no
man unless the Holy Ghost made it known to him by a special revelation."

Dante makes his Hell big enough to hold the majority of mankind. He
thinks that the elect will be comparatively few--just numerous enough to
fill those places in heaven forfeited by the rebel angels who formed
according to his conjecture, about a tenth of the angelical host. That
their places in Heaven are already nearly filled leaving little room for
future generations Dante makes known in the words of Beatrice:

"Behold our City's circuit, oh how vast
Behold our benches now so full that few
Are they who are henceforth lacking here."
(Par. XXX, 130.)

His theory of restrictive salvation, it may be noted, is not in accord
with the teaching of the Church which holds that to every man God gives
grace sufficient for salvation. That is true even as affecting the
heathen and those living in place or in time far removed from the Cross.
St. Thomas Aquinas expresses this doctrine of the Church when he writes:
"If anyone who is born in a barbaric nation does what lieth in him, God
will reveal what is necessary for salvation, either by internal
inspiration or by a teacher."

The farcical element is not wanting in the Inferno, a fact proving that
our poet, in furnishing the episodes, not superior to his age which
demanded especially in the religious plays presented in the public
square the sight of the discomfiture of the devil in scenes provoking
the audience to laughter. The best example of such farcicality occurs in
the eighth circle, fifth bolgia, where officials, traffickers in public
offices, or unjust stewards are immersed in boiling pitch. From time to
time when the fiends are not alert the reprobate here come to the
surface for a breathing or cooling spell, like dolphins on the approach
of a storm darting in the air and diving back again or like frogs with
their muzzles alone exposed and their bodies covered by the water,
resting on the banks of a stream into which they drop at the first
approach of danger.

Getting in this way momentary relief from suffering a grafter named
Ciampolo, a former retainer of King Thibaut II of Navarre, lingered too
long and was deftly hooked by Graffiacane amid the savage exultations of
the other fiends, who proceed to maltreat the unfortunate wretch. The
hideous confusion of attacks by the demons is stopped long enough for
the poet to learn his history, and also what is more interesting to
Da