Dante's Inferno, by Dante Alighieri

Judgment, a term used in Christianity to refer to someone’s soul, heart and their deeds. Dante Alighieri was the first person to judge people and put them in Hell for their deeds and actions in life. The book, Dante’s Inferno, explores morality and judgment. It is a book that truly says, “The punishment fits the crime.” It explores the deeds of people such as William Howard Taft, King John, Otto von Bismarck, and Nostradamus. These people are in Inferno for the same reason that someone like Alexander the Great is there because they committed some sort of crime or sin while living on Earth. These people violated absolute standards of humanity and behavior that is in fact there across culture and time.

In Christianity, murder is a sin, and being a devout Christian that Dante is, he creates a circle for violence, circle seven. Since, violence is too general, he divides the circle into three rounds, violence against others, violence against self, and violence against God. Circle seven, round one, houses people who have willingly harmed and/or killed others. A person that committed these sins is King John of England. John was born in Oxford, England on December 24th, 1167. His father was Henry II and his mother was Eleanor of Aquitaine. He was the youngest son, and his older brother was Richard the Lion-Hearted. (“BrÜckmann”). After Richard died, John became the King of England. He ruled from 1199 to 1216. He was a bad military leader and people started to call him John Softsword. John lost Normandy and all his lands in northern France to Phillip Augustus. After, losing all this land to the French, the nobles revolted. (Beck, 394-395). To stop the revolts, John started to torture his nobles and also alienated the Church (Beck, 39...

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...ior across culture and time.

All in all, Inferno, set standards of evil. Dante in his time was a rejected member of society after being excommunicated, and by writing this book he was looked as evil because he judged people based on their actions, and set certain standards. This shift says that there are absolute standards because only the views of society towards that particular sin has changed, but nevertheless it is still a sin. There are some aspects of judgment that has changed such as lust, anger and sullenness, and fraud compared to murder, but these are still sins that humans should not commit. These standards also impact the unity of society because Christians might consider violence a sin, but the Mongols loved to conquer and had different views about violence. Dante set the absolute standards of humanity and behavior across culture and time.