Historical and Personal Background of the Divine Comedy Essay

This essay is to accompany mingled with Fortune and Providence Astrology and the conception in Dantes augur Comedy. What follows is the everyplaceview and fourth dimensionline I wish I had when I showtime started reading the shaper Comedy. Many commentaries of the Divine Comedy give foulground historic in reachation, usually consisting of a general presentation and brief explanations when specific characters and events come up within the poem. Here I allow for proceed sequentially, beginning centuries forwards Dantes birth and concluding in the form of his death. When I introductory mention a historical person whose character appears in the Divine Comedy, the name will be in bold, followed by page references from betwixt Fortune and Providence. Because this section gives an all overview specific to the Divine Comedy, Italy and the city-states of northern Italy, especially Florence, is our focus.This essay is partly organized according to the mod astrological practice that uses cycles of the modern planets Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. When relevant, we will feeling at outer planet configurations when they form conjunctions, opening squargons, oppositions, and closing squares that correspond to New, graduation exercise Quarter, and Full, and Third Quarter Moons. Since many readers of among Fortune and Providence are astrologers or are interested in modern astrology, this will be useful for them. Those who are not astrologers can pass over this material.Heres a prelude summary of some the interacting themes of church, politics, and economics that erect some background for the Divine Comedy. piety Understanding the medieval perform takes a special leap of the imagination. The church building had a dominant role in organizing and broad cohesiveness to atomic number 63 over a very long time. Yet the Church had its ups and drinks, politically and spiritually. Because of its wealth and political power, the Church was as well vulnerable to bein g abducted by strong secular rulers, and this is the case throughout the medieval era. In this essay we first encounter the Church as mostly controlled by secular authorities, but ameliorate movements were afoot that would assistance give it greater independence and spiritual authority over time. As the Church grew stronger, however, it would vex to a greater extent empire than religion and at quantify was unbelievably worldly.Over the centuries the papacy sometimes inaugurated some attempts to reform the Church. There were withal reform movements from the monastic side. Other Church reform2 movements, like the orders of the Franciscans and Dominicans, began with charismatic leaders. There were also some failed attempts that have come down to us as heresies. Two centuries after Dantes death, one heretical preacher, Martin Luther, would service of process launch the Protestant Reformation.Politics In Dantes lifetime, the Italian peninsula was comprised of many autonomous and economically diverse regions. In the southmost were the vulnerable but cosmopolitan kingdoms of Sicily and Naples. The of import region was governed by the Pope. In the wealthier and much urbanized north, including Florence, there were many free and prosperous city-states that were frequently at warfare with each other and with the larger political entities around them. Beginning around the time of Dantes birth, the consecrate Roman empire was a loose confederation of competitive German princes and their territories that were governed by an Emperor at least in theory. In the centuries before Dante, the Holy Roman Empire was much dominant in Italian affairs. mediocre before and during the poets lifetime, however, the French monarchy had become a major player in European affairs. Dante resented this greatly. He was nostalgic for a renewed Roman Empire, but the humanity was the perpetually disappointing contemporary Holy Roman Empire. Dante did not know that Europes future wou ld favor not empires but nations like France, England, and Spain.Economics The financial and banking systems of Dantes world would be more than familiar to us than its religious and political institutions. Unlike the more rural and feudal Europe to its north and west, northern Italy contained commercial-grade and banking institutions similar to ours. Italy benefited from its proximity to major batch routes and, with the Crusades, more traffic that moved back and forth across the Mediterranean. Toward Dantes lifetime, Florence was a prosperous banking center and was also know for its textile industry. Dante loathed the commercialization of Florence and northern Italy in general. Yet this commercial activity would help bankroll Italys greatest eras in the centuries to come. In short, Dantes conceptions of the flow of accounting into the future turned out to be completely wrong. He longed for a transposition of times that would never return.