Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here?

Where does the phrase abandon all hope ye who enter here come from

From Dante Alighieri’s work Inferno, translated by Henry Francis Cary as ‘all hope abandon ye who enter here’, from the Italian lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.

What is the Latin quote for abandon hope?

Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate ».

What does abandoned all hope mean?

Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here Meaning – Definition: Proceed with caution; do not enter. The proverb abandon hope all ye who enter here comes from Dante’s Divine Comedy,

What did Dante say about hope

“‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter.'” – This ominous quotation is perhaps the best known line from Dante’s Divine Comedy, and possibly the most familiar passage of all mediaeval literature. The command is engraved above the Gate of Hell, through which the Comedy ‘s narrator must pass to begin his descent into Hell and his journey, ultimately, to Heaven.

This engraving is the first part of Hell that Dante encounters as a physical space – Hell as a tangible, observable, and undeniable entity. The demand to abandon hope is also Dante’s first interaction with the force of Divine Justice, the overriding concept that shapes and guides the rest of his pilgrimage.

From the very beginning, Dante thus forefronts hope – or the lack thereof – as central to his conceptualisation of Hell, as much a part of its nature as the more conventional infernal tropes of justice and punishment. As parts two and three in this three-article series will show, hope is a fundamental concept throughout Dante’s Divine Comedy, but it is in Inferno that the importance of hope is established.

But what does it mean to abandon hope? What did hope mean to Dante and what might its loss mean to the poet’s readers, both past and present? Fortunately, Dante answers these questions in a discourse found within the Comedy itself. Unfortunately, this exchange does not come until the narrator reaches Heaven, so a discussion on Dante’s theorising of hope will have to wait.

However, part of Dante’s genius is his ability to explain impossibly complicated concepts in simple terms, terms that make sense even seven hundred years later – and his approach to hope is no different. Put simply, Dante thought of hope in much the same way as many of us do today – the belief that human experience and existence were capable of improvement, and that things could and would ‘get better’.

• For Dante, as Christian writing at the start of the fourteenth century, the ultimate goal of human existence was admittance to Heaven; the utmost terminus of improvement was eternal paradise itself.
• Ergo, for Dante, hope is faith in salvation, a belief that by living a virtuous life he can and will attain entrance to Heaven and reside forever in the presence of God.

By defining Hell in terms of a lack of hope, Dante shows that those in Hell are permanently denied entry to Heaven and the presence of God. This banishment – and the hopeless state it generates – is the paramount punishment for sin. The diverse contrapasso tortures Dante later depicts serve primarily to remind sinners of the nature of their crimes and the reason behind the exclusion from Heaven.

What is the Latin death motto

Memento mori (Latin for ‘remember that you die’) is an artistic or symbolic trope acting as a reminder of the inevitability of death.

What is the most famous Latin quote?

One of the best known and most frequently quoted Latin expression, veni, vidi, vici may be found hundreds of times throughout the centuries used as an expression of triumph. The words are said to have been used by Caesar as he was enjoying a triumph.

What is a famous Latin goodbye?

The most common words associated with saying goodbye are Salve, ave, vale. A famous line from Catullus addressing his late brother combined two : ave atque vale.

What happens when you lose all hope in life?

Losing Hope Can Lead to Depression – The erosion of hope can lead to clinical depression. And then a downward spiral begins, as depression expresses feelings of abandonment and hopelessness. In both hopelessness and depression, the depressed and hopeless individual comes to feel extraordinarily different from others and remarkably alone.

He or she becomes disconnected from the world, friends, family, and even God. In essence, the depressed person has lost heart. In his book, A Stubborn Darkness, 2 author and counselor Edward T. Welch, Ph.D., closely examines the reasons for depression and confirms its effects on the individual and their family.

Early on in the book’s first chapter, Dr. Welch writes: Depression is a form of suffering that can’t be reduced to one universal cause. This means that family and friends can’t rush in armed with THE answer. Instead, they must be willing to postpone swearing allegiance to a particular theory, and take time to know the depressed person and work together with him or her.

What is the message when all hope seems lost

The message of the Bible is ‘ Jesus wins! ‘ When all hope seems lost, remember that Jesus wins. He has declared his victory with his resurrection from the dead. He is risen today!

How do you live when all hope is gone

Final Thoughts – There is always a source of strength and hope available for every situation. Talk to someone, do something different, look within yourself, read biographies, relive old memories, or seek divine help. When you do, your mind will be refreshed, your problems will appear lighter, and you will find hope to navigate through until you come out of the situation.

What was Dante’s best quote?

The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis. Beauty awakens the soul to act. Consider your origins: you were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.

What did Nietzsche think of Dante

Crude blunder – In his Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche declares that Dante made a crude blunder when he placed above the Gates of Hell the words “I too was created by eternal love”. He suggests that Dante would have done better to inscribe above the gateway to the Christian Paradise the words “I too was created by eternal hate”.

He follows that with a quote from Thomas Aquinas to the effect that souls in heaven “will see the punishments of the damned, in order that their bliss be that much greater”. Nietzsche’s claim about eternal hate would have some merit with respect to Dante if the souls in Dante’s Heaven did in fact delight in seeing the damned suffer.

Fortunately for him, and for his readers, Dante recovers his sanity once he exits Hell, and by the time he reaches the celestial spheres he is too enraptured to think about the sinners in Hell. Indeed, none of the souls in Paradiso shows the slightest interest in them.

• The only indication that they are even aware of the damned comes from Beatrice’s last words, in “Paradiso 30”, when she predicts the damnation of Pope Clement V, whose political conniving thwarted the campaign of the Emperor Henry VII in Italy between 1310 and 1313.
• Beatrice takes no pleasure in Clement V’s damnation, or in anyone else’s.

What she expresses is anger – Dante’s own bitter anger – that those who make history on earth continue to opt for the lacerations of Hell rather than the sanity of justice. While Santagata’s biography is short on insights into The Divine Comedy as a poem, it shows in granular detail what the peninsular history that Beatrice denounces in “Paradiso 30” actually looked like up close – how randomly it unfolded, who its major as well as minor players were and the power struggles that left almost no one untouched in central Italy. Dante Alighieri is described as a champion of vengeance by biographer Marco Santagata. Leemage

What was Dante’s message?

Inferno In this section we will examine:

• Dante’s idea of man as a social and political animal
• Dante’s idea of peace and its political significance
• Dante’s idea of Empire
• Dante’s idea of Church
• Dante’s idea of the relationship between Church and Empire.

Dante’s idea of man as a social and political animal Man, for Dante, is a social and political animal. As Dante explains in Convivio IV, iv, the end of human existence is happiness, and no human being could reach this end without the help and support of others.

All human beings depend for their sustenance and well-being on the relationships they establish with other human beings. All human beings are therefore, by their very nature, social. This idea, which is derived from Aristotle’s Nichomachean ethics, may be seen as one of the fundamental principles underlying Dante’s thought.

It is crucial, in order properly to come to terms with the Commedia, always to bear in mind that Dante did not conceive of the human being in individualistic terms. For Dante, human beings exist for and before others. Rationality is that which, for Dante, distinguishes human beings from other animals.

In turn, man’s nature as a social animal is that which, for Dante, defines the way in which human beings ought to exercise their rationality. Dante believed that in order to be true to their nature, human beings ought to live together in communities. It is fitting, therefore, that they should organise their lives around well-defined political structures such as city, kingdom and empire.

These structures are necessary in order for human beings to work together for the common good, each person contributing, according to his or her talents and dispositions, to the well-being of the community as a whole. According to Dante, being a social animal also involves being a political animal.

Politics, for Dante, is not simply something done by governing bodies or political rulers. Everything anyone does has political implications –i.e. effects for the community one is part of. Every individual, according to Dante, ought to recognise this, and ought to recognise how their behaviour may contribute to the political life of the community as a whole.

For Dante, to use one’s rationality properly one must not act for self-centred motives, but for the common good. According to Dante, the main obstacle on the way to both individual and communal well-being is greed (‘cupidigia’), the selfish desire for earthly things, power and possessions.

‘Cupidigia’ leads human beings to turn against each other, and prevents individuals from acting not only for their own well-being but also for the well-being of others. When reading the Inferno you should always ask yourself if, and on what terms, the different sins punished in the Inferno may be seen as actions that encourage selfishness and/or that go against the well-being of the community as a whole.

Peace, politics and the Empire Dante believed that the ideal social and political condition for human beings to achieve happiness is peace. Peace is achieved when the life of a community as a whole is not disturbed by the attempts of individuals and/or factions to pursue selfish ends and turn against other human beings.

The duty of political leaders is to guarantee peace within the community they are governing. It is also their duty not to enter into war with neighbouring communities out of greed for political power and earthly possessions. Dante’s invectives in the Inferno against Florence and other Italian cities are a bitter criticism of the way in which civic living is governed not by the desire for peace and common well-being, but by greed and selfish motives.

Peace throughout the whole world can only be guaranteed, according to Dante, through the authority of the Emperor. As Dante explains in book I of the Monarchia, it is necessary that human society and all earthly things be governed by the authority of a single Emperor.

All other political authority should be seen as deriving from that of the Emperor, who in turn derives his political authority from God. If all political leaders (including the Emperor himself) were able to recognise this then, according to Dante, universal peace could be achieved. For, if all authority over earthly things is ultimately seen to rest with the Emperor by divine – and therefore unchangeable – decree, then it simply makes no sense for political rulers greedily to covet, and fight each other for, political power and earthly possessions.

Ideally, all other political rulers and governing bodies ought, for Dante, to recognise the authority of the Emperor and govern their communities following his guidance for the creation of peace. However, the political situation of Dante’s day was very far from this ideal state, and Dante criticised both the Emperor and other political rulers for failing to guarantee peace for human beings.

The Church Dante’s understanding of man as a social being is not only defined by his idea of politics but also by his idea of Church. Dante lived at a time in which ecclesiastical authorities, and in particular the papacy, were making unprecedented attempts to increase the political and institutional power of the Church, and were competing against political rulers for wealth and material possessions.

Dante saw this as an utter perversion of the nature of the Church. For Dante, as for other medieval theologians, the Church ought in no way to be seen as a political institution, and ecclesiastical authorities should not spend their time pursuing or administering political influence and/or material possessions.

This is because the Church ought to be seen simply as the community of all those who believe in God and participate in the love which is God. For Dante, the Church does not directly correspond to any earthly institution. In Monarchia, III, xv, 2–3, Dante says that ‘the “form” of the church is simply the life of Christ, including both his words and his deeds’.

This means that the Church is defined simply as the community of all those who follow the example and teaching of Christ. It is by following the example and teaching of Christ that, according to Dante, human beings may participate in the love which is God.

The example and teaching of Christ was seen in the Middle Ages to be defined by the ‘two greatest commandments’: to love God and to love one’s neighbour as oneself. A very important thing to note about Dante’s attitude towards the papacy is that, despite all his harsh criticism of corrupt popes, Dante never questions papal authority or the idea of papacy as such.

In fact, throughout the Commedia Dante always shows respect for the papal office itself – as is shown, for example, in Inferno XIX, 100–102. Note also that, even though Dante thought that someone like Boniface VIII was abusing his spiritual authority, this did not mean that his spiritual authority was no longer valid.

As we saw when reading Canto XXVII, for example, even though Boniface makes the offer of absolution to Guido for devious political ends, the absolution would itself have been valid had Guido truly repented. Dante’s idea of the relationship between Empire and Church We have said so far that Dante’s idea of man as a social animal is defined both by his idea of politics and by his idea of Church.

This raises the question of how, for Dante, the two are to be related. In Dante’s day, there was intense debate regarding the relationship between the Church and political authority. The debate focused in particular on whether or not the authority of the Emperor derived directly from God or whether it was imparted to the Emperor by the Pope – i.e.

• On whether or not the Pope had the right to take a stand in political affairs.
• Boniface VIII, for example, strongly argued that all authority, political and spiritual, was given by God to the Pope, and that it was the Pope’s duty then to impart political authority on the Emperor.
• As we have seen, Dante disagreed strongly.

He argued that the authority of the Emperor derives directly from God. More specifically, he argued that God had provided human beings with two guides: the Emperor to guide human beings in political terms, the Pope to guide human beings in spiritual terms.

1. The passage from the Monarchia below (with key sections in bold to make it easier to navigate) tells us more about Dante’s idea of the relationship between Church and politics: Ineffable providence has set us two goals to aim at: i.e.
2. Happiness in this life, which consists in the exercise of our own powers and is figured in the earthly paradise; and happiness in the eternal life, which consists in the enjoyment of the vision of God (to which our powers cannot raise us except with the help of God’s light) and which is signified by the heavenly paradise.

Now these two kinds of happiness must be reached by different means, as representing different ends. For we attain the first through the teachings of philosophy, provided that we follow them, putting into practice the moral and intellectual virtues; whereas we attain the second through spiritual teachings which transcend human reason, provided that we follow them putting into practice the theological virtues, i.e.

Faith, hope and charity. These ends and the means to attain them have been shown to us on the one hand by human reason, which has been entirely revealed to us by the philosophers, and on the other by the Holy Spirit, who through the prophets and sacred writers, through Jesus Christ the son of God, coeternal with him, and through his disciples, has revealed to us the transcendent truth we cannot do without; yet human greed would cast these ends and means aside if men, like horses, prompted to wander by their animal natures, were not held in check ‘with bit and bridle’ on their journey.

It is for this reason that man had need of two guides corresponding to his twofold goal: that is to say the supreme Pontiff, to lead mankind to eternal life in conformity with revealed truth, and the emperor, to guide mankind to temporal happiness in conformity with the teaching of philosophy,

And since none can reach this harbour (or few, and these few with great difficulty) unless the waves of seductive greed are calmed and the human race rests free in the tranquillity of peace, this is the goal which the protector of the world, who is called the Roman Prince, must strive with all his might to bring about: i.e.

that life on this threshing floor of mortals may be lived freely and in peace. (Monarchia, III, xvi, 7–11) Discussion point: Inferno XXVII As we noted when reading through Inferno XXVII, Dante’s encounter with Guido da Montefeltro is one of the most psychologically and morally complex of the first cantica.

• This complexity, as we also noted, comes from the relationship between Guido’s fraudulent political advice and Boniface VIII’s abuse of his spiritual authority.
• After having worked through this section you should be in a position to make a more detailed assessment of the complexity of Inferno XXVII.
• A note on the significance of Rome Rome plays a special role in Dante’s thought, especially in relation to his understanding of Church and Empire.

You should note that Dante believed the Emperors of his day to be the direct political descendants of the Emperors of Ancient Rome. And, as he explains in Book II of the Monarchia, it was on the Emperors of Ancient Rome that God originally bestowed authority over temporal matters.

• Rome and the Roman Empire are, for Dante, a fundamental part of God’s providential plan for history.
• In fact, as Dante also explains in Book II of the Monarchia, universal peace was only ever achieved during the reign of the Emperor Augustus; and it was at this time of universal peace that Christ was born.

© Vittorio Montemaggi, Matthew Treherne, Abi Rowson This resource is a collaboration between the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies at the, and the at the

What is Semper Invictus?

Behind the scenes – Semper invicta is Latin for “always undefeated.” It is also the motto for the city of Warsaw, Poland since World War II; a testament to the strength of the city.

Is Memento Mori a good saying?

Quotes about ‘memento mori’ – This section contains some of the notable things that people have said about the concept of ‘memento mori’ throughout history, starting with its use by ancient philosophers and followed by its use in more modern times. Note that in some of these quotes, the term ‘memento mori’ is mentioned explicitly, while in others only the underlying idea behind it is discussed.

Don’t let yourself forget how many doctors have died, after furrowing their brows over how many deathbeds. How many astrologers, after pompous forecasts about others’ ends. How many philosophers, after endless disquisitions on death and immortality. How many warriors, after inflicting thousands of casualties themselves.

How many tyrants, after abusing the power of life and death atrociously, as if they were themselves immortal. How many whole cities have met their end: Helike, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and countless others. And all the ones you know yourself, one after another.

1. One who laid out another for burial, and was buried himself, and then the man who buried him—all in the same short space of time.
2. In short, know this: Human lives are brief and trivial.” — From ” Meditations ” (Book IV, Passage 48), by Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, circa 170 CE.

“Hippocrates cured many illnesses—and then fell ill and died. The Chaldaeans predicted the deaths of many others; in due course their own hour arrived. Alexander, Pompey, Caesar—who utterly destroyed so many cities, cut down so many thousand foot and horse in battle—they too departed this life.

Heraclitus often told us the world would end in fire. But it was moisture that carried him off; he died smeared with cowshit. Democritus was killed by ordinary vermin, Socrates by the human kind. And? You boarded, you set sail, you’ve made the passage. Time to disembark. If it’s for another life, well, there’s nowhere without gods on that side either.

If to nothingness, then you no longer have to put up with pain and pleasure, or go on dancing attendance on this battered crate, your body—so much inferior to that which serves it. One is mind and spirit, the other earth and garbage.” — From ” Meditations ” ( Book III, Passage 3), by Marcus Aurelius “A trite but effective tactic against the fear of death: think of the list of people who had to be pried away from life.

What did they gain by dying old? In the end, they all sleep six feet under—Caedicianus, Fabius, Julian, Lepidus, and all the rest. They buried their contemporaries, and were buried in turn.” — From ” Meditations ” (Book IV, Passage 50), by Marcus Aurelius “We plan distant voyages and long-postponed home-comings after roaming over foreign shores, we plan for military service and the slow rewards of hard campaigns, we canvass for governorships and the promotions of one office after another—and all the while death stands at our side; but since we never think of it except as it affects our neighbour, instances of mortality press upon us day by day, to remain in our minds only as long as they stir our wonder.

Yet what is more foolish than to wonder that something which may happen every day has happened on any one day? There is indeed a limit fixed for us, just where the remorseless law of Fate has fixed it; but none of us knows how near he is to this limit.” — From ” Letters from a Stoic ” (letter number 101, “On the Futility of Planning Ahead”), by Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger, circa 65 CE.

Let us so order our minds as if we had come to the very end. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s account every day. The greatest flaw in life is that it is always imperfect, and that a certain part of it is postponed. One who daily puts the finishing touches to his life is never in want of time.

And yet, from this want arise fear and a craving for the future which eats away the mind. There is nothing more wretched than worry over the outcome of future events; as to the amount or the nature of that which remains, our troubled minds are set aflutter with unaccountable fear.” — From ” Letters from a Stoic ” (letter number 101, “On the Futility of Planning Ahead”), by Seneca “Do you likewise remind yourself that you love what is mortal; that you love what is not your own.

1. It is allowed you for the present, not irrevocably, nor forever; but as a fig, or a bunch of grapes, in the appointed season.
2. If you long for these in winter you are foolish.
3. So, if you long for your son, or your friend, when you cannot have him, remember that you are wishing for figs in winter.
4. For as winter is to a fig, so is every accident in the universe to those things with which it interferes.

In the next place, whatever objects give you pleasure, call before yourself the opposite images. What harm is there, while you kiss your child, in saying softly, ‘To-morrow you may die’; and so to your friend, ‘To-morrow either you or I may go away, and we may see each other no more.’ ‘But these sayings are ominous.’ And so are some incantations; but, because they are useful, I do not mind it; only let them be useful.” — From the ” Discourses of Epictetus ” (Book III, Chapter 24), based on informal lectures by the Stoic philosopher Epictetus that were collected by his student Arrian, published circa 108 CE.

One notable story which features the concept of ‘memento mori’ involves a slave standing behind a victorious general during a procession celebrating the general’s achievements: “He is reminded that he is a man even when he is triumphing, in that most exalted chariot. For at his back he is given the warning: ‘Look behind you.

Remember you are a man.’ And so he rejoices all the more that he is in such a blaze of glory that a reminder of his mortality is necessary.” — From “Apologeticus” (chapter 33) by Christian author Tertullian (circa 200 CE), as quoted in ” The Roman Triumph “, by English scholar Mary Beard (2007).

1. Though the veracity of this tale has been questioned, for example by English scholar Mary Beard in her book ” The Roman Triumph “, it remains a tale that is often used in modern times to illustrate how the concept of memento mori can be used.
2. When it comes to the English language, the first use of ‘memento mori’ in print is attributed, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, to Shakespeare, who wrote the following: “Bardolph: Why, Sir John, my face does you no harm.

Falstaff: No, I’ll be sworn; I make as good use of it as many a man doth of a Death’s-head or a memento mori” — From the play “Henry IV, Part 1” (Act III, Scene 3) by William Shakespeare (published circa 1597) Since then, this concept was also mentioned in other literature.

For example: “Memento mori, remember death! This is a great saying. If we only bore in mind that we should inevitably die and that very soon, our life would be entirely different. If a man knows that he will die inside of thirty minutes, he will not do anything trifling or foolish in these last thirty minutes, surely not anything evil.

But is the half century or so that separates you from death essentially different from a half hour?” — From “The Pathway of Life: Teaching Love and Wisdom”, by Russian author Leo Tolstoy ( 1919 ) And: “And I think that we all, except perhaps nurses and doctors who see it all the time, have a primitive instinct to withdraw from death, even if we manage to conceal our pulling away.

There is always the memento mori, the realization that death is contagious; it is contracted the moment we are conceived.” — From ” A Circle of Quiet ” (Book 1 of ” The Crosswicks Journals “), by American author Madeleine L’Engle (1972) In addition, this concept has also appeared in other types of media.

For example: “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

1. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
2. You are already naked.
3. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” — By American designer, inventor, and entrepreneur Steve Jobs, in a Stanford University commencement address ( 2005 ) Note: ‘memento mori’ is sometimes assigned slightly different translations, which all share the same general meaning.

This includes, for example, “remember that you will die”, “remember that you must die”, “remember that you have to die”, and “remember death”.

What are 2 famous Latin phrases?

Far from being a dead language, Latin is very much alive in our day-to-day conversations. Carpe diem, et cetera, cum laude, curriculum vitae and mea culpa are just a few of the Latin phrases still widely used today. It’s unclear whether Latin made a comeback or it has been this cool for hundreds of years.

1. But one thing is sure: Latin phrases are nowadays the cooler siblings of slang words,
2. And Julius Caesar approves this message.
3. No, really.
4. Didn’t you notice how inserting some Latin words here and there automatically makes someone look smarter? Even the dullest conversation can become an erudite discussion if you use the right Latin sayings.

Here’s proof: — Do you want the chocolate ice cream or the vanilla ice cream? — The vanilla ice cream. You know me: semper fidelis to the vanilla. As you probably already guessed, semper fidelis means ‘always faithful’ or ‘always loyal’. So yeah, Q.E.D.

What was Julius Caesar’s famous quote in Latin

2. I came, I saw, I conquered – Probably the best known Latin phrase there is can accurately be attributed to Caesar. He wrote “veni, vidi, vici” in 47 BC, reporting back to Rome on a speedily successful campaign to defeat Pharnaces II, a prince of Pontus. The pink and purple areas show the growth of the Kingdom of Pontius to its greatest extent in 90 BC.

What does it say must be abandoned on the gates of the Inferno?

.,through me you enter into the city of woes through me you enter into eternal pain, through me you enter the population of loss. abandon all hope, you who enter here. Dante reads these lines, which he finds inscribed on the Gate of Hell, as he and Virgil pass into the Ante-Inferno before the river Acheron in Canto III (III.1–7).

• These lines may be said to represent the voice of Hell, as they declare its nature, origin, and purpose, and thus pave the way for what is to come throughout the poem.
• First, the inscription portrays Hell as a city, which defines much of the geography of the poem—Hell is a geographically contained area bound by walls and containing a vast population of souls.

Hell is thus a grotesque counterpart to Heaven, which Virgil describes as the city of God. Second, the inscription portrays Hell as a place of eternal woes, pain, and loss, situating it as the center of God’s strict punishment of sinners, a place from which there is supposed to be no escape (” abandon all hope “).

What does Lasciate ogni speranza voi che entrate mean?

: abandon all hope, ye who enter.

When did Dante write the Divine Comedy

Dante shown holding a copy of the Divine Comedy, next to the entrance to Hell, the seven terraces of Mount Purgatory and the city of Florence, with the spheres of Heaven above, in Domenico di Michelino ‘s 1465 fresco The Divine Comedy ( Italian : Divina Commedia ; Italian pronunciation: ) is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c.1308 and completed around 1321, shortly before the author’s death.

1. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest works of world literature,
2. The poem’s imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval worldview as it existed in the Western Church by the 14th century.
3. It helped establish the Tuscan language, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language,

It is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, The poem discusses “the state of the soul after death and presents an image of divine justice meted out as due punishment or reward”, and describes Dante’s travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven,

Allegorically, the poem represents the soul’s journey towards God, beginning with the recognition and rejection of sin ( Inferno ), followed by the penitent Christian life ( Purgatorio ), which is then followed by the soul’s ascent to God ( Paradiso ). Dante draws on medieval Catholic theology and philosophy, especially Thomistic philosophy derived from the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas,

Consequently, the Divine Comedy has been called “the Summa in verse”. In the poem, the pilgrim Dante is accompanied by three guides: Virgil, who represents human reason, and who guides him for all of Inferno and most of Purgatorio ; Beatrice, who represents divine revelation in addition to theology, grace, and faith; and guides him from the end of Purgatorio onwards; and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who represents contemplative mysticism and devotion to Mary the Mother, guiding him in the final cantos of Paradiso,

The work was originally simply titled Comedìa ( pronounced, Tuscan for “Comedy”) – so also in the first printed edition, published in 1472 – later adjusted to the modern Italian Commedia, The adjective Divina was added by Giovanni Boccaccio, owing to its subject matter and lofty style, and the first edition to name the poem Divina Comedia in the title was that of the Venetian humanist Lodovico Dolce, published in 1555 by Gabriele Giolito de’ Ferrari,

Erich Auerbach said Dante was the first writer to depict human beings as the products of a specific time, place and circumstance, as opposed to mythic archetypes or a collection of vices and virtues, concluding that this, along with the fully imagined world of the Divine Comedy, suggests that the Divine Comedy inaugurated realism and self-portraiture in modern fiction.

Where is Beatrice in Dante’s Divine Comedy

Beatrice – Beatrice is Dante’s muse and inspiration for writing the Divine Comedy. Thanks to Giovanni Boccaccio, the author of the Decameron and a biography on Dante, we know that Beatrice’s real identity is Bice di Folco Portinari. She married a prominent Florentine banker and died when she was only 24 years old.

• Metaphorically speaking, Beatrice is a mirror upon which divine love is reflected and, consequently, serves as the pilgrim’s bridge to salvation.
• She is a powerful character and a woman of action who descends into hell to call upon Virgil for his help and to instruct him to lead the pilgrim on an otherworldly journey.

Her love not only saves the pilgrim from the Dark Wood of sin, but also inspires him to cross through the purifying flames of Mount Purgatory into the peaceful bliss of heaven. She is a strict guide, and often scolds and admonishes the pilgrim for his less than virtuous behavior.

In one of the most memorable scenes of the Divine Comedy, Beatrice appears to Dante in Terrestrial Paradise. She is dressed in white, green, and red, the colors of the three theological virtues representing faith, hope, and charity respectively, and is seated on a Griffin-driven chariot. The Griffin has the wings and head of an eagle and the body of a lion, and in Dante’s world, represents Christ.

During this poignant scene in the final cantos of the Purgatorio, Virgil disappears and Beatrice becomes the pilgrim’s guide, leading him to the Beatific Vision in Paradiso XXXIII, : References