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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: also relate among themselves spiritually. Dante often highlights a virtue
by first condemning its corruption. Within Dante's system Justice is the
greatest of the cardinal virtues; its corruption, Fraud, is the most
contemptible of vices. Because Dante saw the papacy as the most precious of
sacred institutions, corrupt popes figure prominently among the damned in
the Poet's Inferno. In the Danteum the materiality of the worldly Dark Wood
directly opposes the transcendence of the Paradiso. In the realm of error
every thought is lost and secular, while in heaven every soul's intent is
directed toward God. The shadowy Inferno of the Danteum mirrors the
Purgatorio's illuminated ascent to heaven. Purgatory embodies hope and
growth where hell chases its own dark inertia. Such is the cosmography
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
