Divine Comedy

The Divine Comedy

Divine ComedyThree 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

Inferno(Hell)

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

CIRCLE ILimbo

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 IILust

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 IIIGluttony

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

CIRCLE VIheresy

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 VWrath 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 VIHeresy

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 VIIViolence

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 VIIIfraudThe 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 IXTreason

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.

PURGATORIO (purgatory)

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 TERRACEThose 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 being punished in this level.

The wrathful are purged by walking around in acrid smoke

FOURTH TERRACE

Those who are slothful are being punished in this level.

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 being punished in this level.

The gluttonous are purged by abstaining from any food or drink

SEVENTH TERRACE

Those who are lustful are being punished in this level.

The lustful are purged by burning in an immense wall of flame

Paradiso (Heaven)

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.

In describing the heavens, Dante is going beyond previous poets, driven by intellect

(Minerva), steered by divine creativity (Apollo), and guided by poetic inspiration

(The Muses).

The Ten Heavens

The System of Dante's ParadiseThe Ten Heavens1.The Moon: Faithfulness marred by inconstancy

2. Mercury: Service marred by ambition3. Venus: Love marred by impurity

4. The Sun: Wisdom; Theologians5. Mars: Courage; Warriors

The System of Dante's ParadiseThe Ten Heavens

6. Jupiter: Justice; Rulers7. 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

1. The Moon--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.

Piccarda Donati

Piccarda turned her back on the world but was dragged back to it.

Constance

Constance-- She was the daughter of King Roger II and heiress of the Norman House of Tancred that conquered Sicily and Southern Italy from the Saraceans in the 11th century.--She was the wife of Frederick II who was afterwards known as Emperor Henry VI.--Dante followed a notion that she had been a nun and had been forced to make a political marriage against her will

Piccarda and

Constance could

have willed not to break their vows

indefinitely, but could have

attempted to

return to the

religious life. Since they did not, they wavered in their

faith and less

virtuous for doing

so.

The vow cannot be cancelled, but its content can be altered, though not at one’s own discretion only under the control of knowledge and authority.

Since the religious vow made by Piccarda was of the complete self that nothing exceeds in value, there can be no recompense for

breaking such a vow.

2. Mercury 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.

Justinian

Dante had used Justinian, himself as an individual who sought honor and fame, to point to the imperfection of earthly ambition compared with spiritual hope.

Man’s downfall injured himself not God, and what was demanded was not a propitiation, but restoration. Just as the fall of the Roman Empire because of earthly sovereignty and power.Through Christ’s suffering as a just punishment in that nature, so mercifully making man capable of redeeming his fault to bring hope of redemption to all humankind.

-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 befall 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.

3. Venus

Dealing with Love and its imperfection

Charity, Compassion

and Love

Cunizza da Romano

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.

4. Sun

The first sphere of

the cardinal virtues; PRUDENCE

= practi

cal wisdo

mThe sun is a sphere of light, creation and wisdom.

The Coronet of Twelve Living Lights

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. GratianItalian 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 3:5-15He 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 OrosiusAn 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 Fortitude.

The red planet carries traditional associations of blood and war in myth and astrology; but in here, it represents the associations of the Church Militant and of the Crucifixion.

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).

5. Mars

-- 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.

Cacciaguida

It is associated with

Justice and Wisdom, with Jupiter

the Roman God, and

therefore with

the Roman Emper

ors, and with the

Christian

God.

6. Jupiter

The head and neck of an Eagle1. The emblem of Rome2. The divine sign of Empire and justice

The mind of God inspires the earthly forms, the nests where intellect builds and creates justice.

Trajan and Ripheus

-- 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 contemplati

ve spiritual life of an individual and the

fourth cardin

al virtue

of Temperance

7. Saturn

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.

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.

8. Fixed Stars

Saint James• Hope

Saint John• Love

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

Saint Peter • Faith

Saint Peter • Faith

Christ entrusted

the keys of the Church, the faith to Peter, ‘The Rock’ on which the Church

would be built.

Hebrews 11:1“Faith is

the substance of things

hoped for, the

evidence of things not

seen”

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.

Saint James• Hope

“Hope is the

certain expectati

on of future bliss,

coming from the grace of God and preceding merit.”--Peter Lombar

dWhat is Hope and its source?

Dante’ hope then, is of the immortality of the soul and the ressurection of the body.

Saint John• Love

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.

9. The Primum Mobile/ CrystallineConcentric Sphere• C

entered on Earth

Concentric Angelic Orders• C

entered on God

God is both the center and the circumference.

The Angelic Orders

The first circle: Seraphs emphasizing movement towards God (Love), and

insight into His being

Second: The Dominions: the

virtues indicating Divine strength and

fortitude.

Third: The

Principalities:

angels that are

concerned with the

things of this world.

The Angels

•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.

10.

The Empyrean

Here, Dante had

seen the redeem

ed spirits

and the angels in their form of the Last Judgme

nt.

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.

10.

The Empyrean

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.

St. Bernard of Claivaux (1090 -1153)

-- represents loving contemplation-- the Cistercian monk and theologian who founded the great monastery at Clairvaux.

First Seven ranks descendingThe 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 First Rank

The souls on the right and left of Mary in the First rank

Adam

Moses

Peter

Virgin Mary

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

Education

Divine Comedy