Inferno III

While I find the idea the Dante puts many Popes in Hell since he is a devote Christian, I don't find it as odd as you may think. In the title of the canto it specifically states that we will find corrupt clergy which was not exactly uncommon in Dante's time. We have to remember that the Church has not always played the same role as it does today. Of course we all know that at one point there was no separation between Church and State and in some cases the Church was the State, but we must also remember that the Church was an institution and functioned much like institutions we see today. Therefore of course there was corruption. One source lists the corruptions of the Church as follows “Moral laxity, at all levels of Church hierarchy, became an obvious source of criticism of the Church. Clergy members were supposed to be an educated elite, but many parish priests were illiterate and hardly know how to perform ordinary religious services. Many priests and nuns publicly flaunted their vows of chastity by taking lovers. During this time, “illegitimate” children could be made legitimate by purchasing a document from the Church; out of 614 grants of legitimacy in the year 1342-43, 484 were to members of the clergy. In some areas, bishops chose not to enforce rules regarding celibacy because it would decrease the income gained from fines imposed on concubinage. Several popes raised illegitimate children, including Innocent VIII and Alexander VI, who conferred upon their sons important Church offices. Numerous bishops and abbots used their positions to lead lives of luxury and leisure, living more like princes than humble men of God. Cardinals lived in palaces in Rome, sporting jewel-encrusted gold robes and feasting on sumptuous meals. During the Babylonian Captivity, one Cardinal in Avignon required 10 stables for his horses, and another housed his servants in 51 houses. When Giovanni de Medici was elected Pope Leo X in 1513, he said, “God has given us the papacy; now let us enjoy it.”The Church developed several corrupt practices to pay for these extravagant lifestyles. Christian tradition taught that pilgrimages to sites of relics or holy places were acceptable forms of penance that were necessary to return to God’s grace after one had sinned. During the late medieval period, some clergy took advantage of this tradition to create a thriving industry by bringing relics to the people and charging repentant Christians to see the holy remains and objects. Frederick I, prince of Saxony in northern Germany, kept a collection of over 17,000 relics that included a piece of Moses’ burning bush, 33 fragments of Jesus’ cross, some straw from Jesus’ manger, and even a vial of milk from the Virgin Mary’s breasts. Proceeds from pilgrimages to this museum of relics paid for Saxony’s cathedral, castle, and university. Simony was another practice that created revenue for the hierarchy in Rome. It allowed Church offices to go to the highest bidder, regardless of the buyer’s background or training. By the fifteenth century, some Christians even considered traditional Church taxes, levied in the form of tithes on all Christian subjects of the pope, to be unjust.”
As we can see it is no surprise that Dante a devote Christian condemns such actions and sends those who “supervise the Church” and are supposed to be the icons of the Church in one of the lowest circles of Hell. It is almost as though Dante cannot put the Church the institution in Hell so he must put the “governors” of the institution there to pay for the sin of steering such a great force in such a terrible path.
The interesting part of this canto for me is that the Church is only inverted on a superficial level. While on the surface we see the Church as a representation of “all things holy” but in fact there is nothing holy about what the Church is doing and Dante knows this. We can see a parallel in a sense. God cast Lucifer and his band on angles out of heaven after trying to take God's place as all-mighty. The Popes in Hell were cast there after trying to manipulate the Church and its followers to become “all-mighty” In a way God cast all those who followed in the ways of Lucifer into the same eternal damnation. Guess we should all be glad Dante didn't cast all of those who liked these Popes into hell right along with them.