Florence Times
Dante Alighieri Insane?
Sunday, April 5, 1314
The poet Dante Alighieri disappeared on Good Friday and has claimed that he has returned from Hell on this day, Easter Sunday. He described Hell has a spiral pit in the earth and each ring was a "Circle". Inside each circle was a general sin and some circles had smaller rings that had more specific sins. He has claimed that his guide was the famed Virgil, writer of The Aeneid. Dante has returned from hell with little physical injury and has been treated for his minor frostbite, which he claimed was from a frozen lake at the center of Hell where Satan was trapped, already.
We asked how he got into Hell and he claimed that he was simply taking a walk and got lost in his thoughts and when he realized where he was, he was in a forest if "sin".
As most of us are aware, Dante was exiled from Florence and is not to return, and with these new events he is still not welcome because he is believed to be "mentally unstable".
Doctors have suggested mental help to try to get him out of this state of insanity but he still claims the same thing without backing down.
For the fear of a mental breakdown he has been put into isolation and given nothing but paper and a quill. Doctors have said that every week they will see what he has written to see how his mental state is improving.
his mental state is believed to be because he was exiled and he has made up his story of Hell and has put Poets in his "Hell" to spite Pope Boniface, who was the man who exiled him from Florence.
Dante Alighieri
Bella delgi Abati
Beatrice Portinari
Sunday, April 12, 1314
It has been one week since Dante's arrest and isolation because of his mental state. The Doctors have reviewed the papers given to him to write on and have concluded that he has not gotten any better in the last week.
On the paper he wrote of his imaginary adventure through Hell and they were mortified over the punishments of the people. Therefore they believe he has actually gotten worse.
One of the things that seemed strange although is that when he was searched they found a small branch coated in blood; in his story he talks of a forest that had all the people who have committed suicide and he says their punishment was that every time a branch was broken that it would feel like a broken bone.
Dante writes that he broke one branch and now that the officers have found a blood covered branch, they are now not so sure that it was a mental breakdown.