Dante’s Inferno
From The Divine Comedy
“Onward he moved, I close his steps pursued.”
Canto I, line 132
Dante Alighieri
• Italian poet during the
Middle Ages
• His Divine Comedy often
considered the greatest
Italian literary work.
• Homer – Greek
• Virgil – Latin
• Dante – Italian
• Chaucer – English
Dante Alighieri
• Believed that if Pax Romana were to be achieved,
the Holy Roman Empire needed to be reinstated
in order for Jesus to come back (the second
coming).
• Was exiled from Florence, during which he
wrote the Inferno.
• Needed to be protected after The Divine Comedy
was written because he “sentenced” certain
people to certain levels of hell.
• Today, Italy refers to Dante as “the supreme
poet.”
The Divine Comedy
• Written in three parts: the Inferno (Hell),
Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise)
• Dante’s journey through the three realms of
the dead.
• Virgil guides him through Hell and Purgatory.
• Beatrice, Dante’s ideal woman, guides him
through Heaven.
The Low-down on Hell
• Virgil guides Dante through the 9 circles of
Hell
• The circles are concentric; represent a gradual
increase in wickedness; they culminate at the
center of the earth where Satan is held captive.
• Each punishment fits the crime: afflicted for all
eternity by the chief sin they committed
Purgatory (The Vestibule)
• Place for people who sinned, but prayed for
forgiveness before they died
• Here they labor to be free of their sins, but
they are not in Hell
• The ones in Hell are people who tried to
justify their sins and did not repent
The Doomed Souls embarking to
cross the Acheron
First Circle: Limbo
• Unbaptized and virtuous pagans
• Were not sinful, but did not accept Christ
• Others lived prior to the coming of Christ, but
did not pay fitting homage to their respective
deity
• Punishment: grief over separation from God
with no hope to reconcile with him
First Circle: Limbo
• IRONIC: this circle shares many of the same
characteristics as the Elysium Fields because
the “guiltless damned” are punished by living
in their deficient form of heaven.
• their fault: lacked faith
• Limbo: green fields and a castle
• Beyond Limbo, sinners are judged by Minos
and sent to one of the eight lower circles
Second Circle: The Lustful
• those overcome by lust
• souls are blown around by a violent storm
without hope of rest; this symbolized the
power that lust has to blow one around
needlessly and aimlessly
Third Circle: The Gluttonous
• Cerberus guard the gluttons
• they are forced to lie in the mud under
continuous cold rain and hail
Fourth Circle: The Avaricious and
Prodigal
• sinners concerned with material goods more than
what is normally “desired”
• included people who hoarded possessions and the
prodigal people who squandered all their
possessions.
• punishment: each pushes a great weight against the
heavy weight of the other group; after the weights
crash together, the process starts again (in some
interpretations they push around huge money bags)
Fifth Circle: The Wrathful
• In the swampy waters of the River Styx, the
wrathful fight each other on the surface and
the sullen or slothful (lazy) lie gurgling
beneath the water
Virgil shows Dante the
Souls of the Wrathful
Phlegyas ferries Dante and Virgil
across the Styx
Lower Parts of Hell
• The lower parts of Hell are contained in the
walls of the city Dis which is surrounded by
the Stygian marsh. (Punishments in Dis are
active, not passive, sins). The walls of the city
are guarded by fallen angels.
Sixth Circle: Heretics
• Heretics are trapped in flaming tombs
Seventh Circle: Violence
• houses the violent sinners
• entrance is guarded by the Minotaur (part
man, part bull)
• Divided into three rings:
a. Outer ring: houses the violent against people
and property. They are immersed in
Phlegethon (a river of boiling blood) to a level
that measures up to their sins. Centaurs
patrol this ring.
The Minotaur
on the
Shattered
Cliff
Centaurs Patrolling Outer Ring of the Seventh Circle
b. Middle ring: houses the suicides. They are
transformed into gnarled thorny bushes and trees
and torn at by the Harpies (winged death spirits,
their name literally means “that which grab”).
***Unique among the dead, the suicides will not be
bodily resurrected after the final judgment because
they gave their bodies away in suicide. Instead, they
will remain their bushy form, with their own corpses
hanging from the limbs.
c. Inner ring: The violent against God (blasphemers),
the violent against nature (sodomites), and the
violent against art (usurers). Reside in a desert of
flaming sand and fiery flakes raining down from the
sky.
Harpies in
the Forest of
the Suicides
The Violent tortured
in the Rain of Fire
The Abyss
• The final two circles of Hell punish sins that
involve conscious fraud or treachery. The
circles can only be reached by descending a
vast cliff on the back of Geryon (a winged
monster represented by Dante as having the
face of an honest man and a body that ends in
a scorpion-like stinger).
The Demons threaten Virgil
The Eighth Circle: Fraud
• those guilty of deliberate, knowing evil; divided into ten bolgia
(ditches of stone spanned by bridges)
•
*Bolgia 1: Panderers and seducers walk in separate lines
in opposite directions whipped by demons
•
*B 2: Flatterers are steeped in human excrement
•
*B 3: Those who committed simony (crime of paying for
offices or positions in the leadership of a church) are placed
head-first in holes in the rock while flames burn the soles of
their feet (a type of inverted baptism)
•
*B 4: Sorcerers and false prophets have their heads
twisted around on their bodies backward, so they can only see
what is behind them and not into the future.
The Eighth Circle, Bolgia 3
Sins of Fraud
*B 5: Corrupt politicians are immersed
into a lake of boiling pitch (like tar), guarded by
devils
*B 6: Hypocrites wearing gold-gilded lead
cloaks.
*B 7: Thieves guarded by a centaur are
pursued and bitten by snakes. The snake bites
make them transform into various things, some
are resurrected after becoming a pile of ashes,
some mutate into new creatures, some become
snakes and chase after other thieves.
The Thieves tortured by Serpents
*B 8: Fraudulent advisors are encased in
individual flames.
*B 9: Sword wielding demon hacks at the
“sowers of discord.” When their wounds heal,
the demon tears them apart again.
*B 10: Groups of various sorts of falsifiers
(counterfeiters, perjurers, etc.) are afflicted
with different types of diseases.
The Flaming Spirits of the evil
Counsellors
Demons
pursue Dante
and Virgil in
the Eighth
Circle.
Ninth Circle
• Satan is frozen in the central zone of this circle
• Ringed by classical and biblical giants
• Traitors who betrayed someone who was in a
special relationship with the betrayer. They
are frozen in the lake of ice known as Cocytus.
• Each group is frozen at a different depth,
ranging from the waist down to complete
immersion
The Giant Antaeus lowering Dante
and Virgil
Sinners Frozen in Cocytus
• -Divided into four concentric zones:
•
*Z 1: Caina (named for Cain) is home to traitors of their
kindred. Immersed in ice up to their necks.
•
*Z2: Antenor is named for Antenor of Troy (tradition
says that he betrayed his city to the Greeks. Traitors to
political entities, like party, city or country are here. They’re
immersed up to the same level as Caina, but they cannot bend
their necks.
•
*Z3: Ptolomaea is home to the traitors to guests.
Immersed so much that only half of their face is visible. As
they cry, their tears freeze and seal their eyes shut. They’re not
even allowed the comfort of tears.
•
*Z4: Judecca (For Judas the Iscariot, betrayer of Christ).
This is for the traitors to their lords and benefactors. All
sinners here are completely trapped in ice and distorted into
all kinds of crazy positions.
The Center of Hell:
• houses Satan
• Condemned here for treachery against God (the
ultimate sin)
• Satan has 3 faces, one red, one black, and one pale
yellow. Each mouth chews on a prominent traitor.
Satan is represented as a giant, terrifying beast who
weeps tears from his six eyes. He is waist deep in ice
and beats his six wings trying to escape.
• Sinners in his mouth: Brutus and Cassius (for the
betrayal of Julius Caesar) and Judas Iscariot (for the
betrayal of Christ)
Dis (Satan)
All artwork by
French artist
Gustave Doré
(January 6,
1832 –
January 23,
1883)