Giovanni Andrea Scartazzini | |
|---|---|
 Giovanni Andrea Scartazzini | |
| Born | 30 December 1837 |
| Died | 10 February 1901 (aged 63) |
| Nationality |  Switzerland |
| Other names | Andreas Scartazzini, Johann Andreas Scartazzini, Scartazzini |
| Occupation | Minister, writer |
Giovanni Andrea Scartazzini was a Protestant pastor and Italian-Swiss literary critic, best known for his Italian annotated edition of the Divine Comedy and the other writings on its author, Dante Alighieri.
Son of the notary Bartolomeo di Picenoni and Clara, he was born in Bondo, Switzerland, in the canton of Graubünden, on 30 December 1837. His childhood was marked by an early passion for two books: the Bible, the essential book in every Protestant Christian family, and the Divine Comedy , which he had received as a gift from his godfather. He studied at the Institute of Evangelical Missions at Basel where he joined the liberal theological trends, completing his theological studies at Bern.
He served as a minister in several Swiss cities, including Soglio in the Valley of Bergell. He had to give up this ministry due to his highly controversial nature and his criticism of the Reformed Church of his time, which was frontally attacked in his writings, just as he did against the critics of his work as literary scholar on Dante and the Divine Comedy.
He reached international fame due to his literary activity, which culminated in 1869 with the publication of a study about the life, the epoch, and the work of Dante Alighieri, and the subsequent annotated edition of Dante's Divine Comedy in four volumes, the first of which was published in 1874 and the last in 1890. This work, in an edition reviewed and expanded by Giuseppe Vandelli in Milan in 1893, still remains a fundamental text.
His fighting soul in the persistent defense of his convictions was, of course, enhanced by the cultural contexts in which he lived. These contexts were so far apart. On one hand, Scartazzini lived under the liberal Swiss Protestant theology, and on the other hand, under the environment of the Italian classic literature. Despite the strong influence of both contexts on his life, he never yielded to the temptation to draw a bridge between them.
In 1871-1874 he taught Italian at the cantonal school of Chur. He was also the director of the "New International Journal of Florence". In 1884, as a result of the conflicts raised by his fighting spirit, he permanently left Bergell and settled in Fahrwangen in the canton of Aargau, Switzerland, which would be his last pastoral office, where he died at the age of 63 on 10 February 1901.
In Acilia, a district close to Rome, Scartazzini is honored by a street named for him, while in Bondo, the municipality has placed a commemorative stone at his own home.
In one of his sermons he expressed a thought that is valid in every time and in every nation: “A people who care about what it takes to have peace have laid a firmer and safer foundation for their own good ... May our people and our homeland recognize in time what it takes to have peace.”
On 21 December 1862 in Bergamo he married his first wife, Anna Maria Caterina Baebler (1841-1883 ca.), daughter of Anna Maddalena Hoesli (1807–1870) and Ulrich Baebler (1798–1878), director of the weaving company which belonged to his father-in-law Gaspare Hoesli (1773–1857) from St. Bartholomew in Brescia.
His second wife was Maria Sophia Lehnen from Twann.
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Dante Alighieri, probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to simply as Dante, was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His Divine Comedy, originally called Comedìa and later christened Divina by Giovanni Boccaccio, is widely considered one of the most important poems of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language.
The Divine Comedy is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed in 1320, a year before his death in 1321. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval worldview as it had developed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped establish the Tuscan language, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language. It is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.
Allen Mandelbaum was a Jewish American professor of literature and the humanities, poet, and translator from Classical Greek, Latin and Italian. His translations of classic works gained him numerous awards in Italy and the United States.
Beatrice "Bice" di Folco Portinari was an Italian woman who has been commonly identified as the principal inspiration for Dante Alighieri's Vita Nuova, and is also commonly identified with the Beatrice who appears as one of his guides in the last book of the Divine Comedy, Paradiso, and in the last four canti of Purgatorio.
Brunetto Latini was an Italian philosopher, scholar, notary, politician and statesman.
Dolce Stil Novo, Italian for "sweet new style," is the name given to a literary movement in 13th and 14th century Italy. Influenced by the Sicilian School and Tuscan poetry, its main theme is Divine Love. The name Dolce Stil Novo was used for the first time by Dante Alighieri in Purgatorio, the second canticle of the Divine Commedia. In the Divine Commedia Purgatory he meets Bonagiunta Orbicciani, a 13th-century Italian poet, who tells Dante that Dante himself, Guido Guinizelli, and Guido Cavalcanti had been able to create a new genre: a stil novo.
Francesca da Rimini or Francesca da Polenta was a medieval Italian noblewoman originally from Ravenna, known for having been murdered by her husband, Giovanni Malatesta, upon his discovery of Francesca's affair with his brother, Paolo Malatesta. She was a contemporary of Dante Alighieri, who portrayed her as a character in the Divine Comedy.
In Christian theology, a heresiarch or arch-heretic, is an originator of heretical doctrine, or the founder of a sect that sustains such a doctrine.
In Dante's Inferno, contrapasso is the punishment of souls "by a process either resembling or contrasting with the sin itself." A similar process occurs in the Purgatorio.
Bondo is a village and a former municipality in the district of Maloja in the Swiss canton of Grisons. It is now part of the municipality of Bregaglia.
The Val Bregaglia is an alpine valley of Switzerland and Italy at the base of which runs the river Mera.
Franz Hettinger was a German Catholic theologian.
Paradiso is the third and final part of Dante's Divine Comedy, following the Inferno and the Purgatorio. It is an allegory telling of Dante's journey through Heaven, guided by Beatrice, who symbolises theology. In the poem, Paradise is depicted as a series of concentric spheres surrounding the Earth, consisting of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Fixed Stars, the Primum Mobile and finally, the Empyrean. It was written in the early 14th century. Allegorically, the poem represents the soul's ascent to God.
"Raphèl mai amècche zabì almi" is a verse from Dante's Inferno, XXXI.67. The verse is shouted out by Nimrod, one of the giants who guard the Ninth Circle of Hell. The line, whose literal meaning is uncertain, is usually interpreted as a sign of the confusion of the languages caused by the fall of the Tower of Babel.
Justine Constance Wirix-van Mansvelt was a Dutch Protestant expert on the oeuvre of the Italian poet and writer Dante Alighieri (1265–1321).
Duecento is the Italian word for the Italian culture during the 13th century.
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri was translated into Latin, French, Spanish and other European languages well before it was first translated into English. In fact the first English translation was only completed in 1802, almost 500 years after Dante wrote his Italian original. The lack of English translations before this is due in part to Dante's Catholic views being distasteful, or at least uninteresting, to Protestant English audiences, who viewed such a Catholic theology, mixed with references to classical mythos, as heretical.
The Dante Society of America was founded in 1881 through the leadership of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Charles Eliot Norton, who in turn served as the society's first three presidents. One of the oldest scholarly societies in North America, the DSA predates both the Modern Language Association, founded in 1883, and the American Historical Association, founded in 1884. The society's mission, first formulated at its founding and now renewed and reinvigorated for the twenty-first century, is to encourage the study and appreciation of the time, life, works, and cultural legacy of Dante Alighieri. After the Deutsche Dante-Gesellschaft it is the second-oldest scholarly organization devoted to the study of this medieval Italian poet. The Dante Society of America is also one of the first scholarly societies in the United States to welcome women among its founding members. The current president is Alison Cornish of New York University.
The first circle of hell is depicted in Dante Alighieri's 14th-century poem Inferno, the first part of the Divine Comedy. Inferno tells the story of Dante's imaginary journey through a vision of the Christian hell, ordered into nine circles corresponding to classifications of sin. The first circle is Limbo, the space reserved for those souls who died either before baptism or those who hail from non-Christian cultures. They live eternally in a castle set on a verdant landscape, but forever removed from heaven.
Cando lucis aeternae is an apostolic letter that was issued by Pope Francis on 25 March 2021. The letter was written in honor of the 700th anniversary of the death of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri and is one of several papal letters on the author, with previous ones having written by Benedict XV, Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI.
