Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy: Inferno

Dante's Inferno is perhaps his most widely-read and analyzed work, due to its attention to detail, historical relevance, elegance, and groundbreaking style. Dante the poet was capable of offering an incisive religiopolitical commentary on contemporary public figures and issues, and encapsulating it within a rich and deeply symbolic narrative. However, there is one canto in particular that is particularly salient to Dante's own most deeply-held beliefs, and couched in some of the Commedia's most ingenious rhetoric: Canto XIX, which describes the bolgia of the Simoniac popes.

The canto's most immediately defining attribute is its spirited condemnation of the sin of Simony, notable for both its fiery rhetoric and the breach of the poem's consistent narrative distance. Through this forceful invective against Simony at a moment when, chronologically, Dante the pilgrim is ignorant as to the nature of the sinners of the current bolgia, Dante the poet reveals his own charged emotions regarding the Simoniac popes (245). The language employed in these first two tercets is rife with indignant and righteous anger, railing against the Simonists, labeling them "scum" (1) and "rapacious creatures" (3), and accusing them of prostituting "those things of God that rightly should be wed / to holiness" (2-3). Here, as always, Dante hand-picks his words with care; by specifically stating that the papacy determines the treatment of matters that are, ideally, "wed" to holiness, Dante intensifies the iniquity of prostituting the papal office. This is also the first instance in which Dante analogizes the church to a woman, a recurring theme employed throughout the canto.

The poet resumes his narrative distance for the following tercets, as the pilgrim is hitherto capable of drawing his own conclusions based on what he sees. However, the breach of the poem's fourth wall, so to speak, through authorial intervention, serves to remind the reader for the remainder of the canto that this is a sin (and therefore a passage) of particular importance to the poet. This importance is immediately emphasized by Dante the pilgrim's affirmation of the righteousness and aptness of Divine Justice upon witnessing the nature of the contrapasso: "Oh Highest Wisdom, how you demonstrate / your art in Heaven, on Earth, and here in Hell!" (10-11). By praising God for his wisdom in meting out just punishment, Dante serves a dual purpose: most evidently, he further establishes the detestability of the Simonists, but of equal importance is the reminder of Dante's journey as a pilgrim. Here, the pilgrim displays none of the pity reserved for previous sinners, but immediately regards them with loathing and contempt, an indication that he has progressed along his journey toward Divine Wisdom.

Subsequently, Dante takes a moment to describe the geography of the bolgia, which he characterizes as mottled with round holes in the rock that seemed "no wider and no deeper / than those inside my lovely San Giovanni" (16-17). By alluding to the pits' similarity to baptismal fonts, Dante not only initiates the canto's overriding baptismal metaphor, but also sets the stage for a pertinent reminiscence from the life of the poet: "and one of these, not many years ago, / I smashed for one who was drowning in it: / let this be mankind's picture of the truth!" (19-21) Here Dante references an incident in which he was forced to destroy a baptismal font at the Baptistery at Pisa in order to save a drowning boy. However, the final line of the tercet, in which Dante emphasizes the verity of his statement that his intentions were noble, seems incongruous with the pace and aesthetics of the canto. The purposes for this digression are multiple and varied. Firstly, as Musa points out in his notes, Dante likely wished to answer any allegations of sacrilege likely resulting from his destruction of church property. Secondly, according to Musa, the breakage of the font serves to parallel the nature of the sin of Simony, in that both result in the destruction of the church, though the former was an act driven by love, and the latter by avarice (246). However, the implications of the reminiscence are even further-reaching than this. On the surface level, Dante's comparison of the holes in the rock to the baptismal font at Pisa, in which he states that "they seemed no wider and no deeper / than those inside my lovely San Giovanni, / in which the priest would stand or baptize from," (16-18) establishes a correlation between the infernal fonts and those of the church. It serves to emphasize the perversion of the structure of the church, literally, in that on Earth, priests stand upright and administer the rite of baptism, while in Hell, corrupted priests are inverted and receive a baptism in flame. The declaration that the infernal fonts seemed "no wider and no deeper" than that which he smashed to save someone drowning serves to underscore how hellish the font must have felt to that victim, another parallel between the earthly and infernal fonts, in that they are torment to those too long inverted in them.

However, delving beyond the aesthetic level, Dante's closing call to validate the universal truth of his reminiscence attempts to bring to attention the relationship between the church and all mankind. His breakage of the baptismal font, a structure of the church, to save a human life establishes humanity, even an individual child, as paramount to the entire ecclesiastical institution. It's Dante's way of saying that when the church ceases to serve the common good (represented by the life of the child, an innocent), its sanctity is destroyed (much like the font). The current, corrupt church must be broken and formed anew. The implications of this allegory would have been considered heretical in Dante's time, and as such, it was necessary for it to be couched in such nebulous terms.

The nature of the contrapasso is particularly appropriate in Canto XIX. The punishments sinners face in Dante's vision of Hell are typically designed around one of two ironies; that of an eternity spent engaged in a behavior painfully reminiscent of the sin being punished, or one that contrasts directly to it. This is fitting, as contrapasso translates roughly to "counter-suffering," or a directly retaliatory form of justice.

In the bolgia of the Simoniacs, sinners are condemned to a punishment featuring aspects of both spectrums of the contrapasso. Most evident is the position of the sinners in relation to their surroundings; they are upside-down, bunging up holes in the ground, with their feet aflame. By the time Dante the pilgrim reaches the flailing Nicholas III, Dante the poet has already established the overarching baptismal metaphor; rather than a baptism that anoints the head in cooling holy water, the sinners are subjected to a baptism in flaming oil, another ingredient in the sacrament. In the Christian tradition, baptism represents the cleansing of sins, as represented by the physical immersion in water. Here, however, the feet of the sinners are enflamed, but only superficially; the fire seems only to burn on the surface, ineffectually, "just as a flame will only move along / an object's oily outer peel" (28-29). This indicates that the perversion of the baptismal rite is incapable of cleansing the sinner of his sins, an appropriate detail, considering that in life, these Simoniac popes were capable of extending benediction; here, they are powerless.

The absolute revocation of power is another element essential to the contrapasso. During their time on the papal seat, each of the Simoniac popes was afforded absolute power. Ideally, this access to incontestable authority is the greatest of all boons to the church, allowing the pope to act in favor of all Christendom. However, the Simoniac popes acted out of blind self-interest, with the potential to harm millions of people, as evidenced by the sacking of the Christian cities of Zara and Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade (Cook & Herzman, 191). It is fitting, then, that these sinners are placed in a position of complete powerlessness in Hell. This impotence is emphasized by Dante's greeting to Nicholas III: "Whatever you are, holding your upside down, / O wretched soul, stuck like a stake in the ground, / make a sound or something,' I said, if you can'" (46-48). Not only is Dante unable to recognize the sinner-pope, once the most recognized man in the world, he is not even convinced that the latter is human and can speak. The sinners are also depicted as kicking hard enough to "have broken any chain or rope" (27), an obvious display of strength, but one that avails them nothing. Not only are they upside down, wedged in a hole, they are driven lower down with each successive pope to join them. Thus, they slowly fade into obscurity, losing even their legacy to the neglect of ages. In this way, the contrapasso parallels the nature of the papacy in that, eventually, even the most self-involved, politically-motivated efforts of the Simoniac popes will be erased by their successors.

Clearly, Dante's Inferno is a work of inexhaustible meaning; the study of a single canto can reap volumes. However, Canto XIX is perhaps the densest, most emotionally-charged passage of the Commedia. It provides the reader with invaluable insight not only into the nature of Simony, but also Dante's own perspective on corruption in the papal office, and his personal vision of its punishment.

Works Cited:

Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy Vol. I: Inferno. Trans. Mark Musa. New York, New York: Penguin Books, 1971.

Cook, William, and Ronald Herzman. The Medieval World View: An Introduction. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.