Dante's Inferno Ep. 6: Cantos 26-31 with Dr. Donald Prudlo

We finish the 8th Circle of hell! Dcn. Harrison Garlick and Dr. Donald Prudlo of the University of Tulsa discuss pits 8-10 of the 8th Circle of Dante's Inferno (Cantos 26-31). Dr. Prudlo is an incredibly talented Catholic scholar! You'll want to hear what he has to say - especially about Odysseus, Troy, and the Garden of Eden.

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From our guide:

64.      What happens in the eighth ditch (Cantos 26-27)?

Overlooking the eighth ditch, the Pilgrim and Virgil view the punishment of those souls King Minos found guilty of deception or evil counsel.[1] The Pilgrim sees columns of flames, and Virgil explains, “there are souls concealed within these moving fires, each one swathed in his burning punishment.”[2] Dante the Pilgrim observes a “flame with its tip split in two,” to which Virgil explains the flame contains the souls of both Ulysses and Diomedes.[3] The contrapasso of the eighth bolgia is that these deceivers burn as tongues of flame just as their tongues in life brought forth pain and destruction.[4] Moving on, the Pilgrim and Virgil meet another soul, Guido da Montefeltro, “a soldier who became a friar in his old age; but he was untrue to his vows when, at the urging of Pope Boniface VIII, he counseled the use of fraud in the pope’s campaign against the Colonna family. He was damned to hell because he failed to repent of his sins, trusting instead in the pope’s fraudulent absolution.”[5] Virgil and the Pilgrim press on, where, coming to the ninth ditch, they see “those who, sowing discord, earned Hell’s wages.”[6]

65.      Does fire have a special role in the Inferno?

Given its name, most expect fire to be the normative punishment of the Inferno—but it is not. The question is whether the role fire does play has a special pedagogical purpose. Dr. Prudlo sets forth that fire, especially as seen here as “tongues of fire,” represents an “anti-Pentecostal sin.” Fire plays a role in the punishment of the blasphemers, sodomites, usurers, simonists, and false counselors. Fire, as Dr. Prudlo notes, is the “most noble element in Dante’s world,” and it plays a certain “refined punishment” in the Inferno. It seems to signify a certain “unnatural abuse” within the sin, an “abuse of some special gift that God has given us.” The role of fire in the Inferno merits further consideration.

66.      Is there a special relation between Ulysses (Odysseus) and Dante?

Dante the Poet arguably has a certain fondness for Ulysses. As Dr. Prudlo observes: “genius untethered to virtue is one of the most dangerous things that can possibly exist.” Dante the Poet and Ulysses are both geniuses. Yet, Ulysses cannot find rest upon returning to Ithaca—the question for knowledge calls him away from his wife, son, and kingdom to journey out into unknown Ocean. He sails passed the Pillars of Heracles, which mark the boundaries of mortal men, and, upon seeing Mount Purgatory, God strikes his ship and all lives are lost. Dr. Prudlo remarks that where Ulysses attempted to make it to Mount Purgatory despite God, Dante the Pilgrim will make it to Mount Purgatory with God. Ulysses appears as a warning to Dante the Pilgrim—the dangers of genius without virtue.

67.      How is the fall of a Troy a secular original sin?

 The fall of Troy is the original sin within the Roman mind. As Dr. Prudlo sets forth, for the Romans, the Trojan horse was the deception, the original sin, that led to the fall of Troy. Ulysses, the deceiver, is, as Dr. Prudlo notes, a type of anti-Aeneas. Whereas Aeneas tries to save his family in the fall of Troy, Ulysses abandons his. The escape of Aenaes from Troy to eventually found Rome, as described by Virgil in his Aeneid, is a type of felix culpa or “happy fault” that came about from the fall of Troy. From the fall of Troy, Rome is allowed to rise.

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[1] The sin punished in the eighth bolgia has been traditional thought to be “evil counsel,” but, as the notes below explain, it is probably more likely for the sin to be deception or evil rhetoric. Most notably the souls in the eighth and ninth bolgia are referred to as “like filth,” denoting a special disgust against these sins by Dante the Poet. See Musa, 313-14.

[2] XXVI, 47-8.

[3] XXVI, 52, 55.

[4] cf. Musa, 313-14.

[5] Musa, 315; the fraudulent absolution here is that it was offered before the friar committed the sin. The friar, a victim of fraud, then engages in fraud via deception or evil rhetoric.

[6] XXVII, 136.