Hungering for What is Just: A Brief Comparison of the Gluttonous in Dante’s Inferno &Purgatorio

  An often-overlooked sin in the modern church, gluttony is one of the seven capital sins according to Christian medieval theology. In his renowned work, The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri describes the punishments the gluttonous must suffer in hell and the penance the gluttonous must engage in purgatory. In both realms, the gluttonous are in some way forced to reap the fruit of what they had sown on earth. I shall argue that the consequences described by Dante that the gluttonous receive in hell, in contrast to what they receive in purgatory, insightfully demonstrate the differences in God’s purposes for each of these domains. While I am a Protestant and thus do not affirm the doctrine of purgatory, one need not believe in purgatory to benefit from Dante’s message regarding the purposes of God, the pursuit of virtue (in this case, temperance), and the means by which God enables His people to grow in holiness. God’s gracious purposes in purgatory are displayed by the fact that, while the gluttonous in hell are forced to become immersed in the gross, overabundance of their sin in order to face just punishment, those in purgatory who have committed gluttony are compelled to engage in starvation in order to grow in holiness.  

In Canto VI of Dante’s Inferno, the reader finds oneself in the third circle of hell. In this circle, those who were guilty of the sin of gluttony lie on the ground and experience “hateful rain, cold and leaden / changeless in its monotony.”¹  A man named Ciacco, which meant “hog” or “pig” in Dante’s Florentine dialect, serves as Dante’s primary gluttonous interlocutor.² Throughout the Inferno, Dante provides the reader with contrapassos, punishments which either resemble or contrast with the sin committed by the sinner. The contrapasso for the sin of gluttony elicits a visceral reaction from the reader, as it makes extreme the gross, overabundance with which the gluttonous lived during their earthly lives. Dante describes the scene as he writes,  

I am in the third circle of eternal, 

hateful rain, cold and leaden,  

changeless in its monotony. 

 Heavy hailstones, filthy water, and snow 

pour down through gloomy air  

The ground it falls on reeks.³ 

 Ciacco, and the rest of the gluttonous, lie prostrate in the heavy, oppressive rain. How might this be a fitting contrapasso? If in their earthly lives the gluttonous were constantly seeking overabundance, then in hell they face the terror of disgusting overabundance raining down on them while they cannot move. Furthermore, the rain and water are filthy and the ground “reeks.” Disgustingly, those who were consumed by food and overindulgence now sit under excrement-like rain, an example of what they themselves expelled in their gluttony.  

While the gluttonous of Inferno are forced to be all consumed by their sin to which they had given their life, the gluttonous of Purgatorio are given the opportunity to deny their gluttonous impulses and experience starvation instead. In this experience, the penitents learn temperance. In the sixth terrace of Purgatory, the gluttonous are so thin that they are unrecognizable, and their skin begins to scale. 

 Their eyes were dark and sunken,  

their faces pale, their flesh so wasted 

that the skin took all its shape from the bones.⁴ 

 Instead of punishment by drowning them in the consequences of their sin, God allows the gluttonous of purgatory to undergo the exact opposite; they are denied their hunger for material and earthly things to an extreme extent. Instead of something given as a punishment, something is stripped away as penance. Forese, one of the penitents in the terrace, states beautifully,  

All these people who weep while they are singing  

followed their appetites beyond all measure,  

and here regain, in thirst and hunger, holiness.⁵ 

 While their situation is difficult, Forese makes clear God’s intended purposes for the pain; through starving the penitents, God would bring about holiness. Forese’s description of the penance reaches its high point when he compares it to the work of Christ saying,  

for the same desire leads us to the trees  

that led Christ to utter Eli with such bliss  

when with the blood from his own veins He made us free.⁶ 

 Like Christ, the pain the formerly gluttonous penitents experience would work for good. Herein lies an excellent example of how the different use of contrapassos in Inferno and Purgatorio highlight the purposes of God.  

As Dante ascended from the terrace of the gluttonous, he heard the following words:  

… Blessed are they  

whom grace so much enlightens that appetite  

fills not their breasts with gross desires,  

but leaves them hungering for what is just.⁷ 

 The formerly gluttonous in purgatory were not punished by being consumed in their gluttonous ways, instead, their hunger was transformed. No longer would they hunger and thirst for the gross desires that reek like filthy water,; rather, they will hunger for justice and righteousness. 

As classical Christian educators, may we work to cultivate a desire in our students to deny and put to death the gluttonous desires of their hearts by God’s grace and to instead hunger for the just, good, beautiful, and true.  

 1 Dante Aleghieri, The Inferno, trans. Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander (New York City, NY: Anchor Books, 2002), 6.8-9. 

2 Ibid., p.124.  

3 Ibid., 6.7-12. 

4 Dante Aleghieri, Purgatorio, trans. Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander (New York City, NY: Anchor Books, 2003), 23.22-24.  

5 Ibid., 23.64-66.  

6 Ibid., 23.73-75. 

7 Ibid., 24.151-154 

Bibliography 

Aleghieri, Dante. The Inferno. Translated by Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander. New York City, NY: Anchor Books, 2002. 

Aleghieri, Dante. The Purgatorio. Translated by Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander. New York City, NY: Anchor Books, 2003.  

Raffa, Guy P. The Complete Danteworlds: A Reader’s Guide to the Divine Comedy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009.