Hell: A Gateway for Change

There has been an ongoing debate over exactly who and what sparked the Renaissance and the Reformation. In his work The Divine Comedy, Dante’s Inferno significantly influenced the appearance of these great reforms and modernizations, depicting many of the social and religious issues of the day during his journey through the seven layers of Hell.

The Renaissance, meaning rebirth, was a time of intense social, political and moral change (Estep 22). Generally, the era is defined between the dates of 1300 and 1517, with Dante and Luther acting as bookends on each side (20). According to “The Magazine of Christian Literature”, Dante inaugurated the Renaissance in his hometown, Florence, Italy (96). Known as “the antipapal polemicist” the Catholic church disliked Dante’s works because they seemed to favor Protestantism as a lead into Luther, even greater evidence that he influenced this period of prodigious reform (Friedrich 44, 48). One renowned Jesuit, the Cardinal Bellarmine argued that the Inferno was very similar to the works of Luther, escorting literature in to the Reformation and Renaissance that Luther so greatly expanded (49).
Interestingly enough, while Dante may have influenced Martin Luther in the writings of his Reformation theologies, in turn, Virgil “is above all Dante’s master in style” (Clarke 13). Despite Dante’s role in the Renaissance and Reformation, he was influenced tremendously by the classics of the Middle Ages, yet he raised their art to a new level. However, this preoccupation with classical writers, such as Virgil, displays the renaissance of humanism under which the idea of a Renaissance man evolved with the belief that “people should be proficient at a wide variety of things” (Malone). Dante fabricated a never-before used verse called ‘terza rima’ “which rhymes in the Italian original according to the scheme aba cbc cdc and so on. The lines thus form groups of three interlocked by a repeated rhyme word- a verbal equivalent to the three-in-one of the Trinity” (Norton Anthology 1827).” This creativity exhibits the return to studia humanitatis under which “grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy” were emphasized (Malone).

Commonly mentioned in discussions about the Renaissance is the idea of the ‘modern man,’ yet many question, “Who was ‘the first modern man’? Was he the anonymous burgher who in his obsession with wealth disregarded the traditions and structures of the church, Dante of the Divine Comedy” (Estep 21)? Dante serves in many ways as a symbolic picture of this first modern man. Although some would argue that he falls under the less revolutionary category of the Middle Ages, throughout Inferno, Dante’s “concern with the secular problems of his day is not that of a medievalist. And in religion he held that virtue and inner peace are attained by ethical rather than by supernatural means” in contradiction to the vast majority of beliefs that prevailed in that day (22). According to The Magazine of Christian Literature,
Dante was and still is a prophet rebuking tyranny and injustice, avarice and pride, in high and low places of Church and State, without fear or favor, and pointing to the eternal issues of man’s actions. He stands on the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times…He proved that one may be a good Catholic and yet call for a thorough Reformation (96-97).
Several political figures of Dante’s day appear in his work Inferno, displaying the corrupt nature of both the government and many of its citizens leading towards the Renaissance. In the Seventh Circle of Hell reside Dionysius of Syracuse in Sicily and Alexander the Great, both of which were “the tyrants who plunged their hand in blood and plundering” (Dante 1871).

While the Renaissance meant the rebirth of the modern man along with all the political and social changes which that entailed, the Reformation acted as the religious counterpart to this movement. To many of the first Protestants, Reformation meant returning to the earliest forms of Christianity in an attempt to reverse the thorough morphing and corrupting of original Christianity that had taken place in the Church through the centuries since the death of Christ (Smith 20). Many of the clerical figures that appear in Dante’s Inferno are in hell because of their role in the corrupt and evil practices of the Church that sparked the Reformation. Dante “condemned the interference of the Church, and especially the pope, in political affairs” (Norton Anthology 1827). Furthermore, as the frontrunner of the Reformation, chiefly “he is concerned with restoring the conditions in which Christ first came” (Ibid).

Corruption took many roles in the Church leading up to the Reformation. For example, the selling of church offices as well as justice was a common misuse of clerical authority (Smith 20). In the Inferno, Dante met an individual who, out of cowardice, made the ‘great refusal,’ choosing not to do the good he had the opportunity to do, which served as another form of extortion of Christianity. Pope Celestine V, resided with others of his sort in the Ante-Inferno, naked and continually bitten by flies and stung by bees, shedding tears and dripping blood to his feet, which disgusting worms consumed (Dante 1843-1844). Another prevalent practice exercised among priests was charging exorbitant remunerations for their services, which Luther, among others in the Reformation, later decried as useless and erroneous assistance. Others followed heresies rather than standing on the doctrine if the Holy Scriptures, such as Pope Anastasius whose tomb Dante and Virgil visited in the Sixth Circle of Hell (1866-1867). He “was thought, wrongly, to have accepted a heresy promoted by the fifth-century theologian Photinus that Christ was not divine but only human,” a blasphemy that resulted in his entombment in Hell.
Basically, the Church in Dante’s time at the beginning of the Reformation amounted to a massive money-making venue. An advantageously common belief which greatly empowered the Church was the claim to possess the ability to free souls from Purgatory even after they were deceased. (Smith 23-24). According to Smith in his work The Age of Reformation,
One of the richest sources of ecclesiastical revenue was the sale of indulgences, or the remission by the pope of the temporal penalties of sin, both penance in this life and the pains of purgatory…In the 14th century the pardons were extended to all who contributed a sum of money to a pious purpose, whether they came to Rome or not, and, as the agents who were sent out to distribute these pardons were also given power to confess and absolve, the papal letters were naturally regarded as no less than tickets of admission to heaven (23).
Ironically, many of these emissaries for the pope found their way into the corridors of Hell rather than the paradise that they promised so many. One Reformation writer Hutten “mocked at Pope Julius II for selling to others the heaven he could not win himself” (24).

Another corrupt and unethical practice in the church that Reformation theologians attempted to terminate was the selling of church offices for extortionate prices. “Though the normal method of appointment to civil office was sale, it was felt as a special abuse in the church [when such methods were carried out] and was branded by the name of simony” (Smith 22). Simony won its name from Simon Magnus, who attempted to purchase the spiritual power of the Apostles for his own temporal gain (Dante 1891). In Canto XIX of Dante’s Inferno, Virgil carries Dante into the Third Pouch of the Eighth Circle of Hell. In this division of Hell, the Simonists are held, their heads embedded in the orifices of rocks with their feet sticking out, constantly writhing from the pain caused by fire burning their soles “as a flame on oily things will only stir along the outer surface” (1891). Dante commends this punishment as fit justice for their sin as, just as they were most attentive in life to the contents of their purses, now in the afterlife the Simonists are rewarded by having their heads stuck into a sort of purse, the thing which they loved most in the world (Ibid). Dante is able to talk to one of these sinners: Pope Nicholas III, who mistakes him for his successor, Pope Boniface VIII (1892). He also sees other famous Simonists, such as Pope Clement V who arranged with the king of France to have the papacy moved, and Jason of the Jews who bribed the king in Maccabees to appoint him high priest (1893).

Although Dante’s work spoke to effect a change in the Church doctrine and practice, many tenets of the Catholic faith of the day are visibly evident in the Inferno. Catholicism held that “grace is imparted to the believer [only] by means of certain holy rites: baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, penance, extreme unction, holy orders and matrimony” (Smith 27). In Canto IV of the Inferno, Virgil leads Dante through the First Circle of Hell, which is also called Limbo, and is “inhabited by those who were worthy but lived before Christianity and/or without baptism” (Dante 1845). Among others, there were many infants in this circle of Hell as well as the righteous that never received salvation, in accordance with Catholic doctrine. Virgil explains that this is because “they did not sin; and yet, though they have merits, that’s not enough, because they lacked baptism, the portal of the faith that you embrace. And if they lived before Christianity, they did not worship God in fitting ways” (1846). Sadly, this shows the way in which the leaders in the Catholic church “were made the arbiters of each man’s eternal destiny, and their moral character had no more to do with their binding and loosing sentence than does the moral character of a secular officer affect his official acts” (Smith 27-28).

In conclusion, Dante performed an important role in the advancement of European culture and religion, acting as the first modern man to stand in the gap between the Renaissance and the Middle Ages through his political involvements and religious dissensions. Lifting his pen to write a beautiful work and craft an ingenious new style of verse, Dante renewed an emphasis on reason and the humanities. His efforts finally culminated to spark the flame that led to the Renaissance and Reformation, influencing many of the key leaders of the time through his writings.



Works Cited
Alighieri, Dante. Dante Alighieri. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Vol. B 100-1500 with Inserts, 2nd Edition. Ed. Sarah N. Lawall and Maynard Mack. Boston: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003. 1826-942.
Clarke, A. K. "The Scope of Virgil's Influence." Greece & Rome 16 (1947): 8-16.
Estep, Willieam R. Renaissance and Reformation. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman's Company, 1986.
Friedrich, W. P. "Dante Through The Centuries." Comparative Literature 1 (1949): 44-54.
"Renaissance." Interview with David Malone. Renaissance Notes. ENG-201 World Literature Class. Jackson, TN. 27 Apr. 2009.
Schaff, Philip. "The Renaissance and the Reformation." Magazine of Christian Literature Apr. 1891: 96-97.
Smith, Preserved. The Age of the Reformation. New York: Henry Holt and Company,
1920.

"The Mind of the Maker"~ Dorothy Sayers

Everyone needs to read this excerpted chapter entitled "The Image of God" from Dorothy Sayers book The Mind of the Maker! This is great stuff!
For background information on Dorothy Sayers: Among Sayers' peers were C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton. She had a child out of wed-lock, but later adopted the child after marrying another man, giving her credence in the world of sinners. This is just so incredible to read- please take the time!
http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/dlsayers/mindofmaker/mind.02.htm