Divine Comedy

Divine Comedy
Three Canticas:
• Inferno (hell)
• Purgatorio (purgatory)
• Paradiso (heaven)
Each cantica is subdivided by
smaller collection of lines called
‘canto’.

Characters
• Dante- the author’s persona in the
story who took a spiritual
pilgrimage.
• Beatrice- Dante’s late love who
asked God to let Dante take the
spiritual journey. She guided Dante in
Heaven.
• Virgil- the famous Latin poet who
guided dante in Inferno and paradiso

This tells the story of Dante and
the Roman poet Virgil going
through the nine levels of hell
in the medieval ages.

CIRCLE I
Limbo
The first circle of hell is reserved for people
who were not exactly sinful, but did not
accept Christ for who they thought he was.
Members of this circle include Julius Caesar,
Socrates, Aristotle, and Virgil himself.

CIRCLE II
Lust
The second circle of hell
includes the people let lust get a
hold of them.
Members of this circle include
Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, and
Achilles.

CIRCLE III
Gluttony
The third circle is for the gluttons,
and poetically are damned to a
place that was like what they
made their lifestyle like.

CIRCLE VI
heresy
The sixth circle of hell is for
the people who didn’t believe
in life after death, heaven or
hell.
This includes the followers of
Epicurus.

CIRCLE V
Wrath and Sloth
The fifth circle of hell is for
people who are doomed to
dwell in the river Styx, fighting
to the top, with the thousands
of others for air.

CIRCLE VI
Heresy
The sixth circle of hell is for the
people who didn’t believe in
life after death, heaven or hell.
This includes the followers of
Epicurus.

CIRCLE VII
Violence
This circle is divided into three
parts. Three parts for violence
against people or property,
violence to self, or violence to god.
Members of this circle include
Frederick II, and Brunetto Latini.

CIRCLE VIII
fraud
The second to last circle is divided
into eight parts. The different parts
include pimps, thieves, counterfeiters,
and perjurers to name a few.
This circle includes people like
Ulysses, Muhammad, and Jason from
Jason and the Argonauts.

CIRCLE IX
Treason
The final circle of hell is divided into four
levels and is for people who commit treason.
Satan is in this ring, waist deep in ice, with
Brutus, Cassius, and Judas in each of his
three heads mouths.

This is the place
where the souls of sinners,
who still have the chance to
redeem themselves, would
go after they die.

The terraces of PURGATORIO
LATE-REPENTANT
PROUD
ENVIOUS
WRATHFUL
SLOTHFUL
AVARICIOUS
GLUTTONOUS
LUSTFUL

ANTE-PURGATORY
This is the level where the
late-repentants stay.
These sinners stay in
purgatory until the prayers of
their loved ones shorten their
stay there.

FIRST TERRACE
Those who are proud are
being punished in this level.
The proud are purged by
carrying giant stones on their
backs, unable to stand up
straight

SECOND TERRACE
Those who are envious are being
punished in this level.
The envious are purged by having
their eyes sewn shut and wearing
clothing that makes the soul
indistinguishable from the ground

THIRD TERRACE
Those who are wrathful are
The wrathful are purged by
walking around in acrid smoke

FOURTH TERRACE
Those who are slothful are
The slothful are purged by
continually running

Those who sinned on the fifth
through seventh terraces are
those who loved good things
but loving them in a disordered
way.

FIFTH TERRACE
Those who are avaricious and
prodigal are being punished in
this level.
The avaricious and prodigal
are purged by lying face-down
on the ground, unable to move

SIXTH TERRACE
Those who are gluttonous are
The gluttonous are purged by
abstaining from any food or
drink

SEVENTH TERRACE
Those who are lustful are
The lustful are purged by
burning in an immense wall of
flame

Dante, under the guidance
of Beatrice, completes his journey to
the afterlife by leaving the earth and
rising through the ten celestial
heavens of the ancient cosmos.
Paradiso narrates how Dante and
Beatrice encounter blessed spirits
in the seven planetary spheres.

The System of Dante's Paradise
The Ten Heavens
1.The Moon: Faithfulness marred by inconstancy
2. Mercury: Service marred by ambition
3. Venus: Love marred by impurity
4. The Sun: Wisdom; Theologians
5. Mars: Courage; Warriors

The System of Dante's Paradise
The Ten Heavens
6. Jupiter: Justice; Rulers
7. Saturn: Temperance; Contemplatives
8. The Fixed Stars: the Church Triumphant
9. The Crystalline, or Primum Mobile: the
Angelic Orders
10. The Empyrean: the Holy Trinity, the Virgin,
the Angels and the Saints

--The sphere is that of faith, the content of faith,
taken on trust that will be revealed, realised, self-
evidently as “truth.”
--The spirits in the moon is also associated in our
culture with woman, with the virginity and chastity
of Diana.
--Spirits are those who failed in the aspect of faith
by breaking their vows.
--Though they are forced to leave the religious life,
they had remained true to their heart’s belief and
commitment.

Justinian and the hope of the Roman Empire
--refers to the justice of the sin of the Fall of Man.
Mercury is filled with spirits who hoped for earthly fame and
honor, so they impaired the force of their spiritual hope.
The spirits are satisfied because reward is matched with
merit and they are free of envy.

-Still in the heaven of Venus, Dante speaks first with Cunizza, the
mistress of the troubadour poet, Sordello, and sister of the
tyrant, Ezzelino da Romano, and secondly with Foulquet of
Marseilles, a troubadour poet, renowned as much for his amours
as for his poetry. The discourse of both souls is concerned with
affairs on earth, Cunizza foretelling the disasters which will befal
the inhabitants of the Trevisan territory, and Foulquet deploring
the avarice of the Church and her neglect of true religion. Both
spirits rejoice in the degree of bliss to which God has destined
them; the love in which they erred in their first life is now
discerned by them as the power by which the universe is
governed.

Dealing with
Love and its
imperfection
Charity,
Compassion
and Love

Cunizza da Romano
--Famous for her love affairs, she had four husbands
and many paramours.
-- She admitted her excessive love but she was
contented with her state.
--She also prophesied related to the downfall of Can
Grande’s territory around Verona.

Folquet de Marseilles
--The Lover of Cunizza until he
chose to become a Cistercian
monk. He was made Bishop of
Toulouse in 1205.
-- He persecuted the Albigensian
heretics, who actually revolted
against the doctrines and
philosophy of ecclesiasticism and
the Catholic church, till his death in
1231.

Folquet asserts that the spirits are beyond
the state of repentance, and thoughts of their
sin, and they dwell on the power that made
the order of the universe.
Their faith asserts redeemed their past lives
of excessive dependence on earthly love and
sexuality.

The spirits are manifested who
reconciled spiritual and earthly
wisdom; pagan and Christian learning
and history, and directed the virtuous
Christian life on Earth.

1.Thomas Aquinas (c1225 – 1274)
He sought to achieve a synthesis between Aristotelian philosophy
and Christian thought .
He wrote the Summa Theologica and Summa Contra Gentiles.
2. Albertus of Cologne (1193 – 1280)
They (with Aquinas) ‘Christianized’ Aristotle in adapting his
philosophy .
3. Gratian
Italian Benedictine monk who brought ecclesiastical and civil law
in harmony with each other.
His Decretum was the first systematic treatise on Canon Law.
4. Peter Lombard (c1100 – 1160)
He wrote his four books on God, The Creation, Redemption and
the Sacraments and Last Things, as the chief summary of
medieval theology before Aquinas.

5. Solomon (The King of Israel)
1 Kings 3:5-15
He chose practical wisdom, as his gift from God to rule over the
chosen nation and people of God.
6. Dionysius the Areopagite
He was supposed to have learned the hierarchies and
teachings of St. Paul, who had seen them when rapt up into the
third heaven.
7. Paulus Orosius
An early fifth century writer, whose Historia adversus Paganos
was an apologetic treatise written to show that Christianity had
not ruined the Empire, as Pagans contended.

8. Anicius Manlius Torquatos Severinos Boethius (c475 –
525)
He wrote the Consolation of Philosophy while in prison,
defending the virtuous life and justifying the ways of God.
9. Isidore of Seville (c560 – 636)
10. Bede (c673 – 735)
English Ecclesiastical historian
11. Richard of Saint Victor
The Augustinian mystic who wrote a treatise called De
Contemplatione.
12. Sigier of Brabant (d. c. 1283)
He suggested the inferiority of philosophical argument to faith,
where they were irreconcilable.

-- Signifies the virtue of
The red planet carries traditional associations
of blood and war in myth and astrology; but in here, it
represents the associations of the
and of
The Spirits are those of the warriors of God;
those who fought for the Chosen People of the old
law (Old Testament), and of Christ’s Church in the
new (New Testament).

-- Dante himself becomes heir to Aeneas and Paul,
the gate of heaven to be twice opened to him, now in
life and afterwards in death, which is Cacciaguida’s
subtle prophecy.
-- He has the power of future vision, but denies pre-
destination; God and Paradise being extra temporal,
outside the flow of events, in the same way as the
eye does not affect the course of the river it sees.

It is associated with , with
Jupiter the Roman God, and therefore with the
Roman Emperors, and with the Christian God.
The head and neck of an Eagle
1. The emblem of Rome
2. The divine sign of Empire and justice

-- Human vision is
inadequate to
understand all God’s
provision and cannot
judge who will
ultimately be
redeemed, and so we
require faith to bridge
the gap.

The contemplative spiritual life of an
individual and the fourth cardinal virtue
of
Is also a reminder of the
Golden Age when in myth, Saturn ruled
the Earth; a time of simplicity,
moderation and primal innocence.

Saint Peter Damian of Ravenna
• An ardent reformer of church discipline and one of the
chief ecclesiastical writers of the eleventh century
Saint Benedict (c480 – 543)
• He signifies the self-control and discipline and
obedience and simplicity of the virtue of temperance.

Dante will be examined by the Apostles who stand
at the threshold to the Primum Mobile, concerning
his understanding of the theological virtues:

Christ entrusted
the keys of the
Church, the faith
to Peter, ‘The
Rock’ on which
the Church would
be built.
Hebrews 11:1
What is faith?
What does it
look for?
On Earth, faith is the substance of, and
the evidence for, what will be seen as
substance in heaven, and there
require no visible proofs.

“Hope is the certain expectation of
future bliss, coming from the grace of
God and preceding merit.”
What is Hope
and its source?

Dante is temporarily blinded by the
dazzle light of Saint John’s splendor,
like a man gazes at the sun’s eclipse.
Goodness is the object of love, and
since God is the ‘supreme good,’ He is
the supreme object of love. The more
a mind sees the good, the more it
must focus on that ‘supreme’ object,
with love.
What surpasses
the boundary of
love and being
loved in return?
Dante confessed that all things which
share in the Divine Good inspire love
in him; including the world’s creation,
his own being, the redemption and
man’s hope of Paradise.

The Angelic Circles
• There is a spiritual rather than a spatial
correspondence between the two arrangements.
Concentric Sphere
• Centered on Earth
Concentric Angelic Orders
• Centered on God
God is both the
center and the
circumference.

• Beatrice explained that unlike Satan who fell
through pride, the angels opened themselves to
God and understood their place humbly, and that
is a virtue to open oneself to grace, likewise.
• The Angels has free will and understanding, but do not
require memory since they see past, present and the
future.
• The “Angels” is a term applied collectively to signify
‘messengers’ and the higher Angels can execute the
functions of the lower angels, while having their special
additional qualities.

Here, Dante had seen the redeemed spirits and
the angels in their form of the Last Judgment.
The Emyrean is the full Light of 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, in the form of a
white rose, and God. Angels’ faces are flame, their wings
golden and the rest, white: the three colors that
symbolize Love, Knowledge and Purity.

The Virgin Mary
Eve
Rachel (Jacob’s wife)
With Beatrice
Sarah (Abraham’s
wife)
Rebecca (Isaac’s wife)
Judith (Jewish patriotic
heroine)
Ruth (Boaz’ wife,
great grandmother of
David)
These are those who came
with or after Christ:
John the Baptist
Francis (who carried the stigmata)
Benedict (opposite that other
contemplative Rachel)
Augustine
The Ranks are separated on either side of the Virgin
into those before Christ’s coming (on the left), and
those after (on the right).

The souls on the right and left of Mary in the First
rank
Adam
Moses
Peter
John
St. Anne (Mary’s
Mother
St. Lucy (Dante’s
patron saint)

Dante looked into the Divine Light.
His power of Vision and of memory is beyond
speech, and like a dreamer, he retains only the
impression and the glorious light.
His Vision, in the moment of
Supreme stillness, beyond time, is of universal
unity, bounded together by love in a simplicity
of light.
--End

Divine Comedy

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Divine Comedy