ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how the disparity between literal and spiritual interpretations of the same object illustrates the incommensurable psychological states of Epicurean unbelief and Christian belief. It considers each stage of the Cavalcante dialogue according to the possible intention of the speaker and to the possible inference of the interlocutor. Dante Alighieri-character could reasonably infer that Cavalcante, eternally damned as an Epicurean disbeliever, is anxious about his son's notorious Epicureanism and eternal destiny. Following the theological precedent of St Paul's dialogue with the Epicureans in Athens, Dante foregrounds the theme of Jesus's bodily resurrection as the site of Christian faith in Inferno X. Inferno X is clearly concerned with the evil of civic divisiveness within the temporal hemisphere. Where the Christian philosophers, in the heaven of the sun, have illuminated the faith and combatted heresy with their doctrine and treatises, the crusaders have fought for the Christian faith with their own blood.
