A realization about Dante

Before spring break, I did a blog about Dante’s prejudice. I wrote about Ulysses being in hell was a product of this prejudices. I believed that Dante killing Ulysses on his last voyage and putting him in hell was wrong because Dante does not have the authority to decide someone’s death, especially since Homer already wrote about Ulysses making it home. However, when I was writing my research paper, I read more into the story of different characters that Dante put in hell. It was then that I realized that Dante did have means of justification for putting Ulysses and others in hell. The Inferno was based on justice, not on mercy, and before, I was reading the poem from my Christian, “Where’s the forgiveness?” point of view. But after I realized that, even though Dante was a Christian poet, his poem was not based on the Biblical principles of God’s mercy and forgiveness through Jesus, I saw that Dante had reason to put Ulysses in hell. Because, ignoring forgiveness for a moment, the condition of Ulysses soul was corrupted by the actions he did and the deceitful speeches he made. I think that in the Inferno, Dante was acting just as God would have acted has there never been Jesus the Sacrifice.