Dates and Epoch.—Although the vision is poetically placed in the spring of 1300, during the Pope’s jubilee and shortly before Dante’s election to the priorate, the actual date of composition of the poem—as far as concerns the first two parts—is still uncertain and disputed. There are at present two principal theories. According to the one (very strongly held by Parodi), the Inferno was composed shortly before the advent of Henry of Luxemburg, the Purgatorio during his Italian enterprise. According to the other, not only the Paradiso, but the whole poem was written after the death of the Emperor, and must therefore be regarded as the work of the closing years of the poet’s life. On the former hypothesis, the allusion to the death of Clement V., in Inf. xix., must be taken as an indefinite prediction or a later insertion. It is possible to adopt a compromise between the two views. The poem may have been begun some time between 1306 and 1308, and portions of the Inferno and Purgatorio composed before the catastrophe of 1313. After the death of the Emperor, Dante may well have revised and completed these two canticles. Boccaccio tells us—and the statement is confirmed (for the Paradiso) by a sonnet of Giovanni Quirino—that the poet was wont to send his work in instalments to Can Grande before any copies were made for others. There is no evidence of any circulation before 1317, when some lines from Inf. iii. appear among the papers of a notary at Bologna.[30] The first Eclogue shows that, by 1319, the Inferno and Purgatorio had been, so to speak, published, and the Paradiso was in preparation; Boccaccio’s story of the finding of the last thirteen cantos confirms the belief that this final canticle, which crowns the poet’s whole life-work, was only completed shortly before Dante’s death. Dante is in the position of a man who is now relating to the world the vision vouchsafed to him many years before. Hence everything that happened after April 1300 is spoken of as future and by way of prophecy, beginning with Ciacco’s account in Inf. vi. of the famous faction fight of May Day in that year. With two exceptions—Frate Alberigo and Branca d’Oria (Inf. xxxiii.), whose souls went down to Hell before their bodies died—every spirit met with in the ecstatic pilgrimage is represented as having died before April 1300. But Dante anticipates the certain damnation of some who, though living in 1300, were dead when he wrote the poem; Corso Donati, Popes Boniface and Clement, and a few less notorious sinners as Carlino de’ Pazzi. In one instance, that of Venedico Caccianemico (Inf. xviii.), he seems to have supposed a man dead in 1300 who in reality lived a few years later.
Time.—Dante’s conferences with the dead open at sunrise on Good Friday, in his thirty-fifth year. He would impress upon us that his visionary world is no mere dreamland, but a terrible reality, and therefore his indications of time are frequent and precise. For poetical purposes, he seems to represent this Good Friday as an ideal Good Friday, March 25th, which was believed to have been the actual date of the Crucifixion on the thirty-fourth anniversary of the Annunciation (cf. Inf. xxi. 112, and the “three months” from Christmas Day in Purg. ii. 98). In reality, it fell upon April 8th in 1300; and, when Dante in his pilgrimage through Hell would mark the time by reference to moon and stars, he perhaps has recourse to the ecclesiastical calendar, in which the Paschal full moon was on Thursday, April 7th (see Dr. Moore’s Time-References in the Divine Comedy):
E già iernotte fu la luna tonda,
“And already yesternight the moon was round” (Inf. xx. 127); the night of Maundy Thursday, that he has passed “so piteously” when the poem opens.
2. The “Inferno”
Cantos I. and II.—At break of day on Good Friday, Dante, in his thirty-fifth year, after a night of agonised wanderings, would fain issue from the dark wood into which he has, as it were in slumber, strayed. This tangled forest represents at once his own unworthy life and the corruption of human society; both the “sin of the speaker” (§ 28) and the “state of misery of those living in this life” (§ 15) of the Epistle to Can Grande. He would climb the “mountain of delight” which, for the individual, represents the state of felicity, and, for mankind in general, the goal of civilisation; mystically, it is the mountain of the Lord, to which only the innocent in hands and the clean of heart shall ascend. But he is impeded by a swift and beautiful leopard; terrified by a lion; driven back by a hideous she-wolf. The three beasts are derived from Jeremiah (v. 6), where they stand for the judgments to fall upon the people for their sins; here they symbolise the chief vices that keep man from the felicity for which he is born (Conv. iv. 4): Luxury in its mediaeval sense of Lust, Pride, Avarice or Cupidity in its widest meaning. The comparatively modern interpretation which would see in the beasts the three great Guelf powers that opposed the Empire—the republic of Florence, the royal house of France, the secular power of the Papacy—is now generally discarded.
From this peril Dante is delivered by the spirit of Virgil, who bids him take another way. The power of the wolf will extend until the Veltro or greyhound comes, who will deliver Italy and hunt the wolf back to Hell. The advent of this Deliverer is mysteriously announced (Inf. i. 100-111), and seems to be repeated in other forms at intervals throughout the poem (Purg. xx. 10-15, xxxiii. 37-45; Par. xxvii. 61-63). There can be little doubt that Virgil refers to a future Emperor, who shall re-establish the imperial power and make Roman law obeyed throughout the world, extirpate greed, bring about and preserve universal peace in a restored unity of civilisation. His mission will be the realisation of the ideals of the Monarchia, and will work the salvation of Italy who will be restored to her former leadership among the nations. At the same time, there may possibly be a remoter reference to the second coming of Christ. This double prophecy would have a certain fitness upon the lips of Virgil, who was believed to have sung mystically of the first coming of Christ in the fourth Eclogue (cf. Purg. xxii. 64-73), as well as of the foundation of Rome and her Empire in the Aeneid. It has frequently been supposed that Dante identified the Veltro with some definite person; of the various claimants to this honour Can Grande della Scala is, perhaps, the least improbable. In any case, whatever the nationality of the deliverer, the Empire of Dante’s dream was, in fact as well as name, Roman (cf. Epist. v.).
Human Philosophy can lead man from moral unworthiness and guide him to temporal felicity; there are judgments of God to which human reason can attain. Therefore Virgil will guide Dante through Hell and Purgatory, that he may understand the nature of sin and the need of penance to fill up the void in the moral order; after which a worthier soul will lead him to Paradise and the contemplation of celestial things. Dante’s sense of unworthiness keeps him back, until he learns that Virgil is but the emissary of Beatrice, to whom in turn Lucia (St. Lucy) has been sent to Dante’s aid by a noble Lady in Heaven—evidently the Blessed Virgin Mary, who may not be named in Hell, and who symbolises Divine Mercy, as Lucia does illuminating Grace. Thus encouraged, Dante follows his guide and master upon “the arduous and rugged way.” Aeneas had been vouchsafed his descent to the shades to learn things that were the cause of the foundation of the Empire and the establishment of the Papacy (Inf. ii. 20-27); Dante shall learn things which may prepare men’s hearts for the restoration of the imperial throne, and the cleansing of the papal mantle from the mire of temporal things. St. Paul was caught up into paradise “to bring confirmation to that faith which is the beginning of the way of salvation” (ibid. 29-30); Dante shall follow him to lead men back to the purity of that faith, from which they have wandered.
Ante-Hell.—It is nightfall on Good Friday when Dante reads the terrible inscription on the infernal portal (Inf. iii. 1-9): “Leave all hope, ye that enter.” The sense of the whole inscription is hard to him, but Virgil gently leads him in. In the dark plain of Ante-Hell, disdained alike by Mercy and by Justice, are those “who lived without blame and without praise,” mingled with the Angels who kept neutral between God and Lucifer. Here the pusillanimous, who, taking no side in the struggle between good and evil, would follow no standard on earth, now rush for all eternity after a banner, “which whirling ran so quickly that it seemed to scorn all pause.” Further on towards the centre, flowing round the mouth of Hell itself, is Acheron; where the souls of the lost assemble, and are conveyed across by Charon in his boat. Unconsciously borne across, Dante with Virgil now stands on the verge of the abyss, hearkening to the gathering thunder of endless wailings.
Structure and Moral Topography of Hell.—Hell is a vast pit or funnel piercing down to the centre of the earth, formed when Lucifer and his Angels were hurled down from Heaven. It lies beneath the inhabited world, whose centre is Jerusalem and Mount Calvary; its base towards the surface, and its apex at the centre. It is divided into nine concentric circles, the lower of which are separated by immense precipices—circles which grow more narrow in circumference, more intense and horrible in suffering, until the last is reached where Lucifer is fixed in the ice at the earth’s centre, at the furthest point from God, buried below Jerusalem, where his power was overthrown on the Cross (cf. Inf. xxxiv. 106-126).