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Ascend - The Great Books Podcast
Dante's Inferno Ep. 5: Cantos 18-25 with Noah and Gabriel of CLT
02:17:55
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- [00:00]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Today on Ascend, the Great Books podcast, we continue our journey through Dante's Inferno by exploring the first seven pits of the eighth circle of Hell, punishing those souls guilty of simple fraud. Amongst these, we will see seducers, flatterers, simonists, sorcerers, and many other sinners, and even run into some old friends like Jason and Tiresias to guide us through our foray into fraud. We are joined by Noah and Gabriel from the classic Learning Test. I greatly enjoyed talking to these guys, and I'm a big fan of the CLT and their tremendous work in restoring education in America. We'll discuss why flattery is in a deeper part of hell than murder or suicide, why Virgil wants people to know he's not a sorcerer, and why lying is contraceptive speech, a speech that denies the mind the fecundity of truth. I love hearing from you all on our Patreon or X account. Please comment and let us know if you're enjoying the podcast. And I hope you'll join us for another excellent conversation on Dante's Inferno. Welcome to Ascend, the Great Books Podcast. My name is Deacon Harrison Garlick. I'm a husband, father of five, and serve as chancellor and general counsel for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa. We are recording on a beautiful evening here in rural Oklahoma. If you're new to Ascend, we're a weekly podcast that helps guide you through the great books. We have a whole series to help you read the Iliad, the Odyssey, Aeschylus, Oresteia, with more Greek plays and even Plato on the docket. After we finish Dante's Inferno, you can check us out on Twitter, X, YouTube, Facebook and Patreon. We appreciate all of our supporters. You can also visit thegreatbookspodcast.com where we have written guides to help you read the great books, including a reader's guide to Dante's Inferno that is incredibly helpful for you or for your small group. Today we have our fifth episode on Dante's Inferno in our covering the first seven pits of the eighth circle in hell, those condemned for simple fraud found in Cantos 18 through 25. To help guide us through the eighth circle, we are joined by two distinguished guests from the classic learning test, Mr. Noah Tyler, who serves as the CFO for CLT. Noah, how are you doing this evening?
- [02:29]
Noah Tyler
Doing great. Thanks for having me.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, no, thank you for being here. And Mr. Gabriel Blanchard, a staff writer for CLT. Gabriel, how are you doing?
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Gabriel Blanchard
Doing all right, thank you. How are you?
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Doing well, all right. So, Noah, maybe just kind of tee us up a Little bit. Like, what is the classic learning test?
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Noah Tyler
Absolutely. So the. The classic learning test is a test of reading and writing and mathematics. So not so dissimilar from the SAT that people are so familiar with, but rooted in the classics. So you'd see someone like Dante as a text used for reading comprehension, or Dickens used for grammatical corrections. And the math tends to be richer, deeper, allow you to use reasoning concepts and combine different skills and show different abilities. So there was a need for a new test, and we decided we would create this test to help drive curriculum and reinforce the best educational models out there.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. No, that's wonderful. Yeah. So it's like the SAT or act, but it's better, right?
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Noah Tyler
But it's better. Yeah, but it's better.
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Gabriel Blanchard
It's much better.
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Noah Tyler
Colleges and all the right kinds of colleges, including University of Dallas and Hillsdale and Grove City, accept the test for admissions alongside of the other tests. And we're growing all the time. A lot of exciting scholarships that were being added to, including in your state of Oklahoma. So big things on the horizon.
- [03:54]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, good things are coming to Oklahoma. I believe you also have tests for, like, elementary school kids. Right. So, like, if you're going through certain grades as they matriculate, they can take certain tests according to, like, the classical education. Right.
- [04:06]
Noah Tyler
Brand new in the last year. Yeah. So third through through eighth now is our lower grade suite of assessments. And those are beautiful. I mean, they're not going to be Dante. They're going to be more like Winnie the Pooh or Beatrix Potter. Some of the classic texts for children.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. Not very good. You don't have your fifth grade test being on the eighth circle of hell.
- [04:26]
Noah Tyler
No, no, no. Hegel or Kant on those third grade tests.
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Gabriel Blanchard
They will go directly from the fifth grade test to the eighth circle of hell. Like that. That is how we planned those exams.
- [04:35]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
That's good. No, that's very good. So, Gabriel, tell me a little bit, like, about your role at CLT as, like, a staff writer.
- [04:42]
Gabriel Blanchard
For the most part. I run our blog, which we have been doing some series on sort of a crash course in the liberal arts for those who didn't get to have a liberal arts education. At least something sort of introductory and point you in the right direction. So, like, we had a series on sophistries. We did one on going through logic, like, all the way down to how does the square of opposition work, how do disjunctives work, all that kind of thing, and recently started a series on rhetoric. This is after we did two Gigantic Series one, profiling all of the authors on our author bank, which is from. Who's the most recent that we have now? Elie Wiesel. I think from him all the way back to the Epic of Gilgamesh. And also a series on the great ideas borrowed largely from Mortimer Adler's Syntopicon, if you're familiar with the Great Books of the Western World set, that's sort of the not reference index, but idea index to that series.
- [05:53]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
So, yeah, that book actually almost makes that whole series worth it. That's an excellent, excellent resource. Also, it's been a long time since I have thought about the square of opposition. And really thinking right now whether I could actually do it or not, I might need to kind of refresh myself a little bit. We should probably also mention Jeremy Tate. So if people are on X, go follow Jeremy Tate. And he is the president of clt, CEO, something like that.
- [06:20]
Gabriel Blanchard
Great Con.
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Noah Tyler
Founder.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Founder, yes, all the titles. Yeah. So he's a great follow on X. If you're not following already, go, please check him out. And we've also had, I should mention, Dr. Jennifer Frey and Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson, who are already on the podcast to explain Dante's Inferno, are also on the advisory board for clt, along with myself. I was added only a little, maybe a few weeks ago, actually. And so, yeah, so we're here to help. Help promote the CLT cause however we can.
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Noah Tyler
Fantastic. Glad you're on the board. You belong there.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Thanks. I know. I appreciate it. All right, let's talk about Dante. So maybe Noah, just as like a preliminary, like, how did you come to love Dante? How'd you come to love the Dante's Inferno?
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Noah Tyler
It's actually a fun story. I went to a small rural high school where there were no great books. And the social studies professor took one class period and just wrote names on the board of great thinkers we should just be cursorily familiar with. And so that was my first encounter of like, there's a guy named Dante, Divine Comedy. It wasn't funny. Moving on. You know, then I went to it. It's also actually funny. Then I went to Grove City College, where they have a very strong core curriculum. Even the. The frat boys and the football players have to take civil Civ lit, civilization, literature. And we read the Inferno there. And I was absolutely taken with poetry and the story, the relationship between Dante and Virgil, the moral theology, the history, all of it. And then ended up in an Anglo Catholic church with Gabriel. And we did a reading group where we did three cantos per month. So extremely slow trek through all of the books of the Divine Comedy. Then we took a year off and did Flannery O'Connor and then went back to Dante and did it again. So. And then with the new translation out by Michael Palma, I got it for Christmas and started digging it again. And so just love the multi dimensional aspects of Dante.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
I love that there's people like you that will cover only a few cantos a month because it makes me feel a lot better about the slow pace of my own reading groups where I always feel like I'm dragging everyone down. I'm like, no, we can read Homer. It will take six months just to read the Iliad. So now I really enjoy that because I'm going to use that when they're like, why are we taking 10 months to read the Republic? Like, listen, I know a guy in their group only read like three cantos a month. So not. No, I actually really appreciate knowing that exists. Gabriel, what about yourself? How did you come to love Dante?
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Gabriel Blanchard
I went to a tiny, tiny classical school for high school. It actually only opened a few years ago. I wound up being part of the first graduating class and they were really big on sort of a great books education. And the Inferno was one of the things that we read When I was In, I think, 10th grade there, I fell in love, despite the fact that I was a hardcore bratisnch at the time. I went out and bought a copy of Purgatorio, fell in love with that Dante wound up being like part of my conversion to Roman Catholicism. And it was just. I have rarely found another author as profound, both artistically and spiritually at the same time. And that was before I found out about Charles Williams.
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Noah Tyler
Can I give a brief digression just while we're on the topic of Introduction to Dante?
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Of course.
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Noah Tyler
Heard a lecture by Anthony Esselin on the Vita Nuova, his earlier work, and had never read it until. There's also a new translation of that out by Joseph Luzi. And so I picked that up for. For Christmas as well and read that and was profoundly disappointed.
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Gabriel Blanchard
It was not really different.
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Noah Tyler
It was not what I expected at all.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Oh, did you think it was gonna be like the Comedy?
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Noah Tyler
Not like the Comedy, but I thought maybe a lot more narrative. It's like one third some narrative random stuff he did as a, you know, kind of a weird teenager, and then one third of explaining the poem he's about to write, and then one third of the poem he's gonna write about his long Lost love or something. It's just like. I found it very odd, you know, it's still good poetry. It's still interesting if you love Dante. But I think I'm sticking with the comedy myself.
- [10:51]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, There's. There's no one walking around with their head twisted on backwards or anything like that. Nothing fun.
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Noah Tyler
I was, like, looking between the lines for that.
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Gabriel Blanchard
To be fair, that does run out fast in Inferno.
- [11:03]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. I will say on his. On his earlier poetry, I think the. I think one of the main lessons I would pull from that pull into the Inferno would be that obviously he's writing that courtly love poetry, but I think his poems that he did earlier, I think are probably the best insight on how to understand Beatrice. Because as you probably noticed in the poem that he has in there, he's praising Beatrice. She's like his muse. He's praising her. But then he'll say things like, and then your beauty led me to him. He switches the pronouns. And he has this interesting idea that, like, you know, Beatrice can. In my own words, Beatrice can really be an icon of God. Right. Her beauty is actually an invitation for his soul to contemplate God. And that's. That's a. It's in the ancients, obviously. It's very Platonic, but it's also in the early church fathers, St. John, Climacus and his Ladder of Divine Ascent will praise the monk that can see a woman and glorify God her creator, because of her beauty. Right. And he says it's a very rare thing that that can happen. And so I think it's really interesting because those poems that you mentioned do give kind of an insight. Unfortunately, Beatrice doesn't play a huge role in the Inferno, but as you kind of move on, I think, too. But she throws us for a loop because it's like, well, she's not his wife. Like, who is she? Like, what's she doing? And I think that that's one of the best ways to see her, and those poems are somewhat exemplary of that, is she really becomes an icon of God's beauty. Right. Her own beauty is. And it's an invitation for the soul to ascend. It's an invitation for the soul to go up. And this is one of the things that, if you've read the whole comedy, which I know both of you guys have, but maybe a lot of our listeners haven't, is that at some point, like, Dante's own love is going to have to transition. Can Dante's love transition from Beatrice to God? Is he Actually making this journey because of Beatrice, like, because he wants to see her or because he wants to see God. And that's part of his, like, maturation process. But I think that those poems are really good. And if you actually, if you guys have those who are listening, if you picked up the Esalen translation, the follow along, going by memory, I think Esalen has some of that poetry in his appendices, so you can kind of see that play. So, yeah, that's a good mention because I think that actually haunts the text a certain way.
- [13:15]
Noah Tyler
Well, I think he. He goes from. In the very first, you know, in the first Cantos, he goes from just terror, like, he's not really looking to get to Beatrice, he's just terrified. And then he latches on to Virgil and it's a slow kind of drawing up. It comes from. It comes from a very earthly, you.
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Gabriel Blanchard
Know, level recovery of his humanity because he's almost lost that when he's in the dark wood.
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Noah Tyler
Yeah. But by this point, he's got a lot of security. By the point we're picking up, he and Virgil are tight, you know, like, they're kind of cheering each other on in some ways, laughing at each other. And it's kind of fun to watch their.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Their maturity, you know, I think Dante the pilgrim might have matured a bit by this point. Right. Like, he's trying to find his courage. That's another thing he's trying to find. We're trying to see if his pity. Right. His will.
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Noah Tyler
Say again, he's fainting a lot less than he was.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Right. He's grown up. Right. He's fainting a lot less. I think we actually see the last time that he cries and weeps is actually in this section. Yeah, he is maturing. Right. This is something that we're watching, particularly his first time readers. We're watching his pity. Does his pity align with the divine will? You know, is he pitting people? Does he understand why they're there? We saw him earlier, I think, really kind of get taken by Francesca, you know, is that starting to mature a bit? Is his will harmonizing with God? And these are kind of some of the things that we've been talking about as we've kind of moved through the Inferno under the understanding that Dante the pilgrim, in a lot of ways, really is an analog to us. We are the pilgrim. We're the one that actually has to grow and mature as we kind of go on this journey with him.
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Gabriel Blanchard
The moral level of the allegory.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Okay, all right, well, let's jump into the text. Then let's look at Canto 18. So maybe let's give like a little sketch about where. Where are we in hell? Right. Where are we in the inferno? And so maybe I'll give, like, a little mapping and then maybe if you guys have something to add. So mainly we've been tracking that, you know, hell has like two major parts. So we've got Upper Hell, which is the sins of incontinence. So this is. These are things like lust. These are things that. There's a good, and you have a disordered appetite towards that good. So we had. We had lust, we had wealth would have been another one. Food would have been another, even anger.
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Noah Tyler
Right.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
We saw wrath, these types of things. So that's Upper Hell. Lower Hell is characterized by malice. And so then it's broken into two separate categories. And so we see violence. And then at the very pit of hell, where we are now, the 8th and 9th circle, it's fraud. And so then what's the distinction, I guess, between 8 and 9, if they're both in the broader category of fraud, like, what do we make this? Well, I don't know what other translators say. Eslint. I think it's eslint. Or maybe Musa calls this simple fraud. Right. Simple nine is going to be complex, and we're going to have to have some examples to kind of show us what does that mean? Like, what's the actual juxtaposition that's being shown there? But in eighth, what we're going to see is fraud. It's going to be simple, but it's going to be malicious. We're going to have to kind of keep that in mind, because I think we're going to see a few sins here that we're like, really? That's worse than being Attila the Hun. Like, to do this. And I think we kind of have to take a step back. We also tracked with, like, the animals. So in Kanto 1, you know, we saw the she wolf was kind of the incontinence, the lion was violent. And now we're finally down to the leopard to fraud.
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Noah Tyler
Cross down on Geryon. Right. And as a symbol of fraud, an animal of sorts with a. A friendly face and a scorpion's tail.
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Gabriel Blanchard
Like a manticore?
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, like a manticore. Yeah, yeah. No, very good. Yeah. So that's kind of where we are, like, in the broad overall journey. So let's get into the text. Canto 18, the 8th circle, the fraudulent.
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Noah Tyler
Maybe add to the context There. That there's. There's plenty of counterintuitive. Like many people in the Christian setting would say, well, obviously lust is the worst. You know, so we're already inverting a lot of people's inclinations when they look at sins in the world. But I think when we get into fraud, we're talking about calculating and reasoning as one of the highest functions of man. And when that highest function is perverted, that in some ways is. Or that in many ways is worse or the. The worst deviation from the highest gift that God has given. Or let's. That. That's how I understand the entire. Whether it's simple or complex, why fraud is at the. The bottom of the pit.
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Gabriel Blanchard
There's a. I don't know exactly where it comes from, but I know that there is a saying in Latin that corruptio optimi pessima, the corruption of the best is the worst. And since fraud is specifically a sin that involves not just the animal part of humanity, but its intellect, that is what makes it worst in Dante's eyes.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, no, very good. Yeah, that's a good ad. Yeah. You can think of Lucifer, right? So the highest angel becomes the greatest demon. Yeah, no, that. That's my understanding of it as well, that basically fraud is a corruption of the intellect. And so we're rational animals. And so this is a particularly human sin. So we have the gift, the imago dei, we have the image of God in us. We have this intellect, which is really an invitation for us to know and love God. And we can corrupt that. And I think. No, I think that's great because again, as we kind of work through this, we're going to see sins that we're like, why are these. Do we really think these are so bad? Right. And so we have to kind of understand what's the. What's the context here. I think with lust, too, one of the things we mentioned in the previous episode is you have to make distinctions between why is a sin bad? So is it bad in of its nature or is it bad because of its, like, severity in the culture? And so Dante saying lust is at the top doesn't necessarily mean that it can't be severe insofar as how common it is. So, like, I think of, like our lady of Fatima, you know, we'll talk about that. More sins or more sinners go to hell for. For lust than any other sin. So it might be at the top of the inferno, but you still go to hell for it, which is overall a negative.
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Noah Tyler
Well, one of the I mean, we're trying to. We're going to get into our actual circles, but one of the most remarkable things in the whole inferno is the people chased by bees and that the numerous. Like, they're not even worthy of any circles of hell. They didn't even make the cut, but they're still in hell. And. And they're uncountable. Like, they are the lukewarm ones that were spit out of God's mouth. And then they. They. They don't. They don't even. Dignified by a particular, you know, particular category.
- [19:51]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, it's particularly a modern sin, if that makes sense. Like, it's almost that. That sin of being like the lukewarm, the milquetoast, they stood for nothing. They march after the banner, et cetera. Tends to be like a particular modern sin, and one that we would even. I think Dr. Frey talked about this when she was on. One that we would even praise. Like, they're. They're kind of agnostic. They're not, you know, they're not too into anything. Like, do whatever you want to. Just don't be overly into it. Don't be zealous. And so, like everything that we typically praise in our culture, that one particular vestibule of hell where they're all marking. Excuse me, marching like that tends to be like something that we actually would praise as almost like a virtue. So now, I love that part. He also. It's Dante's invention, but he also mentions angels in there. There were angels that could not decide either between following God or not. And so they're all marching now behind a spanner with bees and wasps and all kinds of things.
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Gabriel Blanchard
So.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, that's very good. Yeah. So let's look at the eighth circle. So the eighth circle has an interesting structure that we should probably talk about. So we're expecting to see simple fraud, but then it has these. My understanding is that it has 10 pockets, ditches, whatever you want to call them, ravines in this. So you kind of see. And I think, you know, one thing that people talk about is, you know, Dante flew down right on Grayon. And so he. He actually got kind of an aerial view of how this works. And so the eighth circle has these 10 ditches, and in each ditch we will see then a different species of simple fraud. Okay, so the first one that we're going to run into, Right. What sin is punished in this kind of like, first ditch is we have the seducers and the panderers. So we have those who seduced people. That makes More sense. But then, like the panderers, this is like a. Like a pimp, right? One that actually puts someone out to do this sin. So why are these like, why. How are these so bad? Why are these down here in the eighth circle?
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Gabriel Blanchard
The idea of seduction does seem to contain in it, like there's a suggestion that this is different from fornication, that there's an idea of being led on and as it were, or. Or of being deceived. And certainly in the idea of pandering, there's an idea. Terrible sentence. Anyway, certainly in the concept of pandering, there is an active involvement of the intellect that is required. That is something more and other than just a failure of self discipline. I am struck by the fact that the Malbough of the panderers has a sort of foreshadowing all the way back up with Paolo and Francesca, because she specifically mentions the book that the two of them were reading when they lost control and that it was specifically named for Galliot or Galahalt, who is a character in Arthurian myth, who in some versions of the story was the go between of Lancelot and Guinevere. So even though their sin was not this sin, it's already hinting at what lies beneath them.
- [23:17]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, that's interesting because in that example that he gives back up in lust, that's a really good distinction because he does kind of stress through Francesca's story that it was almost equal. Right. One didn't seduce the other, they were both reading this book and et cetera. So, no, that's a good distinction because here we have someone who has corrupted their intellect. They've put it at the purpose of seducing another. And so, yeah, usually, obviously for some type of sexual gain, but it doesn't fall into lust, it falls into a type of fraud because of. It's a corruption of the intellect. I think that's a good distinction.
- [23:52]
Noah Tyler
Yeah, it's a crime of passion versus a calculating crime. And so if you're seducing, you're setting out to. To know, you set up the rose petals on the bed and whatever, and you go out and you say fine words and lure them in. And like from the Proverbs, where the simple man, you know, is led in like a. Like a fish on a hook, and the seductress gets him.
- [24:15]
Gabriel Blanchard
Which does make Jason a very good example because, I mean, if there's anything that you could say about the myth of Jason and Medea, it's that while it was not a virtuous love as she went on to prove to great excess, like she was absolutely captivated by Jason, like, that is the point of the story, that she was genuinely in love with him and he was not in love with her.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
So can you just, for those who might not be familiar with Jason, can you just give like the, the quick summary of his story?
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Gabriel Blanchard
Yes. So about a generation before the Trojan War, Jason and the Argonauts go to Colchis, which is supposed to be roughly in the modern day state of Georgia, country state, not U.S. state. And the reason that they're going there is quest of the Golden Fleece. I forget why it's important, but you know, it's gold. Everybody wants that. And the way that he obtained it was with the help of the king of Colchos's daughter, Medea, who was a very powerful witch actually related to Circe. And so she aided Jason in getting the fleece and fled with him when they left to take it back to Greece. And he said that he was going to make marry her and then very much didn't married someone else. Now a lot of people feel that Medea's response of killing not only his actual bride, but the two sons that she and Jason had was tacky. I tend to agree with this. But, you know, Jason was wrong too.
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Noah Tyler
Which, yeah, puts him in this circle.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
I think it's interesting too to kind of look at then how Dante judges the pagans because obviously all the pagans are going to fall short of Christian virtue. But then some pagans, right. So some, but some pagans he judges to have done, you know, well. So like, obviously we had in limbo, you know, I think Hector was there. We also had, obviously we had the philosophers, but you also had, you know, obviously some Muslims as well. So it's interesting too because I think one of the themes that we've been tracking through all this is Dante's soteriology, right. Who, who is saved. And while we've very kind of painfully parsed out that Dante's text is not a treatise on eschatology. Right. He's not here to tell us who is and is not in hell. That's why he can add these mythological characters and do things like this, even the popes, we'll see that here in a few minutes.
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Noah Tyler
He's at least forcing you to think about what sorts of people should be in hell.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I think it's, it's interesting, it's interesting on the, on the pagan side to then see how he makes certain judgments and how he judges them in the Tradition. So you have like a pagan hero.
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Gabriel Blanchard
Like, if some. If they knew better, then that is to them a sin along the same lines as St. Paul. And if their code did not condemn something, as for instance, the Roman code did not necessarily condemn suicide before Christ. And, you know, we meet Cato, not even here in the Inferno, but in Purgatorio.
- [27:39]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. Pagan suicide is the first person I meet in Purgatory. Yeah. So I think it's just a good thing for us to be tracking is how. How does he actually play out the salvation? And I like that, too, is like, was. Was the act wrong that they did not just simply according to natural law or according later to Revelation, but was it wrong that they knew it was wrong? Was it wrong to them when they did it? I think that's a. I think that's a good distinction to move forward on.
- [28:03]
Noah Tyler
I wonder if if heresy or like some. Some sort of heretical position or. Or divisiveness in the church wouldn't be akin to seduction in some way that you're. You're luring people out of the true church and yet that the heretics are not as deep in hell, Right.
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Gabriel Blanchard
No, the circle of the heretics is the sixth, but I think the difference is the ones who are punished in the sixth circle are those who were heretics, as opposed to being heresy arcs, people who preached heresy. Yeah, That, I think, is going to be the difference between the heretics in the sixth circle and the source of discord in the eighth, who are even deeper than anything we're going to be looking at.
- [28:52]
Noah Tyler
Right, Right.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, very good. What about the contrapasso? So we've been talking about contrapassos on the, on the podcast. How is the. How is the punishment here of each ditch within the eighth circle tailored to the particular sin? What's the contrapasso here?
- [29:08]
Noah Tyler
Have we, have we described what's happening in this first ditch?
- [29:11]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, we've just described. We've just described the. Who is here. Right. And that he sees Jason. But yeah, the contrapasso, then, is the introduction to, you know, what's actually happening in this ditch. Right. What is it that is actually happening to the sinners?
- [29:24]
Noah Tyler
So this is the two lines of. Of people walking in opposite directions and they're being whipped. Like, if they, if they slow down a little bit, they get whipped and they don't wait for a second or third whip, they pick up their heels and. And keep going on and they're. Since they're walking in a circle, I mean, it's just fun. The Way that he describes, like the Romans when they cross the bridge, you know, like the outside has to walk with a little bit longer steps. You know, some of the little descriptions are. Are kind of comical and fun in. In light of the fact that these people are. Are suffering. They're totally naked and they. So there's no real, real protection and they just for. For all eternity, just marching in circles. Yeah.
- [30:09]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
What do you. So that Dante, as we kind of just explained, right, he's not kind of writing a treatise on eschatology. Dante is a teacher. And so he's trying to teach us, I think, primarily about human desire, about the human soul, vice and virtue, these types of things. And so each contrappasso is supposed to be pedagogical. So for instance, in lust we saw that they're blown about by the winds, which really confused me when I first read this. But then you say, oh, well, that's because that's how they treated their soul, right? They allowed their soul to be blown about by the passions. You say the same thing with the gluttonous right there. Sin. It's very kind of like pig, horse, scene, scene. They're wallowing in the muck and that's how they treated their soul. They had like an irrational desire for food. Cerberus is like eating the slime that they're lying in. What's the pedagogy here with the whips, though? I was thinking about this because it wasn't immediately clear to me. You know, a few things that did occur to me was one, I think Dante throughout the eighth circle, we'll see in different places, plays with imagery of the tongue, right? Because that's one of the things that speech, the corrupted speech, is a big part of this. So if the intellect is an appetite that wants to satiate on truth, and so its purpose is to find truth. The purpose of our speech is to communicate truth. We don't think about our speech as a telos. Our speech has a purpose, and so it's there to communicate truth. And so we see then that a lie is contrary. It's not just like bad, it's actually a corruption and contrary to the very nature of speech itself. And you know, in Christianity, we don't really have a noble lie. We don't really have like a good lie, right? We have justified murder. You can defend yourself. We have these kind of things. There are certain things we have, you know, that things can be justified. We have no justified lie. And I think that one reason, going back to what we have, Rahab In James, we do have. We do have Rahab in St. Thomas.
- [32:11]
Gabriel Blanchard
Save someone's life rather than to seduce someone, which are fairly different.
- [32:16]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, yeah, she is. She also is in a lineage of Christ. Right, yeah. Saint. Maybe not take us too far afield, but, yeah, Saint Thomas Aquinas has to do a lot of work on Rahab and Abraham. And there's another example in the Old Testament too, which he has to give some examples of how those are contextualized. But broadly speaking, right. And I think one way, Noah, going back to your point on why then is fraud so bad? Is not only is it a corruption of our particular intellect, which is the gift, but it's also an act that is actually very antichrist. Right. Because Christ is the way, the truth and the life. He is the Logos. He actually is kind of the ordering principle of reality itself. He is truth. And so to lie, then. Right. Sometimes we talk. We talk about him too. In the beginning of John is the eternal word, the word that gives structure, that gives reality, that gives truth to things. So to lie is a very antichrist act. And so it just kind of goes back to your point about why is fraud down here in such a low section of hell and it's severity. And I think that's one of the reasons too, because even from a, you know, the. You could say that the corruption of the intellect is a natural argument. The it being kind of an antichrist act is a very supernatural argument. And so you'll see imagery here with, like, tongues. And so one thing of the whipping on the like, again, going back to the pedagogy on the contrapasso is one is of that the whips are like the damaging of the tongues. Right? They're being. They're being whipped. You know, another thing I think that's. There is particularly, maybe not so much on the seducers, but particularly on the panderers that kind of pushed people right into situations. They pushed people. So you have the whips coming in. There's some imagery there. But any. Any thoughts, like, on this? Because sometimes the contrapostos are very clear. This one, I felt like I had to kind of stop and I mean, obviously it's bad to be whipped by demons. We can. That's a. That's a given. We can say that's a given. But trying to figure out, like, what's the pedagogy there? Like, how's it tailor into the sin wasn't immediately apparent to me.
- [34:20]
Noah Tyler
My bigger connection was on the nakedness that they've got nothing to cover Themselves with that, they used all of their smoothness and their lies and their words to kind of create a Persona and to create a perception and to deceive, and all of that is stripped bare. And they've got no way to defend themselves. So the whipping is just the whipping, but the nakedness is the real punishment that they cannot escape the stings of the whips because they've been stripped of what they're accustomed to or what they had become accustomed to.
- [34:51]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, that's good. I guess my default, I mean, just kind of maybe pushing into my own imagination, I guess my default was, is that they were all naked in the Inferno. But maybe that's not accurate. Maybe it's only when it's mentioned that they're naked.
- [35:07]
Noah Tyler
Are Paulo and Francesca naked?
- [35:10]
Gabriel Blanchard
I do not recall that. It was still seated. Either way.
- [35:14]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. So one thing, I mean, either way, Noah, what I would lean into is why is their nakedness mentioned here? So even if. Even if all the souls. Right. Are. Are naked, because I don't quite remember. Well, actually, we're going to have one here that has, like, a cloak, but that's, you know, that's an outlier. Even if they are, then I think pedagogically, you ask, well, why is Dante the poet, mentioning the nakedness again? Right. I think that would be a flag then, to kind of go into what.
- [35:43]
Noah Tyler
You mentioned in the depths.
- [35:45]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Right. All right, very good. Any other thoughts on. On the first ditch? All right, let's look at the second one. This is the one, I think, that really throws people for a loop. We've already kind of done a kind of a foretaste of it because we've kind of used it as an example. But we get into the second ditch, and who do we find here but the flatterers. The flatterers. People that engage in flattery. So you're telling me to go back to our earlier point that people who engage in flattery commit a more vile sin than, say, you know, people that are wrathful, people who engage in sexual immorality than tyrants, Attila the Hun suicides. I mean, think of all the people that we've had so far, people who flatter each other. I mean, what's going on here? What is Dante's intent here, I think.
- [36:36]
Gabriel Blanchard
Is one of the places where Charles Williams really shines. And he may have come up in the show before, but even if he has, I'm gonna plug him again. Charles Williams, the figure of Beatrice. Some of the best commentary I have ever read on any Book, absolutely fantastic. But one of the points that he makes, because he made a particular study of what he calls the romantic theology of Dante, and it shows up in Williams's own poetry as well. He makes the point that Tes, in particular, the prostitute who's mentioned here, she adopts the language of love, of romantic love, to stroke the ego of this customer. And when, as Dante does and as Williams does, when you approach love in the first place as a way of the soul, that is a kind of sacrilege. It is taking something that could have been real and making it fake. It's BSing.
- [37:52]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, that's interesting, because this really caught. I mean, this really caught my attention the first time I read the Inferno, like, really just threw me for a loop. And then this really is what led me then into understanding the distinction between incontinence and malice. Okay, great. But then also, I think, kind of going back to Noah's point of understanding, a natural standpoint, the corruption of the intellect, you know, the corruption of the highest, you know, ends up being the lowest. And so. But I think, too, just on flattery itself, I think one distinction we should make is that this is flattery done with malice, right? So it is an intention to deceive. So this is not just like a kind word you say to someone, Christmas.
- [38:31]
Noah Tyler
Party where you say, nice dress, but it's a terrible dress.
- [38:33]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Right, exactly. It's like, well, you're going to the eighth circle, bud. Sorry. Right. Like, you. You know, these are. I mean, I don't know, maybe they're, you know, white lies. Or we. We say things like this in polite society. These, like flattering. I want to make a big distinction that I don't think that's what Dante means, because it has to be one with malice, right? It has to be one where you're actually intending to deceive, I think, you know, to kind of leaning back into the purpose of speech. So another way to look at this, maybe to use a term, is that lying is contraceptive speech. Like, lying is a type of speech that has been contracepted from its actually per. Its actual purpose. Right? So when I communicate with words, hopefully what's happening is there's a certain fecundity that I'm sharing an idea with you, right? I'm trying to share an idea which hopefully is true, and then your mind can actually receive that and digest it, Right? And then hopefully there's something that happens there that you've actually received this idea. So when we lie, we have to understand that it creates an artificial reality in the recipient. So your words are supposed to be. The fecundity of your words is supposed to be truth. It's supposed to be reality. You're actually helping your neighbor's mind conform to reality, right? That's our working definition of truth. Truth is the conformity of the mind to reality. So you're trying to help your neighbor's mind, right? Like, conform to truth. Like tonight, you guys are trying to help me understand the inferno. But when you lie, you. You basically help your neighbor's mind conform to an artificiality, to something that's not real. And I think that flattery, then, in that context, particularly seen in a malicious context, can really be insanely damaging. And actually, I think one of the. One of the things, too, that I think maybe might not be mentioned enough is the concept of mutual flattery. And what I mean by that is, like, you know, you're doing a good job. Don't let anyone tell you that you don't. You know, you can't do better. You know, don't. Don't let anyone speak down to you. Don't. And then you're like, oh, you know what? You're also doing a great job. I also like what you're doing. And, like, we actually create these cultures of incompetency based off this type of, like, flattery. And that one's a little different because, like, what's the malice there? But it's actually, like, towards yourself. Like, you understand that if you flatter this person, there's a certain benefit that you receive back. And then if there's a mutual flattery, it creates these artificial realities that can actually kind of envelop entire communities. And then when that happens is they become incompetent, they collapse. You know, no one could ever have seen this coming. Well, yes, everyone saw this coming, right? Except those that were kind of inside it. So I think that flattery, you know, maybe I'm just trying to carry water for Dante here, but I do think, you know, I do think that flattery can be very malicious and can really take people off guard, divorce their minds from reality, and then cause a lot of damage.
- [41:23]
Noah Tyler
There's somebody that's on our. Also on our academic board at clt, Lexi Hudson, who, you know, her experience working in the government, briefly. She reflects on this in. In her book, and it was just lots of flattery. Washington D.C. is like a city built on flattery. That's all. That's what they do there. It's the business they're in. We work with some people who are in the. The friends business. And I'm like, oof, the friends business. That phrase just grates me. The wrong.
- [41:53]
Gabriel Blanchard
That is very uncomfortable.
- [41:55]
Noah Tyler
But if you're in D.C. i don't know if you've read Atlas Drug, but, you know, there you got to have your man in Washington. You know, you gotta have, you know, and. And the businessman trying to work on honest business is like, I don't need a man in Washington. And he learns that he needs a man in Washington. Like, if you don't have the, the flattery engine going, you're not able to grease the wheels and get the things that you need. So it's a dark world and I feel like it's a lot of what happens in, in D.C. that's going to end up in this particular circle.
- [42:26]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
That's good.
- [42:27]
Noah Tyler
I also just riffing on what you're saying, Deacon Garlic Gabriel also got me to read Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem. And, you know, so my mind is just turning on how, you know, how does an entire society flip into Holocaust mode without realizing it? They just like boiled their own frog somehow. And a lot of it did have to do with language. They had language rules. You can't, you can't call it extermination, liquidation. You can't even call it that. You know, we're going to call it, you know, resettlement, quote, unquote, resettlement. And then, you know, these, these countries that we've taken over, they'll give up their Jews for resettlement rate, let's call it that. You know, and even at the trial, like, well, gassing is just a medical act, you know, just the distortion of words, you know, where, oh, if it's just a medical act, euthanasia, no big deal. It's just a medical act. We lie to ourselves and we create, you know, evil, evil cultures that truly belong in the deepest possible imaginable pit of hell by distorting our language.
- [43:28]
Gabriel Blanchard
It is, I think, true that there are people who are honestly deceived, but I think most of us, a lot of the time, the issue is much more that we could know the truth if we wanted to, but it would take a lot of work and cost our ego a lot.
- [43:48]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I like that. That kind of goes in that mutual. That kind of goes into that mutual flattery, Right? Like, I know I'm benefiting from this in a certain way, I think too. Noah, going back to your point, you know, obviously the mind moves from grammar to logic to rhetoric, right? Yet we have to understand our terms and then how to apply them, and then we can talk about them. And so I think that it is pretty standard that we're seeing that, you know, if. If they want to change, right, the proverbial day, if they want to change our logic, the first thing they do is they change our grammar. And so they. We start gutting. You see this in our culture, right? We start gutting words of their meaning, and then later, you know, you do that for a few years, and you throw out logical arguments that never would have survived, you know, a decade ago. And now they just all of a sudden make sense to everyone. Well, how do they make sense? Well, because the words have changed. So you just take, like, love. Like, love is love. Well, that doesn't mean anything. But we get so used to hearing that that love basically has no boundaries. It actually has no nature. It has no actual characteristics or infrastructure to it. Then you're like, well, is this love? Is that love? Like, then you lose your capacity to make distinctions. So when love has to be applied, logically speaking, like, it doesn't mean anything, therefore, it can apply to everything. No, I think the way that we change this, and you can give a thousand examples of all the terms in our culture that a lot of money has been poured into to try and change the grammar. And the reason they do that is because it will naturally change the logic. If you come out with the logical arguments first without changing the grammar, no one will follow you. So you kind of got to erode this to a certain degree. So, no, I think it's a great example.
- [45:25]
Noah Tyler
I missed 1984 in high school, but I just read it in the last couple of months. And it's a lot about rewriting the dictionary. I mean, there's a major subplot the whole time of getting this dictionary rewritten.
- [45:38]
Gabriel Blanchard
Brave new world's better. Just saying.
- [45:40]
Noah Tyler
I know, I know. I'll get that next. I want to knit us across the ditches, though, in some way, and keep on the theme of calculation, because I think that that's one of the keys to the whole. The ten ditches. Um, and we've got the seducers who are. Who are calculating a seduction to get. And we've got. On the other side, we've got graft and grift and. And theft all coming. And they're stealing. They're. They're. They're using their creative gifts to grab something for themselves in a very calculating way. And I think that if we put flattery mostly in that context of. I knew I'm going to do a hostile takeover of your business. And so I'm going to flatter you and butter you up and take you out to wine and make you, you know, and then I'm going to like, stab you in the back. You know, that's the kind of like, whoa, that is some bad flattery. That's, you know, very, very intentional. We didn't slide into that as a habit. We dreamed that up and hatched a plan and ambushed, you know, using this flattery technique.
- [46:45]
Gabriel Blanchard
It's premeditated.
- [46:46]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Well, maybe we'll take that as a jumping point into canto 19. So looking at the. The eighth circle, and we get into our third ditch that are the Dante, the pilgrim and Virgil come through. So we get simony, right? Which I don't know if we think about too often, but one thing that really strikes me here in this canto is Dante the poet, right? Starts off with this thing about, you know, Simon is named after Simon, right? Who wanted to. They sell things they were going to sell, you know, could they buy the apostolic power? Could you buy this healing power the disciples have? So simony in general is typically seen as the selling of ecclesiastical goods, particularly offices. So, oh, you pay me, you become the priest, you become a bishop, you become these types of things. It's interesting because I think one thing to watch throughout the Inferno is you can kind of tell when Dante has a particular hatred for a sin. I would say it's not necessarily. It's like not necessarily in the contrapasso, but it's in these, like, tirades that he goes on. So all of a sudden he kind of breaks from the narrative and will give, like, these kind of tirades against this sin. And it's interesting when Dante the poet speaks, because when Dante the poet speaks a. We are assuming that he has gone through his entire journey. And so he's. He's giving this commentary after already going through purgatory and up through heaven. And I think that's a heavy thing to think about because he's actually already. This is the mature Dante. Dante the poet is theoretically the Dante who has been matured and purified throughout this journey. Like, for instance, an example was earlier in the Inferno. We saw that Dante the poet talked about that seeing a sinner being punished still delighted him to this day. And so that's. But that's. That's a huge claim because he's saying that this. I think that was in wrath to see this guy get dragged back under the boat by these angry souls. Is still something that delights him even after he's matured, like through his whole journey, which to a certain degree we can claim to, because, you know, he's aligning. He's trying to align his will to the divine will that put that sinner there. So here, I think with simony, this is a particular sin that Dante hates. It's also, I think, one of my favorite contrappassos, just because it's at least the first time when I read it, it's another one where I'm like, what does this have to do with Simony? They get shoved in a hole in the ground. So they come down into the third ditch. What do they see? They see all these little legs up in the air. You see all these little legs sticking out of the air, all these holes. And it's like, that's what simony is. But there's a wonderful line in this canto where he actually makes this play on words explicit that they're pocketed in the earth as they pocketed coins for the selling of church goods. So now they're the thing that's pocketed into the floor of hell. And once I understood that, I just thought this was an excellent contrapasso. And what even makes it more horrific is when you realize that there's more than one soul in each hole. And so there's, you know, here we have. Here we're gonna have. What is this? Pope Nicholas, right? Is. Is the one that's actually still has his feet out, but he's waiting for Boniface the eighth, right? But King Minos is gonna throw him down, and then he gets shoved into the same hole. And so they all get crammed into this thing, and then Boniface's legs will be sticking out, but there's all these souls that are crammed down into the floor of hell in this tiny little hole being pocketed like they pocketed money for church goods. I mean, it's. I think the. The pedagogy here of the contrapasso is. Is really brilliant.
- [50:34]
Gabriel Blanchard
I'd actually highlight something else even in around lines 13 through. Where is it? 13 through? Neighborhood of 20. One of the pretexts on which Dante was banished from Florence was that he had committed sacrilege because he had broken down part of the wall of the font in the Florentine baptistery because there was a child drowning in it.
- [51:08]
Noah Tyler
Which, you know, he's kind of mad.
- [51:12]
Gabriel Blanchard
And so, yeah, he did not take that well, and I don't blame him, but. But he brings that up here and the thing that strikes me about this image is the way it's an anti baptism, that they aren't being immersed or even, like, held the way a priest would hold a baby for a baptism. They. They're being dunked down into fire. Like it's. It's as opposite from baptism as it can be.
- [51:46]
Noah Tyler
Instead of raised up out of water.
- [51:51]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I like that. I like that a lot. Another way to look at that imagery, too, when we see them being upside down, is that there's like a satanic perversion of man. So that upside down man is that you know, naturally kind of image of man being corrupted, because man is typically, as we've talked about, right? He has an intellect and then he has the will and then he has his passion. So that kind of corresponds then with the. What's highest on the human body, moving to the lowest. So then there's that picture of satanic man of when he's turned upside down, because then obviously his lower passions are what's highest, right? And the intellect is what is lowest. And so there's two. I think, kind of playing off that, of them being upside down for all eternity, right, that they. They allowed, right. This. This passion, this need for, you know, for the goods that they got, right? Like gold and things like this. It's not always gold. I think, like Pope Nicholas. I think there was a note that. Pope Nicholas, a lot of it was him just moving his family. Like, he used. He used it to, like, benefit his family and the power of his house and things like this. Boniface. I don't know. Am I allowed to give a defense of Boniface? Is that a good idea? I don't know if that's a good idea or not.
- [52:59]
Gabriel Blanchard
But Boniface don't think it's a good idea.
- [53:02]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Well, I mean, we just have all these popes raining down into the floor of hell. So maybe we have to give a little bit of a defense, or maybe just clarification. We'll call it a clarification. So one, Dante has a particular hatred for Boniface VIII, because it's basically Boniface VIII's pressure into Florence that is kind of the, you know, proximate cause of him being exiled. So he has a particular hatred. And one of the things we've been tracking is Dante's political views. And there's. What I mean by that is like, you can get really sucked into Florentine politics. And if that interests you, God bless you, you go for it. You figure it all out. Like, you know, last week or so Last week no. Two weeks ago, we hit on Dr. Jason Baxter and he gave this like wonderful, like eight minute talk, like, just straight about, like, trying to understand all the parties in Florence and the, the whites and the blacks and how this all worked. It was beautiful. But from like a larger architectonic standpoint, you know, what we're seeing is Dante just believes that there's two powers. This is duo sunt. He believes there's two powers. There's the temporal imperial power, and then there is the apostolic spiritual power. And because sometimes you see Dante's critiques of the papacy misread, like somehow Dante is like a proto liberal, like he's going to install liberalism. And like, the Pope has too much temporal authority. And that's not the case. What he thinks is that the Pope has too much temporal authority taken away from the imperial, from the emperor. Remember, you know, Italy's fractured into all these city states. And so you don't. When you don't have a strong temporal power, right, you suffer. The common good suffers. And so the papacy during this time period has amassed a good amount of temporal power in the absence of a strong empire. And so Dante kind of pushes back against this. But Boniface viii, I think he gets blamed for this. But Boniface VIII is not known for selling church offices. He's not known for his simony. So it's interesting here that, and I was reading Esalen's commentary on this, that Boniface VIII seems to be here under some kind of, like, vague notion of he's kind of stolen. He's using the Church to gain temporal power, if that makes sense. Right. So he's kind of stolen some type of authority from the emperor and he's using the ecclesiastical structure for his own benefit. So it's a much larger picture. But it's interesting because it's a critique on a very high level of like, what should the balance be between the temporal power and the spiritual power? As these two powers guide man, The Church will talk about that. These two powers are the two lights. It's like the sun and the moon. If you have good temporal power and good spiritual power, your pilgrimage on earth is good. They help guide you, right? They, they illuminate, you see the way. If we don't have a good temporal power, if there's corruption, if it's fractured, I mean, how well can you be a good Catholic when Florence is constantly killing each other and fighting over all these politics? Right? And so, yeah, so I just mentioned that not to maybe give a defense of Boniface viii, even though I Do like one of his encyclicals that he did. But Dante puts him here for a very particular reason. That makes sense.
- [56:13]
Gabriel Blanchard
One thing that I found really helpful in the SER's commentary on the Inferno was her explanation of simony, which was. She gave a slightly broader one, which was that it is the sale of a sacrament. And she said that it is normally found in the sense of like the sale of church offices and relics and so forth. But she also gave the example that a mercenary marriage is the sale of a sacrament.
- [56:41]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
What do you mean by that?
- [56:42]
Gabriel Blanchard
Marrying someone for their money. And that to me shed a really helpful light on the fact that I think we sometimes in theology in general and morals in particular, sometimes get a little bit fixated on terms and categorization, which I love. Terms and categorization. I am all about that. It is my jam. But I think that what occasionally gets lost or maybe obscured is a better word. There I am doing it. What I think sometimes gets obscured is that the point of the words is the ideas and the idea of simony or whatever else has slightly fuzzier edges than the term tends to.
- [57:34]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I think that's a fair point because one of the things we've seen is that the sins tend to be slightly broader than they first appear, if that makes sense. So when we. Father, I think Father Thomas pointed this out, that the sexual sins that we find in the. What was that seventh circle in the sands, that that was actually contextualized as just like a larger category of sins that dealt with sterility. Right. That there's no fecundity here. And so we've seen this a few times in which a particular sin is mentioned, but it actually, it's actually kind of a stand in for a larger category. So. No, I like that. I'd have to think about that. More particularly, I like the example of marrying someone for their money. But then you're using a sacrament to do it. Does that count then as a simony? I like that.
- [58:25]
Noah Tyler
I wonder, I mean, is this though, we said that maybe, you know, flattery might be a modern thing or is. Is this not a modern thing? Like we don't really have to worry about simony in this day and age. So we'll, you know, talk about the history and how popes used to sell offices. But we don't, we don't have to deal much with that or.
- [58:45]
Gabriel Blanchard
I mean, we're not safe from it. We don't have it on the scale that they had it in the Middle Ages. Yeah, it was like Unreal.
- [58:53]
Noah Tyler
Yeah. Yeah. And. And Deacon, how much do you want for that relic that's behind you there.
- [58:58]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Right, that's going to go on for sale at the end of. The end of the podcast? Yeah, I think that. Well, it depends on how broad. Right. So I, I. And I don't mean to, like, push into things, but I'm always really skeptical when we think a sin has disappeared. This is how we wake up one day and no one knows what usury is, which is kind of like a fish waking up and not understanding what water is. And so, you know, sometimes these things, like we just. A sadia would be another one. Right. So there's a theory that, you know, if. If we don't think a sin is around anymore or again, that grammar, logic, rhetoric we have, we struggle to define it. It's usually not because it's gone, it's because it's ubiquitous. And we just. We've become so accustomed to it that we don't see it. And Simony. I don't know. I mean, I actually think I was thinking about this and contemplating it and also how much I wanted to lean into it. But, no, I think this happens a lot more in the church. If you contextualized it broadly as, you know, does the church ever change what she's doing for the sake of money? Are things for sale in the church? I think there are intangibles that are for sale, and that's a little more difficult to track down. But then you'd probably have to lean into the malice section and say, well, is this really being malicious, or is this just a culture that's popped up and it's become normative? And so we kind of need, you know, maybe a prophetic voice to start calling this back down. But it's not malicious per se, which.
- [60:26]
Gabriel Blanchard
I think is important in knowing how we are to respond to a culture like that. Because I do think that there are cultures that get like that because there are malicious people at work, and there are people either who don't understand that or are just fine with going along with the malice. I think that there are also cultures where, as you were saying, there just hasn't really been serious reflection on this at any stage. And it's just kind of happened insofar as anything really kind of happens when humans are at the helm. And I think that there are probably also cultures where there was an introduction of this or that bad cultural phenomenon that was originally malicious, but has just sort of drifted into something that's excusable, doesn't Feel like the right phrase, but less culpable, put it that way. That almost everything happens. Basically every kind of moral change can happen in a society the same way that it can happen in a person. And knowing which one we're addressing does actually have relevance to how we need to address it.
- [61:38]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. To your point, I would say that in a lot of circumstances, even on the outside, it might match some of the sins that we're going to see here in the eighth circle. It lacks the malice. And I actually think in a lot of ways what we're seeing is actually the fruits of a sadia, because I actually think that's probably. If I had to name a sin that I actually think is absolutely ubiquitous in every actual, every aspect of our culture. I think it's slothfulness. It's a cooling of love. And that's where you get into scenarios where you wake up day and wake up one day and say, how did I get here? But Acadia and malice are very distinct from one another because the cooling of love is very different than the intentional act. And so I would say a lot of cases, what we're actually dealing with are the fruits of Acadia. That's a good question. So notice too, just to push us along a bit on line 90, Dante the Pilgrim, also rants against this sin. So you have one from the poet and then you have another rant about it from Dante the pilgrim, right? So he's. I mean, it's just a one, two punch on this, right? Dante does not like this sin. And then we get into this, like, fascinating reference, which I don't know if everyone's familiar with, about the donation of Constantine. So maybe this is kind of a fun story. So maybe we should just parse this out real fast. So my understanding of this is basically like when Constantine, Emperor Constantine, Roman Empire, et cetera, when he's like, hey, I'm moving the capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium, right. We're going to the East. I need someone to control things here in the West. So I'm going to give you. I'm kind of give you this temporal power over Italy to the Pope. And so this was actually like, this was a. Believed to be like a historical thing that had happened in Dante's age. Like this, like, this was an actual explicit thing. And so most people agree today that that's a forgery. That's not something that that actually happened. You know, it's interesting, Ethelon in his commentary pushes against this just a little bit and says, like, there was the temporal government at that time was becoming really corrupt and useless. And so you do actually see the empire leaning more into the Catholic bishops of that time to take on certain roles and structures and build, like, a certain infrastructure, like a certain societal infrastructure. But there's no, like, you know, donation. But again, what you see here is Dante reeling against the papacy having a temporal power. And that the papacy should not have this temporal power. It should not be ruling over Italy. We should be under the empire. And the papacy has the spiritual authority. It has this higher authority that it should be focused on. And if it was more focused on that, things would be better.
- [64:32]
Gabriel Blanchard
The pope should not be a bishop on a chessboard. That's for kings and queens.
- [64:37]
Noah Tyler
He's upset with Constantine because he thinks that the temporal power should be located in Rome because Rome is a special place. Dante really likes the centrality of Rome, the Pax Romana. Like, he. He sees some. Something special about the city and the overlay of those two. Those two features spiritual and temporal, geographically in one location. So I think that he's. He's really upset that this happened.
- [65:03]
Gabriel Blanchard
Well, a lot of people were quite. Quite fascinated with, I mean, the fact that romance, in the sense of adventure, that the word came to mean that is not an accident. I mean, if you look not only at the Byzantines, not only at Moscow's whole thing about being the third Rome, which I. I won't.
- [65:21]
Noah Tyler
I won't start Moscow, Idaho or.
- [65:26]
Gabriel Blanchard
Yes, that's a good distinction. One of the things that I found kind of fascinating about the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople is like, they. There. There were multiple Islamic states that referred to themselves as of room of Rome. That the. The power of Rome as an idea and the concept of rule by law rather than arbitrary whim was an enchanting one, not just to Western European Catholics, but to, like, the whole paramediteranean civilization.
- [66:11]
Noah Tyler
It's incredible.
- [66:12]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, no, very good. All right, let's. Let's push on. Canto 20. So we're gonna make it to the fourth ditch. And here we have. Who do we have here? We have sorcerers, fortune tellers. Like, you know, I think this is actually probably one of the most grotesque contrapassos. And he. And he describes it. I mean, he describes it with a certain grotesque nature, right? He gives way more detail than he needs to here. So, I mean, in short, right, the souls are walking, but their heads have been twisted backwards. And so he gives this, like, very detailed account that they're weeping, they're crying, and their tears are going down. Their back and basically on their butt cheeks. He gives us, like, kind of like grotesque, vulgar description and. Go ahead.
- [67:07]
Gabriel Blanchard
It's body horror.
- [67:09]
Noah Tyler
Yeah. Kind of is. Yeah. Into the cleft, where the buttocks separate.
- [67:14]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. He's very. He's. He's very detailed on this.
- [67:19]
Gabriel Blanchard
I do find this less grotesque than saw. Like, I prefer it when the medievals do it.
- [67:24]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
That's a good distinction. The. Yeah. And what's interesting, too here is the heads being twisted. Like, it's not. It's. I took that not just simply that the heads are on backwards, but the heads have been actually, like, twisted around. Right. It's a very grotesque scene. Because the other thing that's interesting here is that none of them can speak. Or at least none of them can speak or do speak, I should say.
- [67:47]
Noah Tyler
Such a twisting may have happened in a fit of palsy sometimes, but not to my eye, you know, so it's like when people have a right, like, wrenched around backwards.
- [67:59]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
But obviously the contrapasso here, right, Is clear. So these are sorcerers. They. They thought they could tell the future. They thought they could see these things. This is. It's interesting that Dante views all these characters as malicious, right. That they. They kind of understood what they were doing. You get some somewhat famous sorcerers and seers and prophets in here as well. But the contrapasso is pretty clear right now. For all eternity, they see backwards. They can't even see what's right in front of them. Right. They could stumble and something right in front of them. Even though through the whole life, they claim to be able to see the future.
- [68:32]
Noah Tyler
And we don't even have to guess at something very obvious because he says he who wished to see too far ahead parades backward and looks behind him in damnation. So he's spelling it right out for us.
- [68:43]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I will say I was a little sad that Tiresias was here. I really like Tiresias. You know, we've. We've had him before. We saw him, you know, on the podcast. We worked through the Odyssey. We saw him down there, you know, the Theban prophet. He pops up in the Bacchae. He's got. He's. He's kind of, you know, an interesting character. So I was, you know, it was a little sad to see him here. What's funny to me, though, and I don't, you know, please parse this out for me. It's funny to me that Dante mentions this one story about him here, like. And I'm not entirely sure why this story is connected, but Tiresias, if you don't know the story. It's a hilarious story that he mentions, right? So Tiresias is famous for being a woman for a certain period of time, right? So Tiresias is out, he sees these snakes coupling, you know, he. He messes with them and he's turned into a woman. And then he lives his life as a woman for a certain period of time. And then he sees two snakes coupling again, he messes with them and he's turned back into a man. And it's a famous narrative and I don't think Dante, I can't remember if Dante gives the whole thing here. It's a famous narrative here because Zeus and Hera get into an argument about which gender, which sex derives more pleasure from sex. And they get into an argument about it and they don't know who they can ask about it. And then they remember Tiresias has been both a man and a woman. And so then they go to Tiresias and they're like, hey, what do you think? And Tiresia says, Tiresias tells them, oh yeah, it's by far women, like nine times more women. Women totally get more pleasure out of sex. And so this is why Tiresias becomes blind. So Hera, in a rage, blinds Tiresias and Zeus is like, oh, I feel kind of bad. And so he gives him the gift of unerring prophecy. And this is how Tiresias becomes. So I guess I just answered my own question. So I guess that's why he mentions the snakes, because it's the story of how he became a seer. Maybe. So anyway, it's a funny, It's a funny narrative, but it was, it was.
- [70:43]
Gabriel Blanchard
Say again, for anyone who isn't familiar with Greek mythology, they're all this weird. It's not you.
- [70:50]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
That was a fun story. So. But I guess maybe that. Maybe I answered my own question. So the reason that narrative is mentioned is simply because that is the origin of him actually becoming, you know, this kind of unerring Theban prophet.
- [71:01]
Noah Tyler
But where's the example of him being calculating and malicious in this prophetic act?
- [71:07]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Well, I wonder if Dante takes all these prophets and seers to be false.
- [71:15]
Noah Tyler
That's kind of what you'd have. I mean, you're self deceived and really think you're reading poems or whatever. I mean, I don't know.
- [71:23]
Gabriel Blanchard
I'd be more inclined to look at it through the lens of the witch of Endor, that like, in one sense calling her a false prophet would be very misleading because she really brought Samuel up. But like, this is not the kind of thing that the Lord our God wants us to be involved with, whether it's summoning the spirits of the dead or summoning other kinds of spirits. Just get a job. Stay away from her.
- [71:51]
Noah Tyler
But then how does it fit with our calculating fraud?
- [71:56]
Gabriel Blanchard
That I'm less sure.
- [71:58]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I think one of my favorite reads, because we talk, we've talked about the witch of indoor and Saul going to her to call up the soul of Samuel in the Old Testament. One of my favorite reads of that is that, yeah, she's a fraud. And then she's actually shocked that Samuel shows up. Right. So like, it, it actually works. And she's like terribly surprised about what's happening. Yeah, I think that. But I think in that example, I think the way Dante reads this is that all, all of these people were intentionally deceivers. Right. The bird sign, I'm reading the burn signs. I'm trying to tell you what's going on because obviously there's no actual, you know, the Greek gods. There's none of these things. And so they're all malicious because they're, they're all deceivers.
- [72:40]
Noah Tyler
That's a good question in particular, I mean, in some cases, like with Odysseus, he's latching onto a particular story and that's why you're, you're locked into this. But he doesn't mention a particular offense that Tyresus.
- [72:54]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, he just gives the story of how he got his manly quills again.
- [72:58]
Gabriel Blanchard
Come to think of it, you, you mentioned the Baccha earlier, and this is sort of unusual in any, in the Greek literature that I'm familiar with. But Euripides was something of an iconoclast by temperament. He's the one who wrote the Bacchae. And Tiresias doesn't cut a particularly good figure in it. I mean, no one does. It's a play by Euripides. But specifically Tiresias comes across in that play as a very sort of like a wishy washy religious figure who wants to weasel through things on technicalities is the best way I can think of to describe him. I wonder if he might have been drawing on that as well for this.
- [73:46]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, that's a fascinating point. I agree with you 100%. The bacchae is one of my favorite plays, probably one of the most unsettling pieces of literature in Greek mythology. But I actually are Greek plays. I actually really like it just because how it dovetails into Plato's Symposium. So on the podcast we actually have two episodes coming up on the Bacchae and we kind of Work through it. And we work through it as an antecedent to Plato's Symposium of understanding eros and erotic desire. So. But you're. You're absolutely correct. It's a weird play for Tiresias because Tyrese. Tyrese is typically like the Gandalf figure. Like, he just kind of shows up and tells everyone, right? And it's like when, you know, Samuel shows up or the prophet Nathan, like, he's just gonna show up and tell everyone how you got everything wrong, right? Where is it he show. Oh, Tyresis also shows up in Antigone, right? He shows up and tells King Creon, like, you're an idiot. You need to be going and doing these things, right? So you are. You are correct that in the Bacchae, he's very different. I wonder, though, that gets into a question of, like, how much Dante actually knows about Greek literature. He doesn't even have Homer. So I took it just broadly speaking, that he finds all of these characters, these kind of like pagan prophets, to be frauds, to be maliciously deceiving people. Now, what's really funny is, is that then he gives at the end of this canto, this really long thing about Virgil's hometown and how it's named after a witch. And it's one of those things that particularly. It's the first time reader, you're like, what are we doing here? Why is he doing this? And I think it was interesting because I had to dive into the section to try and figure out. But one of the theories here, and Esalen kind of leans into this, is that there was also a theory that Virgil was some type of prophet or magician or some type of, you know, pagan seerer. And this is for two reasons. It's actually for reasons we've already talked on the podcast, but if you remember, you know, Virgil wrote Eclogue 4 before the birth of Christ. And obviously he's not talking about Christ, but the way it reads, there's be this child and this golden age that comes in and etc. It very much then was received by many of the early church fathers as a inadvertent pagan prophecy about the coming of Jesus Christ. And so there was this way that Virgil then started to be seen as like a prophet. You know, I think on the podcast we talked about him being almost like a secular John the Baptist, because he's. He's between these two ages, right? He's also between. You mentioned earlier, like the Imperial Rome and the Apostolic Rome, right? He's. If you see that as a prophecy of Christ, he stands in between these. So one of the theories here is why there's this long diatribe at the end about Virgil's hometown. And he's like, going off about the fact that he doesn't like this witch or whatever is. It's also kind of purifying Virgil's own perception that he's like, no, I hate this sin. I would never engage right in this. And it's Dante kind of purifying him of this certain negative connotation that's attached.
- [76:50]
Gabriel Blanchard
To Virgil, which, I mean, the connotation of Virgil being a sort of white magician is. It is very strong. It's actually why we spell Virgil the way we do in English, because in Latin it's V E, R, but the standard English spelling is vir, because the Latin word for wand is virga.
- [77:10]
Noah Tyler
There you go.
- [77:11]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I didn't. I was not familiar with this. I. I mean, not to push into it too far, but, like, I didn't realize that the Romans, after a certain point, would, like, treat the Aeneid like. Like a magical text. Like, almost like certain people treat the Bible today, where they'd be like, what should I do with my life? It's like, I know I'll just flip open the Aeneid and stop it and read. Then what's going on here? And that's what the gods are trying to tell me. Like, we see, like, this is how people sometimes approach Scripture, which we all make fun of this. And then that's basically what St. Augustine did in the Confessions. But setting that aside, right, like, this is a terrible way to approach this. But apparently, like, Virgil's Aeneid gain that type of, like, almost religious fervor and, like, superstition within Rome. And so Virgil took on these negative. I should make a distinction, these negative connotations, because I think him as a inadvertent prophet of our Lord Jesus Christ is not what's being condemned here, because obviously the Holy Spirit can work through people to prophesy even when they don't understand it. And so one of the examples we gave was Psalm 22. I'm going by memory here, but Psalm 22, which opens up, you know, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And so when Christ yelled at from the cross, this psalm would have come to mind. And if you read the psalm, it sounds very much what Christ would have been thinking on the cross. Obviously, David is. Or the psalmist is writing it about his current plights. But he says things like, you know, my bones are not broken, you know, they gamble for my clothing. He has all these like very key statements. I think he even says like my hands and feet are pierced or something like that. So he has all these like very key statements. Is David or the Psalmist aware that he's prophesying about what Christ will think on the cross? Probably not. Can the Holy Spirit do that inadvertently through him? Yes. So then the theory here is that the Holy Spirit did this inadvertently through a pagan. And so that, however, I think is kind of a pristine Catholic tradition that the early church fathers engaged in. Then to the side of that you have Virgil in that kind of context gaining this reputation for being superstitious, a magician, the Aeneid having this kind of magical properties, etc. And I think that's what he's pushing out against at the end of this canto.
- [79:28]
Gabriel Blanchard
I imagine it would have been a fairly common self defense for people who did like to dabble in the black arts that well, Virgil did it and blah, blah, like it's not a good defense, but it's the kind of thing that people reach for. Reach being the operative word.
- [79:46]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, no, very good. Anything else in this? In Canto 20, get a little orientation.
- [79:51]
Noah Tyler
Of where we're heading at the very, very end where the hemispheres don't, don't turn. Gonna get down to Kane eventually. Kind of almost hurrying along. I like it. Well, we got a long way to go, so let's, let's push on. So that's kind of fun. I, I love the topography of the entire Inferno. Like I just love the broken rocks and the gates and how they're stumbling and the weightlessness of one and the heaviness of the other and the physicality of hell.
- [80:19]
Gabriel Blanchard
I love the whole time I love Jesus.
- [80:23]
Noah Tyler
Well, that's good too.
- [80:25]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
That's a good value add. You know one of the things too, sometimes it's dangerous to ask open ended questions, but obviously Virgil seems to have a knowledge that is disproportionate to him. So for instance, sometimes Virgil can tell what Dante the pilgrim is thinking and he'll answer Dante's question without Dante having to ask. And that's really interesting how Virgil can do that. The other one is, here is Dante keeps telling us what's happening in the sky, but he can't see it like they can't see the moon where they're at. And so that's an interesting point is how does Virgil seems to be aware of the constellations, where the moon is, et cetera. So he can tell Dante what Time it is. Right. So as Dante receives this, if memory serves, I think they're now into. I think we've gone past midnight. Right. So now they're into Holy Saturday, the beginning of Holy Saturday. And so one way, though, is like, how Virgil can tell this because he can't see the sky. And so there's a. There's some questions here about Virgil's knowledge as a guide and what's been given to him to kind of help him in this. And so it's. It's a. It's a topic I'd like to think of more. Maybe one of you under, you know, can unpack it for me. But it's something I'd like to think.
- [81:43]
Noah Tyler
About more, you know, right after the paragraph where we're saying he's not, you know, into which things. And it's like, ah, the moon just went past that I can't see.
- [81:53]
Gabriel Blanchard
Well, of course, one of the first things that we get in the Comedy, and that is very much reinforced when we're about to enter the city of Dees Proper that we're now in, is that Virgil is not just on a mission from Beatrice, but has been like, specifically commission given authority that he does not natively possess. Like, he has the ability to call on an angel to command the gates of Dece to be opened that Virgil by himself could not have done. So I would assume that this would be another aspect of that. I mean, it's even how Virgil gets into purgatory, I assume, because he doesn't get to stay. Spoilers.
- [82:37]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, that actually was one of the most fascinating things when I first read the Comedy was that the guide through purgatory is a unbaptized pagan. But we don't have to get there. We just have to talk about the Inferno. So any other thoughts on Canto 20? All right, hearing none. Let's push into Canto 21. So we're still in the eighth circle, punishing simple fraud, but now we are in the fifth. Ditch the grafters. This is an interesting. This is actually a really interesting kind of section, little pericope that we get into here. So let me kind of maybe set a little bit of the stage here. So the grafters, like, what is the sin? So my understanding of the sin is that we just had simony, right? And they're selling all these church offices and things of this nature, at least, like in a narrow definition. And now we have basically the temporal power version of this, right? So these are people that are taking bribes and et cetera. Part of the civil power. Right. So they're selling civil offices or taking bribes to exert their authority in certain ways or et cetera. So this is a corruption then, of the temporal. And what's fascinating here is that we get this, like. And I'll be honest with you, I did not like this section at all the first time I read the comedy. I did not like it at all because I like this kind of. I don't know, I. I like this kind of dark, gritty inferno. I like that it's like, making me think about sin and. Etc. And then I get these goofy demons, like, demon band of goofy even. I, like, I just. I struggle. Like, the first time I read this, I was like, what is this? I don't know, you know, because I don't know.
- [84:20]
Gabriel Blanchard
Change of tone.
- [84:22]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, there's a change of tone. I don't know. Noah, Noah, if you like this section, then tell us about it.
- [84:28]
Noah Tyler
Oh, I mean, just. I'm just a sucker for comic relief, maybe. I mean, the names are really funny. They're like the Three Stooges or something. They. They're getting tricked and, you know, they're, you know, the, the. The. Is it this canto that ends. Yeah, he made a trumpet of his ass. You know, a lewd trumpet of his ass. Like, it's just like too much. And then you get. You get more. Okay. The interplay between Dante and Virgil, like, it's a little bit more expressive than we've seen. So there's like. I don't think we should trust these guys. Virgil's like, we got this. We got this. Like, of course that doesn't. Doesn't work out in the end. So I. And I think.
- [85:11]
Gabriel Blanchard
Well, it doesn't. It doesn't. I think the demons lie. Doesn't ultimately work. They make it because they get away.
- [85:16]
Noah Tyler
Yeah. Um, but I think maybe for the same reason that you like the deep, heavy inferno, gritty moral theology. Like, I'm ready for some. I'm ready for a break at this point.
- [85:31]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
That's good. What about the contrapasso?
- [85:33]
Gabriel Blanchard
I don't get. This one's contrapasso. I mean, I guess there's the idea, which I think I'm taking from sers, of like, being sunk in tar or pitch or whatever it is, beings sort of along the lines of having sticky fingers. But I mean, that would just be sort of any kind of theft or corruption. Not specifically barratry, I think, is the word I've usually seen, because, again, clear. So, yeah, I don't know.
- [86:02]
Noah Tyler
I did look At. Because grift is now a common word on. On Twitter or X that I did look up is graft the same as grift. And obviously there's the extra meanings of grafting apple trees or whatever besides that. Basically the same. And have it. Have a common origin. Grift appeared around, you know, 1902 or something, and it was mostly graphed before then.
- [86:25]
Gabriel Blanchard
Grafting pitch on Tsimony, right?
- [86:29]
Noah Tyler
No, no. So we think about grifters, you know, I mean, the doge comes to mind. It was like exposing grifters, you know, like right and left of people that just, like, I'm taking money to give Libyans tax advice or whatever. $17 million. Like that's true. Grift, like, you know, like, you don't need $17 million to give Libyan tax advice. And that is not something that we belong doing. So I think exposing some of that comes to mind right now.
- [87:04]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
But yeah, I'll be honest with you too. The contrapposto on this one, I struggle with to a certain degree to understand exactly. There's a tar. I mean, he kind of gives some examples. I mean, Dante is obviously an excellent teacher, so if I'm not tracking with something, the fault is very much with me. But he gives like, you know, he gives these examples, right? So he talks about the tar, you know, boiling and things like this. He talks about also, like, it's like the little boys, like the little sous chefs, assistants that help the cook. And so they take their little forks and they keep pushing. They keep pushing the vegetables back into the stew, right? They push the meat back into the stew. And that's what the demons are doing is they're taking their pitchforks and they're shoving the souls back in the tar. This is another one that we see in which there's like a punishment, a contrapasso, and then there's some type of creature that seems to be enforcing whether or not you're engaging it, engaging in it to the right level. So remember, the centaurs were shooting the violent. If they, you know, got into a different area they weren't supposed to in the river of, you know, boiling blood, etc. So, I don't know. I mean, you kind of think there's somewhat. There's somewhat of that pocketing aspect again, right? There is a little bit of that stickiness that he could be playing off of. You know, there's the demons themselves. They seem to have to be tethered to this somehow, to this kind of comical band of demons that really can't get anything done and are fighting amongst themselves and being incompetent. I mean, if again, this is, this is a ditch that has to deal with grafters basically in the government, in the temporal. And here you have these demons that are so incompetent and chaotic they can't get anything done. So like, are they. Is Dante using them as an analog for something? So even, you know, because he hates this type of corruption. So them showing them as like fools, I think would work well. And yeah, the bugle scene is just beyond the pale. And so, you know, what, like what's he doing here? I mean, it is, I don't know, it's a fascinating canto. It's what I struggled with when I first read it. The only reason I don't struggle with it now is because I know it's coming.
- [89:19]
Gabriel Blanchard
Forewarned is forearmed. I have read that the names of the devils are puns on the names of Florentine officials who either had themselves been guilty of baratry or who had been involved in the trumped up charges that got Dante banished. However, I've just read that that is the case. I've never read particular explanations about any of the specific names.
- [89:46]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I think Esalen talks about that too, that this could be a play. So these, these could be little kind of grotesque caricatures of politicians, if you will.
- [89:57]
Gabriel Blanchard
I have also read, I think Serres makes this point, and I'm pretty sure Williams does too, that the circles of fraud are very appropriately the place where we begin to see actual demons. Because hitherto we've seen malevolent figures, but they've always been either human souls or mythological creatures which could maybe be read as, okay, this is some type of demon, but it doesn't hit the same way like these are fallen angels, these are specifically perverted intellect. And so it doesn't necessarily follow that they would have to come in specifically to do with like secular corruption. But it is very fitting that they come in this broader circle, whether it's specifically in this ditch of it or not. And I do think also that there is value and it is very medieval too in the fact that the devils are ridiculous, because there's a certain strain. And strain is very definitely the word in some forms of Catholic thinking that is just way too focused on hell and Satan and like, yeah, I won't name names, but there's a certain kind of spirituality, if that's even the right word for it, that is just very focused on hating evil and being afraid of it in a way that I think is profoundly unhealthy. Because I mean, that that's very literally and specifically not the point. Loving God, which is the opposite, is the point. And that's simply not the same thing as hating evil. That's not how love and hatred and good and evil work. And I think that one of the strengths of medieval spirituality and culture was the fact that. That the devil, although he was correctly perceived as evil, was also, I would say, correctly perceived as an idiot. Like, he has f. He is fundamentally wrong about what he has devoted his entire being to. Like, this is not just a bad choice. This is an incorrect choice. And he and every spirit like him don't have the right to be solemn all the time. Like, they don't get that respect.
- [92:37]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, no, I think that. I think that plays out. Yeah. You agree or. I agree with, like, if you look at a lot of medieval art, like, the way that demons are shown sometimes are like these little comical, distorted figures.
- [92:54]
Gabriel Blanchard
Medievals love the old guys.
- [92:56]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, right. It's not. It's not how we would show them today. You know, the other thing, too, that I think is unique about this particular Kanto is that we see basically all the different actors in this engaging in the sin or something like the sin. So, for instance, when we were on. On Wrath, we saw that the boatman was wrathful. We saw the souls being punished were wrathful. We saw that Virgil became angry because he couldn't go through the city of Dis. And we saw the angel had a righteous anger when he came down. It seemed to be very perturbed about the entire ordeal of being sent down because of how recalcitrant all these demons are. There's something similar going on here. So we're in fraud. We're in simple fraud. We're in these kind of grafters. And what are we gonna see here? Well, we see the demons, and they're gonna make a deal with Virgil and Pilgrim and Dante the Pilgrim. And obviously, we're literally in the ditch that deals with fraud and we have a deal being struck. So, like, all of our alarm bells. Yeah. So, like, you know, our. Our deep. Our deep esoteric read here is that this might be bad. And, you know, it's interesting, though. What's interesting here, I think Noah pointed this to it. It's actually Dante the Pilgrim that seems to be more, like, aware that this is a bad idea than Virgil is. And that's a role reversal. And I wonder too, there if that's because now we're dealing with demons and the Christian understands, like, nope, nope. They're just disordered. Stay away. Nothing good comes from this. And the pagan is like, yeah, we can totally trust these guys. Like, this is going to be fine. Because that's a role reversal that I think we have to think about. And then, clearly, obviously, then I think you see, too, Virgil's prudence kicks in and, you know, leads Dante the pilgrim to safety. And is that a counter to fraud? Right. A rightly ordered prudence is a contrary to simple fraud.
- [95:04]
Gabriel Blanchard
I can't remember the source of it. It's either Williams or Sayers. But someone said of this passage and of the fact that ultimately Virgil is going to be lightly embarrassed by one of the hypocrites who, you know, points out the whole situation, that you trusted a demon, really. But the description of the sort of Virgil's misstep here is that humanism by itself, like humanism unleavened by Christian faith, is always apt to underestimate and be baffled by the deliberate will to evil.
- [95:42]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I like that. Like that a lot because it is.
- [95:46]
Noah Tyler
Things throughout the. The inferno is the role of danger. On the one hand, they face absolutely impossible dangers. And Virgil's like, God wants this to happen. Get out of our way or help us or whatever. And then on the other hand, you're like, gosh, like, are they gonna make it? Like, there's, you know, you really wonder, like, are we about to go off. Off a ledge here and are these demons gonna catch them? And it seems like Virgil, in some cases is totally confident. Other cases, he's sweating it, like, this could be the end of our journey, like, buckle up, Dante. So I think it's like a weird, you know, like, either they have supernatural confidence or in some, you know, you wonder as a reader, like, are we. Which one? Which one are we supposed to believe here? Could they get caught? Or are they kind of invincible, like Mario when he's flashing?
- [96:41]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
You know, that's a great. That's a great analog. That's wonderful. You know, so far on the podcast, I don't think anyone has given a Dante the pilgrim to Mario analogy. So that's good. No, I. We appreciate you're here, Noah. The. Can we talk about the deal that was made? So just. Just, you know, what's the problem? The problem is, is that these little. I don't call them bridges that go between the ditches. Right? The bridge is broken, if memory serves. It's broken actually because of the harrowing of hell. It's been broken since then. Right. When Christ our Lord went down into hell. So of course then they make this deal. We all know this is not going to be good. So look, you look at Canto 22, I think. Canto 22. I think the other reason I don't like this section when I was a first time reader is like, you know, what was it? Kanto. The first Kanto we had, Kanto 18. Those are both fascinating Kantos or both a fascinating Kanto that we get two ditches in and one kanto with three different types of sins and they're all fascinating. He goes so fast and then this bumbling band of demons gets like multiple kantos on this deal, right? So like my only. So Canto 22, it's the eighth circle, the fifth ditch continued. What I found most fascinating here obviously is that they, they catch a sinner, right? So they catch one of the sinners and they pull them out and they're going to tear them apart, right? This is the problem if you don't get. And so what's so fascinating about this is that we see a sinner engaging in the sin that put them in hell. And so he, he is fraudulent with the demons, right? So it's like, okay, yeah, just back off me a bit and I'll tell you guys more about, you know, Florence and who's down here and X, Y and Z and what they do. They back off and he hops back into know the tar before they can get him. And then they, then the demons crash into each other and make a big, you know, bloody mess about the whole thing. And again it's this comedic scene, but it's, it's another character then that's engaging in that type of sin. And I know I, it's, it's a fascinating aspect, come to think of it.
- [98:53]
Gabriel Blanchard
It is a slight foreshadowing arguably of what will happen to who. I've forgotten his name, but the fellow with the ice on his face down in Cocytus, that's in fraud complex though. Just a bit of adumbration.
- [99:16]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
How's that? A foreshadowing to him.
- [99:18]
Gabriel Blanchard
A certain character says, well, I'll. If you tell me your story, I'll pull the ice off your face. And if I don't, may I go down to the center of the ice?
- [99:28]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Oh yeah, I remember now. Yeah, that's interesting.
- [99:31]
Gabriel Blanchard
That bit's hard to read.
- [99:33]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, well, Dante, you know, Dante's not through his whole formation, so. But I mean in this Kanto though, Kanto22, I don't know if anyone has anything else to, to Add to it. Maybe I'm not giving enough time and attention to this section, but I really think the. The most fascinating part of this entire Kanto is just simply that we see a center engaging in that. I've seen commentaries say that, like, this is the first time we see. See in the entire Inferno a sinner engaging the sin that put them there. I'm not entirely sure I buy that because obviously, like, the wrathful are being wrathful, right? I mean, they're gluttony.
- [100:10]
Noah Tyler
Gluttoning.
- [100:11]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah.
- [100:12]
Gabriel Blanchard
They're eating. Yeah, that. That interpretation doesn't make any sense.
- [100:15]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I read that and I was like, that doesn't make sense. Also, even Francesca, right? Like, she like, obviously, like, not lust, but like, she's like, she's bringing like. Yeah, well, when they're coupled together, but two, you know, she's still seducing, right. She seduces Dante in that. So, like, it's. It's interesting because, like, I agree that, like, there's a certain intentionality here on the sin that's really interesting. It's, It's. It's a sin perpetrated against another, which is. Which is really fasting. But you also kind of see that with the wrathful to a certain degree. So. But again, just like with other Cantos, all the parties currently are participating in this sin in some way, even if it's like, in a contrary way. They're all Dante's using these as little pedagogical characters to try and teach us something about this sin.
- [101:01]
Gabriel Blanchard
To think of it, I guess one of the lessons, and this will probably apply to the. The Adam braided one as well. One of the lessons is probably don't make deals with evil in the first place. But also too, if you made a deal with evil, don't keep it. That's not a deal.
- [101:25]
Noah Tyler
That's a great point. Yeah.
- [101:27]
Gabriel Blanchard
Because I do think that that's something that a lot of us are prone to in, especially earlier in the moral life, that, well, okay, I'll make such and such compromise. No, you're not bound to that. You don't have to compromise because you said you would.
- [101:43]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, that's a good point. Well, let's look at Canto 23, then the eighth circle, we're escaping from the fifth ditch and going into the sixth ditch. So, you know, I think that. So I think, you know, how does Virgil, who, again, Virgil's representing human wisdom. You know, how does he kind of outsmart fraud or it kind of finally dawns on him. So again, I think that you can see then that Virgil finally understands kind of what's happening. And so then that human wisdom, that human prudence can finally kind of take Dante the pilgrim where he needs to go. Again, it's just a fascinating scene because Dante the pilgrim was the one that was more sensitive to this than Virgil was. So then they able to escape and they go down into the sixth ditch and they see what is like a very clear contrapasso. So they see these souls and they're walking and they have these beautiful golden cloaks on the outside, but on the inside they're heavy with lead. And so there's. They have this crushing weight that these people have to walk on. And these are the hypocrites. And I think probably one of the most memorable scenes here as they're kind of chit chatting with the hypocrites, is they come upon an individual crucified to the ground. And so then obviously, if that wasn't horrific enough, right, then these souls that are wearing these large, heavy cloaks are then kind of tromping on this particular soul. And this really stands out to me because, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, memory might not be serving. But it's interesting that we have like one sinner in a certain section that's pulled out for like a particular punishment that's distinct from all the other souls in that particular section. It doesn't occur to me that we have a lot of examples of that.
- [103:37]
Gabriel Blanchard
We have at least three more, but we won't meet them until the center of hell.
- [103:41]
Noah Tyler
Summer of Discord. See?
- [103:44]
Gabriel Blanchard
No. Brutus, Cashus and Judas.
- [103:49]
Noah Tyler
Certainly those.
- [103:50]
Gabriel Blanchard
Yeah, yeah, those, those, those three. And Judas. And I suppose Satan. Well, no, Satan has the same punishment as the rest of Positis. But yeah, those three in Satan or those three in Caiaphas, I think, are the only ones that I can think of that have a unique punishment within a circle.
- [104:11]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, it just doesn't seem that anyone that we've seen so far has this type of uniquely called out. And maybe, I mean, obviously, if I had to give a reason, Caiaphas. Right. So this individual who is crucified to the ground, this is Caiaphas. This is the high priest. You know, his hypocrisy has to deal particularly with our Lord and also with our Lord's death. And so obviously you would think that there might be a certain weight, to use that word, that's been given to his particular hypocrisy. And so Caiaphas. But Caiaphas has to have one of the most ironic lines in all of.
- [104:43]
Gabriel Blanchard
Sacred scripture, it is expedient that one should die for the people.
- [104:47]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
People, yeah, yeah. That it's. It's better that one man die than the whole people. And so he's talking about why we need to crucify Christ.
- [104:58]
Gabriel Blanchard
John said it. He died being high priest that year.
- [105:02]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. John uses it with a deep s saturation of irony that he says this and it's actually going to be true. Right. Because Christ is going to die on behalf of the people. But that is not how Caiaphas actually means it. And so now he finds himself, you know, crucified to the ground.
- [105:22]
Gabriel Blanchard
Speaking of unconscious prophets, as we were earlier.
- [105:25]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, no, that's a good connection. What's really interesting is that Virgil looking on this scene is astonished. Do you see this? It's around 124.
- [105:35]
Gabriel Blanchard
Yes.
- [105:35]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I'm not sure what that. So, again, like, when we track that Virgil has a particular reaction to something, it's typically because he's being used as, you know, this icon, this analogy for human wisdom, a natural human wisdom without the gift of grace. And we see too that certain times Virgil doesn't have a full understanding of our Lord, and so certain things confuse him. So I didn't know if that's what was happening here. He's astonished because here he has this hypocrite, but he doesn't quite understand the totality of Christ, and so he can't quite grasp why this sinner would suffer such a punishment. Because he couldn't. He can't. You know, Virgil doesn't quite understand the whole situation. I was trying to figure out how to contextualize his astonishment.
- [106:19]
Noah Tyler
It's very brief astonishment. Then he goes on to ask for directions.
- [106:24]
Gabriel Blanchard
I guess it's legitimate to ask exactly how much it is that Virgil knows, because, of course, he is a spirit in limbo. And limbo, it's not a place of punishment, certainly not in Dante, but it's not a place of enlightenment either. And so how much more does Virgil know now than he just knew already as a righteous pagan? Obviously enough to recognize what Beatrice is. And he understands that. He understands now that there is one God, and on some level that it is the God of the Jews and Christians. But it might well be that he didn't have full details on how exactly the whole cross thing went down. I mean, he died before Jesus was even born.
- [107:15]
Noah Tyler
So he's aware of the harrowing event.
- [107:17]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Right? Yeah. There's a question then of, like, to what degree does he actually understand these things? And really, it seems like his understanding of. Of God and of. Of Christ, particularly. Yeah. Is kind of limited to what he observed during the harrowing of hell and then what he kind of somewhat ascertained when Beatrice came and spoke to him. But he still doesn't quite get it right. Even when Beatrice comes and speaks to him, he doesn't understand why Beatrice isn't afraid. Like, why is Beatrice not afraid to be here? She has to give. Well, you know, this place can't touch me. I'm one of the righteous. We're only afraid of things that can actually hurt us. So he doesn't. I think, again, one way to read that is, like, Virgil does really well until human reason starts to come to its edge. And so he can't. He doesn't quite get it. And so, anyway, I just wanted to point out that he was astonished just because we are tracking a lot of how Virgil interacts with things. Any other thoughts here on the hypocrites?
- [108:13]
Gabriel Blanchard
One of them. I hadn't thought of this before, even though the passage came up, but there is something fitting in one of the hypocrites. Like, the last thing they hear from one of the hypocrites is a sort of light mockery for and a statement of theological truth. When I was at Bologna, I heard tell of all the devil's vices, and I heard he was a liar and the father of lies. There is something incredibly satisfying in that being how the religious hypocrite signs off.
- [108:56]
Noah Tyler
I like that.
- [108:57]
Gabriel Blanchard
Like that.
- [108:59]
Noah Tyler
It's not expressly hypocritical, but it just. It's the right mood.
- [109:03]
Gabriel Blanchard
Yeah. It's the neither truth nor falsehood of it because, like, it's coming from a source that is profoundly false and at the same time is correct.
- [109:18]
Noah Tyler
Not really sympathetic with Virgil for having been taken in. Just kind of sanctimonious.
- [109:26]
Gabriel Blanchard
That is a very good word, I.
- [109:29]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Think, too, just as a broader note is Dante's ease at putting clerics in hell. And so obviously, the hypocrites, I think, are predominantly, if not fully all, clerics. Obviously, in simony, we had that. But even with, like, gluttony and then with. Yes, with avarice. Right. That's where he actually sees. He's like, how many of them are actually clerics? Because he can tell their haircut. And so, no, I think it's one thing that Dante is raging against, too, is just simply the corruption in the Church, and he doesn't seem to pull any punches. Well, this is the same Dante who. The first person he recognizes in hell as a canaanized saint. So Dante the poet is, you know, he has some things to teach us. All right, let's look at Kanto 24, the eighth circle, the seventh ditch. In the eighth circle. This is theft. I have to say, this probably the first time I read the Inferno was probably one of the most intriguing passages in the entire thing. Because you're like, wait, what is happening right now? And trying to figure out the contrapasso is. Is really fascinating. So, you know, on a broad level, right, who do we see here? It's punished in the seventh ditch. We get thieves, right? We get theft. And, you know, this. This section is. Is somewhat famous because the contrapasso, at least initially, right when we first see it. And this is around line 82 or so, it's snakes. And you're like, okay, yeah, that makes sense. They're thieves and the snake and they're hidden and they get bit. And like. Yeah, there's some parallels there. I can. I can see how this works. But the guy that can tell 24, you know, he. Let's see. I think this is the one where he gets bit and then just burns up. So that's like line 98 or so he gets bit, and I think he gets. Compared to a phoenix, Correct? Yes. And he just. He kind of burns up. You're like, okay, well, that's. That's kind of fascinating that that occurred. I also thought it was interesting that the soul at 133, because we're always kind of looking to see how. How is the sin becoming, like, thematic throughout the text. I thought it was interesting at the. The soul on 133 says, it pains me that you've caught me here. Right? So these are thieves. So he's like, been caught. So Dante's using this language, and this is a thief that I believe stole vestments from the sacristy is what he did. What did you take? Of one section that I appreciate here that I didn't mention was Dante's kind of like, exhortation to glory. I mean, it's in the mouth of Virgil. This is at line, like, 46 or so. He says, you must shake off your sluggishness, the teacher said, for no one comes to fame who sits in soft pillows of down or lies at ease in bed. And when his life is wasted utterly, he leaves such traces of himself behind as smoke and air or foam upon the sea. Get up, then. Conquer your distress with that brave soul that wins through every fight, unless it should turn weak beneath the flesh's. Weight. It won't suffice for you to leave the damned, for you shall have to climb a longer stair. Turn that to profit, if you understand. So it's really, again, we get this fascinating thing where the Christian who's lost his way is coached by the pagan. And here I think it's somewhat fitting that the pagan understands, like, the thematic side. He understands being spirited. He understands that you have to get up and you have to fight for glory, and you can kind of take the. The longer stare is typically understood as purgatory, Right. So you think this little climbing out of the ditch is difficult. You're going to have to climb all the way up the mountain of purgatory to be purged of your sins. So, I don't know. I like this. I like this, Virgil, like, get off your soft pillows. You could have made something of yourself. You have a long journey. Let's get this done.
- [113:46]
Noah Tyler
Goes back to your acedia comment. You know that. That you've got to fight sloth. This is a. Another sin to watch that. We haven't. There's. We haven't come across a circle of acedia, right?
- [113:57]
Gabriel Blanchard
We don't.
- [113:58]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Well, there's. It depends on how you read it. So that's a big question, you know, is acedia somewhere in the Inferno? So there's a couple of ways to answer that. One is, no, it's not. Two is that Dante, the pilgrim is the example of acedia, right? So he is the example of slothfulness, because the entire first canto he's lost midway in his life. He doesn't know how he got here. He doesn't know how he lost the path of truth. His love has cooled. And so he is the example of this kind of slothfulness. But then a lot of people will point to the very small passage in the circle that deals with the wrathful, that there seems to be a second category of soul in the wrathful, which are the ones that are just. That aren't moving, that are underneath the waves and are just sitting there bubbling. And so a lot of people read that as slothfulness or acedia, because it's on the contrary side of wrath, Right? So wrath is. I had too much zeal, right? I could not control my zeal. And a sadia is a lack of zeal. And so a lot of people will put that, those souls that are bubbling underneath the surface as acedia.
- [115:18]
Noah Tyler
I love Dante's response to the passage you just read, which is to, like, fake till you make it. I stood up and said with greater show of breath than then what I really felt within. I am strong and resolute. Now let us go.
- [115:33]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah.
- [115:36]
Gabriel Blanchard
Which you know, of a woman born shall harm Macbeth. Wait, no.
- [115:43]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Dante is a. Dante the Pilgrim is a very human, human character, which I think.
- [115:50]
Gabriel Blanchard
I can't remember if I'm getting this from Sers or Lewis, which I don't think Lewis makes but much sense because he didn't really write about Dante that I recollect anyway. There was a passage that I read in some commentator or other that I really appreciated because I feel sometimes that there's a. An oddly specific delight in tearing down narrators in some corners of literary criticism. But the point made in this commentary was that anything that we feel like we can or wish to make fun of Dante the pilgrim for was put there by Dante the poet.
- [116:30]
Noah Tyler
Like he.
- [116:31]
Gabriel Blanchard
He is not completely without self awareness here.
- [116:35]
Noah Tyler
It's true.
- [116:37]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. And I think at times we actually really struggle with that, if that makes sense. What I mean by that is like, I don't know, we. We tend to naturally conflate Dante the poet with Dante the pilgrim, and it's really narrative, basically. Say again?
- [116:54]
Gabriel Blanchard
We get sucked into the narrative, basically.
- [116:56]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, we do get sucked into narrative. And so it's interesting to me that, like, we struggle then to see Dante as a saint because we read him through Dante the Pilgrim, even though he's the author. I actually think we do something very similar to Boethius. So Boethius puts himself in his own work as he's needing to be consoled by lay philosophy, as he's awaiting his execution. And so he's doubting, right? He's doubting. He has. And so we see. We see Boethius like. We see Boethius as he presents himself and not like in the masterful soul that must have been able to write that. And it does something when authors do.
- [117:41]
Noah Tyler
This, it does something philosophy. Right, Right. It was Boethius.
- [117:48]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Right.
- [117:48]
Noah Tyler
But we look at Boethius being pathetic and lame and crying and you know, wow, Boethius lame.
- [117:55]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
But it only speaks more of their humility, right, that they're able to present themselves in this manner and to expose their own flaws. But then, yeah, it really seems to. To skew with our capacity to see their own spiritual brilliance.
- [118:09]
Gabriel Blanchard
I think part of it is just that when we read a saint talking about, or for that matter, a non saint talking about, you know, I'm this and I'm that and I'm the. The other worst thing that isn't narrative in the same way that this or the constellation are narratives, because even though they're not, you know, like fiction, the way a novel is fiction, they are fictional stories. And I think because the human mind has such a strong appetite for story and for entering into stories, that there is a level on which we forget that they were written by somebody and that it is just that simple, that we have to consciously leave the story and think about it from an exterior perspective before we can fully digest a story.
- [119:08]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I think that's fair. All right, let's look at the. The next and kind of final. Kanto. Kanto 25. So it's the eighth circle still working through Simple Fraud. We're in the seventh ditch, dealing with thievery and Pistoia. What is that?
- [119:23]
Noah Tyler
And Pistoia, he's got a couple figs for God.
- [119:26]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I mean, this starts off with this. I mean, a charitable act of. Of blasphemy, which even Dante points back to. One of the things we. We wrestled with on the podcast was the fact that Dante uses an example of blasphemy against Zeus as his example of blasphemy in the Inferno. And, like, why did he do that? That was, like, something that we wrestled with earlier. So I thought it was really fascinating that here when we actually get an example of blasphemy against God directly, that Dante. Dante makes it explicit about pulling this back to his more natural example of blasphemy earlier in the Inferno. He. That's at line 14 or so. Right. I'd seen no soul so haughty against God, not him who tumbled from the walls of Thebes. And that was the king that we saw earlier that had talked about not needing Zeus and got blasted back when we deal with blasphemy. So it's an interesting. Dante intentionally couples those two narratives for the reader.
- [120:27]
Noah Tyler
We had the grafter making a deal. This is a thief blaspheming. You know, like, this is. This is not a thief stealing. Right. Which I think is kind of interesting, I guess, to me, this. This doesn't. It doesn't fit. Like, the amount of anger at God and, like, unrepentance, like. Like, for a thief. Like, I mean, they calculated and they were sneaky and they, you know, were inhumane and took away the humanity of others all, you know, But I think it's kind of an odd thing for him to be so aggressive against God this. This deep in this circle.
- [121:05]
Gabriel Blanchard
I think it does track with something else that we see definitely specifically within the city of De. I don't know if it's present, certainly not in the same way in the suburbs of hell. But remember, when we first come into the evil city, the first souls that we meet. The first one that we meet is Farinata. And say what you will about Farinata, but he is an impressive figure. And basically that phrase, say what you will about him, but is why he's in hell, because that's how pride works. But, like, there is, like, Farinata is a proud man who has something to be proud of. Which, again, doesn't keep you out of hell. Just want to emphasize that. But, you know, there's. There's a definite dignity in his pride. Like, he's much more like Denethor than an orc, to put it in those terms, because I have to.
- [122:13]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
You can't put it in Mario terms.
- [122:16]
Gabriel Blanchard
No, actually, when my fifth nephew was being born, I spent the whole day being talked down to by my first nephew for being bad at Mario. So starting from Farinata, you get increasingly squalid depictions of sin as you descend. Like, the dignity that Farinata has is by no means lost. When you get down to Capanes, like, you're only one circle further in. And like, sure, this, the seventh circle has three rings, so it's. It's further than it was from, say, the second to third circles. But, like, Kapanes still has a certain grandeur, for lack of a better word. But, like, that has. There's definitely a sharp break in that respect between violence and any level of fraud. Simple. Like, there's a definite indignity, a grossness in fraud. Simple. That is not really present in any of the earlier circles. Not even gluttony, really. And Vanny Fucci is a very. He's nasty in a way that is really tracking and continues to track as we go further down. Because it gets so much worse than just indignity in the way they're presenting themselves. I mean, you know, once we get to Cocytus, we got, again, spoilers. A guy gnawing on another guy's head because he just hates him that much. Like, yeah, we're in hell. And I'm gonna gnaw in your head, like, this level of squalor. Psychologically, spiritually squalorous.
- [124:00]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, there's a juxtaposition there, too, that thieves, you know, they come in the night, deception is a big deal, you know, etc. And here we see him, you know, standing up, and he's laid bare, if that makes sense. So he's just out here in the open and he's cursing God. So everything's been dragged out into the light. On the condition of his soul and things like that, I agree with you. I mean, I think when we see these sections, we have to take a step back and say, why was this coupled here? Why was this here? The thing that I really like too is that Dante's response to this is from that point on, the snakes were friends to me. So like the. The punishment of these sinners, Dante realizes snakes are not, you know, they're safe as far as he's concerned, and they're going to end up punishing these sinners. And that Dante is going to delight in it. I mean, just to kind of jump to what's, I think probably some of the most imaginative and interesting sections here, we get two sinners that are attacked by the snakes and have kind of very different reactions. We've already had one that was kind of like burnt up, right? But he said a phoenix, so I'm assuming that means that soul comes back, right? Because obviously we don't believe in annihilationism. So that soul's burnt down and then comes back in some way. So that's. That's one thing that's going on here. But then we get a second one. This is at line, oh, 50 or so, right? He says, I a snake with six feet flings itself and clings to one of them. So these are more like serpent, dragon creatures, I guess. Like this one has feet and lizards. Say again?
- [125:48]
Gabriel Blanchard
Lizards. I feel like lizard is a particularly good word because it has a slithering sound to it that even dragon doesn't have.
- [125:55]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Well, we saw a dragon earlier, we didn't talk about him, but the centaur has like a little dragon on his shoulder that's like breathing fire at people, which is a kind of a fascinating picture to begin with. So on this first one, the line 50, the snake, you know, grabs into this individual and they basically fuse together into one kind of just very grotesque, horrific creature. And then the second one or the third center overall that we see here in 82, this one seems to be where there's a little snake and he runs up and he basically bites this guy right on the stomach. And then they kind of take a step back from each other. And then the snake transforms into a man and the man transforms into a snake, which then gives us the perception that all the snakes that are in this pit are actually damned souls themselves. So the contrapasso. I mean, what is going on with this contrapasso Right. So the snakes are apparently people. We've got these, like, transformations happening. And this is supposed to be punishing thieves. Like, what's going on with the contrapasso?
- [127:15]
Gabriel Blanchard
It goes back to a concept in Roman law, the way Romans treated property. I don't know that it was all property, but, like, this would be sort of the default assumption with property, I believe, was basically that property was treated as an extension of the person. So this contrapasso is actually one of the more literal ones from that perspective.
- [127:39]
Noah Tyler
So how does that tie into the snakes and the snakes becoming men and.
- [127:43]
Gabriel Blanchard
Well, maybe not snakes specifically, but the deformation and mutation of the body constantly changing. I mean, that aligns with the Roman idea of what theft was.
- [127:58]
Noah Tyler
So you're changing someone else's body and then changing their person. You're grabbing their body and turning it into your body because you're grabbing their property and turning into your property, essentially.
- [128:10]
Gabriel Blanchard
I would hesitate to call this a fully Christianized understanding of property.
- [128:17]
Noah Tyler
Fairly locky in them.
- [128:20]
Gabriel Blanchard
True. That being said, I mean, while I don't know that I agree with Dante's specific placement of this ditch, I mean, it does definitely belong in the eighth circle. So there's not that far. It's gonna move.
- [128:36]
Noah Tyler
I. I want to remark that Dante could have said the snakes became men and the men became snakes. He doesn't do that. He. He gets very specific in the transformational poetry. He goes into every limb and what part it turned into and what part it separated out from. And like, so I. He goes to. To great length to. Maybe he's just showing off his poetic abilities, but I appreciate it. I like it. I like his poetic abilities.
- [129:08]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. There seems to be here, again, like, a particular hatred for this sin. Right. Something that he really wants to show, something about the depravity of it. I think one of the things maybe kind of piggybacking on the comment of, you know, how Romans saw property. Yeah. That there one thing is a thief is not making the proper distinction between what's mine and yours. And so this contrapasso denies that at, like, the most existential level. That even like my own. My own body and your body are mixed. Right. Or have the capacity to be switched. And so, you know, thief takes other things that aren't his, and now something's actually robbed from the thief himself. Right. Like kind of his own humanity or his own integrity as a being is called into question. Particularly if you look at all the snakes or if you take the thesis that all the snakes are other types of thieves. And things like this. So, yeah, it's a. It's a really imaginative punishment that I think shows that Dante has, like, a particular hatred for this particular sin and what it really is. Because I don't. I don't think a lot of us would. If you talk about, oh, just thievery, would come up with something this grotesque to show it has, like, an existential nature to it that's actually, you know, very troubling. I mean, there's something here that I think Dante the teacher is really drawing.
- [130:34]
Noah Tyler
Out for us, kind of, to Gabriel's point of, is this the right sequencing of the ditches? Dante had a personal vendetta against the Pope, and he had personal experience with corrupt politicians, like, very personal thieves. Like, okay, it's definite moral depravity. It's definitely calculating. It's definitely fraudulent. Like, did somebody rob him of his stuff one time? Like, is there. Is there some sense in which. Why does he have a kind of a personal anger towards thieves? I mean, they just steal stuff, right?
- [131:12]
Gabriel Blanchard
I mean, Florence did rob him of literally everything that he owned, including. And his family.
- [131:17]
Noah Tyler
Yeah.
- [131:17]
Gabriel Blanchard
So from Florence did that. But that being said, although I might be willing to disagree with Dante intellectually here, I actually would tend to. What's the word I'm looking for? I don't suspect him of simply letting his personal feelings overwhelm his judgment. And there's a particular reason for that. This may have come up before, I don't know. But at one point in the early 14th century, Pope Boniface VIII, Dante's personal anime nemesis, was seized by soldiers of the king of France for writing a bull that the king of France did not like, did not care for one bit. And he was delivered after a few days. But he was so harshly treated by the soldiers in the interim and so shocked by the fact that people would do this to the Pope that it is generally thought that it contributed to his death a matter of weeks later, I believe. And Dante, who hated Pope Boniface's guts, described this as Christ led captive and crucified in the person of his vicar. Well, like, the absolute intellectual clarity of Dante's theology is one of the things that I admire most about him and the reason that it pisses me off when people talk about Dante put his friends in heaven and his enemies in hell. No, he didn't read the book. I just. Oh, like, that one drives me absolutely up the wall. But not what we're here about, but because of that, like, rigid, determined justice in recognizing what is due to whom. And Why? I do think that he may have made. Made an intellectual mistake in where he ranked theft relative to other things. If he did, I don't think it was because he wanted to make the mistake.
- [133:42]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I mean, I agree. I think it's a very flat read to say that Dante put his friends in heaven and his foes in hell. And we've already seen that that's not true. Right. Yeah, it's very dismissive, I think, of trying to. It's very dismissive of trying to actually kind of sidestep, I think, Dante, the teacher, that he has anything here because it just makes it a very shallow read, if that's your take. But we've already seen, you know, clearly that, you know, his, like, friend's dad is here. We saw very much in the seventh circle that people that he admired very closely. His own teacher was here as well. He doesn't seem to spare those people at all.
- [134:26]
Gabriel Blanchard
So.
- [134:26]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, I. I think you have got to have a. A better read than that. Yeah, that. I was looking real fast.
- [134:31]
Gabriel Blanchard
Ghibellines in Purgatory too.
- [134:33]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Say again?
- [134:34]
Gabriel Blanchard
We meet Ghibellines in Purgatory too. He wasn't above putting his enemies in heaven.
- [134:38]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Right. Yeah. I do think as a. As a broader topic, the structure of the 10 ditches is a really fascinating conversation of how are they actually structured. Because obviously we. Our thesis is, is that, you know, the closer that you come to the. The pit of hell, the more severe the sins. And so just like, for instance, like another example, you know, is. Is theft in the right place. This would seem to say that selling of church offices is less of a sin than being bribed as like a. A civil official. And that also. That also doesn't seem to. To sit well, if that makes sense.
- [135:19]
Gabriel Blanchard
One thing that came to my mind about that specifically is that although controversial, take simony is wrong. Although simony is wrong, it doesn't result in invalid sacraments. Like a person who bribes their way into being ordained, and then the people who ordained them perform the sacrament has been ordained and mutates Mutant is for every other sale of a sacrament. Whereas I'm not sure that the same thing is true when you're talking about political graft. Like, is it even still justice when it's been bribed out of the judge or whatever? That's the only thing I can think of that makes the placement of those two specifically make sense. But I mean, there's a whole conversation to be had about every one of the 10 ditches in that respect.
- [136:17]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, you know, Very good. Well, any. Any other kind of final thoughts on. On this ditch or any of the subjects that we've covered?
- [136:26]
Gabriel Blanchard
All the thoughts have been had. There are none left.
- [136:28]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
We've. We have exhausted them. No, that's. That's very good. Well, Noah and Gabriel, I deeply appreciate you being on today and kind of helping us guide us through Dante's Inferno. Where can people find out more about CLT? Sure.
- [136:43]
Noah Tyler
CLTexam.com has all kinds of resources. You can find the journal, which is our. Our blog that Gabriel writes. The Anchored podcast is there. If you haven't been on it, Deacon, you should be soon. The author bank practice tests. There's even pages that link to the ESAs that are popping up in a lot of states and how you can get connected with the school choice movement that we're, well tied into.
- [137:12]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No. Very good. All right, Noah, Gabriel, once again, thank you so much for being on this evening. We really appreciate it. We appreciate all of your insights, everyone. Next week, we'll be discussing Cantos 26 through 31. So we'll be finishing the eighth circle of hell. And we'll be joined by Dr. Donald Prudlow at the University of Tulsa. And in the interim, you can visit our website@thegreatbookspodcast.com or we have a guide on Dante's Inferno if you want to kind of get deeper into the text. And we will see you next week.