Historical and Personal Background of the Divine Comedy Essay

This leaven is to accompany amongst Fortune and Providence Astrology and the Universe in Dantes master Comedy. What follows is the overview and timeline I wish I had when I frontmost started reading the portend Comedy. Many commentaries of the worshipful Comedy give background historical information, usually consisting of a general introduction and brief explanations when specific characters and events come up within the poem. Here I will proceed sequentially, beginning centuries in the first place Dantes birth and concluding in the year of his death. When I first mention a historical person whose character appears in the Divine Comedy, the name will be in bold, followed by page references from among Fortune and Providence. Because this section gives an overview specific to the Divine Comedy, Italy and the city-states of northern Italy, especially Florence, is our focus.This undertake is partly organized according to the red-brick astrological practice that uses cycles of the modern planets Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. When relevant, we will look at revealer planet configurations when they form conjunctions, outset squares, oppositions, and closing squares that correspond to New, First Quarter, and Full, and Third Quarter Moons. Since many readers of amongst Fortune and Providence are astrologers or are interested in modern astrology, this will be useful for them. Those who are not astrologers provide pass over this material.Heres a preliminary compendium of rough the interacting themes of perform, politics, and economics that provide some background for the Divine Comedy. devotion Understanding the medieval Church takes a special leap of the imagination. The Church had a dominant role in organizing and giving cohesiveness to europium over a very long time. and the Church had its ups and downs, politically and spiritually. Because of its wealth and political power, the Church was also vulnerable to being abducted by strong layman rulers, and this is the case throughout the medieval era. In this essay we first encounter the Church as largely controlled by secular authorities, but reform movements were afoot that would help give it greater emancipation and spiritual authority over time. As the Church grew stronger, however, it would become to a greater extent empire than religion and at times was unbelievably initiationly.Over the centuries the pontificate sometimes inaugurated some attempts to reform the Church. There were also reform movements from the reclusive 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 aft(prenominal) Dantes death, one heretical preacher, Martin Luther, would help launch the Protestant Reformation.political relation In Dantes lifetime, the Italian peninsula was comprised of many autonomous and economically different lands. In th e south were the vulnerable but cosmopolitan kingdoms of Sicily and Naples. The central region was governed by the Pope. In the wealthier and more urbanized north, including Florence, there were many self-directed and prosperous city-states that were frequently at war with each other and with the big political entities around them. Beginning around the time of Dantes birth, the blessed Roman Empire was a loose confederation of warring German princes and their territories that were governed by an Emperor at least in theory. In the centuries originally Dante, the consecrate Roman Empire was more dominant in Italian affairs.Just before and during the poets lifetime, however, the French monarchy had become a major(ip) player in European affairs. Dante resented this greatly. He was nostalgic for a re-create Roman Empire, but the reality was the perpetually disappointing contemporary Holy Roman Empire. Dante did not know that Europes future would raise not empires but nations like France, England, and Spain.Economics The monetary and banking systems of Dantes world would be more familiar to us than its religious and political institutions. impertinent the more rural and feudal Europe to its north and west, northern Italy contained technical and banking institutions similar to ours. Italy benefited from its proximity to major trade routes and, with the Crusades, more traffic that go back and forth across the Mediterranean. Toward Dantes lifetime, Florence was a prosperous banking midriff and was also known 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 history into the future turned out to be completely wrong. He longed for a renewal of times that would never return.