Dante and his peers believed that:

Dante and his peers believed that there was indeed an afterlife, and one's actions while present in human form on the Earth would be judged after death and determine one's eternal fate. 

The three steps before modern english were indo-european, germanic, and old english. as peoples moved around the eurasian continent, their languages changed. throughout the ages, the languages became more specialized. as english has many germanic influences, it is easy to see how this was one of the forebears. also, old english was one of the main ancestors of the modern language, spoken in the 5th through about the 13th centuries.