Personal Sacrifice and Knowledge: Purgatorio & Genesis

On a general level, religions like Islam and Hinduism reflected personal sacrifice as a set of core values (enforced and transmitted by sacred texts) by which all should live by. The Qur’an featured teachings that would lead the individual to acceptance into the afterlife. However, the path of attainment meant drastic life changes: “these laws included practices of regular prayer, almsgiving and charitable treatment of the poor, modesty with the opposite sex, and the rejection of idols and false Gods” (“Religious Movements Homepage: Islam”). While these points may seem relatively simple, they required that the individual take into consideration God and others before themselves. Given the presumptuous nature of humans, this indeed includes difficult tasks. This was also evident in Hinduism where the it was essential to achieve Moksha, which “refers to the ultimate release from the world, or salvation, that can only be obtained by transcending all physical and social limitations”  (Religious Movements Homepage: Hinduism). Like Islam, Moksha could only be reached if certain guidelines were followed and personal sacrifice was delivered. The numerous paths that one could take in Hindu to accomplish the same thing emphasizes the notion that sacrifice is fundamentally varied in accordance with the individual.

For Adam and Even in Genesis, their selfish temptation to understand good and evil resulted in a life of hardship and a newly found residence outside of the Garden of Eden. After God created the first man and woman, he instructed them not to eat from the tree of knowledge. The serpent then proceeded to tempt Eve with the promise that “on the day that you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will become as gods knowing good and evil” (“Genesis” 31). Here, the promise was that not only would she know good and evil, but she would be considered godly in the same sense as the creator. It is important to note that the intentions are entirely impulsive and selfish. Besides gaining knowledge, there was no other reward that could be gained. As such, God did not respond mercifully.

As punishment for Eve’s treachery, all of mankind would be left to suffer for the entirety of their existence. Upon seeing Adam and Eve covering their genitals, God knew that they had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and had finally understood good and evil. In his anger, God delivered a terrible fate to the woman: “I will terribly sharpen your birth pangs, in pain shall you bear children. And for your man shall be your longing, and he shall rule over you” (“Genesis” 31). Consequently, women would have to endure their lives with extreme pain during birth and then would have to submit to the authority of their husbands. This example illustrates that gaining spiritual knowledge is not a learning process as it is in our contemporary world; instead, knowledge is more analogous to a trade-off in the form of a personal sacrifice. In this case, it was brutal pain and submission to the opposite sex. Despite being a relatively short quest for knowledge, the sacrifice would be forever.

On the other hand, Dante’s path throughout the Divine Comedy (and specifically Purgatorio) for spiritual knowledge, featured a much more noble end result. In being misguided during his life, Dante’s quest for righteousness was a process by which he would see the suffering of others who have done wrong. However, besides seeing grotesque horrors Dante also faced extreme suffering in the form of shame from someone that he used to love, Beatrice. As Dante’s journey through Purgatorio was concluding, Beatrice warned him that “You’ll need your tears for what another sword must yet inflict” (Alighieri 1904). This wound that Dante suffered was hearing from his own past love that he has committed sins and has not followed through his living a Christian life. While in tears hearing about his wrongs, “such shame weighed on [Dante’s] brow, [his] eyes drew back” (Alighieri 1904). In order to fully understand what he had done in life and move forward to spiritual knowledge of going to heaven, he had to deeply suffer a very personal attack on his character from someone that had the capacity to hurt him deeply.

Dante’s personal suffering was extremely relevant because it took the form of a very unique attack. In losing his way as a Christian, Dante was clearly apathetic towards the words of the Bible and teachings of God. While these words and messages held merit in his afterlife and throughout his journey, they were not as effective in truly showing Dante the right path because the voice was not familiar. However, when Beatrice delivered the grueling message, it was a different form of suffering because our loved ones are always armed with knowledge about us that carries more force in torturing us internally. Rightfully so, Beatrice had the capacity to not only deliver personal suffering, but to deliver him from it: “I led him with me toward the way of righteousness” (Alighieri 1905). Similarly to Eve, the suffering was very personal and redefined Dante to a new course in life. Therefore, in exchange for the spiritual knowledge to a path of righteousness, Dante endured the suffering of others along with a cold and sobering realization of his sins by his past love in a ghost form.

The quest for personal spiritual knowledge does not take the form of a learning process like we define learning today. Instead, for Dante and Eve, attaining spiritual knowledge functioned as a trade-off in either physical or emotional form. Attaining spiritual knowledge typically required personal sacrifice anyway though. Religions like Islam and Hinduism used scared texts to outline guidelines where the individual would have to lead a relatively strict life. On a specific level, Eve had to trade off her livelihood in exchange for learning about good and evil. The pain she would have to endure would continue to affect all of humankind forever. Similarly, Dante’s quest for knowledge of a righteousness path required that he suffer intense anguish in a personal and unique way. Rather than merely be told by God that he must change his ways, the word was delivered by a woman that he had a romantic relationship with. His suffering was also thus a trade-off to lead a better life. 

Works Cited

Alighieri, Dante. Purgatorio. The Longman Anthology of World Literature. Vol. 1. Ed. Damrosch, David, and Pike, David. New York: Pearson, 2009. 1886-1907. Print. The Middle Ages.

"Genesis." The Longman Anthology of World Literature. Vol. 1. Ed. Damrosch, David, and Pike, David. New York: Pearson, 2009. 28-38. Print. The Ancient World.

"Religious Movements Homepage: Hinduism." Internet Archive Wayback Machine. 29 July 2011. http://web.archive.org/web/20060829154244/http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/hinduism.html. Accessed 23 Jan. 2019.

"Religious Movements Homepage: Islam." Internet Archive Wayback Machine. 29 July 2011, http://web.archive.org/web/20060830165051/http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/islam.html. Accessed 23 Jan. 2019.