Commentary Inf XI 22-27

This is probably the crucial passage for our understanding of the organization of lower hell. All sins punished therein are sins of malizia, 'malice,' in the sense that these sinners all willfully desire to do harm (the incontinent may indeed end up doing harm to others or to themselves, but their desire is for another kind of gratification altogether). Heresy, because it lies within the iron walls of Dis, and is thus also punished as a sin of the will rather than of the appetite (surely it seems closer to malice than to appetite), is perhaps less readily considered a desire to harm others (even though it assuredly, in Dante's view, does so). Ingiuria has thus both its Latin meaning, 'injustice,' acting in opposition to the law (iniuria), and its other meaning, the doing of harm. As Mazzoni (DDP Mazzoni.Inf.XI.22) points out, Daniello (DDP Daniello.Inf.XI.22-24) was the first commentator explicitly to link this passage with its almost certain source in Cicero (De Officiis I.xiii.41): 'Cum autem duobus modis, id est aut vi aut fraude, fiat iniuria; fraus quasi vulpeculae, vis leonis videtur; utrumque alienissimum ab homine est, sed fraus odio digna maiore' (Moreover, we may be harmed in two ways, as by the cunning of little vixens or by the power of a lion, that is, either by force or by fraud. Both of these are utterly foreign to humankind, yet fraud is the more execrable). Mazzoni observes that Dante had already cited this text in Conv.IV.xi.10-11, where 'aut vi aut fraude' is translated 'per forza o per fraude.') Cogan's recent study (Coga.1999.1) attempts to revise our understanding of the organizing principles of Dante's structure of the vices, claiming that they are essentially only Aristotelian (the Nicomachean Ethics as explained by St. Thomas). Cogan disregards the importance of Cicero in this respect entirely (although this passage is mentioned once in a note). This omission may help explain how Cogan could have decided that the sins of the seventh Circle are not sins of the will, but of irascible appetite (pp. 24-36), an interpretation that almost certainly cannot be accepted.

Here malice is divided into two sub-groups, force (violence) and fraud. Fraud itself will shortly be divided into two sub-groups (see C.Inf.XI.61-66); but for now Dante has only divided the sins of violence (cantos XII-XVII) and fraud (cantos XVIII-XXXIV) into these two large groups. On malizia see Mazzoni (DDP Mazzoni.Inf.XI.22), who demonstrates that for Dante, following St. Thomas, malice reflects voluntas nocendi, the will to do harm.