The Influence of a Beautiful Life
Story★★★★Dante was a genius of the first order with a tremendous grasp of Christian concepts. When he was a little over nine years old, he suddenly fell in love with a little girl of eight years named Beatrice.
When he saw her for the first time, she was wearing a dress of crimson. From that moment Beatrice was the ruling passion of Dante’s life. She is the heroine of The Divine Comedy. Dante wrote, “Today I have seen her and she looked at me.
Today I believe in God.” The influence of a good and beautiful woman had this tremendous effect on Dante, “When Beatrice appeared in any place and I was allowed to hope for her wonderful salutation, there was no man mine enemy any longer and such a flare of charity came upon me that most certainly in that moment I would have pardoned whosoever had done me any injury.”
One of the master paintings of the ages has preserved that electric moment in Dante’s life when he suddenly met Beatrice, a girl of eighteen in the company of two other girl friends, and received from her the radiance of her smile of recognition. Dante swooned under the burden of his happiness and had to lay his hand upon the rail of the bridge to save himself from falling. Beatrice died in her youth and Dante made this vow in her memory, “. . . if it be His pleasure through whom is the life of all things that my life continue with me for a few years, it is my hope that I shall yet write concerning her what hath not been before written of any woman.”
The point
Dante's encounter with Beatrice at age nine transformed his life, inspiring The Divine Comedy and exemplifying how one beautiful soul's influence can redirect a life toward God.