Film - Yulia has also the room reserved Jones A 101 for Thursday, December 1,
from 5:30pm to 8pm for a History 131 and History 189 extra credit movie.
4 points + 1 for a detail that's not historically accurate.
Do not read Lualdi
Last time – increasing intolerance, beginning of inquisition.
We'll return to it later, but now I want to linger in the “flowering of the Middle Ages”
Gothic – Reyana
Dante, born in Florence, first met Beatrix when he was 9 and she was 8, met several times in his life.
She later married, died in her 20s, Dante also married.
Had to leave Florence because of political struggle.
Divine Comedy” - work where the main character survived, “divine” added later.
Hell – 9 regions, progressively more serious sins, punishments appropriate for the specific sins.
9 types of sins grouped by 3
Incontinence – did not control their urges, but did not intend to harm others – lust, greed, anger;
Violence;
Treachery – purposely harmed others through deceit.
The 9th circle in the middle of the Earth
Purgatory – huge mountain in the southern hemisphere, 7 levels. Sinners who repented before their
death are cleansed from their sins and then advance into heaven.
From the edge of the forest sees a shining mountain and wants to go there, but leper – Lust, lion – pride, wolf – greed
prevent him from leaving the forest.
Lost in the forest - slide,
Virgil appears, says that Beatrice came down to hell, asked Virgil to give him a tour of Hell and
Purgatory - slide.
Abandon all hope you who enter.
Outer rim of Hell – 2 kinds of souls
1. keep running around following a banner with changing pattern – passionless people who never
committed himself to anything
2. who just died and wait to cross the river Acheron (Joyless), ferryman Charon - slide.
Upper Hell – five circles for those who could not contain themselves, but did not do harm to others
deliberately: lust, greed, anger
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1st – good unbaptized people, where Virgil lives, classical heroes and philosophers live in a castle, there
is a little bit of light, no particular punishment, grief that they cannot be with God - slide.
2nd – guarded by King Minos, condemns souls to place in Hell (how many times coils his tail), throws
them with his tail – slide.
2nd circle is for the lustful – blown around constantly – were blown by passions.
Cleopatra, Helen of Troy; Paolo and Franchesca of Rimini killed by her husband in 1280, locked in
permanent embrace - slide.
Read a romance about L and Guinevere, when they kissed, they also kissed, “and we did not read any
more on that day.”
Dante faints when he hears their story and finds himself in the next circle.
3d – gluttons – overindulged their senses – gloomy environment, no appeal to senses, lie and can't get
up, hail and rain – slide.
4th – greed, who misused wealth – hoarded or wasted, spend eternity rolling giant boulders at one
another - slide.
Many monks and clergy including bishops and two popes.
5th – angry – in the marsh attacking one another - slide.
Lower Hell begins.
6th – heretics in burning tombs - slide
7th – sins of violence
1) against other humans – immersed in a river of boiling blood , Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun –
up to eyebrows, others – to chest, chin... - slide
2) against themselves – twisted tress with no foliage, broken branch bleeds - slide
3) against God – blasphemous, against nature – homosexuals, Dante meets his teacher; against
productive activity – usurers, lived on interest, did not do productive work.
8th – 10 ditches – flatterers, hypocrites, thieves, sowers of discord (parts of their bodies divided from
them, headless – Bertran de Born, encouraged sons of Henry II to rebel against him) - slide.
9th – frozen lake, sinners who broke a sacred trust – betrayed their family, their country or party, their
guests - slide.
Lowermost point of the Universe – the part of the lake called Judaeca – Satan with three faces
chomping on somebody in each mouth – Judas, Brutus, Cassius (a leading instigator of the plot to kill
Julius Caesar ), God intended that republic should turn into empire.
Climb down on Satan's body, then through the network of canyons and get to surface of the Southern
hemisphere - on the shore of the huge island mountain – 7 levels, sins are purged.
Eden – earthly paradise on top of it, Beatrice appears and they go to Paradise. She explains Aristotle's
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and Plato's cosmology to him.
15th century illustrations
Various degrees of blessedness, souls are shown for Dante's education in various spheres according to
degrees of blessedness
.
Moon, Mercury, Venus – souls have some blemish.
A nun known to Dante, was forced to break her wows as a nun – Moon is inconstant (Constance of Sicily “Constance was not betrothed until she was thirty, which is unusual for a princess whose marriage was an important
dynastic bargaining chip. This later gave rise to stories that she had become a nun and required papal dispensation to forsake
her vows and marry, or that she was impossibly ugly. Neither supposition is consistent with the evidence ')
Mercury – Emperor Justinian – personal glory, discusses the Roman Empire with Dante – God
preordained it as a stable environment where Christianity could spread - slide.
Venus – Folco – troubadour, loved many women, then became a monk and bishop of Toulouse, says
church loves money too much - slide.
Sphere of the Sun – slide
scholars who searched for truth, saints of the church – Bede, Thomas Aquinas;
St. Francis – slide?
Mars – souls form a cross, D. meets his great-great-grandfather Guido who died in the 2nd crusade.
Tells him how good life in Florence was in his time, contrasts with Dante's time – slide.
Slide- Guido on crusade
Slide – Dante's exile
Jupiter – souls form letters “Judge rightly, oh you, who judge on the Earth,” then make an eagle – slide,
the beak says the joint message of them – just society is united like one.
Dante asks, why only Christians are saved?
Eagle: if they live Christian life, they will be saved, one soul is a Trojan, Dante is pleased.
(Adam appears)
Rose – free petals for future comings. Beatrix – her place in the rose, St. Bernard asks fro a vision for
Dante - slide
Dante is given visions of Trinity and Incarnation:
seeing the Triune God. In a flash of understanding, which he cannot express, Dante finally understands
the mystery of Christ's divinity and humanity, and his soul becomes aligned with God's love:[24]
But already my desire and my will
were being turned like a wheel, all at one speed,
by the Love which moves the sun and the other stars.
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