Antonio Patuelli today in the Dante dialogue in Ravenna, next to Dante's Tomb, stated among other things that the Divine Comedy is first and foremost a manual of fourteenth-century ethics that is both Catholic and secular.
More relevant today than ever is where Dante, in the sixth canto of Purgatory, referring to Florence, criticizes the instability of "law, money, and office, and custom": the uncertainty of law and sometimes even the retroactivity of the new rules contrasts with the solid and classical rules of Roman law which Dante, in the same Canto, apologias in the name of the codifier Justinian (portrayed only in Ravenna in the Basilica of San Vitale). In this Dante is also a precursor of modern constitutionalism.
Uncertainty about the currency and the prospects for interest rates is still a cause of economic instability, when the solidity of the currency is one of the prerequisites for investments and development. Dante, in the ninth Canto of Paradise, in another invective against his beloved Florence, defines the Florentine florin as a "cursed flower", the currency which was then increasingly replacing the Byzantine gold solid which the Ravenna mint had also minted for a long time.
Dante - concluded President Patuelli - finally criticizes the continuous changes in laws and rules in general and the habituation to fashions, instead of referring to principles and high ideals. These are always very timely warnings.