Dante’s Influence on Italian Culture Dante Alighieri was a very well known and influential poet in early literature. “He was not only a poet, he was also a philosophical thinker, an active politician, and a religious visionary” (Holmes 1). Dante was born in Florence in 1265, into the Guelph political party, one of the two main parties in Florence. The Guelphs were aristocrats and nobles. They supported the church and papacy and were against the Renaissance. Their opposition was the Ghibellini Party who consisted of the rising merchant class. They supported the emperor and wanted to gain power from the pope (Holmes 22).