“O conscience, upright and stainless, how bitter a sting to thee is a little fault!” By his early fifties, Dante had been exiled from his hometown, wrestled with the top authorities of the church, and taken up arms against his fellow countrymen. He had made plenty of enemies, and he was not pleased. So he did with his enemies what many have wished to do: he sent them all, even the pope, to hell—literarily, that is. But his damnatory writing