Editor’s Note: This essay was written earlier in my academic life and is presented here without substantive revision.

Dante Alighieri’s Inferno is a work which says a lot about its author and the moral attitudes of the society in which he lived. Dante’s structuring and organization of hell is deliberate and purposeful, and is intended to reflect the severity of the various sins according to Catholic dogma. Of course, Dante’s personal beliefs are also reflected throughout the work; for instance, he places many of his political enemies throughout hell. Dante’s careful organization of hell presents God not as a source for good in the universe, but, rather, as an arbiter and upholder of divine law. Inferno does not present God as identical with the moral universe itself, but as a sovereign will administering that universe through law.

Dante divides hell into three major sections which are foreshadowed in the beginning of Inferno by the she-wolf, the lion, and the leopard. These three beasts are symbols of the major divisions of hell–the wolf represents the first division, which consists of the sins of self-indulgence. The lion represents the sins of violence, and the leopard those of fraud. As Dante travels through hell he shows the reader which sins are encompassed by each of these three categories, though he makes no attempt to explain the reasoning of this organization. Dante deliberately makes no attempt to explain the organization because hell was arranged by the will of God. Dante’s lack of explanation for hell shows that he lived in a time when the word of God was regarded as law, and was not to be questioned.

The first major section of hell encompasses circles one through five and consists of those who are guilty of the various sins of self-indulgence, or incontinence. The severity of sinfulness advances from the first circle, which consists of virtuous pagans and unbaptized children, to the lustful in circle two, the gluttonous in circle three, to the squanderers and misers in circle four, and finally the wrathful and sullen of circle five. The sins of self-indulgence function primarily as sins against other people with the only real trouble represented by the unbaptized children and pagans. Divine law would dictate that the unbaptized must be placed in hell, though because these people had no way of knowing Christ they are not actively punished. Instead, their punishment consists only of separation from God.

As the first section of hell consists of those who commit sins against mankind, they are organized according to the degree of harm these sins often inflict. Thus, the lustful are placed first, just after limbo, because their sin usually involves only themselves. The gluttonous come next, because theirs is the frigid sin of self-indulgence—they come to ignore the world in favor for the pleasure of their own senses, and, while not necessarily causing direct harm to anyone, they devalue God’s creation. The squanderers and misers in circle four, however, can easily be thought of as causing harm to others. Resources squandered or hoarded are resources that cannot be put to use by those who need them most. Of all the sins against man, wrath and sullenness are considered the greatest, because they lead to direct harm. Sullenness leads to harm being inflicted upon oneself, while the wrathful harm others.

The punishments of the first five circles of hell give the impression of a harsh, mechanical God. For instance, the philosophers and unbaptized children reside in hell, albeit in the most pleasant circle of hell. This shows that Dante’s God is more involved on the axis of law versus chaos than that of good versus evil. Compassion would dictate that some form of judge be installed to determine if the inhabitants of the first circle deserve a shot at paradise, despite their accidental births. Because God’s law says that those who are unbaptized, or who do not believe in God, must go to hell, then to hell they go. Perhaps God’s compassion shows through in their punishment; because they are in hell they must be punished, but because they committed no sins their punishment is not made too severe: They must endure eternity in hopelessness.

After circle five, Dante and Virgil descend into lower hell, which consists of circles six and seven. Lower hell is represented in the introduction by the lion, and contains the violent and bestial sinners. In circle six are the heretics, who reside in fiery tombs. In life they held beliefs which did not coincide with those required by God, and because of their perversion of the beliefs of others are held in the sixth circle of hell. Next is the seventh circle, which is divided into three sections: The violent against people and property, the violent against the self, and the violent against God and nature. The seventh circle is organized according to the subject of violence—the violent against people and property (property being the means of sustaining life) are placed further out, with the next, the violent against the self, being in the middle. Violence against the self is deemed more heinous than that against others because self violence is a perversion of the gift of life. Finally, those who commit violence against God and nature are judged most harshly in this circle. The violent against nature includes the sodomites, who are guilty of sodomy in the biblical sense—that is, sexual acts which do not lead directly to procreation. The violent against the divine are also called violent against benefactors, and for this reason, are considered the most violent of the three groups.

The last section of hell consists of the eighth and ninth circles, each of which is split up into several smaller sections. The eighth circle is called the Malebolge, which, when translated, means evil ditches or pockets. There are ten of these pockets each containing the fraudulent and malicious; they progress in order toward the center of hell according to the severity of sin: Panderers and seducers, flatterers, simoniacs, fortune tellers and diviners, grafters, hypocrites, thieves, evil counselors, sowers of discord, and falsifiers. The eighth circle ends near the center of hell at the great well, where the ancient titans reside.

The ninth circle, or Cocytus, houses sinners who committed a more severe kind of fraud: Betrayal. Cocytus is home to the betrayers of country, betrayers of guests and hosts, and betrayers of benefactors. These last two circles, made up of the fraudulent and traitorous, are yet another example of God’s devotion to law and order rather than goodness or decency. The reason betrayal and fraud are the most severe sins is because of their effects on lawful and orderly systems—they completely disrupt the way things are supposed to be, introducing chaos into the system. God, being a creature of law, would of course harbor the deepest sense of loathing, and perhaps even fear, toward these agents of chaos. The divine order must have been severely disrupted when Lucifer betrayed God and convinced the other angels to rebel. It is for this introduction of chaos into the divinity and lawfulness of God’s heaven, and for the betrayal of God’s trust, that Lucifer languishes at the very center of hell.

Dante’s hell shows a Divine Will which is mechanical, and which rarely, if ever, considers the extenuating circumstances which might apply to individual sinners. God is not so much a moral agent as a functionary of order. An enforcer. It follows, then, that God must uphold this underlying principle absolutely, and exceptions cannot be made. Inferno shows that not only is the fate of man judged by infallible divine law, but that the hands of God, Himself, are tied by the necessity of upholding that law without reservation.

Works Cited

Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy. Trans. John Ciardi. London: Penguin Books, 2003. Print.