Having overcome his doubts about making the journey Dante now stands at the gates of hell. Inscribed over the gates he sees this terrible inscription Through me the way the city of misery But lest he think this place is the creation of some malevolent power opposed to God, he discovers that this terrible place was conceived by and created by God. Justice moved my creator on high The most terrible thing of all is the sheer sense of hopelessness this forbidding place inspires. There is no end to its horrors the pilgrim discovers. it has always been and always will be. Before me there was nothing In confusion he turns to Virgil his guide for help. Virgil tells the pilgrim that he must be brave and with an encouraging hand he leads the way through the gates. These words I saw darkly inscribed over an archway. And I said Inscriptions above doors and gates can be very revealing. They are usually intended to tell the visitor something about of the place they are about to enter. It can be a company name, a memorial inscription reminding visitors of how and when the building was erected or, sometimes, it can be a message suggesting how the place and its purpose are suited. This was brought to a terrible reality in the sign that was posted by the Nazis above the gates of many of the concentration camps they constructed. The sign said "Arbeit macht frei" (work shall set you free). The sign was a travesty of truth. The work those condemned to the camps would do would probably kill them and, if it didn't, then the gas chambers would finish the job. There was no freedom here only, perhaps, the freedom of death. Whether they intended it as such or not, the Nazis gave to these words a malevolent irony. It challenges everything we thought we knew about 'freedom'. As the pilgrim and Virgil enter hell they read the sign inscribed on the gates. It proclaims that this place of torture and hopelessness has been created by the Justice, Wisdom and Love of God. Just as we are revolted by the Nazi signs over the gates of their earthly 'hells', the reader is confused and horrified by the words on the gates of Dante's hell. How can this place from which there is no escape, not even the escape of death, be a manifestation of the divine wisdom and love? Is there a similar malevolent irony at work here too? Is love not what we thought it was? Is God not who we thought God was? Understanding the answer to these questions is, I think, one of the keys to understanding the whole work. A hopeless placeThe famous inscription over the dreadful gates of hell reads abandon all hope you who enter here. There is absolutely no hope, none whatsoever, for those who pass through these gates. The reason is also given: This is an eternal city, created by God before creation itself. This city will not stop, will never be closed down, will never fall into disrepair and become unuseable. It will not become obsolete. It will last forever. The basis of all hope is the possibility of change. A fundamental property of change is ending. We hope that we will win the lottery (and so stop worrying about money) or that the cancer will go (and so stop being terminally ill), or that she (or he) will fall in love with me (and so I will stop being alone), or that the tyranny will be overthrown (and so I will stop living in fear) or that the sentence will come to its end (and so I will stop being imprisoned). And when hope for positive change disappears, when the pain is intractable when we are overwhelmed with depression when the tyranny and torture become unbearable we can, at the very least, hope for death the ultimate ending. But not here. Here there is no change, no remission, no early release, and most desperately hopeless of all, there is no ending, no death. This is a place that will go on being terrible for ever and ever and ever and those who enter through the gates will discover that their misery continues forever. This is a changeless, endless place. Therein lies its true horror. Whatever grains of hope you may have brought with you, says the inscription, leave them at the gates for they are irrelevant here And therein perhaps lies the essence of the idea of hell. Hope and life are connected because life is defined by change and growth. But in hell this eternity of hopelessness, there is no change, no development, no ending. So to exist in such an unchanging eternity is true 'damnation'. Life without God is a life of absolute certainty - the certainty that nothing will get better, that nothing will change and we will remain forever the tortured, broken souls we now know ourselves to be. In medieval thought, hell was usually associated with Satan's fall. According to early Christian traditions Lucifer (Satan) originally an angel (of light) had rebelled against God in heaven. His 'bad' angelic forces battled against Michael's 'good' angels and Lucifer/Satan was banished from heaven and thrown down to earth. This tradition is reflected by Dante in the Commedia. According to a later passage in the Purgatio, Satan's fall from heaven created a massive 'blast crater' reaching down to the center of the earth, thus establishing the physical space of hell. The ground displaced by this impact formed the mountain of purgatory. This account explains the conical structure of hell and the fact that in most accounts of hell and here too in the Inferno, Satan sits at the deepest, lowest point, right at the centre of the earth. So hell was created at the same time as Satan's fall from heaven, before the creation of mankind. The idea that hell is eternal is a revealing one. It implies that in Dante's mind hell was not an afterthought, as if God had been surprised by the fall of Adam and resorted to punitive measures to deal with the problem! In this, Dante reflects the orthodoxy of his time. The eternity of hell was firmly fixed in Christian orthodoxy. Strictly speaking, of course, only God is eternal, and everything else (even hell) is created, but here the inscription reflects the tradition that the creation of hell came before the creation of those things that wither and die, that have physical limitations to their lives. Hell belongs to the 'eternal things', such as heaven and angels (and, for some, the souls who live with God before becoming joined to human bodies and minds). The implication (spelled out in the terrible inscription) is that hell is part of God's plan. Even before God created the first human beings God knew that their life would be devastated by sin, the sin that would grip the whole of humanity, and created hell as His just response. In this sense hell can be read as an inevitable manifestation of the being of God. Hell - the City of God!In this light the inscription is deeply unsettling and even shocking. Hell is not something that opposes God, nor is it a place created by God under duress. The inscription proclaims that God, the Trinitarian God (notice the inscription is written in a pattern of three) who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the God of Justice, Wisdom and Love, is the very same God who created this horrifying place. It is for that reason that there is an 'terrible order' here. Dante's hell is the most organised, structured hell devised in art or literature up to that point. Compared to the depiction of hell in the famous fresco of the Last Judgment by Giotto in the Cappella degli Scrovegni in Padua or in the mosaic of the Last Judgement which adorns the ceiling of the Baptistry of St John in Florence where hell seems to be a chaotic realm, Dante's hell is a civic administrator's dream. There are nine levels or 'circles' organised into two distinct sections. The first, upper part of hell proper consists of 6 circles which hold those guilty of sins of 'incontinence' (not the medical kind!) in other words those sins of excess such and gluttony, greed and sexual immorality. Beyond (and below) these circles lies the city of Dis, in which lie the deepest three circles of hell where the most terrible sinners, those guilty of violence and fraud are located. In modern terms we might say there is a normal prison for the lighter sins and then a high security, forced-labour kind of penitentiary for the others! Satan is right at the bottom in his icy silence. All the circles are subdivided in to sub-levels and for every sin there is an an appropriate circle and seb-section! There are rivers, bridges, boatmen and guardian monsters, all organised perfectly. There is perfect structure to this kingdom of misery. And most importantly, each sin gets its appropriate reward. It is not simply a matter of being randomly poked by demons with pitchforks or boiled alive but a precise, careful and totally 'just' apportioning of punishment 'that meets the crime'. In many depictions of hell from the medieval era, hell is seen as Satan's domain, and consequently chaos rules. Evil could be seen as the opposite of order, God is perfect beauty and goodness and to the medieval mind that was represented by structure and order, an order embodied, in terms of afterlife, by the idea of the City of God, the New Jerusalem, which is built to a perfect pattern with careful precision. Hell, the godless place, in contrast is a descent into chaos. When I wrote about the painting of the Last Judgement by Rogier van der Weyden (The Beaune Altarpiece) I pointed out that those who are damned are not tortured but instead they become a jumble of undifferentiated humanity with no individual identity. Not in Dante's world (unless the specific sin calls for such a punishment). Here Dante the pilgrim knows exactly who everyone is and is usually able to converse with them. Each one retains their unique identity, has their own place in the system of hell and receives their own designated, appropriate punishment. This points us to the truth (for Dante) of hell's purpose. The way hell is carefully structured indicates that the primary purpose of hell is to express Divine Justice, a justice which so often seems to be missing from the world of the living. When he sees the terrible inscription and realises that this is a place created by God, the pilgrim is appalled and confused but according to Dante the writer, he shouldn't be. If God is just, then this is exactly the kind of place we should expect to exist. God is not hating people, or expressing some kind of lust for revenge against his enemies here. God, we understand, gets nothing out of seeing sinners in torment. This is a cold and calculating place, a place where everything fits together like a dreadful machine. Where many medieval hells were presented as the antithesis of the City of God, chaotic and wild, this place is pictured as a mirror of the City of God. In fact the inscription could be read as saying that this too is a City of God. In both, the goodness and justice of God are manifested. In both, God's good will is done. Both reveal God's perfection. Tough LoveBut the hardest thing of all for the pilgrim (and the reader) to get his (or her) head around is that according to the inscription this City of the Damned is also a manifestation of the love of God. We get the justice bit. God has to be just and there has to be justice for those who escape it in this life. But surely we think (erroneously), these are somehow in tension with God's love. This is usually presented in modern discussions in terms of the 'divided' God. God's love would forgive and save everyone but 'unfortunately', God is also holy and just so he has to punish sinners (or Jesus in their place). This is a very different conception of God from Dante's. For him God is a unity in whom no division no conflict exists. God's justice and God's love are two sides of the same coin, two manifestations of the same divine identity. Love and justice are not at war. They are both revelations of Truth. The problem for us is that we have come to define love differently. For Dante (and so for his God) love was the love for something, in this case for the Highest Good. God loves the Good, which is the moral order and perfection of the universe, And justice is an aspect of that perfection. Sin is an opposition to it, a denial of that Good, a disruption of the moral order of the universe, and so the justice meted out to sinners is a reconciliation and a restoration of the Good. God's love is the love for Goodness that underpins all of reality. Hell serves that purpose! That might seem a strange conception to the modern Christian reader. After all when we talk about Jesus we see a much more personal kind of love; a man who reaches out in tenderness to vulnerable, weak and sinful human beings. I don't think Dante would have disagreed and after all Beatrice, his image of Christ, is tender and loving in just that way. But what she desires for Dante is his ultimate Good. And that is true of the Gospel too. It is primarily his love for God that drives Christ, and his primary purpose is not to comfort his friends but to be the salvation of the world, to fulfill God's good purpose of cosmic redemption. Dante's vision of hell as the manifestation of the Justice and Love of God is therefore profoundly challenging to our modern notions of God and divine love. Part of Dante's purpose in his poem was to remind the readers of his own day that God's vision and purpose was much greater than the prosperity of Florence (or any other city), or indeed that of any of its citizens. Dante wanted people to understand that the purposes of God encompassed the whole of creation and that the ideals of Truth, Beauty and Justice were what really mattered. We may not believe in hell and we certainly shouldn't take Dante's brilliant imagining of hell to reflect any actual afterworld reality, but his message seems to me to be profoundly relevant to our own day. Dante's God is not ultimately a God defined by human need. In fact it is the other way round, Human need is defined by the revelation of God. The famous quote says that "in the beginning God created man in his own image and we have been returning the compliment ever since". But Dante's God is different. His is the God in whom all things find their true meaning and so the God who defines the proper meaning of human life. That's why Dante wrote the Commedia - because he saw his world becoming increasingly nationalistic, self-centered and shallow. His world was one where human pride and avarice defined the common world view and where the image of God was twisted to fit, to suit those who sought power and influence. It would be no bad thing I think if the church of today which is I think a so tainted by the individualising and 'me first' outlook of this age rediscovered Dante's vision of God, not as the God of hell-fire and damnation, but as the God whose being defines Beauty, Truth and Love, the God whose wisdom defines what we value and love. It was this deeper, fuller vision of God, 1300 years before Dante wrote, that led Jesus to say to God his Father as he hung on the Romans' terrible instrument of torture, "into your hands I commit my spirit" and "not my will but your be done". You might also be interested in . . .
1 Comment
camilo
3/11/2017 03:40:21 pm
Great Blog! Thanks!
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
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.
Categories
All
|