B. U. G. S.

In Dante’s Inferno, the worst part of Hell is solid ice. Those sent there are buried to their necks or completely in the ice.

Larry Niven wrote a wildly successful novel which was absolutely faithful to Dante’s version. His central figure was a science fiction writer who had gone to Hell, the real hero of the novel was, of all people, Benito Mussolini!

If you read a description from literary types about who was consigned to the Tenth Circle, the bottom of Hell, it sounds complicated. They use terms like “People who betrayed their patrons.”

Niven described them as exactly the way Dante thought of them:

As TRAITORS.

The modern literature professor’s problem with this concept is, like so much else here, a conflict of which only BUGS is aware. Our whole societal tradition is NOT based on Traditional Values, it is based on Loyalty.

The first thing someone preaching Traditional Values will do is to say that betraying one’s loyalties is the greatest virtue of all, rejecting race and nationality as “tribal loyalties” and becoming a part of the Book in which Traditional Values are writ.

So to plainly describe what Dante was saying, what everyone around him took for granted was the worst of all sins, is a literary no-no.

All of our high-points of valor go back to the Alamo, to the Three Hundred Spartans, to the chief’s men who fought around his dead body until they were themselves killed, “faithful unto death.”

Our central figure went onto the cross. “Greater love hath no man than to give his life for his fellow.”

In Dante’s time, wise men were reverenced, but it was the bones of MARTYRS that were collected.

In Dante’s time, when loyalty was to cities or tribes, men were united under a single master. “I will not leave you masterless,” many a dying chieftain assured his people, National or racial treason, especially since most people had never met another race, can be twisted into meaning something it obviously does not.

Or at least obscured.

Though he is never called upon to look at why, loyalty is a concept that a Wordist instantly dislikes. His only loyalty is to his Book, which is beyond all other loyalties. The more you reject your country or your race in the name of Universal Truth, which means one of the tens of thousands of doctrines that different Wordists subscribe to, the better person you are.

This is a very practical matter. A society based on loyalty naturally thinks the way Dante did, that treason is the worst of crimes, allows people like Dante to write. Dante wrote his version of Hell, and Luther followed the traditional method of nailing his Propositions to the church door.

Compared to the age of the religious wars which followed it is staggering how much freedom of speech and thought was allowed in Medieval Europe. When those religious slaughters got under way people began to identify themselves by the exact words they spoke.

The practical point is axiomatic: people united only by words and doctrine cannot allow freedom of doctrine or speech. People like Dante or those who wrote the US Constitution assumed that society was based on a common set of loyalties. They could allow a great deal of free thought and free speech, they assumed there was room for different thoughts and a lot of free speech.

But just as the Wordist cannot allow any real dissent, a loyalty-based society has no room for treason. When a Mommy Professor of Literature runs up against Dante’s Tenth Circle, he begins to do a dance which is very familiar to one who has dealt with Communist censorship. He does the same dance on the ice of the Tenth Circle that we normally associate with standing on a hot stove.

Erasmus was a good example of Dante’s thought. He backed Luther when Luther attacked the Church’s abuses. Wordist History then says he deserted Luther when he “went too far.”

This implies that Erasmus remained a loyal Catholic when he backed the Church against Luther’s separate Evangelical, now call Lutheran, Church. To the few who know about it, it is strange that, a loyal Catholic like Erasmus refused the one thing that even the most agnostic Catholic insists upon: Last Confession and Last Rites, Extreme Unction.

Erasmus broke with Luther because Luther began to threat the unity of Western Christendom. In Erasmus’ mind, Luther had gone from a change of doctrine to a change of LOYALTY.

Mommy Professor doesn’t like the smell of that, and lets it go as being “puzzling.”