700th Anniversary of the Death of Dante Alighieri

On the left, the portrait of the eminent Italian poet and philosopher of the late Middle Ages, the 'Father of the Italian Language' (1265–1321), with the initials 'P. DANIELE' of designer Patrizio Daniele below. On the right, the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, originally the Palazzo della Signoria, with Dante's signature and the years '1321' and '2021' beneath it. At the upper right, along the edge, the issuing state 'CITTA’ DEL VATICANO'.

Dante Alighieri did not write the Divina Commedia in Latin but in Tuscan — a decision that profoundly shaped the fate of the Italian language. Composed between roughly 1307 and 1321, the work leads the narrator through Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso, uniting for the first time theological depth with the expressive power of the vernacular. Dante, born in Florence in 1265, grew up in a city then torn between Guelphs and Ghibellines. As a committed White Guelph, he was exiled in 1302 and never returned to Florence. He died in Ravenna in 1321, where he remains buried to this day. His influence on the literature, philosophy and theology of the late Middle Ages is difficult to overstate; Petrarch and Boccaccio built on his work, and the title "father of the Italian language" has accompanied his name for centuries.

The Vatican honoured Dante Alighieri in 2021 with a 2-euro commemorative coin marking the 700th anniversary of his death — an occasion observed internationally. The connection between the Holy See and the poet runs deep: the Commedia is steeped in medieval Church theology, and in it Dante explicitly takes positions on papal power politics. Florence, the city of his origin and exile, and Rome as the centre of Christianity, form the intellectual framework of his entire body of work. That it was precisely the Vatican that issued a commemorative coin underscores Dante's enduring cultural and religious significance for the Catholic world — regardless of the fact that in the Commedia he consigned several popes to hell.