DANTE

Dante and Pope Nicholas III


Throughout the poem, Dante takes a pilgrim into the hell for revealing to him the very nature of sin. As Dante travels through this dreadful region, he retains those qualities that he has always possessed on earth. And, he also displays a diversity of emotions ranging from pleasure, to pity, to sympathy, to horror and disgust. However, Canto 19 is especially significant as Dante showed his first abhorrence to the souls discriminating all sympathy towards sinners in Hell in previous Cantos. This change in Dante's behavior serves less to illumine Dante as a character and more to make moral statements.
Dante and Virgil now are at the third pit, wherein are punished those who have been guilty of simony. These are fixed with the head downward in certain apertures, so that no more of them than the legs appear without, and on the soles of their feet are seen burning fires...