Alighieri

................ io fui nato e cresciuto
sovra il bel fiume d’Arno alla gran villa.

(Inferno XXIII.94-95)

................ I was born and raised
in the great city on the beautiful Arno.

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In contrast to what is commonly believed and, indeed, to what was claimed by Boccaccio (who was convinced that Dante, being a direct male descendant of Cacciaguida and therefore of the Elisei, was a nobleman), the Alighieri family didn’t come from old money. Dante was born (somewhere between this plaque and the Casa di Dante) in 1265 to Alaghiero and his wife Bella who, scholars say, was probably a peripheral member of the Abati clan. Bella died when Dante was still a young child.

Having probably studied with the Franciscans of Santa Croce and the Dominicans of Santa Maria Novella, Dante became a student of Brunetto Latini who taught him literature and the liberal arts. In 1300, Dante became a member of the Priors (one of the highest offices of the city government) and, soon thereafter, was called upon to restore order after particularly violent melees between the White and Black Guelphs. The Priors’ solution was to exile the principal instigators on both sides. Among them were Corso Donati of the Blacks and the man who had tried to kill him, Guido Cavalcanti, one of Dante’s dearest friends, of the Whites.

In 1301, the Black Guelphs convinced Boniface VIII to ask Charles of Valois to intervene on their behalf. Upon entering the city with his soldiers, Charles sent all the important White Guelphs into exile, including Dante, who spent the last two decades of his life far from Florence before dying in Ravenna in 1321.

Coat of arms of the Alighieri family, identical to that of the Elisei

The coat of arms bearing a golden wing on a blue field represented the branch of the Alighieri clan established in Verona by Pietro Alighieri III in the sixteenth century.