HISTORICAL MEMOIRS ON THE LIFE

discord, flooded with the blood of her citizens due to the various rulers who made for a government now happy, now wretched; nevertheless, perhaps there was never a time in which Italian intellects produced greater glory for their homeland through literature than they did then. The divine mind of Alighieri Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), the author of the Divine Comedy. with his Cantos Referring to the 100 individual chapters or "songs" that make up the Divine Comedy. had shaken spirits that had fallen into miserable ferocity and were consumed by a tearful urge for factionalism; he called them to a nobler purpose of glory. One might almost say that, by creating the Italian tongue Dante is traditionally credited with standardizing the Italian vernacular as a literary language, moving away from the exclusive use of Latin., he provided the primary means for the expression of a virtue that the trials of humanity and the political state of the country had put to sleep—but not killed—within Italian hearts. Dante’s ashes were still warm: and, as if from sparks awakened by them, the minds of Petrarch, Boccaccio, and others were forged, bringing further fame to the land that had produced them. These men were admired in the courts, and their wisdom convinced princes to allow such knowledge to take root in the minds of their subjects. Universities were founded, as were public schools of eloquence and grammar Grammar: In this period, "grammar" was the first of the Liberal Arts, involving the deep study of Latin language and classical literature., and the most skilled men were assigned the noble task of holding chairs and teaching there. Among the ranks of the grammarians and rhetoricians of the 14th century,