History Headscratchers / DivineComedy

** This is a simple question to answer. Dante was an Italian nationalist [[OlderThanTheyThink 500 years before that was popular]], and he ([[CriticalResearchFailure unjustifiably]]) blamed the killers of Julius Caesar for the fact that Italy was fragmented. It was a political statement. Remember, Dante was writing an AuthorTract.

*** Nah. He simply landed hard enough to push the center of the earth through and out the other side intoa mountain. And Heaven isn't on top of the Mount of Purgatory -- it was scattered among the celestial bodies.

** Actually, it's an allegory. When Lucifer was cast from the heavens, the Earth was so disgusted that it tried to escape as far away from him as possible, thus creating the "crater" and the mountain on the other side. Also, Heaven isn't on top of Purgatorio, the Garden of Eden is; from the Garden of Eden, Dante takes off and flies trhough Heaven, which is composed of several concentric spheres around Earth, until he reaches God. The only thing that's a bit of a stretch is that when Lucifer fell he managed to land exactly opposite the Garden of Eden.

*** Which is why it makes sense that god would have made the garden of eden where he did, to keep Adam and Eve as far away from the corrupting influence of satan as possible.

* Was anybody else puzzled by Cassius's inclusion in Lucifer's mouth? That implies he's the third greatest betrayer of all time. I'm not saying Cassius wasn't guilty, he certainly belonged in the Ninth Level. But Brutus and Judas each betrayed a dear friend and mentor, to the victim's despair and horror. Cassius and Caesar never really liked each other and had an alliance of political convenience. Cassius conspiring against Caesar was a relatively mundane, run-of-the-mill Curse Your Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal: no kiss or unkindest cut of all. Did we really need RuleOfThree here, seeing as Lucifer makes for a fourth betrayer anyway?
*** The divine comedy runs on rule of three. Trintarian symbolism(in this case, an ironic inversion) and all that.

* Anyone care to explain the comdey part of this tale?

** Don't forget that Jesus broke the Biblical Patriarchs out of Hell and took them with him to heaven. Every other virtuous individual living in the 4000 years between the Genesis and Jesus' birth just had to watch them walk out and excercize true Christian forgiveness.

*** Virgil and a theologian in Paradiso both claim that those in limbo who manage to gain faith in God can be allowed to leave by special dispensation (Virgil mentions pre-christians who prayed to God, which is presumably where the Harrowing of Hell comes in, an the theologian allows for postmortem conversion). This fits fairly well with the thrust of Limbo, which is more about the limits of reason.

**** Dante's Limbo has been decribed a deficient form of heaven. It's not really that bad of a place, but it's still not heaven. My guess is that if they're happy there and have no interest in the christian God then they'll stay. But Dante decribes them as grieving that they are stuck there because they weren't baptised, but then again, all those (or at least some) who were rescued probably weren't baptised so he's a bit uneven. My guess is that he'd decided to put the nice pagans in Limbo, but he was a fan (or a hater) of other ones and chucked them in hell, purgatory or heaven depending on how much he liked them. (Or by how much they illustrate the type of person that belong in each circle/level/sphere).

* Early on the poem, it is explained that "virtuous pagans" (those who were good people but died without ever knowing Jesus) go to hell, but are not punished. It's not exactly a fair system, but it's acceptable considering the ValuesDissonance that one would expect in something from the Middle Ages. But if that's the case... then why is Ripheus, a pagan from the Trojan war, in heaven? Doing that implies that God could send all those in Limbo to heaven, but chooses not to because he is [[GodIsEvil a dick.]] Why has no one noticed the UnfortunateImplications of this?

* [[WordOfDante Why does everyone takes this as part of Biblical Canon?]] Dante was writing a mainly political AuthorTract: turning the Divine Comedy into a morality tale and a part of Christian canon colours [[GodIsEvil God]] with CompleteMonster status, with all the AndIMustScream {{disproportionate retribution}}s and all that.
** Disregarding the obvious {{YMMV}} in the above post, I would just like to add that Dante didn't make up most of the stuff in the DC himself. Instead, he summarized and created a system out of the common beliefs on cosmology and afterlife that permeated Medieval Italy and generally Middle Ages' Europe. While his descriptions are ostensibly non-Biblical, that's how people viewed the world back then and that's why he is so respected by modern scholars.
** This is also the TropeNamer we're dealing with; Dante's poetic vision of Hell is just so vivid that it's hard not to incorporate some of it into canon. Chalk it up to the quality of the work and 700 odd years of PopculturalOsmosis.
*** Even though the cost of this poetry is a monster of a God?
*** To be fair, the Old Testament God was pretty vengeful regarding disobedience and sin; see Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot's wife, and the various conquests following the Exodus. As pointed out above, Dante's poem was derived from common beliefs, but it also makes a bit more sense if you take the entire Divine Comedy as a whole. The souls in Hell are entirely unrepentant, but in ''Purgatorio'', a single tear of genuine remorse is enough to allow a soul to reach Purgatory; from there salvation is guaranteed, even if it takes a while to actually reach Paradise.
*** There's also the YMMV fact that the Old Testament God ''did'', in fact, extend a lot of Mercy [[HumansAreFlawed our]] way. And besides, aren't we forgetting his greatest mercy of all? Parting with his only son to redeem all of humanity? Ring any bells??
**** Three days out of eternity isn't really "parting".

**** It has nothing to do with either of those reasons, actually. The epic was originally called "Commedia", which translates into 'Common', and was called such because it was written in Italian. During Dante's time, Italian was the language of the common people, rather than Latin, the language of the nobles, which was what all other books and poems were written in. Dante enabled his "Commedia" ('Comedy', if you will) to be read by the everyday-man. "Commedia" became boiled down to 'Comedy' over time.

* Was anybody else puzzled by Cassius's inclusion in Lucifer's mouth? That implies he's the third greatest betrayer of all time. I'm not saying Cassius DidNotEatTheMousse: he certainly belonged in the Ninth Level. But Brutus and Judas each betrayed a dear friend and mentor, to the victim's despair and horror. Cassius and Caesar never really liked each other and had an alliance of political convenience. Cassius conspiring against Caesar was a relatively mundane, run-of-the-mill Curse Your Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal: no kiss or unkindest cut of all. Did we really need RuleOfThree here, seeing as Lucifer makes for a fourth betrayer anyway?

**** There's fridge-brilliant symbolism behind Satan being at the centre of the world, and Heaven being immaterial and everywhere else, just as the lowest pit of hell is the coldest and darkest; being the one most removed from GOd, so what does that say about worldly life?

** Disregarding the obvious {{YMMV}} in the above post, I would just like to add that Dante didn't make up most of the stuff in the DC himself. Instead, he summarized and created a system out of the common beliefs on cosmology and afterlife that permeated Medieval Italy and generally Middle Ages' Europe. While his descriptions are ostensibly non-Biblical, that's how people viewed the world back then and that's why he is so respected by modern scholars.

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