Friday, October 9, 2015
Level 8
Upon receiving my level of hell today I didn't understand how magicians would fall under this level. The level is for people who are fraudulent. Through my eyes a magician is not deceitful in a negative connotation but since he is deceiving people he is sinning. I went a head to learn more about level 8. First off the name of level 8 is Malebolge, meaning evil ditch in Italian. Secondly there are subdivisions for every type of fraudulent person and these subdivisions are called Bolgias, and there are 10. Each division has their own special punishment, wether it being walking around with iron cloaks or being whipped by horned demons. Back to my magician, he would be placed in the fourth Bolgias, where his punishment would be having his head on backwards and walking endlessly in a circle. I really hope I am not damned to hell.
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4 comments:
It's also weird to think about how the worst possible sin back then was fraudulence. Like we said in class, the worst sin today would have to be violence. I have trouble understanding how violence was not as bad as fraudulence back then though. When you commit fraud, sure, you're deceiving someone, but when you commit violence, you could kill someone. Because the severity of sins changes so much as time goes on, who's to say what hell is really like?
Ms. King mentioned in class that Dante had political incentives in asserting that fraud is the worst sin. Although we're not there yet, the general idea (I think) is that Dante is criticizing leaders of his time who deceived the masses. After thinking about it more, I wonder if Dante would consider a mass murderer less sinful/evil than a mass deceiver. Maybe this will be explained later on.
I think that the reason fraudulence is the worst, especially in a political sense, is the fact that you are being deceitful to a population that trusts you. It is a betrayal (which I would consider worse that violence). If you trust someone who is deceitful, they can lead you down a destructive path, without you really understanding. A specific example of this would be the sale of indulgences. The religious leaders who led the people to believe that they would go to hell/their families would stay in hell just to get money were selfish and deceitful. They took advantage of people's insecurities and ignorance, which is extremely immoral.
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