The Divine Comedy

A digital edition of Dante Alighieri's Commedia prepared for the Letteratura italiana Einaudi series, based on the critical text edited by Giorgio Petrocchi (Milan: Mondadori, 1966–67). The poem, composed in Italian terza rima between roughly 1308 and 1321, recounts the narrator's allegorical journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso), guided first by Virgil and then by Beatrice. Within the Inferno, the third bolgia of the eighth circle (Canto XIX) is devoted to simoniacs — popes and clergy who trafficked in sacred offices — whom Dante depicts buried upside down in stone sockets with flames burning the soles of their feet.