It is these three Christian themes of love towards God, free will, and suffering that are significantly present in Dante’s Purgatorio. Dante Aligheieri was an Italian poet from Florence, who wrote his most famous poem, the Divine Comedy, in exile. Dante wrote the Divine Comedy for his idealized love, Beatrice, who appears in the trilogy as a goal for Dante. He traverses Hell, Purgatory, and even into Heaven to find and be with Beatrice. In the first part of his poem, titled Inferno, Dante, led by the Roman poet Virgil, encounters those who were unworthy of being Christians: “the unbaptized, the pagans, the lustful and the avaricious, heretics, tyrants, blasphemers, usurers, flatterers, hypocrites, deceivers, traitors, and finally [in the
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In examining love, Christians, like Dante and even Catherine of Genoa, expressed how love towards God would lead to salvation from Purgatory. Catherine of Genoa, in The Spiritual Dialogue, talks about the incredible sensation of encountering God’s love: “A ray of God’s love wounded her [Catherine’s] heart, making her soul experience a flaming love arising from the divine fount. At that instant, she was outside of herself, beyond intellect, tongue, or feeling. Fixed in that pure and divine love, henceforth she never ceased to dwell on it.” In this account, Catherine is experiencing a mystical moment with God, but her words were heavily supported by the Catholic Church and attaining that connection with God was a common motivation for most Christians and mystics alike.
The theme of love is also heavily present in Purgatorio and can best be described by Dante’s recounting of the Fourth Circle in a conversation between Virgil and Dante. Virgil, to Dante, …show more content…
In this circle, Dante encounters Pope Adrian V, a Roman Catholic Pope from the 13th Century, who is a symbol of the avaricious, according to Dante. This is one example of how popular religion plays a part in Dante’s poem. Because Dante chooses to include certain members of the popery into certain levels of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, he is telling Christians attitudes that get them into Purgatory, or even worse into Hell. It is in Canto XIX that Pope Adrian describes the suffering put unto those who were
In examining love, Christians, like Dante and even Catherine of Genoa, expressed how love towards God would lead to salvation from Purgatory. Catherine of Genoa, in The Spiritual Dialogue, talks about the incredible sensation of encountering God’s love: “A ray of God’s love wounded her [Catherine’s] heart, making her soul experience a flaming love arising from the divine fount. At that instant, she was outside of herself, beyond intellect, tongue, or feeling. Fixed in that pure and divine love, henceforth she never ceased to dwell on it.” In this account, Catherine is experiencing a mystical moment with God, but her words were heavily supported by the Catholic Church and attaining that connection with God was a common motivation for most Christians and mystics alike.
The theme of love is also heavily present in Purgatorio and can best be described by Dante’s recounting of the Fourth Circle in a conversation between Virgil and Dante. Virgil, to Dante, …show more content…
In this circle, Dante encounters Pope Adrian V, a Roman Catholic Pope from the 13th Century, who is a symbol of the avaricious, according to Dante. This is one example of how popular religion plays a part in Dante’s poem. Because Dante chooses to include certain members of the popery into certain levels of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, he is telling Christians attitudes that get them into Purgatory, or even worse into Hell. It is in Canto XIX that Pope Adrian describes the suffering put unto those who were