Political and Religious Ambitions: Dante’s Justification of Punishments in the Inferno

In The Inferno, Dante descends through the nine circles of Hell, encountering increasingly serious sins, most of which are crimes. The levels of Hell can be interpreted as a gradation of crimes, with penalties in proportion to their relative gravity of sin. While crimes are transgressions against human law, Dante’s Christian orthodox ambitions translate the treatment of these seemingly earthly crimes as sins, transgressions against divine law. For the purposes of this paper, the two terms can be used interchangeably because Dante’s perception of crimes on Earth is in parallel to the punishment of those crimes as sins in Hell. For Dante, the most punishable sins are those of betrayal. With a lucid examination of Dante’s political involvement, it becomes evident that Dante’s political motivations strongly influenced his placement of sinners in Hell. Specifically, Dante’s political motivation is illuminated in the final canto, in which we find the three greatest sinners suffering in Lucifer’s mouth. Brutus and Cassius, political figures who betrayed and murdered Julius Caesar, are placed in the same realm of Hell as Judas, who betrayed Jesus. While some critics view Caesar as a divine figure, others argue that he was purely a human figure of authority and thus, not divine at all. In this paper, I will show that Dante’s treatment of Brutus, Cassius, and Judas demonstrates his equal attention to both religious and political virtues. To arrive at this conclusion, I will first establish the historical context from which The Inferno was written. After clarifying Dante’s political ambitions in its context, I will present the diverging arguments over Dante’s denunciation for betrayal. Finally, I will dissect the final canto in which Brutus, Cassius, and Judas are simultaneously punished by Lucifer to illustrate Dante’s motivation for his judgment of sin. Dante stresses justice, as shown by his punishment of sinners on relative levels of Hell for their respective sins.

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