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: : : You're right about the unbaptised infants ... a lot of folks have pointed this out and commentaries have been written about it ... but .... : : Have you read Dostoyevski? : Can't say I have. : : the most notable account of children in the comedy is near the end of PARADISO, the children in the stadium of the Rose. (See Canto II) : I have yet to read Paradiso. A while back I started with the Inferno, and enjoyed the translator and bought Purgatorio which was translated by the same person. But I have been unable to find Paradiso translated by him. Do you have a suggestion of a good translator, or will any do? : : Here we see pre-Christian children saved by love and Christian Children saved by baptism. Oddly, many of the children died . . . : Odd, pre-Christian children can go to Paradise, but the pre-Christian adults are stuck in Limbo. Is this a soft spot of Dante's? : : (let me quote John Ciardi here) "before they had achieved the true volition of reason and faith. They could not, therefore, win salvation by their own merit, but by another's, under strict condition. The necessary qualification for election is belief in Christ. THese souls were too young at death to have formed their faith. Salvation is granted them hnot directly through belief in Christ but through the faith and prayers of their parents, relatives, and others of the faithful who interceded for them." : Interesting, partly because Ciardi is the translator I like. So he has done a translation of Paradiso, and I have just been unable to find it. This quote seems to be something taken directly out of a Catholic catechism. I would ume, but I could be wrong, that Dante talked about the children at their ultimate resting place, not mentioning that they are in Limbo before people pray enough for them. I think, it has been a while since I was paying attention to the Catholic faith. : : Further in his footnotes to Canto II Ciardi writes: "The infants are ranked in tiers that indicate degrees of heavenly merit. But if they were saved through no merit of their own, how can one be more worthy than the other? Such is Dante's doubt, which Bernard goes on to set at rest by telling him, in essence, that God knows what He is doing." : A Catholic catechism again! ::grin:: God knows all, so don't question it. I would venture to say that the infants are ranked on the heavenly merit of the people who prayed for them. : : Need Bernard, or God, say more? What seems significant is that the issue of unbaptised babies may well be resolved in these lines. Why are there no babies in Hell? God, wiser than us all, does what he wants to do. : Or Dante didn't want to talk about un-baptised children in Hell, instead waiting to talk about their final resting place in Paradise. I know I haven't even read Paradiso yet, but Dante's willingness to place pagan children in Heavan while the pagan adults are in Hell makes me think he had a soft spot for them. He was willing to talk about them in Paradiso. But although the Catholic faith said they would go to Limbo first, he didn't want to mention them in Hell. : : : Too, figure in the reason Dante wrote the COMEDY. Though the book does contain much commentary relating to Medieval Catholicism, there is much more it does not contain. The COMEDY is not a religious commentary, per se. : It is a travel through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. While it might not be a carbon copy of what the Catholic faith was saying at the time, he had to use something as a road map. No? : : It is a work of fiction conceived by the author as the book which will allow him to gain heroic welcome back into Florence. Dante tends to deal with those stories which will help him achieve his end to bolster confidence in his political viewpoint and bash his enemies. Of course, that's simplifying the COMEDY, but the point is that everything need not be included. Heck ... didn't Dante get in enough already? If God can do what he wants to in Heaven, then we should be allowed to expect Dante to be able to do what he wants to in his own book. : LOL, agreed. But it does appear, to myself at least, that Dante borrowed heavily from the Catholic faith. Not just the general lay out of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, but also things as simple as prayers sung by the dead. : Jeremy Daniels

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