Inferno: Canto 3 -- Vestibule of Hell

Pilgrims, it is only today that we step through the gates of hell and begin to experience the moans of the damned. The beginning of Canto III greets us with a salute like that of a Nazi concentration camp: "Arbeit Macht Frei"--the irony in the German signage is that freedom came only through death. Here, in hell, which is the second death, there is no hope that peace from woe will follow.

I am the way into the city of woe.
I am the way to a forsaken people.
I am the way into eternal sorrow.
Sacred justice moved my architect.
I was raised here by divine omnipotence,
primordial love and ultimate intellect.
Only those elements time cannot wear
were made before me, and beyond time I stand.
Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

The focus of this land on God's power, love, and intellect is what subjugates hell to God's kingdom, for it was built as part of the finished cosmos as a way to restore balance to the universe through the punishment of the rebellious angels, according to one interpretation given by Ciardi. Humanity fell, too, though, and hell yawned open to receive them. That the inscription ends with the idea that there is no hope in hell means that, in Dante's cosmology at least, none who enter may ever reach the beatific vision -- even at the Last Judgment all the damned will remain so.

As Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ, pointed out in yesterday's video clip, there are some more liberal theologians who hold that nothing is impossible through God's grace, including the redemption of repentent sinners who have been denied God's presence in death. Dante's schema of contrapasso again rears its head, for under that schema there can be no redemption as it is not God's wrath that keeps them in their various levels of hell but their own characters that do so.

It is also in the vestibule that we learn that it does not matter the station the person enjoyed in life that earns him or her a place in any one of Dante's 100 cantos. What matters most is the state of the person's being, and this is underscored by the fact that already in Canto III we are greeted with our first pope, Celestine V. Celestine V became pope in 1294 and soon after abdicated the papacy in fear for his immortal soul. The legend, Ciardi tells us, is that a priest named Benedetto convinced Celestine V to abdicate by playing on his doubts about his ability to lead the Church. One account I read indicated that Benedetto had drilled a hole behind the pope's bed and whispered through it every night that the pope would be damned to hell if he remained in the papacy. As it turned out, the pope was damned to hell (in Dante's scheme -- we, of course, pray that he enjoys God's grace) for leaving it, for in doing so he let a great evil into the Church in the form of Pope Boniface VIII (the name Benedetto took when elected to the papacy immediately following the Great Refusal of Pope Celestine V. We will find later where Pope Boniface VIII himself will be going upon his death in 1303, and it can only be a small comfort to Celestine V that he merely has to endure being eaten for eternity by ravenous maggots infesting his body and a tornado storm of insects whipping him around the antechamber).

It is also here that we encounter our first of hell's four rivers (Acheron, Styx, Phlegethon, and Cocytus) as newcoming sinners line up along the banks to allow Charon to ferry them to their judgment (another integration of classical mythology with Catholic truth). Sensing they are out of order, these sinners yearn to be restored to their proper order -- even if it means an infernal existence, which is another demonstration that God's will prevails in all things and all places. With visible evidence of tortured souls that neither heaven nor hell wants in the antechamber to a place outside of God's presence, how might we further say that this is a creation of God's divine love?