o show the essential relations between his life and
his work, and the influence of his experience upon his convictions and
character. Most of the biographies of him are untrustworthy, being
largely built up upon a foundation of inferences and suppositions, and
often filled out with traditions and stories of which the greater part
are certainly false and few have a likelihood of truth. The only
strictly contemporary account of him is that given by the excellent
Chronicler of Florence, Giovanni Villani, a man of weight and judgment,
who in the ninth book of his Chronicle, under the year 1321, recording
Dante's death, adds a brief narrative of his life and works; because, as
he says, "on account of the virtues and knowledge and worth of so great
a citizen, it seems to us to be fitting to give a perpetual memorial of
him in this our chronicle, although the noble works left by him in
writing afford a true testimonial to him, and honorable fame to our
city." "Dante was," says Villani, "an honorable and ancient citizen of
Florence, of the gate of San Piero, and our neighbor." "He was a great
master in almost every branch of knowledge, although he was a layman; he
was a supreme poet and philosopher, and a perfect rhetorician alike in
prose and verse, as well as a most noble orator in public speech,
supreme in rhyme, with the most polished and beautiful style that had
ever been in our language.... Because of his knowledge he was somewhat
presumptuous, disdainful, and haughty; and, as it were after the manner
of a philosopher, having little graciousness, he knew not well to bear
himself with common people (_conversare con laici_)."

Dante was born in Florence, in May or June 1265. Of his family little is
positively known.[1] It was not among the nobles of the city, but it had
place among the well-to-do citizens who formed the body of the State and
the main support of the Guelf party. Of Dante's early years, and the
course of his education, nothing is known save what he himself tells us
in his various writings or what may be inferred from them. Lionardo
Bruni, eminent as an historian and as a public man, who wrote a Life of
Dante about a hundred years after his death, cites a letter of which we
have no other knowledge, in which, if the letter be genuine, the poet
says that he took part in the battle of Campaldino, fought in June 1289.
The words are:--"At the battle of Campaldino, in which the Ghibelline
party was almost all slain a