Lasciate Ogne Speranza, Voi Ch'intrate

"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here"

Dante Alighieri by Botticelli (1)

Durante Degli Alighieri (Dante), born ca. 1265, is considered il sommo poeta (the supreme poet) of Italy. As Spain boasts Cervantes and his masterpiece Don Quixote, and Britain retains the great works of Shakespeare, Italy boasts Dante, the fifteenth-century Florentine author of the epic poem, Divina Commedia. As Shakespeare has been affectionately dubbed “The Bard,” so has Dante been dubbed “il poeta” (2). However, the Divina Commedia was not the only source of Dante's fame--or to some, infamy. The poet was a champion of secular rule that delimited the power of the Catholic Church. When he penned The Monarchia in 1318, Dante effectively sealed his fate as a political exile from Florence: the book was condemned and placed on "The Index": a comprehensive list of books forbidden to Italian Catholics until late into the nineteenth century. Dante was cast out of Florence, and never permitted to return. However, as our text observes, the Florentine city council finally repealed Dante's exile in the year 2008.

Divina Commedia

(panichotel.com)

"'Midway along the journey of our life/I woke to find myself in a dark wood,/for I had wandered off the straight path.' With these opening words, Dante compels his reader to inhabit the point of view of a narrator who, halfway through not 'my' but 'our' lifetime, suddenly realizes that he is lost. His life is thus our life, and the ethical or righteous 'straight path' that the narrator hopes to rediscover also comes to be the reader's own goal. Yet this identification of reader and narrator is countered, again and again in The Divine Comedy, by an insistence on the specific circumstances of Dante's own life: traveling into the underworld and into the other realms of the afterlife, we meet his old teacher, Brunetto Latini; the father of his close friend Guido Cavalcanti; his great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida; and, most importantly, the beautiful Beatrice Portinari, whom Dante has loved...since they were both children. In spite of the particularity of this afterlife--or perhaps because of them--the reader constantly identifies with the narrator, experiencing the painful turns of the journey as well as the joyful expectation of heavenly bliss at the road's end" (387). As modern readers we now think of the term "comedy" as something that makes us laugh; however in medieval Europe a "comedy" referred to a work of literature that ended on a positive--or elevating--note. As Dante's Divina Commedia ends with the narrator, Dante himself, ascending to heaven, the epic lives up to its genre (389). 

Gustave Dore Engraving The Inferno (www.wikipedia.org)

Nine Circles of Hell

First Circle: Limbo—Place for unbaptized Christians and “Virtuous Pagans”

Second Circle: Lust—Here reside those whose sensual desire overruled their reason

Third Circle: Gluttony—Houses those whose excessive love of food, drink, and sensuality has condemned them to eternity.

Fourth Circle: Greed—The Fourth Circle of Hell contains those souls who, in life, horded material goods and valued these items over piety.

Fifth Circle: Wrath—Here the wrathful souls fight each other for eternity

Sixth Circle: Heresy—Houses the Epicureans and Hedonists (Heretics) who pleasure at the core of good.

Seventh Circle: Violence—Contains several sub-rings of violent sinners situated according to offense. Guarded by the Minotaur.

Eighth Circle: Fraud—The Eighth Circle of Hell houses those who have sinned by committing deliberate fraud.

Ninth Circle: Treachery—Houses those who have knowingly committed treachery, or betrayal. Includes names from biblical and mythological fame, such as Judas Iscariot, Cain, and Antenor of Troy.

"Stradano Inferno Canto 06.jpg" (Wikipedia.org)

Terms

Acheron:“The River of Woe” in Homeric tradition, the river that led to the Underworld

Charon: the ferryman who transports souls to the underworld

Cerberus: “Hellhound” or three-headed dog that guards the gates of Hell.

Contrapasso: Symbolic retribution for sin—or, “poetic justice”

Dis: City which houses the lower parts of the Underworld for those whose sins surpass faith and philosophy. 

Rebellion of Angels: Refers to the “War in Heaven” between angels, led by the archangel, Michael and Satan’s minions.

Shades: Spirits or souls in the Underworld.

You may recognize many of the Seven Deadly Sins in Dante's Circles of Hell: that is because Book II of The Inferno is structured around the Seven Deadly Sins, which are in traditional Catholicism:

Lust
Greed
Sloth
Gluttony
Envy
Vanity
Pride

This list of capital vices--"capital" as they are believed to lead to other vices, and "destroy the life of grace and charity within a person." The list was part of Catholic catechism for the ethical education of followers and was used in confession. This list of the Seven Deadly Sins was created in the 4th century by a monk called Evagrius Ponticus, who translated them into Greek. The Seven Deadly Sins were used to teach young people how to avoid the trappings of sin and temptation and walk the path of righteousness. There is a complementary set of Seven Virtues which include Temperance, Chastity, Diligence, Charity, Patience, Humility, and Kindness (3).