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Dante Alighieri was born at Florence, Italy, in 1265 (died at Ravenna, Sept. 14, 1321) of Alichiero de Bellencione Alirthieri and his wife Bella. Politically he was a Guelph, and fought against the Ghibilines. He became a member of the Guild of Physicians and Apothecaries, since as a guild member he could participate in public life. He began writing, completing his first book (New Life) in 1294, which was poetry about "Beatrice", the name of a young girl who had died in 1290.

In 1300 he was elected as one of the six Priori who ruled Florence in two-month terms, his encumbancy being from June 15 to August 15. MO factions had risen among the Guelphs, the Blacks and the Whites, Dante belonging to the Whites. Charles of Valois with his troops entered Florence in 1301 and placed the Blacks in power. Dante was falsely charged with hostility toward the Church, was convicted and assessed with a heavy fine and was perpetually excluded from public office, and in 1302 was condemned to be burned to death.

By this time Dante had fled the city of Florence and joined his wife and children in San Cadenza. Withdrawing from active politics, he started writing a group of poems, partly allegorical in nature, which actually formed a connectins link between his "New Life" and the "Divine Comedy". He was at Bologna in 1304, but was expelled in 1306 with the other "Whites", going first to Padua and then to Linigiana. During this period he wrote "fie Banquet", a popularization of Scholastic Philosophy, and then disappeared from recorded history for some years. After the election of Emperor Henry VII, and in anticipation of the Visit of the Emperor to Italy, in 1309 he wrote "De Monachia", presenting the picture of the Emperor as the healer of all the ills of Italy. Dante met Henry VII in 1311, and later wrote to him, taking him to task for delaying an attack on Florence. Florence reacted with a decree of perpetual exile from chat city, without amnesty. The writings of Dante shaped Italian poetry and left his mark on modern literature. His greatest work was the "Divine Comedy", which he composed in three books:- Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, completing the last at Ravenna about 1317. THE DIVINE COMEDY is an allegory of human life in the form of a vision of the world of Eternity, intended to convert a corrupt society from sin to grace, Dante recounts • vision granted him in the Jubilee Year of 1300, which was intended to lead him from a sinful life to the ways of God. In the vision he passes through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, speaking to individual souls in each place, describing the punishments and rewards, and learning; what God has in store for him and the whole world. the journey through Well with the Roman poet Virgil begins Holy Thursday night and ends on Easter Sunday at 5:00 A.M. At dawn on Easter Virgil leads him into Purgatory and entrusts his trip through the earthly paradise and Paradise itself to Beatrice or. Easter Wednesday morning. Beatrice leads him through Paradise to the Throne of God. THE STAMP DESIGNS are by Casimira Dabrowska. The Lire 10 is taken from the Disputa del Sacramento by Raphael, the fresco on Theology in the Camera della Segnatura in the Vatican Palace (Cf. Vatican Notes, Vol. XII, 04, p.10) and the other three were Inspired by originals by Sandie Boticelli which he did to illustrate the Divine Comedy. Reference for the scene on the Lire 40 stamp is Canto I of Hell, verses 32 ff., which relates that Dante wandered from the right road into the Dark Wood of Sin. He tries to escape by climbing a beautiful mountain, but is turned back successively by a Leopard, a Lion and a Wolf, which are images of sin identified respectively with Lust, Pride and Avarice, or with the three types of sin which can damn unrepentant souls to one of the three main divisions of Hell 
<blockquote>
First rose, a Leopard, nimble and light and fleet, 
 Clothed in fine-furred pelt all dapple-dyed, 
Came gambolling out and skipped before my feet, 
Hindering me so, that from the forthright line 
Time and again I turned to beat retreat 
Yet not so much that I fell to quaking 
At a fresh sigh - a Lion in the way. 
I saw him coming, swift and savage, making 
For me head high, with ravenous hunger raving 
So that for dread the very air seemed shaking. 
And next, a Wolf, gaunt with famished craving 
Lodged ever in her horrible lean flank, 
The ancient cause of men's enslaving; 
She was the worst - at that dread sight a blank 
Despair and whelming terror pinned me fast, 
Until all hope to scale the mountain sank. 
(At this point Virgil appears to guide him on his ways- verses 62 ff.) 
Suddenly a form was there, which dumbly crossed 
My path ....... 
 Canst thou be Virgil? thou fount of splendor, 
Whence poured so wide a stream of lordly speech? 
</blockquote>
(Virgil leads Dante through the Upper Hell and the two parts of the Nether Hell, and then into Purgatory, leads him up the mountain of Purgatory as far as the Earthly Paradise). 
 
The scene on the Lire 70 stamp is from the beginning of The Purgatory. Purgatory is pictured as a mountain on an island at the South Pole, with two lower terraces of Ante-Purgatory, followed by St. Peter's Gate which is at the entrance to the Seven Cornices of Purgatory, above which, at the top of the mountain, is the Earthly Paradise. The first three Cornices make up lower Purgatory and the fourth middle Purgatory, while the last three are upper Purgatory. At sunrise of Easter Sunday the Ship of Souls arrives at the Island of Purgatory from the mouth of the River Tiber with the newly dead, steered by an angel. On the stamp we see Dante and Virgil about to start the ascent of the mountain, and at the upper right the angel and the Ship of Souls. We quote from Purgatory, Canto II, verses 12 ff. 
<blockquote>
 And to I as sometimes at the approach of day 
Mars in the west across the ocean floor 
Glows through thick vapor with a dim, red ray, 
Even so - God send I see the sight once more ! - 
I saw a light come speeding o'er the sea. 
So swift, flight knows no simile therefore. 
For a brief space I turned inquiringly 
Back to my guide; then looked again and lo 
Bigger and brighter far it seemed to me. 
Then from each side of it, there seemed to grow 
A white I-Knew- not what; and there appeared 
Another whiteness, bit by hit, below. 
Now all this time my master spoke no word, 
Till plain we saw, those first two whitenesses 
Were wings .. and knowing then what helmsman steered, 
 "Down, down:" he cried, "fold hands and bow thy knee, 
 Behold the angel of the Lord: Henceforth 
Thou shall see many of these great emissaries. 
See how he scorns all instruments of earth, 
Needing no oar, no sail but his own wings, 
Twixt shores that span so vast an ocean's girth. 
See how each soaring pinion heavenward springs, 
beating the air with pens imperishable 
That are not mewed like mortal coverings." 
And hard on shore he steered his flight.... 
The heavenly pilot on the poop stood tiptoe 
And with him full a hundred souls had place... 
and so he brought the ship to. 
He signed them with the blessed cross and they, 
All with one motion, leapt upon the strand; 
Then swiftly as he came, he went his way. 
</blockquote>
The design on the L.200 of Dante and Beatrice recalls the paradise. Actually, Beatrice appears to Dante in the Purgatory (Canto XXX) and leads him to the earthly paradise, because Virgil cannot enter there. Paradise starts from the Earthly Paradise on top of the Mountain of Purgatory. Beatrice turns her eyes toward heaven, and Dante fixes his gaze on her face, and they rise to the First Heaven. 
<blockquote>
Beatrice gazed on heav'n and I on her; 
 ..whence she ... 
Turned to me as blithe as beauteous; 
"Lift up to God"; she said, "thy grateful sense 
Who with the first star now uniteth us" 
Into itself the eternal union 
Received us both, as water doth receive 
A ray of light and still remains all one. 
</blockquote>
When Dante and Beatrice arrive in the First Heaven, the Heaven of the Noon, the scene depicted on the L.200 takes place. He sees a group of souls (at the left of the picture by Sandro Soticelli, but not shown on the stamp)(Paradise Canto III, vv.7 ff.) 
<blockquote>
But what I saw so carried me away 
To gaze on it, that ere I could confess, 
 I had forgotten what I meant to say. 
Like as from polished and transparent glass, 
Or as from water clear and luminous, 
Whose shallows leave the bottom shadowless, 
The image of a face comes back to us 
So faint, a pearl on a white forehead stirs 
The seeing sense no slowlier than this does, 
Si I saw faces, many and diverse, 
Eager to speak ...so I turned instead 
Straight to my dear and guiding light; she smiled, 
 Her holy eyes aflame, and then she said" 
True substances are these thou dose perceive, 
Who broke their vows, and so are cloistered here...." 
</blockquote>
Heaven, as depicted by Dante, consists of ten successive levels, the last of which is the Empyrean. Here St. Bernard prayed to the Blessed Virgin that Dante may behold God, which favor is granted. Dante looks on the Blessed Trinity and the Sacred Humanity of Christ, but his power to describe fails him, and all that he remembers is that his will is totally surrendered to the love of God.

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