Hardly anything heats up Italian tempers more reliably than Dante Alighieri.
Not only is he probably the best-known Italian, he is Italy's literary national saint.
Reading the Divine Comedy is compulsory in school classes, there is a holiday in his memory, and the 700th anniversary of the poet's death was celebrated with all honors in 2021.
The Italian Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano could therefore be sure that his statement caused a stir.
At a Milan meeting of his party, the "Brothers of Italy", he declared Dante the "founder of right-wing thought" in Italy.
The reactions were huge, but probably not in the way Sangiuliano had calculated.
The Duce with the poet's laurel ornaments
Green Left MP Angelo Bonelli said even Sangiuliano should know that Dante, forced into exile in 1302, championed issues not typical of Giorgia Meloni's right wing;
Raffaella Paita from the Italia Viva party ironically wrote on Twitter that Sangiuliano apparently had problems with his knowledge of history and Meloni with the choice of her ministers.
Photo montages abound on social media showing the Duce with the poet's famous laurel headdress, and posts that, in reference to the widespread trivialization of Mussolini, state: "Dante also did good deeds after all." In fact, it wasn't the first attempt to politicize Dante.
During Fascism, Mussolini's followers stylized the Duce to Dante's enigmatic "Veltro" from the Divine Comedy (Inferno, Canto 1, verse 105), which will cast out evil.
On Monday, Sangiuliano backtracked in a meek letter to Corriere della Sera.
The culture minister admits that the political categories of "right" and "left" naturally arose centuries after Dante's death.
One could describe Dante as "conservative", but his profound world of thought is not suitable for a "joke" and his ideas are not so easy to transfer to today's world.
According to Sangiuliano, if his “provocation” led to one or the other picking up Dante's writings again, then that was “a good result”.
If the culture minister isn't wrong.
Should he take provocations as reading recommendations, Italy can expect further debates.