DIVINE COMEDY (1307-1321)

By Dante Alighieri

• Also called “La Divina Comedia”

• Trilogy: Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso
• THEME: Spiritual journey of man through life
• Dante was guided by Virgil (Epitome of Human Knowledge) from Hell to Purgatorio
• Dante was guided by Beatrice (embodying the knowledge of divine mysteries/ divine of love) to Paradiso.
• It has 100 cantos, 33 for Purgatorio and Paradiso.
DIVINE COMEDY: INFERNO
PRELUDE TO HELL
❖ CANTO I
• Three beasts symbolize the three kinds of sin.
• Three major divisions of hell:
➢ Lonza (Leopard)- Fraud and Malice
➢ Leone (Lion)- Violence and bestiality
➢ Lupa (she-wolf)- incontinence
❖ CANTO II
• Dante and Virgil begin their journey to underworld.
❖ CANTO III: VESTIBULE OF HELL
• Dante and Virgil pass through the gate of hell
• “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”
• Souls of people who are took no sides. Opportunists who were neither good nor evil.
• They are only concerned to themselves.
• They met Pope Celestine V whose cowardice served as the door through which so much evil
entered the church.
• Also, outcasts who took no side in the “Rebellion of Angels”.
• They are chased by wasps and hornets.
• Charon: The pilot of the Ferry
• Archeron: River across to hell proper.

NINE CIRCLES OF HELL

• The circles are “concentric” representing a gradual increase in wickedness, and culminating at the center
of the earth, where Satan is held in bondage.
• Contapasso: Poetic justice. (For example, later in the poem, Dante and Virgil encounter fortune-tellers
who must walk forward with their heads on backward, unable to see what is ahead, because they tried
to see the future through forbidden means.)
• Upper hell (circle 2-5)
• Violence (circle 7)
• Fraud (circle 8 and 9)

❖ FIRST CIRCLE: LIMBO (CANTO IV)

• Unbaptized and virtuous pagans
• Souls who did not accept Christ
• Dante and Virgil encountered some of the philosophers like Aristotle with Socrates and Plato at
his side, as well as Democritus, "Diogenes" (either Diogenes the Cynic or Diogenes of Apollonia),
Anaxagoras, Thales, Empedocles, Heraclitus, and "Zeno" (either Zeno of Elea or Zeno of Citium)
• Punishment is deprivation
❖ SECOND CIRCLE: LUST (CANTO V)
• It is described as “a part where nothing gleams”
• Minos: who judges all of those condemned for active
• Souls whose lustful and adulterous
• They encounter Cleopatra and Helen of Troy
• Canto of Queen
• Punishment is raging winds of storms that symbolizes the swaying passions involved in adultery.
❖ THIRD CIRCLE: GLUTTONY (CANTO VI)
• Ceaseless, foul, icy rain punishment
• Cerberus: Three-headed beast of hell
• Gluttonous souls
❖ FOURTH CIRCLE: GREED (CANTO VII)
• Pluto: Classical ruler of the underworld
• Avaricious souls (Greed)
• They are divided into two groups – those who hoarded possessions and those who lavishly spent
it – jousting
• Dante says to see many clergymen including cardinals and popes.
❖ FIFTH CIRCLE: ANGER (CANTO VIII-IX)
• Wrathful and sullen
• Transported on a boat by Phlegyas, Dante and Virgil see the furious fighting each other on the
surface of the river Styx and the sullen gurgling beneath the surface of the water.
• They encountered Filippo Argenti
❖ SIXTH CIRCLE: HERESY (CANTO X-XI)
• Heretics who are condemned to eternity in flaming tombs.
• Dante talks with a couple of Florentines – Farinata degli Uberti and Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti –
but he also sees other notable historical figures including the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus,
Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, and Pope Anastasius II.
• The latter, however, is according to some modern scholars condemned by Dante as a heretic by
mistake. Instead, as some scholars argue, the poet probably meant the Byzantine Emperor
Anastasius I.
❖ SEVENTH CIRCLE: VIOLENCE (CANTO XII-XVII)
• Divided into three rings:
➢ Ring 1: Against Neighbors: the murderers, war-makers, plunderers, and tyrants are
immersed in Phlegethon, a river of boiling blood and fire.
➢ Ring 2: Against Self: The second round of the seventh circle is the Wood of the Suicides,
in which the souls of the people who attempted or died by suicide are transformed into
gnarled, thorny trees and then fed upon by Harpies, hideous clawed birds with the faces
of women; the trees are only permitted to speak when broken and bleeding.
➢ Ring 3: Against God, Art, and Nature: The third round of the seventh circle is a great
Plain of Burning Sand scorched by great flakes of flame falling slowly down from the sky,
an image derived from the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19:24).
❖ EIGHTH CIRCLE: FRAUD (CANTO XVIII-XXXI)
• Resided by the fraudulent
• Dante and Virgil reach it on the back of Geryon, a flying monster with different natures, just like
the fraudulent.
• This circle of Hell is divided into 10 Bolgias or stony ditches with bridges between them. In Bolgia
1, Dante sees panderers and seducer. In Bolgia 2 he finds flatterers. After crossing the bridge to
Bolgia 3, he and Virgil see those who are guilty of simony. After crossing another bridge between
the ditches to Bolgia 4, they find sorcerers and false prophets. In Bolgia 5 are housed corrupt
politicians, in Bolgia 6 are hypocrites and in the remaining 4 ditches, Dante finds hypocrites
 (Bolgia 7), thieves (Bolgia 7), evil counselors and advisers (Bolgia 8), divisive individuals (Bolgia
9), and various falsifiers such as alchemists, perjurers, and counterfeits (Bolgia 10).
❖ NINTH CIRCLE: TREACHERY (CANTO XXXII-XXXIV)
• Divided into 4 Rounds according to the seriousness of the sin.
• Though all residents are frozen in an icy lake. Those who committed more severe sin are deeper
within the ice.
• Each of the 4 Rounds is named after an individual who personifies the sin. Thus Round 1 is named
Caina after Cain who killed his brother Abel, round 2 is named Antenora after Anthenor of Troy
who was Priam’s counselor during the Trojan War, Round 3 is named Ptolomaea after Ptolemy
(son of Abubus), while round 4 is named Judecca after Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed
Jesus with a kiss.
DIVINE COMEDY: PURGATORIO
Purgatorio is the second section of the Divine Comedy, which is an epic poem written by the great Italian
poet, Dante. It follows after Inferno and tells the story of his climb up Mount Purgatory, accompanied by another
Italian poet by the name of Virgil, who serves as his guide. The climb is supposed to teach him lessons about
Christian life and God's love and purify him of his sins before continuing on his journey to God.
❖ FIRST STAGE (STUBBORNNESS)
• known as Ante-Purgatory
• In it, the two poets encounter the souls of those who delayed their Christian life because of their
stubbornness to obey God’s laws.
• They are to remain in here for a period that is thirty times longer than the period in which they
exhibited stubbornness.
❖ SECOND STAGE (REPENTANT)
• This is the last part of Ante-Purgatory.
• they encounter deceased kings who were negligible during their rule
• people who never repented while alive
• people who suffered violent deaths but managed to repent at the last minute.
❖ THIRD STAGE (PRIDE)
• This terrace that the poets enter first is full of those that were prideful during their earthly lives.
• The walls of the terrace have sculptures with examples of humility, which is the opposite of pride.
• The prideful never get a chance to see these sculptures, since their backs are arched due to the
huge weights, they must carry using their backs as their sins get purged. Dante bends over to
converse with the souls and learns lessons from them.
❖ FOURTH STAGE (ENVY)
• This terrace is filled with the souls of envious penitents.
• Their earthly lives were spent desiring what made other people happy to the point they would
even harm them in order to deprive them of this.
• Soon as they enter the terrace, they hear voices that speak examples of generosity, which is the
opposite of envy, and later on, they also hear the voices speak examples of envy. The penitents
wear gray cloaks and cannot see where they are going because their eyes have been closed and
sewn with iron wire.
❖ FIFTH STAGE (WRATH)
• Souls of wrathful penitents
• Dante begins to have visions of gentleness, which is an example of the opposite virtue of wrath.
The wrathful forever wonder in a cloud of black smoke, which is a manifestation of the anger that
clouded their mind and blinded them when they were alive.
 ❖ SIXTH STAGE (SLOTH)
• Souls of those who were slothful in their earthly lives.
• Virgil explains Purgatory’s structure to Dante and how it is determined by love. The wrathful are
forever preoccupied with running around the terrace without rest, since they never had zeal (the
opposite of sloth) in their earthly lives, especially when it came to acting out of love.
❖ SEVENTH STAGE (AVARICE)
• Dante and Vergil enter the terrace of the Avaricious and Prodigal.
• Their punishment is to lie on the floor, face down, with their hands and feet bound together. The
souls are being punished and purged for desiring material goods with extravagance, greed, or
ambition.
• As the poets travel through the terrace, it is shaken by a mysterious tremor, but Dante does not
ask Virgil about it, even though he is curious. They run into the Roman, Statius, and he explains
the mysterious tremor to Dante: it happens when a soul is ready to move on from purgatory, and
he, Statius, was the soul that caused the tremor. He joins them on their journey. It also turns out
that Statius is an admirer of Virgil’s work.
❖ EIGHTH STAGE (GLUTTONY)
• Souls of the gluttonous
• The poets witness their painful punishment: they experience excruciating hunger and thirst while
there are plenty of trees with fruit around them.
• The souls experience this because they can never reach the trees. The voices in the trees give
examples of temperance, which is the opposite of gluttony. Dante runs into his friend Forese
Donati and his predecessor Bonagiunta Orbicciani.
❖ NINTH STAGE (LUST)
• As they continue to climb Mount Purgatory, Dante contemplates how the penitents in the terrace
of the Gluttonous can be so thin but yet be souls.
• Statius takes this opportunity, and Virgil gives him the go-ahead, to explain how the body and
soul are related. In the terrace of the lustful, the penitent souls must run through a great wall of
flames. As they run through it, they call out examples of chastity, which is the opposite of lust.
Everyone must run through the wall before they leave, including Dante.
DIVINE COMEDY: PARADISO
Paradiso is the third and the last section of Dante's epic poem of Divine Comedy. In it, the Italian poet
describes his journey through Heaven, the things he sees, and people he encounters on the way to the so-called
Empyrean, the true home of God, saints, angels, and the souls of the faithful. He is accompanied by Beatrice,
identified as Dante's love of life Beatrice Portinari (1266-1290) who guides him through the 9 Spheres of Heaven.
❖ FIRST SPHERE (THE MOON: THE INCONSTANT)
• Here, they see the souls of those who failed to keep their vows.
• Beatrice explains to Dante why their souls were “punished” by being allocated to the lowest
Heaven for something that wasn’t their fault, adding that all souls actually live in the Empyrean.
She also explains to him the reasons for the dark marks on the Moon.
❖ SECOND SPHERE (MERCURY: THE AMBITIOUS)
• Dante and his guide Beatrice meet the souls of those who were just and righteous during their
earthly lives but were primarily driven by ambition.
❖ THIRD SPHERE (VENUS: THE LOVERS)
• Home to the souls of lovers who “earned” their place in heaven with their love for God and
humanity.
❖ FOURTH SPHERE (THE SUN: THE WISE)
• Beyond the shadow of the Earth, Dante deals with positive examples
of Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude.
• Dante meets the greatest examples of prudence: the souls of the wise, who help to illuminate the
world intellectually.
❖ FIFTH SPHERE (MARS: THE WARRIORS OF THE FAITH)
• It is home to holy warriors, whose souls are forming the shape of a cross.
❖ SIXTH SPHERE (JUPITER)
• The planet Jupiter is traditionally associated with the king of the gods, so Dante makes this planet
the home of the rulers who displayed justice.
• "Love justice, ye that judge the earth"
❖ SEVENTH SPHERE (SATURN: THE CONTEMPLATIVES)
• The sphere of Saturn is that of the contemplatives, who embody temperance.
❖ EIGHTH SPHERE (THE FIXED STARS: FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE)
• The sphere of the Fixed Stars is the sphere of the church triumphant. From here Dante looks back
on the seven spheres he has visited, and on the Earth.
• Here, the poet and his guide see the Virgin Mary and other Biblical saints including the apostles
of Peter, John and James who test Dante on faith, love and hope.
❖ NINTH SPHERE (THE PRIMUM MOBILE: THE ANGELS)
• The Primum Mobile is the last sphere of the physical universe. It is moved directly by God, and
its motion causes all the spheres it encloses to move.
• The Primum Mobile is the abode of angels, and here Dante sees God as an intensely bright point
of light surrounded by nine rings of angels. ). Beatrice explains the creation of the universe, and
the role of the angels, ending with a forceful criticism of the preachers of the day.