Divine Comedy Sin Taxonomy

Author’s note:

In this article, I will be referring to both the book titles and the places they describe, to avoid any possible confusion, there are certain syntax styles to be made clear. In writing, the book titles will be italicized as The Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, and the places themselves as Inferno/Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise/Heaven.

Disclaimer notice: 

I am nowhere near being a Dante expert, and my opinion is synthesized by my reading of Dante’s works and other works of actual Dante’s experts on this matter. I started thinking about the specific discrepancy in Inferno and Purgatory’s structure after noticing how Pride (as a sin) is never formally categorized in Inferno, yet it is the first sin encountered in Purgatory.

The different taxonomies exhibited in Dante’s Divine Comedy serve a literary purpose and political commentary. Literature-wise, the discrepancies further distinguish the difference between Inferno and Purgatory: how souls in Inferno are damned to never enter Purgatory no matter what, and highlight the correspondence between Purgatory and Heaven: how souls in Purgatory are destined to reach Heaven no matter what. On a political commentary level, Dante touches upon the transition of a traditional Thomistic church to a more modern Medieval church, adding to his list of critiques against the Holy Church. Overall, this is most definitely a question of taxonomy: Why Dante opted for a different taxonomy in these places, and why THIS taxonomy over another when experts have organized sin into ten thousand different ways?

Before comparing these different taxonomies, let’s first establish what they are according to Dante’s organization. In The Inferno, we learn through Vrigil’s teaching of Dante in Canto 11 how sins are placed according to Aristotle’s teachings in his Nica. Thus, The Inferno follows the more traditional Thomistic approach: consisting of sins of Incontinence, Heresy, and sins of Malice/Fraud. In Purgatorio, however, we encounter what is known as the Seven Deadly Sins, introduced by the (more modern) Medieval church at the time. The Seven Deadly Sins consist of seven sins in no particular order, here I will list out the order that Dante chose to arrange in: Pride, Greed, Wrath, Envy, Sloth, Gluttony, Lust. Furthermore, these Seven Deadly Sins appropriately correspond with the Seven Heavenly Virtues in Paradiso, as revealed by Beatrice. More importantly, Dante remains consistent in how both of these taxonomies place the sins’ severeness in accordance to Love—what he considers to be the holiest virtue of all. For example, sins of Fraud are ranked differently by whom one betrays, betraying people that do not know you is less severe than betraying the people that trust you. One only abandons the natural trust between strangers, the other betrays the added trust between allies. Furthermore, this explains why sins of incontinence are less nefarious than sins of malice, at least they are sins resulting from the over-“loving” of something. Subsequently, Lust is the best (least bad) sin to have in both Inferno and Purgatory, for it is the furthest away from Satan in the core of Hell and the closest to Heaven at the top of Mount Purgatory.

With this in consideration, it is then important to discuss Pride. According to Dante’s definition of the severity of sin, then, Pride is the furthest away from love. What modern audiences might think is “the over-loving of oneself” is not actually love. This is because love should apply to other people; altruism is the ruling principle and betraying other people’s love and not loving other people is the most serious sin of all. Moreover, in regards to Pride, it is the single facet that makes up the general difference in souls in Inferno versus Purgatory—repentance. All the souls in Purgatory have chosen to repent, and the first step to repenting is admitting that you are wrong, thus putting away pride. If all the souls in Inferno are prideful, there is no need for a distinguished category for Pride in Hell, so just omit it. However, I believe it is unlikely that this single general lack of Pride is what inspired Dante to choose a different taxonomy, it would just simply be too weak without any plausible explanation for the omission of Sloth and Envy, the other two sins in Purgatory that are never formally characterized in Inferno. Additionally, with the Divine Comedy being a socio-political critique on top of being an autobiographical fiction, it could just simply be that Dante is highlighting the transition from the traditional Thomistic church to the modern Medieval church.

To the question of if Pride is the root of sin: I think in a conversation with Dr. Rebecca DeYoung, she mentioned how Pride is the root cause of sin. I’m unsure if Dante would support that himself. In Canto I of the Inferno, Dante writes how the Pilgrim is blocked by a she-wolf, a beast that breeds with many other partners. The she-wolf represents the sin of Greed, and sexual intercourse with many other beasts implies how Greed breeds other sins. But if Pride truly is the root cause of sin per Dr. DeYoung, it would make sense why Dante omitted the sin of Pride in Hell: all souls are sinful beyond repair.