ABSTRACT
Florentine humanism, generally speaking, held Dante in honour as one of its greatest forerunners, though its more pedantic scholars like Niccolo Niccoli might dismiss him as a “poeta da calzolai” and bold spirits like Maffeo Vegio might try to improve the Commedia by translating it into Latin verse. Cristoforo Landino, who dealt at length with the Platonic allegory of Virgil and Dante in the third and fourth books of the Quaestiones Camaldulenses , was also the author of an exhaustive commentary on the Commedia , which appeared first in 1481 with a prefatory elegy by Girolamo Benivieni. La Citta di Vita takes the form of a vision in which the poet, guided at first by the Sybil of Cuma, and later by a good spirit called Calogenio, passes through the unseen world and hears the mysteries of faith and philosophy expounded by the way. The principal heresy of which Palmieri was accused was not wholly unconnected with his Neoplatonism.
