Civilization #30: Dante as the Second Coming of Homer

okay good morning so we finished Dante today and this will be our last session uh before the semester uh breaks we'll come back in a month and we'll start the second semester second semester um will be very exciting we are going to do the Crusades we're going we're going to do secret societies we'll do um um basically the rest of human history okay so before we begin let's review what we learned last class okay the first first um point is that there are secrets Mysteries and paradoxes embedded into Dante's Divine Comedy and the ultimate secret of the universe is that we are in God and God um is in us and that's the ultimate secret and it breaks apart the idea of the Holy Holy Trinity remember the idea of the Holy Trinity is that it's an equation that makes God exclusive from us and at the end of Divine Comedy Dante inserts us back into God which turns the equation back into a story a story that we are empowered to write okay and it creates the idea of infinity um the idea behind this and this goes back to Homer is for Dante love is the unifying force of the universe remember that God is the force within us that enables us to love and connect with others and then the imagination is the animating force of the universe the more we love the more we can imagine and it is our responsibility it is our Legacy it is our gift that we are able to imagine the universe and continue the work of God and the prime example of this is of course Dante what inspires Dante to create the universe that is the Divine Comedy is his love for beus it is uncreated uh they never got married they never consumated their love in fact beatric died uh when she was very young but Dante never forgot about her and it was this love for d uh sorry it was this love for beatric that would um Inspire him to create the Divine Comedy which is um the greatest literary achievement in human history and as we discuss the second point is that the Divine Comedy it is historically significant because it becomes inal blueprint for the Renaissance for the Protestant Reformation and the Sonic Revolution and then you ask yourself wait a minute here when I read the Divine Colony I don't really understand what's going on so how did it come to be so historically significant and the answer is this the answer is that it is poetry and poetry is a is a unique form of writing poetry is meant to be memorized okay so um the way you learn the way you that you're educated for thousands of years in uh Western his in Western history is through the memorization of classical poets so remember the Greeks how did they educate themselves they memorize Homer the Romans memorize Virgil and the Italians memorize Dante um and poetry is uniquely designed in order to be memorized and so that's the first step and then the second step is this think of poetry as a superfood for the brain you are what you eat and your brain thinks the way that it has consumed information and so poetry is this extremely dense nutritious food that the brain will um use in order to formulate its understanding of the world okay and what's really um interesting is the brain actually works 99% subconsciously meaning we are not consciously aware of what the brain is doing most of the time and what the brain is doing most of the time is trying to figure out the patterns of the universe the brain does not like paradoxes it does not like Mysteries it doesn't like it doesn't like contradictions okay so it's always trying to resolve these contradictions in order to formulate a coherent understanding of the world that's why Paradox is so powerful within the Divine Colony with as we discussed last class the Divine Kony is full of paradoxes which forces your brain to conciously work to resolve these paradoxes um the greatest Paradox within the Divine Colony as we discussed last class is a fact that we are within God and that creates a paradox for the brain to slowly resolve and once it resolves it formulates a new understanding of the world and because of that this new understanding will become the Renaissance brain the scientific brain which will power the rise of modernity okay does that make sense and so the third point the most important point is what Dante realized when he wrote The Divine Comedy is he if is that if he has to created a new modern brain if he has to create a new scientific romantic mind then his true enemy is actually not Augustine okay it is actually Virgil because at this time every educated individual um was educated through Virgil it was Virgil is understanding the world that captured the imagination of the European mind and so Dante when he writes The Divine Comedy his mission is to supplant Virgil it is to remove Virgil from the brain the mind of the European he basically needs to he basically needs to um poetically do surgery okay and the way and so what I'll do is this first I'll explain the thesis and explain what he's trying to do and then we'll study the Divine common to see how he does that okay so the the so Dante understands that if Virgil has become the basis of your mind okay if the inad um is the way that people fundamentally understand the world you cannot get go into an open conflict with Virgil because people will just reject you right people will choose their Customs their habits first and so if you threaten their uh habits and Customs then they will see you as a threat they will reject you so Dante has to perform um surgery on the brain that is nuanced and subtle and sophisticated okay and the way he does this the way he does that it's very clever Dante makes his arch nemesis Virgil the hero of the Divine Comedy okay Virgil is the guide the narrator the protagonist of the Divine Comedy what happens is that we start off with Dante the poet lost in the woods and it's a symbol or metaphor for his midlife prises he doesn't know where he's going uh he's confused by the world and suddenly Virgil appears before him and says I am Virgil a poet and I've been sent by the lady beus from Heaven to guide you through infernal and through per through Purgatory where you will learn the secrets of the universe where where you will learn the truth about the world and I am your guide I will tell you the truth okay so right from the start we learned that Virgil is the hero the guide that's the first thing that happens and the second thing that happens is Dante turns him into an unreliable guide we will discover that Virgil does not speak the truth in fact Virgil contradicts himself all the time and the third thing that will happen is Virgil over time will become displaced by other figures including beus all right so it is one of the greatest literary tricks where Dante understands Virgil his his ultimate Nemesis and in order to defeat Virgil he makes Virgil the hero of this epic okay does that make sense all right so it's the idea of the unreliable narrator all right so we're going to study some passages from Divine Comedy to see how Dante does this and it's very clever it's almost impossible to spot unless you recognize what Dante is trying to do okay once I tell you what he's doing it's then as obvious but again if you were to read Divine Comedy by yourself you wouldn't notice it okay but again the brain works subconsciously the brain will slowly over time pick pick up these problems with Virgil and construct a new worldview that is anti- uh Virgil and pro Dante okay that's a trick of the Divine Comedy any questions before I continue are we clear all right so all right so Virgo and Dante are now going to explore in The Inferno hell and they first end up in in limbo okay and limbo is the outer circle of hell and it's a very nice place it's not Paradise it's not great it's still part of hell but it's a place specifically for virtuous pagans who were born before the time of Jesus you can only be saved by Jesus if you were baptized into the faith and so if unfortunately you were born before the time of Jesus you put in limbo and that's where uh Virgil is okay so Virgil explains to uh Dante the kindly Master Okay so there are all these encomiums for Virgil Virgil is the father to Dante Virgil is the master to Dante all right do do you not ask who are the spirits whom you see before you I'd have you know before you go ahead they not sin okay these people are virtuous including himself these are are people who include Plato um Homer um Julius Caesar okay these individuals are are virtuous though they have merits that's not enough because they like baptism okay the fundamental rule of Heaven is you have to be baptized into the faith the portal of the faith that you Embrace and if they live before Christianity they did not worship God in fitting ways and of such spirits I myself am one okay this is why I'm here in limbo I am as virtuous as can be but because I was not baptising the faith I am stuck here okay of course this raises a question because Dante has nothing but questions and D asks him this question is this an iron law of the universe or were there exceptions okay so we have asked did any ever go by his own Merit or others from this place towards blessedness were they able to ascend into heaven based on his or her own individual struggle and Merit and this is what virtual says there was only one time in the entire history of the universe when it was possible for people in limbo to sent into heaven and that was the death of Jesus Christ remember that he was crucified then he died before he was resurrected and then when he died he ascended into The Inferno and while he was there he took the most virtuous members of the Bible okay who include um Abel Adam Noah Moses Abraham David Israel he took all of them into heaven but that was it okay and that was a rare event right because Jesus God only dies once but that's it all right and so that's what Virgil is saying okay so now that they've been through Limbo what they're going to do is they're going into the inner circles of hell and the first circle of hell are reserved for those who died who s because of love because of lust okay and what's going to happen is that there's going to be parade of all these Souls these spirits who are burning in hell because they died For Love or lust they sinned out of love all right so um the first of those about whose history you want to know my master told me once we as empress over many nations her Vice of lust became so customary that she made license listed in her laws to free her from the Scandal she had caused she is samaris of whom we read that she was n's wife and his successor okay that's the first person they see she held the land the sultan Now commands all right but now there's a second person the other Spirit killed herself for love and she betrayed the ashes of psychas the W Cleopatra follows next all right so this this is interesting what's going to happen is there there'll be about a thousand spirits who are parading before Dante and Virgil and what's interesting is that Virgil names every one of them except this person the other Spirit killed herself for love and she betrayed the ashes of psychi this person her name is ditto who is didto didto is from the inad right she is the liter creation of Virgil this is really interesting because why is didle in the infernal because Virgil put her there and not only does he put her there he does not even bother to acknowledge and name her this is a complete contrast to the relationship between Dante and beus now um when you actually read the inad what you discover is that there's only one realistic character in The Epic and it's stto the way that she behaves um her love for in inas it's actually it actually makes her her sympathetic character but it's her love for inas that causes her to uh to die okay and so who is did who is didle really well if she's a liter creation of virgils I can guess we can surmise that ditto must have existed and ditto is someone who possibly could have um spited Virgil right and that's why Virgil has such venom for her right remember in the indad didle dies by fling herself into a funeral P okay she Burns herself to to death it's a terrible way to die and she dies um driven into Madness by love so you can almost make the argument that you can surmise Virgil really hates this person and she wanted he wanted to punish her for refusing him in real life and this is interesting for us bis go this is dally opposed to what Dante did right Dante loved beatric but he could not he could not possess PC so what he does is he's creates the Divine Harmony so that PC can be in Paradise for the rest of her for all of eternity okay this is D dally opposed so right away in the from this we can understand that Dante and Virgil have opposing perspectives on love these are not friends these are enemies all right now let's continue Virgil refuses to name ditto okay but what Dante will do is name ditto okay those Spirits let the ranks where D suffers where didle suffers Virgil you refuse to acknowledge your creation but I will because she deserves our Mercy she deserves our charity and our generosity so you can see how within the Poetry there's this massive conflict going on between Virgil and Dante and it's all very subtle okay okay now they go through Inferno and they end up in purgatory Purgatory is this isolated Mountain that is the halfway point between Inferno and Paradise people have to send the P Purgatory in order to um get into um Paradise okay and this the these are the first lines of purgatory I saw a solitary patriarch near me his aspect worthy of such reverence that even son to Father owes no more okay this person is Kato Kato is a Roman patriarch who opposed Julius Caesar and when julus julus Caesar was about to win the civil war KO killed himself he committed suicide rather than submit to Julius Caesar now what's interesting about about this is that Kato and virtue are contemporaries they knew each other in Rome and when they died they went to limbo right what's interesting is this where's K now Kato is in purgatory he's left he's left limbo he's left Inferno and not only that but he's become the guardian of purgatory he's the one who controls access into purgatory so Virgil is wrong remember Virgil said it's impossible possible to leave limbo regardless of your Merit and this right away tells us no Virgil is not a reliable narrator Kato has left okay now you would imagine that because Kato and Virgil know each other they're like good friends okay so Virgil so k say to Virgil and Don like who are you to how are you able to escape from from hell okay and then Virgil says let me do the talking because I know this guy okay we're friends right I do not come through my own self there's a lady Sent From Heaven okay this lady is beist her please let me to help and guide this man but since your will would have a far more full and accurate account of her condition my will cannot withhold what you request you want to know why we're here let me explain to you why we're here this man had yet to see his final evening he's not dead but through his folly little time was left before he did he was so close to it he was facing a midlife crisis as I've told you I was sent to him for his Deliverance the only Road I could have taken was the road I took I had to take him through hell okay and that's why we're here I showed them all the people of predition now I in tend to show him to him those spirits who in your care remember C is the guardian of purgatory are B on experation okay so people are here in purgatory in order to absolve themselves of their sins so they that they may Ascend into heaven now this is what what ver Virgil says to KO you know it who in utaka found death for Freedom was not bitter when you left the gar that will be bright on the great day so I know who you are you're KO you're the person who killed himself in UDA rather than submit to the tyranny of Julius Caesar Eternal adicts are not broken for us this man's alive and I'm not bound by myos but I am from the circle where the chase eyes of your Marcia your wife are I know your wife and she still prays to you oh holy breast to keep her as your own for her love then inclined to us remember Marcia your wife allow our journey for your seven Realms I shall thank her for kindness you bestow if you would let your name be named below so what Virgil is doing is saying to KO listen you may be the guardian of purgatory this is your your master of this realm but I have power in hell so I'm going to go back and I'm going to be nice to your wife Marcia right so give me some face here man you know and this is what K says while I was there within the other world Marcus so pleased my eyes he then replied Each Kindness required I satisfied now that she dwells beyond the evil River she has no power to move me any longer such was the law decreed when I was freed so KO is upset with this K says to Virgil how dare you bribe me how dare you do this Marcia is back in limbo which means she is no longer as pure in my eyes as I used to think if I'm able to ascend into purgatory based on my own Merit then so was Marcia and if she's not if if she's not able to come with me that mean that means she's not as virtuous as I once thought okay so you can see right away that Virgil is not reliable he has no authority over k k does not respect him even though they're they they know each other very well okay does that make sense again this is very very clever it's almost impossible to see unless I tell you what's happening okay all right now the question then is what makes virtuo so unreliable what is his problem and what Donnie will will reveal to us is it's really Virgil's conception of love that's the issue okay remember Virgil is someone who condemn didto into hell and it is Dante who sent beus into heaven okay so these people have these two individuals have radically radically opposing conceptions of love so let's so we know what Dante thinks about love okay love is the god for is the god Force within us that connects us with God and the entire universe and the more that we love the more imaginative we will be okay so so you have to direct this love at someone but it doesn't really matter that person loves you back that's not relevant okay what relevant is that you love so let's look at Virgil's understanding of love the soul which is quick to love responds everything that pleases just as soon as Beauty wakens it to act okay so the first thing we we have to understand is that we are animals with Souls that respond to Beauty if I see a beautiful woman across the street I stop and I chase her okay that's the first thing he says your apprehension draws an image from a real object and expands upon that object until until Soul has turned toward it but then you're like but you don't know this beautiful woman and what virgal says is what happens next is your imagination will take over and you will turn this woman into a fantasy woman that you can now control okay so let's go back to the example from last class where you meet this beautiful woman and you say I want to marry you because you're you're so beautiful and she says I will if you give me 10 now if you think about it she's clearly saying no to you but it is your imagination that tricks you into believing that as long as you give her $10 million she will love you okay her love is something that you can master and control and possess and if Soul turn the soul T steadfastly then that propensity is love it's nature that joins a soul in you a new through Beauty okay you must possess her you will do you will do everything possible in order to to possess her and that's what love is all right you you see someone beautiful you turn her into a fantasy and then you chase after this fantasy until it's yours that's what love is then just as flames Ascend because the form of fire was fashioned to fly up word toward the stuff to its own spear where it lasts longer okay so you can understand that what Virgil uses is lot of natural imagery okay fire so these are things beyond our control right we are consumed by our lust and our love for this woman so does the soul when sees move into longing emotion of the spirit never resting till the belov thing has made it joyous we have to possess it if we don't possess it then we will be depressed now you can plainly see how deeply hidden truth is from scrutinous who would insist that every love is in itself praiseworthy okay there's some people who believe that love is beautiful no no no it depends on who you love okay and they are led to error by the matter of love because it may seem always good but not each seal is fine although the wax is okay if you love a woman who loves you back that's fine but if a woman insists that you go rob a bank for $10 million then that's bad all right your speech and my own wi that follow it I answered him this is Dante have shown me what love is but that has filled me with greater doubt for if Love's offered to us from about and it's the only foot with which Soul walks Soul going straight or crooked has no merit okay this is a really interesting question if it is true that when we see someone beautiful we must have her then we have no free will we have no free choice we're just all animals and this is what Virgil says what Reon can see here I can impart pass that for truth of Faith it's beus alone you must await every substantial form at once distinct from matter and conjoin to it and gathers the force that is distinctively its own a force unknown to us until it acts it's never shown except in its effects just as green bous displayed the life in plants so it is true that our soul wants to possess things that are beautiful okay that's what that's what love is and thus man does not know the source of his intelligence or Primal Notions and his tending towards desires Primal objects okay so we are not aware of the lust within us we are not aware of how our soul works both are in you just as in bees there is the honey making urge such Prim and will deserves no praise it deserves no blame okay we just lust for what is beautiful that's just how we are um made now that all other longings May conform to this first will there is in you inborn the power that counsels keep of the threshold of your Ascent this is the principle of which your Merit may be judged for it Garners and windows good and evil longings okay so what we can do our choice our Free Will in the matter is to resist our temptation to say no that that's what Augustine would say right we just say no no no yes I want her but it's bad for me so I will stop myself from doing so okay but those resers who reach the roots of things learn of this inborn Freedom the bequest that thus they left on to the world is ethics okay even if we allow necessity as source for every Power that inflames in you the power to curve that love is still your own the power to curb that love is still your own we can resist we can say no we can deny our love there's noal power is what beist means by Free Will therefore remember it if she should ever speak of it to you okay so this is the conception of love from um Virgil okay does that make sense love can be good or it can be bad it's you who must decide if it's bad for you then you must resist okay and so what is Dante's response to this argument do you guys remember what what what's a response to this okay the response is this the response is if you truly love someone then you only want what's best for that person and so if the person says to you I will only marry you if you give me $10 million then you know that person doesn't love you so you turn away from her and says all I care is about is your happiness if you're happier without me then I will leave but I certainly will not degrade you like by thinking that you're only worth $10 million to my eyes you're Priceless and you you only to grade yourself if you think that you're only worth $10 million does that make sense okay so love is not about possession it's about respecting the person for who she is okay does that make sense right all right so let's continue so now they're climbing up the mountain of purgatory and Purgatory is an isolated Mountain okay that there's a force field around it that protects it from the natural elements but every now and then there's an earthquake okay the entire Mountain trembles and the reason why is because a soul with that mountain has cleansed himself or herself of her sins she's absolved herself of her sins and therefore here or she now has access to heaven and the heavens celebrate this with with a with a shake okay with an earthquake so um Virgil and D and they meet a man named statius a poet who has just exp himself okay who's just released himself from his sins and he's so excited because he's going to heaven all right and this this is what he says so had the will to clim before but that will was opposed by longing to do Penance as once to sin instilled by Divine Justice okay so the people in um Purgatory are those who have committed a sin and they need to do Penance before they can go to heaven now this is really important why because ask ask youself this question if hell is a place where people go because they've Sinn and Purgatory is a place where people go because they sin what is the difference right okay and what what we will learn is this the difference is the question of will people in purgatory recognize that they have committed a sin and that that they must do Penance before they go to heaven but they're willing to admit that they've committed a sin and they're willing to do the Penance and the Penance could be a thousand years it could be one year it doesn't it doesn't matter okay but they're willing to commit themselves to penance hell is a place where you go because you refuse to admit you've committed a sin you refuse to admit your wrong if you refuse to admit your wrong you can never you can never do Penance you can never absolve yourself of your sins and that's the difference guys that's the only difference okay in terms of like crime in terms of sin it's the same but the difference is those in purgatory have committed themselves to redeeming themselves all right so let's continue and I and this is stadius by the way who have laid in a suffering 500 years he's been here 500 years okay and more just now have felt the My Free Will for a better threshold thus you have heard the earthquake and the pious Spirits throughout the mountain as they praised the Lord and may he send them speedily upward so if you are able to release yourself from your sin you are now there's an earthquake and you and now you have access to heaven so did he speak to us and just as Joy is it's greatest when we quench a greater thirst The Joy he brought cannot be told in words status is the happiest person in the universe at this point because he has found paradise and my wife guy and this is um Virgil I now can see the net impeding you how one sips through and why it Quakes here and what makes you all rejoice and now may it please you to tell me who you were in your own words may I find why you've laay here for so many centuries tell us who you are okay who are you how you how are you able to accomplish this in that age when the worthy Titus with help from the highest King Avenge the wounds from which the blood that Judas sold had flowed okay so this is about 70 and this and Titus is the Roman general who attacked Jerusalem sacked it and destroyed the temple and the Christians saw this as revenge for the killing of their Savior Jesus that's sufficient Fame beyond that Spirit replied I bore the name that lasts longest and honors most but Faith was not yet mine okay so he's trying to explain who he is so gentle was the spirit of my verse that Rome drew me son of tus to her and there were my brow deserve a crown of Myrtle on Earth my name is still remember statius I sang of Thieves and then of great Achilles I fell along the way of that lost labor okay so he's an epic poet just like ver that the Sparks that warmed me the seeds of my ardor were from the Holy Fire the same that gave more than a thousand poets let inflame okay so what inspired me is the Holy Fire who is the Holy Fire we would think God right nope it is Virgil okay I speak of the inad it is Virgil who is the Holy Fire it is Virgil who is God when I wrote verse it was Mother to me it was nerd my work routed would not weigh an ounce I was inspired by the inad and Virgil to write my poetry Virgil is the god the mother who nursed me and to have lived on earth when Virgil lived for that I would extend by one more year the time I owe before my Exiles end I've been in per for 500 years but if I had a chance to meet Virgil I would stay one more year that's how Virgil that's how how much I love Virgil that's how much how important Virgil is to me he doesn't know that the person standing next to him is Virgil okay these words made Virgil turn to me and as he turned his face his face through silence said be still okay he's like shut up man I don't want to know who who who I am all right so what's going on here well what's really important for us to understand is that this shows us that Virgil was lying Virgil told us in the beginning of the of divine colony was impossible for Meritt to leave um limbo and Ascend to Paradise he told us that you have to be baptized in order to get into heaven status was not baptized right status is exactly like Virgil a Roman epic poet but status is able to ascend to heaven but Virgil is not does that make sense and the reason why status is able to go to heaven is status wants to okay he's willing to admit there there are flaws in his thinking he's willing to admit that his understanding of the world is flawed and he needs to undergo introspection reflection to improve himself Virgil is not does that make sense all right so let's go to the very last passage and we'll and then we'll end and this is this is Kanto 30 and this is when beus is ascending from Heaven okay no she's sorry she's descending from Heaven on a chariot and it is uh and she's beautiful okay and that's at this point if you're Virgil you might be like wow this is my chance to get out of limbo and go to heaven right because beus who's in heaven asked me to do her a favor guide Dante F infernal and Purgatory I've done that man now she owes me and here's my chance to say to be hey could you do me a favor and like get me into heaven that's all he has to do right that would make sense let's see what happens so this is beus descending from heaven and Dante is en raptured okay he's just completely she completely focused on beus within her presence I had once been used to feeling trembling Wonder disolution but that was long ago still though my soul now she was veiled could not see her directly by way of hidden force that she could move I felt the mighty power of old love all right so it's been decades since he last saw her but he still feels for her he's trembling okay he's completely en raptured by beus as soon as that deep Force had struck my vision the power that when I had not yet left my B Boyhood had already transfixed me I turned around and to my left just as a little child afraid of in distress will hurry to his mother anxiously he's turning around who who does he want to talk to Virgil right he's he's there are butterflies in his stomach he's excited he's trembling he said Virgil Virgil it's beus okay he sees Virgil as his father he wants to share his Joy with Virgil all right and where is Virgil to say to Virgil I am left with less than one drop of my blood that does not tremble I recognize the sons of the the signs of the old flame Virgil it's beus I've waited decades for this moment he wants to share this happiness with Virgil but Virgil had deprived us of himself Virgil the gentless father Virgil he to whom I gave myself for my salvation Virgil has run away at this climax at this moment when Dante is finally reunited with beus the moment that Virgil has completed his quest Virgil has run away okay he's ran he's run away he's disappeared no one knows knows where he is and even our ancient mother LW was not enough to keep my cheeks though washed with DW from darkening again with tears what Donnie wants more than anything else is for a Virg to share his happiness what he wants more than anything anything else is for Virgil to ascend to heaven like Dante will and Virgil disappear and Dante knows at this point Virgil will never change Virgil run away because he refuses to admit he is wrong you understand once Virgil sees the love between beus and Dante then Virgil knows his conception of Love is wrong because never once did Dante possess beatric but never once did Dante stop loving beatric so love is not about possession it's about trust it's about faith that's what love is and so rather than admit he is wrong and go to Heaven by the way Virgil is like screw this I'm going back to hell because I'm happier there i' rather burn in hell for eternity then admit I'm wrong Dante though Virg leaving you do not yet weep do not weep yet you'll need your tears for yet for what another sword must yet inflict pus says to Dante let him go let him go you can't save him you have to save yourself there's no point in trying to save those who don't want to be saved it just isn't all right and so that this is the last we will see of Virgil and as you can understand at this point in our hearts we've also learned to let Virgil go and this means that slowly from our minds the inad will dissipate will dissolve itself and and we will have a new memory called The Divine Colony come into place which will reshape the way we see the universe okay does that make sense guys is this clear all right any questions about this yeah go ahead it actually goes way back so you got some keep going no no no no I I'm I'm finished yeah okay so I'm sorry about this I was like trying to answer messages at the same time yeah no worries no worries yeah that's right I I missed that part like how did he do that yeah okay so um how did Virgil put title In Hell okay so this goes back to the inad um which everyone will have read if you read the Divine commy you must have you you will certainly have read um the inad so what happens in the inad is that inas a prince of Troy he's going to Rome to basically found the Roman Empire okay that is his Divine Mission sent to him by the gods but along the way he gets Shipwrecked on Carthage and didle who is the um queen of Carthage welcomes him and his people and they fall in love and then um they get married they have sex and all that but then the gods get angry because they didn't want indas in Carthage they want him in Rome okay so they sent um Mercury the messenger of God to tell him hey man inas go to Rome and in is because he's Pious okay that's that's what he's famous for for for being Pious he just basically says fine okay and didle of course gets very upset and he and he warns inas if you leave I I can only kill myself I love you that much and in is basically like yeah go kill yourself okay so he leaves and she kills herself okay she basically throws herself into a um I I I can't remember I I I I think she just stops herself with a sword and then throws herself off off into a fire okay so um didle is dead now on the way to Rome inas has to go through hell in order to um get a prophecy of the founding of Rome and in Hell who does he meet he meets ditto and inas is kind of it's awkward for him and he's like I should go say hi okay but the moment he tries to say hi to ditto d runs away and what what's happened is that in hell not only is she burning in hell but she's lost the power to speak which for the Greeks and the Romans was was even worse than death you've lost the power to speak um so that's what happens in the inad and um D is continuing this idea in The Divine Comedy he's assumed that if if you're if you're reading The Divine Comedy you've already read the the inad which which I mean again the inad is what you have to memorize in school yeah just wonder with her being aagan I know she could get out of hell she would have been uh that's right just according to theology yeah so so so yeah so in Virgil's cosmology dto has to be in hell because she's she's a pagan and enas is there as well so enas is actually in limbo and ditto is the first circle of of of of hell um the the problem though is that Virgil does not acknowledge ditto okay so it's like Virgil wants to block ditto from her own uh from his own mind he he he's trying to um ignore the fact that ditto is is his creation he he feels kind of embarrassed about about all this okay does that make sense okay um did you have any questions yeah oh yeah yeah that's a great question where do you say is limbo and patory come from okay so what's happening is that Don is dealing with an entire cosmology of Christian thought okay because throughout Christian history there have been a lot of problems one big problem is let's just say that you're a baby and you are born before the time of Christ okay and you die because you're sick okay well that makes no well then according to Christian theology then the baby would burn and how that's doesn't make any sense right because because it's a baby he or she is without sin and he got unlucky right so they create this place called Limbo for these special cases okay does that make sense right so that that's that's where where with the idea of limbo from and then Purgatory is um another idea that was created um in order to um basically as a middle ground between hell in heaven okay because there are lots of special cases where okay um this person did some sin and so doesn't can't have access to heaven but the sin doesn't qualify for hell right so they created Purgatory so um The Genius of Dante is he's basically accessing all this cosmology and like there are different conflicts within this cosmology right and he's creating his own cosmology right so before Dante the idea of purgatory was not that common but after Dante Purgatory became a much more common Concept in Christian theology right also what if you actually read the Divine Colony it's clear that Don is drawing a lot of his ideas from narcissism okay so in other words what's happening is that even though the Catholic church is trying to impose Orthodoxy on the European population most people are actually resisting especially the educated Elite they're resisting and they they're creating their own uh theology in in opposition to uh the Catholic church so they they all believe in Jesus but the interpretation of Jesus is different okay so one major difference in the Divine colony is that um it's Orthodoxy that Jesus died for our sins but when beus and Don about Jesus pus tells Dante no Jesus died to awaken us to educate us to our own flaws because otherwise we could not look ourselves in the mirror okay the death of Jesus was so shocking that it forced us to look ourselves in the mirror and to see the sin within us okay so it was an act of Education it was an act of inspiration rather than an act of redemption okay according to Wikipedia was checking this up the uh so the Catholic Church kind of solidified its own understanding of 124 Council of so the church gets together earlier about the the ideat B problem IDE suffering Mone get this will be something that Lu basically 200 years from from the time this was insed creates a lit Masterpiece but also kind the to that's right yeah the um the other thing that we didn't we discuss is that at this point in um European history this year about 1300 right um as Doug says there's a lot of reflection going on like like like people in within the Catholic Church hierarchy understand that Augustine his theories his theology are problematic okay and so what happens is that um a new the Theologian named Thomas aquinus comes comes and his Orthodoxy starts to replace that of Augustine and um a and aquinus is a much more enlightened much more open-minded individual than Augustine is okay they're basically dealing with two different uh social Mals when Augustine was around um Rome was at the height of its power the Catholic church was an Empire but obviously a few centuries later there was the Arabian conquest and there was the Mongolian Mongolian Conquest as well so there was a lot of more self-reflection going on okay and so so if you look at the ideas of Thomas aqu quas and Dante they aligned very closely but what's important for us to understand is um philosophy is not as effective as poetry philosophy is about ideas and you debate these ideas but poetry goes into your subconscious and they become the building blocks of your psyche okay does that make sense because poetry is language and and as as we discussed it was very common back then uh it it was it was actually a great practice for just people to memorize poetry they didn't remember they didn't actually know what they were memorizing but they just memorized it and it made them much more fluent in language and much more fluid in thought okay and and and that's that's a culture practice that we no longer do to our detriment basically right shakesp in your head okay so um are there any more questions before we maybe just one like you did plant the the intriguing idea that the Scientific Revolution right the seeds of the Reformation as well pick up one of those and right okay's okay so um the key idea of the proess Reformation is that you have direct access to God right um and how do you access God Through the Bible right you don't need a priest to be the middleman because because if there's a if there's a middleman priest all sorts of problems are being created corruption is a huge issue um but also um Orthodoxy and so the idea of the present Reformation is that you can access God through the the Bible itself okay and why that's and why why you're able to do that is because God is within you and within God and there and therefore through self-study you're able to access truth yourself okay so that's the main idea of the proc Reformation does that make sense okay and then when we talk about the silic revolution the main idea of the silic revolution is the um in intialization of Doubt all right what does that mean it means we incourage you to ask questions we encourage you to debate because that's what God wants and where where do we get this idea from because in heaven B and D are arguing all the time it's the vine to ask questions it's divine to doubt it's divine to experiment all right um remember the father of the side of revolution is Galileo where's Galo from Florence right so Galo grew up immersed in The Divine Comedy all right it's these things aren't AR accidental okay right all right does that make sense but but but I will go into these topics and themes uh much more specifically uh next semester okay any more questions okay great so um I will see you guys uh next semester that