Dante Dante Alighieri (; most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri; – September 14, 1321), widely known mononymously as Dante, was an Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer, and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called ...

's '' Inferno'',

Satan Satan, also known as the Devil, is a devilish entity in Abrahamic religions who seduces humans into sin (or falsehood). In Judaism, Satan is seen as an agent subservient to God, typically regarded as a metaphor for the '' yetzer hara'', or ' ...

is portrayed as a giant demon, frozen up to the waist in ice at the center of

Hell In religion and folklore, hell is a location or state in the afterlife in which souls are subjected to punishment after death. Religions with a linear divine history sometimes depict hells as eternal destinations, such as Christianity and I ...

. Satan has three faces and a pair of bat-like wings affixed under each chin. As Satan beats his wings, he creates a cold wind that continues to freeze the ice surrounding him and the other sinners in the Ninth Circle. The winds he creates are felt throughout the other circles of Hell. In his three mouths, he chews on

Judas Iscariot Judas Iscariot (; ; died AD) was, according to Christianity's four canonical gospels, one of the original Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ. Judas betrayed Jesus to the Sanhedrin in the Garden of Gethsemane, in exchange for thirty pieces of sil ...

Marcus Junius Brutus Marcus Junius Brutus (; ; 85 BC – 23 October 42 BC) was a Roman politician, orator, and the most famous of the assassins of Julius Caesar. After being adopted by a relative, he used the name Quintus Servilius Caepio Brutus, which was reta ...

and

Gaius Cassius Longinus Gaius Cassius Longinus (; – 3 October 42 BC) was a Roman senator and general best known as a leading instigator of the plot to assassinate Julius Caesar on 15 March 44 BC. He was the brother-in-law of Brutus, another leader of the conspir ...

. Scholars consider Satan to be "a once splendid being (the most perfect of God's creatures) from whom all personality has now drained away".Jacoff, pg. 143 Satan, also known as

Lucifer The most common meaning for Lucifer in English is as a name for the Devil in Christian theology. He appeared in the King James Version of the Bible in Isaiah and before that in the Vulgate (the late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bib ...

, was formerly the Angel of Light and once tried to usurp the power of God. As punishment, God banished Satan out of Heaven to an

eternity Eternity, in common parlance, is an Infinity, infinite amount of time that never ends or the quality, condition or fact of being everlasting or eternal. Classical philosophy, however, defines eternity as what is timeless or exists outside tim ...

in Hell as the ultimate sinner. Dante illustrates a less powerful Satan than most standard depictions; he is slobbering, wordless, and receives the same punishments in Hell as the rest of the sinners. In the text, Dante vividly illustrates Satan's grotesque physical attributes.

Description of the Ninth Circle

Dante's Hell is divided into nine circles, the ninth circle being divided further into four rings, their boundaries only marked by the depth of their sinners' immersion in the ice; Satan sits in the last ring, Judecca. It is in the fourth ring of the ninth circle, where the worst sinners, the betrayers to their benefactors, are punished. Here, these condemned souls, frozen into the ice, are completely unable to move or speak and are contorted into all sorts of fantastical shapes as a part of their punishment. Unlike many other circles of Dante's Hell, these sinners remain unnamed. Even Dante is afraid to enter this last circle, as he nervously proclaimed, "I drew behind my leader’s back again." Uncharacteristically of Dante, he remains silent in Satan's presence. Dante examines the sinners who are "covered wholly by ice, / showing like straw in glass – some lying prone, / and some erect, some with the head towards us, / the others with the bottoms of the feet; another like a bow bent feet to face." This circle of Hell is a complete separation from any life and, for Dante, "the deepest isolation is to suffer separation from the source of all light and life and warmth."

Contrappasso: the poetic justice of Satan

The reason for Satan's eternal punishment was his desire to be as powerful as the Divine. When Satan was cast out of Heaven, he "excavated the underworld cosmos in which the damned are held". Satan's punishment is the opposite of what he was trying to achieve: power and a voice over God. Satan also is, in many ways, "the antithesis of Virgil; for he conveys at its sharpest the ultimate and universal pain of Hell: isolation." It is Virgil, Dante's guide through Hell, who tells Dante "that the inhabitants of the infernal region are those who have lost the good of intellect; the substance of evil, the loss of humanity, intelligence, good will, and the capacity to love." Satan stands at the center because he is the epitome of Dante's Hell.

Religious significance

Dante's Satan remains a common image in popular portrayals. The answer to the question of how Satan wound up in the bottom of the pit in Dante's Inferno lies in Christian theological history. Some interpretations of the

Book of Isaiah The Book of Isaiah ( ) is the first of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible and the first of the Major Prophets in the Christian Old Testament. It is identified by a superscription as the words of the 8th-century BC prophet Isaiah ben Amo ...

, combined with apocryphal texts, explain that Satan was cast from Heaven, and fell to earth. Satan, the angel, was enamored of his own beauty, power, and pride, and attempted to usurp God's divine throne: This immediately backfired on Satan. God sentenced him as a betrayer and banished him from Heaven. Dante uses this idea to create a physical place Satan created after his impact with the earth. According to Dante, the pit the Pilgrim climbs down to reach the center of Hell is literally the hole that Satan made when he fell to earth. The extra earth formed Mount Purgatory on the other side of the Earth. William O'Grady has pointed out that those frozen in the ice perversely imitate God in the sense of being

unmoved mover The unmoved mover () or prime mover () is a concept advanced by Aristotle as a primary cause (or first uncaused cause) or " mover" of all the motion in the universe. As is implicit in the name, the moves other things, but is not itself moved by ...

s, but rather than moving by attracting us towards them, they move us by repelling us away from them, as evil was understood to do in scholastic philosophy. Thus, since they wanted to be God, Dante makes them godlike but at the farthest distance removed from God.

Islamic influence

The pictures of Dante's Satan bears close resemblances to

Iblis Iblis (), alternatively known as Eblīs, also known as Shaitan, is the leader of the Shayatin, devils () in Islam. According to the Quran, Iblis was thrown out of Jannah#Jinn, angels, and devils, heaven after refusing to prostrate himself bef ...

, the chief fallen angel in

Islam Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

ic tradition. While the Bible alludes only once to Satan's fall, the

Quran The Quran, also Romanization, romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a Waḥy, revelation directly from God in Islam, God (''Allah, Allāh''). It is organized in 114 chapters (, ) which ...

narrates the fall of Iblis in seven

Surah A ''surah'' (; ; ) is an Arabic word meaning 'chapter' in the Quran. There are 114 ''suwar'' in the Quran, each divided into ayah, verses (). The ''suwar'' are of unequal length; the shortest ''surah'' (al-Kawthar) has only three verses, while ...

s. Some descriptions of Dante's lowest hell match precisely the descriptions of Islamic eschatological literature, such infidels growing into giants at the lowest layer of hell as means of punishment, whereas Biblical tradition lacks such notion. The idea that hell consists of several layers, each adored with a specific name, is also attested in Islamic beliefs. The picture of Satan being chained at the bottom of hell also parallels the Islamic description of Iblis. According to Quranic exegesis, Iblis is chained in a frozen hell (Zamhareer) in a pit of the lowest earth.Palacios (2013), p. 106

Footnotes

Works cited

* Alighieri, Dante. ''The Inferno of Dante''. Trans.

Robert Pinsky Robert Pinsky (born October 20, 1940) is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. He was the first United States Poet Laureate to serve three terms. Recognized worldwide, Pinsky's work has earned numerous accolades. Pinsky ...

. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1994. *Cassell, Anthony K. "The Tomb, the Tower, and the Pit: Dante's Satan." ''Italica'' 56.4 (1979): 331–351.
Circle 9, Cantos 31-34
" ''Dante's Worlds''. University of Texas at Austin. 27 Jan. 2007. * Cunningham, Lawrence S. "Satan: a Theological Meditation." '' Theology Today'' 51 (1994). 27 Jan. 2007. *Foster, Micheal, comp. ''

Sandro Botticelli Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi ( – May 17, 1510), better known as Sandro Botticelli ( ; ) or simply known as Botticelli, was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 1 ...

, the Drawings for the Divine Comedy''. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2000. *Freccero, John. ''The Sign of Satan''. MLN 80 (1965): 11–26. *Gilbert, Allan. ''Dante and His Comedy''. New York, NY: New York University P, 1963. *Jacoff, Rachel, ed. ''Dante''. Cambridge UP, 1963. *Klonsky, Milton, comp. ''Blake's Dante, the Complete Illustrations to the Divine Comedy''. New York, NY: Harmony Books, 1980. *Korchak, Michael.
Portrayal of Heaven and Hell Through Art
" Boston College. 27 Jan. 2007. * Paolucci, Anne. "Dante's Satan and Milton's "Byronic Hero"" ''Italica'' 41 (1965): 139-149.
Satan: an Instrument for Dante and Milton
" 27 Jan. 2007. * Scott, John A. ''Understanding Dante''. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame P, 2004. *The Holy Bible Revised Standard Edition. 1962. World Publishing Company. Cleveland. * Vittorini, Domenico. ''The Age of Dante''. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1957. {{Divine Comedy navbox Inferno (Dante) Christian iconography Demons in the Divine Comedy Fiction about the Devil Male literary villains Mythological anthropophages