chapter 1

Blasphemy in Inferno

Prayer as edifying contact with God is obviously absent from hell. The damned
souls are severed from salvation for eternity and have no possibility of appeal-
ing to God for assistance. The only contact with him is through cursing and
blasphemy, which are perverted forms of prayer.
Blasphemy can be defined as verbal profanation of God and all sacred things.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, it is “a mortal sin, the gravest that may
be committed against religion” (Catholic Encyclopedia, n.d.). Etymologically,
the Greek word combines two roots, “to hurt” and “to speak,” hence, “to hurt
by speaking” (Lawton 1993, 14). Although the prohibition to offend divinity is
a general concept of almost every religion and can also be found in classical
antiquity, the ban to vilify God in the Judeo-Christian tradition comes origi-
nally from Exodus 22:28, which declares “Thou shalt not revile the gods, nor
curse the ruler of thy people.”1 This was renewed in Matthew 12:31–32 when
Jesus warned against insulting the Holy Spirit, which is the worst form of blas-
phemy (Scott 1991, 191). Throughout the Middle Ages, the crime of blasphemy
becomes confused and unified with heresy, since from “the point of view of the
church it was substantially the same crime; only the name was different […]
The preoccupying problem of the church was not abusive speech about God or
the Holy Trinity but different interpretations of the faith” (Levy 1981, 103). This
may help to explain Dante’s choice when confronted with the sin of blasphemy
in Inferno. He mentions no Christians as part of that section of hell and the
only blasphemer he encounters is Capaneus, a pagan who was guilty of chal-
lenging Jove. Dante had already placed the heretics in the sixth circle and the
sin of blasphemy seems to warrant no Christian sinners. While being punished
for thievery in Inferno 25, Vanni Fucci blasphemes God in words and deeds
from the depths of the seventh pouch in the eighth circle, and his renewed
and increased suffering immediately following his blasphemous action con-
firms that offending God calls for adequate recompense even in hell. More in
general, it is clear that blasphemy changes according to religious and cultural
context. “Blasphemy is essentially rhetorical,” since it can be applied so widely

1 Levy’s study provides ample information on the concept of blasphemy, its development and
changes throughout history, departing from the particular perspective of the Judeo-Christian
tradition, but expanding the investigation to classical times as well (1981, 15).

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16 chapter 1

that anybody using it can give their own signification to it (Lawton 1993, 2). It is
culturally and historically connoted and can acquire different meanings, even
within the same religion. This is how David Lawton explains the phenomenon:

Blasphemy, then, is culturally relative even as it indignantly refutes cul-

tural relativism […] It functions at the levels of community, discursive
positions and semantics. Its nature is rhetorical, more verbal than intel-
lectual: blasphemy is form or sound or interference […] Whether it takes
oral or written shape, the words count for everything, not their speaker
or writer. The personality of the blasphemer is of little importance. (4)

Context is everything, and this principle ought to be taken literally, since the
intention to offend is a crucial component on the part of the blasphemer.
However, anyone could repeat the insult in the form of example, which would
be a neutral, innocent action. In order for the reviling word or phrase to be
charged with an offence the desire to curse divinity needs to be present or the
insult has no power; a reference system is required in which the word or phrase
is perceived as offensive.
The souls of Dante’s hell acknowledge divinity but deny their subordina-
tion to it. One of the most notable examples of blasphemy in Dante’s Inferno
is that of Capaneus, whose long, self-identifying speech to Dante and Virgil
is rhetorically a long blasphemous utterance—and, therefore, an anti-prayer,
the opposing rhetorical device to prayer. In the same way that prayer acknowl-
edges the superiority of God over the supplicant and exalts him and his works,
blasphemy denies any superior power of divinity and aims at vilifying him. In
the Comedy, Vanni Fucci uses words and gestures in his insult to God, thereby
fulfilling the definition of blasphemy as a combination of offensive speech and
malicious intention. Offending God bears strong links with the sin of pride,
which permeates the whole pit of hell, to the point of not having a specific loca-
tion in Dante’s Inferno as a single sin, but being the matrix and origin of all sins.
All blasphemers display incommensurate and unredeemable pride, which in
most cases is the root and source of their blasphemous uttering, or their inabili-
ty to formulate any comprehensible language. The Giants of Cocytus and Satan
himself fall in this latter category; their pride merits the punishment of being
unable to speak. But blasphemy is also featured in Plutus’s incomprehensible
line (Inf. 7.1) and in Nimrod’s equally senseless apostrophe (Inf. 31.67), both
of which appear to be invocations of Satan and can be interpreted as infernal
prayers raised to the “emperor of the painful kingdom” (Inf. 34.28). These are,
I would argue, the only examples of hellish prayer in the Comedy.