In Inferno and Purgatory, the avaricious and the prodigal are subjected to the same punishment, because the vice they indulged in comes from the same source: the immoderate desire for wealth. The avaricious, or hoarders, accumulate wealth for the pleasure of possession, while the prodigal, or wasters, accumulate to spend it without reason. Having sinned by incontinence, that is, by lack of control, they are placed in the fourth circle of Inferno, after the lustful and the gluttons; in Purgatory, they are situated in the fifth terrace, immediately preceding the latter.
In Inf. 7, the avaricious and spendthrifts, divided into two groups, are condemned to walk in a semicircle while pushing weights (probably rocks) with their torso. When they collide, they insult and blame each other shouting: “‘Why do you hoard?’ or ‘why do you squander?’” (v. 30). Then, the walking resumes in the opposite direction, until another collision. Dante’s character notes that sinners are more numerous in this place than elsewhere, and he notices several clerics among them. However, he does not really recognize anyone by name: Virgil explains to him that the lack of discernment characterizing their life on Earth has made them unrecognizable in Hell. On the day of the last judgment, they will clothe their spoils, in reference to their faults: the avaricious will come out of their graves with closed fists and the prodigals with their hair cut. Dante, giving importance to none of the sinners, and quickly moving on to other arguments (Fortune, the wrathful of the Styx), reduces the description of the fourth circle to the spectacle of the noisy crowd caused by the penitents; their tormented agitation is compared to the opposing currents of Scylla and Charybdis (Inf. 7, 22-24).
In Purgatory, differently from Inferno, the penance of the avaricious and the prodigals does not obey the law of contrapasso. It is explicitly illustrated by the words of Pope Adrian V (Purg. 19, 121-126). By stating that “the mountain gives no punishment more bitter” (v. 117), it seems to indicate that among the souls of Purgatory, only those of the fifth terrace are subjected to a punishment that directly evokes the sin committee, so that their remorse is more biting. Here too the information on the souls is little. Dante speaks only with two avaricious – Adrian V and Hugues Capet. We would know nothing of the prodigals if, successively (Purg. 22, 19-36), Virgil would not have questioned Stace on the perdition of his otherwise virtuous soul: how could the avarice have found refuge here? It was the prodigality that led him to seek redemption in the fifth terrace.
On the theological level, Dante develops much on avarice and greed, but little on prodigality. The value he places on it remains unclear. Certainly, he does not explicitly minimize the seriousness of this vice compared to avarice, nor does he express a clear adherence to the thesis of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica II, 119) who maintains that prodigality is a less dangerous fault than avarice, because it constitutes a form, although dissolute, of liberty. Moreover, it can be cured in poverty or in old age – which conversely aggravates the sin of greed. If it cannot be proven that Dante was inspired by the theories of this saint, the dialogue between Virgil and Stace, in canto 22 of Purgatory, suggests that he makes a distinction between the greedy and the prodigal: if both depart from a moderate use of wealth, going against an ideal of virtue, only the former is characterized by moral aridity and are totally devoid of the spirit of charity.
Unlike Purgatory, where the foundations of avarice and prodigality (in this case the valuation and excessive use of wealth), as well as the disposition of souls clearly established by a fixed moral order, in Inferno, their definition is more complex, generating a superposition in the penitential arrangement of sinners.
Notably, a particular category of the prodigals is placed in the second ring of the seventh circle of Hell, for those guilty of self-violence. In this case, Dante insists on the fact that wasting one’s own wealth is an act of violence against oneself – like the suicidal who take their own lives. This position is reminiscent of Aristotle’s opinion that “the waste of wealth that sustains life is a destruction of man’s essence” (Nicomachean Ethics IV, 1).
Another type of avarice is punished in the ditch of Simoniacs, who are guilty of having sold or bought a spiritual good by carrying out a profane transaction. The correspondence that Dante operates between simony and avarice is also expressed on the literary level in the setting that relates, in a similar way, the meeting of protagonists with Pope Nicholas III in Hell (Inf. 19) and with Pope Adrian V in Purgatory (Purg. 19). In the third infernal ditch, Dante, looking to speak with the simoniacal pope who lies at the bottom of a well, is forced to bend towards him, assuming the position of a brother in confession: “I stood there like a friar who confesses / a treacherous assassin. Once fixed in place, / he calls the friar back to stay his death” (Inf. 19, 49-51). Their exchange is marked by a mix of irreverence, incurred by the pope for the baseness of his life on Earth, and deference, ordered by the poet by the papal dignity: Dante, who speaks harshly to Nicholas III, assures that he would have been more severe if it were not for the respect that he owes to his office (v. 100-103). Similarly, in addressing Adrian V in Purgatory, Dante kneels to approach his ear, thus producing at the same time a mechanical gesture of reverence. The pope condemned this act, inviting him to get up, because here he no longer has his pontifical dignity as on Earth; he is but a simple soul, among many others subjected to divine power (cf. Avarice).
Consult the entry of the Enciclopedia Dantesca in Italian.
Entry taken from the Enciclopedia Dantesca published by the Istituto Treccani — Texts revised by the Centre d’études médiévales of the Université de Montréal.
Editing: Gabrielle Hamelin, Martyna Kander.
English translation: Brittany Buscio.
