As he passes through the gates with their terrible message of warning Dante sees an unsettling sight And I, all eyes, saw a whirling banner INFERNO Canto 3:52-69 [Translation Robert and Jean Hollander: the Princeton Dante Project] 'Making your mind up'Sometimes it's hard to make choices. Either we don't quite know what we want (will we have the beef or the chicken) where we are trying to balance the merits of two things we like, or we are worried about the consequences of our choice (if I have the chicken with the creamy sauce I will be putting on more weight than if I have the lean beef) where we are weighing up our desire (creamy chicken) against the outcome (calories). Usually finding it hard to choose isn't a big problem (unless for our spouses, who are sitting outside the changing room growing increasingly frustrated at the time it is taking to choose a new pair of trousers/shoes etc) but sometimes, when our choices really matter, indecision can be fatal. Sometimes not choosing is simply not a option and is in fact a form of surrender. When we refuse to take sides when one of those sides is clearly wrong, when we stay neutral when existential issues are at stake, when we stay silent and hide behind our newspaper when someone is being sexually harassed in our train carriage, when we 'opt out' of the discussion when the future of the community or the family is being decided, then we are denying something fundamental about ourselves, our necessary involvement and responsibility. When we opt out in this way we become less than what we should be, as Dante would see it, less than human, For Dante the refusal to decide for or against the Good was the worst sin that a person could commit. In his view each person creates his or her own identity through the decisions they make, be they good or bad. Being is a function of doing and doing involves decision-making. Those who refused to take sides, to commit themselves in the necessary moral choices of life were, in his view, opting out of life itself. In his own day Dante thought that far too many people were playing safe and 'sitting on the fence'. At that time there was a fierce battle raging over who should have supreme political authority over the city-states of Italy such as Florence, between the supporters of the papacy based in Rome, and those who supported the authority of the Holy Roman Emperor, who claimed to be the direct successor of the original Roman emperors. Dante was on the side of the Emperor and critical of the church and papacy. The Emperor, he believed, was the divinely appointed ruler over the material world and his rule would bring peace and safeguard the rights and prosperity of his home city of Florence. The papacy on the other hand, was responsible for the spiritual good of the citizens, guiding them to eternal happiness. Even in that regard, Dante thought, the Popes had failed, becoming as he saw it hopelessly corrupt. But Dante saw that the rapid growth and increasing prosperity of Florence and other italian city states led many to opt out of involvement in the big issues of the day. For some there was too much to lose. In his life before his exile, Dante had committed himself to one of the political factions within Florence, the so called 'White' Guelf party, which ultimately led to his exile in 1302 when, at the instigation of the then Pope, Boniface VIII, the 'Black' Guelf party took over control of the city. Although he eventually renounced membership of any factional party or group, calling himself a 'party of one', Dante knew what it was to make choices, take risks and suffer the consequences out of conviction. He believed that everyone who was able to should take responsibility for working towards the common Good, i.e. the revelation of God's will on earth (which he associated with the victory of the Emperor and the limitation of the powers of the Pope). But he believed many, motivated by greed and self interest, avoided doing so. For such as these, the moral cowards of his day, he created a very special place in his hell. In the ante-chamber of hell, he locates the people who refused to choose, who, in the afterworld as in life, hardly seem to exist at all. They spend eternity chasing a banner (flag) which has no emblem, represents no cause. Those who in this life chose no cause, who believed in nothing, are now seen as they really are; the devoted, committed supporters of nothing! As they chase the banner, they are gnawed at by worms and their blood, running to the ground, provides the nourishment for the maggots beneath their feet. In other words their pointless lives have become a form of death. These are the people as Dante puts it, 'who never were alive'. Centuries later, another poet trying to express his impression that the modern world was devoid of the commitment and passion that gave it meaning, found inspiration in this terrible vision. In The Wasteland T.S. Eliot describes his own vision of the living dead, the great crowd 'who never were alive' Unreal City,
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Half way through the journey of our life How can I express the horror of that wood To speak of that place is so bitter for me I can't say how I got myself into that place, But when I reached the foot of a slope, looking up, I saw its shoulders Then the fear that had endured And just like someone who, struggling for breath so my mind, still in flight, Inferno Canto 1:1-27 Dante's midlife crisisHalf way through the journey of our life, Dante the pilgrim discovers that he is lost in a dark forbidding forest. Since Dante the poet was born in 1265 and the allotted span of a human life is traditionally 'three score years and ten' (70), the journey through the three domains of the afterlife apparently begins in the year 1300. The pilgrim is 35, so at the mid point of his life. But this, Dante says, is the mid-point of our lives, the lives of the readers too, (despite the fact that, sadly, I am no longer 35!). The poem pulls us all into that terrible forest, for according the writer, we are all enduring a mid-life crisis of existential proportions. We, the readers, stand there too, lost and confused with the pilgrim. But not because we stand there as individual readers, but because this is the crisis of the life of the world in which we all live. According to some medieval speculation about the age of the earth, 1300 stood exactly as the mid-point of the history of the world. The Christian world was in crisis as the Papacy and the Holy Roman Emperor fought it out for political supremacy over europe. In February 1300 Pope Boniface VIII declared a year of Jubilee (the present Pope has just done the same!) and declared that a plenary indulgence (time off from Purgatory) would be given to everyone who visited the churches of St Peter and St Paul in Rome. This was in fact a huge money-grabbing operation, as tens of thousands flocked to Rome. This is where the story begins, in a year like this, a year which finds mankind at its own 'mid-life crisis'.
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Archives
April 2016
GalleryThis blog is as much about images as it is about text. Below is a slideshow of the pictures and images used in this blog. Click on any of the pictures to go to the post where that image is featured.
PostsLocating Paradise #1 In a Garden, Far, Far Away
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #5 'Stuck in the Middle With You'
The Resurrection According to Rahner
Today You Will Be With Me in Paradise
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #4 'And Who by Fire'
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #3: Held in the Balance
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #2: Once, Twice, Three Times a Sinner
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #1: The Broad and Narrow Gates
Daily Dante 7: Many Rivers to Cross
Daily Dante 6: 'You Gotta Serve Somebody'
In Hell Everyone Can Hear You Scream. The Vision of Tundale #3
Teeth, Spikes and Cleavers: At the Sharp end of Hell. The Vision of Tundale #2
'No Pain No Gain': The Vision of Tundale #1
'Hellzapoppin':
Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #2 'It's The End of the World as We Know It (and we feel fine)'. Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #1
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #2 Blinded by the Light
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #1: Glorious and Immortal
Daily Dante 5: What the gates said.
Daily Dante 4: When I find myself in times of trouble
Daily Dante 3: I'll take you there
Daily Dante 2: Fierce creatures
Daily Dante 1: If you go down to the woods today
In Seventh Heaven or 'What Enoch Did Next'
A World of Fire and Ice: Heaven according to Enoch
The Power and the Glory: Visions of God as king in the Hebrew bible
The Beautiful Bestiary of Catherine Cleves: Monsters and Demons in detail.
Heaven is for Real: Heaven as a physical space up above the sky
Resurrecting the Dead or Reviving the Flowers? The loss of resurrection faith in Judaism.
The Defeat of Death #1: The promise of resurrection in the Isaiah Apocalypse.
The Defeat of Death #2: Death as a hostile power and promise of God's victory in Isaiah
Scary Monsters and Super Creeps: The 'Last Judgement' according to Stefan Lochner
Hell in the Hospital: The 'Last Judgement' of Rogier van der Weyden in the Beaune altarpiece.
'Hell' in the New Testament #2: The gates of Hades shall not prevail
The Hours of Catherine Cleves: Imagining hell and purgatory in Catherine's prayer book
'On Earth as in Heaven': The kingdom of God as a revelation of heaven
'Hell' in the New Testament #1: Gehenna
Lost in Translation #1: How the King James version got it so wrong about hell
Heaven is not our home
Domes, Depths and Demons: The cosmology of the Hebrew world
A Bigger God
"See you in Sheol" - Sheol, the common destination of all
Heaven, Hell and Christian Hope
BooksBelow are some of the books which have helped me the most in the research and writing for this blog. Click on any image to find out more about that book at its page on Amazon uk.
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