First circle of hell

rdf:langString First circle of hell

rdf:langString right

rdf:langString #FDFDDF

rdf:langString Here, as mine ear could note, no plaint was heard

rdf:langString except of sighs, that made the eternal air

rdf:langString felt by those multitudes, many and vast,

rdf:langString of men, women, and infants.

rdf:langString tremble, not caused by tortures, but from grief

rdf:langString —Canto IV, lines 24–28

rdf:langString The first circle of hell is depicted in Dante Alighieri's 14th-century poem Inferno, the first part of the Divine Comedy. Inferno tells the story of Dante's imaginary journey through a vision of the Christian hell, ordered into nine circles corresponding to classifications of sin. The first circle is Limbo, the space reserved for those souls who died either before baptism or those who hail from non-Christian cultures. They live eternally in a castle set on a verdant landscape, but forever removed from heaven. Dante's depiction of Limbo is influenced by contemporary scholastic teachings on two kinds of Limbo—the Limbo of Infants for the unbaptised and the Limbo of the Patriarchs for the virtuous Jews of the Old Testament; the addition of Islamic, Greek, and Roman historical figures to the poem is an invention of Dante's, which has received criticism both in his own time and from a modern perspective. Dante also uses his depiction of Limbo to discuss the Harrowing of Hell, using the motif to explore the concept of predestination.