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The Role Of Schism In Dante's Inferno

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Throughout Dante’s travels through the lower levels of Hell, he meets meets many tormented souls. As he and his guide Virgil get to and goes down through the different circles of Hell, he sees the punishments that each sin gives consequence to and learns of how these souls lost their way and ended up here being in pain for eternity. Specifically in Canto XXVIII, he meets the souls in the ninth bolgia of the eighth circle of Hell who are being persecuted for they have committed sins of scandal and schism. Here the souls are being tormented by a devil who inflicts wounds continuously for each lost soul. Each soul he meets along the way tells him a warning or a story on how to avoid theses punishments himself. With each soul he encounters and sees the eternal physical condition of their souls and pain that they are put through, he comes to understand why sins of schism and scandal are so horrible. …show more content…

The carnage that he sees in this place is so gruesome that he states that “...any tongue would have to fail:...man’s vocabulary are not able to comprehend such pain”(4-6) this unearthly scene can only be described as hell. This place in Hell was littered with the bodies of those missing limbs or those with limbs being pierced through. The tournament here was constant, much like pain suffered throughout Hell. This pain equaled the punishment that was due for these sinners. This environment in which these sinners are kept is full of blood, pain and sorrow. Dante and Virgil are seeing this scene from afar, for they are standing atop a bridge looking down at these lost souls in

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To justify his feelings, Dante would seek out if the sinners have any qualms and if they are truly sorry for being abusive, or if they are just sorry because they are being punished. Based on Dante’s previous comments, this category fits in perfectly because Dante goes throughout a change in this book, at first, Dante would faint over punishments, but later on, Dante believes that some of the punishments are just. In Canto XVIII, Dante does not even grimace about punishments that sinners undergo over just “ordinary” fraud, and in Canto XV Dante says, “This is marvelous!” (24), when seeing someone familiar in Hell. In an earlier Canto XIII, Dante feels compassion when saying, “...so much pity takes my heart.”

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