DIVINE COMEDY SERIES
Dante’s Inferno: Canto IV
When Catholics do not know where to put the ancient pagan poets and philosophers, they invent a VIP lounge and great real estate.
Hello fellow readers, here we are at Canto IV (4) of the inferno!We left off canto 3, with Dante using an escamotage (a trick), to change scene from the boat of Charon to the first level of Hell.
Alighieri fell asleep during the trip and he now suddenly wakes up, as if someone hit his head.
Thunder rolling heavily in my head
shattered my deep sleep. Startled I woke -
as though just shaken in some violent grip.
(Line 1–3, Canto 4, tr. Robin Kirkpatrick, Penguin Readers)
I can’t help but notice that this description sounds a lot like most of us, when getting ready to go to work on a Monday morning. Anyway, the poet with Virgil finally arrives and the first level of the underworld.
Theological doubts, and how to exit inferno
Which one are we talking about? Well it’s a special club and is called the LIMBO.
As the word suggests, is indeed a place where souls stay there forever, stuck between hell and never being able to see, feel or even get close to the grace of god.
Who are these souls? They are the ones who have lived before Christ, who were not Christians but lived as just men/women and therefore did not deserve real Hell.
These souls have committed no sin, and consequently do not suffer any particular pain. Nonetheless, they remain overshadowed by the original sin which, for the Christian, is removed at baptism (thank you mom, you sorted me out early on!).
The presence of so many famous souls makes Dante hesitate, who appears pre-humanist, as he values the culture of the classics and thinks that they deserve God’s grace.
However, he remains a man of his time, sensing the conflict between reason and faith, he accepts the inscrutable mystery of God.
Still perplexed, the poet asks Virgil if anyone from Limbo has ever ascended to heaven. He discovers that the great patriarchs, such as Adam, Abel, Moses, Noah, reside in the Empyrean (more precisely in the candid rose), as they believed in the Coming Christ .
Is baptism necessary for salvation?
Does all of this sound odd? well, it’s because there has been a MASSIVE debate during that time about what happens to these types of souls.
They cannot access Paradise and Purgatory (a recent invention in Dante’s time) and therefore they had to end up in Hell, according to logic. Although, it took the Church-State three Councils (1311 Council of Vienne in the picture above) to even establish an agreement.
(A bit off-topic, but the Council of Vienne is important because on top of the baptism question, Pope Clement V also dissolved the order of the Templar Knights.)
Thus it was a theological uncertainty, generating the need to get baptized as soon as possible (in order to avoid problems), then the Limbo of children was conceived, which is not part of the official doctrine of the Church.
The VIP estate with interesting property management
The two poets keep walking and Dante notices the presence of a light that forms a hemisphere: Virgil explains to him that there reside those who enjoyed much fame.
I’m sure in the current time we would put people like Leonardo Di Caprio, Cristiano Ronaldo, Sharon Stone and Shakira but the picture looked quite different in the 1300!
Four characters stand out to welcome Virgil, and they are: Homer, with a sword in his hand, symbol of epic poetry, Ovid, Horace and Lucan.
Virgil approaches them and talks amiably, then the poets invite Dante to spend time with them and to talk. He joins as the “sixth” poet of the group and says he will not say what they said (come on man!).
The six poets walk together and arrive in front of a castle (symbol of philosophy), in which the great spirits reside.
This castle is surrounded by seven walls (symbol of the parts of philosophy) and by a stream which, once crossed, leads in a vast green meadow where Virgil shows Dante illustrious characters such as: Hector, Aeneas, Aristotle, Socrates, Plato and also Saladin, Averroes and Avicenna of Muslim religion.
An open wound in the middle east
Here I have to make a small digression on Saladin mentioned above. The conquest of Jerusalem in 1187 by the Muslim Sultan, immediately threw Europe into a tizzy and there was a need to understand just how the successes of the First Crusade, so clearly granted by God, could have been undone.
His figure becomes a “mirror” by which Christian failing can be emphasized, he is, in effect, transformed into a rhetorical tool.
That loss in Jerusalem was so painful that it echoed more than 100 years later to Dante’s generation (talk about PTSD!)
Why the castle and what does it represent?
Dante thinks in a medieval way and for him the sign of strength and empire takes the form of a castle.
Let’s take a closer look at the symbology. In the Convivio he wrote:
«nobility is where there is virtue»
(Convivio, IV, 19, 5).
Virtue and nobility are the hallmarks of these great souls, and Dante establishes for them a castle, beautiful and noble, with seven circles of walls and seven gates .
Symbolic numbers with many references such as the arts of the Trivium and the Quadrivium; or the division of philosophy: Physics, Metaphysics, Ethics, Politics, Economics, Mathematics, Dialectics; or the seven liberal virtues.
Conclusion and personal thoughts
Lots are the names that Alighieri mentioned and to put an end to the list and to the Canto, he uses quite funny words:
I cannot here draw portraits of them all;
my lengthy subject presses me ahead,
and saying often falls short of fact.
(Line 145–147, Canto 4, tr. Robin Kirkpatrick, Penguin Readers).
So here we are at the end and this chapter, is indeed quite an unusual canto, with a list so long of names that almost resembles a shopping list.
On a serious note though, canto 4 brings into sharp relief some of the most fundamental tensions in his work, in particular those that arose in Canto 1 with the choice of Virgil as his guide.
What place does poetry and personal talent have in the search for Christian salvation?
Above all, what contribution can the great traditions of classical learning and literature make to such search?
These questions, which run through the whole Commedia, emerging in Purgatorio and Paradiso too, remain largely unsolved (bloody poets!).
Hope you enjoyed this Canto IV analysis, I’ve been reading it during a break in the National Portrait Gallery in London.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me via email or the comment section below.
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Does Love and Lust attract you? Read Canto V here!
