Dante's Inferno: The Symbolism of Hell

hello and welcome back everyone and welcome to our final exploration of Dante's Inferno I have already explored the general construction of Hell and its two tiers in the first part of the series and we have just proceeded to explore the relationship between Dante and Virgil in the second part of this lecture series this final part will highlight in some greater detail what has already been referenced and discussed in those first two lectures but also bring out hopefully more additional detail and emphasis upon Catholic teaching and how it impacts the construction of Hell from Dante's Pen so to begin we want to examine color and image symbolism and allegory in the inferno Dante's hell as we've already mentioned is cold and dark unlike the images of a burning fire and a vengeful Satan as ruler over a dark and fiery kingdom that depiction of Satan and Hell comes from John Milton's Paradise Lost the reason has to do with the Catholic theological understanding of love and beauty and how love and beauty are the greatest things in the world and that they are contingently related to each other love between humans makes humans more beautiful this is the process of dividend the dividend through love to be a partaker in God's very essence and that essence is love as God loved humans asked to send His only Son to die for Humanity so as humans loved one another they participate in the love of the Trinity likewise the world that is beautiful is beautiful precisely because it is made in the love and image of a loving God the misdirected love is what dominates the second through fifth circles of hell there is some light as we descend through these circles principally in limbo to enter the second circle of hell but it progressively gets dimmer and dimmer ultimately expiring in that frozen darkness that enter in the ninth circle of hell the lighting and temperature of hell is an allegorical reference to Catholic theology concerning love and beauty the lack of love and beauty in hell is also reflected in the changing facial complexions of not merely the residents of hell but also our two protagonists Dante's face grows paler and paler indicative of his losing life as he journeys closer to the lifeless pit that is the center of Hell here he'll as the second death means a place without love and beauty whereby man's soul is forever lost untouched and unable to live up to his nature which is called to beauty and love despite Dante's paler complexion as he gets closer to the ninth circle of hell the love between Dante and Virgil grows which allows them to proceed further and further as you can tell the loveless hell that Dante journeys through is counteracted by the growing love that Dante and Virgil have for each other as I previously mentioned in the second talk the only warmth love and beauty that is in hell is shown through that growing relationship of Dante and Virgil for a future reference when observing the great paintings or understanding the use of colors and Catholic liturgy color does have specific symbolic meanings attached to them so we'll just cover it now red is the color of sacrifice or spiritual enlightenment Green is the color representing life or new life orange is the color of authority blue is the color of faith or divinity or being Heaven Sent brown is the color for commonality and universal nature white is the color of purity and chastity purple is the color of royalty black is the color of sin and death the intermixing of color shows vitality in other words life in hell being an empty sameness of darkness and coldness Dante is symbolically communicating through colors and imagery that hell is a place without life because it is pale and dark thus a place without love another question that we want to ask in this further examination of Hell deals with political theology and political philosophy why is hell a disordered City as we proceed through hell we also meet people who are always at war with each other shut off from one another can't find each other or want running away from others there is no harmony or order in hell why is this hell is exceedingly atomized that is individualized we meet many characters by name though their faces increasingly become harder to distinguish as we journey journey further into hell again why is this Catholicism teaches that that man is by nature social and relational that is man is filial relational and not a cut off individual moreover Catholicism teaches that the more individualistic a society becomes that is the more self-centered it becomes the more homogeneous the people become paradoxically everyone becomes a cooker a cookie cutter copy of whatever Idol they chase after individualization results in sameness oh the irony and the great paradox their four faces become blurred as Dante and Virgil journey closer to the center of hell and only know their hellbound captives when they announce their names to them there are two circles and hell that reflect the anti relational and antisocial attitude most explicitly the sixth circle the entry into the city of disks where the heretics namely the Epicureans are walled off from each other in tombs unable to see or discuss with each other made more funny by the fact that the polite company and discussion was one of the high virtues to live for according to the Epicureans before one died and then the other the other circle is obviously the ninth circle where all those who betrayed their friends and families reside the ultimate expression of anti relation relational attitudes hell is disordered because it is not ordered to anything it is not ordered to family friendships or the common good hence why hell is a chaotic place and an increasingly isolated hellhole so to speak as Virgil and Dante descend to the ninth circle of hell he'll reveal reflects the rejection of man's social relational and filial nature this is why man is increasingly isolated and atomized in hell and also why no fulfillment can be had in hell and why hell as a city is a place of absolute disorder and chaos as it relates to the question of Hell we also should realize that hell is the rebellious city or the rebellious world thus Dante's construction of Hell is a theological and political allegory the fact that hell is a city the city of dis is also a reflection of Catholicism social and relational understanding of man and the world hell as the disordered anti relational and anti filial polis is contrasted with heaven the ordered relational and filial indeed beautiful and loving warm and illuminated City in contrast to the ugly and unloving cold in dark City which was held throughout the journey throughout the journey through hell and it's construction especially when contrasted with heaven in Paradiso Dante is setting up the allegory of the two cities that goes all the way back to Agustin and from Agustin's reading of scripture the Bible a Tale of Two Cities the disordered and ventral city of man and the ordered and loving city of God given the political polis nature of hell we also see the larger commentary in Dante's Divine Comedy The Divine Comedy is also a work of political philosophy and theology it is a work of political allegory this is made clearer with the contrasts of Heaven and Hell once you start to read through the second book purgatory and the third book paradise in book 2 Dante writes Rome which made the world good used to have two sons that made visible the two paths of the world and of God this would be a more and Roma the two civilizational archetypes and contrasts one son has extinguished the other and the sword is joined to the Shepherd staff and it is ill for those two to be violently forced together for join neither fears the other Dante is communicating here that the political prefigures the celestial an Agustin also made this argument in the City of God when he exhorts the Romans in book 2 of the City of God that the prophecies of Rome inheriting a celestial and internal Kingdom in Virgil's own Aeneid was a prefiguration of the eternal and celestial heavenly city offered by Christianity the helis city is hell pun intended and that is because it is the rebellious City Satan fell because of rebellion the ninth circle is filled with traitors and rebels those who betrayed their king and country their family and their God the message from Dante is not subtle at all rebellion the seed of disorder is the road to hell Adams fall was also because of his rebellion he tried to seize for himself what was not given unto him namely the power to choose what was good and what was evil to try and derive one's own happiness this of course kaan this of course contrasts yet again with the orderly city that is heaven where authority God's Authority is obeyed and consented to the earthly City is where the authority of God is dismissed and rebelled against as such political authorities who are given their authority by God in His wisdom are also to be obeyed Catholicism has historically and still doctrinally today although few people read it promotes a very Pro Authority ethos and a civic patriotism and its doctrinal teaching and a firm's citizenship and patriotism as the highest of earthly goods you could read that in paragraphs 2238 through 2243 in the Catechism civil strife in Italy is also a major theme in Dantes many side conversations with the various Italians in hell and purgatory it is the case that Dante weeps for the strife and disorder in Italy and Dante was an early Italian nationalist nationalism and Catholicism historically went hand in hand though contemporary Catholicism tempers its nationalistic paths with the language of proper patriotism rather than the strong nationalism found among the patristic fathers and the medieval theologians furthermore the authority of the church the temporal representative of God's law is not to be rebelled against this is not to say that the church is not without problems or corruption any reader of the Divine Comedy will surely see that there is much corruption throughout the church as corrupt clerics are burning in hell and even faithful clergy in heaven they're the corruption of the church on earth especially in taking money from Satan as reflected in Dante's conversation with Wolcott de marsay in canto 9 of Paradiso Dante places the authority of the church on a high pedestal in his work it stands above the world because the church as the body of Christ with its rules and laws which Paul says justifies man in accordance with Christ's teachings to the young rich man to keep the commandments mediates fallen man back to God through the headship of Christ yet when these representatives of God and these clerics of God are in league with Satan they do more damage to the church than the churches 10 portal or earthly enemies this should also be given consideration in lights in light of what is going on today in the Catholic Church thus the ninth circle is filled with the most abominable of rebels the rebellious Lucifer and the angels who rebelled against God the ultimate crime are punished here those who rebelled against their king and country the temporal authorities over men which men are called to love and serve an equally horrendous crime that is punished in this circle of hell and those who rebelled against their family the most atrocious of crimes that rejects basic filial piety and relationships which marks one out as worse than the infidels in the words of st. Paul is punished in this circle of hell the punishment of rebels in the ninth circle not only correspond with the rejection of humanity's basic social relational and filial nature it is also an allegorical warning against rebellion in general rebellion only brings strife and destruction nothing good can come from it it is why you find all the rebellious individuals in the lowest rung of hell the implication to political philosophy and theology are also very clear when this is known about Dante's work the ordered life is what brings contentment and one to the gates of paradise which is what the second and third books of the Divine Comedy lead us to and through as we can hopefully see Dante's Inferno is a rich and dense poem filled with steep literary historical theological scriptural and classical references all throughout failure to pick up on many of these deep literary themes depreciates the value of the work and turns it into a dry read which is unfortunate when many people are probably forced to read the inferno without much knowledge of the context and the history of Dante's time and the people that he meets with and that in my opinion is is rather sad because if you have even a faint familiarity with the Christian theological tradition and the classical tradition you can have a much greater appreciation of this work and hopefully for any of those who may stumble upon these lectures if you listen to them hopefully they can impart a little bit a little bit of that to you and it will motivate you to reread the Divine Comedy the basic imagery of hell and the allegories therein can be understand through knowledge of said church teachings so why is hell cold and dark the answer is hell is a place where love and beauty are absent the lack of love equals coldness the lack of beauty equals darkness why is hell a disordered City the answer is man cannot escape his social political nature and rejecting or fighting against his social and relational nature disorder and chaos is what follows and this is represented by the disordered city of hell man as such cannot flourish in a disordered City as nobody in hell flourishes which is to say man cannot flourish unless he lives up to his daaad created nature and ultimately that means to live according to the standards of God why is rebellion punished punished so harshly answer is rebellion is the rejection of order and authority which subsequently leads to the disordered City and leads to the destruction of all that is good and beautiful in the world rebellion is what leads to a place where chaos reign supreme and goodness and beauty are destroyed in that rebellion there are also deep political and theological overtures involved in this assertion what should be the loyalties of humans where should they direct their energies and desires to family to country and to the truth eg God is what Dante is informing us and those who reject family country and God spiral downward into death and destruction which is what Dante journeyed through and showed us in his pilgrimage through hell and now at the end of this journey he is able to begin his ascent to paradise thank you

Channel: Paul Joseph Krause

Views: 6,970

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Dante, Divine Comedy, Dante's Inferno, Inferno, Virgil, Love, Purgatory, Purgatorio, Catholic social teaching, political theology

Id: hffb3gPV75Y

Length: 19min 4sec (1144 seconds)

Published: Thu May 02 2019