What are the seven circles of purgatory?

Although there is no explicit reference in the Bible to a site called PurgatorySince ancient times and especially in the Middle Ages, it was believed possible that after death souls spent a necessary period to atone for their deadly sins, since no impure soul could approach God.

Only in the 13th century Catholic church officially accepted the existence of Purgatory. Sins, for Catholicism, are divided into venial and capital. The venial are those whom the priests forgive while alive after confession, penance and communion.

The deadly sins, listed by Saint Thomas Aquinas, there are seven and the purification takes place in Purgatory, a space-time of punishments before accessing Paradise. This Catholic idea was accepted neither by the Greek Orthodox Church nor by the Protestants, says the website of the University of Concepción of Chile.

It was the poet Dante Alighieri, in the 14th century, who best illustrated the seven circles of Purgatory in his theological poem The Divine Comedy.

Represented as a mountain on top of which is the Heaven on earththe path to ascend is a spiral of seven turns (or circles), one for each capital sin, from the gravest to the lightest.

The seven circles of Purgatory

A study on the Divine Comedy carried out by University of Valencia He describes Purgatory as the highest mountain in the world, surrounded by water, to which souls arrive on boats guided by angels. Given the medieval notion of a flat world, this mountain is the only land that exists in the Southern Hemisphere.

At the base is the antechamber of Purgatory (Antepurgatory), waiting room where souls await the moment to begin penance. There are the excommunicated who repent of their sins before dying and who must haunt the base of the mountain for 30 times longer than the duration of their excommunication.

Even the lazy are waiting, who will have a period equal to the one they experienced. And those who died violently but managed to repent, especially the princes who They did not fulfill their duty.

Each in turn will climb the mountain to the circle destined for the redemption of their sin.

The seven deadly sins are:

• Pride
• Envy
• Going
• Laziness
• Avarice
• Throat
• Lust.

And the punishments are similar to those of Hell, but they are not eternal, since these are souls who will be willing to abandon Evil to access God. The circles of Purgatory are as follows:

• Circle first (Pride)

• The proud crawl carrying stones of unbearable weight and are unable to lift their eyes from the ground.

• Second circle (Envy)

• Envious people walk with their eyes sewn shut with wire as they hear voices speaking of generosity.

• Third circle (Going)

• The angry are enveloped in a cloud of smoke, it is the smoke of the blinding fire of their passion that does not allow one to see.

• Fourth circle (Laziness)

• The lazy ones, who, exhausted, don’t stop running while doing the work they did in life.

• Fifth circle (Avarice)

• The greedy and the spendthrift crawl on the ground pushing stones in opposite directions and when they collide they insult each other.

• Sixth circle (Delicacies)

• The greediest, surrounded by generous and excessively tall fruit trees, are condemned to hunger because they cannot harvest the fruit of their desire.

• Seventh circle (Lust)

• The lustful are consumed by fire.