The Theme in the Work
Justice is the first word the Inferno says about itself. The inscription on the gate, in canto III of the Inferno, speaks in the first person and gives the cause of the city: justice moved my lofty maker, and divine power, supreme wisdom, and primal love made me. Before any punishment, the poem warns that the Inferno is the work of an order, and not of an accident.
Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore; / fecemi la divina podestate, / la somma sapïenza e ’l primo amore. / Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create / se non etterne, e io etterno duro. / Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate, justice moved my lofty maker; divine power made me, supreme wisdom, and primal love. Before me there were no created things, only eternal ones, and I, eternal, endure. Abandon all hope, you who enter.
The poem shows three gears of this order. The first is a will that no one disputes. Before Charon, and then before Minos, Virgil answers with the same words, "it is so willed there where what one wants can be done," and the repetition says that Dante's journey has an owner whom the guardians know.
Non impedir lo suo fatale andare: / vuolsi così colà dove si puote / ciò che si vuole, e più non dimandare, do not hinder his fated going: it is so willed there where what one wants can be done, and ask no more.
The second is measure: Minos examines the guilt and wraps his tail as many times as there are degrees of the descent, and the design of the abyss, set out by Virgil in canto XI of the Inferno, orders the punishment by the use of intelligence against the trust of others. The third is contrapasso, the punishment that repeats the fault. The poem uses this word only once, on the lips of Bertran de Born, in canto XXVIII of the Inferno, who states it as the law of which he is the example: because he divided people so closely united, he carries his brain divided, far from its source. What is seen in that canto is found in almost all the others, in the lead cloaks of the hypocrites, in the serpents that undo the bodies of the thieves, in the bodies the suicides will not get back: the justice of the Inferno is something the damned understand and confirm, and not only suffer.
The poem does not stop at showing it. Dante questions it, in canto VII of the Inferno, when he sees the amount of punishment piled into one place, and what he receives is a lesson on the avaricious and on Fortune, the minister set by God, which the poem leaves to the reader to judge whether it answers the question of why the guilt of men destroys them thus:
Ahi giustizia di Dio! tante chi stipa / nove travaglie e pene quant’ io viddi? / e perché nostra colpa sì ne scipa, Ah, justice of God! who piles up so many new torments and penalties as I have seen? And why does our guilt so destroy us?
And the poem watches the pilgrim himself, so that he does not put his own grief in the place of the sentence. When he weeps before the soothsayers, Virgil rebukes him with a word that in Italian serves for both compassion and pity:
Qui vive la pietà quand’ è ben morta; / chi è più scellerato che colui / che al giudicio divin passion comporta?, here pity lives when it is well dead; who is more wicked than he who feels compassion for God's judgment?
There is also the justice of men, which the Inferno charges and debates: the law of property that shuts the wood of the suicides, the vengeance that the family of Geri del Bello leaves unpaid, the city in which, Ciacco says, only two are just and they are not heard. In all of them the poem asks who has the right to measure.
Who Embodies It
Minos is justice as a craft: he examines, measures, wraps his tail, and sends; only Virgil's formula silences him. Charon is execution: he does not judge; he ferries across to the other shore whoever divine justice spurs on, so that fear becomes desire. And the devil who disputes Guido da Montefeltro with Saint Francis is the same justice in the form of argument:
ch’assolver non si può chi non si pente, / né pentere e volere insieme puossi / per la contradizion che nol consente, for one who does not repent cannot be absolved, nor can one repent and will at the same time, because the contradiction does not allow it.
Where It Appears
- canto III: The inscription on the gate says that justice moved the creator of the Inferno, and Virgil explains that divine justice turns the fear of the souls into a desire to cross over.
- canto V: Minos examines each guilt and wraps his tail, and Virgil repeats to him the formula he used with Charon, that of a will no one disputes.
- canto VII: Dante, before the punishment piled upon the avaricious and the prodigal, questions God's justice, and Virgil answers him by speaking of Fortune.
- canto XI: Virgil sets out the order of the abyss, in which fraud lies below violence, and incontinence offends God less than malice.
- canto XII: Nessus explains that divine justice strikes Attila, Pyrrhus, and Sextus in the river of blood, and squeezes out the tears of two highwaymen.
- canto XIII: Pier delle Vigne says the suicides will not have their bodies back, because it is not just to have again what one tore away.
- canto XIV: Capaneus, lying under the rain of fire, cries out that he is killed as he was alive, and Virgil replies that his own pride is his punishment.
- canto XX: Virgil rebukes Dante for weeping before the soothsayers with twisted faces, because there pity lives only when it is well dead, and feeling compassion for God's judgment is the worst of crimes.
- canto XXI: Virgil presents to the Malebranche the will of heaven as the reason to pass, and Malacoda lets the hook fall at his feet.
- canto XXVII: A devil shows Guido da Montefeltro that one who does not repent cannot be absolved, nor can one repent and will at the same time.
- canto XXVIII: Bertran de Born says he carries his brain divided because he divided father and son, and calls this contrapasso.
- canto XXIX: The Aretine tells that Minos, to whom error is not permitted, condemned him for the alchemy he practiced in the world, in the last of the ten ditches.
- canto XXX: Master Adam says that the justice that lashes him punishes him in the place where he sinned, and recalls the streams of the Casentino that now dry him out.
Where the Readings Diverge
The justice that the Inferno displays bears two readings, and the poem does not choose. In one, it is an intelligible order, which the damned understand and confirm, as Bertran de Born does before the contrapasso, and which the pilgrim learns to accept without weeping. In the other, it is an order imposed by a will above every question, like the formula repeated to Charon and to Minos, and which the pilgrim accepts only because three ladies of heaven look after him. Canto VII of the Inferno shows the point of tension: Dante asks about God's justice, and the poem answers with Fortune.
Between the justice that is explained and the one that is merely imposed, the Inferno keeps a place for each, and the reader decides which weighs more. The inscription that opens the canticle puts both in the same sentence: what moved it is justice, and the one who made it was primal love.