DANTE ALIGHIERI SOCIETY. - Founded in Rome in 1889 on the initiative of Giacomo Venezian.
"It has the purpose of protecting and spreading the Italian language and culture throughout the world, keeping high everywhere the sentiment of Italianness, reviving the spiritual ties of fellow countrymen abroad with the mother country and fostering among foreigners the love and veneration for Italian civilization" (art. 1 of the Society's Statute). It achieves these aims through its committees abroad, to which belongs the organization of schools, of courses in language and culture, of lectures, of concerts, of art exhibitions, of libraries, etc.: in a word, of every initiative useful for the greater diffusion of the language and of culture. The internal committees - flanked by student, women's and workers' subcommittees - through various events have the purpose of multiplying subscriptions to the s., so that the central office may have at its disposal the funds necessary to increase the work of the Committees abroad. Special measures are carried out by the "Dante" in favor of emigrants, of the Julian and Dalmatian refugees, of the inhabitants of the border zones and for the diffusion of the Italian book beyond the frontier. The members of the "Dante" meet annually in congress for the examination of the report and of the society's balance sheet and for the periodic election of the president and of the members of the Central Council, which is the governing body of the association.
Before the war of 1915-18 the "Dante" carried out, among other things, an intense activity in favor of the redemption of the Italian lands, particularly effective in the years in which the government could not officially work for the Italianness of Trentino and Julian Venetia, given its alliance with Austria. From that period also date the assistance to emigrants, in which the s. wrote pages of high merit, as well as the establishment of many Italian schools abroad, especially in North Africa and in Latin America. Gravely damaged by the Second World War, the "Dante" is today in a phase of clear recovery, despite the failure to reopen its committees in several countries.