Dante's representation of the Catholic Church in the Inferno

Introduction

Inferno is an Italian word meaning Hell. It is the initial part of Dante Alighieri's poem Divine Comedy. This poem is a representation of the journey of the spirits towards the God. It is with the Inferno describing the identification and rejection of sin. The Divine Comedy is a poem comprising of approximately 14,233 lines, which are in turn divided into three sub parts which are also known as Centrica's. It discusses three aspects, which is the, Hell called Inferno, the purgatory which is a place of suffering and torment and Paradise which is a place of peace and happiness. Each aspect has a total of 33 cantos (Whiting, p.98)

The entire piece of the poem is using the first person view, it narrates the entire journey of Dante's, and he narrates the story via the three realms of the dead. It initiates on a Thursday night which is a night before the Good Friday and goes on till Wednesday which occurs after the Easter in 1300. The poet who's from Rome names Virgil guides through the Purgatory and through the Hell. A lady named Beatrice was Dante's infatuation and is termed as Dante's ideal woman. She aids Dante through the realm of Paradise or Heaven. Dante's ideal woman was from Italy and was Florentine. He met her in his childhood, and he admired her since then.

Inferno describes the belief of degree or the intensity of the sin that is found amidst the damned: Dante along with Virgil move towards the dimension that has a minor degree of sins to the dimension which has the highest degree of sins. So Dante and Virgil, throughout the journey of the dimensions are insecure in terms of safety because they were surrounded by evil of all degrees, the danger which kept on increasing in intensity. They were also enlightened about the circles of Hell. Each sinner was placed in the circle of hell based on the type or kind of sins that they had committed (Anderson, p. 54).

Because of the symbolic agreement amidst the kind of sin and the kind of punishment, it communicates a lot about the tangible surroundings and the atmosphere in which the plotline takes place. This union amidst the geography and the story, also amidst the kind of sin and intensity of sin, establishes a connection between the poem's theme to the belief of the divine avengement and justice (Gardner, p.33).

An example of it from the poem is of the Catholic Church which was said to have the 7 deadly sins. Those deadly sins are purified and cleansed in the Purgatory which are conjoined by special dimensions for the Late repentant and the banished by church. The 7 deadly sins included the following within the purgatory which complements to the scheme of morality, of love perverted, which is in turn divided into three categories complementing to excessive love, which comprises of Greed, Gluttony and lust, deficient love, which comprises of, Sloth, ...