. Mediæval and modern history . ny respectswas directly opposed tomediaeval teachings andideals. This intellectual andsocial movement withinthe mediaeval towns, es-pecially in the great city-republics of Italy, wasrelated most intimately,as we shall see in amoment, to that great re-vival of the fourteenthand fifteenth centuries towhich the term Renais-sance is properly and dis-tinctively applied. 250. Dante as a Fore-runner of the Renais-sance. We have alreadyspoken the name of Dante,but the great place he holds in the intellectual history of the racerequires that we should speak with some det
. Mediæval and modern history . ny respectswas directly opposed tomediaeval teachings andideals. This intellectual andsocial movement withinthe mediaeval towns, es-pecially in the great city-republics of Italy, wasrelated most intimately,as we shall see in amoment, to that great re-vival of the fourteenthand fifteenth centuries towhich the term Renais-sance is properly and dis-tinctively applied. 250. Dante as a Fore-runner of the Renais-sance. We have alreadyspoken the name of Dante,but the great place he holds in the intellectual history of the racerequires that we should speak with some detail of the relationwhich he sustained to the age which, just as he tippeared, waspassing away and to the new age which was then approaching. Dante Alighieri, the fame of the Tuscan people, was born atFlorence in 1265. He was^gxiled by the Florentines in 1302, andat the courts of friends learned how hard a thing it is to climbthe stairway of a patron. He died at Ravenna in 1321, and histomb there is a place of pilgrimage Fig. 46. Dante. (Ftom a portrait byS. Tofanelli) 226 THE RENAISSANCE [§251 It was during the years of his exile that Dante wrote his im-mortal poem the Commedia, as named by himself, because of itshappy ending; the Divina Commedia, or the Divine Comedy,as called by his admirers. This poem has been called the Epicof Medisevalism. It is an epitome of the life and thought of theMiddle Ages. Dantes theology is the theology of the mediaevalChurch; his philosophy is the philosophy of the Schoolmen; hisscience is the science of his time. But although Dante viewed the world from a standpoint whichwas essentially that of the mediaeval age which was passing away,still he was in a profound sense a prophet of the new age whichwas approaching,—a forerunner of the Renaissance. He wassuch in his feeling for classical antiquity. He speaks lovinglyof Vergil as his teacher and master, the one from whom he tookthe beautiful style that had done him honor. His modern at
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