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====Dante and religion====
The exiled Florentine was a great religious poet and theologian. His conception of the dual nature of man, one that was earthly and the other that was eternal was decisive in the development of his political doctrine. He argued in his main political work that there should be a separation of church and state. This was something that greatly contributed to Renaissance political thought. Major thinkers such as Machiavelli under the influence of the great Florentine believed were influenced by Dante and argued that religion had no place in politics and . He believed that politics was a skill and should not be constrained by theological precepts. When Dante while a deeply religious man by arguing argued that church and state should be separate did much to ensure ensured that the humanists who succeeded him felt free to concentrate on the secular and did not feel world. He also made it clear that it involvement in the secular was not incompatible with their hopes of future salvation. The ideas of Dante not only influenced Renaissance thinkers but also some of the leaders of the Reformation. The exiled Florentine helped to change the discourse on the role of religion in Europe .<ref>Fortin, p 119</ref>.
====Conclusion====
Dante composed one of the great literary work in Italian if not all literature. His Divine Comedy is an enduring literary masterpiece that has and will stand the test of time. However, the Florentine was much more than a great poet and he made a significant contribution to the Renaissance. His helped to fashion the poetry of the period and decisively changed the direction of Western literature. Dante helped to raise the Tuscan dialect into the national literary language of Italy. He helped to establish vernacular languages as literary languages and demonstrated that great writers did not have to use Latin, and this is perhaps his greatest contribution to the Renaissance. Dante was a forerunner of the humanist movement, because he argues that this life had value and that the individual while a part of the community was significant and had a right to self-expression and even happiness. The poet was also an original political and religious thinker and he argued for the then dangerous idea of a separation of church and state. This persuaded many humanists to adopt a more secular approach that was such a feature of civic humanism. However, it should be noted that the Florentine was also medieval in outlook and he would have disapproved of some of the aspects of the Renaissance in the 15-16th century. Dante can be considered because of his immense contributions one of founders of the Renaissance.
