Time and Space in Dante’s Comedy

Abstract

It has been said that cosmology is the most important defining factor in a culture, and in this respect classical and medieval views of the world — the cosmos or mundus — differed from our own in one fundamental principle. From Aristotle and Ptolemy, the Bible and Christian writers, Dante and his contemporaries had inherited a vision of the universe as closed, with the earth motionless at the centre, surrounded by eight visible revolving spheres — the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Fixed Stars — with a further sphere beyond: the Primum Mobile, the source of the motion of all the others, revolving with extreme speed within the infinite Empyrean Heaven, the abode of the blessed enjoying the eternal vision and love of God.