Blogging through Hell (pt 13) - Of Hatred of God, Once-Saved-Always-Saved, Islam, and Vatican Two in the Divine Comedy

After having climbed back out of the sixth bolgia over the remains of the bridge which collapsed at Christ's entrance into Hell, Dante and Virgil, who has now regained his composure after his fury at being deceived by the Malebranche, peer into the darkness of the seventh bolgia. Able to hear the moans of the sinners beneath him, but unable to see anyone, Dante asks Virgil if they can descend into the pit to see who these sinners are. Virgil, happy to comply with his pupil's eagerness to learn, leads Dante down to meet the sinners.

and there within I saw a dreadful swarm
of serpents so extravagant in form
remembering them still drains my blood from me. (XXIV:82-84, Mandelbaum)

Among this cruel and most dismal throng
People were running naked and affrighted. (XXIV: 91-92)

The serpents are plaguing the thieves - sinners who defrauded others by stealing from them. Just as the thieves, in life, caused property to unnaturally change from one owner to another, so too, eternally, the thieves will be transformed, and cause each other to transform, unnaturally from one form to another. The first example Dante sees of this is of a who is bit by a snake,

.... which transfixed him
There where the neck is knotted to the shoulders. (XXIV:98-99)

 After being bitten, the sinner catches fire, burns to ash, and, like the phoenix, rises from the ash to be tormented yet again. Dante, shocked at this latest, self-imposed, punishment cries out,

Justice of God! O how severe it is,
That blows like these in vengeance poureth down! (XXIV:119-120)

The sinner, returned to his natural form, answers Virgil's question about who is is and what he has done. He is Vanni Fucci, a native of Pistoia so renowned for violence that Dante is surprised he isn't boiling in the Phlegethon above with the other murders. Fucci, however, explains that his robbery of the Cathedral of Pistoia, which he allowed to be falsely attributed to another man.

Showing his hate-filled nature, Fucci prophecies about the explosion of Dante's White Guelfs from Florence, ending with, "And this I've said that it may give thee pain." (XXIV:151). Having finished grieving Dante, Fucci makes an absence gesture to the sky, screaming, "take that, God, for at thee I aim them." (XXV:3) before being covered in so many snakes that he can no longer move. Surprised at Fucci's supreme audacity, Dante notes,

Through all the somber circles of this Hell,
Spirit I saw not against God so proud, (XXV:13-14)

The hatred that the souls in Hell are consumed by, of both neighbor and God in direct opposition to the greatest commandment (cf. Mk 12:30-31), is on full display in Vanni Fucci, but has been witnessed time an again throughout Dante's journey. Souls have held Hell in disdain, have cursed God, and have shouted blasphemies. What we haven't seen, indeed what we will never see, in Hell is any remorse, any sorrow, for the sins committed or any love for God (or for the other sinners being punished in Hell). Hell, then, is a place of absolute hatred, which is what we'd expect as the primary punishment of Hell is the absence of the God who is love. This is in complete accord with the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which St. Pope John Paul the Great called "a sure norm for teaching the faith" (Fedei Depositum, 3).

We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves... To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God's merciful love means remaining separated from him forever by our own free choice.... Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell where they suffer the punishments of hell... The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God (1033-1035)

Vanni Fucci, and all the sinners we've met or will meet in Hell, are precisely those who have refused to freely love God, who have sinned gravely against Him and against their neighbors, and who have refused to repent... eternally. These souls now embrace their self-selected destiny with a continued hatred for others and for God. Nowhere is this better displayed than in the character of Vanni Fucci.

Vanni Fucci by Claudio Bez

As Dante and Virgil leave behind Vanni Fucci, several other prominent Florentines, and the rest of the thieves in the seventh pit of the Eighth Circle of Hell, they see, in the next bolgia, a bewildering number of flickering flames, without seeing any sinners. Having learned from his experience in the Seventh Circle with the Wood of the Suicides, Dante accurately surmises that each flame contains a sinner. This is the perpetual abode of the evil counsellors, especially those who were deceitful in war (more fox than lion, as Dante has one sinner explain, reminding us of the opening canto of the Comedy).

With flames as manifold resplendent all
Was the Eighth Bolgia (XXVI:31-32)

Unable to penetrate the flames with his sight, Dante asks Virgil if he may not question some of those damned here to learn who they are and what they have done. One flame, with two tips, particularly grabs Dante's attention. Virgil, explaining that this flame contains the shades of both Odysseus and Diomedes, both Greek heroes who participated in the war with Troy, suggests that these souls might be more open to hearing from him, a fellow ancient and a poet famous for his recounting of the deeds of the Trojan Aeneas, than from Dante. It is here, in Odysseus' speech to Virgil, that we get an entirely original account of Odysseus' final fate. The Homeric hero describes how, after returning home from his adventures recounted in the Odyssey, he was overcome by a desire to see more of the world. He thus once more abandoned his father, son, and long-suffering wife, gathered the remaining elements of his crew and set sail to the west. His crew now "old and slow" (XXVI:106) sail to the "Pillars of Hercules" (the Straights of Gibraltar) which no man was supposed to travel beyond, yet press on he did, convincing his crew through deceitful speech, as he had previously convinced Achilles to join the war at Troy and the Greeks to offer the Trojan horse. Sailing as far as a mysterious mountain on the uninhabited portion of the world (the Medievals knew the world was round, however they didn't think anyone lived in the western hemisphere), Odysseus' ship is deliberately sunk by "Another's will" (XXVI:141, Musa). The foreshadowing of Mount Purgatory and of Satan, who mad a "mad flight"(XXVI:125) of his own and was also cast down by "Another's will," sets the stage perfectly for what is to come.

As Dante and Virgil watch Odysseus and Diomedes wonder off, another soul, that of Guido da Montefeltro, approaches the pair, wailing over his fate. Guido, who's tale is as interesting as Odysseus', was another brilliant, yet deceitful, military leader, this time from Dante's own day. After a long, treacherous, and successful career leading anti-papal (Ghibelline) armies, Guido,

"... saw that the time of life had come
for me, as it must come for every man,
to lower the sails and gather in the lines," (XXVII:79-81, Musa)

Thus presenting an opposite image to that of Odysseus, who, even "old and slow" refused to "lower the sails" and end his exploits with a time of reflection and penitence. Guido, seeking to avoid damnation, relates how he joined the Franciscans in an attempt to end his life in friendship with God.
"And poor me it would have helped" (XXVII:84, Mandelbaum), exclaims Guido. Would have if he had truly repented and sought God's forgiveness. Instead, at Guido's death we see this scene,

"Francis came afterward, when I was dead,
   For me; but one of the black Cherubim
   Said to him: 'Take him not; do me no wrong; 

He must come down among my servitors,
   Because he gave the fraudulent advice
   From which time forth I have been at his hair; 

For who repents not cannot be absolved,
   Nor can one both repent and will at once,
   Because of the contradiction which consents not." (XXVII:112-120)

Guido's fate testifies to a basic tenant of reason (in fact the demon tells the horrified Guido, "Peradventure/ Thou didst not think that I was a logician!" [122-123]), a man can't be forgiven if he isn't repentant. Guido, much like "once-saved-always-saved" Protestants, tried to receive forgiveness before sinning, rather than sincerely repenting afterward. This attempt to "both repent and will at once" is an attempt to defraud God and leads directly to Guido's damnation. This lesson is important for us today. Sincere repentance, even of an entire life of sin (like Guido's) can bring salvation (hence, St. Francis comes for him). However, God's great mercy can't be had by those who refuse to accept it by repenting of their past sins. Trying to "game the system," trying to get a "get out of jail free card" (whether that card be the "sinners prayer" or, in Guido's case, Pope Boniface VIII's assurances), trying to get forgiveness and then to sin, is to reject the only thing that can ever save us - God's great mercy. Thus Guido only appeared to be better than Odysseus, only appeared to have repented and sought the solace of God's embrace. This deception, this final act of fraud, leaves Guido wrapped in, "the flame, in previous pain.../ gnarling and flickering its pointed horn. (XXVII:131-132).

After leaving behind the sinners engulfed in flames, Dante and Virgil come to the ninth bolgia of Malebolgie, the Eighth Circle of Hell. It is here that Dante is overwhelmed by the spectacle before him. Here he sees a demon wielding a great sword which he uses to rip to pieces the shades condemned here. Two souls in particular leap to Dante's attention. The first is cut from his throat to his groin; the second from his brow to his chin. This pair identify themselves,

..."How mutilated, see, is Mahomet;
In front of me doth Ali weeping go (XXVIII:31-32)

He looked at me, and opened with his hands
His bosom, saying: "See now how I rend me" (XXVIII:30)

Just as the schismatics, the sinners punished here, rendered asunder the Mystical Body of Christ on Earth, so now their bodies are rendered in torment below. We might, at first, be surprised to find the founder of Islam condemned as a schismatic. Isn't Mohammad another religious founder? Isn't Islam a separate entity entirely from Christianity, more like Hinduism than Mormonism? Dante's answer is no. He neither sees "Christianity" as one of the "world religions," one of which is Islam, nor does he see Mohammad as having created Islam ex nihilo. This view of Catholicism and of Islam is wonderfully summed up by the great Hilaire Belloc in his book The Great Heresies,

There is no such thing as a religion called "Christianity" there never has been such a religion. There is an always has been the Church, and various heresies proceeding from a rejection of some of the Church's doctrines by men who still desire to retain the rest of her teaching and morals.... There has always been, from the beginning, and will always be, the Church, and sundry heresies either doomed to decay, or, like Mohammedanism, to grow into a separate religion. 

Christianity, then, is the Catholic Church. Jesus didn't come to found "another great world religion." He came to establish the Kingdom of God, which is present in and through the Holy Catholic Church. Islam, like Arianism before and Protestantism after, split off from that Church, rejecting "some of the Church's doctrines" and seeking "to retain the rest of her teaching." That is why Jesus and Mary play such a prominent role in Islam (to the point where Jesus, not Mohammad, will return at the world's end to judge mankind).

We've already seen that Dante doesn't consider being Muslim to be a reason for eternal punishment (we met Saladin, Averoes and Avicenna living in a painless Earthy paradise in Limbo with the other virtuous non-Christians in Limbo). However, creating a division in the Body of Christ, which Dante believes Mohammad to have done, is. This distinction, between formal and material schism (and heresy) is still made by the Church today and is one reason the Church has softened her tone towards Eastern Orthodox, Protestants and Muslims today. These men and women might be in an unwilled state of material schism (and, for some, material heresy), but such isn't sinful. The founders of these schisms, Photius, Luther, Mohammad, however, and their early followers who left the Church, would have been guilty of the sin of formal schism (and, in most cases, heresy). Thus, in full accord with what Dante already is saying in the Thirteenth Century, Vatican Two can rightly say,

The Church recognizes that in many ways she is linked with those who, being baptized, are honored with the name of Christian, though they do not profess the faith in its entirety or do not preserve unity of communion with the successor of Peter. For there are many who honor Sacred Scripture, taking it as a norm of belief and a pattern of life, and who show a sincere zeal. They lovingly believe in God the Father Almighty and in Christ, the Son of God and Saviour. They are consecrated by baptism, in which they are united with Christ…. Likewise we can say that in some real way they are joined with us in the Holy Spirit, for to them too He gives His gifts and graces whereby He is operative among them with His sanctifying power. Some indeed He has strengthened to the extent of the shedding of their blood…. Mother Church never ceases to pray, hope and work that this may come about….…(T)hose who have not yet received the Gospel are related in various ways to the people of God…. (T)he plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place amongst these there are the Muslims, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind… (Lumen Gentium, 15-16)

After being overwhelmed by the mutilation he sees, including a sinner with his head removed from his shoulders, a perfect example of Dantean contrapasso - as this man, Bertran de Born, who severed the relationship between a father and son on Earth now is severed himself, Dante and Virgil trudge into the last bolgia of the Eighth Circle.

In me you see the perfect contrapasso! (XXVIII:142, Musa)

Blogging through Hell (pt 12) - Walking Among Devils & Hypocrites

After leaving behind the fortune tellers, and the unjust sorrow at their fate, Dante and Virgil cross the next arch into the fifth bolgia of the Eighth Circle. This bolgia, as Dante sees from the top of the archway, is filled with boiling pitch, but which appears empty. Dante, staring intently at the pitch in an attempt to discern who is being punished here, is pulled back by Virgil as a devil comes speeding towards them. The devil, one of the malebranche (evil-claws) who guard this bolgia, speeds past our pilgrims on a mission to dunk one of the sinners who dared surface from under the pitch. The sinners here punished are the grafters, government officials who took bribes, i.e. men who subverted justice, who defrauded their fellow citizens, for coin.

An image of bribery from Eighteenth Century England

The malebranche, both terrifying and humorous, in an off-color manner, soar about the tarpit with pitchforks in hand looking to skewer any sinner that dares to show his flesh. One poor soul, from Lucca, does just that and meets with both the devils' hooks and their humor as they compare the sinner's attempt to float on the pitch to the Santo Volto ("Holy Face," an important devotional crucifix, said to have been craved by Nicodemus, in Lucca) and remind him, while pulling him apart, that swimming in Hell isn't like swimming in the Serchio (the primary river near Lucca).

Santo Volto of Lucca

As the devils finish with the grafter from Lucca, Virgil steps out of the shadows to confront them. Malacoda, the leader of this group of devils, flies at Virgil, ready to thrust his pitchfork into Dante's guide, but is brought low, as so many of Hell's demons have been, by a mere mention of the Divine protection Dante's journey enjoys,

... his arrogance so humbled in him,
That he let fall his grapnel at his feet,
And to the others said: "Now strike him not." (XXI:85-88)

 The devils explain that the arch-bridge over this bolgia was destroyed, "yesterday, five hours later than this hour, / One thousand and two hundred sixty-six / Years"(XXI:112-114) ago by the Harrowing of Hell, which also destroyed the entrance gate to Hell and created the rockslide on which we met the Minotaur. As each bolgia has several bridges across it, Dante and Virgil must content themselves with following the devils to the next crossing, which Malacoda reveals is still intact (remember Virgil last passed through here before the Harrowing of Hell, before the bridge was destroyed). Dante, none too enthused with his new traveling companions, sidles up next to Virgil as Malacoda "made a trumpet of his rump" (XXI:139), as the signal to set off.

On the journey to the next bridge, the Malebranche come across a group of sinners that dare to have their faces slightly above the pitch. Most of them immediately duck back under at the approach of the devils, but one doesn't get away in time and is hoisted out by the demon guards. The other devils cry out,

"O Rubicante, see that thou do lay
Thy claws upon him, so that thou mayest flay him," (XXII:40-41)

Virgil interrupts the torment of this sinner to discover his name, he never gets to (though early commentators identify the man as Ciampolo), and to learn of anyone else that might be beneath the surface. The captured sinner, who we learn only is from the Kingdom of Navarre, uses the opportunity of speaking with Virgil to leap from the claws of the Malebranche striving to return to the relatively safety of the boiling tar. Seeing the Navarrese leap toward the pitch, Alichin, another devil, flies off to capture the sinner before he makes his escape, but misses as, "wings could not / outstrip the fear" (XXII:128-129) of the sinner.

Therefore he moved, and cried out: "Thou art o'ertaken."  (XXII:126)

It is noteworthy that Ciampolo lies to the devils, he tells them that he will call other sinners to the surface if they will but back off a bit (i.e. he says he will lie to the other sinners), to make his escape. Here we see a sinner still committing the sin for which he is damned - fraud. The devils seem to be in on the act as well, as they pretend to believe Ciampolo, lying to their fellow devil Alichin, merely to pick a fight with Alichin once Ciampolo escapes.

While the devils are betrayed by Ciampolo and while they battle one another, Dante and Virgil decide to press ahead by themselves to the next bridge. Dante is more fearful now of the devils than ever,

..."These on our account
Are laughed to scorn, with injury and scoff
So great, that much I think it must annoy them....  

I am in dread; we have them now behind us;
I so imagine them, I already feel them." (XXIII:13-15; 23-24)

No sooner is this said than that the Malebranche appear on the horizon, wings spread, pitchforks in hands. Virgil grabs Dante and slides down the rocky side of the bolgia, just as the devils reach them.

... there was
nothing to fear; for that High Providence
that willed them ministers of the fifth ditch,
denies to all of them the power to leave it. (XXIII:54-57, Mandelbaum)

Now, turning their backs on the furious Malebranche, Dante sees the next group of sinners, the hypocrites. These must walk forever covered in a heavy leaded mantel that, on the outside, glitters like the finest gold. Their mantel is a perfect image of hypocrisy, a lie to anyone who sees it. They plod along, under their heavy weight, burdened and pained, but also inflicting pain on another group of sinners punished here, the members of the Sanhedrin that betrayed their God who walked among them in the Flesh. Dante and Virgil see Caiaphas, nailed to the ground, cruciform (which was nicely foreshadowed by the image of the sinner in the last bolgia floating on his back like the Volto Santo). Caiaphas (and the rest of the Sanhedrin) are perpetually being trodded upon by the hypocrites, a fitting punishment for the betrayers of Christ (from His own people) and a just dessert for the pain and suffering they caused the Jewish People by their rejection of YHWH in the Flesh. Some commentators see Dante's harsh words for these sinners,

... "This transfixed one, whom thou seest,
Counselled the Pharisees that it was meet
To put one man to torture for the people. 

Crosswise and naked is he on the path,
As thou perceives; and he needs must feel,
Whoever passes, first how much he weighs; 

And in like mode his father-in-law is punished
Within this moat, and the others of the council,
Which for the Jews was a malignant seed." (XXII:115-123)

to be an incidence of hatred for the Jews, however I think the exact opposite is proven here. Dante bemoans the fate of Jerusalem and God's Holy People (the destruction of the Temple, the Sack of Jerusalem, and the diaspora), by showing how severely the leaders who caused these evils to be listed on the people are punished in the pit of Hell. We see nowhere in Dante the damnation of all Jewish people, in fact many of the Old Testament figures (and, of course, the Jewish New Testament saints and Christ Himself) enjoy Paradise. It is the parties responsible among the First Century Jewish leadership that are here punished, not all Jews indiscriminately.

The canto ends with Virgil livid over realizing that the malebranche had lied to him about the broken archway bridge. All the bridges over the fifth bolgia, it turns out, were shattered when Christ entered Hell, including the one Malacoda and company were leading Virgil and Dante to. On this fraudulent note, Virgil and Dante walk off to try to find some way out of the sixth bolgia.

Blogging through Hell (pt 11) - Dante Weeps

Of a new pain behoves me to make verses
And give material to the twentieth canto
Of the first song, which is of the submerged. (XX:1-3)

Thus Dante announces the arrival into the fourth "pocket" (bolgia) of the Eighth Circle of Hell, the Circle where the Fraudulent are punished. Here Dante is taken aback by a "new pain," one which our pilgrim guide seems to struggle with more than many others that we've witnessed with him,

and in the valley's circle I saw souls
advancing, mute and weeping, at the pace
that, in our world, holy processions take. 

As I inclined my head still more, I saw
that each, amazingly, appeared contorted
between the chin and where the chest begins; 

they had their faces twisted towards their haunches
and found it necessary to walk backward,
because they could not see ahead of them. (XX:7-15, Mandelbaum)

Indeed, Dante begins to weep. He attempts to justify his reaction, after learning so much about Hell, sin, and Divine Justice, to his readers,

So may God grant you, Reader, benefits
from reading of my poem, just ask yourself
how I could keep my eyes dry when, close by 

I saw the image of our human form
so twisted - the tears their eyes were shedding
streamed down to wet their buttocks at the cleft. (XX:19-24, Musa)

 It is the disfigurement of the human form, made in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gen 1:27), not the self-inflicted pain and suffering of the unrepentant sinners, that Dante claims makes him weep. Virgil, however, is having none of it,

..."Art thou, too, of the other fools? 

Here pity lives when it is wholly dead;
Who is a greater reprobate than he
Who feels compassion at the doom divine? (XX:27-30)

"Qui vive la pietà quand'è ben morta", "here pity lives when it is wholly dead" (XX:28), is a lesson Dante was supposed to have learned by now. It is also a lesson we're supposed to have learned by now, but how many of us are also moved by the repeated horrors we see in lower Hell? These sinners, the fraudulent and the violent above them, have maliciously chosen to act out evil, whether through killing others, themselves, violating nature and nature's God, or through deceiving others (an act reserved to persons, and thus worse than violence), yet we still, like Dante, have a tendency to feel sorrow for their self-imposed sentences. These sinners, all the sinners in Hell, have freely chosen, against the Will of God, to be precisely where they are. God, not being a spiritual rapists, desires all men to behold His Holy Face, but doesn't force anyone to. That is the radical nature of Love - a Love so great that even the Almighty allows His Will to be thwarted by some so that others may freely choose love (for love not freely chosen is no love at all).

"Chi è più scellerato che colui / che al giudico divina passion comporta?" "Who is a greater reprobate than he / who feels compassion at the doom divine?" (XX:29-30) As divine justice (perhaps a better translation than Longfellow's "doom divine") fulfills the dictate of love, not of wrath, makes he who would rail against it not "merciful" or "loving" but anti-love and even anti-mercy. "Il giudico divina" isn't the opposite of l'amore divina, God's love, but is one and the same with it, as all of God's attributes are ultimately one with His eternal, unchanging essence.

It is with this in mind that, even when seeing the human form "so twisted" (XX:22) by sin, that we should not be moved to pity but to righteous indignation that creatures beloved of God, creatures given the opportunity to fulfill a blessed destiny, have instead chosen sin over Love and in so doing have warped their souls into a greater disfigurement than even that which we behold in the twentieth canto. Here the shades of those who wanted to see the future (i.e. they wanted to see farther ahead of themselves than is possible or just) are now walking backwards, with their heads facing the same direction as their backsides, forever unable to see forwards at all. The shades here bemoan their self-imposed eternal lot with tears of suffering, not of repentance, the one thing which could have saved them.

Tiresias, damned in the Eighth Circle, tells Odysseus the future

Blogging through Hell (pt 10) - Those who Defraud the Church

Leaving behind the putrid smell of the second bolgia, Dante, the poet, makes the following interjection in the narrative of his Commedia, 

O Simon Magnus, O forlon disciples,
Ye who the things of God, which ought to be
The brides of holiness, rapaciously 

For silver and for gold do prostitute,
Now it behoves for you the trumpet sound,
Because in this third Bolgia ye abide. (XIX:1-6)

Simon Magnus, of course, appears in the Acts of the Apostles,

But there was a man named Simon who had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the nation of Samaria, saying that he himself was somebody great. They all gave heed to him, from the least to the greatest... But when they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized... Even Simon himself believed, and after being baptized he continued with Philip. And seeing signs and great miracles performed, he was amazed.
Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit... Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, saying, “Give me also this power, that any one on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”  But Peter said to him, “Your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money!..” (8:9-20, RSV, emphasis added)

From this early encounter through Dante's day and beyond the temptation for men to try to purchase spiritual things, known as simony, after Simon, plagued the Church. As did the equally pernicious temptation for Church men, including popes, to sell Church offices (i.e. to "prostitute," "for silver and for gold," "the things of God, which ought to be the brides of holiness.") It is these sinners, obviously related to those in the first bolgia, who prostituted women, oftentimes their close relatives, that we encounter here.

Among these simoniacs, Dante meets Giovanni Gaetano degli Orsini, Pope Nicholas III, who, like all the sinners punished here, is plunged, upside down, into a hole, his feet protruding upwards with a flame eternally licking them. This image, a pope turned upside down with his feet aflame, is a perfect contrapasso, as it inverts the original "birthday of the Church," Pentecost, where the Holy Spirit descends upon the heads of the original pope and bishops of the Church - none of whom purchased their offices from Christ - as tongues of fire.

Pope Nicholas goes on to reveal to Dante that both Boniface VIII and Clement V, the next two popes, will be joining him in this bolgia, each successive pope stuffing the former one farther into the hole. Dante, disguised with the evil of simony, has no pity on Nicholas,

I do not know if I were here too bold,
That him I answered only in this meter:
"I pray thee tell me now how great a treasure 

Our Lord demanded of Saint Peter first,
Before he put the keys into his keeping?
Truly he nothing asked but 'Follow me.' 

Nor Peter nor the rest asked of Matthias
Silver or gold, when he by lot was chosen
Unto the place the guilt soul had lost. (XIX:88-96) 

But Dante, despite acknowledging in the most graphic manner, that even popes can be evil sinners, yet retains his respect for the office which Nicholas, Boniface, and Clement betrayed,

And were it not for the reverence I have
   for those highest of all keys that you once held
   in the happy life - if this did not restrain me, 

I would use even harsher words than these (XIX:100-103, Musa) 

I stood there like a priest who is confessing
some vile assassin who, fixed in his ditch,
had called him back again to put off dying. (XIX:49-51, Musa)

After bewailing the greed of pastors like Nicholas, including accusing them of worshipping not one, but hundreds of gods made of gold and silver, Dante and Virgil leave behind the suffering pontiff, climb back onto the bridge and head for the next bolgia.

Blogging through Hell (pt 9) - Fraud

As he descends from the abode of the violent on the back of the horrific Geryon, Dante gets a "demon-eyed" view of the next Circle, the Eighth, the Circle where fraud is punished. Earlier, when Dante and Virgil had rested by Anastasius' tomb to allow themselves to adjust to the horrible odor coming from lower Hell (the source of which we will soon discover), Virgil had explained why fraud, as an evil only persons can commit, is worse even than violence or heresy (the other sins punished inside the fortress city of Dis). It is precisely these sinners who will fill the Eighth and Ninth Circles of Hell, these sinners who we will begin to meet once Geryon lands.

Before our demon-turned-airplane touches down, however, Dante is able to get a stunning view of the unique structure of the Eighth Circle. This is the famed "malebolge" ("evil pockets"), divided into ten "bolge" (each a smaller, concentric circle within the Eighth Circle, making malebolge a microcosm of Hell itself). The bolge are pits over which stone bridges arch, allowing Dante and Vigil to move from one bolge to the next. Dante describes the scene,

There is a place in Hell called Malebolge,
  Wholly of stone and of an iron color,
  As is the circle that around it turns.... 

Within this place, down shaken from the back
  Of Geryon, we found us; and the Poet
  Held to the left, and I moved on behind. (XVIII: 1-3, 19-21)

Map of Malebolge showing the bridges from one "pocket" to the next

The first "pocket" Dante and Virgil come upon is filled with two different groups of sinners, each walking a different direction within the bolgia and each whipped forward, without pause or mercy, by powerful demons. Waking toward our pilgrims, their faces visible as the other groups are not, are the pimps, men who most literally "used women" for their political, social, and above all economic gain. Among this group, none too anxious to be seen by Dante, unlike the souls in the higher circles of Hell, is Venedico Caccianemico, a prominent Bologna politician said to have curried favor with the Marquis of Este by pimping out his own sister. Bologna was known in the early fourteenth century for this sin so much that Venedico tells Dante that more Bolognesi reside in the first bolgia than currently live in the entire territory controlled by Bologna! Venedico's tale is concluded by a demon's whip.

... "Move on,
you pimp, you can't cash in on women here!" (XVIII:66-66, Musa)

Before crossing the bridge over the first bolgia, Virgil asks Dante to turn around so as to see the faces of the other group of sinners punished here, the seducers. They too have defrauded women, not by selling them to other men, but by luring them into their own bedchambers. Here Dante sees another proud soul, one who attempts to keep his absurd royal bearing despite being driven, naked, through the pits of Hell - Jason (from the Argos). 

After seeing the punishment met out to those who betrayed the women in their lives, and now themselves are forced, very much against their wills, to do something they might rather not, Dante and Virgil cross the bridge and discover the cause of the foul smell they've been dealing with since they entered the Sixth Circle. It is here, in the second bolgia, that the flatterers are punished by finding themselves immersed in that which they dealt best in above,

There we were, and from where I stood I saw
   souls in the ditch plunged into excrement
   that might well have been flushed from our latrines (XVII:112-114, Musa)

Here the souls, including a notable political ally of Dante's White Guelf party, Alessio Interminei, are forever in torment,

... snorting with their muzzles,
And with their palms beating upon themselves. (XVIII:104-105)

The very words Dante uses to describe Alessio's appearance echo with the sounds of slapping and smacking, (listen to the stop in the double c's bolded below):

e se' Alessio Interminei da Luccaperò t'adocchio più che li altri tutti». 

Ed elli allor, battendosi la zucca:
«Qua giù m'hanno sommerso le lusinghe
ond'io non ebe mai la lingua stucca». (XVII:122-126)

After watching the suffering of Thaïs, Vrigil, disgusted with the scene below, tells Dante,

I think our eyes have had their fill of this. (XVIII:135, Musa)

Blogging through Hell (pt 8) - Violence Against God

After leaving the sorrowful wood made of the souls of the suicides, Dante and Virgil come to a barren wasteland, a desert which has the forest as its border. Not daring to enter such a treacherous terrain, our pilgrims hold-up on the edge of the forest and begin walking along the edge of the desert, searching for a suitable place to cross, just as they had to do with the Phlegethon -the boiling river of blood, in which the first sinners of this, the Seventh, Circle were punished. As those sinners had lived lives of violence against neighbors and as the suicides and profligates in the wood were violent against themselves or their possessions, the sinners punished in the desert, of which we'll meet three distinct kinds, were violent against God Himself.

Many separate herds of naked souls I saw,
all weeping desperately...
And over all that sandland, a fall of slowly
raining broad flakes of fire showered steadily (XIV, 19-20; 28-29; Musa)

The first thing that comes to Dante's attention is one sinner, Capaneus (a pagan king who dared Jupiter to cast a thunderbolt at him and was dispatched quickly by the god for his impertinence), lying upon his back on the sand, but described by Dante as,

that mighty one who seems to heed not
The fire, and leith lowering and disdainful,
So that the rain seems not to ripen him? (XIV, 46-49)

Capaneus, in his disdain, reminds us immediately of Farinata degli Uberti who,

...uprose erect with breast and front
E'en as if Hell he had in great despite. (X, 35-36)

Some modern commentators have tried to suggest that these men, in their continued disdain for God and His Justice, have somehow "conquered Hell." Dante, through the words of Virgil addressed to Capaneus, has quite a different opinion,

My guide spoke back at him with cutting force,
   (I never heard his voice so strong before):
   "O Capaneus, since your blustering pride 

will not be stilled, you are made to suffer more:
   no torment other than your rage itself
   could punish your gnawing pride more perfectly." (XIV, 61-66; Musa)

It is the very unrepentant disdain for God, and for man, that is the worst punishment for Farinata and Capaneus. Such is true of all the sinners we've met thus far. Each and every one is permanently fixated on the sins that damned them in the first place and which cause their current, and enduring, misery. If any of them could but let go of their sin, they might fly to God's arms, but such is now impossible for them.

Capaneus, then, and all the sinners pinned eternally to their backs on the sands, represent the first of the three groups punished in this round of the Seventh Circle - the blasphemers, who do violence against God directly. These men offend against the virtue of religion, defined by St. Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theolgiae II:II:81:4,

Since virtue is directed to the good, wherever there is a special aspect of good, there must be a special virtue. Now the good to which religion is directed, is to give due honor to God. Again, honor is due to someone under the aspect of excellence: and to God a singular excellence is competent, since He infinitely surpasses all things and exceeds them in every way. Wherefore to Him is special honor due: even as in human affairs we see that different honor is due to different personal excellences, one kind of honor to a father, another to the king, and so on. Hence it is evident that religion is a special virtue.

After moving past Capaneus, and learning about the single source of Hell's four rivers, Dante and Virgil find a place to cross the desert and, as they do so, they meet the next group of violent sinners, the sodomites. These souls are allowed to wander about the desert, unlike the blasphemers, but if they stop they are forced to remain still on their backs for one-hundred years. The sodomites, like all the souls punished in the desert, sinned by committing violence against God, not directly, like Capaneus, but by violating nature, which was created by God (and is thus "God's child"). Dante meets several fellow Florentines among the sodomites, including a favorite teacher of his Ser Brunetto Latini, who Dante pays much respect to and from whom he learns more about his own misadventurous future.

Are you here, Ser Brunetto? (XV, 30)

As the Florentines race off across the desert, we come to the edge of Circle Seven with its precipitous fall. Dante and Virgil, it seems, have no way of descending into the next circle, but Virgil, familiar with this path from his previous journey, casts Dante's belt into the abyss to await aid from an unlikely source, the Geryon - another half-man, half-beast creature of which we've met so many in the Seventh Circle.

While Virgil awaits the coming of the monster, Dante meets the last group of violent sinners against God - the usurers. These shades, like their non-violent counterparts in Circle Four, are indistinguishable from one another, save for the bag of money, with their family's crest, tied about their neck. These souls, perhaps yet concerned only with their money, have little interest in speaking with Dante, who is quickly told, "now get thee gone!" (XVI, 67). Dante then returns to Virgil, who is already seated upon the back of Geryon, described as the perfect image of fraud (a prelude to the Eighth Circle). After bolstering his courage and climbing upon the monsters back, Dante begins the terrifying descent (compared to the ill-fated voyages of Phaeton and Icarus) into the next Circle.

It is interesting to note how our culture has lost, almost entirely, the sense of sin for most of the sins punished in the Seventh Circle - the Circle of the Violent. We've met, over the last two posts, six different types of violent offenders:

1. The Violent Against Neighbors (Highway robbers, tyrants, murders)
2. The Violent Against Themselves (Suicides)
3. The Violent Against Their Possessions (Profligate spenders)
4. The Violent Against God Directly (Blasphemers)
5. The Violent Against God's Child, Nature (Sodomites)
6. The Violent Against God's Grandchild, Human Work (Usurers)

 Most everyone, including moral relativists, would yet condemn the first group. Our society has, however, been systematically rejecting the notion that the other five groups here punished are sinners at all. In fact, we've witnessed an increasing tendency, whose apotheosis is "same sex marriage," to glorify these sins as if they were virtues. Suicide, violence against one's own life and body, is called "the right to die with dignity." Profligate spenders are routinely held up as "icons" of self-actualization. Blasphemy is common to the point where hearing the name of God, the name at which every knee shall one day bend (Phil 2:10), Jesus Christ, is common only when it is being used precisely as a blasphemous "swear word." Likewise with the name "God," which is heard less often with reverence than it is as an expression, often shortened to OMG, of shock or surprise. If these trends weren't bad enough, sodomy (seen, again, not as a sin, but as a "right") and usury (including "loan shark" practices, advertised openly on television) are becoming fundamental to our culture and economy. These sins, all of which are sins of violence against God, directly or indirectly, fester at the root of our culture, driving us away from God and into the awaiting arms of Satan. If there is but one Circle of Dante's Hell which every American needs study, this is the one. In fact these sins are so common, and so celebrated, it might do us all some good to review these sins and our attitudes to them.

Blogging through Hell (pt. 7) - The Fate of the Violent

Last time, we left our traveler's crouched behind a pope's tomb, discussing Aristotle and adjusting to the horrible smell that began to over-power them in Lower Hell. The smell, and the cacophony of ceaseless yells, screams, groans, and blasphemies is a background for this entire journey since we left Circle One (Limbo) long ago. We can imagine a haunted house with the sound track up as high as possible as a dim suggestion of what this journey sounds like. One of the features, then, of Hell is the horrible atmosphere through which we are traversing.

As you'll remember, the entire journey through the Inferno is to be completed within Holy Saturday of the great jubilee year, A.D. 1300. Vigil, mindful of this, goads Dante on toward a sharp descent into the Seventh Circle, where, we find, the violent are punished in three different mini-circles for six different expressions of violence (each punished differently). We'll look at the first three types of violent sinners today and the next three tomorrow.

First, however, Dante and Virgil have to get into the Seventh Circle. To do so means they must pass another guard drawn from ancient mythology who is a fitting representation of violence - the Minotaur.

there lay stretched out the infamy of Crete (XII, 12 Musa)

The Minotaur, half man, half beast, who once glutted himself upon the blood of Athenian boys and girls, falls immediately into a mindless rage at the mention, by Virgil, of Theseus (here called only by his title "the Duke of Athens" in verse 16) and begins bucking uncontrollably, providing just enough time for our pilgrims to descend the broken path and enter into the Circle of the Violent.

Dante, surprised by the destruction of that part of Hell's geography, asks his guide what could have caused such devastation. An Earthquake, caused by Christ's Harrowing of Hell (which also destroyed the gate at the entrance to Hell and led to the freeing of certain souls from Circle One) leveled this section of Hell's dividing wall. Christ's entrance into Hell, on Holy Saturday 1267 years before Dante's journey, was the major even in Hell's history, one which continues to have eternal, physical consequences. Virgil describes the event, from the perspective of a citizen of Hell and as a non-Christian to the best of his abilities,

Now will I have thee know, the other time
I here descended to the nether Hell,
This precipice had not yet fallen down. 

But truly, if I well discern, a little
Before His coming who the mighty spoil
Bore off from Dis, in the supernal circle, 

Upon all sides the deep and loathsome valley
Trembled so, that I thought the Universe
Was thrilled with love... (XII, 34-42)

Once down the destroyed path, which shifts under the weight of Dante's living feet, Dante is confronted with the first punishment for the unrepentant violent as he beholds the River Phlegethon, a river made of boiling blood. The sinners here, tyrants (e.g. Dionysius of Syracuse), warlords (e.g. Attila the Hun), murders, and highway robbers are here punished eternally for the blood they shed in life. The Phlegethon varies in depth, thus those shades who committed less atrocious acts of violence might be only ankle deep in its bloody waters, while Alexander the Great or Ezzelino da Romano find themselves completely submerged. Any attempt to rise out of the boiling blood is met with arrows slung from yet more half-men, half-beasts, the centaurs (who carried a reputation for bloodshed and violence in their own right).

Crossing over the Phlegethon, Dante and Virgil immediately find themselves in another "dark wood (cf. Canto One),"

   ...we were on our way into a forest
   that was not marked by any path at all. 

No green leaves, but rather black in color,
   no smooth branches, but twisted and entangled,
   no fruit, but thorns of poison bloomed instead. (XIII, 2-6, Musa)

The moment that a violent soul departs
the body it has torn itself away from...
it drops to the wood...
anywhere that fortune tosses it.
There... it...
soon springs into a sapling, then a wild tree (XIII, 94-95, 97-100, Musa)

 Stunned that the screams of the damned fill the forest, with no one to be seen, Dante turns to his trusted guide who instructs him to break off a twig from the nearest tree and,

...its trunk cried, "Why dost thou mangle me?" 

After it had become embrowned with blood,
It recommenced its cry: "Why dost thou rend me?
Hast thou no spirit of pity whatsoever? 

Men once we were, and now are changed to trees;
Indeed, thy hand should be more pitiful,
Even if the souls of serpents we had been." (XIII, 33-39)

This, Dante learns, is the shade of Pier della Vigna, counsellor to Emperor Frederick II, stupor mundi ("wonder of the world"), who we learned from Farinata spends his eternity entombed for denying the immortality of the soul. Pier, who was a poet of the "Sicilian school," the primary Italian antecedent to Dante's dolce stil novo, was maligned to the Emperor and lost his position. Such despair enveloped him at the false accusations of disloyalty to his beloved emperor, and at his loss of position, that Pier took his own life. Thus, Dante learns that these tree-like souls are those who committed violence not against their neighbor, but against themselves.

Frederick II Condemns Pier della Vigna of Treason

Not for Dante, then, the ludicrous modern notion that someone can't harm themselves. In fact, everyone in Hell (and almost everyone in Purgatory and Paradise) has harmed themselves, as every sinful act ultimately harms the sinner more than anyone else. This might come as a shock to modern readers who assume anything consensual, anything chosen freely by the individual, is, ipso facto, good. Rather, like we learned with love (cf. part three of Blogging through Hell), choice is not, cannot, be a good in-and-of-itself. Choice, consent, is only good when the action chosen is good. Choosing evil over good is what constitutes sin, which is displeasing to God not because it harms God, nothing can, but because it harms us. Thus, suicide isn't damnable because God is angered that we dare "play God," but is sinful because it harms a human person - the suicide himself. Suicide, then, is no less worse than murder and is punished in the same circle of Hell, albeit in a different form from those who take their neighbor's blood. While bathing, forever, in a river of boiling blood is a fitting contrapasso for those who have made others bleed, losing the human shape they violently casted off in life, is a fitting eternal state for the suicides. Justice demands that these souls, and these souls alone in all of Dante's afterlife, will never regain their human bodies. Even after they rise again on the last day to receive their public judgment from Christ the King, they will not return to they human bodies, rather they will drag them back to Hell to be forever hung on their thorns.

Dante's conversation with Pier ends abruptly as two naked men, pursued by large, vicious dogs appear. The men, Arcolano di Squarcia Maconi and Giacomo da Santo Andrea, are profligates - wasteful spenders who violently spent away their possessions (Giacomo, for example, was known to throw money into a river and to burn his cottages for entertainment). The profligates punished here, as opposed the prodigal spenders punished in Circle Four above, were not just too weak to keep their spending in check (i.e. they weren't merely incontinent spenders), but were maliciously, violently wasteful of possessions that should have been used to succor the poor ("since you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren you have done it unto me" - Mat 25:40).

After the dogs rip Giacomo apart, along with the suicide-turned-bush he's hiding behind, Dante, in an act of kindness, gathers up the shredded leaves of the unidentified Florentine suicide and learns more about Florence's fate, which, with its constant civil unrest and violence, is compared to a suicide.

Florence, today

Blogging through Hell (pt. 6) - Hell's Architecture

As our travelers through the realm infernal continue past the Tomb of the Epicurean Heretics, who denied the immortality of the soul and are now destined to spend eternity in a tomb, a fitting rebuke who claimed their entombed bodies were all that would be left of them, a horrid odor blows up into their faces. Virgil recommends that the pair stop to accustom themselves to the malodorous air of lower Hell. To do so, they take shelter behind a massive tomb of Anastasius, the Byzantine Emperor who was led by Photinus into the Arian heresy¹. Now, eager to learn and no longer wanting to waste time, Dante asks Virgil to describe the layout of Hell. The positive effects of traveling this arduous path are beginning to show.

We drew ourselves aside behind the cover
Of a great tomb (XI:6-7)

Virgil, happy that Dante seeks to understand, lays out the basic division of Hell into the now famous "nine circles." Each circle holds a different type of sinner, with a punishment that perfectly fits the crime. We've seen this already several times, for example Francesca and Paolo (who couldn't control their bodies in life and are now uncontrollably whipped about in an eternal tempest) and the heretics we just left behind. The primary division of Hell, represented by the gates of the Infernal City of Dis, which Dante has just entered, is between sins of malice and sins of incontinence with the malicious sinners being confined within the city walls and the incontinent being punished outside of Dis (but still in Hell). The distinction between these two types of sinners is important. Sins done with malice are those done intentionally to harm. Sins of incontinence are those committed by an inability to control our passions. Thus, murder (a sin of malice) will be punished in Dis, while wrath (a sin of incontinence) is punished in the River Styx, outside of the city gates.

Further, Dis is sub-divided between those who commit violence and thus who commit fraud. It is instructive to see Dante place both the misers and the sodomites among the violent. He sees both groups committing acts of violence against nature - the one (represented by Sodom) against human nature, the other (represented by Cahors, a city in the south of France that became synonymous with usury in the Middle Ages) against human industry (what Dante calls "l'arte vostra," "your art"). Art, defined more broadly as anything created by man, is to follow nature, which itself follows God's Divine Plan, making human industry "God's grandchild" (XI:105). Therefore, violating human nature (or human industry) is to offended against God. As usury and sodomy are more than incontinent desires, but are willed evil acts, those who die unrepentant of such sins are rightly punished in Dis among the violent malicious.

Map of Dante's Infernal Topography

As Dante's mini-tutorial on Aristotle's ethics comes to an end, Virgil urges him, and us readers, onward in our journey as Holy Saturday is waning.


________________________
1. In the Fourteenth Century the heretical Byzantine Emperor (ruled from 491-518) was mistakingly confused with Pope Anatastasius II (pontiff from 496-498), thus Dante has the tomb read, "Pope Anastasius I hold." (XI:8)

Blogging through Hell (pt 5) - Into the City of the Damned

Last time, we had left Dante and Virgil waiting to continue their God-ordained journey on the outside of the gates of the City of the Damned - Dis (taken from an ancient Roman name for the god of the dead - Pluto, not to be confused with Plutus, who we met earlier). Dante notes the fearsome quality of this perversion of human cities, centers of learning and culture in our poets day,

"Master, already I can see
the clear how of its mosques above the valley,
burning bright red, as though just forged, and left 

to smolder. (VIII:70-71, Musa)

Yes, one of the most predominant features of lower Hell, and one important for the next group of sinners we will meet, is its fiery red, burning Mosques. Hell, thus conceived, is an infernal Islamic city, one in which God isn't know as love and certainly not as "abba" ("Father"), but only as a powerful master, the Creator to us creatures. God's power and justice are known to the sinners of Dis, and all of Hell, just as they are known in Islam, but His tender, parental love, His self-sacrificial love, is entirely alien. God may be feared, but He isn't loved here.

After a brief run-in with three demons who seek to turn our pilgrim into stone by calling on Medusa, Dante and Virgil's hoped for Heavenly aide arrives. The damned in the River Styx dive out of the way of the Heavenly messenger who walks dry-shod over the marshy waters, in a scene that brings the Israelites passage out of slavery, dry-shod, through the Red Sea or Christ's walking on the storm tossed seas in Galilee to mind. This latter image out to be especially striking as the Angel here represents the "first advent of Christ," i.e. His incarnation as Savior of mankind in a still hostile, indeed Satan-ruled, Earth. St. Bernard of Clairvaux describes this "first advent" as,

We know that there are three comings of the Lord... In the first coming he was seen on earth, dwelling among men; he himself testifies that they saw him and hated him... In his first coming our Lord came in our flesh...¹

In a similar manner, the Angel here comes and the reaction of the damned is hatred. In the Purgatorio  we'll need to keep our eyes open for the other two advents of Christ.

The Angel, again representing Our Lord and sent by Him, has no problem battering down the defenses of Dis, as once Christ Himself destroyed the gate on the entrance to Hell, the gate that once stood underneath the "cruel" words we read in the third canto. In fact, the mere touch of a "little rod" swings open the gates and allows our journey to continue.

He reached the gate, and with a little rod
He opened it, for there was no resistance. (IX:89-90)

Once inside that fearsome city, Dante is struck by the proliferation of tombs, in-between which fires rage. Virgil explains,

"Here are the Heresiarchs,
With their disciples of all sects, and much
More than thous thickest laden are the tombs. 

Here like together with its like is buried;
And more and less the monuments are heated." (IX:127-131)

As Dante and Virgil make their way past the tombs, they converse with one another. Hearing Dante's Florentine dialect, one sinner rises up from the tomb,

"O Tuscan, thou who through the city of fire
Goest alive, thus speaking modestly,
Be pleased to stay thy footsteps in this place. 

Thy mode of speaking makes thee manifest
A native of that noble fatherland,
To which perhaps I too molestful was." (X:22-27)

It is the shade of Farinata of the degli Uberti family, one of the noblest in Florence. Farinata's first question gives us a hint at his personality,

As soon as I was at the foot of his tomb,
Somewhat he eyed me, and, as if disdainful,
Then asked of me, "Who were thine ancestors?" (X:40-42)

Farinata knows the likelihood of any fellow Florentine rising to the eminence of his own family is next to none. His question, then, isn't asked so much out of interest in the family of the living man walking past his eternal tomb, but rather is a way for Farinata to lord over Dante with his superior lineage. Farina's extreme pride in life lead him to even reject the revealed truth of the Catholic Faith. Buried here, with the Epicurean heretics, who rejected the truth of the immortality of the soul. It is interesting to note that Epicurus is buried here, in Dis, as a heretic even though he was a pagan philosopher. His philosophy, which denial of the immortality of the soul, is a heresy because it denied a religious truth which the pagans had access to.

And he uprose erect with breast and front
E'en as if Hell he had in great despite. (X:35-36)

Farinata's pride in his, and his family's, Earthly fame is one consequence of his embrace of the Epicurean heresy which emphasized the importance of temporal happiness. Another consequence is represented in Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti who, raising himself on his knees to Farina's waist, seethes with envy that Dante has been chosen to journey through the underworld instead of his son, Guido. Cavalcante assumes, wrongly as we know, that Dante's great poetic genius is what has brought him on his travels and wonders why his son, Guido, another poet and Dante's "first friend" according to La Vita Nuova, wasn't chosen to accompany Dante. Dante uses the past tense to refer to Guido, which prompts Cavalcante to ask if his beloved son is dead. Dante, pondering why the damned have knowledge of the future, but not of the present, delays in answering, which Cavalcante takes as a confirmation of his son's death. Before Dante can correct him, Cavalcante collapses back into the tomb. Farinata, too proud to even notice Cavalcante's interruption, continues on discussing Florentine politics with Dante as if nothing happened, eventually giving Dante another prediction of his impending exile, which Virgil commands the pilgrim to well remember as they leave the Epicureans behind.

_________________
1. Sermo 5, In Adventu Domini, 1-3: Opera Omnia, Edit. Cisterc. 4 {1966} 

Blogging through Hell (pt 4) - Greed & Wastefulness; Anger & Sullenness

"Papë Satàn, Papë Satàn, Aleppë!" are the words that greet Dante as he crosses into the fourth circle of Hell. These words, utter nonsense to us (although variously interpreted as a reference to Satan as the pope of the underworld or as a cry of distress at seeing an enemy (satàn) of Hell in Dante). Virgil, after a brief, Christlike call to Dante, "Let not thy fear Harm thee" ("Be not afraid"), turns on this latest demon, Plutus (once worshipped as the god of wealth in ancient mythology), with a stunning and effective rebuke,

"Be silent, thou accursed wolf;
Consume within thyself with thine own rage. 

Not causeless is this journey to the abyss;
Thus is it willed on high, where Michael wrought
Vengeance ion the proud adultery." (VII:8-12)

The mere mention of the powers of Heaven, symbolized in the name of the mighty defeater of Satan, St. Michael the Archangel, causes Plutus to collapse to the ground as Dante and Virgil move past him to see the sinners, Plutus' devotees in life, and their punishment.

Dante, upon seeing the fate of the greedy and the prodigals, both of whom worshipped money - the former by hoarding it, the latter by spending it recklessly, is moved, once again by pity,

Justice of God, ah! who heaps up so many
New toils and sufferings as I beheld?
And why doth our transgression waste us so? (VII:19-21)

These two sets of sinners are eternally set to the task of rolling enormous weights, the weight of the money they so desperately desired in life, around the fourth circle. Each group occupies half of the circle and at each point where the two groups come to together the sinners slam their weights into one another shouting, "why hoard?" and "why waste?" at one another in an eternal, if now useless, reproach.

Dante is shocked to see so many souls condemned here. In fact, he says more souls are confined to this circle than all the souls he's yet seen added together. Money, then, is the "root of all evil" (1 Tim 6:10). Dante asks Virgil if he might not stop and see if he knows any of the souls here. Florence, after all, was, in Dante's day, on the cutting edge of economic growth and prosperity. It was Florence, with her newly minted gold coin, the Florin (1252-1533), that would transform Europe's economy and be home to some of the wealthiest men in the world. Dante's hopes of interacting with these souls are doused by Virgil. The worship of money has forever made these souls indistinguishable. Indeed, unlike souls throughout the rest of Hell, these men can't even be bothered to look up at the novel sight of a living man striding through their accursed resting place. Money is all that will never matter to them, even though,

"... all the gold that is beneath the moon,
Or ever has been, of these weary souls
Could never make a single one repose." (VII:64-66)

The coin that changed the world - Florence's "Florin"

 After a brief discussion of Fate, another entity worshipped in ancient times, but now set within the Christian revelation as a minister of God, indeed as an angel, and on God's reasons for granting her the power to raise up and knock down the wealth and prosperity of societies and men, Virgil leads Dante, and us with him, father into the abyss, for time is running short (remember the entire trip through Hell must be completed on Holy Saturday. Dante is here to learn the consequences of sin, not to see the sights).

As Dante follow his guide they come to a fetid swamp, the Styx (another appropriation from classical mythology). Here, in the dark gray waves, they behold

... people mud-besprent in that lagoon,
All of them naked and with an angry look. (VII:110-111)

These souls, who add to the torment of their fellow sufferers by clawing, biting, and punching each other, are the wrathful. They weren't violent in life (those sinners we'll meet later in lower Hell), but allowed anger, one of the deadly sins, to fester in them and dominate their personality. They rejected the command to love their neighbor (cf. Jn 13:34) and the forgiveness which is only on offer to those who forgive others (cf. The Our Father), instead fixating on hatred and rage. The angry state in which they died now consumes them as they rage, without result, for eternity.

Beneath the waves and feet of the wrathful, Dante sees yet more souls. These are the slothful. They could take no pleasure in life and now are denied it for eternity. Unable to "shout to God with cries of joy" (Ps 47:1) then, they are reduced to sighing,

"We sullen were
In the sweet air, which by the sun is gladdened,
Bearing within ourselves the sluggish reek; 

Now we are sullen in this sable mire." (VII:119-124)

Dante and Virgil then see signals being flashed back and forth across the Styx and notice a rapidly approaching boat, oared by Phlegyas. For those rusty on their ancient mythology, Phlegyas, a demigod (the son of Mars), in a fit of wrath, burned Apollo's temple to the ground in Delphi. Here he is seen as the epitome of wrath, and thus a fit boatsman to transport Dante and Virgil across the abode of the wrathful sinners.

As they journey across a Styx, a shade leaps from the waters, the soul of another Florentine, Filippo Argenti, who, like Francesca da Rimini, seeks to gain the pity of Dante by identifying himself as one who weeps. Dante, growing spiritually on his journey, reacts quite differently, though. Instead of weeping with the soul or collapsing into a swoon, Dante turns on his fellow Florentine in a display of righteous anger (which is contrasted nicely with the sin of wrath displayed by Argenti),

"With weeping and with wailing,
Thou spirit maledict, do thou remain;
For thee I know, though thou art all defiled." (VIII:37-39)

"Thou seest that I am one who weeps" (VIII:36)

Virgil, happy to see Dante's spiritual progress, echoes the woman from the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke (verse 27),

"... Indignant soul,
 blessed is she in whose womb you were conceived (VIII:45, Musa)

As the boat moves forward, and Argenti is "dunked" back into the slime by his fellow sinners, much to Dante's delight (showing our pilgrim is still struggling with the sin/sinner distinction), we arrive at the walled city of Dis, the city that makes up "lower Hell" where the worst sinners are housed. The fallen angels that guard the gates of the infernal city mock the Divinely approved mission of Dante by slamming the doors in Virgil's face. Dante, frightened by the thought of his journey's progress ending with him lost in Hell, is assured by Virgil that help from Heaven will arrive. It is with this hoped for divine assistance yet to come that our canto ends, leaving us, like the chosen people before the Incarnation, awaiting a Savior...

Blogging through Hell (pt 3) - Those Lost to Love

Another way my sapient Guide conducts me
Forth from the quiet to the air that trembles; 

And to a place I come where nothing shines.

Such were the dreary last words we heard at the end of Canto IV, when we left behind the last of the souls who, though unable to enjoy the beatific vision, yet still dwell outside of the pains of Hell and entered into the entirely lightless skies of Hell. This imagery, of course, reflects the total absence of Christ, He who is the Light of the world, and shows Hell to be a perfect contrapposto to the city of Heaven which "has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb" (Rev 21:23). Here God's glory shines not and the souls, who hate the light (cf. Jn 3:20), dwell in an endless, Godless darkness.

As Dante finishes his descent into the second circle of Hell, he encounters another demon, Minos, who is tasked with the unpleasant role of hearing the evils each newly arrived soul left unrepeated in life and, by wrapping his scaly tail around himself, sends each soul to its perfectly just eternal home. It is important to reflect here on an essential truth revealed by Minos about Hell. Each soul, through confession (the very act that would have saved their souls had they been willing to do it in life with repentance) to the demonic judge condemns itself to its place in Hell. The damned have chosen their own final resting place. Minos can do nothing but "rubber stamp" that choice. Distracted from his eternal bureaucratic task, Minos is no happier to see the living Dante than Charon was, but Virgil, with a short, albeit veiled, reference to God, who's name is never directly mentioned in Hell, easily leads Dante past the enraged infernal judge and into the second circle proper.

The infernal hurricane that never rests
Hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine
(V:31-32)

Here Dante is overwhelmed by what he sees. As he looks upward he witnesses an eternal tempest raging and, within its relentless winds, he sees scores of souls being whipped about here and there, totally out of control. These souls, forever flying past the seat of Minos, where their eternal fate was proclaimed, call out the most awful yells and blaspheme God. They are, as we see in this act, eternally unrepentant. They hate God and curse Him. These souls, self excluded from the sight of God, do not wish to see Him who they hate, thus confirming, eternally, the choice they made at the moment of death.

Despite this hatred for God, Dante is overwhelmed by pity at the scene. The words he read on the Hell's gate still seem "cruel" to him. Dante realizes that these souls, who have forever lost the ability to control their bodies, are "the carnal malefactors... who reason subjugate to appetite" (V:38-39), i.e. those who couldn't control their bodies in life. These are the lustful and it is love that has undone them. Not for Dante, or for us as Catholics, the banal claim that "love" justifies anything and everything. We see here, right at the beginning of Hell proper, souls eternally lost because of love wrongly pursued.

That day no further did we read therein. (V:138)

After seeing out a slew of famous souls, everyone from Achilles and Helen to Cleopatra, Dante calls two souls, forever wrapped together, over to speak with, Francesca and Paolo. Dante asks Francesca, Paolo says not a word, how she came to this awful fate. After briefly protesting, Francesca eagerly delves into the tale. She was undone, not through any fault of her own - at least in her own mind, because of "the media." Of course, she didn't have television or the internet, but she blames here adulterous affair with Paolo on the fourteenth century equivalent - romance novels, specifically the Arthurian romance Lancelot du Lac. It was the book, and its author, that is to blame. More, Francesca blames her lover, Paolo, by changing the details of the Lancelot story, having Lancelot kiss Guinevere, when it was the Queen who kissed the knight. Francesca, as all the souls in Hell are, is entirely unwilling to repent or accept any blame for what she has done - cheated on her husband, the very husband who caught her and Paolo in the act and sent them to their judgement (Francesca reveals that her husband is farther down in the pit of Hell and is entirely unmoved, indeed almost happy, about it).

Dante, who before penning the Comedy, was a love poet (of the dolce stil nuovo - see La Vita Nuova for his prime accomplishment there), is immediately taken in by Francesca. Our poet, and many modern commentators, sympathize with her self-chosen fate so much so that he swoons a second time. Which makes us ask ourselves, do we too sympathize with Francesca? Do we find her and her lover's fate too hard to bear? Are we seeing here an image of Divine Justice and ultimately Divine Love (which grants such freedom to us mere creatures that we can choose something over God and get that thing forever, even if it means Hell) or do we want to declare that we "believe in a God of love and mercy" as if it is either loving or merciful for God to force us, against our wills, to be with Him forever? Do we fall into a swoon like Dante or do we thank God for being a suitor, not a rapist, and repent of our own failings though His Grace? Hopefully the latter, but if we are like Dante, we might need a bit more time in Hell before coming to that realization.

Upon awakening, our pilgrim guide finds himself surrounded by new sinners and realizes that Virgil has transported him to the next circle of Hell. Here he finds rain,

Eternal, maledict, and cold, and heavy;
Its law and quality are never new. 

Huge hail, and water somber-hued, and snow (VI:8-10)

Yes, snow. Dante's conception of Hell includes both extreme heat and fire and extreme cold, ice, and even snow.

As Dante turns he sees another demon, Cerebrus, the three-headed dog famed from ancient Greek myth. The beastial character of Cerebrus, and his unending appetite, make him the perfect tormentor, even while himself suffering the same conditions as the other sinners here, of the gluttonous. As Dante moves downward through Hell he encounters worse sinners. Thus, those lead astray by lust are the least punished and the least sinful of all the properly damned in Hell. It might surprise us at first to think that gluttons, those who love food inordinately, are worse than the lustful, but if we pause to consider the higher value of human love vis-a-vis mere food, we can understand how making you belly you God is worse than corruption what in itself is a higher good - love shared between a man and a woman. Both of these sins, however, are interconnected (as is the sin we will see being punished in the next circle) as they are sins of incontinence. This interconnectedness was concretely brought home to me in a discussion I once had with a well meaning, portly, Protestant minister. When the topic of divorce came up he dismissed the idea that such could be a sin by patting his stomach and declaring, "next we'd have to condemn gluttony!" as if the thought that he might have to deal with what could be a sin in his own life was cause enough to never help anyone deal with sin in their own. In this, he seemed to get Jesus' advice in Matthew 7 exactly backwards. Christ admonishes us to remove the sins in our own life and then to help others not to justify other's sins by appealing to our own (cf. Matt 7:5).

Finally, it is worth pausing for a moment on the meeting Dante has with a fellow Florentine, with someone he actually knew in life, here identified as "Ciacco" Italian for "the hog." Dante, still struggling with the idea that anyone might be lost (no, Von Balthasar wasn't the first Catholic to long to "dare to hope all are saved") breaks out in tears at the filth covered shade of his former fellow citizen. Ciacco is the first of the damned to reveal something to Dante about his own future (the damned have the ability to know of things that will come thanks to being removed from time, but this seeming power is finally a curse. They can do nothing about what will happen, unlike the living, and will even have this foreknowledge come to an end once time ends.) Ciacco gives Dante the first premonition of his impending exile from his beloved Florence.

After a brief philosophical dialogue with Virgil where Dante learns that the pains of the damned will be increased after the Final Judgement for the same reason the joys of the blessed will be increased, we descend to the next level,

Round in a circle by that road we went,
Speaking much more, which I do not repeat;
We came unto the point where the descent is; 

There we found Plutus the great enemy. (VI:112-115)