Secularism In Dante's Inferno

The Dark Ages were a time of despair as the churches had full control over the kings and brainwashed the minds of the people. The popes chose who would be excommunicated and sent to hell. People believed in fatalism, a better afterlife than the life they were living. This belief made the lives of people boring because they did not want to do anything too risky or revolutionary because their afterlife was going to be better. When the Renaissance came, that all changed. The churches began to lose power as not everyone started to believe in Christianity. The idea of fatalism started to disappear as people began to care more about what happened during their life on earth. Love began to show in artists’ sculptures and paintings. Writers began to

express their emotions in their sonnets and the care for their life. Humanism emerged from the Renaissance in three parts, individualism, classicism and secularism. Individualism was glorifying the potential, talents and achievements of individual human beings. Classicism was the rediscovery and celebration of Greco-Roman culture. Lastly, secularism was the celebration of life on earth, here and now, rather than the afterlife or spiritual world. One writer in particular best represented secularism, Dante Alighieri. Dante was a writer who wrote about his love, Beatrice Portinari, and a corrupt society. Beatrice was his inspiration to all of his sonnets. When she died he wrote Vita Nuova describing the tragic loss of his love. Dante also wrote The Divine Comedy which was a series of political events with real characters that represented the allegory of life through a trip of the Christian afterlife. He was different than previous writers because his topic was not about God, it was about his love and the outcomes of the people tampering with society. At the start of the Renaissance, Dante Alighieri best represented secularism of the era through his writings, that transitioned out of the feudalistic topic of the church.
During the Renaissance the power and economic responsibilities the churches had once had, began to collapse. During the time of the Dark Ages, the pope would tell whether someone would be excommunicated or sent to hell. They decided what the taxes of the town would go towards and the laws of land disagreements. Every celebration, marriage, baptism or funeral would be held through the church. Even the art of the time was all focused on the holy ways of the church. There was no power in the king’s position for the pope could overrule him. In the book World History Perspectives on the Past, the power is described as, “In the Age of Faith, fear of the interdict put great pressure on a king to bow to pope’s demands”(Krieger 229). This highlights how not only were the kings obeying the pope’s every decision, but they were put under great stress to make sure they would not go against the pope in fear of the consequence. When the Renaissance began, this all changed. People had begun to doubt the church after the Crusades because the Christian pope had started the war and brainwashed soldiers to fight. After the eighth Crusade, people began to venture out from the ideas of Christianity. The artists and writers of the era had begun to illustrate their feelings and emotions of life on earth instead of afterlife. They had begun to experiment with secularism.
Alighieri’s poem, The Divine Comedy, exemplified secularism by pushing people to think about their corrupt society.

The Divine Comedy has three sections, Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. They all represent the different parts of the corrupt society Dante experienced. The Inferno segment, or hell, was based on the political faction, the Black Guelfs, along with Pope Boniface. This political faction still had the feudalistic system of the Dark Ages where the pope was the head of power. When Dante was exiled by them from Florence they became part of the Inferno. In the Inferno, the character Virgil guides Dante through the nine circles of hell. Each circle of hell has people who have committed specific sins. Dante portrays the consequences of the lustful in Canto V. The sinners are continuously being blown by a strong wind with no say in where they go and when they leave. Their fate is determined by the wind. According to the article World History: Ancient and Medieval Eras, “This punishment presents Dante's understanding of the sin of lust itself. Like the wind, lust is difficult, even perhaps impossible, to control, especially if the victim does not take precautions against it ”(ABC Editors). Dante used secularism with the wind to portray the corrupt society that was brainwashing the people. He got people to think about the leaders using their power for the benefit of themselves rather than the society itself. He leadingly expressed secularism because he was one of the

first to educate the people on the economic degeneracy happening right in front of them.
Dante Alighieri best represents the Renaissance because his writings exemplify the idea of secularism.

The Divine Comedy was an allegoric interpretation of the human life through a Christian afterlife. The Inferno inspired people to direct their loyalty away from the church. His writings had the long term effect of showing the consequences people leading the corrupt society would face. His sonnets sent messages to the people about the importance of secularism and what was happening around them. Dante continues to inspire people to think about their society and whose hands the power is

in.