LA TEOLOGIA DEL PECCATO FRA XII E XIII SECOLO E LA STRUTTURA MORALE DELL’INFERNO DANTESCO

The century between the composition of Abelard's Ethics (1139) and the complete translation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (1246) covers a period of time during which medieval masters tackle and discuss the most important themes of ethics debated by ancient philosophy and Christian Fathers, elaborating the essential lines of a new moral theology, within which the theme of sin, its definition and its classifications occupies an increasingly important space. At the same time, the growing importance of preaching and the central role of penitential practice feed the need to describe the phenomenology of sin and to define its hierarchies of gravity and the modalities of expiation. Dante's Comedy represents an interesting observation point to verify the circulation of moral doctrines even outside the university debate and pastoral practice. The need to translate the huge reflection on the theme of sin into poetic terms requires solutions that are at least partly new with respect to those developed by theologians and preachers. This is the case of the complex architecture of Dante's Hell, in which the different patterns offered by moral theology coexist with an approach more juridical and political to the problem of guilt and punishment.