Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Dante's Circle of Hell
'Midway on our life's journey, I found myself in dark woods, the right road lost…' So be-
gins the ominous year 1300 in Dante Alighieri's
Inferno,
where our hero Dante
(1265-1321) escapes from one circle of hell only to tumble into the next. In the 14th cen-
tury, Dante and his fellow Tuscans were to endure a hellish succession of famine, economic
collapse, plague, war and tyranny.
When medieval mystics predicted the year 1300 would bring doom, they were off by
barely 50 years. Approximately two-thirds of the population were decimated in cities
across Tuscany in the bubonic plague outbreak of 1348, and since the carriers of the plague
(fleas and rats) weren't identified or eradicated, the Black Death ravaged the area for dec-
ades. Entire hospital and monastery populations were wiped out, leaving treatment to op-
portunists promising miracle cures. Flagellation, liquor, sugar and spices were prescribed,
as was abstinence from bathing, fruit and olive oil.
Painful though those days must have been to record, writers such as Boccaccio, Dante
and Marchione di Coppo Stefani (c 1336-85) wrote frank assessments of their time, believ-
ing their critiques might one day serve the greater good. More than any painterly tricks of
perspective or shading, it's this rounded view of humanity that brought truth to Renaissance
art.
Relive 14th-century Florence: visit Dante's Florentine home with the chapel where he met his
muse and with a traditional tripe shop. For Dante with a pop-culture twist, read Sandow Birk's
and Marcus Sanders'
The Divine Comedy,
which sets
Inferno
in Los Angeles' traffic,
Purgatorio
in
foggy San Francisco and
Paradiso
in New York.
