summarized by Walter Antoniotti Return to Subject Libraries: Religion 3/21/19 |
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Preface: Poem is about God's Love and it's
Profound Mysteries. Approach the mouth of Hell and its sinners who can not leave they read the inscription: “Abandon hope all you who enter here.” Dante's Sins were Incontinence, Violence, Bestiality, and Fraud. Sinner Dante could amend his ways and escape. Sinners who succumbed to human appetites come first and move toward those who willed evil who included tyrants, thugs, bandits plus heretics, blasphemers, sodomites, and usurers. First encounter those unnamed never really alive persons who refused to take chances and take stands. Then they encounter Paolo Francesca, most famous of the denizens of Hell. Dante is sorrowful at Francesca’s fate whose sin seems small on as she was spurred by a romance and stole a kiss. But she was married to another and had subjected reason to passion degrading the divine spark in her divine spark. Then they encounter the righteous pagans where Virgil spends eternity because he was just but did not know God. God's justice is absolute. Dante begins to see God as a judge so his journey's themes will concern divine justice. Among the violent, we are tyrants, thugs, and brigands but also heretics, blasphemers. Among these deceivers were seducers, panderers, corrupt popes, corrupt politicians, hypocrites, and thieves. People who failed to uphold human dignity harming society. Encounter Satan, the worst betrayer they are ready to move on to a realm of hope. Postface: At the end of his journey through, Hell, Purgatory and Heaven Dante states "...But already I could feel my being turned. Instinct and intellect balance equally as in a wheel nothing jars by the love that moves the sun." |
Meet Hell's Many
Sinners on the Journey Down to the
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