Divine Comedy
horace
['moses', 'penelope', 'sir henry merrivale', 'edward cullen', 'christos papadimitriou', 'captain haddock', 'king duncan', 'cookie monster', 'jesse', 'ebenezer scrooge', 'tetragrammaton', 'hroar', 'xerxes', 'king priam', 'guybrush threepwood', 'eighth doctor', 'louis xiv', 'adrastus', 'prometheus', 'solomon', 'mephistopheles', 'shinichi kudo', 'terah', 'sandy', 'aramis', 'pallas athena', 'jason bourne', 'huckleberry finn', 'homer simpson', 'michal', 'ann boleyn', 'fantasio', 'hermione granger', 'shem', 'lady macbeth', 'john seward', 'aphrodite', 'mickey mouse', 'socrates', 'big bird', 'oceanus', 'bella swan', 'hercules', 'rory williams', 'dionysos', 'superman', 'augustus', 'seetha', 'king miraz', 'samuel wilberforce', 'jocasta', 'baloo', 'cthulhu', 'aragorn', 'antigone', 'dan dare', 'nadab', 'dido', 'queequeg', 'philo vance', 'fred flintstone', 'yahweh', 'saint francis', 'tommy pickles', 'catherine linton', 'yorick', 'merlin', 'amor', 'rockman', 'thetis', 'geppetto', 'tardis', 'faline', 'long john silver', 'jasmine', 'count dracula', 'pinky', 'three witches', 'jonah', 'squidward tentacles', 'bagheera', 'roland', 'hanuman', 'achilles', 'fairy godmother', 'maenads', 'amy pond', 'hector', 'samus aran', 'george', 'lyra', 'orestes', 'erinyes', 'helen', 'sancho panza', 'lord rama', 'frodo baggins', 'iago', 'noachian']
Virtuous pagan
Virtuous paganism is a concept in Christian theology analogous to that of the "righteous gentile" in Judaism and Hanifs in Islam. It addressed the problem of pagans who were never evangelized and consequently during their lifetime had no opportunity to recognize Christ, but nevertheless led virtuous lives, so that it seemed objectionable to consider them damned. Prominent examples are Socrates, Cicero, Trajan, and Virgil. The Roman Catechism issued by the Council of Trent, based on the opinion of Thomas Aquinas, asserted that these souls were waiting in a limbo between heaven and hell, and were freed at Christ's Harrowing of Hell. A modern Catholic rendering of this is known as anonymous Christian in the theology of Karl Rahner. Dante Alighieri in his Divine Comedy places a number of virtuous pagans to the first circle of hell (analogous to Limbo), including Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan, and notably also Saladin, a Muslim, although Muslims are monotheists not pagans, and Saladin knew of Christianity. "Virtuous paganism" became relevant to Romanticism with its interest in North European mythology or enthusiasm for the rediscovered pagan ethos of the Icelandic sagas. Tom Shippey argues that the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien, is significantly based on such a concept of virtuous paganism: