposing parties : the "Blacks" and the "Whites", with Dante belonging to the losing part ), he lived in exile until his death in Ravenna in 1321. For the importance his work has had over the centuries, for the vastness of the spiritual and cultural interests he possesses and has inspired, for the intensity and the absolute relief of his poetry, Dante has always been placed in the highest Empyrean of World Literature of all ages. His work too, as that of Giotto, is the fruit of the reawakening of all life in those times. In the intellectual field, in the second half of the XIIIth century, one saw a strenghtening of phylosophy , that accepted mundane principles together with scholastic forms; of historiography , that began to give more and more space and relief to matters, to passions and to contrasts of everyday life, along with the traditional trascendental interpretation of human events; of the political doctrines which saw the elaboration of new orders and new forms of State, that became object of debate. Dante took part, or rather was one of the most relevant arteficers of this reawakening. Studied and respected all over the world in times to follow, ( Geoffrey Chaucer, the first great Englishman to voice the spirit of Renaissance Italy reverenced him as the supreme master "..the grete poete of Itaille, that highte Dant..", he belongs to the great people of mankind.