When Pope Committed a Cardinal Sin, Helping Pope is Also a Sin

Excerpt from Dante's "The Divine Comedy".

As Dante and The Poet Virgil descended into Inferno 27, The Circle 8 of the Hell, where the sinners were tormented by locking their heads inside the holes of rocks, a familiar voice of Italian tone coming out the Inferno.

Torment of sinners at Inferno #27.

"I was a man of arms, and then I was a cordelier," trusting, thus girt, to make amends; and surely my trust had come full but for the Great Priest, whom ill befall! who set me back into my first sins; and how and where­ fore, I will that thou hear from me. While I was that shape of bone and flesh which my mother gave me, my works were not leonine, but of the fox. All wily practices and covert ways I knew, and I so plied their art that the sound went forth to the end of the earth. When I saw me arrived at that part of my age where every one ought to strike the sails and coil up the ropes, what before was pleasing to me then was irksome to me, and I yielded me repentant and confessed. Ah wretched, alas! and it would have avail . " The Prince of the new Pharisees having -war near the Lateran,'-and not with Saracens nor with Jews, for every enemy of his was Christian, and not one of them had been to conquer Acre, or a trafficker in the land of the Soldan,-regarded in himself neither his supreme office, nor his Holy Orders, nor in me that cord which was wont to make those girt with it more lean; but as Constantine besought Sylvester within Soracte to cure his leprosy,' so this one besought me as master to cure the fever of his pride. He asked counsel of me, and I kept silence, because his words seemed drunken. And then he said to me: 'Let not thy heart mistrust; from tills time forward I ab­ solve thee, and do thou teach me to ac·t so that I may throw Palestrina to the ground. I can lock and unlock Heaven, as thou knowest; wherefor the keys are two, which my predecessor held not ..."  Canto 27

Guido da Montefeltro, the military strategist who helped Pope sack the Colonna family, thus also committed a cardinal sin.

The voice came from Guido (c. 1220-98), a military strategist who had led many victories for the ghibelline (pro-emperor party and army) military campaigns in central Italy. In the 1270s and the early 1280s he scored decisive victories over guelph and papal forces before suffering defeat in 1283 at Forlí (in Romagna). Excommunicated, he later captained the forces of the Pisan ghibellines against Florence (1288-92); in 1296 Pope Boniface VIII rescinded the excommunication as part of a political strategy to remove the dangerous Guido from the scene. Guido later retired and became a Franciscan friar hopping that he would relieve all his sins against the church in his earlier career. Pope told Guido that he (The Pope) could pardon Guido's sin if Guido could help Pope a military campaign against the Colonna family to whom the Pope had already made a promise of amnesty. Pope Boniface did not keep his promise; with Guido's help, the Pope sacked his enemy and killed all members of the Colonna family. Because of this, Dante condemned both the Pope and Guido to Inferno 27.

Pope Bontiface committed a cardinal sin by breaking his promise of amnesty and sacked his enemy, the Colonna family. Dante also condemned the Pope to Inferno #27.

Dante's writing on this part had a great influence on Protestant Reformation movement. It inspired Martin Luther (1483-1546) to reject teaching and practice of Roman Cathodic Church that freedom from punishment because of sin could be purchased with money; or could be redeemed by serving the Pope for the wrong cause.

Martin Luther (1483-1546) influenced by Dante's writing, started a church reform movement in the 16th century. The Europe began the Renaissance since the movement.