Welcome to Gaia! ::

Since Before the ancient Egyptians even conceived the concept of a life after death, Man(?) has tried to imagine what could be waiting for them when they die. For the Christians, it was the vague idea of a “good place” and a “bad place”; a Heaven where the righteous would be rewarded and a Hell where the sinners would be punished. Unfortunately, not even the Bible revealed many clues on the specifics of these places, and until a Florentine poet by the name of Dante Aligheri wrote his epic poem[you use poet and then poem. Maybe reference it instead of saying Poem?], many Christians would be left to wonder. Dante’s Divine Comedy provided a detailed (though fictional) description of the Christian afterlife, and evolved the endless plane(?) of fire and stretch of clouds into living, breathing, believable places, forever changing the way Christians viewed Heaven and Hell.

One of the major things Commedia offered was a more in-depth description of what the afterlife could really look like. Contrary to the idea that Hell was just an eternal pit of fire, Dante imagines an(?) complex cavernous place [use "which led" or "leading". Try to stay away from "that"]that led to the frozen center of the Earth, which encased Satan and the highest sinners. He imagined[use a synonym, you already used 'imagines'. Speaking of that, pick a tense, too.] every layer of Hell had it’s own unique layout and offered a punishment according to the sinners'(?) deeds. For example, the Suicides of the seventh terrace have their souls encased in thorny trees and their leaves are fed upon by harpies. They bleed through the wounds the harpies leave, and can only speak through this blood. [this statement makes no sense. 0.o]This symbolizes that their statement in life was destroying it, because now in the afterlife they can only speak through destruction. Along with giving specifics on the punishments of Hell, Dante also offered detailed physical descriptions of the place, and even offered rough measurements of one terrace. [this also does not make sense]He also went into much detail for Purgatory, which he changed from a sort of Limbo to a mountain that one who didn’t belong in The Vestibule or Limbo, yet still didn’t meet the standards to enter Heaven, could climb to be redeemed for his or her sins. The mountain offered punishments on every terrace,(?) similar to Hell, but they were for the purpose of redeeming sin rather than punishing the sinners. The imagery of Purgatory was a mountain which held(?) both a night and a day (though those on it were allowed to move only during daylight), and was in every other way an ordinary mountain. This made it seem more worldly, perhaps to symbolize the fact that the sinners were not yet able to part from the Earth and enter “God’s light”. Dante’s Heaven, however, is an entirely different story.


(?)In the first canto of Paradiso, Dante admits that the Heaven he sees is only what his eyes permit him to see. Basically, it is suggesting that every person will have their own personal Heaven, or maybe share the same Heaven but view it differently. This greatly differs from the traditional view of the cloudy Kingdom of Heaven.