His father died when he was nine or ten years of age. Shortly before his death, he introduced his son to Folco Portinari, a rich citizen of Florence, and to his daughter, Beatrice, who was his first, and probably his only, love. Although but a child, he was struck by her beauty. "Her dress on that day," he says, "was of a most noble colour, a subdued and goodly crimson, girdled and adorned as best suited with her very tender age." Beatrice died when Dante was in his twenty-sixth year, and the blow was so great that it was long before he was comforted by philosophy and study. She became, in his mind, the personification of everything great and noble. In the Divine Comedy she appears as his guide from the summit of Purgatory to Paradise.
In 1292, he married Gemma Donati, by whom he had seven children. Thus, it can hardly have been an unhappy marriage; but as she did not follow him into exile, and as he never mentions her in any of his extant letters, we may suppose there was no very ardent affection on either side.
The latter part of Dante's life was destined to be marked with many sorrows and disasters. He was dragged into the vortex of faction and civil war, and was wrecked with many less noteworthy mariners.
He was made Prior of Florence in 1300, and so eminent was he that he was appointed one of the four ambassadors who were sent to Pope Boniface Viii to complain of the French intervention under Charles of Valois. Before they returned, Charles had entered Florence; Dante and his companions were outlawed, his property was confiscated, his house pillaged, and he never again was suffered to return to the city of his birth.
Tradition says, and I think it is supported by the internal evidence of the poem, that he wrote the first seven cantos of the Inferno in Florence before his exile, and that the beginning of the eighth canto:
"Io dico, seguitando,"
is a proof that the poem was continued after having been laid aside for a time, otherwise the word "seguitando" would be unnecessary to the sense, and it is not in Dante's style to admit unnecessary words into his lines. If this reasoning hold good, we can determine pretty accurately the date of the Divine Comedy. The poet feigns that he descended into the infernal regions on Good Friday of the year 1300; his exile began in 1301; therefore, the latter part of 1300 very probably saw him write the first seven cantos of the work. In the sixth canto there is an allusion to his exile, and to the defeat of his party; but that may have been inserted afterwards.
Cruel was the blow that fell upon him, doubly cruel after so many years of prosperity and honour. He had to consort with unworthy companions; he had to eat the bitter bread of dependence; he was severed from those whom he loved most dearly; and, as he makes Cacciaguida foretell in Paradise, "this was the first arrow with which the bow of exile struck him."
"Tu lascerai ogni cosa diletta
Più caramente; e questo è quello strale
Che l'arco dell esilio pria saetta."