From the Crypt: Dante Was No Italian Superman

In a legitimate though limited sense, Dante Alighieri created Italy. That’s because the “Divine Comedy,” written in an idiom called the Tuscan vernacular, achieved such renown that it formed the substrate of the country’s modern national language. Philologists like to point out that Dante invented many words and idioms current in today’s Italian, or more often borrowed them from Latin or Old French. Among them are molesto (“burdensome, irritating”) and such expressions as il gran rifiuto, “the great refusal.” That phrase Dante used in Canto III of the “Inferno” to denounce the miserable indecision, in his view, of Pope Celestine V, who reigned for only a few months in 1294 before renouncing the papal tiara. In the “Inferno,” poor pusillanimous Celestine is denied entrance even to Hell: Without the nerve to pick a side, to stand for good or evil, he must linger forever in its antechamber with others of his ilk.