h has not censured their opinion"
(Cath. Encyclo., VIII, 211.)

While the pain of loss and the pain of sense constitute the very essence
of the punishment of Hell, theologians teach that there are other
sufferings called accidental. The reprobate never experience v.g. the
least real pleasure nor are they ever free from the hideous presence of
one another. After the Last Judgment the lost souls will also be
tormented by union with their bodies, a union bringing about a fresh
increase of punishment. On this subject, for our information Dante
addresses Virgil his guide through Hell: "Master, will these torments
after the great sentence increase or diminish?" Virgil explains that
they will become worse because when the soul is united again to the body
there will be perfection of being and the resulting sensitiveness will
be the more intense.

"Return unto thy science," answers Virgil, "which wills that as a thing
more perfect is the more it feels of pleasure and of pain." (Inf., VI,
40.)

Dante also holds that only by way of exception is there any escape from
Hell once a soul is condemned. Following a legend commonly believed in
the Middle Ages that in answer to the prayers of Pope Gregory the Great,
the soul of the Emperor Trajan was delivered from Hell, Dante assumes
that God who could not save Trajan against his will, allowed his soul to
"come back to its bones" and while thus united to use its will for
salvation. So regenerated Trajan is placed by Dante, in the Heaven of
Jupiter (Par. XX 40, 7). Referring to this incident the Catholic
Encyclopedia says: "In itself it is no rejection of Catholic dogma to
suppose that God might at times by way of exception, liberate a soul
from Hell. Thus some argued from a false interpretation of I Peter III,
19 seq. that Christ freed several damned souls on the occasion of His
descent into Hell. Others were led by untrustworthy stories into the
belief that the prayers of Gregory the Great rescued the Emperor Trajan
from Hell but now theologians are unanimous in teaching that such
exceptions never take place and never have taken place" (VIII, 209.)

As to the location of Hell it is the poet Dante and not Dante the
theologian, as we shall see later, who gives definite place and
boundaries to Hell. He knows that on this subject the Church has decided
nothing, holding to the statement of St. Augustine: "It is my opinion
that the nature of hell-fire and the location of Hell are known to