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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Uncanonical Dante: the Divine Comedy and Islamic Philosophy Chapter Two The role of Islamic thought in Dante is a vast topic and has been extensively debated. In a brief essay, I cannot explore this subject**[End Page 140]** systematically and thus will confine myself to one small facet of it, concentrating on the Limbo episode of the Inferno , one of the most puzzling sections in the entire poem from a theological perspective.

Dante did not invent the notion of Limbo; the idea emerged in response to a set of theological questions that troubled many medieval thinkers. Some were disturbed by the thought that people otherwise virtuous according to Christian standards would end up damned for all eternity merely because of where or when they were born.

In particular, people born before the coming of Christ were denied access to the Christian revelation and thus never had the opportunity to embrace the Christian faith and be saved. Such considerations led to the development among medieval theologians of the idea of Limbo, a place in between, neither quite heaven nor hell.

In the standard view, Limbo included two categories: Old Testament worthies who had lived virtuously and anticipated the coming of Christ, along with children who died before having been baptized (thereby dealing with another troublesome issue of salvation).6 Thus Dante inherited a concept of Limbo, but he developed it in a very unorthodox way, choosing to add to the categories of people admitted to Limbo and shifting his emphasis away from the traditional areas.7 Above all, he fills Limbo with figures out of classical antiquity.8 Conventional medieval opinion would lead us to expect to find that Abel, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and King David once occupied Limbo, but not Hector, Aeneas, Junius Brutus, Camilla, and Lucretia as we see in Dante.

However heretical Dante's treatment of these virtuous pagans might be, one could argue that he remains within the larger bounds of Christian orthodoxy because after all he presents Limbo as a form of punishment. The figures in Limbo are said to suffer because they feel themselves deprived of the true God, for Whom they yearn. But here one must read Dante carefully and follow closely the pattern of his presentation of Limbo.