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
For centuries humans have been drawing parallels to help explain or understand different concepts. These parallels, or allegories, tell a simple story and their purpose is to use another point of view to help guide individuals into the correct line of thought. “The only stable element in a literary work is its words, which if one knows the language in which it is written, have a meaning. The significance of that meaning is what may be called allegory.”(Bloomfield) As Bloomfield stated, it is only how we interpret the words in an allegory that matters, each person can interpreted it in a slightly different way and allegories are most often personalized by a reader. Dante’s Inferno allegory is present throughout the entire poem. From the dark wood to the depths of Dante’s hell he presents the different crimes committed in life as they could be punished in death.
At the outset of Dante’s “Inferno,” he is introduced as a man lost in a sinful forest of his own creation. He is, by all accounts, beyond saving. Even Beatrice, in conversation with Virgil, states that, “[Dante] is, I fear, already so astray / that I have come to help him much too late” (ii.65-66). It is only through the compassion and the divine pity of Beatrice, and the more active role taken on by Virgil—who is also shown to have “felt compassion for [Dante’s] pain", that Dante is provided an opportunity to regain a pious sense of self, and in doing so increase his odds of salvation (ii.50). This basic human conception of pity and empathy dominates a great deal of Dante’s interactions in the underworld. He begins his descent consistently overwhelmed, at first weeping in response to the “sighs and lamentations and loud cries […] echoing across the starless air” (iii.22-23).
Descending from the first to the second level of Hell, Dante witnesses the transition to greater agony and greater punishment for the damned. Overwhelmed by the sinner’s harrowing cries and the extensive list of seemingly innocent souls given to him by Virgil, Dante beckons for two lovers to approach him, desperate for some sense of comfort. The souls are known to be the historical figures Francesca de Rimini and her lover Paolo, forever trapped in the circle of lust due to their sinful adultery. Through her words spoken to Dante, Francesca shows how she feels she has been unjustly punished and is deserving of others’ sorrow, and Dante, despite his awareness that she is a sinner, pities her. A close reading of this passage is necessary to better understand Dante’s internal battle with showing compassion where it is not deserved and Francesca’s incessant denial of her sins.
Himmelfarb, Martha. Tours of Hell: An Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and Christian Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983.
In The Inferno of Dante, Dante creates a striking correspondence between a soul’s sin on Earth and the punishment it receives in hell for that sin. This simple idea serves to illuminate one of Dante’s recurring themes: the perfection of god’s justice. Bearing the inscription the gates of hell explicitly state that god was moved to create hell by justice. Wisdom was employed to know what punishments would be just, power to create the forms of justice, and love to show that the punishments are conditioned with compassion, however difficult it may be to recognize (and the topic of a totally separate paper). Certainly then, if the motive of hell’s creation was justice, then its purpose was (and still is) to provide justice. But what exactly is this justice that Dante refers to? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is the So hell exists to punish those who sin against god, and the suitability of Hell’s specific punishments testify to the divine perfection that all sin violates.
Christianity is one of the most popular religions in the world today. Christianity has the largest amount of followers today. Over time, the religion has developed and change depending on the era. However, most of the traditional values are kept the same since its creation. Throughout many years, there have been numerous ideas originating from Christianity that do not exist today. During the development of the western world, religion played a big role in everyday lives. During the 14th century, an era of change began with the Renaissance as people experienced change and development through the western worlds. In Dante’s Inferno, some of these new beliefs, changes, and different forms of imagery can be noticed throughout the whole poem. Throughout
In Dante’s Inferno, the relationship between Dante the Pilgrim and Virgil the Guide is an ever-evolving one. By analyzing the transformation of this relationship as the two sojourn through the circles of hell, one is able to learn more about the mindset of Dante the Poet. At the outset, Dante is clearly subservient to Virgil, whom he holds in high esteem for his literary genius. However, as the work progresses, Virgil facilitates Dante’s spiritual enlightenment, so that by the end, Dante has ascended to Virgil’s spiritual level and has in many respects surpassed him. In Dante’s journey with respect to Virgil, one can see man’s spiritual journey towards understanding God. While God loves man regardless of his faults, His greatest desire is to see man attain greater spirituality, in that man, already created in God’s image, may truly become divine, and in doing so, attain eternality.
Souls residing in Purgatory receive punishments despite the fact that this level is not considered part of Hell. As Dante and his guide, Virgil, enter Ante-Inferno (also known as Purgatory), Virgil explains to him that this is where the souls of those who did not take a side between God and Satan or did not do anything during their lifetime that would determine whether they would go to Hell or Heaven (III. 30-37). The punishment that the souls in Purgatory must face is being bitten by insects and weeping for the rest of eternity, which is unreasonable seeing that Purgatory, according to the Catholic Church, is a place intended for people who need to be cleansed of their sins before entering Heaven (“Catholicism and Purgatory”). The Catholic Church’s definition of Purgatory implies that the souls here have not done anything honorable enough to earn a place in Heaven nor have they done anything so wrong as to deserve being put in Hell. Because Purgatory is neither Heaven nor Hell, it does not make sense for the souls kept here to receive a punishment like the sinners in Hell do.
Dante the pilgrim wakes up in the Dark Wood of Error without knowing how he got there. He tries to get to the Mount of Joy, but cannot, as the Leopard of Malice and Fraud, the Lion of Violence and Ambition, and the She-Wolf of Incontinence guard it. He cannot get passed them, so Beatrice, Dante's love, sends Virgil, who represents Human Reason, to come to help him, for man cannot get through Hell without the aid of Human Reason. Apparently, Dante thinks that the intellect can keep one from sinning. However, Human Reason can only get man to Purgatory. Man needs Divine Love to reach Heaven.
Throughout the fast-paced lives of people, we are constantly making choices that shape who we are, as well as the world around us; however, one often debates the manner in which one should come to correct moral decisions, and achieve a virtuous existence. Dante has an uncanny ability to represent with such precision, the trials of the everyman’s soul to achieve morality and find unity with God, while setting forth the beauty, humor, and horror of human life. Dante immediately links his own personal experience to that of all of humanity, as he proclaims, “Midway along the journey of our life / I woke to find myself in a dark wood, / for I had wandered off from the straight path” (I.1-3). The dark wood is the sinful life on earth, and the straight path is that of the virtuous life that leads to God. Dante’s everyman, pilgrim character represents all of humanity, and endures much adversity and temptation through squalid conditions in a nightmarish vision of hell, in his search to find the soul’s true path in life. While he stands in peril, Dante wishes that each individual would put themselves in the same position as the aforementioned, as all of mankind knows some form of sin, and also wanders lost in a dark wood. Before achieving moral redemption, an individual must take a hard look at evil both in the world and in himself. Only by confronting inner evil can people achieve self-knowledge, which is the first step toward redemption.
Dante Alighieri presents a vivid and awakening view of the depths of Hell in the first book of his Divine Comedy, the Inferno. The reader is allowed to contemplate the state of his own soul as Dante "visits" and views the state of the souls of those eternally assigned to Hell's hallows. While any one of the cantos written in Inferno will offer an excellent description of the suffering and justice of hell, Canto V offers a poignant view of the assignment of punishment based on the committed sin. Through this close reading, we will examine three distinct areas of Dante's hell: the geography and punishment the sinner is restricted to, the character of the sinner, and the "fairness" or justice of the punishment in relation to the sin. Dante's Inferno is an ordered and descriptive journey that allows the reader the chance to see his own shortcomings in the sinners presented in the text.
At first glance it may not appear that Dante’s Purgatorio has a central theme of liberty. However, the majority of its premise all relates to that of liberty and free will. Free will is the dictionary form of liberty; thus, they can be interchangeable. As humans, God has given us all the choice to do as we wish whether it be good or bad, and this ability to choice is that of free will. Dante’s journey through the afterlife is ultimately a quest for freedom, and this essay will address how the theme of free will is presented.
Justice is one of the major building block that society is built upon. It gives people a sense of retribution when they have been wronged. In Dante’s Inferno, justice is served in the supernatural realm. Throughout this play, the reader is exposed to the inner working of hell and the nine circles of specialized punishment it is composed of. Justice, in Dante’s Inferno, differs from justice in the mortal world in that it is decided, not by humans, but by God. However, it is not God’s justice that is portrayed in this divine comedy. While this divine comedy depicts justice coming from God, the justice in the Inferno is based on Dante’s personal views of the severity of the sin and the sinner. This paper will examine this issue by looking into the life of Dante and the potential reasons for his rankings of the sin pertaining to specific circles of hell.
The Inferno was written by Dante Alighieri around 1314 and depicts the poet’s imaginary journey through Hell. Dante spent his life traveling from court to court both lecturing and writing down his experiences. His Divine Comedy – the three-part epic poem consisting of Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso (Hell, Purgatory and Heaven)– is generally regarded as one of the greatest poetic feats ever accomplished. All three parts are incredible literary feats with symbolism so complex and beautiful that scholars are still unraveling all the details today. However, this essay will focus on the first part of Dante’s work, Inferno, which consists of 34 cantos. Dante’s Inferno is a masterpiece of allegorical imagery where Virgil represents human reason, Beatrice love and hope, and Dante mankind on the journey of the human soul through life to reach salvation.
The doctrine of salvation contains various aspects. The intent of this research paper is to provide a general overview of salvation from the angle of justification, propitiation, grace, redemption, and sanctification.