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Divine Comedy diagram of hell. Hell (Divine Comedy)

In Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy, hell consists of nine circles; the lower the circle, the more serious the sins committed by a person during his lifetime. In addition to a clear structure, in general the concept reflects the Catholic ideas about hell that existed in the Middle Ages.

In front of the entrance are pitiful souls who did neither good nor evil during their lives, including “a bad flock of angels” who were neither with the devil nor with God.

1 lap
Limbo
Guardian: Charon.
Type of punishment: Painless grief.
Languishing: Unbaptized infants and virtuous non-Christians.

2 round
Guardian: Minos.
Yearning: Voluptuous (fornicators and adulterers, simply passionate lovers).
Type of punishment: Torsion and torture by a storm.

3 circle
Guardian: Cerberus.
Languishing: Gluttons, gluttons and gourmets.
Type of punishment: Rotting in the sun and rain.

4 circle
Guardian: Plutos.
Languishing: Misers and spendthrifts (inability to spend wisely).
Type of punishment: Eternal dispute.

5 circle
Stygian swamp.
Guardian: Phlegius is a ferryman through the swamp.
Languishing: Angry and lazy.
Type of punishment: Eternal fight up to the throat in the swamp.

6 circle
Walls of the city of Dita.
Guardian: Furies.
Languishing: Heretics and false teachers.
Type of punishment: To be ghosts in hot graves.

7 circle(divided into 3 belts)
Guardian: Minotaur.
Languishing: Perpetrators of violence,
1 - Violent people against their neighbors and their property (tyrants and robbers),
2 - Rapists against themselves (suicides) and against their property (gamblers and spendthrifts, that is, senseless destroyers of their property),
3 - Rapists against deity (blasphemers), against nature (sodomites) and art (extortion).

Type of punishment: Boil in a bloody river. Those who stick out are shot by the centaurs Nessus (mythology), Chiron and For.
1 - Boil in a bloody river. Those who stick out are shot by the centaurs Nessus (mythology), Chiron and Pholus.
2 - Suicides, in the form of trees, are tormented by harpies; spendthrifts are driven away by hound dogs.
3 - To languish in the sultry desert near a burning stream.

8 circle(contains 10 moats, the most popular of the circles)
Sinisters, or Evil Crevices.
The sinuses are separated from each other by shafts (rifts). Toward the center, the area of ​​the Evil Crevices slopes, so that each subsequent ditch and each subsequent rampart are located slightly lower than the previous ones, and the outer, concave slope of each ditch is higher than the inner, curved slope. The first shaft is adjacent to the circular wall. In the center yawns the depth of a wide and dark well, at the bottom of which lies the last, ninth, circle of Hell. From the foot of the stone heights, that is, from the circular wall, stone ridges run in radii, like the spokes of a wheel, to this well, crossing ditches and ramparts, and above the ditches they bend in the form of bridges or vaults. In Evil Crevices, deceivers are punished who deceived people who are not connected with them by special bonds of trust.

Guardian: Geryon.
Those who languish: Those who deceived those who did not trust:
1 - Pimps and seducers;
2 – Flatterers;
3 - Holy merchants, high-ranking clergy who traded in church positions;
4 - Soothsayers, fortune tellers, astrologers, witches;
5 - Bribe takers, bribe takers;
6 – Hypocrites;
7 – Thieves;
8 - Crafty advisers;
9 - Instigators of discord;
10 - Alchemists, false witnesses, counterfeiters.

Type of punishment:
1 - sinners walk in two oncoming streams, scourged by demons;
2 - Sticky feces; foul-smelling;
3 - The torsos are chained in rocks, fire flows down the feet;
4 - The head is turned half a turn;
5 - Boil in resin. The devils stick hooks into those who stick their heads out;
6 - Chained in lead robes;
7 - Torment by reptiles (kenkhr, amphisbaena, farey, yakul, echidna), mutual transformations with them;
8 - Souls are hidden (burning) inside the lights;
9 – Gutting;
10 - Leprosy and lichen.

9 circle
Ice Lake Cocytus.
Belt of Khaine
Antenor Belt
Tolomei Belt
Giudecca Belt

The middle, the center of the universe.

Guardian: Giants (Briareus, Ephialtes, Antaeus).
Those who languish: Those who deceived those who trusted:

Traitors to relatives;
Traitors to the motherland and like-minded people;
Traitors to friends and dinner companions;
Traitors to benefactors, divine and human majesty.

Dit (Lucifer), frozen into an ice floe, torments in his three mouths the traitors to the majesties of earth and heaven (Judas, Brutus and Cassius).

Type of punishment: They were frozen up to their necks in ice, with their faces turned downwards.
9 circles of hell according to Dante

The poem "The Divine Comedy", which provides the broadest synthesis of medieval culture and an anthology of the world, was written by Dante Alighieri in the period from 1307 to 1321. In the work, Dante builds a strict system of the afterlife from the point of view of Catholic Christianity, presenting it in the form of 9 circles surrounding Lucifer frozen in ice.

In the introductory song, Dante tells how, having reached the middle of his life, he once got lost in a dense forest and how the poet Virgil, having delivered him from three wild animals that blocked his path, invited Dante to travel through the afterlife. Having learned that Virgil was sent to Beatrice (Dante’s beloved), Dante surrenders to the poet’s leadership without trepidation.

Dante's Hell looks like a colossal funnel consisting of concentric circles, the narrow end of which rests on the center of the earth.

The first circle of Hell is Limbo, where the souls of those who were not convicted of unrighteous deeds reside, but died unbaptized. Charon stands guard. Punishment: Sorrow without pain.

“He was born of painless sorrow,
by which they seemed embraced
Crowds of babies and husbands and wives.”

Here were Noah, Moses and Abraham - all the righteous men mentioned in Old Testament, - but then they were allowed to ascend to Paradise. The greatest poets of antiquity live in Limbo - Homer, Horace, Ovid, Virgil, Lucan; Roman and Greek heroes - Electra, Hector, Aeneas, Caesar, Penthesilea, Camilla, Lavinia with her father Latin, Lucius Junius Brutus, Julia (wife of Pompey), Lucretia (dishonored by the royal son Sextus Tarquinius), Cornelia, Marcia (wife of Cato Uticus), Deidamia + Saladin; Scientists, poets and doctors - Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Democritus, Diogenes, Thales, Anaxagoras, Zeno, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Dioscorides, Seneca, Orpheus, Linus, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Euclid, Ptolemy, Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna, Averrois.

In the form of a funnel. Unbaptized infants and virtuous non-Christians in limbo are given over to painless grief; voluptuous people who fall into the second circle for lust suffer torment and torment by a hurricane; gluttons in the third circle rot in the rain and hail; misers and spendthrifts drag weights from place to place in the fourth circle; the angry and lazy always fight in the swamps of the fifth circle; heretics and false prophets lie in the burning graves of the sixth; all kinds of rapists, depending on the subject of the abuse, suffer in different zones of the seventh circle - boil in a ditch of hot blood, tormented by harpies or languish in the desert under the fiery rain; deceivers of those who did not trust languish in the cracks of the eighth circle: some are stuck in fetid feces, some are boiling in tar, some are chained, some are tormented by reptiles, some are gutted; and the ninth circle is prepared for those who deceived. Among the latter is Lucifer, frozen in ice, who torments in his three jaws the traitors of the majesty of the earth and heaven (Judas, Marcus Junius Brutus and Cassius - traitors of Jesus and Caesar, respectively).

The map of Hell was part of a large commission - an illustration of Dante's Divine Comedy. Unknown exact dates creation of manuscripts. Researchers agree that Botticelli began working on them in the mid-1480s and, with some interruptions, was busy with them until the death of the customer, Lorenzo the Magnificent de' Medici.

Fragment of a map of hell. (wikipedia.org)

Not all pages have been preserved. Presumably, there should be about 100 of them; 92 manuscripts have reached us, four of which are fully colored. Several pages of text or numbers are blank, suggesting that Botticelli did not complete the work. Most are sketches. At that time, paper was expensive, and the artist could not simply throw away a sheet of paper with a failed sketch. Therefore, Botticelli first worked with a silver needle, squeezing out the design. Some manuscripts show how the design changed: from the composition as a whole to the position of individual figures. Only when the artist was satisfied with the sketch did he trace the outlines in ink.


The torment of sinners. (wikipedia.org)

On the reverse side of each illustration, Botticelli indicated Dante's text, which explained the drawing.

Context

"" is a kind of response to the events of his own life. Having suffered a fiasco in the political struggle in Florence and being expelled from his hometown, he devoted himself to enlightenment and self-education, including the study of ancient authors. It is no coincidence that the guide in The Divine Comedy is Virgil, the ancient Roman poet.


The horrors of hell. (wikipedia.org)

The dark forest in which the hero gets lost is a metaphor for the poet’s sins and quests. Virgil (reason) saves the hero (Dante) from terrible beasts (mortal sins) and leads him through Hell to Purgatory, after which he gives way to Beatrice (divine grace) on the threshold of heaven.


The suffering of sinners. (wikipedia.org)

The fate of the artist

Botticelli was from a tanner's family; as a teenager he was apprenticed to a jeweler. However, the boy liked sketching and drawing much more. Immersed in a world of fantasy, Sandro forgot about his surroundings. He turned life into art, and art became life for him.


"Spring", 1482. (wikipedia.org)

Among his contemporaries, Botticelli was not perceived as a master of genius. At that time, they generally did not think about their contemporaries in terms of genius. The more orders, the higher the aristocracy valued the artist. And Botticelli experienced both his rise, when his workshop was extremely busy, and the Pope himself invited him to paint the Sistine Chapel, and his fall, when the aristocracy turned away from the beautiful Sandro.


"Birth of Venus", 1484−1486. (wikipedia.org)

Botticelli was patronized by the Medici, famous art connoisseurs. Vasari writes in his biography that the painter spent his last years as a decrepit, beggarly old man, but this is not so.

The artist was significantly influenced by his acquaintance with the monk Girolamo Savonarola, who in his sermons convincingly called for repentance and renunciation of luxury. After the monk was found guilty of heresy, Botticelli practically closed himself off from the world in his workshop. Last years he worked little, suffering in soul and body. The artist died at the age of 66 in Florence.

    The circles of hell are described by Alighieri Dante in his Divine Comedy. In the poem, he builds a strict system of the afterlife in the form of 9 circles of hell, not 7. That's why they say it wrong. These are terrible circles of retribution and punished crimes. Circles 1-5 are for intemperate people in all respects, 7 - for rapists, 8-9 - for deceivers, traitors.

    This is most likely due to the variety of sins and the degree and severity of the guilt and the punishment for it, in general there are nine of them, and the main ones that are considered the most serious are seven. You can read more about them from the answers above!

    Dante Alighieri, like Aristotle, has nine circles of hell (in the Divine Comedy). But according to Christian teaching, a person, in order to atone for his sins, in order to get to heaven, must be cleansed by going through exactly the seven circles of hell.

    Since there is still no evidence of the existence of hell, nor even a consensus on this matter among those who believe in it, we can assume that the differences are explained simply different views the authors of these theories, which may have been influenced by accepted beliefs or teachings and his personal views.

    The number 7 is often used to denote completeness, since in the world around us it is often found in this particular perspective, for example, 7 colors of the rainbow or 7 notes. Therefore, when they say that a person has gone through 7 circles of hell, intuitively we understand that he has passed all the difficult tests that are possible.

    There may be 3, 5, 7, or even 9, they correlate with defects and their aggravation in the individual.

    If we proceed from Dante, then there are only nine circles of hell, and the seventh circle contains rapists, but in a broader sense than what is familiar to us. The rapists included rapists against their neighbors and their property (tyrants and robbers), rapists against themselves and their property (suicide gamblers and spendthrifts), rapists against deity and nature (blasphemers, sodomites, covetous people). The eighth circle contained deceivers - namely: seducers, flatterers, all kinds of soothsayers, bribe-takers, hypocrites, thieves, provocateurs and all kinds of swindlers. The ninth contained traitors to relatives, homeland, friends, benefactors and faith.

    From this enumeration it becomes clear that when a person talks about the seven circles of hell, he admits that he led a far from sinless life and even resorted to violence, but still never committed the most terrible sins the eighth and ninth circles - deception of those who trusted and betrayal.

    Sometimes you study human thoughts and wonder how people can come up with so many things; there have been science fiction writers at all times of human life...

    So, here's what the fevered minds came up with:

    1 circle of hell, so to speak, the easy level, there are good non-Christians sitting there, including babies who did not have time to be baptized...

    2nd circle of hell, heavier, there are those who loved to eat well during their lifetime...

    3rd circle of hell intended for those who loved to walk to the left during their lifetime...

    4th circle of hell for those who spent money left and right...

    5th circle of hell for unrestrained people who shout at everyone and swear...

    6th circle of hell for scientists who go against God's laws...

    7th circle of hell for criminals, thieves, robbers, etc.

    8th circle of hell for those who deceived other people and received bribes to enrich themselves...

    9 circle of hell for moral traitors, traitors to the people and the Motherland...

    Hell is a place where sinners serve their punishment.

    In hell, sinners suffer and suffer.

    Hell has nine circles.

    The lower the circle, the more serious the sinners in it. Their sins are more severe.

    The seventh, eighth and ninth circle are still divided into separate parts.

    Below you can see what sins people fall into in one circle or another:

    All world religions contain the idea of ​​hell. But even if it exists, then so far there is not a single dead person who could come back and tell everyone that hell really is.

    We know that Dante in his Divine Comedy described nine circles of hell, but this is just the author’s fiction, reflecting ideas about afterlife, people of that time.

    It was believed that there were 9 circles in hell different categories sinners:

    • At first The circle included infants who did not have time to be baptized, and non-Christians who were distinguished by virtue during their lifetime.
    • In the second Fornicators and adulterers suffered.
    • Third was created for those who indulged in gluttony.
    • On the fourth there were wasteful and stingy sinners.
    • Fifth inhabited by lazy people and those prone to anger.
    • In the sixth Heretics and preachers of false teachings, so hated by the church, languished.
    • In the seventh There were various rapists: tyrants, blasphemers, robbers and tyrants.
    • Eighth the circle was full of deceivers: flatterers, fortune-tellers, thieves, hypocrites, bribe-takers, sorcerers, etc.
    • At nine the last circle were those who betrayed the trust of their parents, homeland, friends, etc.

    In each of these circles, terrible suffering and trials awaited the deceased person. Therefore, about a man who endured a lot in his life path and did not break, they say that he went through seven circles of real hell. This is simply a figurative expression designed to convey the unbearable pain and torment that someone had to go through.

    The answer to this question may be different, depending on who you take as an authority. According to Christianity, there are still 7 circles of hell, but theologians have still not come to a consensus on what this number means. I like the option when the seven circles of hell are the mandatory seven stages of self-improvement that the soul of every person must go through, by analogy with the seven days of creation. These are ways of acquiring knowledge about the nature of things and one's place in the world.

    The Italian writer Dante described in colorful form 9 circles of hell, in each of which sinners fall for strictly defined crimes. This point of view also seems very attractive and seems fair - after all, crimes and torment.

    IN Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri represents hell, which has 9 circles (the last circles are also divided into belts), and the lower the circle, the more serious the sins committed by a person during his lifetime. There are 7 main circles, which is why they say the Seven Circles of Hell.

    Before entering Hell pitiful souls are placed who during their lifetime did neither evil nor good.

    First circle of Hell unbaptized infants, virtuous non-Christians

    II voluptuaries

    III gourmets, gluttons, gluttons

    IV hoarders and spendthrifts

    V lazy and angry

    VI false teachers

    VII tyrants, robbers, suicides, gamblers and spendthrifts, sodomites

    VIII seducers, flatterers, soothsayers, fortune tellers, bribe takers, hypocrites, thieves.

    IX deceived those who trusted them.

    Dante's model of Hell is the same as that of Aristotle, who

    in the 1st circle sins of intemperance

    2 sins of violence

    c 3 sins of deception.

    Dante in the work

    placed intemperate people in circles 2-5

    in the 7th circle - rapists

    in the 8th circle - deceivers

    in the 9th circle - traitors

    The more a sin is connected with a person’s spiritual fall, the more unforgivable it is, and vice versa, the more material the sin, the more forgivable it is. In Catholicism, the most terrible 9-9 is the lower circle of CAIN, which contains those who have encroached on the life of their neighbor.

    And some believe that there are only 12 or even 14 circles of hell.

    Proverb

    Go through the seven circles of hell

    associated with Christian teaching, according to which, in order for a sinful soul to have a chance to go to heaven, it is necessary to go through seven circles of hell, in which to be cleansed of the sins accumulated over life. And the degree of torment during these circles will be comparable to the magnitude of sin.

1 lap. Limbo


The first circle of Hell is Limbo, where the souls of those who have not committed unrighteous acts but died without baptism reside. They are doomed to painless grief. Unbaptized infants of ancient philosophers and poets (Virgil) live in Limbo; Noah, Moses and Abraham were also here - all the righteous men mentioned in the Old Testament - but then they were allowed to ascend to Paradise.

Guardian: Charon.
Punishment: Sorrow without pain.

2nd circle Voluptuousness, lust

At the entrance, travelers are met by King Minos (a fair judge and father of the Minotaur), who distributes souls in circles. Here everything is covered in darkness and a storm is constantly raging - gusts of wind throw the souls of those who were pushed onto the path of sin by love. If you coveted someone else's wife or husband, lived in debauchery - your soul will float restless over the abyss forever.

Guardian: Minos.
Punishment: Torsion and torment by a hurricane, blows of souls against the rocks of the underworld

3 circle. Gluttony

Gluttons are imprisoned in this circle: icy rain always pours here, souls get stuck in dirty slurry, and the demon Cerberus gnaws the prisoners who fall under the clawed paw.

Guardian: Cerberus.
Punishment: Rotting in the rain and hail

4 circle. Greed



The abode of those who “spent and hoarded unworthily,” a gigantic plain on which stand two crowds. Their souls drag huge weights from place to place, and when they collide with each other, they engage in a fierce battle.

Guardian: Plutos.
Punishment: eternal dispute.

5 lap. Anger and boredom (despondency, laziness)

An eternal fight in the dirty swamp of Styx, where the bottom is the bodies of the bored. All circles up to the 5th are a haven for the intemperate, and intemperance is considered a lesser sin than “malice or violent bestiality,” and therefore the suffering of souls there is alleviated compared to those who live in the outer circles.

Guard: Phlegius.
Punishment: eternal fight up to your neck in the swamp.

6th circle For heretics and false teachers

The burning city of Ditus (the Romans called Hades, the god underground kingdom), which is guarded by the Furies sisters with balls of snakes instead of hair. Inescapable sorrow reigns here, and heretics and false teachers rest in open tombs, as if in eternal ovens. The tombstone is open, a fire is burning inside the grave - it heats the walls of the tomb to redness. The transition to the 7th circle is fenced off by a fetid abyss.

Guardians: Furies.
Punishment: Be a ghost in a hot grave.

7th circle For rapists and murderers of all stripes

This circle is divided into three belts.

In the first - rapists against their neighbors and their property (tyrants and robbers), they are destined to boil in a ditch of hot blood.

In the second - rapists against themselves (suicides) and against their property (gamblers and spendthrifts, that is, senseless destroyers of their property). Suicides in the form of trees are tormented by harpies, spendthrifts are driven away by hound dogs.

In the third - rapists against deity (blasphemers), against nature (sodomites) and art (covetous people). They are destined to languish in a barren desert, where fire rains from the sky.

Guardian: Minotaur.

8 circle. For those who deceived and did not trust

The haven of pimps and seducers consists of 10 ditches (Zlopazuchi, Evil Crevices), in the center of which lies the most terrible - the 9th - circle of Hell. Soothsayers, fortune-tellers, witches, bribe-takers, hypocrites, flatterers, thieves, alchemists, false witnesses and counterfeiters are tormented nearby. Priests who traded in church positions fall into this same circle.

Guardian: Geryon.
Punishment: sinners walk in two oncoming streams, scourged by demons, stuck in fetid feces, some of their bodies are chained in rocks, fire flows down their feet. Someone is boiling in the tar, and if he sticks out, the devils stick the hooks. Those clad in lead robes are placed on a red-hot brazier, sinners are gutted and tormented by vermin, leprosy and lichen.

9 circle. Those who deceived those who trusted


In the very center of the Underworld is the icy Lake Cocytus. It's like Viking hell, it's incredibly cold here. Here lie the apostates frozen in the ice, and the main one is Lucifer, the fallen angel. Judas Iscariot (who betrayed Christ), Brutus (who betrayed the trust of Julius Caesar) and Cassius (also a participant in the conspiracy against Caesar) are tormented in the three jaws of Lucifer.

The same fate awaits traitors to relatives, traitors to the homeland and like-minded people, traitors to guests, friends and companions, traitors to benefactors, the majesty of God and man.

Guardians: giants Briareus, Ephialtes, Antaeus.
Punishment: Eternal torment in an icy lake.