Part one of term paper
During the Middle Ages, the church was a powerful institution. It had its own government, courts, system of taxation, and laws. To live a good Christian life guaranteed access to heaven in the afterlife, and a life of sin was to be sentenced to hell. Dante Alighieri was an Italian poet, who had an admirable depth of spiritual vision and was ...

Part two of term paper
... to make readers evaluate their own morals. The journey was to show readers what could happen if they live a sinful life, or if they live a godlike life. “In the middle of the journey of our life I came to my senses in a dark forest, for I had lost the straight path. Ah! How hard a thing it is to tell what this wild and rough and difficult wood was, which in thought renews my fear! (Alighieri, 1)” This passage tells us that Dante is lost in the middle of the woods, and he is in the m ...