When Dante Alighieri wrote The Divine Comedy in the early fourteenth century, the heyday of the Roman Catholic Church had almost passed. The Church, chronically plagued with conflict ever since its inception in the first century, reached a point where much of its leadership had corrupt tendencies, and where the traditions and values it upheld were outdated and did not reflect that of the Christendom. By 1320 (when the Comedy was completed) the Church’s troubles revolved around the struggle for power between the monarchs/governments of Europe and the church itself. This church-state conflict, which disaffected many in Europe, played a large part in Dante’s decision to place many influential Church figures in Hell. The events in the centuries-long …show more content…
As “one of the most ardent supporters of papal authority,” Boniface’s main goal, to make the Church as ubiquitous and as powerful as possible, often put him against the people and governments of Europe; in fact, one of his main enemies, King Philip IV of France, incited a rivalry between the two that caused much strife in Italy at the time (Suddath). Boniface eventually died in 1303, but not before personally exiling Dante for supporting limits on the Pope’s power, which saw him placed in Dante’s version of Hell. Another power struggle in Europe at the time included the war between the Guelph party, who supported the Pope, and the Ghibelline party, who supported the Holy Roman Empire. After many fierce battles between the two parties culminating in the defeat of the Ghibellines, the Guelphs again split into two parties, causing the creation of the White and Black Guelphs. The Black Guelphs specifically supported the “power of popes in the struggle for hegemony in the [Italian] peninsula,”; the White Guelphs supported limits on the pope’s power to help the growing middle class (Popham). Dante, being born into the White Guelphs, was eventually banished from Florence by the Black Guelphs, causing him to place many prominent Black Guelphs and Ghibellines in Hell. A final event in the church-state conflict that made its way into Dante’s work was the