IV.
ASTRONOMY IN DANTE’S WRITINGS.
If we except the seven Penitential Psalms and the Profession of Faith, which are only paraphrases, and are very doubtfully ascribed to Dante, no work of his can be mentioned which does not contain some reference to the heavenly bodies.
When writing the Vita Nuova, that story of his love for Beatrice which he calls the work of his boyhood,[138] he was haunted by the sublime idea of the rolling spheres. Beatrice at her first appearance as a little girl of eight, and Beatrice when she died, suggested thoughts of the nine heavens;[139] almost the first words of the book allude to the circling spheres of the sun and of the stars:[140] and the last sonnet soars beyond them all to the Empyrean.[141] Already he seems to have read Alfraganus, for he takes a suggestion which occurs in the first chapter of the Elementa Astronomica et Chronologica. Alfraganus there describes the different methods of reckoning days, months, and years, in use among different nations, and gives a special list of the Syrian months with their corresponding Roman months; and Dante, by using the Arabian system of days and the Syrian months, is able to prove to himself that the day and the month when Beatrice died were both at the sacred number of nine.[142] According to our method of reckoning, the time was sunset on the eighth of June, but this was the first hour of the ninth day according to Arabian usage, and our sixth month corresponds with the ninth of the Syrians.
Dante had also read at this time Aristotle’s doctrines about the spheres and their Movers, for he quotes from the Metaphysics,[143] and this is the work in which they are found.
Yet a familiarity with Alfraganus and Aristotle so early as this is hardly consistent with the difficulty he says he found in understanding Latin books of philosophy some time after the death of Beatrice.[144] Perhaps the latter part of the Vita Nuova was written a good deal later; or it may be not altogether frivolous to suggest that in his youth Dante had read the first chapters of Alfraganus, which are easy, but did not master the rest of the book till later.
Out of his fifty-three short poems (including all in Moore’s Oxford Edition, except those which form part of the Vita Nuova or Convivio), twelve, or nearly a quarter, contain some reference to sun, moon, or stars, planets, or spheres; and from these alone we could form some idea of Dante’s acquaintance with astronomy. He speaks of the sun as measuring time,[145] and giving light to the stars[146] (according to the general belief); the moon[147] and each of the planets[148] is mentioned, some of the constellations also,[149] especially with reference to the seasons; the theory of the several heavens and their First Mover,[150] and the supposed influences of the stars and planets are alluded to.[151] These poems were written at different times, and some belong to a much later period than the Vita Nuova.
It is when we come to examine the Convivio, the work of his manhood,[152] that we find the clearest evidence of Dante’s careful study of astronomy. This book was written with the professed intention (as one of its aims) of sharing with others the learning he had been happy enough to acquire—not indeed as one of the guests at the Table of Wisdom, but as one sitting at their feet and gathering up the crumbs.[153] The thread which connects his discourse is a collection of his own Odes, on each of which he had intended to write a treatise or commentary, but the book never advanced beyond the fourth treatise. These Odes were nearly all love-poems, but the poet explains that they are a figurative expression of his devotion to Philosophy, and the whole book is a glorification of the pursuit of knowledge. In the opening sentences, with the reference to Aristotle, the manner of reasoning, the assumptions of our innate desire for absolute knowledge and the bliss brought by its attainment, Dante is the spokesman of his period.
“Siccome dice il Filosofo nel principio della Prima Filosofia, Tutti gli uomini naturalmente desideranno di sapere: La ragione di che puote essere, che ciascuna cosa, da providenza di propria natura impinta, è inclinabile alla sua perfezione. Onde, acciochè la scienza è l’ultima perfezione della nostra anima, nella quale sta la nostra ultima felicità, tutti naturalmente al suo desiderio siamo soggetti.”[154]
And from a study of the Convivio we may learn much of the authors most esteemed, the methods of study pursued, and the results obtained, by thirteenth-century scholars seeking to gain the ultimate perfection of the soul.
Astronomy is frequently introduced, especially in the second and third treatises. The Ode which forms the text of the second treatise is that which is quoted by Charles of Hungary in Par. viii. 37—“Voi che intendendo il terzo ciel movete,”[155] and it gives Dante the occasion to speak first of the heaven of Venus, explaining Ptolemy’s system of epicycles, and later of all the heavens in their order, and the celestial bodies contained in them. The ode of the third treatise contains the line “Non vede il Sol, che tutto il mondo gira ...”[156] and upon this he hangs a complete little essay describing the movements of the sun, and how they appear from different parts of the earth, as well as a short dissertation on the question whether it is Sun or Earth which actually moves.