Dante's Ranking of Sins

What I found most interesting about Dante’s Inferno is the way in which he ranked sins. In today’s modern society, we think of sins such as murder and rape as some of the worst, while those who “betray” their friends and family are simply looked down upon, but seem to suffer far less severe consequences. Sins are ranked in the Inferno in a matter quite different from how someone writing today would rank them. This matter of ranking shows the reader much about how Dante viewed the world and Christianity, as well as the way in which his society viewed certain “sins”.

One way to interpret this ranking is to compare each sin and its respective ranking to what the Bible commonly refers to as God’s greatest gift to mankind: love. As Dante and Virgil travel closer and closer into the center of Hell, it seems as if each sin gets farther and farther away from love. With the worst sin of all, treason of a benefactor, being a complete betrayal of love. As we discussed in class, the inner circles get colder and colder, perhaps symbolizing this divergence from love, an emotion commonly described as warm and comforting. If a reader were to analyze the Inferno from a strictly Christian viewpoint, I believe comparing the sins and their ranking in this way would best describe Dante’s reasoning behind the flow if his story.

But we also discussed in class that the Inferno includes influences from Dante’s political and cultural life. This could also explain the way in which some of the sins were ranked. During the 1300’s in Florence, certain “sins”, such as gluttony and fraudulence, were seen as despicable. Dante also ranked sins based on people he knew who committed them and how he felt about those people. It is interesting that he ranked treason as the worst of all sins when he himself was exiled from Florence, along with his political party, for treason.

When examining the way in which Dante ranks certain sins in the Inferno, it is important to consider all of the possible contributing factors. Dante was a writer just like any other, and was thus influenced by the multiple factors that appear in his writing. Although the ranking of sins may seem nonsensical to a modern reader, it made perfect sense to him. Understanding this notion comes with the idea of reading a piece of work as if you were in the author’s shoes. Doing so with the Inferno makes it much easier to understand Dante’s reasoning in why he ranked certain sins as he did.