Dante’s Divine Comedy, Purgatorio: Canto 1 – The Cleansing Begins

Canto 1

It is just before dawn on Easter Sunday, April 10, 1300 when Dante and Virgil arrive on the shores of the island-mountain of Purgatory (see Purgatory Introduction). Upon making ground they encounter Cato - a Roman military leader who lived from 95-46 B.C. and  who committed suicide after he was defeated in the rebellion against Julius Caesar. Although a pagan, a suicide, and a traitor, Cato was considered quite virtuous (symbolized by four stars [=cardinal virtues] that light up his face like the sun). Cato is honored in the Comedy with both escape from Hell and a role in Purgatory similar to Charon’s in the Inferno.

Despite fine treatment by Dante the author, however, Cato is not impressed with Dante the character.

Dante has exited the Inferno, but he is not yet ready to begin his ascent of this, the “second kingdom given the soul of man wherein to purge its guilt and so grow worthy to ascend to Heaven.” The idea of needing cleansing to achieve worthiness is heavy in this canto. In his “dark flight” Dante was just escaped “the eternal prison of the dead . . . the eternal valley which lies forever blind in darkest night.” And the residue of the Inferno remains upon him.

Thus, when the poets meet Cato, Purgatory’s gatekeeper on the shoreline, he is upset by Dante’s appearance and even thinks he may be a soul escaped from the Inferno itself (whether he thought this impossible or merely “against the rules” is unclear). Virgil assures him that Dante is not yet among the dead, and that by “Heaven is the power and the command” given for him to continue his journey.

Cato immediately allows them to continue but admonished Virgil to clean Dante up before they step foot on the mountain (to remove “all trace of the pit”). At the edge of the water Virgil plucks a reed out and it is instantly replaced by a new one. This he binds about Dante’s waist (replacing the Cord he through to Geryon), and it is never mentioned again. Virgil also washes Dante’s face -”lifting my tear-stained cheeks to him, and there he made me clean, revealing my true color under the residues of Hell’s black air.” Finally clean, Virgil leads Dante through  a cool morning breeze and over dew-covered grass to “show him those whose suffering makes them clean.”

The imagery here is almost startling when compared to that of the Inferno. Everything here is bright and wet and clean – the opposite of the dark, dry, dirty pit of the Inferno. The point is difficult to miss – here there is cleansing from sin. Note that all the cleansing comes from an external source and act – Dante does nothing but submit. This may seem a strange introduction to the climb of suffering they are about to embark upon – but it is important to remember that this suffering is not punishment per se – it is simply the necessary final step(s!) in the application of Christ’s work: the final infusion of sanctifying grace that actually makes the soul prepared for Heaven.

Here, as in life, the soul must do what it does not want to do in order to become what it wants to be.

Dante’s Divine Comedy, Purgatorio: Introduction

Introduction

It is Easter morning in the year 1300 when and Virgil and Dante emerge from the pit of the Inferno. Following Dante’s imagery and afterlife structure, we might guess that what comes next is a walk through Heaven – but this is a Catholic poem!

The second book of Dante’s Divine Comedy follows the writer’s journey through Purgatory, pictured here as a great mountain (corresponding to the great pit of the Inferno, and, as said earlier, also formed by Satan’s fall). The title comes from the Latin “purgare” which means “to make clean, to purify.” The Catholic Encyclopedia defines Purgatory as “a place or condition of temporal punishment for those who, departing this life in God’s grace, are, not entirely free from venial faults, or have not fully paid the satisfaction due to their transgressions.” This, then, is the mountain of purification.

Although Purgatory is not an accepted condition /place / state by most Protestants and Eastern Orthodox, this part of the poem can still, I believe, be beneficial to members of these traditions.  First a few words on the Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory itself.

The Doctrine of Purgatory

It is important at the outset to realize that although Purgatory stands between Heaven and Hell, it is not some third salvific state with regard to one’s final destination. Purgatory can be seen as the ante-room of Heaven – a “washroom” if you will, where saints get cleaned up before they walk into the perfectly clean house. Unlike Hell, which is suffering for sins that will never be purged, Purgatory is a place of purging from sin via suffering. Salvation is no more at question in Purgatory than it is in Heaven, for only the saved may enter here.

To understand this doctrine and practice of the Church, it is necessary to understand that sin has a double consequence. Grave sin deprives us of communion with God and therefore makes us incapable of eternal life, the privation of which is called the “eternal punishment” of sin. On the other hand every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures, which must be purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called Purgatory. This purification frees one from what is called the “temporal punishment” of sin. These two punishments must not be conceived of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without, but as following from the very nature of sin. A conversion which proceeds from a fervent charity can attain the complete purification of the sinner in such a way that no punishment would remain. (CCC 1472)

Now, some may ask, “Isn’t Christ’s sacrifice enough to affect our cleansing from sin?” Yes, it is – but how that cleansing is accomplished is another question with another answer. Roman Catholics make a distinction between being forgiven for sin and avoiding suffering for it. In the Bible, God forgave people without removing the consequences of their sin, and they often suffered for it (e.g., Num. 20:12; 2 Sam. 12:13-14; cf. 1 Pet. 3:17 and 4:15). Thus, says the Roman Catholic, some sins (specifically venial sins – in seeming contrast to the Bible examples cited) must be removed through suffering before one enters Heaven. This is how it is defined in The Catechism of the Catholic Church: “purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven,” which is experienced by those “who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified . . . this final purification of the elect . . . is entirely different from the punishment of the damned” (CCC 1030-31).

The specific doctrine of Purgatory is not very detailed. It does not seem to have been construed as a “place” until the 13th Century, but the early church has been said to assume the doctrine of purgatorial suffering / cleansing to the extent that it affirmed the efficacy of prayers for the dead. Further, some early commentaries on Scripture explain various passages with reference to Purgatory (e.g., Mt. 12:32; 1 Cor. 3:11-15). Luther himself took some time before deciding to rid himself of the doctrine, and there are Protestants and Eastern Orthodox who have affirmed similar teachings regarding some middle state between earthly life and the heavenly afterlife. The exact duration, experience, and nature of Purgatory, however, are left fairly open even in Roman Catholic thinking.

Purgatory for Protestants?

Although Luther did not deny the doctrine, Purgatory is almost universally  (but not completely) denied by Protestants today Dante’s vision, however, is not without value even to those who disbelieve in Purgatory per se. Peter Kreeft once said that if you believe that between your initial salvation in this life and your glorified state in Heaven that some transformation (i.e., purification) takes place, you believe in Purgatory. That’s probably a far too optimistic appraisal, but it does contain some truth. Clearly, believers are not kept from ever performing future sins on the day they first believe (as the Apostle John tells us in 1 Jn. 1:8). Just as clearly, there will be no stain of sin in Heaven (as the same apostle tells us in Rev. 21:27). Thus, sanctification is required to enter Heaven, and even non-Catholics agree that sanctification involves suffering.

This generally seems to be the teaching of Scripture (e.g., Luke 9:23; Acts 14:22; Rom. 5:3–5; 2 Cor. 4:7-12; etc.), and it answers the question of why God would allow suffering after salvation from sin (see Christians in Tribulation). Further, to say that suffering at the end of the sanctification process invalidates the sufficiency of Christ’s atonement seems the same as saying it does so at the beginning or in the middle. Suffering for sanctification, however, need not be seen as taking away from the sufficiency of Christ’s work in the least. Rather Christ’s work can be said to be the efficient cause of sanctification which uses the instrumental cause of suffering to effect it (whether or not further sanctification is possible after this life is another debate).

This view of the purpose of our lives also helps resolve the oft-perceived disparity between the doctrine of salvation by God’s grace and the salvific effects produced by good works, it helps explain temporal punishments for evil deeds, the afterlife judgments of believers, as well as the different levels of reward in Heaven and degrees of suffering in Hell – which the Bible (and Dante, of course) also teaches.

Theological considerations aside, one of the reasons for Dante’s continued popularity is due to the fact that his poem functions on multiple levels. It is a travel story with theological themes of course – but it is also a clear moral tale. Thus, the reader is able to abstract from Dante’s specific theological beliefs many truths that apply even to the non-Catholic or, even, the non-Christian. The Inferno, for example, was populated by those suffering for their own choices – something that happens in this life as well. Purgatory sends much the same message. The ultimate destination of each sufferer, though, is radically different. The former suffer punishment for their deeds, while the latter suffer because of their deeds – in order to prepare for their reward.

Ciardi says of the Inferno that it is a “remarkable amalgam of the Nichomachean Ethics and Cicero . . . [with] little that is peculiarly Christian” (Introduction to Purgatorio, in DC p.274). In the same way, even as one who is not committed to a tradition that affirms Purgatory, I can well appreciate the fact that, one way or another, God prepares believers for Heaven in a special way that involves our own experiences. So whether one sees this mountain as a middle ground between Heaven and Hell, or a commentary on the results of our actions in this life, Dante’s Purgatorio retains its relevance.

Purgatory in the Purgatorio

The Purgatorio tells of the middle ground between the Inferno and the Paradiso (Hell and Paradise/Heaven, respectively). As Hell is darkness and Paradise light, Purgatory requires both day and night. Dante and Virgil will spend four days and three nights on the mountains slopes, circling up through seven terraces corresponding to the seven deadly sins (and, in many cases, suffering alongside the souls encountered there).

As the Inferno began with an ante-chamber, Mt. Purgatory begins with a shoreline containing souls who repented very late in life, and now must wait to begin their journey up the mountain. As with the Inferno, particular trials and sufferings in Purgatory correspond to the sins that characterized the soul’s life; however, here the scenes are far more calm and serene. Though suffering, these souls retain joy and hope because they know what their sufferings are leading toward (cf. Rom. 8:18 and 2 Cor. 4:17). At the top of the mountain is the Garden of Eden – the ultimate earthly paradise, and the gateway to the presence of God in Paradise.

But before all this comes the sea.

Dante’s Divine Comedy, Inferno: Canto 33, Circle 9 – From Satan to the Stars

Canto 33: Circle 9 – Judecca

 “Now see the face of Dis! This is the place where you must arm your soul against all dread.”

Here is the bottom, the last circle of the last circle of Hell: Judecca. Not to be confused with any personal or national terms referring to Judaism, Judecca is named after Judas Iscariot – the worst of human sinners, who betrayed the ultimate benefactor, Jesus Christ. Thus, this region punishes Treachery against Benefactors, where sinners here are completely sealed under the ice in various postures – some seated, others upside down, some twisted in upon themselves. Because of their state, Dante cannot converse with, or name, any of them. The real interest here is Satan himself.

Virgil announces their arrival with a distorted hymn originally written to celebrate the coming of the True Cross which is sung on Good Friday at the uncovering of the cross in liturgical worship. Virgil adds “of Hell” to the opening line, “On march the banners of the king.” His sarcasm points out the fact that the king of Hell is, in actuality, going nowhere – for Satan himself is frozen in the center of the lake of ice.

Satan is not completely underneath the ice, however. Frozen to his waist, the beast is free to move his limbs and wings. In fact, it is the beating of his six bat-like wings that causes the wind which freezes the waters. Even in Hell, Satan continually seeks to fly up to God’s rightful throne, thus imprisoning himself in the frozen remains of all the world’s tears and pain.

So far Dante has been walking behind Virgil to avoid these gale force winds, but now Virgil steps aside. Dante’s reaction to seeing Satan firsthand is “a terror that cannot be told.” Indeed, Dante will say nothing during this canto (nor, interestingly, will Satan. Unlike Milton, Dante is not interested in what the Devil has to say).

Dante describes “The Emperor of the Universe of Pain” as enormous – with arms alone that are larger in comparison to the giants that surround Cocytus than these giants are larger than Dante himself (probably making Satan tower above Dante as high as the Empire State Building). Satan is also hideous: a  beast with three faces that merge into one head in a disgusting parody of the Trinity. The middle face is red, while the right face is “something between white and bile,” and the third is “the color of those who live along the banks of the Nile” (black). Each of his six eyes weep.

If all this was not horrific enough, each of Satan’s three mouths chew forever upon a sinner. The black face chews Brutus and the whitish face chews Cassius (both traitors to Julius Caesar – the greatest king of the greatest world empire). The red face, which tears more than chews, tortures Judas Iscariot – traitor to the King of All Creation. Judas, who left the last supper to betray Jesus Christ with his mouth, is chewed in Satan’s mouth forever at his paradoxical last meal.

At this sight, Virgil announces that Dante has seen all there is to see, and it is time to depart. Virgil’s words of encouragement, quoted above, are appropriate – for the only way out of Hell is to climb down Satan himself (“there is no way to rise above such evil”). Once again, Virgil takes on the responsibility for their transition and, grasping Dante, proceeds to lower them down Satan’s shaggy coat. Reaching the point where Satan’s thigh and haunch meet (apparently past some fissure in the ice and rock), Virgil turns them around, and continues climbing upside down (which at first makes Dante think they are climbing back up into Hell). On the other side of an opening in the rock, Virgil sets Dante on the rim and leaps up. Dante’s disorientation is compounded when he sees Satan’s feet dangling upwards below him.

Dante is told to begin a long and arduous climb, for time is running short. It is also daylight again, although diffused in this small underground passage (formed, as we are about to find out, by the erosion of a little stream from the mountain – this is Lethe, the river of forgetfulness which washes away memory of sin from those undergoing purification – sweeping sin into Hell). Along the way, Virgil explains what has happened. When they passed Satan’s mid-point, the two travellers had reached the center of the earth where gravity reverses. They are now, therefore, climbing up – up to the other side of the world. Above them is a sea which nearly covers the other hemisphere of the earth (and thus it is daytime here).

Virgil explains how this topography came into being. When Satan fell from Heaven, he smashed into the Earth directly opposite Jerusalem (the place of salvation) – forming the cavern of the Inferno itself, and pushing out a corresponding mountain rising from the sea above it. It is to this mountain that Dante and Virgil will now travel. Dante and Virgil climb without rest for another full day, thus (subtracting 12 hours for the hemisphere switch), emerging from the place of the dead early Easter morning.

It is pre-dawn, and Dante once again sees the stars.

Dante’s Divine Comedy, Inferno: Cantos 31-32, Circle 9 – The Lake of Ice

Canto 31 – Elemental Spirits

 “Where the instrument of intelligence is added to brute power and evil will, mankind is powerless in its own defense.”

As he and Virgil ascend the containing ridge of Malebolge, Dante thinks he sees the towers of a city before him, and then hears a tremendous trumpet blast. In order to save Dante some shock when he learns the truth, Virgil explains what they really are: Giants who guard the Ninth Circle – Cocytus, the final hole of ice. Around its perimeter is a wall of stone approximately 75 feet high around which stand the giant guardians of biblical and classical lore. These giants are both natural and supranatural – elemental brutes whose intelligence and strength only compounds their potential evil– to the point that they can threaten the gods themselves. Thus, they are kept here guarding the final pit of Hell.

The first of these giants is Nimrod – the biblical first king of Babylon who attempted to build a tower to heaven. God’s punishment for such an undertaking was to confuse the languages of the people (also affecting the obedience of the people whose original mandate was to spread out over the earth). As the poets approach, Nimrod babbles (the word itself reminiscent of Babylon) at them incoherently, to which Virgil responds with a series of insults which also reveal that it was Nimrod whose trumpet was sounding when they topped the rise.

Next come giants from classical mythology. Ephialtes and Briareus, who warred against the gods of Olympus (a pagan version of Nimrod’s activity), are mentioned (though Briareus remains unseen) and then Antaeus, the son of Neptune and Tellus (the earth) who Hercules killed. Because Antaeus did not take part in any rebellion against the gods, he is unchained and is able to aid the poets on in their journey. After Virgil explains that Dante could help Antaeus remain memorable in the world above, the giant willingly lowers the poets onto the frozen lake of Cocytus.

Canto 32 – Caina and Antenora

“It is no easy undertaking, I say, to describe the bottom of the Universe.”

At the bottom of Hell we find a lake of ice, not fire. This may seem out of place, but there are both biblical and metaphysical reasons for this. Biblically, we need to remember that “Hell” here is not the final state of the damned. This is the holding place of sinful shades until the resurrection and final perdition. The throwing of Satan and Hell (“the grave” or “Hades”) itself into the Lake of Fire referenced in Revelation 20 is still future. Metaphysically, the ice is approprite – for it is the closest physical representation of nothingness. Cold, like silence, has no substance. Cold is merely the absence of heat, just as silence is merely the absence of sound. At the bottom of Hell the poets are at the farthest point from God, and therefore farthest from being itself.

The single icy sheet of Lake Cocytus is divided up into four concentric areas (discernible only by the positions of the sinners kept in the ice), each punishing the sins of treachery against those whom one is bound by special ties. The well of Hell bears the weight of the entire inverted cone above it – although all sin is treachery (denial of love) in some sense, these special forms of treachery are the final, lowest forms of sin. Devoid of human warmth, these sinners will suffer forever in cold. Turning from God (who is ultimate love), they will spend eternity frozen in the coldest darkness with the most treacherous of all beings, Satan himself.

The first area is Caina – named after Cain, the first murderer who was also a killer of an innocent family member. Thus, here are punished those who were treacherous to their family. These shades freeze forever up to “the part at which they blushed for shame –  frozen in the ice up to their necks, where “bowed toward the ice, each of them testifies to the cold with his chattering mouth, to his heart’s grief, with tears that flood forever from his eyes. ” Dante calls this “the place of pain,” and says that those in it would have been better off being born sheep or goats (literalizing the metaphor Jesus uses to describe saints and sinners at the judgment in Matthew 25).

The next region is Antenora – named after Antenor who betrayed his city to the Greeks. Here are the Treacherous Against Country. These have only their heads above the ice, and therefore cannot move at all. Dante inadvertently kicks one ion the head and then treats its owner to a savagery unseen in him toward anyone prior when the shade will not reveal his identity. After tearing out fistfuls of the man’s hair Dante discovers his identity from another, and then is given a quick census of several others in the same predicament. He also comes upon two shades who are trapped in the same hole, one of whom is being bitten by the other.  Dante asks for the reason for this activity, and the Canto ends.

Canto 33 – Ptolomea

In answer to Dante’s inquiry in Canto 32, he is told the story of Count Ugolino and Archbishop Ruggieri. Ugolino was himself a co-conspirator and traitor with Ruggieri, but Ruggieri himself betrayed Ugolino and imprisoned him, along with his innocent sons and grandsons. A year alter the prison was sealed up and Ugolino was forced to watch his offspring die of starvation. Then, overcome by his own famine, Ugolino died (some interpret his words to mean that he ate their dead bodies). Ugolino can barely finish his horrific tale, so great is his grief, before he resumes gnawing through the neck of Ruggieri. Once again we see the law of retribution at work – the one who caused starvation to starve is now serving as food.

Dante and Virgil then enter Ptolomea, named after Ptolomaeus of Maccabees who murdered his father-in-law at a banquet (cf. 1 Macc. 16:11-17). Here, then, are where the Treacherous against Hospitality are punished. These lie supine in the ice, their faces are nearly covered with ice and their tears freeze over their eyes causing them to lose even the ability to weep. Dante, though numb from the cold, feels a wind blowing across the ice. Dante inquires as to where this wind could be coming from, given that there is no heat here. Virgil declines to explain the wind, as Dante will find its source soon enough.

Dante speaks with a soul trapped in the ice, swearing (it seems) against his own soul’s consignment to the last rim of the ice that he will free the sinner’s eyes for temporary relief. In response Dante is told that this region is so “privileged” that souls may fall into it before the death of their bodies (which are then animated by demons). Dante then betrays his promise (but not his oath, as he will indeed be descending to Hell’s last rim in mere moments), deciding that “to be rude to him was a courtesy” (the treacherous deserve treachery) and moves on, leaving the sinner “bathing his filthy soul in the eternal glacier of Cocytus for his foul crime.”

While treachery of any kind is sinful, we see here that there remains in Dante’s mind some degrees of its vileness. While family and nationality are to some extent non-chosen, and therefore the expectations of fidelity concerning them are to some extent non-chosen, to act treacherously toward guests is a completely free violation of an obligatory (if only implied) promise to do good. What comes next deserves its own section, for it is treachery of the worst kind. At the bottom of the frozen well, completely covered in ice, are punished those who did evil toward those who not only did good to them, but did so without obligation of any kind.

It is the absolute bottom – the frozen, silent realm of Satan himself.

Dante’s Divine Comedy, Inferno: Cantos 28-30, Circle 8, Ditches 9-10 – Dividers and Deceivers

Canto 28

“An eye for an eye to all eternity, thus is the law of Hell observed in me.”

Here Dante finds some of the most revolting in all of Hell’s punishments. Observing the law of retribution (as eloquently stated by one of the sufferers, quoted above), these sinners are punished for schism – the rending of two that should be one. This is the only place in the poem that Dante mentions this law, here named “Retribution” (“contrapsso”), a term that is found in Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics (but without the eye-for-an-eye qualification).

In one of the clearest examples of Dante’s form, these schismatics are themselves divided by a demon with a long sword who cuts them to pieces as they pass by. Each round of the circle brings healing to the sinners, only to have them reach the demon and be cleaved yet again.

Three different types of schismatics are brought out here – the first (and possibly most infamous) is Muhammad, along with his son-in-law, Ali. Interestingly, in the Islamic Koran Muhammadwas said to have been transported through the seven heavens by the angel Gabriel – Dante seems to have reversed the direction of his supernatural trip. The Prophet of Islam is considered by Dante to be a religious schismatic, said to have divided, oddly, Christianity and Islam. Why is he not simply consigned to Circle 6 with other false teachers? Several theories are put forth: In medieval Christian thinking, Islam was viewed as a usurper and sower of religious divisiveness. Islam began as a religion of schism from its own culture. Further, the succession of Muhammad was itself a acuse of division within Islam itself – giving rise to Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Assuming Dante did not see Muhammadas a Christian heretic (along the lines of an “urban legend” going around at the time), he may have placed him with the schismatics for the many conflicts which Muhammad’s religion had already caused in the world (or perhaps prophetically seeing a future where nearly the entire world would be divided by Islam). It could also be that Islamic religion approves of a particular brand of monotheism and other distortions of Christian doctrine and biblical history (probably influenced by heretical Christian and Jewish teachers that Muhammad came into contact with prior to his taking the title Prophet). More on this HERE.

Though shared by many of those consigned to Hell, Dante makes use of this sinner’s prophetic powers by having Muhammad foretell the future of Fra Dolcino, the leader of an early 14th century heretical group that shared all things (including women) between them. Muhammad warns him to “check his groceries” before heading to the hills (where, in reality, his group was besieged and starved out before Fra Dolcino was burned at the stake).

The others are political and familial dividers. The latter has his head cut off and swings it like a lantern to find his way around the circle, and held it aloft to speak with Dante and Virgil. This imagery is among the most riveting and revolting in the Inferno, but there is worse to come.

Cantos 28-29

“There, High Justice, sacred ministress of the first Father, reigns eternally over the falsifiers in their distress.”

Pausing to look for someone he thought he might know in the ninth ditch, Dante is prodded along by Virgil who tells him the man he was looking for was there insulting him, but Dante missed him because of his talk with the beheaded shade. But their time is short (it is now noon on Holy Saturday), and they must move on. (Virgil notes that the ninth ditch is 22 miles around, and Dante will be told that the next is eleven. According to Ciardi this measurement is merely poetic and cannot be coherently mapped.)Their next stop, ditch 10, is the last of this Circle.

Dante devotes two cantos to the final pit of Malebolge – the ditch of the Falsifiers. Here we find afflictions and torments for all of the senses: painful and itching skin diseases, wailing, putrid smells of rotting flesh and infections, violent attacks, and disgusting sights. Those who corrupted the social order with distortions of sensible things are now having all that can be sensed about them corrupted.

In Canto 28 we meet Falsifiers of Things (alchemists), and in Canto 29 Falsifiers of Persons (impersonators), of Money (counterfeiters), and of Words (liars – including Potiphar’s wife, and Sinon, who convinced the Greeks to accept the Trojan Horse). Dante’s description of them begins with some classic tales of madness, to which he – unfavorably – compares the insanity he sees below him. One man he is speaking to is savaged by another shade who runs off dragging his body off. Two others who are lying next to one another, eternally immobile, become irritated with one another and begin beating each other with their lone working arms while berating each other for their sins.

This blame theme has been seen here and there throughout the journey. It is interesting how the various shades have been straightforward in their descriptions of, and admissions of, guilt. Dante seems to have them unable to do otherwise, but to keep a more typically human touch to the scenes, the sinners often point out each other’s sins as well. While we do not see repentant sinners in Hell, they are certainly aware of each other’s faults. This principle is illustrated vividly here, but also in the claim of one “husk of sin” that if he were able to move even an inch per century he would travel the entire circle (said to be eleven miles, and thus about 70,000,000 years) just to watch one of his enemies suffer along with him.

Dante is astonished by the sight of these two fighting, and has to be shamed out of his staring by Virgil who says, “the wish to hear such things is debasing.” Dante, though, is so ashamed of his interest that Virgil immediately consoles him – assuring him that “less shame would wash away a greater fault than yours.” With these and other comforting words, Virgil moves them on to the last of Hell’s circles.

Dante’s Divine Comedy, Inferno: Cantos 26-27, Circle 8, Ditch 8 – Two Evil Counselors

Canto 26 

And going our lonely way through that dread land
among the crags and crevices of the cliff
the foot could make no way without the hand
I mourned among those rocks,
and I mourn again
when memory returns to what I saw . . .

An unusual canto, this. Dante begins with his own brief prophecy concerning his beloved Florence, noting that her fall will be due to thievery and evil counselors (the two groups he now stands between). The 8th ditch is full of evil counselors who burn in their own personal flames as they circle around and around forever. These are people who were given great gifts of wisdom, but used them for evil ends. Now their hidden sins are repayed by their own hiddenness. In fact dante cannot tell who any of them are – they all look the same in hell.

One flame is split in two conjoined halves, however, and Dante pleased with Virgil to speak to it. It turns out to be two souls – Ulysses and Diomede. Virgil speaks with Ulysses on Dante’s behalf and learns of the great adventurer’s death. Late in life, unsatisfied by family and fame, Ulysses and his best men set sail past the Pillars of Hercules (the Gibraltar straights) to find new adventure and honor. In Dante’s geography the northern realm of earth is land and the south is water, with one exception: “a peak so tall I doubted any man had seen the like.” This, we will see later, is the mountain of Purgatory – directly opposite Jerusalem on the other side of the world. No sooner is the great mountain spotted than Ulysses’ ship is taken down into the sea by a storm sent by “Another.”

This story was made up by Dante, and it serves as an interesting foreshadowing of the next section of the Comedy – just as Dante was unable to reach the top of the hill by his own reason prior to his descent, so Ulysses was not able to reach Mt. Purgatory by his valor.

Canto 27

Virgil releases Ulysses and as he moves on another shade inquires as to who is speaking. Dante answers, and is informed that this flame houses Guido Da Montefeltro – an adviser to Pope Boniface VIII who was seduced into counseling the Pope (who he hopes will rot in hell) into how to overcome a personal feud. Guido’s advise was to offer a false amnesty and then ruin them upon agreement. This the Pope did.

Prior to this, Guido had joined the Fransciscan order in the hopes that he could repent of his sin (he was world renown for his trickery). The Pope had offered him pre-absolution for his sins in exchange for his evil plotting. In a chilling report, guido explains that when he died St. Francis came for him, but a black devil contested ownership. The devil tells St. Francis that,

This one’s name went into my book the moment he resolved to give false counsel. Since then he has been mine, for who does not repent cannot be absolved.; nor can we admit the possibility of repenting a thing at the same time it is willed, for the two acts are contradictory.

The devil then boasts about being a logician, as he carries him off to hell for Minos to hurl him into the 8th ditch.

In an interesting side note – Guido only gives up the details of his life to Dante because he does not believe anyone can escape the Inferno (he does not want his fate recounted outside “the world of the blind”). Apparently he cannot see that Dante is among the living from inside his fiery “clothes.”

Dante’s Divine Comedy, Inferno: Cantos 23-25, Circle 8, Ditches 6-7 – Hypocrites, Thieves, and Other Snakes

Canto 23

Dante and Virgil proceed along their course but are soon pursued by the demons that were tricked into falling into the 5^th ditch. Virgil holds Dante to himself like a mother holds a child, and slides down into the 6^th ditch. The demons follow up to the rim, but are not allowed to give chase for Divine Providence has placed the demons in their proper places in the Inferno and has “taken from their souls the power to leave it.”

The 6^th ditch is filled with the Hypocrites. They march at an agonizingly slow pace around the circle wearing leaden cloaks like a monk’s habit covered in gold. Dante has once again made a fitting punishment for the sin of appearing holy on the outside but bearing the heavy weight of deceit on the inside.

Virgil gets a bit of a surprise when he discovers a soul in the ditch of the hypocrites who bears a far different punishment than the rest (for this soul had not been there the last time Virgil came through). It is Caiaphus is the high priest who condemned Jesus Christ (Jn. 11:51). He, along with His father-in-law, Annas, and the rest of the Sanhedrin of Jesus’ day, lies naked and crucified on the ground with three great stakes. The hypocrites of this ditch march slowly and painfully over the top of these bodies forever because, for their ultimate hypocrisy, they will bear the weight of all hypocrites.

An interesting note here: given his cultural context, it has been said that Dante is remarkably free from anti-semitism. There are no specifically Jewish insults in the Comedy (even here, where many would have seen fit to make them).

Canto 24

At the end of the previous canto Virgil is told, contra Malacoda – the head demon from ditch 6, that all of the bridges over this ditch have been destroyed. Angered, he heads out with Dante to climb the rubble from one bridge. It does not get them to the top of the ditch (indicating how large these “pockets” are!). So after an arduous climb they still must scale the side of the ditch and reach the rim (it is easier to fall into sin than to climb out!). Virgil gives Dante a pep talk about the fame that awaits him and they head off.

Coming to the 7^th ditch they hear murmuring but the ditch is so dark they cannot see into it. At Dante’s suggestion they climb down the side (amazing idea after the climb out of ditch 6!). When they do, they come upon one of the most bizarre scenes in the Inferno.

O Power of God! How dreadful is Thy will which in its vengeance rains such fearful blows.

Dante sees great coils of serpents binding the hands of sinners and coiling around them coming out the front, some serpents bite the souls and at that time the sinners explode in fire and are reduced to ash – only to reform moments later for more. In addition, the serpents and men sometimes exchange bodies through several bizarre means such that, as it turns out, the serpents are not just there for punishing the souls – but are themselves souls being punished. In order to recover their human form the serpents must steal bodies from other sinners. Among thieves nothing is permanent, nothing is sure.

As these men stole the substance from others they are now punished by having their very substance stolen from them, and replaced with the form corresponding to their actions in life. Their sinning hands are bound by this reptilian nature. As they chose a bestial life over human, now they will exchange the two bodies forever.

Dante finds one soul to answer for his crimes (here we discover that they are forced to answer truthfully when questioned), but gets a dark political prophecy for his trouble.

Canto 25

The soul Dante speaks to them utters the strongest blasphemy heard in hell so far and adds in obscene gestures toward God (the “fig” is a symbol of the feminine sexual organ, making a fist to mimic this and then sticking the thumb out imitates intercourse – this is something like giving God the middle finger). No sooner has the sinner uttered this then he is chased down by Cacus (here a centaur) who was killed by Hercules for stealing his oxen (and thus why he is here, for the greater crime of thievery, rather than with than his violent brothers above in circle 7).

Dante then watches and records in detail the grotesque transformation of a serpent into a man and vice versa as the man’s nature is stolen from him through a vaporous smoke. Dante holds nothing back here – even devoting a verse to how the man’s sexual organ split in two as he became the serpent. The sinner reports that it is someone else’s turn to crawl through the ditch and goes looking for him next.

Dante’s Divine Comedy, Inferno: Cantos 20-22, Circle 8, Ditches 4-5 – Diviners, Grafters , and Demons

Canto 20

“Now I must sing of new griefs . . .”

Dante and Virgil now cross over the 4^th ditch which contains the fortune tellers and diviners of the future. They walk backwards for all eternity with their heads twisted around to their back. Because  they spent their life trying to look forward into things they should speak of, now they are silent and can only look backward. Nor is much sight even possible, for in this state they weep continuously – their tears streaming into their . . . crevice.

Dante feels so horrible at these sinner’s fate that he cries himself, earning for the first time a strong rebuke from Virgil:

“Still? Like the other fools? There is no place for pity here. Who is more arrogant within his soul, who is more impious than one who dares to sorrow at God’s judgment?”

Dante apparently should have learned his lesson by now.

Other than identifying a few of the tormented souls (and the last of any non-mythical women noted as being placed in the Inferno), little else needed be said. It is interesting that astrology was not at that time considered nearly as bad as Dante makes it out to be. He and Aquinas agreed on this point.

Dismissing the description of this ditch rather quickly, Virgil recounts the history of Mantua (correcting his earlier, magical, account in the Aeneid) which takes up the majority of the canto.

Cantos 21-22

“Awesomely dark and desolate it was . . .”

The fifth ditch gets more description than any other place in the Inferno. Some have said that Dante structures his Comedy like a cathedral, and here we find the gargoyles – the Malebranche (“evil claws”) demons. And, appropriately, it is in these two cantos that Dante employs his coarsest language. here Dante earns his title of the Master of the Grotesque.

This is the place of punishment for Graft – giving advantage to others illicit gain, like taking bribes for political reasons.  These “sticky fingers” are kept in sticky goo – boiling pitch. Should they attempt to come up for relief, demons with sharp claws, teeth, and grappling hooks tear them to pieces.

Dante himself was falsely accused of graft, and it is interesting that only in this ditch is he warned of danger to himself. This feature was highlighted very well in Thigpen’s novel “Gehenna”. Dante hides behind some rocks while Virgil speaks with the demons. Although the demons are terrible to behold, Virgil tells them he is on a mission from God “it is willed in heaven.” They all back off after that and even offer to guide the two travellers to the next ditch, for the bridge here was destroyed during the great earthquake mentioned earlier.

The demons are called things like Bad Tail, Hellkin, Dragontooth, Grafter, Grizzly, and Deaddog. Dante is fearful that they are merely lying in wait to go back on their word and get him, but Virgil tells him to cease. They’re all talk once heaven is invoked!

The mood lightens a bit when the demons all stick their tongues out in salute to the leader and his response is making “a trumpet of his ass” producing a “low toot” that Dante will speak of in the next canto.

As Dante and Virgil walk along the ditch, they notice sinners rising to the top of the pitch to get some reflief, but who disappear quickly when they sense the demons are close. One is too slow and gets hooked and dragged up on to shore.

Dante and Virgil try to speak with him, and he tells them a few things about others in the pitch, but all the while the other demons are ripping pieces of flesh off of him and so he remains distracted. Finally, he makes a deal with the demons to fool his friends (fellow grafters) into rising to the surface so that the demons could have several sinners to “play with” in exchange for him. They let him go and he dives under the pitch too fast for them to catch him.

This ruse results in a fight between two demons who end up falling into the burning in the pitch themselves. It is worth note here that the demons are affceted by the pitch – hell was made for them and can affect them too.

As the demons go to retrieve them, Dante and Virgil sneak away.

Dante’s Dante’s Divine Comedy, Inferno: Canto 19, Circle 8, Ditch 3 – Black Hole Stone

Canto 19

Simon the Magician (“Simon Magus”) was the person in Acts who tried to purchase the gifting of the Holy Spirit for gain (Acts 8:9-24). Since then, persons who try to buy/sell ecclesiastical favors/positions are known as simoniacs.

In ditch three, the simoniacs are placed upside down in holes which Dante says are the size of “those in the font of my beautiful San Giovanni built to protect the priests who come to baptize.” Thus are those who mocked the priesthood themselves mocked. As they stuffed their pockets with ill-gotten gains, they are now stuffed into holes themselves. The reference seems to be to features in baptismal fonts that kept the priests from being mobbed during the annual baptism times. Apparently Dante (in real life) had rescued a drowning child who got caught in one of these fonts by breaking it. He was accused of sacrilege, and asks that this account suffice to exonerate him. Unfortunately this font style / feature has been difficult to prove (and some believe the few alleged remaining examples are not what Dante was talking about either).

As if being stuffed upsaide down into a hole in the black rock of the Inferno was not bad enough, the simoniacs feet are also burning with an “oily fire” (note the double reference to Holy Spirit symbolism – Dante, you are the man!). The flames are worse for the worse sinners (yet again showing the concept of corresponding punishment). Eventually other simoniacs will come along and stuffed into these holes, at which time the sinner is pushed through the hole into crevices in the rock. This, in fact, is what the worst of the simoniacs, Nicholas III (a Pope!) is waiting for Boniface VIII (another Pope) and one after him, Clement V (the current Pope of Dante’s day who was involved in moving the Holy See to Avignon).

Virgil carries Dante down a path that would have been difficult for a goat to tread so that he may converse with this simoniac Pope (in the manner of a priest giving last rites to assassins who were buried upside down). For the second time in the Inferno, Dante himself delivers stinging rebuke. His litany against this Pope is startling given his previous timidity, and Virgil loves it! As Dante winds down, he makes an interesting distinction between Popes and the Papacy when he says he would have used even harsher words but for his “reverence for the Great Keys you held in life.” Following Roman Catholic thinking, for Dante the holy office is not itself threatened by the evil men who sometimes hold it.

During his diatribe, Dante mentions holy men of old who did not sell out for the ministry given them, such as Peter and Matthias (“Matthew”). Matthias was the disciple who was chosen to replace Judas Iscariot as the twelfth apostle (Acts 1:15-26). No more is heard of him in the New Testament. Tradition does not help much either. Clement of Alexandria says some identified him with Zacchaeus; he is sometimes identified as Barnabas or Nathanael (cf. Gospel of John) as well. According to various traditions he may have preached in Ethiopia, Judea, Cappadocia, or the Caspian Sea area.

Dante continues by identifying this corrupt Pope as the Woman of Revelation 17 (who seems to stand for Pagan Rome according to John) and reviling the greedy Pope himself as an idolater:

“Gold and silver are the gods you adore – In what are you different than the idolater, save that he worships one, and you a score?”

Dante finishes by decrying the wealth associated with Church offices since Constantine’s time, and is then carried by Virgil back up to the bridge over the next ditch.

Dante’s Divine Comedy, Inferno: Cantos 17-18, Circle 8, Ditches 1-2 – Pockets of Filth

Canto 17 – The Blessed Hell Ride

Geryon, a massive man / lizard / scorpion rises out of the chasm to greet the travelers. His upper torso looks like a man at peace, but he is really a spotted (like a leopard!) reptile with a deadly tail. Geryon is named after a Spanish king who used to invite guests to dinner and then kill them. A beast that “makes the whole world stink,” Geryon is a perfect creature to bring the poets into the 8^th Circle, “Malebolgia” (“the evil ditches / pockets”) of Fraud and Malice.

As Dante heads over to Geryon he makes a quick stop at the edge of the burning sands where the Usurers sit staring down at their purses. Usury is the unnatural (remember which circle they are in) act of making money using money. Thus they have tried to take make something meant to be infertile into something fertile (the opposite of the sodomites). When discussing this with a friend he pointed out that someone might argue that without usurers (e.g., banks and money stores) we would not be able to get the loans or credit we need to afford homes or cars or medical care. My reply was that if usury did not exist things could not inflate to the point where we would need them. There are other ways of taking care of needs without trying to make money via interest.

The rest of the canto is taken up with Dante’s terrifying flight down into Maleboge past the great waterfall formed by the sand’s creek above. The flight ends up being without incident, however, and they land safely.

Canto 18

8^th Circle, Ditch 1 – the Panderers and Seducers

The poets enter the 8^th Circle where they will be for the next 14 cantos. Here are punished sins of simple fraud – that is, fraud without treachery added. The word Malebolge means something like “evil pockets” or “evil ditches”– in either case an apt title for the greedy who lined their pockets in sinful ways and who now suffer in ditches. The 8^th Circle is a sort of amphitheater with a series of ten concentrate ditches surrounding an enormous well (the 9^th Circle lies at its bottom). Connecting these circles are radii-like bridges that go out from the center. It is these bridges that allow the poets to continue on through the circle and view what is going on in each ditch.

Once the transition is made from the 7^th to the 8^th Circle an interesting thing occurs with the inhabitants – they suddenly do not wish to be noticed, engaged, or remembered. Perhaps at this level, the sins are so unnatural that no one wishes them to be remembered.

Turning left (as they almost always do), Dante and Virgil come first to the Panderers. These are “go-betweens in sexual intrigues” (Freccero). Pimps, basically – but pimps of different sorts of people, not just prostitutes. Next to the Panderers are the Seducers. Each line travels in opposite directions in the ditch while being beaten and whipped by devils all the while (it has been suggested that he devil’s dual horns represent the twin sins of adultery and cuckoldry). Having goaded others into evil in life, they are not forever goaded on by evil. Dante sees Jason of “and the Argonauts” fame, who was quite the ladie’s man but who treated them horribly.

8^th Circle, Ditch 2 – The Flatterers

Climbing over the first ditch via the bridge (note: the text says they turn right here, but this is only to align themselves with the bridge which was on their left), the poets come to ditch number 2 which contains the Flatterers.

Dante’s words are best cited here:

“Exhalations, rising from below, stuck to the banks, encrusting them with mold, and so waged war against both eyes and nose.”

What is Dante smelling in this next ditch?

“People plunged in excrement that seemed as if it had been poured from human privies.”

In other words, people covered in crap. Ciardi, who uses the word “shit” in this canto, is insightful here when he writes that Dante “deliberately coarsens his language when he wishes to describe certain kinds of coarseness. . . . It would be ridiculous prudery to refine Dante’s diction at these points.” Here are the people who sinned with their mouths - pouring out filthy flattery - who are now forced to have filth poured into their mouths.

Ewwwww.

Interestingly, there is a harlot here who is being punished for her flatteries instead of her sexual sin. Apparently the prostitution of her words exceeded that of her body.