Dante Alighieri

❖Born in Florence in 1265; died in

Ravenna in 1321.
❖Met Beatrice circa 1274
❖Married Gemma Donati in 1289
❖Elected Prior (highest magistrate) in
1300.
❖Exiled from Florence in 1302.
Dante Alighieri
Literary Works:
❖ De Vulgari Eloguentia, on the
origin and development of
language
❖ De Monarchia, on political theory
❖ Vita Nuova, lyric poems and
commentary
❖ Commedia, later “The Divine
Comedy in the 16th century,
written from 1307-1321.
The divine comedy

❖ La Divina Commedia (The Divine

Comedy)
❖ Trilogy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso
❖ Written in the late Middle Ages, c.
1307-1321
❖ Relates a symbolic pilgrimage
through Hell, Purgatory, &Heaven
undertaken by the fictitious pilgrim
Dante beginning the evening before
Good Friday, 1300.
The divine comedy: background

❖ Dante wrote The Divine Comedy

while in exile due to his
involvement with a political party
that criticized the corruption of the
pope. Dante believed that an
emperor should govern affairs of
the state while the pope’s power
should be confined to religious
affairs.
The divine comedy: literary
influences

❖ Old and New Testament

❖ Homer’s Odyssey, and
especially Virgil’s Aeneid
❖ St. Augustine’s Confessions
The divine comedy: contents

❖ The Divine Comedy is an account

of Dante’s own journey through
the afterlife (hell, purgatory, and
paradise)
❖ He is guided by the Roman poet
Virgil and later by Beatrice
❖ The journey is inspired by and
directed towards Beatrice, the
earthly love of Dante’s youth.
❖ A journey towards salvation
The divine comedy: Characters

❖ Hundreds of
historical
contemporaneous,
and mythical figures
who had died by the
year 1300, but who
may have lived
centuries before.
The divine comedy: Time

❖ The action of the poem begins

on Good Friday of the year
1300, at which time Dante had
reached the middle of the
Scriptural threescore years
and ten. It ends on the first
Sunday after Easter, making in
all ten days.
The divine comedy:
Dante’s criticism of his world

❖ Challenging of Church dogmas

❖ Creating of new Humanist
philosophy radically reinterpreting
Christianity
❖ Demanding the substance of true
Christianity in Christian life: love,
peace, humility, forgiveness, giving,
caring about the others, healing the
sick, feeding the hungry.
❖ Dante’s Journey begins in Hell
❖ Concept of contrapasso (sin=punishment)
❖ Hell is the state of sin; harming others
creates a world that is literally hellish for
the sinner himself and for others.
INFERNO
❖ The physical
aspects of hell
is a gigantic
funnel that
leads to the
very center of
earth.
 Vestibule of inferno:
opportunists

❑Morally neutral people as well

“Abandon all hope ye as angels who sided neither
who enter here” with God or Satan.
❑They are shut out of both
heaven and hell.
❑Punishment: Run after a flag
that floats in front of them
forever. They are chased by
wasps, flies and worms.
❑FIRST CIRCLE: ❑SECOND CIRCLE:
LIMBO LUST
➢ These are the virtuous ❑“carnal sinners who
but lacked baptism and subordinate reason to
hence could not be desire”. (misguided
saved. desire)
➢ Punishment: Live in a ❑Punishment: They are
splendid castle punished with a wind
representing natural that whirls the souls
wisdom without endlessly, never giving
Christian faith. them a chance to rest.
: :
❑THIRD CIRCLE: ❑FOURTH CIRCLE:
GLUTTONY AVARICE & PRODIGALITY
➢ the avarice (closed fists)
and prodigality (spending
➢ Punishment: Wallow in
without measure).
garbage and receive no
➢ Punishment: dance in an
food or drink
infernal round while
endlessly pushing around
great weights and
insulting one another.
❑FIFTH CIRCLE: WRATH ❑SIXTH CIRCLE:
& SULLENNESS HERESY
➢ Wrath: anger that is ➢ A belief or opinion that does
expressed, not agree with the official
➢ Sullenness: anger that is belief or opinion of a
repressed. particular religion.
➢ Punishment: Wrathful are ➢ All those who did not believe
punished by furiously in the immortality of the soul.
fighting against one another ➢ Punishment: The souls are
naked while the sullen are tormented in burning
the spirits underwater. They
are stuck in the slime. They
tombs that were spread
gargle they lament. all around.
❑SEVENTH CIRCLE:
VIOLENCE ➢ Punishment:
▪ First ring- submerged in
➢ This circle is divided into
three rings: the river of blood.
▪ Second ring- a horrid
1. Violence against neighbors: forest, became suicide
tyrants and murderers trees.
2. Violence against themselves: ▪ Third ring- a barren plain
suicide and squanderers of sand ignited by flakes
3. Violence against God:
of fire and the souls were
Blasphemers, sodomites,
usurers lying on their backs.
❑EIGHT CIRCLE: ▪ Hypocrites- walk around wearing beautiful
FRAUD golden cloaks that are lined with heavy lead
inside.
➢ This circle is divided into ten ▪ Thieves- ran naked to the darkness with their
subcircles. hands tied behind their backs while being
chased by snakes and serpent masters.
▪ Panders and seducers- ran naked in ▪ Fraudulent councelors- are tormented inside
opposites directions while being the flaming pillars.
whipped by demon. ▪ Scandal mongers- forced to walk around the
▪ Flatterers- plunged in the stinking filth. circle bearing horrible disfiguring wounds
▪ Simonists- head down in stone tubes inflicted with them by a demon with a sword.
and flames licked their feet. ▪ Falsifier of :
▪ Diviners, Astrologists and Magicians- o Metals- suffer from leprosy that changes their
wander with their heads turned appearance.
backwards on their shoulders. o Persons- made insane
▪ Barrators- submerged in boiling pitch o Coins- given dehydration
guarded by demons. o Words- tormented with a fever that make them
smile.
❑NINTH CIRCLE:
TREACHERY ➢ NINTH CIRCLE is the
➢ This circle is divided into four : frozen, circular lake
➢ Traitors to kin (Caina)- have their ice at the bottom of
heads and necks out of the ice and
allowed to their heads. hell.
➢ Traitors to homeland (Antenora)-
have their heads above the ice but
cannot bend their necks.
➢ Traitors to guests (Ptolomea)- lie
supine in the ice while their tears freeze
in their eye sockets sealing them with
small visors of crystal.
➢ Traitors to benefactors (Judecca)-
fully encapsulated in ice, distorted and
twisted in every possible position.
 PURGATORIO
(PURGATORY)
This is the place where the
souls of the sinners who still
have the chance to redeem
themselves would go after they
die.
 PURGATORIO
(PURGATORY)
➢ depicted as a mountain in the Southern
Hemisphere, consisting of a bottom section
(Ante-Purgatory), seven levels of suffering and
spiritual growth (associated with the seven
deadly sins), and finally the Earthly Paradise at
the top.
➢ the Purgatorio represents the penitent
Christian life. In describing the climb Dante
discusses the nature of sin, examples of vice
and virtue, as well as moral issues in politics
and in the Church.
➢ The poem outlines a theory that all sins arise
from love – either perverted love directed
towards others' harm, or deficient love, or the
disordered or excessive love of good things.
 Paradiso
(Paradise)
❖The Paradiso is a place of
reward.
❖It is structured on the Seven
Cardinal Virtues: Faith, Hope,
Love, Prudence, Justice,
Fortitude, Temperance.
❖Each virtue is rewarded in one
of the spheres that were
thought to surround the earth.
 Paradiso (Paradise)
❖Dante's journey through Heaven,
guided by Beatrice, who symbolizes
theology.
❖In the poem, Paradise is depicted as a
series of concentric spheres
surrounding the Earth, consisting of
the Moon, Mercury, Venus,
the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,
the Fixed Stars, the Primum Mobile and
finally, the Empyrean.
❖ Allegorically, the poem represents the
soul's ascent to God.
 Spheres of Heaven
❑ First Sphere (The Moon: The Inconstant)
❑ Second Sphere (Mercury: The Ambitious)
❑ Third Sphere (Venus: The Lovers)
❑ Fourth Sphere (The Sun: The Wise)
❑ Fifth Sphere (Mars: The Warriors of the Faith)
❑ Sixth Sphere (Jupiter: The Just Rulers)
❑ Seventh Sphere (Saturn: The Contemplatives)
❑ Eight Sphere (The Fixed Stars: Faith, Hope, and Love)
❑ Ninth Sphere (The Primum Mobile: The Angels)
- Love, in all its forms, reads to him is Divine Love, The Good
God, Himself. Love is one continuum, from the Divine to the earthly.
All love is one.
 Empyrean
❑ Here, Dante had seen the redeemed spirits and the angels in their
form of the Last Judgement.
❑ The Empyrean is the full Light Of The Truth which is filled with
Divine Love. That love is full of transcendent joy coming from the
Supreme God, the essence of Love.
❑ The Angels fly among the redeemed who is in the form of white
rose, and God. Angel’s faces are flame, their wings golden, and
rest white: The three colors that symbolize Love, Knowledge and
Purity.
❑ Dante sees a vision of Christ. The three orbs of “triple hue” reveals
the mystery of the Trinity in human nature in the being of God, the
Son mirroring the Father and the love of the Holy Spirit between
them both.
Sources:
➢ https://www.slideshare.net/MarkGilbertLlaguno/divine-comedy-inferno-purgatorio-
paradiso
➢ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradiso_(Dante)#The_Empyrean
➢ slideserve.com/Ava/dante-the-divine-comedy

For further reading and videos to watch:

➢ https://www.bookreports.info/the-divine-comedy-summary/
Inferno: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE5ihycCq54
Purgatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgXwBKjHMDQ&t=23s
Paradiso: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQgNdynxFY0