Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno

Dante Alighieri was perhaps the greatest writer that the West has ever produced. Few men could ever be considered to be worthy of being described as his rival. As impressive the works of Homer, Shakespeare or Tolkien are, they cannot similarly satisfy our internal angst about the big questions of justification and the hereafter.

Our Western conceptualisations of hell, purgatory and heaven have possibly been shaped more by Dante than any text of the Bible. Dante using his inherited Catholic tradition and literary licence, transmits a message of mystery, awe and urgency.

He is by far our best literary expression of The Four Last Things (Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell) ever written. Yet, one will find little resemblance between his masterpiece, the Divine Comedy, specifically Inferno, and our modern pop-culture caricature of flames and pitchforks.

Dante shaped not only the Italian language, but the concept of, and possibilities of literature. His, was by no means the first notable work of Western literature, however Dante captures the imagination of the individual in a way that Turoldus, in his 11th century epic poem “Song of Roland”, never could.

This is due to his effective use of Christian analogy, which allows us to encounter the divine. Dante’s work, sometimes falsely attributed to the so-called Renaissance, is in fact the culmination of the underappreciated High Middle Ages.

Traditional depiction of Dante Alighieri

The early 14th century world in which Dante occupied was in many ways little different to our own. People went about their daily lives, most often concerned about relatively trivial things and occasionally pondered the unknown.

The great questions of where do we come from and where are we going, were no less relevant then, than they are today. The only difference between us and our ancestors, being that they were much more open to the transcendent.

It is worth noting that a generation after Dantes death, the Great Plague befell Europe and in the space of a a handful of years, over half of her population would succumb to a painful death. It is in this context of disease, death and pondering the afterlife, that Dante’s works were first appreciated and rose to fame.

Many say that modern man, in a world of 4G and “reality” television, has no time for such big questions. The opposite is true. Modern man has an almost endless appetite of curiosity. For it was curiosity that allowed him to split the atom and it was curiosity that took him to the moon. It just so happens that today he often channels his curiosity into and searches for meaning in all the wrong places. Genuine fulfilment does not come from the sexual organs or the tastebuds, but rather from the mind and the heart fulfilling their intended purpose.

Gustave Doré’s depiction of Canto IX Inferno

The answers to understanding the nature of virtue, hope and love cannot be found at the end of a microscope, much less than at the end of an empty bottle. Despite the harm done to Western man at the hands of the proponents of rationalistic positivism and critical theory relativism, this longing for meaning and transcendence can never be replaced by the mere material.

There is no conclusive material demonstrable evidence for the existence of hell and therefore modern man thinks himself excused from having to contemplate the inescapable negative consequences of his actions. The idea of inferno is seen as either irrelevant, unjust or implausible. Modern man in his arrogance thinks that he must be the first to attain such an enlightened epiphany. He fails to understand that since the days of Christ, St. Augustine of Hippo and Dante, men have sought to deal with the question of how a loving God could inflict on an individual, the horrors of hell.

Dante over the course of his Divine Comedy, split into Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso, conveys the truth of a loving, just God. It is in the interest of freedom that we must voluntarily choose to spend eternity with Him in paradise and it is in the interest of justice that those who do not, choose to send themselves to Inferno. At the heart of the existence of hell and heaven, is that God is perfectly just. Human justice in contrast, while in some areas greatly improved in recent centuries, can never be perfect. God, however, never lets evil go unpunished and good go unrewarded.

This will no doubt be seen by many modern secularised Christians as being intrinsically authoritarian or paternalistic. However, we should understand that it is our divine filiation, -recognising that God is our Father, and that we are thus His children and that it is this relationship, being created in His image and likeness-, which gives us our innate human dignity.

We naturally recoil at the injustices of our modern world, and we know that suffering without meaning is the worst suffering imaginable. Dante’s message can be condensed into one simple idea; we can suffer in this world for Christ or suffer in the next for eternity. It is our mortality that gives his message its urgency. What happens in this finite life, determines our infinite afterlife.

Gustave Doré’s depiction of Dante and Virgil approaching the entrance to Hell.

It is for this reason that in the opening of Dantes masterwork, in Canto III we read written above the gates of hell, the now infamous and foreboding words; “All hope abandon, ye who enter here”. The choice is permeant, its consequences echoing in eternity. Dantes work is therefor not only a personal reflection on a life lived, but a public call to conversion and penance, while one still has opportunity to do so.

This worldview could not be more different to the later Calvinist protestant doctrine of double predestination or the modern agnostic nihilism expressed in the maxims like; “live in the moment” or “live free and die young”.

Dante describes hell as a series of ever descending circles of increasing depravity and vice. he draws heavily on not only Catholic tradition as well as Greek and Roman mythological symbolism. It is this integrating of, and attempting to reconcile, classical antiquity with Catholic truth that gives rise to his iconic guide Virgil.

Gustave Doré’s depiction of Canto XXI Inferno

Virgil is Dantes personal hero, the poet par-excellence of Roman antiquity, he was responsible for such masterworks as the Aeneid and Georgica. The divine comedy is Dantes story and therefore he interacts with his heroes as only he could dream. He sees Virgil not only as a guide through inferno (and later Purgatorio) but in general as a guide of how a man of integrity, a nobel poet in the classical tradition should comport himself.

Dante has a profound respect for Virgil as a man of intelligence and virtue, but must reconcile this with the fact that Virgil was a pagan, dying only a couple dozen years before the birth of Christ.

It is for this reason that Virgil can be a suitable guide though hell, not only having written about Hades himself, more than a millennium before, but rightfully residing in ante-inferno. Here, those that are righteous, but not baptised, live free from pain and suffering, but experience a certain sadness, being unable to approach God in all his glory.

It is worth noting that for Dante, still alive, his journey to see God enthroned in all his majesty, must take from ante-inferno to heaven, through inferno and Purgatorio. There, he will see, to varying degrees, the alternative awaiting those that use their free will to reject God.

In Inferno we can gain an immense insight into the worldview of Catholic Middle Ages. We see how in a poetic fashion, the punishment always matches the crime. Furthermore to illustrate and drive home the reality of this point, he names real people (including some Popes), declaring them to be in either heaven, purgatory or hell.

Inferno features ante-inferno and seven circles where the seven deadly sins are punished. They are in order, lust, gluttony, greed, wrath, heresy, violence, fraud and worst of all betrayal. Circles are subdivided and punishments vary on the specific nature of the sins.

Lust is punished by never-ending cold gusts of wind. Here we find such historical and mythical figures as the couple Paolo and Francesca, Helen of Troy and Cleopatra of Egypt. Lust while desiring of eternity on hell, is seen as the most understandable of sins, on account of its connection to the natural passions.

After lust come gluttony. Here, Dante describes how the guilty are rained on with dirt and sewage and Cerberus, the three headed dog of greek mythological, keeps watch on the dammed souls.

Eugène Delacroix’s painting of Dante and Virgil in Hell.

The fourth circle of hell pertains to the sin of greed. Here the souls must push boulders of rock up a hill all day, only to see them fall back to the base of the hill come night, starting the process again repeatedly without end.

Worst than greed is the sin of wrath. This fifth circle of hell features the crossing of the river Sticks into a deeper and more pernicious part of hell. Crossing the river they must fend off the ravenous attacks of the sinful souls, trapped in ceaseless rage for eternity. On the other side of the river they encounter the gates of the city of Dis.

Here, Virgil is powerless to help Dante as the gates are guarded by demonic spirits, with only the worst of the worst sinners lying on the other side. Just as it seems that their journey must come to an abrupt end, an angel for heaven appears and opens the gates, much to the frustration of the evil spirits.

Ezio Anichini’s depiction of Dantes Inferno, canto IX (The Opening of the gates of Dis).

Behind the gate lies the next circle, where those guilty of heresy are condemned and punished to reside in a graveyard with tombstones covered in flames.

Dante as a faithful Catholic sees heresy as a crime against ones community but more importantly against God. Virgil warns Dante that he should avoid speaking with or even making eye contact with the souls in these lowest of lowest circles of hell. Here Dante sees Pope Anastasius II and takes pity on him.

What could be worse than heresy you might ask? Well the answer is violence, both against innocents, against themselves, against nature and against God. Here the guilty should find a boiling river of blood and arrow shooting centaurs awaiting them. Notable souls include Alexander the great and Attila the Hun. Other surprising inhabitants include those who freely chose to kill themselves, those who commit sodomy (a crime against nature) and those who commit blasphemy (a crime against God). These last two must contend with endless plains of burning sand and hellfire.

Gustave Doré’s depiction of Canto XV Inferno

The eight circle is home to those who commit fraud. Their guard or rather torturer is a mythical creature with the upper torso of a man and lower torso of a scorpion, appropriate symbolism of deception. There, Dante encounters many forms of fraud and manipulation, ranging from sexual exploiters to gamblers to forgers to fortune tellers. The worst of these are those with responsibility for the salvation of souls but abdicate this responsibility. Most noteworthy of these are Pope Nicholas III, who was Dantes contemporary and accused of simony (corruption involving the selling of positions in the Church). As the saying goes “corruptio optimi pessima”.

Those mentioned in this eighth circle are numerous, but a common trend of false prophets (having their heads bent backwards 180 degree) and politicians (being dropped by demons in boiling tar) can be seen. They range from the pharisee Caiaphas, to those greeks guilty of deceiving the city of Troy (as a side note Dante continuously sides with Trojans who as the myth goes founded Rome after the downfall of the great city).

The final and deepest circle of hell is reserved for the lowest of the low, those guilty of betrayal. In stark contrast to the preceding circles, one will find no fire and brimstone here, but rather a cold, desolate and miserable place. The guilty souls are frozen to their necks in the lake of kokytos. Among them one can find Cain (who murdered his brother Abel), Antenor (a Trojan turncoat), Brutus (conspirator against Julius Caesar) and Ganelon (an 8th century nobleman who betrayed Charlemagne’s army and Roland to the Muslims after the siege of Saragossa).

Gustave Doré’s depiction Canto XXXIV Inferno: Dante and Virgil confronted with the sight of a sad defeated satan.

The common trend in these crimes is the betrayal of trust, the sin being aggravated by how much those betrayed had reason to trust the offender. It is therefore without surprise the most notorious betrayer of all time, so much so that his name has become sonorous with betrayal, Judas Iscariot, betrayer of Christ can be found in the lowest and coldest part of hell, accompanied by Satan himself.

The devil carries no pitch fork, no evil laugh can be heard. Instead Dante depicts Satan as a sad lonely spirit, a frozen tear descending down from his eye, condemned to eternal defeat. He is condemned to suffer the consequences of his satanic refusal to serve and ponder the resurrection of Christ, forgiveness of sins, and path to salvation available for all men.

Niall Buckley

October 2020