“Abandon all hope ye who enter here.” These famous, frightening first words are inscribed on the gates of Hell in Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, from The Divine Comedy, written in the early 14th century. In the poem, the author, Dante, travels with his guide Virgil down through the circles of Hell. By Canto 19, he has reached the eighth circle, second to last, which is reserved for the fraudulent. In the third trench of the circle are the simonists, people guilty of buying ecclesiastical offices or trafficking in sacred things. Simony, a word that first entered the language in the 1225 A.D. Ancrene Riwle, a book of instruction for nuns often called the Nun’s Rule, is named for Simon Magus, who attempts, in Acts 8:18–19, to buy the Holy Spirit from Peter. To Dante this was an offense more serious than murder. Murderers are only in the seventh circle of Dante’s Hell. In the Inferno, Simon Magus is joined by Pope Nicholas III, who was guilty of trying to purchase holy offices for his nephews. Their punishment, as depicted in a 14th-century illustrated Inferno: to writhe in pain, upside down, with their torsos shoved in holes up to their calves, flames lapping at the soles of their feet. —K.E.M.