Purgatory By Dantes Inferno

Purgatory is mostly a result of Dante’s imaginative creation. Medieval Christian theologians had concluded that Christian who led saintly lives had to be distinguished from those who tended to fall to the vices. These were the people, who despite receiving God’s mercy, made mistakes, and therefore had to be purified before being in the company of God. Jeffrey T. Schnapp, Professor of romance and comparative literatures at Harvard University says, “Christian theologians had long recognized that there existed a logical necessity for a place in between Hell’s eternal torments and Paradise’s eternal beatitude.”
As aforementioned, the logic behind Purgatory was that Christians who had made errors throughout their lives should not be equivalent to
Though some speculated it involved fire, Dante chose to surround the Mountain by water. In contrast, there already existed the idea of a dark and gloomy hell, and a beautiful and light heaven. The poet selected to envisage purgatory as a mountain located on an island in the southern hemisphere. Purgatory is most similar to Earth, while hell and paradise are the customary spaces imagined. Dante divides the mountain to ante-purgatory and the seven terraces. The terraces stand for the seven deadly sins that are pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust. In contrast to hell, souls are not indefinitely placed on one terrace. In fact, no soul is in purgatory forever. Instead, all souls go through the process of purgation and simply spend more time at the terrace corresponding to their sin. Dante and Virgil spend three full days going through the terraces of the mountain, filled with references and symbols of penitence, clarification of the paradox of free
The reason souls go through Purgatory is not because of the governance in heavens, but rather humans’ free will. Marco explains that souls are born good, but require the guidance of two suns: the pope and the emperor. Without the guidance, people will go astray. He continues to say that it would not be just to mourn for evil or be joyous for good if one does not have free will. This is not because God has predestined people to misuse free will, but rather that God can see the future. “To reach and ascent Mount Purgatory requires human effort and superhuman support,” says Professor Schnap. This further reiterates the idea of free will. While pagans such as Virgil who lived before Christ were not blessed by the grace of God, those who lived after Christ were blessed by God’s grace. But they were unwilling to fully accept his grace and make best use of their free will. In short, Purgatorio is filled with symbolisms such as the immense illumination of Cato, the divine bird, or the gatekeeper, symbolizing spiritual enlightenment. It constantly refers to rebirth and makes a clear distinction between those who had life long dedication to God versus those who had gone astray. In this way, Dante establishes an original representation of the intermediate world and the processes of