In Dante's Inferno, his circles of hell are divided in chronological order, the sins getting worse as you descend into hell. In the order of his circles, Dante puts sins of violence as less severe as sins of fraud such as fortune tellers, hypocrites, thieves, grafters, etc. Dante himself believes that sins of violence are less severe as sins of fraud. Circle seven includes all of those who have committed various types of violence. The next circle, circle eight contains all those who have committed some sort of fraud. Circle seven, violence, is placed as less severe than circle eight.
Dante assesses the sins of violence by dividing them into three categories, violence against one's self, violence against one's neighbors, and violence against art and nature. He puts these sins in the circle above sins like thievery and fortune telling. I believe that Dante considered sins of violence to be less severe because he thought that a direct sin is better than a sin of the mind involving deceit. When one commits an act of violence, you cut to the chase, its straight forward, a direct act of sin. Dante views sins of fraud to be more severe because they are indirect, they do not always have direction intentions as well is it is not a "clean break" like an act of violence. When one commits an act of violence, you are being very upfront about your feelings, where as when one commits an act of Fraud you are trying to deceive those around you, deceiving God by default. In Dante's eyes, a direct act of violence is not as bad as deceiving God himself by committing Fraud. Also, it is very dumb of a person to try and deceive God because God is all-knowing and by trying to deceive him you are just asking to be punished.
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Palm reading, a form of fortune telling |
Many of the sins of Fraud go directly against God himself, such as the fortune tellers and the diviners. The sin of fortune telling goes against God. This is because God is supposed to be the only one who can see the future, followers of God are supposed to be guided through life by faith in God. By telling fortunes you are denying faith in God as well as God's will to be the only one allowed to see into the future. In their punishment they are distorted in form and forced to walk backwards with their heads facing backwards eternally. Virgil describes one of the sinners as, "In life he wished to see too far before him, and now he must crab backwards around this track"(176). The sinners defied God by looking into the future, now they spend eternity only being able to see backwards, not even being able to see the present. Another group of sinners in circle eight, the simoniacs, defy God himself in their sin. The simoniacs sinned by selling church positions and using church positions for their own personal benefit. In doing so, the church was badly corrupted with the sin of greed. This is extremely deceptive because the church is supposed to be extremely pure, obeying the ways of the lord, but by being corrupted by greed for high positions, the church becomes hypocritical of itself. Also, by selling/buying church positions one is disrespecting the purity of baptism. Also, the people of the church become more concerned with the worshiping of money rather than God. The simonacs are described as, "Gold and silver are the Gods you adore! In what are you different from the idolator?"(170). In the sin of the simoniacs they are contradicting the beliefs which they preach, such as that idolizing is wrong in the Christian faith, a sin against god himself.
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Pope Nicholas III, one of the Simoniacs |
I agree with Dante's assessment in the sense that I do believe that violence could be argued as a less severe sin due to the fact that its direct and a sin of Fraud is not. I see the point in Dante's argument but I do not agree that in this day and age that a crime of violence is worse than a crime of Fraud. For example, you wouldn't put someone on death row for committing fraud and convict another person for murder only for a couple of years. In this modern age, Dante's argument doesn't make sense. But from the standpoint of Dante's time period where everything revolves around religion, it would make sense that fraud is worse than violence since fraud is more of a crime against God himself. Therefore, I can see the point in Dante's argument and I do believe his argument is correct for a middle ages mindset, but for a twenty-first century mindset, it is wrong.