The Cardinal Virtue In Dante's Purgatorio

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Medieval Christian literature depicts personal transformation as a gruesome, time-consuming process, that is demanding, spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically. Embarking on the journey to salvation and earning the great privilege of entering Heaven, is one of the greatest challenges anyone could face. Julian of Norwich writes about her unwavering faith and her acceptance of the will of God. Even in suffering she kept her eyes focused, not on her own bodily pain, but on the face God. Aquinas writes of the Cardinal Virtues and how he believes we as rational beings should live our lives, and Dante shows us that even after we die, the way we lived here on earth can greatly impact us, and it would be worth the suffering for us to transform our lives so that we may spend eternity at peace in the Kingdom of Heaven. The process of salvation, after the acceptance of Christ as Lord and savior, begins with a commitment to personal transformation. Moral and theological virtues are part of the Medieval view of personal transformation which are recounted by Aquinas in Summa of the Summa and embodied in Dante’s Purgatorio. …show more content…

In Purgatorio, Dante, is lead by Virgil as he travels through purgatory. He eventually reaches the level of gluttony, the sin that contrasts temperance. Here, he witnesses “ a band of spirits, silent and devout, their eyes dark-shadowed, sunken in their heads, their faces pale, [and] their bodies worn so thin that every bone was molded to their skin.”(Dante XXIII.21-23) These spirits purge the sin of gluttony by starving themselves and redirecting the use of their mouths toward praising God. All the while they are cursed with the delectable smell of fruit wafting though the air, while the fruit itself is hung just out of reach. Through this suffering they become transformed, and attain the level of purification necessary to reach

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