ponder

"Although Dante virtually invented the category of the Neutrals who are neither damned nor redeemed, and created a Limbo going far beyond its counterparts in the Christian tradition, nothing in his world made possible  a redemption apart from the Church, and thus no pagan as pagan can ever be saved. This despite the fact that Virgil is the primary source of wisdom in the Commedia, just as the Classical world was the primary source of knowledge in the medieval world, and even as Virgil himself is Dante’s prime poetic inspiration. Perhaps even more disturbing is the fact that here the Roman Empire is the source and ground of the new Christian Empire, and the Roman Empire is not simply the providential instrument of God, but also the gracious embodiment of the law and justice of God, so that even the Crucifixion was executed according to God’s justice (Paradiso, VII, 40-50)."

— Thomas Altizer, History as Apocalypse