The Divine Comedy

Religion has always been one of the most controversial topics when it comes to diversity. Each religion throughout the world has its own perception of morality, what is good and evil. These come with rewards and punishments, Dante Alighieri’s epic poem, the Divine Comedy, gives an insight to the culmination of medieval thinking developed by the Church.
Since Dante’s date of birth is unknown, it is theorized that he was born around 1265. He was born in Florence at the early stages of the Renaissance, and he is considered a forerunner of it because of the way he created the Italian language. Dante combined Tuscany, a regional dialect, with Latin and other dialects to make it more suitable for its expression. This makes Dante one of the first to break from the traditional way of publishing in Latin (Dante Online). The Divine Comedy gathers the Summa Theologica and Thomostic philosophy, both from St. Thomas Aquinas. Summarizing, Thomism says that truth is true wherever it is found, and Summa Theologica is a manual that serves as an explanation of theology and the main teachings of the Catholic Church (Knight). The Divine Comedy was originally called Commedia; Giovanni Bocaccio added the word Divina later on. It is mathematically and numerically arranged in patters throughout the entire work, specifically in threes and nines. The poem is recognized by Dante’s personification of the characters he encounters, critics to Florentine and Italian politics and a large poetic imagination. Although there are no original manuscripts from Dante himself, there are about 800 copies of it (Sayers, Purgatory). The Divine Comedy’s structure is quite complicated; it consists of 33 cantos and composed of about 1,400 lines, divided into three chapters: Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. There is an initial chapter that serves as an introduction to the whole poem. The poem is written in the first person where Dante is the main character. He tells a journey through the realms of the dead. His guide Virgil serves as a guide through Hell and Purgatory, which Beatrice, Dante’s ideal love guides him through Heaven. One of the most distinguished numerical patterns in the Divine Comedy is the number of divisions each Realm has, they make a total of ten divisions, nine plus one. Out of those nine, seven are specific moral layout.
Dante is thirty-five years old when his journey starts, he finds himself lost in dark woods, surrounded by beasts and unable to find a way out. Virgil rescues Dante, and they begin their journey through Hell, each of the circles they go through represent justice for a sin. The Inferno represents a soul seeing a sin for what it is, and the three beasts represent three types of sin: the self-indulgent, the violent, and the malicious (Sayers, Hell). These beasts also provide the three main divisions of Hell. Besides the circles containing punishments for sins, there is one place for the ignorant of Christ and the ones confused of Christ. In addition to these, at the end, Satan stands in a frozen lake, adding all these circles plus Satan, gives us a total of 10, completing the numerical pattern (Sayers, Hell).
The First Circle is t Limbo, and it is for the unbaptized and those who are ignorant of God, the pagans. In the Limbo, there is a castle with seven gates representing the seven virtues. Here, Dante encounters many poets, mathematicians, scientists, and mythological creatures. After the first circle, souls that sinned willingly are condemned to a certain circle, and they are judged by Minos. The circles are grouped into abandonment, violence and fraud, and they are represented by a leopard, a lion and a she-world respectively. The Second Circle is the circle of Lust, the ones with an intense desire of the body. Their souls are blown by a storm of wind, just like their desires did on earth. Here, Dante meets the souls of the ones that were overwhelmed by sensual love during their life. The Third Circle is for the gluttons, the ones that feel excessive love for food and drinks, and other addictions. Cerebrus is the guardian of this circle. The gluttons lay in a pile of mud while hail rain and snow fall on them and they are torn apart by Cerebrus. The Fourth Circle is for the ones with excessive for material goods. Here, the avaricious fight with boulders, tossing them at each other while their chests shout to each other. The boulders represent money and the weight on their lives on earth. The river of Styx flows through the Fifth Circle, where the wrathful remain on the surface fighting one another, naked and tearing themselves with their teeth and the slothful, which lay on the river with black mud. Here, Dante starting gaining consciousness about his sins. The deeper circles lay within the city of Dis, guarded by fallen angels. Inside Dis, the punishments become active, rather than passive like the in the first circles. Dante and Virgil where threatened by the Furies when attempting to enter. A messenger angel descended from Heaven to allow Dante to proceed and punishes those who opposed him. Symbolically, this shows the power that Heaven has over Hell, good controls evil. This also represents that Dante is approaching a part of the circles where sins cannot be comprehended by humans and philosophy. In the Sixth Circle lay those who failed to believe in God and the afterlife called heretics and they are trapped in flaming tombs for eternity. A valley leads into the Seventh Circle where the violent are punished, and it is divided into three rings. The Minotaur guards the Seventh Circle. The Outer Circle serves for the ones that were violent with people and property. They are submerged into a river of boiling blood and fire and depending on the gravity of their sins, the depth at which they are submerged increases (Quizlet LLC. Happy Studies). A distinguished figure Dante encounters here is Alexander the Great, who is submerged up to his eyebrows. The Middle Circle two sinners are condemned differently. The suicides are transformed into thorny bushes and are fed to the Furies. Dante twigs off one of the branches and sees some bleeding in it. The other sinners are the profligates, those who destroyed the lives of others through money and property. These are eternally chased and eaten by malicious dogs. Finally, in the Inner Circle those who were violent against God and nature lay down in a desert of flaming sand flakes raining on their faces. The difference is that the blasphemers lay down, the usurers sit, and the sodomites wander in groups. Those who committed conscious fraud and treachery lay in the Eight Circle and it can only be reached by descending a cliff. The fraudulent are located in a circle called Malebolge, and it is divided into 10 parts, which are joined by bridges. The Ninth Circle is dedicated to the treacherous, and it is divided into four other sections, respecting the gravity of the treachery, those who betrayed family, their community, their guests and their lords and benefactors respectively, which with a respective punishment. In the center of all these sections, lays the ultimate betrayer, Satan himself, and he is described as a giant winged beast with three heads. His body is submerged in a frozen lake up to his waist. Each of the heads is chewing a crucial traitor, Brutus, Cassius and Judas, who receives the worst of all punishments for being the traitor of Jesus Christ. He is being skinned by Satan’s claws and being chewed by the middle in the middle (4Degreez). This circle represents an anti-trinity where Satan is represented as full of hatred, a punisher and impotent whereas God is all-powerful, forgiving and loving. Virgil and Dante escape Hell by climbing down the fur of Satan, they pass through the center of Earth, and they end up in the Purgatory.
Same as in Hell, the Purgatory is divided into 10 sections, 7 dedicated to the deadly sins, the first two which is an Anti-Purgatory and Paradise itself. On the first and second layers the excommunicated and those who repented at the end without proper reception of the last rites. They are allowed to go in the Purgatory because of their late repentant. The seven terraces represent thee seven deadly sins, but these focus on the motives, other than the actions. These deadly sins are classified on love; the first three are for love towards harm for others, one for deficient love and the last three for excessive love for material things. The Purgatory is not a place to be punished for a sin, but rather to gain consciousness of it, which is shown as Dante advances through the terraces with Virgil.
When reaching the top of the Purgatory, Beatrice is the one who guides Dante through the nine circles of Heaven all the way to the Empyrean. The nine circles are represented as planets, moon and stars representing the belief in cosmology of the time. On the Moon, Mercury, and Venus are associated with false forms of Fortitude, Justice and Temperance. Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are associated with the true forms of Prudence, Fortitude, Justice, and Temperance. On the Eight Circle, Faith, Hope and love appear together. The Ninth Circle is the only one that has a physical movement which comes from God Himself; it is surrounded by nine rings of angels. After the Primum Mobile (Ninth Cirlce), Dante reaches somewhere beyond the physical world, an abode of God, which is the Empyrean; here Dante visualizes a rose which symbolizes a home for every soul on Heaven. Angels fly the rose spreading love and peace. Dante then tries to take a glance at the presence of God, and he is blinded for a moment by doing this. At the end of the poem, Dante finally aligns his soul with the love of God.
The Divine Comedy clearly gives an outstanding insight on the importance of obeying the law of God. The Catholic Church always made the life of a Christian clear, the whole of point of it was being a good Christian to gain entrance to Heaven, and try to avoid falling into a sin and consequently going to Hell. Dante then amplifies the vision of what morality and how sins are judged by their gravity, there is a place for those who repent; even if they do it at their last instance of life there is still salvation for their souls and can ascend to Heaven. Nevertheless the way the poem itself portrays the power of God over evil, how He allows Dante going into Dis, gives a wider explanation of why Hell exists. The Divine Comedy is not just Dante’s dream; it unifies scientific knowledge with religion and designs a space of every human action, good or evil. This is how Dante ends with medieval thinking and ignorance, by combining reason, science and religion.