Satan in Dante’s Inferno

In Dante’s Inferno\ The Divine Comedy Satan is portrayed as a giant beast, frozen mid-breast in ice at the center of Hell. [Satan] has three heads and affixed under each chin are pairs of bat like wings. As Lucifer beats his wings, he creates a cold wind which continues to freeze the ice surrounding him, and the other sinners in the Ninth Circle. These winds he creates are the those felt throughout the other circles of Hell, which Dante notes several times. Each of his three mouths gnaws on either, Judas, Brutus, or Cassius. Scholars consider Satan to be “a once splendid being (indeed the most perfect of God’s creatures) from whom all personality has now drained away.” (Jacoff 143) Satan, also known as Lucifer, was formerly the Angel of Light and once tried to usurp the power of God. As punishment, God kicked Satan out of Heaven to an eternity in Hell as the ultimate sinner. Dante illustrates a less powerful Satan than most standard depictions; he is dumb, slobbering, wordless, and receives the same punishments in Hell as the rest of the sinners. In the text, Dante vividly illustrates Satan’s grotesque physical attributes.

“The emperor of the great real of grief protruded/ from mid breast above the surrounding ice/ a giant’s height and mine, would have provided/ closer comparison than would the size/ of his arm and a giant, envision the whole/ that is proportionate to parts like these/ if he was truly once as beautiful/ as he is ugly now, and raised his brows/- Against his maker then all sorrow may well come out of him.” (Canto XXXIV, ln 31-40).

Che I gigantic non fan con le sue braccia:/ vedi oggimai quant’ esser dee quell tutto/ ch’a cosi fatta parte si confaccia./ s’el fu si bel com’ elli e ora brutto,/ e contra ‘l suo fattore alzo le ciglia/ ben dee da lui procedere ogne lutto/ oh quanto parve a me gran maraviglia/ quand’ io vidi tre facce a la sua testa!/ l’una dinanzi, e quella era vermiglia;/ l’altr’ eran due, che s’aggiugnieno a questa. (Canto XXXIV, ln 31-40).

Description of the Ninth Circle

Dante’s Hell is divided into nine circles; Satan sits in the last ring, Judecca. It is in this Ninth Circle that the worst sinners, the Betrayers to their Benefactors, are punished. Here, these condemned souls, frozen into the ice, are completely unable to move or speak. Dante describes this circle as “nothing like a palace hall; instead/ a kind of natural dungeon enveloped us/ with barely any light, the floor ill made” (Canto XXXIV, ln 94-96). Unlike many other circles of Dante’s Hell, these sinners remained unnamed. Even Dante himself is nervous to enter this last circle, “as he nervously proclaimed, I drew behind my leader’s back again” (Dante, cn XXXIV; ln 11). Uncharacteristically of Dante, the pilgrim, he remains silent in Satan’s presence. This circle of Hell is a complete separation from any life; there is no light and for Dante, “the deepest isolation is to suffer separation from the source of all light and life and warmth” (Jacoff, 143).

“To where the shades were covered wholly by ice/, showing like straw in glass- some lying prone/, and some erect, some with the head towards us/, the others with the bottoms of the feet; another like a bow bent feet to face” (Canto XXXIV, ln 14-18).

[Contrapasso]: The Poetic Justice of Satan

The reason for Satan’s eternal punishment was his desire to be as powerful as the Divine. When Satan was kicked out of Heaven, he “excavated the underworld cosmos in which the damned are held” (Cunningham 2). Satan, who represents all the damned, is forever punished because of his betrayal of God. His fate is to be stuck in ice for eternity with his body reduced to its ugliest form. Satan is also chewing the three most potent sinners, according to Dante, in his mouth, yet never digesting them. His mouth represents the topography of Hell; “Hell is one huge mouth that never digests” (Evitt). Although Satan is physically enormous, he is small, powerless, and forever silent, in other words, his punishment is the opposite of what he was trying to achieve, power and a voice over God. Satan is in many ways, “the antithesis of Virgil; for he conveys at its sharpest the ultimate and universal pain of Hell; isolation” (Jacoff, 143). It is Virgil who tells Dante “that the inhabitants of the infernal region are those who have lost the good of intellect; the substance of evil, the loss of humanity, intelligence, good will, and the capacity to love” (Cunningham 2). Satan stands at the center representing the epitome of Dante’s Hell.

“He wept with all six eyes, and the tears fell over his three chins mingled with bloody foam. The teeth of each mouth held a s inner, kept as by a flax rake: thus he held three of them in agony” (cn XXXIV, ln 54-58).

Religious Significance

An interesting irony throughout Dante’s Inferno, but especially prevalent in his description of Satan, is the fact that he strays so far from descriptions of Lucifer in the Bible. It is a common mistake, however, to assume Dante’s version of the Devil is the same as the Christian one. Even though the Inferno is, in essence, a Christian story this is not entirely true. The qualities Satan possesses in the ninth circle do not represent the traditional beliefs of Christianity. The Bible describes Satan thus: “Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour…” (1 Peter 5:8). The Bible also refers to Satan as a “serpent” (Genesis 3:4), and a “dragon” (Revelation 20:2), among other physical descriptions. Contrary to these depictions, though, Dante creates a large, lumbering Devil who is immobile and doomed to a frozen pit and to have a bad taste in his mouth for eternity. Before Dante, Christian doctrine viewed Satan as a frightening, quick, intelligent beast that will attack the moment one lets his guard down, and Dante fails to capture this in his depiction of Satan. Despite all the Biblical disagreements, Dante’s Satan remains a more common image in popular portrayals.

The answer to the question of how Satan wound up in the bottom of the pit in Dante’s Inferno, lies in Christian theological history. The Bible explains that Lucifer was cast from Heaven, and fell to earth. Lucifer, the angel, was caught up in his own beauty, power, and pride, and attempted to usurp God’s divine throne…

“I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit on the mount of assembly on the heights of Zaphon; I will ascend to the tops of the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High.” (Isaiah 14:12)

This immediately backfired on Lucifer for he was no match for God. God sentenced him as a betrayer and banished him from Heaven. Dante uses this idea to create a physical place Satan created after his impact with the earth. According to Dante, the pit the Pilgrim climbs down to reach the center of Hell is literally the hole that Lucifer made when he fell to earth. As in his descriptions of Satan, Dante draws from the Bible, but adds much of his imagination to the text. He creates a fantastic story that is often construed as Christian doctrine, but differs in several fundamental ways.

A fascinating point Scholars stress in the Inferno, is that “Dante turns upside down the medieval religious symbols and signs”. The Cross, for instance, draws this conclusion, “Crosses are almost invariably symbols of the sun, the sky, and the passage of time.” Satan’s outline is somewhat like that of a cross, his body and head representing the vertical beam and his wings representing the horizontal beam. Yet, in Hell it is turned upside down. Therefore the original symbol of the cross is inversed; In Hell there is no sun, no sky, and absolutely no passage of time. This type of cross is a “symbol of inverted grace.” Satan epitomizes this falling away from Christ’s grace.

== Effects of Dante’s Satan on the Renaissance ==

When looking at the way Dante portrays [Satan] in comparison with early renaissance depictions, it can be seen how unique his idea was and how much of an effect it had during the time. As opposed to the popular conception of the era, which viewed Satan as an all dominating beast of Hell, found at its most fiery depths, Dante gives the portrayal of Satan as just another victim of Hell’s tortures. He places Satan trapped within the ice, stripped of voice and power and thus sets forth a new conception of who and what Satan is. With the understanding that during the time of the renaissance, many messages of the society were depicted through the [art]work (the artwork reflected the society and the society reflected the artwork) it can easily be seen how much of an effect Dante’s literary image of Satan had on the Society. The demonstration of this effect can be seen in the comparison of these three paintings done during the [Renaissance era]. The first one is the work of [Giotto di Bondone] (1267-1337), the [Last Judgment] found in the [Arena Chapel] in [Florence], the works of [William Blake] (1757-1827) and the works of Nardo di Cione (13501357)

As it can be seen, Giotto gives Satan a very dominant role in Hell and portrays him as extremely violent and gruesome. His depiction of Satan is representative of the popular conception before Dante and is in great contrast with the other two images of Satan. In Blake's work it can be seen that Satan is given three heads, each of which are consuming a body, just as Dante expressed in the Inferno. This is also true in Cione's work, though slightly less clear. The other characteristics that these two artists draw from Dante's Satan, is the lower body of the devil, which is strictly confined in ice. Satan is perceived with less power, as opposed to Giotto’s Last Judgment. Also found in Cione's work, which is represented in the Cappella Strozzi of the [Santa Maria Novella] in Florence, is the clear depiction of Dante's nine circles of Hell. Through this art work and others of the Renaissance, one can see how much of an influence Dante had in the understanding of Satan and [Christian theology].