From Dante to Dan Brown: 10 things about Hell

[frigidmagi]

BBC

nferno, the first part of Dante's poem The Divine Comedy, provides the theme and title for the new thriller by Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown. The original poem describes a journey through Hell - writer Stephen Tomkins gives a 10-point tour of the underworld.

1. Hell is conical
Hell, as Dante described it, consists of nine concentric circles, going deeper each time as they get smaller, towards the centre of the Earth. Which of the nine you are condemned to depends on your sin, with circles devoted to gluttons, heretics and fraudsters. The centre point of the surface of the cone is Jerusalem. The river Acheron runs around hell, separating it from the outside world. Outside hell itself, but still part of the scheme, there are the people who somehow never did anything good or evil in their lifetime. Even they are punished for their neutrality, running round for eternity being stung by wasps while maggots drink their blood.

2. Hell is diverse

The modern cartoon image of Hell, with flames and pitchforks for everyone, is tragically bland compared with medieval depictions. This modern version is probably the legacy of Milton, who in Paradise Lost describes hell as "one great furnace" whose flames offer "no light, but rather darkness visible". Then again, he is setting it in the time of Adam and Eve when its only population is demons, so even his Hell might have livened up a bit later. In the medieval hell explored by Dante and painted by Hieronymus Bosch, punishments are as varied as sin itself, each one shaped to fit the sin punished. In Dante, sewers of discord are cut to pieces, those who take their own lives are condemned to live as mere trees, flatterers swim in a stream of excrement, and a traitor spends eternity having his head eaten by the man he betrayed. In Bosch, one man has a harp strung through his flesh while another is forced to marry a pig in a nun's wimple, and other people are excreted by monsters. This Hell is not a fixed penalty, but the fruition of bad choices made during our lives.

3. Hell is underground - maybe
In the Middle Ages, people generally thought of Hell as being underground, and there were legends of travellers seeing its smoke coming up through holes in the ground. Dante agreed, and because he assumed that the Earth was round, he had Satan at the bottom of Hell, with his waist the centre of Earth's gravity. Milton's Hell, however, is far from Earth. Paradise Lost is set in the time of Adam and Eve when the Earth was still perfect, so it would be incongruous for hell to be in the centre of it. Dante manages to do the whole tour of Hell, purgatory and heaven in less than a week. Meanwhile it takes Milton's Satan nine days just to fall from Heaven to Hell.

4. Hell can freeze over
Actually it can be pretty sweltering, especially in Milton, who describes hills, caves, beaches and bogs of fire. Dante has a river of boiling blood for people guilty of bloodshed, tombs of fire for heretics, and a desert where it rains flakes of fire on blasphemers, usurers and homosexuals. But many of Dante's circles aren't fiery. In the second circle, the lustful are blown about by strong winds, while the gluttons in the third are subjected to sleet and sludge. In the ninth and deepest circle of hell, Satan himself is encased in ice to his waist. For the Devil, it's always a cold day in hell. Even for Milton, beyond the fire plains of Hell there are regions of ice, hail, snow and wind, where the damned are taken on forced excursions. The change offers no respite, as "cold performs th'effect of fire", and in fact the variation only makes things worse.

5. Hell is other people (and they're real)

Hell is full of popes. Milton's Hell doesn't have any people in it yet, though it would surely have an abundance of popes when the time came. But even for ardent Catholics, the Vatican provided a wealth of damnations. Dante finds many popes in hell, including Anastasius II for heresy and Nicholas III for buying episcopal office. The Catholic scholar Erasmus wrote a dialogue called Julius Excluded, where Pope Julius II is rudely turned away from the pearly gates for his many sins. Michelangelo, in his fresco The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, shows real people being pulled down to Hell, including Biagio de Cesena, the Pope's Master of Ceremonies who opposed the artist's depiction of nudity and is shown with a snake eating his genitals. Dante's Inferno includes many people he knew personally, and not just enemies. He is shocked to see his friend and teacher Brunetto Latini suffering the punishment for violence because his sex life did violence to the natural order. At the bottom-most pit of hell, three real people are eternally eaten by a three-headed Satan - the arch traitors Cassius, Brutus and worst of all (because headfirst) Judas. "With six eyes did he weep, and down three chins/Trickled the tear-drops and the bloody drivel."

6. Hell is unreal creatures
Hell is full of creatures from pagan myth. Dante sees centaurs and harpies, the Minotaur, and the three-headed dog Cerberus. Michelangelo includes Charon and Minos, the boatman and judge of the Greek underworld. Even Milton puts Medusa and Hydras there.

7. Hell is pandemonium
Pandemonium ("all the demons"), although it has come to mean noisy chaos, is a word Milton invented for the capital city of hell, where Satan and his followers meet for their infernal parliament. Milton also coined the phrase "all Hell broke loose", which again did not originally refer to noisy chaos, but to demons escaping. When Satan arrives at Eden to tempt Adam and Eve, Gabriel asks him: "Wherefore with thee/Came not all Hell broke loose?"

8. Hell is gated
Dante's gate is famously inscribed "Abandon hope all ye who enter here". Less famously, this is only the last of a nine-line inscription, which includes the claim that the realm within was created by "the highest Wisdom and the primal Love". In Paradise Lost there are nine gates, three of brass, three of iron, and three of adamantine rock, and they are guarded by Sin, Death and the ever-barking hounds of Hell.

9. Hell isn't all that interested in sex
Christianity may have a bad name for obsession with people's sex lives, but sex doesn't feature very prominently in the behaviour punished in Hell. Admittedly Brunetto Latini is treated harshly in the seventh circle for "unnatural" sex, but mere sins of lust are dealt with in the second circle (the first being limbo, a pretty nice place for unbaptised babies and sinless non-Christians) making it the least of sins.

10. Hell isn't all that Biblical
Very few of these ideas are from the Bible. The Bible does refer to Hell and its fires, but more of the details in Dante are drawn from Greek and Roman myths, and the vast majority are the creation of medieval Western imagination. Eastern Christian artists never shared their interest, and even in the West it was a late development - the doctrine of perpetual torment was propounded by the Lateran Council of 1215, just a century before Dante wrote. In modern times Christians have become increasingly sceptical about Hell. There are 622 verses in the Bible (in the New International Version) which mention Heaven, and 15 that mention Hell.

Hell is full of Popes... hehehehehe.

[Josh]

Your roots are showing.

[frigidmagi]

Your roots are showing.

As if I ever hide them...

[LadyTevar]

The last bit is the most interesting: Hell was not an original Christian belief. It's a mix of Greco-Roman pagan myths and only taught starting 1215ce. Which does beg the question, what happened in 1200s that made the Catholic Church decide people needed to learn what happened to sinful people. Luther and his Reformation could have dropped it, but by then the concept of Hell had been around several centuries and became "truth".

[General Havoc]

Prior to the 1200s, people didn't need to read or hear sermons about hellish domains of pain and violence. All they needed was to look outside. Hell was most people's everyday existence.

The thirteenth century was, on the other hand, probably the apogee of the European Middle Ages. Pestilences vanished, wars died back, crusades sucked away many of the landless second sons and unpaid mercenaries that otherwise tormented the lives of everyday Europeans. Towns flourished, yeomen and landed peasants competed with burghers for increased rights, commerce swelled and new inventions such as the windmill or clock improved people's lives. The earliest stirrings of renaissance and humanist thought were beginning to appear, drawing people away from the Church, and the focus thus began to shift from "God will reward you by removing your pain" towards "God will punish you by inflicting it".

The high middle ages didn't last, of course, but for a while, it was a decent time.

[Cynical Cat]

The last bit is the most interesting: Hell was not an original Christian belief. It's a mix of Greco-Roman pagan myths and only taught starting 1215ce. Which does beg the question, what happened in 1200s that made the Catholic Church decide people needed to learn what happened to sinful people. Luther and his Reformation could have dropped it, but by then the concept of Hell had been around several centuries and became "truth".

That's not quite true. Christian belief in hell dates back to the New Testament, but it didn't have the importance to early Christians until later. Heresy, of course, is a big reason for its increased prominence.

[LadyTevar]

Ah yes, Heresy, aka Schisms in the Official Church that Must Not Stand.

[SirNitram]

The First Circle has to be pretty nice these days. Einstein, all the greatest philosophers of Greece.. If that's where I'm headed, I'm going to live it up with the Virtuous Pagans.

[Charon]

What I find most interesting is that in the translation I have of the Inferno. It states that Saladin is among the Virtuous Pagans... Which stands against the entire premise of the First Circle.

But yeah, it's amazing how influential Dante and Milton were on our perceptions of Hell, and even the other realms were heavily influenced. It's been argued that without Dante, purgatory would have been forgotten about long ago.

[Comrade Tortoise]

What I find most interesting is that in the translation I have of the Inferno. It states that Saladin is among the Virtuous Pagans... Which stands against the entire premise of the First Circle.

But yeah, it's amazing how influential Dante and Milton were on our perceptions of Hell, and even the other realms were heavily influenced. It's been argued that without Dante, purgatory would have been forgotten about long ago.

Why would that be strange? Saladin was considered by his enemies to be a good and noble individual--only their enemy because he did not follow Christ. He is famous for sending christian commanders and kings his superior physicians when they had leprosy (in the case of Baldwin IV) or wounded (in the case of Richard I), and when he took Jerusalem after a bloody siege, pointedly did not engage in rapine pillage, burning, or enslavement. He paid ransoms due for the release of captives personally.

He was a good dude. Maybe not by modern standards, but by the standards of the time he went over and above what was considered good and moral conduct. It seems to me that this is the exact thing the first circle is for.

[Charon]

Because Limbo was meant for virtuous pagans and IIRC, was shut off to most of the world (except babies) after Christ's ascension. It was presumed that such good people would have followed Christ if given the chance (let's not forget, by Catholic doctrine of the time even Moses and Abraham were in hell before Christ's Ascension). After Christianity came up however, no more people were admitted to Limbo because now everyone who was not saved wasn't saved because they chose not to be (save, again, for the babies).

Saladin lived in a time where Christianity was around (Hell, he died only 120 years or so before Dante started writing his book) so he then clearly would have chosen to not be a Christian, which would have meant he turned away from salvation. I could be wrong about the fact that Limbo was closed after Christ's ascension, but I'm pretty sure it was.

[Steve]

I got the impression that Limbo was meant for the virtuous who never embraced God/Christ, regardless of time. Saladin thus applies; he had no sin to punish but still was not of Christ, ergo he goes to Limbo and the First Circle.

[Josh]

I got the impression that Limbo was meant for the virtuous who never embraced God/Christ, regardless of time. Saladin thus applies; he had no sin to punish but still was not of Christ, ergo he goes to Limbo and the First Circle.

No mortal sin, at least.