He finished the
Paradiso, and died in 1321 (at the age of 56) while returning to Ravenna from a diplomatic mission to Venice, possibly of
malaria contracted there. Dante was buried in Ravenna at the Church of San Pier Maggiore (later called San Francesco). Bernardo Bembo,
praetor of
Venice in 1483, took care of his remains by building a better tomb.
Dante's tomb in Ravenna, built in 1780.
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On the grave, some verses of Bernardo Canaccio, a friend of Dante, dedicated to Florence:
- parvi Florentia mater amoris
- "Florence, mother of little love"
The first formal biography of Dante was the
Vita di Dante (also known as
Trattatello in laude di Dante) written after 1348 by
Giovanni Boccaccio;
[4] several statements and episodes of it are seen as unreliable by modern research. However, an earlier account of Dante's life and works had been included in the
Nuova Cronica of the Florentine chronicler
Giovanni Villani.
[5]
Eventually, Florence came to regret Dante's exile, and made repeated requests for the return of his remains. The custodians of the body at Ravenna refused to comply, at one point going so far as to conceal the bones in a false wall of the monastery. Nevertheless, in 1829, a tomb was built for him in Florence in the basilica of
Santa Croce. That
tomb has been empty ever since, with Dante's body remaining in Ravenna, far from the land he loved so dearly. The front of his tomb in Florence reads
Onorate l'altissimo poeta—which roughly translates as "Honour the most exalted poet". The phrase is a quote from the fourth canto of the
Inferno, depicting Virgil's welcome as he returns among the great ancient poets spending eternity in Limbo. The continuation of the line,
L'ombra sua torna, ch'era dipartita ("his spirit, which had left us, returns"), is poignantly absent from the empty tomb.
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