1265–1321 · Florentine poet, author of the Divine Comedy
Dante Alighieri was a Florentine poet whose three-part Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso) is the founding masterwork of Italian literature. In Paradiso III he meets Piccarda Donati, a nun forced from her convent, who explains that the blessed feel no envy of higher souls because their wills rest wholly in God’s — the thought crystallised in this line. The verse echoes Augustine’s “our heart is restless until it rests in Thee.”