The Structure of The Trinity In The Inferno

The Structure Of The Trinity In The Inferno
Dante’s Inferno, itself one piece of a literary trilogy, repeatedly uses the number three as a recurring symbol of the trinity. The number three plays an important role in Catholic theology because of the triune God, made up of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Throughout The Inferno Dante uses dates involving the number three, encounters many different groupings of three characters representing the trinity, and uses the terza rima rhyming pattern with it’s three line stanzas as a structural building block as well.
The opening tercet of Inferno situates the poem in time: “When I Had journeyed half of our life’s way” (1836; I.1). The Bible’s Psalms describe a human lifespan as being “threescore and ten years” or seventy years. Because of the many close links between The Divine Comedy and the Bible, we can assume that Dante was thirty-five, which would date the poem to around the year 1300. As well as taking place in a yea...