This year’s Dantedì is closely linked to the eighth centenary of the death of the Poor Man of Assisi (October 3, 1226). The profound bond between Dante and Francis, as identified in the “Panegyric” of Canto XI, can be artistically captured in the beautiful “Allegory of Chastity,” a fresco (dated before 1322) preserved in the lower church of the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi: the saint is depicted welcoming the poet, a Franciscan tertiary, to climb up to the rock of Purity. The interior reading of the “Panegyric” and the “Canticle of the Creatures,” hosted at the Vaso vanvitelliano of the Angelica Library, will be embellished by the beautiful antiphon of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), a German nun and sister of the Poverello of Assisi. A shared embrace of spiritual life culminating in a song of praise to Creation.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Reading by poet Andrea Mariotti

Voices of Maria Letizia De Berardinis and Roberto Bisconti

Exegesis by Dante scholar Annamaria Vanalesti