Dante's Cosmic Vision in Divine Comedy

Dante's Cosmic Vision in Divine Comedy

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  • Prompt: The importance of astronomy for Dante is evidenced by the many astronomical references in the Divine Comedy. Dante's Heaven and Hell are Aristotelian in nature and form. Dante's notion of a corruptible and ever-changing earth surrounded by a series of immutable, nested crystalline spheres whose perfection increased with their distance Earth, was derived from the Greek philosophic tradition. While the Pythagoreans established the sphere as a perfect, if not divine shape, Aristotle synthesized earlier conceptions of the heavens into a cosmology congruent with his physical laws. Aristotle consigned everything that is corruptible and imperfect to the sub lunar realm, the region of the universe inhabited by the people and the animals of the Earth. Divinity and perfection were reserved for the celestial spheres -- the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the fixed stars -- with the sphere of the moon being the lowest and least perfect. The celestial bodies that governed the spheres were made of an altogether different, ethereal substance; each heavenly sphere becomes more perfect as Dante travels closer to the highest heaven, the sphere known as the Empyrean where God resides. Dante's Hell also reflects he hierarchical structure of Aristotle's heavens. Just as the heavens become more perfect as one ascends through the crystalline spheres so do the circles of Hell become more evil the closer one approaches the center of the universe. At the center, to which everything heavy and Earth-like is drawn to, we find Satan appropriately positioned at the point farthest from the most perfect heavenly realm.
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