Thank you for your thorough, thoughtful and respectful reply. I saw that you mentioned Dan Brown in your comment, and that made me think that Dan Brown’s main message in his famous “Da Vinci Code” novel is at the heart of my thinking about all this. As I understand it, the main thing that Dan Brown was intending to get across was that the New Testament documents are not reliable as historical documents, that the real history and real teachings of Jesus were probably much different and that the real history and teachings of Jesus were suppressed by the early leaders of the Christian church, and continued to be suppressed into the Middle Ages at least. At bottom, I agree with those very few scholars (a very tiny minority indeed) who interpret the life and writings of Dante as pointing to the conclusion that Dante was more like Dan Brown than St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas, in that Dante was probably a heretic more or less in the camp of Gnostic-like groups such as the Cathars, the Templars, and the Albigensians, and other major heretical groups that were savagely suppressed in the Middle Ages. One thing that convinces me of this is a book I read recently, titled “Gnostic Philosophy,” by Churton, that shows the close connection between the Troubadour poets and the Cathars. Dante sings the praises of the key Troubadour poets in his Comedy. That is just one piece of evidence. I am also influenced by a recent book titled “The Sistine Secrets,” which seems to show conclusively that Michelangelo was a heretic who very intentionally filled the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with images that were meant to communicate heresies and reject orthodox Catholic teachings. I could cite more info about Dante, Michelagelo, Guido Cavalcanti, Da Vinci, and others, and, in the end, I fully agree that no one is bound by logic and reason to accept the Dan Brown-like conclusion. If a person has made life commitments that are inconsistent with Dan Brown-like interpretations, then one has no incentive to see things that way. If a person has made life commitments that are inconsistent with orthodox Christianity, then one has no incentive to see things as conservative Presbyterians do. And yet, there are the writings of Dante, full of so much that is strange, so much that is really is unlike the New Testament. In Canto 1 of Paradiso, Dante the Pilgrim offers up a devout prayer of supplication to the god Apollo. By name, the god Apollo! What would Paul of Tarsus say to that? Wouldn’t he have immediately broken off fellowship with any “Christian” doing or writing anything like that? To me, the reason conservative Presbyterians feel a certain warmness and acceptance towards Dante is because of the intellectual need to ratify and legitimize much of what the Catholic Church did in the Middle Ages, since the legitimacy of the Reformation Church in the present time depends on the legitimacy of much of what the Catholic Church did and believed in the Middle Ages. Furthermore, as I see it, a main drive of many conservative Presbyterians today is to create a bulwark against ever expanding secularism, nihilism, atheism, hedonism, Islamism, absurdism, and so on. And so, to make this bulwark as strong as possible, the Christian tradition need to be legitimate all the way from the time of Jesus up through to today, and, above all, the New Testament documents need to be seen as true in every way, historically, doctrinally, etc. And so, you are willing to overlook prayers to the god Apollo if that is what it takes to stand up against, and maybe someday defeat, the liberals who you see as destroying America and the world. Oh, forgive me! What good can come from such a conversation as this? I wish you well. I frankly confess I have no answers. Everyone must take some path through life, and must recommend some path to others who ask the way. Dante had his path, but he is long dead, at least as far as this world and this time go. I don’t like nihilism or secularism or Islamism either. I wish time could have frozen some time around the Eisenhower Adminstration. But, time goes on. Good luck. I’ll pray to Apollo for you. (Just kidding.)

Hello Tom:
You understood correctly about the purpose of the exercise. A number of friends, along with some members of The Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville (hereafter known as PCOL) joined together in an exercise to read Dante’s “Inferno” as an activity for the season of Lent. Rev. Jeff Vamos, the PCOL pastor, organized the session and acted as its moderator/ overseer.
I have been mulling over your posting to our “Dante Dailey” for some time now, and feel I finally can begin to respond to points you have made. When I say “Our” I am taking some liberties, since, as noted above, I was invited to participate, but was not one of the main six “Primary Contributors”. I did, however, follow along as best I could and posted many thoughts of my own and here are my own reactions to your posting.

1. Concerning the Appropriateness of “The Inferno” as a Lenten Exercise. The whole idea was “to reverse normal practice,” and instead of (or in addition to) giving something up for Lent, to do something more (or add on). In a sense, for me at least, the exercise became a mental discipline and form of prayer. I became more focused in my search for God and my understanding of Him.
I do feel you make a valid point in stating: “Since the season of Lent seems to be about doing penance, at least traditionally, then would not Purgatorio be the most relevant part of the Commedia to read during Lent? No one does penance in Inferno, and penance is all they do in Purgatorio. But, since we could only cover one book in Lent, it seemed to make sense at the literal bottom, with ”the Inferno.”
2. Concerning the Limitation to one of the three books of “The Comedia.” The
time limits involved made this a practical consideration. Since Dante designed the trilogy in the order of Hell, Purgatory, Heaven (i.e. as ascension), “Inferno” seems the logical starting place for any reading. Certainly Robert Pinsky saw it that way in his translation. I agree with what I believe you are saying, that one should not STOP, there, although I do not agree with some of the comparisons you make to parts of other works. “The Inferno” IS a separate, self-contained piece of a larger work, but it IS a complete piece. I disagree with your statement that “reading only the Inferno part of the Divine Comedy is akin to reading only the first third of Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest,’ or only the first third of Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment.” Inferno is just the first act in a three act play, so to speak.” To me, it is a PART, but it is not a fraction. You continue that the “Inferno” is most commonly read in isolation from the other two parts, and it seems like very few people ever read or study Purgatorio and Paradiso. I think this leads to terrible misunderstandings of Dante and what his aim was in producing his Commedia.”
On this, I feel more in agreement with you. I do hope our group re-gathers to continue the journey on to the “Purgatorio” and “Paradisio.”
3. Concerning Dante’s possible Atheism, mysticism and his “real” religious position:
I doubt very much Dante was an atheistic, a cultist or member of some secret anti-Christian group (Shades of Dan Brown). While he lived in that tumultuous period spanning the end of the so-called “Middle Ages” and the beginning of the “Italian Renaissance” he was very much part of his age. He was just one of many talented thinkers and writers of a long chain who saw and commented upon the perversions of the institutions around him, in both Church and State. He was a member of a long line of people who were brave enough to say what he saw and point out inconsistencies. He was a Catholic, as were most all West European Catholics. As a historian I generally tend to view Boccaccio, Chaucer, and later Hus, Wycliffe and many others who wanted the Church to “clean up its act.” But, I wouldn’t push it further than that.
4. Concerning Dante’s use of a pagan, Virgil, as a guide and the positioning of many pre-Christian thinkers in Hell. Dante was hardly alone in that, but one of the reasons he is often considered a proto-Renaissance writer was because he did look back to the Ancient Greco-Roman glories that had been eclipsed, if not lost, for nearly 700 years or so. Considering how many different, early Church Fathers/commentators also incorporated pre-Christian thought into their theology, this should be no great shock. Others will show up in Purgatory.
5. Concerning Dante’s seeming equivalence given to Greco-Romans and Christians.
You questioned whether Dante was “even a Christian in any meaningful sense? “ and, stated, “I doubt it. His Commedia and his Nuova Vita are full of strong hints that he consciously rejected the Catholicism of his time, and perhaps rejected any and all traditional concepts of the Christian religion.” I feel he stays close to the understood Christian traditions of his time. And, I see his use of characters for allegorical and argumentative purposes, not as examples of actual characters to be found in hell or elsewhere in the afterlife.
To conclude, I thank you for raising so many significant questions and points to consider. To me, this was an experiment. A work in progress. Meaningful, thoughtful questions are and were necessary.
And, I particularly thank you for point to the need to continue the exploration and discussion of the remaining to books of “The Comedia.” Bob Sinner

In your second major point, I diverge a bit more from your position. Like you, I would probably assign the monsters of the 20th century to the lowest pit in hell: “those who betrayed their benefactors. … [and] those who have betrayed their putative beneficiaries—who, in fact, have turned on their own peoples, such as Stalin and Mao.”
We seem to find their like in Dante’s Hell’s more middling circles [7th out of 9]. Alexander the Great is found in the seventh circle (of hell), a circle that contains three rings. He is in the topmost ring of the circle, being one of those who “killed for gain” (albeit on the massive, empire-building scale). So, even “mass murderers” such as Alexander (though up to his eyebrows in boiling blood) are considerably better off than Cassius and Brutus. Below Alexander’s like, in the second ring, are those who committed suicide. Suicides are below the homicides, even mass homicides (Dante probably could not imagine genocide), because they willfully violated the concept (natural law?) of self-preservation. This is not at all similar to our thinking, but seems consistent with Dante’s own scheme of things.
“In the Inferno, Dante established a scheme in which the penalty was to “hold a mirror to the sin itself, to show how it manifested itself in life.” Did he remain true to the scheme in the last pit in the last circle? I’m not sure. But he was certainly a loyal “Italian” of his times, who felt Caesar’s betrayers had sowed chaos and betrayed the peoples of Italy for centuries to come. As you noted of Dante, “His, far more than ours, was a world of … superiors and servants. Perhaps that heavily hierarchical social context helps to explain why his Cassius and Brutus are highlighted as the most abject of lowlifes.”

Finally, concerning the possibility of anti-Semitism. Certainly anti-Semitism was rife throughout Christian Europe in the 13th-14th centuries. But I am not convinced the choice of the name Judecca is an example of it. Indeed “it’s supposed to denote the particularly ruinous, ruined condition to which Judas has been condemned for betraying the Christian savior” as you note. But does it “also suggest a more general collecting place for traitors to the body politic and/or mainstream culture—or “Jews” in the slipperiest, most denigrating sense”?
I’m not as sure as you are. Where were the usurers located? Were they noted to be Jews? No. The main attack on Judaism then was the crime of usury (officially condemned by the Church). Yet you will not find the Jews mentioned among the usurers (which by the way meant getting ANY interest for lending something). And, of course, Dante also damns Muslims in Canto 8, with its burning mosques, and in 28 with Mohammed and Ali being torn apart. So, he was definitely more anti-Islamic than anti-Semitic.
I seem to recall some anti-Semitic barbs in the Purgatorio, but I really feel Dante comes across as quite ‘enlightened’ for his time in this matter, when compared to his contemporaries. I have not gone back to the Purgatorio, so I am just guessing.

I will end by returning to my original point. I thank you for an in-depth, extremely thoughtful examination of this the final canto.

To the future!! Agape, Bob