The high middle ages are often referred to as “the age of synthesis”. This age brought together many developments in religion, science, and classical learning. The age of synthesis occurred during the 11, 12th, and 13th centuries. On this paper I am going to try and elaborate on those aforementioned topics, as well as talk about Italian poet Dante and the affects of his work. Ill also talk about what writers had influence of Dante's work. Dante Aligheri was an Italian Poet that lived during the renaissance. Dante's works have had a huge impact on the modern world. One of Dante’s most well-known works is The Divine Comedy, his most influential piece. Dante was admired for his spiritual writings and vision during not only the Renaissance period but also in the modern age. Dante is one of the most influential writers in world history. Dante Alighieri, born in Florence around 1265, was from a family of lower nobility. Not much is known about Dante’s life, but he did lose his mother during childhood and his father before he reached twenty-years old. In 1302, Dante was banned from the place of his birth by the Blacks, a faction within the Guelph party. Dante was involved in the political affairs of Florence. His involvement with these politics ranged from holding local offices to aiding Henry VII by urging Italian princes and political leaders to welcome Henry VII’s rule. During that period of time, Dante also showed his favor towards the separation of church and state and the necessity of a Holy Roman Empire. Now the reason for Dante's substantial influence was that he started writing in Italian. We disccussed in class how back in the high middle ages everything was written in Latin; because of that literary works were only available to the wealthy,educated elite in Italy.
Dante's influence in the age of synthesis is huge in many ways. The effect of this was to popularize his work amongst the vast majority of the population, rather than just the (small) educated minority that could both read and speak Latin. The ordinary Italian could listen to public readings of Dante and understand his work. Thus, the ideas of the Renaissance - Humanism and Naturalism - as well as references to the likes of classical philosophers and writers such as Aristotle, became well known to everyone. Before Dante people used to go to mass and not understand what the priest would say. We discussed in class that the reason behind making stained glassed windows were so the uneducated could still understand what was going on in mass. Just ponder at that for a second, you had no say in what you believed in. In a sense this was the perfect way to control society as a whole. People were forced to blindly follow what others believed the bible interpreted and if you didn't god would shun you and you would go to hell and die. Dante in a sense gave people the oppurtunity to define what they believed in by reading and interpreting literary works for themselves. Another way Dante was influential was not just in the Renaissance, but in the Italian language itself. Dante's influence in the Renaissance is shown by his revolutionary idea to write his works in Italian. This also caused a chain reaction to translate other literary works into Italian. We also talked about how Dante also spoke a particular dialect of Italian (Tuscan). Ill remind you that just like any country, a launguage is spoken diffrently depending on geographics. This is huge because the Italian language was forced the Italian Dante wrote in. Thus this is why Dante is also commonly known as "the father of the Italian Language". Dante's influence is shown as this dialect is now the primary dialect used in the Italian Penninsula. It is used in modern day court houses, the bible was translated into this Tuscan dialect. That is how Dante affected "the age of synthesis" (early renaissance).
