International Institute for Strategic Studies
Arundel House, in Temple district of central London
Abbreviation	IISS
Formation	1958
Type	International relations think tank
Headquarters	London, United Kingdom
Director-General and Chief Executive	John Chipman
Website	www.iiss.org

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) is a British research institute (or think tank) in the area of international affairs. It describes itself as "the world’s leading authority on political-military conflict". Since 1997 its headquarters have been Arundel House, in London.

Overview[link]

Founded in 1958, with its original focus nuclear deterrence and arms control, the IISS has strong establishment links with former US and British government officials among its members. The institute claims that it "was hugely influential in setting the intellectual structures for managing the Cold War." The current Director-General and Chief Executive is Dr John Chipman CMG. The Chairman of the Council is Francois Heisbourg, a former Director. Sir Michael Howard, the British military historian, is President Emeritus. Sir Michael founded the institute together with the British Labour M.P. Denis Healey and journalist Alastair Buchan.^[1]

The IISS describes itself as a

primary source of accurate, objective information on international strategic issues for politicians and diplomats, foreign affairs analysts, international business, economists, the military, defence commentators, journalists, academics and the informed public. The Institute owes no allegiance to any government, or to any political or other organisation.

The Institute claims 2,500 Individual Members and 450 Corporate and Institutional Members from more than 100 countries.

The IISS publishes The Military Balance, an annual assessment of nations' military capabilities; the Armed Conflict Database; Survival, a journal on global politics and strategy; Strategic Survey, the annual review of world affairs; the Adelphi Papers series of monographs; and Strategic Comments, online analysis of topical issues in international affairs.

The Institute hosts the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual meeting of Asia-Pacific region Defense Ministers in Singapore, and the Manama Dialogue, an annual meeting of Persian Gulf-region security ministers and officials in Bahrain.

Based in London, the IISS is both a private company limited by guarantee in UK law and a registered charity.^[2] It has branches in the U.S. and in Singapore, with charitable status in each jurisdiction.

Directors[link]

• Alastair Buchan (1958 - 1969)
• François Duchêne (1969 - 1974)
• Christoph Bertram (1974 -1982)
• Robert J. O'Neill (1982 - 1987)
• François Heisbourg (1987 - 1992)
• Kristofer Huldt (1992 - 1993)
• John Chipman (1993 - )^[3]
• Nigel Inkster

Council[link]

Current council members as of 2009 are:

• Professor François Heisbourg, Chairman
• Mr Hironori Aihara
• Professor Dr Dewi Fortuna Anwar
• Robert D. Blackwill, former U.S. Ambassador to India from 2001-2003 and diplomatic representative for several U.S. Republican presidents
• Mr Olivier Debouzy
• Ms Fleur de Villiers
• Mr Daniel R Fung
• Mr Shekhar Gupta
• Dr. István Gyarmati
• Mr David Ignatius
• Field Marshal The Rt Hon Lord Inge
• Ryozo Kato, former Japanese Ambassador to the United States from 2001 to 2008, current Commissioner of Nippon Professional Baseball
• Mr Ivan Krastev
• Dr Ariel Levite
• Mr Kishore Mahbubani
• Sir David Manning, a career diplomat who served as British Ambassador to Israel from 1993-1995 and the United States from 2003-2007.
• Mr Moeletsi Mbeki
• Dr Günther Nonnenmacher
• Lord Powell of Bayswater
• HRH Prince Faisal bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud
• Mr Thomas Seaman
• Hugh Segal
• Alison Smale, the Executive Editor of the International Herald Tribune
• Ambassador Dr Theodor Winkler

See also[link]

• List of UK think tanks
• Adelphi Papers, the monograph series of the Institute

References[link]

External links[link]

• International Institute for Strategic Studies (official website)

Chuck Hagel
Chairman of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board
Incumbent
Assumed office October 28, 2009[1] Serving with David L. Boren
President	Barack Obama
Preceded by	Stephen Friedman
United States Senator from Nebraska
In office January 3, 1997 – January 3, 2009
Preceded by	J. James Exon
Succeeded by	Mike Johanns
Deputy Administrator of Veteran Affairs
In office 1981–1982
President	Ronald Reagan
Personal details
Born	(1946-10-04) October 4, 1946 (age 65) North Platte, Nebraska
Nationality	American
Spouse(s)	Lilibet Hagel
Children	Allyn Hagel Ziller Hagel
Residence	Omaha, Nebraska
Alma mater	University of Nebraska at Omaha
Occupation	Electronics executive
Religion	Episcopalian[2]
Military service
Service/branch	United States Army
Years of service	1967–1968
Rank	sergeant
Unit	2nd Battalion, 47th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division
Battles/wars	Vietnam War
Awards	Purple Heart Army Commendation Medal Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry Combat Infantry Badge

	Biography portal
	United States Army portal

Charles Timothy "Chuck" Hagel (born October 4, 1946) is a former United States Senator from Nebraska. A member of the Republican Party, he was first elected in 1996 and was reelected in 2002. In 2009, he was elected as Chairman of the Atlantic Council.

Early life and family[link]

Born in North Platte, Nebraska, to Betty Dunn Hagel and Charles Dean Hagel, who had German and Polish ancestry,^[3] he graduated from St. Bonaventure High School (now Scotus Central Catholic High School) in Columbus, Nebraska, the Brown Institute for Radio and Television in 1966 and the University of Nebraska at Omaha in 1971. Hagel is a Vietnam War veteran, having served in the United States Army infantry, attaining the rank of Sergeant (E-5) from 1967 – 1968. He served as an infantry squad leader in the 9th Infantry Division.^[4][5] While serving during the Vietnam War, Hagel received the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, two Purple Hearts, Army Commendation Medal, and the Combat Infantryman Badge.^{[citation needed]} After returning from Vietnam, he worked as a bartender and radio newscaster while finishing college.

Hagel married Lilibet Ziller in April 1985. The couple live with their daughter, Allyn, and son, Ziller, in McLean, Virginia.^[6] The family has one dog, Figgie, a Portuguese water dog who was trained by Dawn Sylvia-Stasiewicz, the same dog trainer who trained the Obama Family's dog, Bo, as well as Ted Kennedy's dogs.^[7]

Hagel has two brothers: Thomas, also a highly decorated Vietnam War veteran, is a professor at the University of Dayton School of Law,^[8] and Mike, an accomplished and well known artist who currently resides in Omaha, Nebraska.^[9] Hagel's third brother, Jim, died in a tragic car accident at the age of 16.^[10]

Hagel has been an avid Nebraska Cornhuskers football fan since he was a young boy growing up in Nebraska. He and his son, Ziller, presented the coin for the coin toss at the 2005 MasterCard Alamo Bowl, in which Nebraska was victorious over the Michigan Wolverines.

Career in Washington[link]

In 1971, Hagel was hired as a staffer for Congressman John Y. McCollister (R-NE), serving until 1977. For the next four years, he worked as a lobbyist for Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, and, in 1980, he served as an organizer for the successful presidential campaign of former California Governor Ronald Reagan.

After Reagan's inauguration as President, Hagel was named deputy administrator of the Veterans Administration. In 1982, however, he resigned his post over a disagreement with V.A. Administrator Robert P. Nimmo, who was intent on cutting funding for V.A. programs, and who had referred to veterans groups as "greedy", and to Agent Orange as not much worse than a "little teenage acne".^[11]

Business career[link]

After leaving government employment, Hagel co-founded Vanguard Cellular, a mobile phone manufacturer that made him a multi-millionaire. While working with Vanguard, he served as president and chief executive officer of the United Service Organizations and the Private Sector Council, as deputy director and chief operating officer of the 1990 G7 Summit, and on the board of directors or advisory committee of the American Red Cross, the Eisenhower World Affairs Institute, Bread for the World, and the Ripon Society. He also served as Chairman of the Agent Orange Settlement Fund and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Although he was pressured by some to run for Governor of Virginia, where he had lived for 20 years, in 1992 Hagel moved back to Nebraska to become president of the McCarthy Group, an investment banking firm. He also served as a Chairman and was CEO of American Information Systems Inc. (AIS), a voting machine manufacturer.

In 1992, as President of investment group McCarthy & Co., Hagel assumed ownership and became Chairman of American Information Services (AIS), later known as Election Systems & Software (ES&S), a manufacturer of computerized voting machines. On March 15, 1995, Hagel resigned from the board of AIS as he intended to run for office.^[12]

Election to the Senate[link]

In 1996, Hagel ran for the open US Senate seat created by the retirement of Democrat J. James Exon. Hagel's opponent was Ben Nelson, then the sitting Governor of Nebraska. Although many people^{[citation needed]} believed Hagel had no chance of winning, he won a "stunning upset" in the election, receiving 56% of the vote, winning virtually all demographic groups including many black precincts that had always voted Democratic in previous elections,^{[citation needed]} and becoming the first Republican in twenty-four years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska.

Six years later in 2002, Hagel overwhelmingly won re-election with over 83% of the vote, the largest margin of victory in any statewide race in Nebraska history.

Senate career[link]

Since his election to the Senate in 1996, Hagel served as deputy whip for the Republican Caucus. He was chair of both the Senate Global Climate Change Observer Group and the Senate Oversight Task Force. He served as co-chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. He also served on the NATO Observer Group. Hagel was a member of four Senate committees: Foreign Relations; Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs; the Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Committee on Rules and Administration.

Hagel's name was widely rumoured to be one of those considered by George W. Bush as a potential running mate in the 2000 presidential election. During the Bush administration, Hagel maintained a "traditionally Republican" voting record, receiving "a lifetime rating of 84 percent from the American Conservative Union and consistent A and B grades from the National Taxpayers Union."^[13] Among his most notable votes, Hagel:

• Voted for the Iraq war
• Voted for the Patriot Act
• Voted for the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts
• Voted against No Child Left Behind
• Voted against Bush’s Medicare prescription drug bill
• Voted against McCain-Feingold^[13]

In August 2004, Hagel acknowledged that he was considering a presidential campaign in 2008.

Hagel appeared as himself on the HBO series K Street in 2003, on the episode entitled "Week Four".^{[citation needed]}

On immigration, Senator Hagel supports a "pathway to citizenship" and a "guest worker program" for undocumented immigrants.^{[citation needed]} On May 25, 2006 he voted for S. 2611, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006, which passed the Senate before reaching a stalemate in the House in late 2006. On June 26, 2007, Hagel joined with Senator Ted Kennedy to support the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 (S. 1639).

In July 2007, Hagel was one of three Republican Senators who supported the legislation proposed by Democrats to require a troop withdrawal from Iraq to begin within 120 days. "This thing is really coming undone quickly, and [Prime Minister] Maliki's government is weaker by the day. The police are corrupt, top to bottom. The oil problem is a huge problem. They still can't get anything through the parliament—no hydrocarbon law, no de-Baathification law, no provincial elections" (from Robert Novak's interview with Hagel, published in the Washington Post: "Hagel's Stand".)

During his first campaign, Hagel indicated that, were he to be elected, he would retire in 2008 after two terms in the Senate.^[14] Nebraska State Attorney General Jon Bruning announced plans to challenge him in the primaries in 2008 if he did not retire.^{[citation needed]} After considering running in the 2008 presidential election, Hagel announced in 2007 that he would retire from the Senate at the end of his present term and would not seek the presidency.^[15] He has joined the faculty of Georgetown University, where his daughter currently attends, starting in the fall of 2009, as a Distinguished Professor in the Practice of National Governance and will begin teaching in the fall of 2009, as reported in the Georgetown University student paper "The Hoya", and in the Washington Post ^[16]

Senator Hagel's differences with his party's platform on Iraq are reflected in a change to his voting record. As reported in:^[17] " ... [A]ccording to Congressional Quarterly, in 2006 he voted with the President ninety-six per cent of the time... Hagel's support for Bush's policies declined—in 2007, he voted with the President just seventy-two per cent of the time."

Hagel had a tradition of wearing costumes to work on Halloween, usually masquerading as colleagues or other notable political figures. He has arrived at work dressed as Joe Biden, John McCain, Colin Powell, and Pat Roberts in past years.^[18]

Committee assignments[link]

• Committee on Foreign Relations
  • Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs
  • Subcommittee on African Affairs
  • Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs
  • Subcommittee on International Development and Foreign Assistance, Economic Affairs, and International Environmental Protection (Ranking Member)
• Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
  • Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance and Investment
  • Subcommittee on Financial Institutions (Ranking Member)
  • Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development
• Select Committee on Intelligence
• Committee on Rules and Administration

Criticism of the Bush Administration[link]

On August 18, 2005, Hagel compared the Iraq War to Vietnam and openly mocked Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that the Iraqi insurgency was in its "last throes".^[19]

In November 2005, Hagel made a much-publicized statement: "To question your government is not unpatriotic — to not question your government is unpatriotic." (This was in reference to the lack of open debate in Congress regarding the Iraq War, and in defense of his assertion that the United States should withdraw its troops.)^{[citation needed]} In December 2005, in reference to Bush, the Republican Party, and the PATRIOT Act, Hagel made a much-publicized statement:

"I took an oath of office to the Constitution, I didn't take an oath of office to my party or my president."^[20]

In January 2006, Hagel took issue with Karl Rove over controversial statements the White House advisor made concerning the mindset of Republicans and Democrats. Hagel said, "Well, I didn't like what Mr. Rove said, because it frames terrorism and the issue of terrorism and everything that goes with it, whether it's the renewal of the Patriot Act or the NSA wiretapping, in a political context." He also said that "dark clouds" are hanging over the Republican party, and "If you look at the environment and the atmospherics politically in this town, read any poll. The sixth year of a governing party usually ... is not good ... the country is tired, a lot of complications in these international issues, we're at war."^[21] Hagel further criticized the Bush administration, saying, "National security is more important than the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. And to use it to try to get someone elected will ultimately end up in defeat and disaster for that political party."^[21]

In July 2006, Hagel again took issue with the Bush administration, this time on its handling of the Israel-Lebanon issue saying "The sickening slaughter on both sides must end and it must end now. President Bush must call for an immediate cease-fire. This madness must stop."^[22] Following heavy Republican losses in the 2006 midterm election, Hagel penned an editorial in the Washington Post highly critical of military strategies both employed and proposed for Iraq. He unequivocally declared that "There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq," and called for a "phased troop withdrawal" — making Hagel one of the most prominent voices in his party to do so.^[23]

According to a SurveyUSA poll, Hagel has a 10% higher approval rating among Nebraska Democrats than Republicans.^[24][25] OnTheIssues.org rates Hagel as a "libertarian-leaning conservative".

In January 2007, Hagel openly criticized President Bush's plan to send an additional 20,000 troops to Iraq. He called it, "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam, if it's carried out."^[26] Together with Democrats Joseph Biden and Carl Levin he proposed a non-binding resolution to the Democratic-controlled Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which rejected Bush's policy as "not in the national interest" in a 12-9 vote.^[27] However, in a Senate vote of 94-2 to revoke executive power to replace federal prosecutors without a preliminary hearing, Senator Hagel and Senator Kit Bond were the only opposition.^[28]

After an April 2007 visit to Iraq with Pennsylvania Democratic Representative Joe Sestak, Hagel expressed his belief that the occupation of Iraq should not continue indefinitely and defended Congressional actions to set a timeline for an end in occupation. In July 2007, Hagel expressed his intention to cooperate with Senate Democrats in voting for a bill that would set a timeline to get out of Iraq.^[29]

In November 2007, he rated the Bush administration "the lowest in capacity, in capability, in policy, in consensus—almost every area" of any presidency in the last forty years. He also revealed he was open to running as vice-president with the 2008 Democratic nominee.^[30] In the same month, he said, "I have to say this is one of the most arrogant, incompetent administrations I've ever seen or ever read about."^[30]

Despite his criticisms of the Bush administration, Hagel voted 78.1% of the time with the Republican party.^[31]

Decision not to seek re-election[link]

On September 10, 2007, Hagel announced that he would be retiring from the Senate at the end of his term in 2009.^[32] The announcement ended speculation regarding a possible bid for the presidency in 2008.

On its website The Times reported that the Senator was a possible candidate for the cabinet position of United States Secretary of Defense in the Barack Obama administration:

Obama is hoping to appoint cross-party figures to his cabinet such as Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator for Nebraska and an opponent of the Iraq war […] Senior advisers confirmed that Hagel, a highly decorated Vietnam war veteran and one of McCain’s closest friends in the Senate, was considered an ideal candidate for defense secretary.^[33]

Senator Obama was quoted in the same article, when asked about Hagel as a potential cabinet member: "Chuck Hagel is a great friend of mine and I respect him very much."^[33] Following Hagel's retirement from the Senate, in February 2009 he accepted a position as Distinguished Professor in the Practice of National Governance at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

In 2010, Hagel endorsed Democratic Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak in his run for the United States Senate.

Vice Presidential possibilities[link]

Hagel was rumored to be a possible Obama pick for the Vice Presidential candidacy in his 2008 presidential election ticket. On June 20, 2008, Hagel said he would consider running with Obama if offered the VP spot.^[34] He had also been mentioned as a potential United States Secretary of Defense to succeed incumbent Robert Gates in the Obama administration.^[35][36] and said that he would consider serving if asked.^[37] In August, Hagel indicated that he wouldn't endorse either candidate or get involved in their campaigns.^[38] However, his wife endorsed Obama. Obama later picked Joe Biden as his running mate. Robert Gates remained Secretary of Defense for the Obama administration until 2011, when he was succeeded by Leon Panetta, a Democrat.

America: Our Next Chapter[link]

In Senator Hagel's new book, America: Our Next Chapter, he suggests that the United States should adopt independent leadership and possibly another political party. He also believes that the Iraq War is one of the five biggest blunders in U.S. history. Hagel is critical of George W. Bush's foreign policy, calling it "reckless." He has been a major critic of the war since it started, and has stated that the United States should learn from its mistakes in the Vietnam War. He considers Bush's foreign policy a "ping pong game with American lives".

Electoral history[link]

Republican primary for U.S. Senate from Nebraska, 1996^[39]

• Chuck Hagel - 108,612 (62.11%)
• Don Stenberg - 65,753 (37.60%)
• Write-ins - 498 (0.29%)

Nebraska United States Senate election, 1996^[40]

• Chuck Hagel (R) - 379,933 (56.12%)
• Ben Nelson (D) - 281,904 (41.64%)
• John W. DeCamp (Libertarian) - 9,483 (1.40%)
• Bill Dunn (Natural Law) - 4,806 (0.71%)
• Write-ins - 832 (0.12%)

Republican primary for U.S. Senate from Nebraska, 2002^[41]

• Chuck Hagel (inc.) - 144,160 (100.00%) - unopposed

Nebraska United States Senate election, 2002^[42]

• Chuck Hagel (R) (inc.) - 397,438 (82.76%)
• Charlie Matulka (D) - 70,290 (14.64%)
• Jack Graziano (Libertarian) - 7,423 (1.55%)
• Phil Chase (Independent) - 5,066 (1.06%)

Awards and honors[link]

In 2001, Hagel was awarded the exclusive Horatio Alger Award for Distinguished Americans.^[43] Hagel is also Nebraska Admiral, an honorary title considering Nebraska is a landlocked state. On June 9, 2007, he gave the commencement address for North Central College and was given an honorary L.L.D.^[44] Hagel was the keynote speaker at the College of William and Mary's Charter Day in 2007, at which he was awarded an honorary degree of Public Service.^[45] On March 3, 2008, Hagel hosted a town hall meeting on domestic and foreign policy issues at the University of Maryland, at which the Center for American Politics and Citizenship (CAPC) gave him the Millard E. Tydings Award for Courage and Leadership in American Politics.^[46] Hagel served as the 2010 Clifford P. Case Professor of Public Affairs at Rutgers University's Eagleton Institute of Politics, speaking at public programs in New Brunswick and Newark.^[47]

Current Positions[link]

Hagel currently teaches at Georgetown University in the Walsh School of Foreign Service (SFS), as a Distinguished Professor in the Practice of National Governance.^[48] He is Chairman of the Atlantic Council, Co-Chairman of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board; a member of the Secretary of Defense’s Policy Board and Secretary of Energy’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future; and is a member of Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) board of directors. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Chevron Corporation; the Advisory Boards of Deutsche Bank Americas; Corsair Capital; M.I.C. Industries; is a Director of the Zurich Holding Company of America; and is a Senior Advisor to McCarthy Capital Corporation.^[49]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Charlyne Berens,Chuck Hagel: Moving Forward University of Nebraska Press (2006)

External links[link]

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Chuck Hagel

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Chuck Hagel

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Chuck Hagel

Official sites

• Speech on U.S.-Iran Relations, Senate Speeches, U.S. Government, February 22, 2007
• Sandhills PAC Hagel's Political Action Committee

Documentaries, topic pages and databases

• Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Voting record maintained by The Washington Post
• Biography, voting record, and interest group ratings at Project Vote Smart
• Issue positions and quotes at On the Issues
• Financial information at OpenSecrets.org
• Campaign finance reports and data at the Federal Election Commission
• New York Times — Chuck Hagel News news stories and commentary
• Chuck Hagel: Moving Forward authorized biography by Charlyne Berens, book information from University of Nebraska Press ISBN 0-8032-1075-2

Media coverage

• Hagel low on cash on hand, raising retirement issue, The Hill, January 30, 2007
• Joseph Lelyveld, "The Heartland Dissident", New York Times Magazine, February 12, 2006
• Chuck Hagel: A Christmas Present, and Past, Washington Post, December 22, 2005
• Interview C-SPAN Q&A, November 13, 2005
• Hagel’s ethics filings pose disclosure issue, The Hill, January 29, 2003
• Sen. Chuck Hagel Interview (video), The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, March 31, 2008
• Connie Bruck, "Odd Man Out: Chuck Hagel's Republican Exile" The New Yorker 84/35 (3 November 2008) : 52-63

Grassroots campaigns

• Blogspot: Chuck Hagel for President, Unofficial campaign site on Blogspot
• Draft Hagel '08 grassroots presidential draft site
• Michigan for Hagel 2008, Unofficial Michigan campaign site on Blogspot
• Students for Hagel, Unofficial students' campaign site on Blogspot

v t e United States Senators from Nebraska Class 1 Tipton Paddock Van Wyck Paddock Allen Hayward Allen Dietrich Burkett G. Hitchcock Howell Thompson Hunter Burke Butler Reynolds Hruska Zorinsky Karnes Kerrey Nelson Class 2 Thayer P. Hitchcock Saunders Manderson Thurston Millard Brown Norris Wherry Seaton Griswold Bowring Abel Curtis Exon Hagel Johanns

Geoffrey Till, FKC (born in London, England on 14 January 1945) is a British naval historian and Professor of Maritime Studies in the Defence Studies Department of King's College London. He is the Director of the Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies.

Early life and education[link]

The son of Arthur Till, a Royal Air Force officer, and Violet Till^{[citation needed]}, Geoffrey Till studied at King's College London, where he received his B.A. in 1966. Then, he went on to complete his MA in 1968 and PhD in 1976 at the Department of War Studies, King's College London.

Academic career[link]

This biographical section of an article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (February 2012)

His first academic appointments were at the Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth and the Department of Systems Science at the City University, London. In 1983, he was appointed visiting lecturer at King's College London and in 1989, he was appointed professor of history at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, also teaching at the Open University. On a NATO Defence Fellowship, he was a visiting scholar at the United States Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. In 1989, Professor Till held the Foundation Chair in Military Affairs at the United States Marine Corps University, Quantico, Virginia.

With the closure of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, Till moved to the Joint Services Command and Staff College, where he served as the Dean of Academic Studies, a position he help concurrently with his King's College London chair and headship of the Department of the Defence Studies Department, until September 2006, when he received a Fellowship of King's College London.

He has also been Visiting Professor at the Armed Forces University, Taiwan and Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, Singapore. He is also a Member of Council of the Royal United Services Institute.

He has written extensively on maritime history and strategy. Professor Till has been Reviews Editor for the Journal of Strategic Studies since it was launched in 1978, General Editor of Brassey’s Seapower: Naval Vessels, Weapons Systems and Technology series since 1987, contributing its first volume on modern sea power, and general series editor of the Frank Cass series on naval policy and history.

Published works[link]

• Air Power and the Royal Navy, 1914-1945: a historical survey. London [etc.] : Macdonald and Jane's, 1979.
• Maritime Strategy and the Nuclear Age by Geoffrey Till, with contributions from John Hattendorf ... [et al.]. London : Macmillan, 1982,1984; New York: St. Martins Press, 1984.
• The Sea in Soviet Strategy by Bryan Ranft and Geoffrey Till. London: Macmillan, 1983; 1989.
• The Future of British Sea Power, edited by Geoffrey Till. London: Macmillan, 1984.
• The Strategy of Seapower by Stephen Roskill with Geoffrey Till editor and author of the revision. London: John Goodchild, 1986.
• Modern Sea Power: An Introduction London: Brassey's Defence, 1987.
• Britain and NATO's Northern Flank, edited by Geoffrey Till. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988.
• East-West Relations in the 1990s: The Naval Dimension, edited by John Pay and Geoffrey Till. London: Pinter, 1990.
• British Naval Documents 1204-1960 eds. J. B. Hattendorf, R.J.B. Knight, A. W. H. Pearsall, N. A. M. Rodger, G. Till, Capt. A. B. Sainsbury, Navy Records Society (1993).
• Coastal Forces by Barry Clarke, Jurgen Fielitz & Malcolm Touchin; edited by Geoffrey Till; with a foreword by Sir Julian Oswald. London: Brassey's (UK), 1994.
• Sea Power: Theory and Practice, edited by Geoffrey Till. London: Frank cass, 1994.
• Amphibious Operations: A Collection of Papers by Geoffrey Till, Mark J. Grove and Theo Farrell. Camberley: Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, 1997.
• Challenges of High Command in the Twentieth Century, edited by Gary Sheffield and Geoffrey Till. Camberley: Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, 2000; Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
• Seapower at the Millennium, edited by Geoffrey Till. Stroud: Sutton, 2001.
• Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-First Century. London: Frank Cass, 2004.
• The Development of British Naval Thinking: Essays in Memory of Bryan Ranft, edited by Geoffrey Till. London: Routledge, 2006.
• Globalisation and Defence in the Asia-Pacific, edited by Geoffrey Till, Emrys Chew, and Joshua Ho. London: Routledge, 2007.
• The Rise of Naval Power in Asia-Pacific, edited by Geoffrey Till. London: Routledge: Adelphi series, 2012.

Sources[link]

• Gale Contemporary Authors

James N. Mattis
General James N. Mattis, USMC
Nickname	"Chaos" (Call Sign) "Warrior Monk" "Mad Dog Mattis"[1]
Born	(1950-09-08) September 8, 1950 (age 61) Pullman, Washington
Allegiance	United States of America
Service/branch	United States Marine Corps
Years of service	1972–present
Rank	General
Commands held	U.S. Central Command U.S. Joint Forces Command/Supreme Allied Commander Transformation I Marine Expeditionary Force U.S. Marine Forces Central Command Marine Corps Combat Development Command 1st Marine Division 7th Marine Regiment 1st Battalion 7th Marines
Battles/wars	Operation Desert Storm Operation Enduring Freedom *2001 invasion of Afghanistan Operation Iraqi Freedom *2003 invasion of Iraq *Operation Vigilant Resolve *Operation Phantom Fury
Awards	Defense Distinguished Service Medal (2) Navy Distinguished Service Medal Defense Superior Service Medal Legion of Merit Bronze Star with V

James N. Mattis (born September 8, 1950)^[2][3] is a United States Marine Corps general and the current commander of United States Central Command. Having replaced David Petraeus on August 11, 2010, he previously commanded United States Joint Forces Command from November 9, 2007 to August 2010 and served concurrently as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Transformation from November 9, 2007 to September 8, 2009. Prior to that, he commanded I Marine Expeditionary Force, United States Marine Forces Central Command, and 1st Marine Division during the Iraq War.^[4]

Marine Corps career[link]

Mattis was born in Pullman, Washington, graduated from Richland High School in 1968, attended Central Washington University^[5] and was commissioned a second lieutenant January 1, 1972.^[6] As a lieutenant, he served as a rifle and weapons platoon commander in the 3rd Marine Division. As a captain, he commanded a rifle company and a weapons company in the 1st Marine Brigade, then Recruiting Station Portland as a major. Promoted to lieutenant colonel, he commanded 1st Battalion 7th Marines, one of Task Force Ripper's assault battalions in the Gulf War. As a colonel, he commanded 7th Marine Regiment, then 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade and Task Force 58 during Operation Enduring Freedom in southern Afghanistan as a brigadier general. As the commander of TF-58, he became the first Marine to command a Naval Task Force in combat.^[7] As a major general, he commanded the 1st Marine Division during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent stability operations during the Iraq War. Mattis played a key role in the April 2004 battle of Fallujah, Operation Vigilant Resolve, by negotiating with the insurgent command inside of the city, as well as playing an important part in planning the subsequent Operation Phantom Fury in November.

After being promoted to lieutenant general, Mattis took command of Marine Corps Combat Development Command. On February 1, 2005, speaking ad libitum at a forum in San Diego, he said "You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them. Actually, it's a lot of fun to fight. You know, it's a hell of a hoot. It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right upfront with you, I like brawling." Mattis's remarks sparked controversy and General Michael Hagee, Commandant of the Marine Corps, issued a statement suggesting that Mattis should have chosen his words more carefully, but would not be disciplined.^[8] Following a Pentagon survey that showed only 55% of soldiers and 40% of Marines would report a colleague for abusing civilians, Mattis told his Marines in May 2007, “Whenever you show anger or disgust toward civilians, it's a victory for Al Qaeda and other insurgents.” Reflecting an understanding of the need for restraint in war as key to defeating an insurgency, he added that, "Every time you wave at an Iraqi civilian, Al Qaeda rolls over in its grave."^[9]

Letter written by Mattis to the 1st Marine Division before the 2003 Iraq War

General Mattis popularized the slogan "no better friend, no worse enemy", (originally coined by the Roman Sulla as his own epitaph in 78 BC) for his command. This phrase became widely publicized during the investigation into the conduct of Lieutenant Ilario Pantano, a platoon commander serving under General Mattis.^{[10][11][12][13][14][15][16]}

The Pentagon announced on May 31, 2006 that LtGen Mattis was chosen to take command of I Marine Expeditionary Force, based out of Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.^[17] On 11 September 2007, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that President George W. Bush had nominated Mattis for appointment to the rank of general to command U.S. Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. NATO agreed to appoint Mattis as Supreme Allied Commander Transformation. On 28 September 2007, the United States Senate confirmed Mattis's nomination, and he relinquished command of I MEF on 5 November 2007 to LtGen Samuel Helland. Mattis was promoted to four-star general and took control of JFCOM/SACT on 9 November 2007. He transferred the job of SACT to French General Stéphane Abrial on 9 September 2009, but continued in command of JFCOM.^[18]

In June 2010, Mattis was passed over for selection to replace James T. Conway as Commandant in favor of James F. Amos.^[19] In July, he was recommended by Defense Secretary Robert Gates for nomination to replace David Petraeus as commander of United States Central Command instead of deputy commander John R. Allen,^[20] and formally nominated by President Barack Obama on July 21.^[21] His confirmation by the Senate Armed Services Committee on August 5 marks the first time that Marines have held billets as commander and deputy commander of a Unified Combatant Command.^[22] He took command at a ceremony at MacDill Air Force Base on August 11.^[23][24][25]

Awards & education[link]

Mattis holds 4 expert rifle and 2 expert pistol badges. He is a graduate of the Marine Corps Amphibious Warfare School, Marine Corps Command and Staff College, and the National War College.

Portrayals in media[link]

General James Mattis is portrayed by Robert John Burke in the HBO miniseries Generation Kill.^[27]

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: James N. Mattis

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: James Mattis

United States Marine Corps portal

• List of United States Marine Corps four-star generals

References[link]

 This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the United States Marine Corps.

Notes

Bibliography

Web

Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri, attributed to Giotto, in the chapel of the Bargello palace in Florence. This oldest picture of Dante was painted just prior to his exile and has since been heavily restored.
Born	Mid-May to mid-June c1265 Florence
Died	September 14, 1321(1321-09-14) (aged about 56) Ravenna
Occupation	Statesman, poet, language theorist
Nationality	Italian
Literary movement	Dolce Stil Novo
Influences Aristotle, Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, Boethius, Avicenna, Averroes, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Richard of St. Victor, Boethius of Dacia
Influenced almost all Western literature, Samuel Beckett, Giovanni Boccaccio, Geoffrey Chaucer, Jorge Luis Borges, William Blake, Sandro Botticelli, Anthony Burgess, T. S. Eliot, John Milton

Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante (UK  /ˈdænti/, US /ˈdɑːnteɪ/; Italian: [ˈdante]; c1265–1321), was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem Commedia, later named La divina commedia (Divine Comedy), considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature.^[1]

In Italy he is known as il Sommo Poeta ("the Supreme Poet") or just il Poeta. Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio are also known as "the three fountains" or "the three crowns". Dante is also called the "Father of the Italian language".^[2]

Life[link]

Dante was born in Florence, Italy. The exact date of Dante's birth is unknown, although it is generally believed to be around 1265. This can be deduced from autobiographic allusions in La Divina Commedia, "the Inferno" (Halfway through the journey we are living, implying that Dante was around 35 years old, as the average lifespan according to the Bible (Psalms 89:10, Vulgate) is 70 years; and as the imaginary travel took place in 1300, Dante must have been born around 1265). Some verses of the Paradiso section of the Divine Comedy also provide a possible clue that he was born under the sign of Gemini: "As I revolved with the eternal twins, I saw revealed from hills to river outlets, the threshing-floor that makes us so ferocious" (XXII 151-154). In 1265 the Sun was in Gemini approximately during the period of May 11 to June 11.^[3]

Portrait of Dante, from a fresco in the Palazzo dei Giudici, Florence.

Dante claimed that his family descended from the ancient Romans (Inferno, XV, 76), but the earliest relative he could mention by name was Cacciaguida degli Elisei (Paradiso, XV, 135), of no earlier than about 1100. Dante's father, Alaghiero^[4] or Alighiero di Bellincione, was a White Guelph who suffered no reprisals after the Ghibellines won the Battle of Montaperti in the middle of the 13th century. This suggests that Alighiero or his family enjoyed some protective prestige and status, although some suggest that the politically inactive Alighiero was of such low standing that he was not considered worth exiling.

Dante's family had loyalties to the Guelphs, a political alliance that supported the Papacy and which was involved in complex opposition to the Ghibellines, who were backed by the Holy Roman Emperor. The poet's mother was Bella, likely a member of the Abati family.^[4] She died when Dante was not yet ten years old, and Alighiero soon married again, to Lapa di Chiarissimo Cialuffi. It is uncertain whether he really married her, as widowers had social limitations in these matters, but this woman definitely bore two children, Dante's half-brother Francesco and half-sister Tana (Gaetana). When Dante was 12, he was promised in marriage to Gemma di Manetto Donati, daughter of Manetto Donati, member of the powerful Donati family.^[4] Contracting marriages at this early age was quite common and involved a formal ceremony, including contracts signed before a notary. Dante had by this time fallen in love with another, Beatrice Portinari (known also as Bice), whom he first met when he was nine years old. Years after his marriage to Gemma, he claims to have met Beatrice again; although he wrote several sonnets to Beatrice, he never mentioned his wife Gemma in any of his poems. The exact date of his marriage is not known: the only certain information is that, before his exile in 1301, Dante already had three children (Pietro, Jacopo and Antonia).^[4]

Dante fought with the Guelph cavalry at the Battle of Campaldino (June 11, 1289). This victory brought about a reformation of the Florentine constitution. To take any part in public life, one had to be enrolled in one of the city's many commercial or artisan guilds, so Dante entered the guild of physicians and apothecaries. In the following years, his name is occasionally found recorded as speaking or voting in the various councils of the republic. A substantial portion of minutes from such meetings from 1298-1300 were lost during World War II, however; consequently the true extent of Dante's participation in the city's councils is uncertain.

Dante had several children with Gemma. Several people subsequently claimed to be Dante's offspring; however, it is likely that Jacopo, Pietro, Giovanni and Antonia were truly his children. Antonia later became a nun with the name of Sister Beatrice.

Education and poetry[link]

Not much is known about Dante's education, and it is presumed he studied at home or in a chapter school attached to a church or monastery in Florence. It is known that he studied Tuscan poetry, at a time when the Sicilian School (Scuola poetica Siciliana), a cultural group from Sicily, was becoming known in Tuscany. His interests brought him to discover the Provençal poetry of the troubadours and the Latin writers of classical antiquity, including Cicero, Ovid, and especially Virgil.

Statue of Dante at the Uffizi, Florence

Dante says that he first met Beatrice Portinari, daughter of Folco Portinari, at age nine, and he claims to have fallen in love "at first sight", apparently without even speaking to her. He saw her frequently after age 18, often exchanging greetings in the street, but he never knew her well; in effect, he set an example of so-called courtly love, a phenomenon developed in French and Provençal poetry of the preceding centuries. Dante's experience of such love was typical, but his expression of it was unique. It was in the name of this love that Dante gave his imprint to the Dolce Stil Novo (Sweet New Style, a term which Dante himself coined), and he would join other contemporary poets and writers in exploring the themes of Love (Amore), which had never been so emphasized before. Love for Beatrice (as in a different manner Petrarch would show for his Laura) would be his reason for poetry and for living, together with political passions. In many of his poems, she is depicted as semi-divine, watching over him constantly and providing spiritual instruction, sometimes harshly. When Beatrice died in 1290, Dante sought refuge in Latin literature. The Convivio reveals that he had read Boethius's De consolatione philosophiae and Cicero's De Amicitia. He then dedicated himself to philosophical studies at religious schools like the Dominican one in Santa Maria Novella. He took part in the disputes that the two principal mendicant orders (Franciscan and Dominican) publicly or indirectly held in Florence, the former explaining the doctrine of the mystics and of Saint Bonaventure, the latter presenting Saint Thomas Aquinas' theories.

At 18, Dante met Guido Cavalcanti, Lapo Gianni, Cino da Pistoia and soon after Brunetto Latini; together they became the leaders of the Dolce Stil Novo. Brunetto later received a special mention in the Divine Comedy (Inferno, XV, 28), for what he had taught Dante. Nor speaking less on that account, I go With Ser Brunetto, and I ask who are His most known and most eminent companions. Some fifty poetical components by Dante are known (the so-called Rime, rhymes), others being included in the later Vita Nuova and Convivio. Other studies are reported, or deduced from Vita Nuova or the Comedy, regarding painting and music.

Florence and politics[link]

Dante, like most Florentines of his day, was embroiled in the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict. He fought in the Battle of Campaldino (June 11, 1289), with the Florentine Guelphs against Arezzo Ghibellines; then in 1294 he was among the escorts of Charles Martel of Anjou (grandson of Charles I of Naples, more commonly called Charles of Anjou) while he was in Florence. To further his political career, he became a pharmacist. He did not intend to practice as one, but a law issued in 1295 required that nobles who wanted public office had to be enrolled in one of the Corporazioni delle Arti e dei Mestieri, so Dante obtained admission to the apothecaries' guild. This profession was not inappropriate, since at that time books were sold from apothecaries' shops. As a politician, he accomplished little, but he held various offices over a number of years in a city undergoing political unrest.

Dante Alighieri, detail from Luca Signorelli's fresco, Chapel of San Brizio, Orvieto Cathedral.

After defeating the Ghibellines, the Guelphs divided into two factions: the White Guelphs (Guelfi Bianchi) — Dante's party, led by Vieri dei Cerchi — and the Black Guelphs (Guelfi Neri), led by Corso Donati. Although initially the split was along family lines, ideological differences arose based on opposing views of the papal role in Florentine affairs, with the Blacks supporting the Pope and the Whites wanting more freedom from Rome. Initially the Whites were in power, and they expelled the Blacks. In response, Pope Boniface VIII planned a military occupation of Florence. In 1301, Charles of Valois, brother of King Philip IV of France, was expected to visit Florence because the Pope had appointed him peacemaker for Tuscany. But the city's government had treated the Pope's ambassadors badly a few weeks before, seeking independence from papal influence. It was believed that Charles of Valois had received other unofficial instructions, so the council sent a delegation to Rome to ascertain the Pope's intentions. Dante was one of the delegates.

Exile and death[link]

Pope Boniface quickly dismissed the other delegates and asked Dante alone to remain in Rome. At the same time (November 1, 1301), Charles of Valois entered Florence with the Black Guelphs, who in the next six days destroyed much of the city and killed many of their enemies. A new Black Guelph government was installed and Cante de' Gabrielli da Gubbio was appointed podestà of the city. Dante was condemned to exile for two years and ordered to pay a large fine. The poet was still in Rome where the Pope had "suggested" he stay; Dante was therefore considered an absconder. He did not pay the fine in part because he believed he was not guilty and in part because all his assets in Florence had been seized by the Black Guelphs. He was condemned to perpetual exile, and if he returned to Florence without paying the fine, he could be burned at the stake. (The city council of Florence finally passed a motion rescinding Dante's sentence in June 2008.^[5])

A recreated death mask of Dante Alighieri in Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

He took part in several attempts by the White Guelphs to regain power, but these failed due to treachery. Dante, bitter at the treatment he received from his enemies, also grew disgusted with the infighting and ineffectiveness of his erstwhile allies and vowed to become a party of one. Dante went to Verona as a guest of Bartolomeo I della Scala, then moved to Sarzana in Liguria. Later, he is supposed to have lived in Lucca with a lady called Gentucca, who made his stay comfortable (and was later gratefully mentioned in Purgatorio, XXIV, 37). Some speculative sources claim he visited Paris between 1308 and 1310 and others, even less trustworthy, take him to Oxford: these claims, first occurring in Boccaccio's book on Dante several decades after his death, seem inspired by readers being impressed with the poet's wide learning and erudition. Evidently Dante's command of philosophy and his literary interests deepened in exile, when he was no longer busy with the day-to-day business of Florentine domestic politics, and this is evidenced in his prose writings in this period, but there is no real indication that he ever left Italy. Dante's Immensa Dei dilectione testante to Henry VII of Luxembourg confirms his residence "beneath the springs of Arno, near Tuscany" in March 1311. In 1310, the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII of Luxembourg marched 5,000 troops into Italy. Dante saw in him a new Charlemagne who would restore the office of the Holy Roman Emperor to its former glory and also re-take Florence from the Black Guelphs. He wrote to Henry and several Italian princes, demanding that they destroy the Black Guelphs. Mixing religion and private concerns, he invoked the worst anger of God against his city and suggested several particular targets that were also his personal enemies. It was during this time that he wrote De Monarchia, proposing a universal monarchy under Henry VII.

At some point during his exile, he conceived of the Comedy, but the date is uncertain. The work is much more assured and on a larger scale than anything he had produced in Florence; it is likely that he would have undertaken such a work only after he realized that his political ambitions, which had been central to him up to his banishment, had been halted for some time, possibly forever. It is also noticeable that Beatrice has returned to his imagination with renewed force and with a wider meaning than in the Vita Nuova; in Convivio (written c.1304-07) he had declared that the memory of this youthful romance belonged to the past. One of the earliest outside indications that the poem was under way is a notice by the law professor Francesco da Barberino, tucked into his I Documenti d'Amore (Lessons of Love) and written probably in 1314 or early 1315: speaking of Virgil, da Barberino notes in appreciative words that Dante followed the Roman classic in a poem called the Comedy, and that the setting of this poem (or part of it) was the underworld, that is, Hell.^[6] The brief note gives no incontestable indication that he himself had seen or read even Inferno, or that this part had been published at the time, but it indicates that composition was well under way and that the sketching of the poem may likely have begun some years before. We know that Inferno had been published by 1317; this is established by quoted lines interspersed in the margins of contemporary dated records from Bologna, but there is no certainty whether the three parts of the poem were published each part in full or a few cantos at a time. Paradiso seems to have been published posthumously.

In Florence, Baldo d'Aguglione pardoned most of the White Guelphs in exile and allowed them to return; however, Dante had gone too far in his violent letters to Arrigo (Henry VII), and the sentence on him was not recalled.

In 1312, Henry assaulted Florence and defeated the Black Guelphs, but there is no evidence that Dante was involved. Some say he refused to participate in the assault on his city by a foreigner; others suggest that he had become unpopular with the White Guelphs, too, and that any trace of his passage had carefully been removed. In 1313, Henry VII died (from fever), and with him any hope for Dante to see Florence again. He returned to Verona, where Cangrande I della Scala allowed him to live in a certain security and, presumably, in a fair amount of prosperity. Cangrande was admitted to Dante's Paradise (Paradiso, XVII, 76).

In 1315, Florence was forced by Uguccione della Faggiuola (the military officer controlling the town) to grant an amnesty to people in exile, including Dante. But Florence required that, as well as paying a steep sum of money, these exiles would do public penance. Dante refused, preferring to remain in exile. When Uguccione defeated Florence, Dante's death sentence was commuted to house arrest, on condition that he go to Florence to swear that he would never enter the town again. Dante refused to go. His death sentence was confirmed and extended to his sons. Dante still hoped late in life that he might be invited back to Florence on honorable terms. For Dante, exile was nearly a form of death, stripping him of much of his identity and his heritage. He addresses the pain of exile in Paradiso, XVII (55-60), where Cacciaguida, his great-great-grandfather, warns him what to expect:

Mural of Dante in the Uffizi Gallery, by Andrea del Castagno, c. 1450.

As for the hope of returning to Florence, he describes it as if he had already accepted its impossibility, (Paradiso, XXV, 1–9):

Prince Guido Novello da Polenta invited him to Ravenna in 1318, and he accepted. He finished the Paradiso, and died in 1321 (at the age of 56) while returning to Ravenna from a diplomatic mission to Venice, possibly of malaria contracted there. Dante was buried in Ravenna at the Church of San Pier Maggiore (later called San Francesco). Bernardo Bembo, praetor of Venice built a tomb in 1483.

Dante's tomb in Ravenna, built in 1780.

Cenotaph in Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence.

On the grave, some verses of Bernardo Canaccio, a friend of Dante, dedicated to Florence:

parvi Florentia mater amoris

"Florence, mother of little love"

The first formal biography of Dante was the Vita di Dante (also known as Trattatello in laude di Dante) written after 1348 by Giovanni Boccaccio;^[7] several statements and episodes of it are seen as unreliable by modern research. However, an earlier account of Dante's life and works had been included in the Nuova Cronica of the Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani.^[8]

Eventually, Florence came to regret Dante's exile, and the city made repeated requests for the return of his remains. The custodians of the body at Ravenna refused, at one point going so far as to conceal the bones in a false wall of the monastery. Nevertheless, in 1829, a tomb was built for him in Florence in the basilica of Santa Croce. That tomb has been empty ever since, with Dante's body remaining in Ravenna, far from the land he loved so dearly. The front of his tomb in Florence reads Onorate l'altissimo poeta—which roughly translates as "Honour the most exalted poet". The phrase is a quote from the fourth canto of the Inferno, depicting Virgil's welcome as he returns among the great ancient poets spending eternity in Limbo. The continuation of the line, L'ombra sua torna, ch'era dipartita ("his spirit, which had left us, returns"), is poignantly absent from the empty tomb.

In 2007, a reconstruction of Dante's face was completed in a collaborative project. Artists from Pisa University and engineers at the University of Bologna at Forli completed the revealing model, which indicated that Dante's features were somewhat different from what was once thought.^[9][10]

Works[link]

See also Works by Dante Alighieri

The Divine Comedy describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso), guided first by the Roman poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, the subject of his love and of another of his works, La Vita Nuova. While the vision of Hell, the Inferno, is vivid for modern readers, the theological niceties presented in the other books require a certain amount of patience and knowledge to appreciate. Purgatorio, the most lyrical and human of the three, also has the most poets in it; Paradiso, the most heavily theological, has the most beautiful and ecstatic mystic passages in which Dante tries to describe what he confesses he is unable to convey (e.g., when Dante looks into the face of God: "all'alta fantasia qui mancò possa"—"at this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe," Paradiso, XXXIII, 142).

By its serious purpose, its literary stature and the range—both stylistically and in subject matter—of its content, the Comedy soon became a cornerstone in the evolution of Italian as an established literary language. Dante was more aware than most earlier Italian writers of the variety of Italian dialects and of the need to create a literature beyond the limits of Latin writing at the time, and a unified literary language; in that sense he is a forerunner of the renaissance with its effort to create vernacular literature in competition with earlier classical writers. Dante's in-depth knowledge (within the realms of the time) of Roman antiquity and his evident admiration for some aspects of pagan Rome also point forward to the 15th century. Ironically, while he was widely honoured in the centuries after his death, the Comedy slipped out of fashion among men of letters: too medieval, too rough and tragical and not stylistically refined in the respects that the high and late renaissance came to demand of literature.

He wrote the Comedy in a language he called "Italian", in some sense an amalgamated literary language mostly based on the regional dialect of Tuscany, with some elements of Latin and of the other regional dialects. The aim was to deliberately reach a readership throughout Italy, both laymen, clergymen and other poets. By creating a poem of epic structure and philosophic purpose, he established that the Italian language was suitable for the highest sort of expression. In French, Italian is sometimes nicknamed la langue de Dante. Publishing in the vernacular language marked Dante as one of the first (among others such as Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio) to break free from standards of publishing in only Latin (the language of liturgy, history, and scholarship in general, but often also of lyric poetry). This break set a precedent and allowed more literature to be published for a wider audience—setting the stage for greater levels of literacy in the future. However, unlike Boccaccio, Milton or Ariosto, Dante did not really become an author read all over Europe until the romantic era. To the romantics, Dante, like Homer and Shakespeare, was a prime example of the "original genius" who sets his own rules, creates persons of overpowering stature and depth and goes far beyond any imitation of the patterns of earlier masters and who, in turn, cannot really be imitated. Throughout the 19th century, Dante's reputation grew and solidified, and by the time of the 1865 jubilee, he had become solidly established as one of the greatest literary icons of the Western world.

Profile portrait of Dante, by Sandro Botticelli.

Readers often cannot understand how such a serious work may be called a "comedy". In Dante's time, all serious scholarly works were written in Latin (a tradition that would persist for several hundred years more, until the waning years of the Enlightenment) and works written in any other language were assumed to be more trivial in nature. Furthermore, the word "comedy" in the classical sense refers to works which reflect belief in an ordered universe, in which events not only tended towards a happy or "amusing" ending, but an ending influenced by a Providential will that orders all things to an ultimate good. By this meaning of the word, as Dante himself wrote in a letter to Cangrande I della Scala, the progression of the pilgrimage from Hell to Paradise is the paradigmatic expression of comedy, since the work begins with the pilgrim's moral confusion and ends with the vision of God.

Statue of Dante Alighieri in Verona.

Dante's other works include the Convivio ("The Banquet")^[11] a collection of his longest poems with an (unfinished) allegorical commentary; Monarchia,^[12] a summary treatise of political philosophy in Latin, which was condemned and burned after Dante's death^[13][14] by the Papal Legate Bertrando del Poggetto, which argues for the necessity of a universal or global monarchy in order to establish universal peace in this life, and this monarchy's relationship to the Roman Catholic Church as guide to eternal peace; De vulgari eloquentia ("On the Eloquence of Vernacular"),^[15] on vernacular literature, partly inspired by the Razos de trobar of Raimon Vidal de Bezaudun; and, La Vita Nuova ("The New Life"),^[16] the story of his love for Beatrice Portinari, who also served as the ultimate symbol of salvation in the Comedy. The Vita Nuova contains many of Dante's love poems in Tuscan, which was not unprecedented; the vernacular had been regularly used for lyric works before, during all the thirteenth century. One of the most famous poems is Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare, which many Italians can recite by heart. However, Dante's commentary on his own work is also in the vernacular—both in the Vita Nuova and in the Convivio—instead of the Latin that was almost universally used. References to Divina Commedia are in the format (book, canto, verse), e.g., (Inferno, XV, 76).

	Book: Dante Alighieri
Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print.

References[link]

Sources[link]

• Gardner, Edmund Garratt (1921). Dante, London, Pub. for the British academy by H. Milford, Oxford University Press.
• Hede, Jesper. (2007). Reading Dante: The Pursuit of Meaning. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
• Raffa, Guy P. (2009). The Complete Danteworlds: A Reader's Guide to the Divine Comedy. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-70270-4. 
• Scott, John A. (1996). Dante's Political Purgatory, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Seung, T. K. (1962). The Fragile Leaves of the Sibyl: Dante's Master Plan. Westminster, MD: Newman Press.
• Toynbee, Paget (1898) A Dictionary of the Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante. London, The Clarendon Press.
• Whiting, Mary Bradford (1922). Dante the Man and the Poet. Cambridge, England. W. Heffer & Sons, ltd.
• Allitt, John Stewart. (2011). Dante, il Pellegrino, Villa di Serio (BG), Edizioni Villadiseriane (in Italian).
• Giovanni Andrea Scartazzini La Divina Commedia riveduta e commentata - (1874-1890, 4 vol.)
• Giovanni Andrea Scartazzini Enciclopedia dantesca: dizionario critico e ragionato di quanto concerne la vita e le opere di Dante Alighieri - (1896-1898, 2 vol.)

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