Virgil explains to Dante that sins of violence take three forms according to the victim: other people (one's neighbor), oneself, or God (Inf. 11.28-33). Those who perpetrate violence against other people or their property--murderers and bandits--are punished in the first ring of the seventh circle, a river of blood (Inferno 12). Those who do violence against themselves or their own property--suicides and squanderers (more self-destructive than the prodigal in circle 4)--inhabit the second ring, a horrid forest (Inferno 13). The third ring--inside the first two--is a barren plain of sand ignited by flakes of fire that torment three separate groups of violent offenders against God: those who offend God directly (blasphemers: Inferno 14); those who violate nature, God's offspring (sodomites: Inferno 15-16); and those who harm industry and the economy, offspring of nature and therefore grandchild of God (usurers: Inferno 17). Identifying the sins of these last two groups with Sodom and Cahors (Inf. 11.49-50), Dante draws on the biblical destruction of Sodom (and Gomorrah) by fire and brimstone (Genesis 19:24-5) and the medieval condemnations of citizens of Cahors (a city in southern France) for usury. Dante's emotional reactions to the shades in the seventh circle range from neutral observation of the murderers and compassion for a suicide to respect for several Florentine sodomites and revulsion at the sight and behavior of the lewd usurers.
Although writers of classical Rome admired by Dante allowed--and even praised--suicide as a response to political defeat or personal disgrace, his Christian tradition emphatically condemned suicide as a sin without exception. Thomas Aquinas, for instance, warned that suicide violates the natural law of self-preservation, harms the community at large, and usurps God's disposition of life and death. Dante's attitude toward Pier della Vigna in Inferno 13 and his placement of famous suicides in other locations (Dido, for example, in circle 2) may suggest a more nuanced view.
Dante's inclusion of sodomy--understood here as sexual relations between males but not necessarily homosexuality in terms of sexual orientation--is consistent with strong theological and legal declarations in the Middle Ages condemning such activities for being "contrary to nature." In Dante's day, male-male relations--often between a mature man and an adolescent--were common in Florence despite these denunciations. Penalties could include confiscation of property and even capital punishment.
