312 Dante Alighieri
saint. Her beauty and devotion to God brought
Dante to religion and developed in him an almost
unshakable faith. However, human life is full of
both incredible joys and deep sorrows. Beatrice died
suddenly, still in mid-bloom, taken from the world
and from Dante just as she was entering adulthood.
Dante, like every other human being who has
experienced loss, must have questioned the justice
of God. It is the question of why bad things happen
to good people that allows most human beings to
wonder about the nature of God. Clearly, there is
no ultimate justice on earth; the only hope of mere
humans is the possibility of finding recompense in
the afterlife. Nevertheless, while the average person
must rely on faith, Dante is fortunate enough to
experience the truth firsthand on his arduous jour-
ney to discover God.
He does not have to travel far. The question of
God’s justice is answered almost immediately in
Inferno, with Dante’s descent into hell. Though it
is more fully expanded in the rest of The Divine
Comedy, the idea of justice is most prevalent in
Inferno. Not only is Dante’s God a just God, but
the afterlife is a finite and perfectly balanced system
of punishments and rewards. Before he enters hell,
Dante pauses to read the inscription carved into
the gate which bars all of the immoral souls in hell
from escaping: “SACRED JUSTICE MOVED
MY ARCHITECT. / I WAS RAISED HERE BY
DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE, / PRIMORDIAL
LOVE AND ULTIMATE INTELLECT” (3.4–6).
Truly the “sacred justice” of God is apparent in every
aspect of the punishments in hell. The sinners who
were gluttons in life, devouring anything they could
without regard to themselves or others, are left to
wallow waist-deep in garbage and putrid “slush,”
probably their own feces (6.38). In the fifth Circle of
Hell, the wrathful—who always violently expressed
their anger in life—beat, harass, and attempt to rip
each other apart in hell, while nearby, the sullen, who
stifled their anger in life, sink miserably and silently
into a swamp (7.1–30).
Though Inferno is the most vivid representation
of God’s justice because Dante goes into great detail
about horrific punishments, other instances of God’s
justice are found throughout The Divine Comedy.
The same sins from hell return again in purgatory
because Dante’s God is fair enough to recognize
that, though many men may be convicted of the
same crime, some do it more often or more intensely
than others. For example, the Hoarders and Wasters
in hell are forced to move great boulders back and
forth on the edge of a precipice while spewing curses
at each other. However, in Purgatorio, the hoarders
and wasters are bound hand and foot and forced to
be stationary, face down in the dirt. Dante finds that
all of the sinners in hell and in purgatory are well
aware of their sins and their fitting punishments, so
he asks one of the damned why he is prostrate, to
which he replies: “We would not raise our eyes to
the shining spheres / but kept them turned to mun-
dane things: so Justice / bends them to earth here in
this place of tears” (19.121–123). Because they spent
their lives focused on material objects that crumble
to dust, instead of God, they are forced to spend
their afterlives focused on dust.
It is within Purgatorio that Dante, having thus far
seen only the punishments of God, begins to see the
just rewards of heaven. In canto 30, he is reunited
with his love, Beatrice, who becomes his guide for
his journey through heaven just as she was his guide
to a religious life on earth. Together with Beatrice,
Dante confesses his sins and is washed clean in the
river Lethe in order to continue, sinless, to Heaven.
In Paradiso, Dante encounters levels of believers
and worshippers of God just as he met levels of sin-
ners in hell. From members of the church who kept
their vows, to saints, to angels, to the Virgin Mary
herself, every aspect of heaven is addressed accord-
ing to God’s divine justice. Dante eventually comes
to God himself, although the revelation disappears
from his memory when he returns to humanity.
Fortunately, the memory of Beatrice and the power
and justice of the Almighty remain with him and
cause him to begin writing the experiences that will
become The Divine Comedy. It is through the fair-
ness of God that Dante is permitted to return to
earth and write a work that will possibly save others
from future sins and punishments.
Sara TomedilOve in The Divine Comedy
In The Divine Comedy, love is not just a theme, it is
the basis for the entire work. For Dante, God and