Dante's Inferno Test

Before entering, there are pitiful souls who did neither good nor evil in their lifetime, including a "flock of bad angels" who were neither with the devil nor with God. 1st Circle (Limbo). Unbaptized infants and virtuous non-Christians. 2nd Circle. Lustful (adulterers and fornicators). 3rd Circle. Gluttons. 4th Circle. Hoarders and wasters (love of excessive spending). 5th Circle (Stygian Swamp). The wrathful and the slothful. 6th Circle (City of Dis). Heretics and false teachers. 7th Circle.

• 1st Belt. Violent against their neighbors and their property (tyrants and robbers).
• 2nd Belt. Violent against themselves (suicides) and against their property (gamblers and wasters, i.e., those who senselessly destroy their property).
• 3rd Belt. Violent against God (blasphemers), against nature (sodomites), and against art (usurers).

8th Circle. Those who deceived those who did not trust them. It consists of ten trenches (Evil Valleys, or Evil Cracks), which are separated from each other by ramparts. Towards the center, the area of the Evil Valleys slopes, so that each subsequent trench and each subsequent rampart is located slightly lower than the previous ones, and the outer, concave slope of each trench is higher than the inner, convex slope (Inferno, XXIV, 37-40). The first rampart adjoins the circular wall. In the center yawns the depth of a wide and dark well, at the bottom of which lies the last, ninth circle of Hell. From the foot of the stone heights (verse 16), that is, from the circular wall, to this well, there are radii, like the spokes of a wheel, stone ridges, crossing the trenches and ramparts, and above the trenches they bend in the form of bridges, or arches. In the Evil Valleys, deceivers are punished who deceived people not bound to them by special bonds of trust.

• 1st Trench. Panderers and seducers.
• 2nd Trench. Flatterers.
• 3rd Trench. Simoniacs, high-ranking clergy who traded in church positions.
• 4th Trench. Soothsayers, fortune tellers, astrologers, sorceresses.
• 5th Trench. Grafters, bribe-takers.
• 6th Trench. Hypocrites.
• 7th Trench. Thieves.
• 8th Trench. Fraudulent advisors.
• 9th Trench. Inciters of discord (Muhammad, Ali, Dolcino, and others).
• 10th Trench. Alchemists, false witnesses, counterfeiters.

9th Circle. Those who betrayed those who trusted them. The icy lake of Cocytus.

• Belt of Caina. Traitors to their relatives.
• Belt of Antenora. Traitors to their homeland and fellow believers.
• Belt of Ptolemea. Traitors to their friends and companions.
• Belt of Judecca. Traitors to their benefactors, to God and to human majesty.
• In the middle, in the center of the universe, frozen in an ice floe (Satan) tears in his three mouths the traitors of earthly and heavenly majesty (Judas, Brutus, and Cassius).

When constructing a model of Hell (Inferno, XI, 16-66), Dante follows Aristotle, who in his "Ethics" (Book VII, Chapter 1) refers to the 1st category of sins of incontinence, to the 2nd - sins of violence ("brutal lust" or matta bestialitade), to the 3rd - sins of deceit ("malice" or malizia). Dante places the 2nd-5th circles for the incontinent (mainly these are mortal sins), the 7th circle for the violent, and the 8th-9th for the deceitful (the 8th - simply for the deceitful, the 9th - for the traitors). Thus, the more material the sin, the more forgivable it is. Heretics - those who have strayed from the faith and deny God - are singled out from the multitude of sinners filling the upper and lower circles, in the sixth circle. In the abyss of the lower Hell (Inferno, VIII, 75), three tiers, like three steps, are arranged in three circles - from the seventh to the ninth. In these circles, malice is punished, operating either by force (violence) or by deceit.