Dante’s Inferno is a masterpiece. Throughout the book Dante journeys through the infinite torment of hell. The book is filled with endless amounts of vivid word choice and loads of imagery to really paint a picture of what Hell is actually like. But what really sets Dante’s work apart from other poets are the characters. Throughout his journey through Hell (the inferno) Dante encounters a number of characters and lost souls who actually existed in real life. There are 9 circles of hell (according to Dante). That’s a lot of mentioning people by name (which as you may already know by now, is part of the reason he was exiled from Italy). In order to really understand their significance to the inferno, You have to do a lot of digging. You have to do a lot of research on those people. You have to find out what was happening in the world at that time, and decipher the context of how Dante felt about them to figure out why Dante mentioned them particularly, and what that tells the reader about his personal beliefs.
The most notable character, Dante being the author and the main protagonist. Dante is the only person alive in the inferno. He is allowed to go into Hell, unscathed , and be an eyewitness to the suffering that awaits the souls of the damned. Dante is lead through Hell by the soul of the Roman poet Virgil, one of the greatest poets, whom Dante admired but also seeks to surpass.
Virgil has been sent to Hell because he worshipped the ancient pagan gods, and lived before the time of Christ, so there was no way he could be redeemed. The spirit of Virgil has been instructed to be Dante’s guide. Virgil is a useful guide and companion to Dante, but is sometimes powerless to protect Dante from the real dangers of the inferno. He consoles Dante when he is frightened and scolds him when he shows too much pity for sinners or lingers too long in parts of Hell. The choice of Virgil as a guide is significant, because prior to his entry into Hell, Dante aspires to be like Virgil.
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Beatrice is a young woman, and Dante’s true love. She is pure of heart and such a good person that she has been allowed to enter Heaven. Dante is a complete wreck after her death and at the beginning of the Inferno, he has become lost . Dante is now broken and is thinking about killing himself. Beatrice rescues him by requesting an angel to send Virgil to Dante and allowing Dante to make the journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven which corresponds to Dante’s spiritual ascent from the depths of sin to redemption. She is not present throughout the majority of the Inferno, but she is Dante’s personal guide through Purgatory and Heaven. Beatrice died at a very young age in real life. No one really knows if Dante actually knew her well in real life or whether he used her as a representation or symbol for love.
Aside from the main characters, Dante encounters a large number of minor characters. Some of which are mythological creatures and demons, as well as souls of the damned, based on real people. Take Fra Alberigo and Branca D’Oria for example. Like many of the other souls that Dante encounters, theses are based off real people. But what sets these characters apart from the rest of them, and makes them worth mentioning is the fact that they were alive at the time Dante wrote the Inferno. Fra Alberigo was a friar and a member of the Guelph political party in Florence. He had his cousin and his son murdered when they were guests at a banquet that he hosted. Branca D’Oria on the other hand was a member of the Ghibellines, and in 1275, the temptation to aid in rushing his inheritance along was way too much to resist. His father-in-law, Sardinian governor Michel Zanche, was wealthy and D’Oria didn’t want to wait for him to die. He recruited a relative to help, invited Zanche to his home for a banquet, and killed the entire party from Sardinia. Keep in mind that both of these men were alive at the time the Inferno was written. Dante explains their presence in Hell by saying that their actions were so sinful, that the Devil did not wait for their death before he took their souls. Their actions were considered so treacherous that Dante awarded them both a place in the Ninth Circle of Hell.
Brunetto Latini has been condemned to the Seventh Circle of Hell, and no exception from the other characters, he’s a real person as well. In the book, Latini is treated with the most respect from Dante, and that’s because he’s Dante’s old teacher. There were no scandals attributed to to Latini, making him the strangest character in Dante’s Hell. In the book, the character of Dante is even surprised to see him in Hell. Brunetto was damned for sodomy, but no one before Danted had ever accused Brunetto Latini of committing sodomy. In an article called “Deviant Teaching” by David M. Halperin, he says that “Twentieth-century Dante scholars “have strained, without success, to find a shred of evidence from contemporary (mediaeval) sources of Brunetto’s vice.”
The Second Circle of Hell is reserved for the lustful, and there, the narrator finds a woman named Francesca Da Rimini. When he talks to her, she tells him that she was damned to Hell for falling in love with her brother-in-law. When Dante was living in exile, he spent some time with Guido Novello da Polenta, who happened to be Francesca’s nephew. Her story was first recorded by Dante, and later writers filled in the blanks. Francesca’s marriage to Gianciotto Malatesta united two noble families in Ravenna. Francesca fell in love with her husband’s brother, Paolo, and the two began a torrid affair. Gianciotto found out about it, and confronted and killed them, skewering them on a sword so that way they would die together. Paolo and Francesca were both damned to the Second Circle of Hell. Gianciotto is also condemned to Hell, in a lower circle reserved for those who kill their own family members.
At times is seems like Dante is letting his own political views determine who will be damned to Hell. Take Farinata for example. In real life Farinata was a political leader in Florence, and a leader of the Ghibelline party, whom Dante opposed. Filippo Argenti is another Florentine and political enemy of Dante in real life. The animosity between the two characters has led some historians to believe that there were more reasons for hatred. According to an article on “The Decameron Web”, it states that “ Some historians suggest that Argenti’s family seized Dante’s property when he was exiled from Florence or that there had been a physical altercation between the two”. Regardless, we do know that Argenti was given his name for his bizarre tendency to shoe his horses with silver instead of iron, demonstrating his wealth and bizarre anger issues in equal parts. Apparently he shows up in other works and the authors portray him equally as violent.
Another adversary of Dante’s real life political career is Guido da Montefeltro. Montefeltro was an advisor to Pope Boniface VIII, who also lives in Hell. He was a corrupt man. He gave false advice to the pope. He sold false promises of remission of sins before they were actually committed. In effect, they served as a permit to perform heinous acts with supposed “immunity” of the consequences. It is impossible to be forgive for a sin without repentance. And it is impossible to repent for a sin that hasn’t even been committed yet. Ironically, Montefeltro is now damned to Hell because he did not ask for forgiveness.
A part of the Seventh Circle of Hell is placed for those who commit suicide. They take the souls of the damned and turned them into trees. The souls are not allowed to keep their human body or ability to speak, until a piece of them is demolished by someone or something. In the book Virgil persuades Dante to break off a branch of one tree, only to find out that tree was once Pietro Della Vigna. Pietro was born in Sicily in 1190. Pietro was born in poverty but rose to success when he became the chief minister for the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. Controversy surrounded him in 1249, when accusations formed saying that he was plotting to kill the emperor. According to an article written by The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, Pietro was “arrested, chained, and put on public display as he was escorted through a series of Italian cities.” He was declared deceased near Pisa, and nobody really knows what happened to him, but apparently Dante believes that Pietro took his own life. And that’s how Pietro earned his spot in the Seventh Circle of Hell.
Dante also condemned the Pope to Hell. Ironically Pope Nicholas III is damned to the Eighth Circle of Hell. The particular area of the Eighth Circle is reverserved for scammers. Primarily church officials who used their power and authority for their own personal gain. The Pope’s acts were so sinful that he was actually hung upside down in a hole. When Dante encounters Nicholas, he believes that the next Pope is coming to take his place to endure torment that he has been experiencing all this time. The Pope was accused of using his position to to create his own family kingdom. He passed laws giving his family the uttermost power in the eyes of the church. He also promoted two family member to the position of cardinal, and created positions for two of his nephews, and made sure that his brother got promoted to the position of senator.
The way Dante uses real life people in his book really allows the story to come alive in a sense.. When you research more about Dante and the people he includes in his work, you get a better understanding of why Dante gave that character to play that specific role. When you know the conflict that was going on at that time, or figure out his personal relationships, (friends, family, rivals, etc.) it makes it more understandable as to why he might have some characters endure a more severe punishment than others. He takes real people who were really controversial at that time, and were accused of being corrupt (or sinful), and shows what their punishment will be in the afterlife. What makes Dante’s Inferno so interesting, is the same thing that sets itself apart from other works: The characters.
Work Cited
- https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=mfsfront;c=mfs;c=mfsfront;idno=ark5583.0016.001;rgn=main;view=text;xc=1;g=mfsg
- http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/circle2.html
- https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/rossetti-paolo-and-francesca-da-rimini-n03056
- https://italian.columbia.edu/files/italian/pdf/Barolini%20Francesca%20da%20Rimini.pdf
- http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/circle5.html
- https://dantesinferno.fandom.com/wiki/Filippo_Argenti
- https://www.revolvy.com/page/Filippo-Argenti
- https://www.stopbulli.it/dante-filippo-argenti-e-i-bulli-iracondi-2/
- https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/history/characters/filippo_argenti.php
- https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/11/25/recapping-dante-canto-8-or-high-drama/
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pietro-della-Vigna
