The Thomistic Influence on Dante Alighieri´s Thought and tha Mytico-theologo Charater of the First Volume of the Trilogy the Divine Comedy

Abstract

Dante Alighieri titled his trilogy Comedy in the Aristotelian sense. Focusing on the first volume, the Hell, we analyze some allegorical elements in dialogue with Scholastic theology. Divine justice in the Divine Comedy is influenced by Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, interpreted through a Thomistic lens, which categorizes moral dispositions into vice, incontinence, and brutishness. The structure of the Inferno and the categorization of sins reflect Thomistic theology, where divine grace is a necessary gift for salvation. Dante incorporates the doctrine of free will, essential for divine justice, where the soul chooses between salvation and damnation. The Hell is an allegory of divine justice, with punishments corresponding to the sins committed. The influence of Thomas Aquinas is evident in the Divine Comedy, where the structure of the circles follows a hierarchy of guilt and merit, articulating in a literary and visual manner the relationship between grace and free will as fundamental to virtue and salvation.

KEYWORDS: Dante Alighieri. Thomas Aquinas. Grace. Free Wil. Hell.