Sins In Dante's Inferno

In the eyes of Dante Alighieri, there were many types of sins, and some were stronger than others. He believed that each sin had to be punished according to its level of strength of the offense towards God. In his poem, the Inferno, Dante includes three major levels of sin. One of these major sins is violence. Somebody once said that, “Life is difficult and then you die.” In the 7th circle located in the second inner circle one of the violent sins are those violent against themselves, which, as one can see in this quote are those who commit suicide.
Lower Hell is the City of Dis. In Inferno, Dis is mostly set aside for “intellectual sins rather than simple sins of passion” (Huse). “This place is where demons mob around” (Huse). In the Second
Ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell, Virgil and Dante enter a strange wood which they describe as:
When we had put ourselves within a wood that was not marked by any path whatever. Not foliage green, but of a dusky color, not branches smooth, but gnarled and interchanged, not apple-trees were there, but thorns with poison. Such tangled thickets have not, nor so dense. (XIII 4-5)
As Dante and Virgil go further into the strange woods they hear many cries of suffering but cannot see the sinners that make the noises. The souls in this ring are those who were violent against themselves or their possessions which are called the Suicides and Squanderers that have been transformed into trees or bushes. One of the residents that were crying out pains of suffering was Pier Della Vigne.
The tree-soul, Pier Della Vigne tells them that in life he was an advisor to Emperor Frederick, moral, admirable man. Then jealous groups of men in the court started blackening his name with lies. As a result of his named being blackened, the Emperor turned against him, which destroyed his reputation, and put him in prison. Pier Della Vigne was so ashamed and “unable to accept his wretched fate that he brutally took his life by either smashing his head against the wall or possibly by leaping from a high window just as the emperor was passing below the street” (Texas). Dante feels sorry for Pier Della Vigne, “And I: Do thou again inquire concerning what thou thinks’ will satisfy me; for I cannot, such pity is in my heart (XIII 82-84)" because Dante himself understands the importance of a good reputation. “Like Dante, Pier Della Vigne was an accomplished poet, part of the "Sicilian School" of poetry, he wrote sonnets and a victim of his own faithful service to the state” (Texas). The second resident that Virgil and Dante then speak to is a bush-soul that was a Florentine man in life who hanged himself. The bush-soul gives the readers some interesting information about the history of Florence while speaking to Virgil and Dante. He speaks about the suffering that has happened to Florence from being Christianized by turning their allegiance towards John the Baptist, and abandoning the god
Mars. Dante paints the picture using words of the current states of the soul’s punishment beginning:
When the exasperated soul abandons the body whence it rent itself away, Minos consigns it to the seventh abyss. It falls into the forest, and no part is chosen for it; but where Fortune hurls it, there like a grain of spelt it germinates. It springs a sapling, and a forest tree; The Harpies, feeding then upon its leaves, do pain create, and for the pain an outlet. (XIII 92-105)
This passage is saying that Minos first cast souls to where they take root and grow as saplings. Then it is the punishment of being wounded and pecked by Harpies which are foul creatures that are creatures with the head of a woman, and a body of a bird. “The Harpies are perched in the suicide-trees, whose leaves they tear and eat consequently giving both pain and an outlet for the accompanying laments of the souls” (Texas). Blood, cries of suffering and pain of dismemberment come out of these souls if handled incorrectly such as branch is broken. When the time comes for all souls to retrieve their bodies, these souls will not reunite fully with theirs, because they discarded them willingly. Instead, the returned bodies will be hung on the soul-trees’ branches, forcing each soul to see and feel constantly the human form that it rejected in life.