O vendetta di Dio

Having considered the full implications of the somber advice "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate'" (Inf. III, 9) inscribed on hell's portal, the sixteenth-century critic Castelvetro, a staunch literalist, wryly observes that this assertion is proven false by Dante himself, "poiche' vuole che i santi padri v'entrassono e n'uscissono, e Cristo similmente ed Enea, e Teseo, ed Ercole e Traiano e Beatrice e l'angelo, che fa aprir la porta a Dite, e Virgilio esce e rientra, ed esso Dante non è ritenuto e Catone."1 In short, the door lies! Indeed, there exists a small army of worthies for whom the yawning portal, despite its ominous inscription, marks the road not to perdition, but salvation; for whom the squalid reaches of hell are not a terminus, but a way station on a journey undertaken to free themselves, or others, from infernal bondage. In the Commedia, it is Christ's descent into hell that establishes the ideal point of reference for all other descents; classical descents like that of Hercules or Aeneas may be viewed as "shadowy prefaces" to the central narrative of Christ's harrowing: Christian descents like that of Beatrice and Dante as a variety of postscript. The notion that Christ descended to hell during the period between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, liberated the First Parents, patriarchs, and other virtuous Hebrews from limbo, trampled [End Page 1] on Death, and bound Satan was suggested by a small number of passages in the Bible.2 These intriguing spunti were more than sufficient to inspire various attempts to flesh out the circumstances of Christ's descent in a more substantial narrative. Prominent among these narratives was the concluding section of the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, the Descensus Christi ad inferos. The anonymous author of this rousing account of Christ's conquest of hell skillfully contrasts the joyful expectation of the enslaved souls awaiting liberation with the frenzied anguish of Satan and his minions as they desperately scramble to throw up defensive metal barricades. Satan's frantic efforts are, of course, unavailing and Christ, "coming in the brightness of celestial light from on high, compassionate, great, and lowly, carrying a chain in his hand" (Latin B, 8 [24].I.), easily binds him and casts him into the dark pit of Tartarus.3 This jarring juxtaposition of charity and chains is a forceful reminder that the same Christ who stretches forth one hand to draw Adam and his company to freedom (8[24]. I.) wields a chain with the other. Christ's mission in hell is not simply to reward the virtuous, but to punish the wicked; his act of salvation is simultaneously an act of depredation, his gain, a devastating loss to a ravished, and humiliated hell. While Dante's commentators have tended to overlook this violent, punitive component of Christ's harrowing, Dante, I would argue, does not. The pages that follow represent an attempt to recover and restore this long-neglected facet of Dante's Christ: an avenging Christ who, in words that Jacobus de Voragine attributes to [End Page 2] Augustine, arrives in hell as "an invader, not a debtor, a demolisher and destroyer, no sinner, but a predator" (Golden Legend, chap. 54).4 The most elaborate treatment of the Descensus theme in the Commedia occurs in Inferno IV where Virgil, in response to Dante's leading question regarding the possibility of beatitude for the "suspended" souls of limbo, supplies a brief, eye-witness account of the harrowing. In sharp contrast to the exuberant drama of the Gospel of Nicodemus, Virgil's testimony consists of a perfunctory listing of liberated souls that ranges from the First Parents to the Hebrew patriarchs before ending rather abruptly with the vague notice that "molti altri" had likewise been saved. Indeed, Virgil's journalistic account of the harrowing is consistent with a pattern in the Commedia whereby Christ

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