What happens in Canto XI of Dante's Inferno?

XI

Dante and Virgil have traveled past the burning tombs of Frederick II and
the Ghibelline Cardinal. The stench emanating from the forever flaming bodies is horrendous.
Dante and Virgil duck under the cover of one of the stones, trying to take cleaner breaths.
Dante sees that the inscription on the tomb reads:

Pope
Anastasius I hold,

Whom out of the right way Photinus drew."

These two men are, in Dantes estimation, the worst of the
arch-Heretics. Phonitus was a Deacon in the Church of Constantinople (the Greek Orthodox
Church).Phonitus believed, and led Pope Anastasius to believe, that Christs birth was not
miraculous at all; rather, he argued,Jesus was the product of natural human sexual relations.
Additionally, Phonitus tricked the pope into giving him communion, an act strictly forbidden for
those outside the Roman Catholic faith.

Virgil tarries, and Dante urges his
guide to move on; but Virgil wants to prepare his charge for the horrors that are to come. The
next circle will house the Violent. Inside the large seventh circle are three sub-circles. The
largest outer ring is reserved for conducted violence against people or property. These
murderers and bandits are submerged in a river of blood:

A
death by violence, and painful wounds,

Are to our neighbour given; and in his
substance

Ruin, and arson, and injurious levies;

Whence
homicides, and he who smites unjustly,

Marauders, and freebooters, the first
round

Tormenteth all in companies diverse."

The next inner circle imprisons those who have committed violence
against themselves: the suicides and the squanderers:

"Man may lay violent hands upon himself

And his own goods; and
therefore in the second

Round must perforce without avail repent

Whoever of your world deprives himself,

Who games, and dissipates
his property,

And weepeth there, where he should jocund be."

The final circle is exclusively for the tormenting of those who had
committed crimes against God or nature. These sinners were, in life, the blasphemers, the
sodomites, and the usurers. These shades exist on a plain of sand, which eternally erupts
underneath them in excruciating flames:

"Violence can
be done the Deity,

In heart denying and blaspheming Him,

And by disdaining Nature and her bounty.

And for this reason doth
the smallest round

Seal with its signet Sodom and Cahors,

And who, disdaining God, speaks from the heart.

Fraud, wherewithal
is every conscience stung,

A man may practise upon him who trusts,

And him who doth no confidence imburse.

This latter mode, it would
appear, dissevers

Only the bond of love which Nature makes;

Wherefore within the second circle nestle

Hypocrisy, flattery, and
who deals in magic,

Falsification, theft, and simony,

Panders, and barrators, and the like filth.

By the other mode,
forgotten is that love

Which Nature makes, and what is after added,

From which there is a special faith engendered.

Hence in the
smallest circle, where the point is

Of the Universe, upon which Dis is
seated,

Whoe'er betrays for ever is consumed."

In these verses, Dante is alluding to the biblical story of Sodom
and Gomorrah, a city so morally evil that it was destroyed by God (Genesis 19:24-5). Cahors was
a city in France, infamous for its usury. Usury is the charging of interest on money lent. It is
a sin because Adams punishment was to live by the sweat of his brow (Genesis 3:19). Since
there is no labor involved in collecting interest, medieval Catholics consider the practice
sinful.

Virgil then tells Dante that when they get to the Eighth Circle, he
will see those who are guilty of fraud, a sin almost every human commits. These sinners include
those who had been practicers of

Hypocrisy, flattery,
and who deals in magic,

Falsification, theft, and simony,

Panders, and barrators, and the like filth.

By the other mode,
forgotten is that love

Which Nature makes, and what is after added,

From which there is a special faith engendered.

Hence in the
smallest circle, where the point is

Of the Universe, upon which Dis is
seated,

Whoe'er betrays for ever is consumed."

(Note: Simony is the practice of selling spiritual
items.Barrators are those who continually file frivolous lawsuits.)

Dante
understand the crimes of the condemned, but he asks Virgil why these souls are punished so much
more harshly than those of the upper Hell. The elder poet reminds Dante of Aristotle work,
Ethics and how sin is divided:"incontinence, malice, and insane bestiality.(Note:
incontinence means a lack of self control, particularly sexual, but also gluttony, wrath, and
sullenness; malice means the fraud previously described; insane beastiality refers to all
the acts of violence also discussed previously.)

Of these three, incontinence
is the least serious although, of course, it still merits punishment. All of these sinners pay
their eternal debt in upper hell.The remainder, the most serious, offenses, are housed
below.

Dante understands everything except for the harsh judgment against
usury. Virgil explains that the man who thwarts honest work not only cheats his customer, but
shows his disdain in real work:

the usurer takes another
way,

Nature herself and in her follower

Disdains he, for
elsewhere he puts his hope.

Time is passing. Virgil
notices the changing constellations and tells Dante they must leave the tortured souls of Circle
Six behind them.