Dante's Empyrean and the Eye of God

Medieval Academy of America

Dante's Empyrean and the Eye of GodAuthor(s): Richard KayReviewed work(s):Source: Speculum, Vol. 78, No. 1 (Jan., 2003), pp. 37-65Published by: Medieval Academy of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3301443 .Accessed: 27/02/2012 16:38

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Dante's Empyrean and the Eye of God

By Richard Kay

One learns a subject by teaching it, and in teaching a text one learns to read it in new ways. This was how I came to perceive a new image while teaching a class about the ending of Dante's Paradiso.1 To help the students visualize the description of the Empyrean, I drew figures on the blackboard: first, the Mystic Rose as seen from above (Fig. 1), as a circle with the lake of light in the center, surrounded first by children and then by adult saints, who were divided into ranks of concentric circles and files like spokes radiating from the center. To make this common, two-dimensional representation more clear, I supplemented it with an uncommon one of the Empyrean in cross-section: a semicircle equally divided by the Ray (in yellow chalk), which comes from above and is reflected back from the Primum Mobile to form the lake of light at the midpoint of the arc (Fig. 2).2 As I stepped back to admire the second figure, suddenly I realized that it might just as well be a diagram of the human eye, illustrating some version of the extramission theory of vision. Most people would not think to compare an object of immense, literally cosmic dimensions with another hardly an inch in diameter, but Dantists of course are accustomed to analogies between the micro- and macrocosm.

Still one may wonder whether it was just a coincidence that Dante's description of the Empyrean resembles an ocular diagram. Far from being coincidental, the resemblance is certainly significant because a common symbol for God is a single eye that radiates light,3 as on the Great Seal of the United States, which is displayed on every one-dollar bill (Fig. 3).4 The Bible is, of course, the ultimate source of

'In this article the Comedy is cited from "La Commedia" secondo l'antica vulgata, ed. Giorgio Petrocchi, Edizione Nazionale 7, vols. 1-4 (Milan, 1966-67); Dante's other works are cited as edited in his Opere minori, La Letteratura Italiana: Storia e Testi 5, 3 vols. (Milan, 1979-86). I am indebted for bibliographic assistance to Karl F. Morrison, Richard A. Orchard, and Richard R. Ring; for reading the work in progress, to Casey Law, David C. Lindberg, John A. Scott, and R. Dean Ware; and for enhancing the figures, to Paul Hotvedt.

2 As will become apparent in the course of this study, several features in Fig. 2 are not exact: (1) in order to illustrate the reflection of the Ray, the Primum Mobile has been separated from the Empyrean, although it is most likely that they are in contact; (2) the Ray has been represented as a cylinder, although it might perhaps be a cone; (3) some of the incident rays are reflected back at an angle, as in Fig. 4. Two features of Fig. 2 will be justified subsequently, namely, the hemispheric form of the Empyrean and the placement of the Ray's source.

3 A small triangle containing the Eye of Providence, from which a ray of creative light came forth, was used as a symbol for God (but not for the Empyrean) by Niccola Nicolini on his map "L'universo di Dante veduto al lume dell'Idealismo" (1842), which was reproduced by Francesco Torricelli di Torricella, Studii sul poema sacro di Dante Allighieri, 2nd ed. (Naples, 1856), facing p. 489; see also p. 495.

4 The Eye of Providence in a radiant triangle was suggested in 1776 by Pierre Eugene du Simitiere, consultant to the ad hoc congressional committee; it was incorporated in the final design, which was approved in 1782. The original right eye was altered to a left one in 1856. A die has never been cut of the seal's reverse, or "spiritual side," but it has been depicted on the one-dollar bill since 1935. See The Great Seal of the United States, United States Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, Office

Speculum 78 (2003) 37

The Eye of God

ROSA CELESTIALE

Fig. 1. The'Empyrean viewed from above. Reprinted from Paget Toynbee, A Dictionary of Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante (Oxford, 1898), p. 612, pl. 2.

this image: although the Latin Vulgate usually represents God as having two

eyes-for example, "Oculi enim Domini contemplantur universam terram"5- the singular form oculus does appear twice.6 Moreover, light is a property of God's

of Public Communication, Publication 10411 (Washington, D.C., 1996), pp. 3, 7-8, and 19, which is based on the work of Richard S. Patterson and Richardson Dougall, who find no conclusive evidence of Masonic influence on the choice of the symbol and think it more likely that du Simitiere was familiar with Renaissance depictions: The Eagle and the Shield, United States Department of State Publication

8900, Department and Foreign Service Series 161 (Washington, D.C., 1978), pp. 529-32. 5 2 Par. 16.9a. Similar occurrences include Prov. 15.3: "In omni loco oculi Domini contemplantur

bonos et malos"; Heb. 4.13b: "omnia autem nuda et aperta sunt oculis ejus"; Ps. 33.16b (AV 34.15): "Oculi Domini super justos"; Job 36.7a: "Non auferet a justo oculos suos"; Ps. 16.2b (AV 17.2b): "oculi tui videant aequitates"; Ecclus. 34.19a: "Oculi Domini super timentes ejus" (cf. Ecclus. 15.20); Ps. 10b.5b (AV 11.4): "Oculi ejus in pauperem respiciunt: palpebrae ejus interrogant filios hominum"; Ecclus. 11.13a: "Et oculus Dei respexit illum [pauperem] in bono"; and Amos 9.8a: "Ecce oculiDomini Dei super regnum peccans."

6 Ecclus. 11.13a: "Et oculus Dei respexit ilium in bono"; Ecclus. 23.27b: "omnia videt oculus illius [scil. Altissimi, vs. 261." The Hebrew original of Ps. 32.18 also used the singular, hence the AV reading, "the eye of the Lord" (AV 33.18), but the Vulgate followed the Septuagint in using the plural: "Ecce

38

Primum Mobile

Fig. 2. The Empyrean in cross-section.

Fig. 3. Reverse of the Great Seal of the United States of America. Realization by Benson J. Loss- ing, based on the official verbal description, from Harper's New Monthly Magazine (July 1856), 184.

40 The Eye of God

eyes, for according to Ecclesiasticus: "the eyes of the Lord are far brighter (lucidiores) than the sun."7 To be sure, many parts of the human body are attributed to God in the Bible-Pseudo-Dionysius listed nine of them8-but the eye is the no- blest of them all. Since Dante knew the Bible well, making it his principal source for the Comedy,9 we can be sure that he was authorized by Scripture to use the image of an eye to represent God. Indeed, for Dante revelation would provide the best basis for a description of the Empyrean, since he considered it to be a con- struct of Christian theology, as opposed to the lower nine heavens, the nature of which is the subject of natural science.10

Therefore it seems plausible to suppose that Dante's Empyrean is an image of God's Eye. Prompted by the Bible, in the iris of a living human eye he could have readily observed the lines radiating from the pupil (and perhaps also the fainter circles surrounding it), which would suffice to suggest the structure he gave to the seats of the blessed. But no amount of observation would suggest the concept of a ray emanating from the pupil; this feature would have to have been derived from the extramission theory of vision, since God's Eye, with or without a ray, was not an iconographic theme in Dante's day.11 I therefore begin the process of verifica- tion by showing that Dante did make use of the extramission theory, both in his

lyric poems and in the Comedy.

oculi Domini super metuentes eum." The Book of Ecclesiasticus (or Sirach), though today regarded as deuterocanonical, was an undifferentiated part of the Latin Vulgate canon; as such, Dante cited it without hesitation: Ecclus. 1.3 and 3.22 at Convivio 3.8.2; 24.14 at Convivio 3.14.7; cf. 42.16 at

Epistolae 13.22.62. 7 Ecclus. 23.28a: "oculi Domini multo plus lucidiores sunt super solem" (Douay trans.); cf. Apoc.

19.12a: "Oculi autem ejus sicut flamma ignis." 8 Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names 1.8 (Migne, PG 3:597AB), trans. Colm Luibheid, Pseudo-

Dionysius: The Complete Works (New York, 1987), p. 57: "[Scripture writers] have applied to the divine Goodness . . . descriptions of every sort . . .; they praise its eyes, ears, hair, face, and hands, back, wings, and arms, a posterior, and feet."

9 Dante's use of the Bible was conveniently documented by Edward Moore, Studies in Dante, First Series (Oxford, 1896), pp. 321-34. Many further echoes and oblique references have been detected since then; for a recent appreciation of the predominant place of the Bible in Dante's thought, see Peter S. Hawkins, "Dante and the Bible," in The Cambridge Companion to Dante, ed. Rachel Jacoff (Cam- bridge, Eng., 1993), pp. 120-25.

10 Convivio 2.3.8: "Veramente, fuori di tutti questi, li cattolici pongono lo cielo Empireo, che e a dire cielo di fiamma o vero luminoso. . ." ("Moreover, outside all of these [nine heavens] the Catholics

place the Empyrean Heaven, which is to say, the 'heaven of flame,' or 'luminous heaven' . ..": trans. Richard H. Lansing, Dante's Il Convivio [The Banquet], Garland Library of Medieval Literature B/ 65 [New York, 1990], pp. 45-46). See also Cesare Vasoli's extensive comment in Opere minori 1/ 2:133-35.

1 "No medieval example [of the Eye of God] has yet been found ... . . ," according to Peter and Linda

Murray, The Oxford Companion to Christian Art and Architecture (Oxford, 1996), p. 177, s.v. "Eye of God." In Italy the use of a single eye to represent God apparently dates from the fifteenth century, after the Greek text of Horapollo's Hieroglyphica was brought to Florence from Greece in 1419: "Oculo picto Deum intelligebant, quod ut oculus quicquid sibi propositum est intuetur, sic omnia Deus

cognoscit ac videt" (Paris, 1551, p. 222), quoted by Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, 2nd ed. (London, 1968), p. 232, n. 52 (see also pp. 231-35 and fig. 84); cf. Rudolf Wittkower, "Hieroglyphics in the Early Renaissance," in Developments in the Early Renaissance, ed. Bernard S.

Levy (Albany, N.Y., 1972), pp. 66, 69-70, and 74-76.

The Eye of God

1. THE EXTRAMISSION THEORY OF VISION

The most prominent feature of Dante's Empyrean is the ray of light that me- diates between God and his creatures. It comes from above (Par. 30.100), and consequently, on the hypothesis that the scene is set within God's Eye, the Ray operates in accordance with the extramission theory of vision, which explained the phenomenon of sight by attributing an active role to the eye. There were many variants,12 but the common feature of extramission theories was that the visual process began with the eye, which emitted some sort of ray. For Dante, the typical extramission theorist was Plato,13 but by 1300 other versions were well known in the Latin West, by such authoritative authors as Galen, Euclid, Ptolemy, Hunain, and especially St. Augustine.14 Indeed, in the Latin West down to the thirteenth century, all theories of vision were founded on the principle of extramission, most notably that of Robert Grosseteste;15 thereafter the extramission thesis was not forgotten, and it was widely available in the Latin translations of Euclid's Optics and al-Kindi's De aspectibus.16

By 1300, however, an alternative explanation of vision was more widely held in university circles, namely, the intromission theory, which assigned a passive role to the eye, into which the visual rays were (correctly) supposed to enter from the outside world. The authority of Aristotle made this view influential in the schools,17 where it was supported by his commentators, such as Averroes, Aquinas, and Albertus Magnus, as well as by the philosopher-physician Avicenna.18 Stu-

12 For the development of extramission theories, see David C. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from al- Kindi to Kepler (Chicago, 1976), pp. 1-57.

13 Convivio 3.9.10. Here Dante's immediate source was certainly Aristotle, De sensu et sensato 2, 437b10-15 (see Vasoli ad loc.). Plato's theory of vision was also available to Dante in Calcidius's Latin translation of, and commentary on, the Timaeus, but whether he did in fact use it seems, after heated controversy, unlikely: Maria Cristiani, "Timeo," in Enciclopedia dantesca, 6 vols. (Rome, 1970-78), 5:604-5 (see also 4:548). Nonetheless it is remarkable that the image of God's Eye could have been suggested by Calcidius, who understood Plato to have drawn an analogy between God and the human eye because both can be likened to the sun: "idem auctor [Plato] in Politia [Republic 508B12-C2] solem quidem simulacrum esse ait inuisibilis dei, oculum uero solis et solstitiale [= solare] quiddam": Timaeus a Calcidio translatus commentarioque instructus, ed. J. H. Waszink, Plato Latinus 4 (London, 1962), p. 258.

14 For Galen, see Lindberg, Theories of Vision, pp. 10-11 and 212 (bibliographic details in David C. Lindberg, A Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Optical Manuscripts, Subsidia Mediaevalia 4 [Toronto, 1975], no. 187); Euclid: pp. 12-14 and 210 (no. 79); Ptolemy, pp. 15-17 and 211 (no. 100); al-Kindi, pp. 18-32 and 211 (no. 4); Hunain, or Joannitius: pp. 34-42 and 212 (no. 185); and Au- gustine, pp. 89-90, citing De Trinitate 11.4.4 and De Genesi ad litteram.

15 Lindberg, Theories of Vision, pp. 94-102. 16 Lindberg, Theories of Vision, pp. 31-32. 17 For medieval Aristotelians, such as Aquinas, Aristotle's definitive statement on visual rays was

De sensu 2, 438a26-b2. They had to explain away other passages that allowed the possibility of extramitted rays (De generatione animalium 5.1, 780b36-781a8) or even assumed their existence (Meteorologica 2.9,370a18-19, 373a35-374a3, and 3.4,374bl 1-15, probably an early work): Lind- berg, Theories of Vision, pp. 6-11.

18 Averroes: Lindberg, Theories of Vision, pp. 52-57 and 212; Albert: pp. 104-7; Avicenna, pp. 43- 52 and 212 (Lindberg, Catalogue, nos. 66 and 180). Aquinas commented on Aristotle's De sensu et sensato and his Meteorologica (see n. 17, above), both edited by Raymund M. Spiazzi (Turin, 1949

41

dents of optics adopted the more elaborate formulation of Alhazen, which in the West gave rise to the so-called perspectivist school,19 the leading proponents of which were Roger Bacon, Pecham, and Witelo.20 Dante himself clearly accepted the intromission theory in his exposition of the visual process (Conv. 3.9.6-10).21

But, although Dante accepted intromission as the scientific account of vision, as a poet he nonetheless made repeated use of extramission, particularly to describe the effect of his lady's eyes. In this he was guided by poetic convention, for the "rich heritage left by the Platonic ... and Augustinian . . . models of vision influenced poets in the lyric tradition from the Sicilians to Petrarch and beyond. ... ."22 In at least six of his lyric poems, Dante clearly has his lady emitting eye rays: for instance, "De gli occhi de la mia donna si move / un lume si gentil. . ./ e de' suoi razzi...."23 The same convention is used in the Commedia, where the eyes of Beatrice are said to emit rays on four occasions, beginning in the Inferno (10.130), then in the Purgatorio ("quando con li occhi li occhi mi percosse," 33.18),24 but most prominently in the heaven of the moon. Just before Beatrice's discourse there, when Dante-personaggio gazed at her, she "flashed (folgoro)" on him (Par. 3.128-29); after her discourse, she looked at him "con li occhi pieni / di faville d'amor cosi divini," which overcame his power of vision and caused him to look down (Par. 4.139-42), and she then went on to explain why "I flame (fiammeggio) on you in the warmth of love" (Par. 5.1-12).25 A century later, the incident was graphically rendered by a Paduan artist who depicted the pilgrim overcome by visual rays emanating from Beatice's eyes.26 In the Comedy, however, visual rays are explicitly identified as such only once:

and 1952). Alessandro Parronchi, "La perspettiva dantesca," Studi danteschi 36 (1959), 5-103, stresses Dante's dependence on Albert and Aquinas; see also Simon A. Gilson, Medieval Optics and Theories of Light in the Works of Dante, Studies in Italian Literature 8 (Lewiston, N.Y., 2000), pp. 32, 54-55, and 113-15.

19 See Alessandro Parronchi, "Perspettiva," in Enciclopedia dantesca, 4:438-39; Lindberg, Theories of Vision, pp. 104-21; and Gilson, Medieval Optics, pp. 7-37.

20 Alhazen: Lindberg, Theories of Vision, pp. 58-86 and 209-10 (Catalogue, no. 3); Bacon, pp. 107-16 (no. 67); Pecham, pp. 116-18 (no. 98); Witelo, pp. 118-20 (no. 105).

21 Convivio 3.9.7: "Queste cose visibili ... vengono dentro a l'occhio-non dico le cose, ma le forme loro-per lo mezzo diafano, non realmente ma intenzionalmente, si quasi come in vetro tran- sparente" ("These visible things . . . enter into the eye-I do not mean the things themselves but their forms-through the diaphanous medium, not as matter but as an image, just as through transparent glass": trans. Lansing, p. 115). Gilson, Medieval Optics, pp. 62-67.

22 Gilson, Medieval Optics, p. 69, n. 70; see also p. 15, n. 15. 23 Dante's Lyric Poetry, ed. K. Foster and P. Boyde, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1967), nos. 30.1-2 and 5 (=

Rime 65, ed. Michele Barbi, in Le opere di Dante [Florence, 1921]). Other unambiguous occurrences in 33.51-54 (Barbi 14 = Vita nuova 14); 35.2 (21); 45.5-8 (69); and 79.43 (102). Further but ambiguous references in 32.7-13 (67); 67.28 (90); and 80.74-75 (103).

24 For visual rays that "strike" (percosse), see Guido Cavalcanti: "la qual degli occhi suoi venne a ferire" and "Per gli occhi fere la sua claritate," in his canzone "lo non pensava," ed. Gianfranco Contini, Poeti del Duecento, 2 vols. (Milan, 1966-88), 2:500-501. See also Gilson, Medieval Optics, p. 36.

25 Discussion of Paradiso 3-5 in Gilson, Medieval Optics, p. 85. 26 Illuminated Manuscripts of the Divine Comedy, ed. Peter Brieger, Millard Meiss, and Charles S.

Singleton, Bollingen Series 81, 2 vols. (Princeton, N.J., 1969), plate 435a, initial at head of Paradiso 4 in Padua, Biblioteca del Seminario, MS 67, fol. 208r (Paduan, saec. XV in.). Ca. 1456 this was the model for a similar illustration in Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Plut. 40.1, fol. 221r (Brieger, 1:226-30).

The Eye of God 42

cosi de li occhi miei ogne quisquilia fug6 Beatrice col raggio d'i suoi, che rifulgea da piiu di mille milia

(Par. 26.76-78)

([T]hus Beatrice chased away every mote from my eyes with the radiance [raggio] of her own, which shone more than a thousand miles.)27

Consequently it seems that Dante used the extramission theory of vision as a poetic device, even though he considered the opposing intromission theory to be the correct, scientific explanation.28 Hence it appears that he regarded extramission as a poetic fiction, or conceit, rather than an established philosophic truth. There- fore there is no difficulty in supposing that he extended the same principle to his construction of the Empyrean as God's Eye, which also was necessarily a poetic fiction.

THE RAY

Since Dante's use of extramitted visual rays is not controversial, it is quite possible that the Ray in the Empyrean is an emanation from God's Eye. If so, we should expect this ray to be the feature of Dante's Empyrean that links it to medieval optics and ocular anatomy. Let us accordingly consider Dante's raggio as an optical phenomenon.

The narrator first describes the raggio as the pilgrim perceives it at the center of the Rose. It is a light coming from above (Par. 30.100) that "spreads (distende) so wide in a circular figure that the circumference would be too large a girdle for the sun" (103-5). Consequently, according to the figure Dante himself calculated in the Convivio for the sun's diameter, this circle of light would be more than 35,750 miles wide.29 While it is most likely that the Ray was a cylinder of light with this immense diameter throughout its length, it is also possible that it was a cone of light, just like the ray that, according to many medieval theories of vision, had its apex in the lens.30 In that respect the poet is, for whatever reason, non- committal.

27 Trans. Charles S. Singleton, The Divine Comedy, Bollingen Series 80, 6 vols. (Princeton, N.J., 1970-75). (This translation is used hereafter unless otherwise stated.) See also Gilson, Medieval Op- tics, pp. 86-87.

28 Robert Podgurski has argued that Dante reconciled the theories of extramission and intromission by treating the former as a supraphysical phenomenon: "Where Optics and Visionary Metaphysics Converge in Dante's Novella vista," Italian Quarterly 35 (1998), 29-38.

29 Convivio 4.8.7, his reckoning being based on Alfraganus's statements that the earth's diameter is 6,500 miles and that the sun's is 5.5 times greater: Alfraganus, De scientia astrorum 8.3 and 22.2, ed. Francis J. Carmody, Al Farghani Differentie scientie astrorum (Berkeley, Calif., 1943), pp. 14 and 39. For Dante's use of Alfraganus, see Convivio 2.5.16 and 2.13.11; his figure for the earth's diameter is also repeated at Convivio 3.5.9.

30 Such a cone plays a prominent part in perspectivists' accounts of intromission: e.g., Pecham, Perspectiva communis 1.36-38, ed. David C. Lindberg, John Pecham and the Science of Optics (Madi- son, Wis., 1970), p. 121; see also p. 38. Following Arabic practice, the cone was often called a pyra- midus (p. 243, n. 8). Extramissionists were less precise: Euclid located the vertex "in the eye" (Lindberg, Theories of Vision, p. 12, n. 77); Ptolemy "at the center of rotation of the ocular globe" (p. 17; see also p. 29).

The Eye of God 43

He most fully terms it "the ray of the lofty light" ("lo raggio / de l'alta luce," Par. 33.53-54). Although we are given to understand by Beatrice that this light is not ordinary light, but "luce intellettiial" (30.40), still it is clear that, even though some of the laws of nature are suspended in the Empyrean (31.73-78), nonetheless the Ray does conform to the laws of optics inasmuch as it is reflected:

Fassi di raggio tutta sua parvenza reflesso al sommo del mobile primo, che prende quindi vivere e potenza.

(Par. 30.106-8)

(Its [the circular figure's] whole appearance is made by a ray reflected from the summit of the Primum Mobile, which therefrom takes its life and potency.)31

It is noteworthy that the Ray does not form the "circular figure" as it passes downward but only as it is reflected back upward from the convex outer surface of the Primum Mobile, which by the laws of optics would mean that the Ray's circumference progressively increased as it was reflected back upwards. The "circular figure," therefore, would be somewhat larger than the Ray was at the point where it struck the Primum Mobile. The distance would be negligible, however, if my hypothesis is correct, namely, that the Ray is a visual ray emitted from the Eye of God in accordance with the Galenic theory of extramission, because in that case the extramitted light bonds with the ambient air as soon as it leaves the confines of the eyeball.32 In other words, the Primum Mobile would be a sphere in direct contact with the Eye of God. This would fit the concept of the Empyrean as a light-filled space just beyond the last material sphere (Par. 27.112).33

This ray, which now gives "life and potency" to the Primum Mobile, and hence to universal Nature, is to be identified with the triforme effetto by which God in one moment created the angels, the heavens, and prime matter:

Forma e materia, congiunte e purette, usciro ad esser che non avia fallo, come d'arco tricordo tre saette.

E come in vetro, in ambra o in cristallo raggio resplende si, che dal venire a l'esser tutto non e intervallo,

cosi '1 triforme effetto del suo sire ne l'esser suo raggib insieme tutto sanza distinzione in essordire.

31 Trans. Singleton, altered ("appearance" for parvenza, not "expanse"). The apparent paradox may be resolved by Aquinas's explanation that intellectual light is visible, but not to our senses: Scriptum super libros Sententiarum 2.2.2.1 ad 1 (Opera omnia, ed. Roberto Busa, annexed to Index Thomisticus [Stuttgart, 1980], 1:130-31), cited by Bortolo Martinelli, "La dottrina dell'Empireo nell'Epistola a Cangrande (capp. 24-27)," Studi danteschi 57 (1985), 49-143, at p. 111.

32 Lindberg, Theories of Vision, pp. 9-11. 33 It is debatable whether the light in Dante's Empyrean is corporeal or incorporeal, but either way,

insofar as it can be reflected (see above, at n. 31), it obeys the laws of optics. Gilson supports the majority view that the Empyrean light, being "luce intellettual" (Par. 30.40), is incorporeal: Medieval Optics, pp. 250-56; bibliography in n. 70. However, Martinelli has forcefully argued that in the Scholastic tradition, the Empyrean was regarded as corporeal (n. 31, above).

The Eye of God 44

Concreato fu ordine e costrutto a le sustanze; e quelle furon cima nel mondo in che puro atto fu produtto;

pura potenza tenne la parte ima; nel mezzo strinse potenza con atto tal vime, che gia mai non si divima.

(Par. 29.22-36)

(Form and matter, conjoined and simple, came into being which had no defect, as three arrows from a three-stringed bow; and as in glass, in amber, or in crystal, a ray shines so that there is no interval between its coming and its pervading all, so did the triform effect ray forth from its Lord into its being, all at once, without distinction of beginning. Order and structure were created together in the substances; and those in whom pure act was produced were the summit of the universe. Pure potentiality held the lowest place; in the middle such a bond tied up potentiality with act that it is never unbound.)34

Although this passage is generally understood to describe the creation of the nine lower heavens that constitute Nature, the text implies the creation of the Empyrean as well, because it states that the Ray's effect was that "order and structure were created together in the substances" (31-32).35 Since these substances are the angels (32-33), it follows that their place of abode would have been concreated with them, namely, the Empyrean (4.28-32). Since we know that one part of that heaven-the lago-was created by reflection of the Ray from the Primum Mobile, we have good reason to suppose that the sedi of the blessed,36 the only other inanimate feature of the Empyrean, were created in the same way.37 Certainly they, like the rest of the Empyrean, are composed of light; in form they are circles of light, rising step by step from the lake, each being larger in circumference and higher than the preceding one. Can such a configuration be produced by reflected light?

By 1300 reflections of this sort were well understood by Scholastic science, and explanations were widely available, especially in the works of the perspectivists. Specifically, such reflections belong to the study of catoptrics, or reflection in mir- rors-in this case, a convex spherical one. Although the principle was illustrated in the Latin translation of Ptolemy's Optica,38 it was most readily available in John Pecham's Perspectiva communis, which was widely disseminated as a uni-

34 Trans. Singleton, lines 31-33 revised. Cf. Patrick Boyde, Dante Philomythes and Philosopher: Man in the Cosmos (Cambridge, Eng., 1981), pp. 243-45.

35 My translation of Paradiso 29.31-32a; Singleton's: "Therewith order was created and ordained for the substances ..." and Boyde's: "The separate substances were created in their ordered hierarchy . .." (Dante Philomythes, p. 245).

36 Only called sedi at Paradiso 32.7 (but cf. scanni, 4.31), although the noun sedio is implied by the frequent use of the verb sedere: e.g., Paradiso 30.136; 31.116; and 32.8, 42, 102, 118, 130, 133, and 137.

37 For Scholastic arguments that the Empyrean was among the first created things, see Martinelli, "La dottrina dell'Empireo," pp. 66-67 and 99-100.

38 L'Optique de Claude Ptolemee dans la version latine d'apres l'arabe de l'emir Eugene de Sicile, ed. Albert Lejeune, 2nd ed., Collection de Travaux de l'Academie Internationale d'Histoire des Sciences 31 (Leiden, 1989).

The Eye of God 45

versity textbook.39 Both treatises illustrate a case analogous to that of the Empy- rean (Fig. 4).40 For Pecham, the visible object in Figure 4 is ABC, with incident, or incoming, rays AE, BF, and CG reflected to the eye of the observer located at D; but the light geometry would be the same if, as I suppose, the Ray emanated from D and was reflected to form the lago at EFG and the progressively larger circles of reflection along the reflected rays AE and GC.

Given Dante's well-known and extensive use of the principles of catoptrics,41 this explanation seems altogether probable; nonetheless, it does raise several prob- lems that must be confronted. First, it assumes that the Primum Mobile, which Dante, like all medieval astronomers, understood to be an invisible, transparent sphere, has a reflective outer surface so that it can function as a convex spherical mirror. However puzzling this assumption may be, it was made by the poet himself, when he specified that the Ray was reflected from the Primum Mobile, so there can be no doubt that within the fiction of the poem this was somehow possible. We can only speculate on how he thought that this was so. Both experience and authority indicated that rays were reflected from any surface that was smooth and highly polished,42 but since we are dealing with an act of God, more likely no scientific explanation is required-it was done thus because God willed it.

The same explanation based on divine omnipotence may well be the answer to the other objection that can be raised against the irradiative origin of the Rose. For the lago and the sedi to be formed by reflected rays, the rays must encounter another mirrorlike surface, which in both cases must be invisible. One can speculate that, just as the Primum Mobile was formed at the first creation to reflect the raggio back, so also that ray created an invisible hemispheric tunic from which it was reflected to form the seats. Again, no scientific explanation is required because the formation of the lago by reflection is also a given fact, and we must be content with the quia, to know that it is a fact, without knowing the reason why (propter quid).43 Since I have supposed that the sedi were similarly generated, their formation consequently presents no difficulty.

THE HEMISPHERIC AMPHITHEATER

Although it is clear that the seats of the blessed are arranged in concentric circular tiers, it is problematic whether they form a cone, a hemisphere, or some less regular shape. Most commonly, the arrangement is compared to an amphitheater with no further speculation.44 Although the poem repeatedly calls this

39 Lindberg, John Pecham, pp. 29-32. 40 Fig. 4 reproduces fig. 27 from Pecham, Perspectiva communis 2.32, ed. Lindberg, p. 185; for a

similar figure, not in the manuscripts, see p. 259 (fig. 48). A comparable diagram appears in Ptolemy, Optica 3.118 (prop. 32), ed. Lejeune, p. 139.

41 Discussed by Gilson, Medieval Optics, pp. 109-49. 42 Thus Pecham, Perspectiva communis 2.7 and 2.10, ed. Lindberg, pp. 162-65. 43 Thus Virgil, making a commonplace Scholastic distinction at Purgatorio 3.32. 44 Francesco da Buti (d. 1405) compared the seats to the "gradi nell'arena di Verona" (Natalino

Sapegno at Par. 30.114). Beginning with Paradiso 30.112-14, Singleton's commentary regularly calls the Rose an amphitheater.

The Eye of God 46

The Eye of God

Fig. 4. Reflection from the surface of a sphere. Re- produced, by permission of the University of Wis- consin Press, from Pecham, Perspectiva communis 2.32, ed. David C. Lindberg, John Pecham and the Science of Optics (Madison, Wis., 1970), p. 85.

amphitheater a rose,45 eventually the reader learns that this image is not to be taken literally: it is revealed in Paradiso 32 that the seats also form vertical files, one above the other, as is evident from Bernard's identification of the Hebrew women (4-18) and their counterparts across the Rose (31-36). No real rose an- swers this description, because in the genus Rosa when the flower is doubled by having more than one row, or whorl, of petals, they are imbricate, that is, they overlap like roof tiles, each petal being centered over the edges of those in the row beneath; thus the petals of a real rose do not form vertical files.46 Instead, we are left with the image of a netlike grid of circular horizontal ranks and of vertical files. The seats on the higher, larger circles must necessarily be wider than those on the lower, smaller ones, since each circle now appears to contain the same number of seats; in other words, the files taper downwards. Although such a grid could be imposed on a cone, it is best known as the division of a sphere, such as the lines of latitude and longitude on a terrestrial globe. While geographical lati-

45 The Empyrean is referred to as a rosa at Paradiso 12.19, 30.117 and 124, 31.1, and 32.15 and 120.

46 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., 23:729-30. Giovanni di Paolo depicted the empyreal rose with botanically correct imbricate petals in London, British Library, MS Yates Thompson 36 (saec. XV med.), fols. 185r, 187r, and 188r: Brieger (n. 26, above), 2:513 and 516.

47

tude and longitude were recognized and useful concepts in medieval Scholastic culture,47 the sphere so divided that would most readily come to mind for Dante's contemporaries was the celestial sphere, especially as it was depicted on the tympan of an astrolabe (Fig. 5).

Because the empyreal amphitheater has a horizon, it corresponds exactly with the half of the celestial sphere represented on a tympan. This horizon is the amphitheater's upper edge, formed by the topmost tier on which are seated the Virgin Mary, Peter and John on her right and Adam and Moses on her left (Par. 31.115- 35, 32.115-32, and Fig. 1). Bernard says it is the "most remote" of the circles (31.115), and the narrator says that Mary's place was "a part on the extreme verge" (122).48 The correspondence between the amphitheater's rim and the celestial sphere's horizon is not a matter of conjecture, for the two are explicitly compared by the narrator, who likens the angelic glory above Mary to a sunrise in "la parte oriental de l'orizzonte" (Par. 31.119).

Our conception of God's Eye is significantly expanded by the discovery that the Empyrean is a hemisphere with a horizon, because these features imply that it is part of a larger structure, namely, a sphere. Dante himself defines a horizon as "the mid-line between two halves of a sphere."49 Moreover, as Aquinas explains in his commentary on the Liber de causis, "a horizon is a circle marking off the boundaries of what is seen."50 Accordingly, the Empyrean's horizon would seem to divide the invisible, ineffable, and eternal Creator from his creation. Thus God and the Empyrean together form a sphere, which may conveniently be termed "Supernature," since it is separate from, adjacent to, and above the Primum Mo- bile, which contains the mundus of Nature. The idea that the tenth heaven was spherical in shape (coelum spheriforme) was in fact a Scholastic commonplace, taken from John Damascene and repeated, for instance, by Bartholomew the En- glishman,51 but since medieval anatomists conceived the human eye as a sphere, of which only the anterior half was visible, it would be fitting to represent God's Eye by its exterior hemisphere, which was the interface between the Creator and his creatures. This implicit image of God's Eye as a sphere has important consequences that I shall explore at the end of this study, but first I want to show that, in addition to this general resemblance to the human eye, Dante's Empyrean pos- sesses many particular features that have counterparts in medieval ocular anatomy.

2. ANATOMY

Although Dante's Empyrean is composed of light, still the features formed by the Ray may resemble structures in the human eye that were known to anatomists

47 On Dante's use of the latitude-related climatic zones in Paradiso, see Richard Kay, Dante's Chris- tian Astrology (Philadelphia, 1994), pp. 63-64, 88-91, 119-20, 173, 217, and 226.

48 Singleton's translation; he offers "a part of the highest edge" or "rim" as an alternative translation of "parte ne lo stremo" (Par. 31.122).

49 Monarchia 3.15.3: "[homo] assimilatur orizonti, qui est medium duorum emisperiorum": trans. Richard Kay, Dante's "Monarchia," Studies and Texts 131 (Toronto, 1998), p. 309.

50 Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Book of Causes, ad prop. 2, trans. Vincent A. Guagliardo et al. (Washington, D.C., 1996), p. 17. See also Kay at Monarchia 3.15.3.

51 Martinelli, "La dottrina dell'Empireo," pp. 64-65.

48 The Eye of God

The Eye of God

Azimuth Lines . __

Lati tude ^" '4Unequal Hour Lines Mark (12 Hours of Day)

(12 Hours of Night)

Fig. 5. A tympan, or tablet, for an astrolabe, showing the coordinates of the celestial sphere for a specific latitude (altitude, azimuth, zenith, and horizon). Reproduced, by permission of Marjorie V. Webster, from Roderick S. Webster, The Astrolabe, 2nd ed. (Lake Bluff, Ill., 1974), p. 10.

in the Latin West circa 1300; consequently, I will now inquire whether Dante's description of the Empyrean corresponds to the ocular anatomy current in his day. Since Simon Gilson has already established that Dante made extensive use of optical science, we can turn with confidence to some of the numerous treatises on optics available to Dante52 in search of possible sources for his description of the tenth heaven. This will be more than an exercise in Quellenkunde for its own sake, for the results will not only confirm my original hunch but will also enable me to expand and elaborate his use of the oculus Dei image.

Following Gilson's lead, I will not attempt to identify any particular source for Dante's optics; the better course is to seek instead to ascertain which doctrines he made use of, since many of them were commonplaces that were oft repeated. This is particularly true of the eye's anatomy, for which all of Dante's contemporaries ultimately relied on the work of Galen of Pergamum (d. ca. A.D. 199).53 Although

52 Summarized in Lindberg, Theories of Vision, pp. 209-13; for manuscripts and editions, see Lind- berg, Catalogue (above, n. 14).

53 Lindberg, Theories of Vision, p. 41. While writers following Alhazen came to interpret ocular function in geometrical terms (pp. 68-71), observational anatomy of the eye remained essentially Galenic until the sixteenth century: Stewart Duke-Elder and Kenneth C. Wybar, The Anatomy of the Visual System, System of Ophthalmology 2 (St. Louis, Mo., 1961), pp. 33-38. But see n. 68, below.

49

it is possible that Dante might have known Galen's De usu partium in Latin translation,54 the substance of Galen's anatomy was most widely known in the West from the treatise De oculis, commonly attributed to its translator, Constan- tine the African (fl. 1065-85), but sometimes to Galen himself.55 Galen's anatomy of the eye was also commonly summarized by other sources available to Dante,56 including several with which he was certainly familiar, such as Avicenna57 and Albertus Magnus58 (though not Peter of Spain).59 In seeking analogues between Dante's Empyrean and Galenic ocular anatomy, it will be enough to establish the basic features of the Galenic eye without attempting to determine where Dante might have learned about them.

GALENIC OCULAR ANATOMY

The casual observer of the human eye sees only part of a sphere about an inch in diameter; most of the visible surface is white, surrounding a colored circle, the iris, at the center of which is the pupil, a dark spot that dilates and contracts. Galen and his Greek predecessors were little concerned with these superficial features; instead, as an anatomist Galen described the ocular structures that could be discerned by painstaking dissection, and modern anatomy still recognizes most of them and often designates them by the Latin terminology devised by medieval translators. Much of Galen's description is irrelevant to the present inquiry because Dante's image concerns only the anterior portion of the eye, to which Galen devoted relatively little attention. Let me begin, then, with a summary of the Ga- lenic anatomy of the anterior hemisphere of the eye.

According to Galen, the front of the eye is covered by three coats (tunicae, panniculi). (1) The outermost tunic is the conjunctiva, a thin layer that covers the posterior hemisphere but extends only slightly into the anterior half.60 (2) The

54 See n. 81, below. 55 Constantini monacbi Montiscassini Liber de oculis, ed. P. Pansier, in his Collectio ophtalmologica

veterum auctorum, 2 vols. (Paris, 1903-33), 2:167-82. The work is in fact a reworking of Galen by Hunain ibn Ishaq (d. 877), The Book of the Ten Treatises on the Eye, ed. and trans. Max Meyerhof (Cairo, 1928). See Lindberg, Catalogue, no. 185. According to Meyerhof's notes, Hunain's principal source was Galen's De usu partium corporis humanis, but he also used Galen's De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis and De demonstratione, neither of which Dante could have known because one was not yet translated and the other has been lost (pp. 20, 21, 27, 36, and 38).

56 Lindberg, Theories of Vision, p. 41, cites as examples of Galenic ocular anatomy Benvenutus Grassus, Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Vincent of Beauvais, and Roger Bacon.

57 Dante cites Avicenna but not his Liber canonis or other medical works: Enciclopedia dantesca, 1:481-82.

58 Albert treats the anatomy of the eye most fully in his De animalibus 1.2.7, in Opera omnia, ed. Auguste Borgnet, 38 vols. (Paris, 1890-99), 11:50-52. See also Lindberg, Theories of Vision, pp. 105- 6.

59 Not surprisingly, since Dante alludes only to his work as a logician: Paradiso 12.134-35. His treatise on ophthalmology (Lindberg, Catalogue, no. 206) simply names the tunics, which he remarks number seven like the planets, and the three humors: Brevarium de egritudinibus oculorum et curis 1.1, ed. A. M. Berger, Die Ophthalmologie (Liber de oculo) des Petrus Hispanus (Munich, 1899), pp. 2-3.

60 Constantine, De oculis 1.2.4 and 1.3.6, ed. Pansier, 2:168 and 170; Hunain, Ten Treatises, trans. Meyerhof, pp. 5 and 12; Galen, De usu partium 10.2, trans. Margaret Tallmadge May, Galen on the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body, 2 vols. (Ithaca, N.Y., 1968), 2:469.

50 The Eye of God

next coat is differentiated into two distinct structures: five-sixths of it forms the sclera, or sclerotic coat, visible as the white of the eye, while the front-most sixth is transparent and is called the cornea because it is hornlike.61 (3) The third anterior tunic is the uvea, so called for the grapelike color of its interior surface; it is the anterior continuation of the choroid, or secundina, tunic.62 Galenists were not in agreement as to the point at which the choroid becomes the uvea; Galen himself appears to have considered the uvea to be the structure we call the iris.63 The pupil is an aperture or hole in the uvea (foramen uveae).64

These three concentric coats form a cavity that contains a thin, pure fluid called the aqueous humor, or the albugineous (albuminoid) humor because it resembles the white of an egg.65 Behind this humor lies another, sometimes called the lens, not for its optical properties but because its shape is that of a lentil seed (Lens culinaris), namely, a flattened sphere; the lens was also termed the humor that is "icelike" (glacial) or "crystalline" (crystalloid).66 Galen thought he observed a thin film covering the anterior surface of the lens; he compared it to an onion skin or a spiderweb (tela araneae) and stated that it was reflective, like a mirror.67 It is commonly referred to simply as the aranea or "the arachnoid membrane." Al- though, like modern anatomists, Galen apparently located the lens close to the pupil, Hunain situated it "in the middle of the eye, like a point which we imagine to be in the centre of a globe," and in this he was followed by Latin anatomists (but not the perspectivists) until the sixteenth century.68 Similarly, before Kepler the lens was considered to be, in Galen's words, "the principal instrument of

61 Constantine, De oculis 1.2.4 and 1.3.6, ed. Pansier, 2:168 and 170; Hunain, Ten Treatises, trans. Meyerhof, pp. 4 and 9; Galen, De usu partium 10.3, trans. May, 2:470-71.

62 Constantine, De oculis 1.2.4 and 1.3.6, ed. Pansier, 2:168 and 170; Hunain, Ten Treatises, trans. Meyerhof, pp. 4 and 9; Galen, De usu partium 10.4, trans. May, 2:474-76.

63 Galen, contrary to prior Greek usage, used the term "iris" to refer to the equator of the lens, the dividing circle (or wreath, corona) where the anterior and posterior tunics joined (May, Galen, pp. 467-68, n. 10). See the diagram in Hugo Magnus, Die Anatomie des Auges in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, Augenartzliche Unterrichtstafeln 20 (Breslau, 1900), pl. 22; reproduced in Duke-Elder, Anatomy, p. 16.

64 Constantine, De oculis 1.3.6, 3.1.15, and 4.1.10, ed. Pansier, 2:170 and 175-76; Hunain, Ten Treatises, trans. Meyerhof, pp. 10, 29-30, and 36; Galen, De usu partium 10.4-6, trans. May, 2:475- 76 and 479.

65 Constantine, De oculis 1.2.3 and 1.3.6, ed. Pansier, 2:168 and 170 ("e[u]gaidos" and "eugaydas"); Hunain, Ten Treatises, trans. Meyerhof, pp. 4 and 10 ((0octit; = "egglike" or "albuminoid"); Galen, De usu partium 10.4-6, trans. May, 2:475-78 ("aqueous humor").

66 Constantine, De oculis 1.1.1, 1.2.2-3, and 1.2.5, ed. Pansier, 2:167-68; Hunain, Ten Treatises, trans. Meyerhof, pp. 3-4; Galen, De usu partium 10.1, trans. May, 2:463-65.

67 Constantine, De oculis 1.3.6, ed. Pansier, 2:170; Hunain, Ten Treatises, trans. Meyerhof, p. 10; Galen, De usu partium 10.6, trans. May, 2:478-79. See Lindberg, Theories of Vision, pp. 36, 55, and 238, nn. 141-42. Probably Galen was describing the anterior lens capsule (Meyerhof, May, and Lind- berg), though Lindberg also considers it to be "a hypothetical membrane."

68 Hunain, Ten Treatises, trans. Meyerhof, p. 3; Constantine, De oculis, 1.2.2, ed. Pansier, 2:168: "In medio [crystalloidos humor] locatur ut cetere partes sibi ministrent. ..." Similarly, Avicenna, Liber canonis 3.3.1: "Et hic quidem [glacialis] humor positus est in medio: quoniam est dignior locis que sunt cum custodia" (Venice, 1507, fol. 203va; repr. Darmstadt, 1964). See also Lindberg, Theories of Vision, p. 34; and Duke-Elder, Anatomy, p. 309. Since the centrally placed lens is not authentically "Galenic," I shall hereafter designate the medieval Latin tradition incorporating this feature, derived from Hunain and Avicenna, as that of the "Latin medical anatomists."

The Eye of God 51

vision," and all the other parts of the eye existed in order to help the lens perform its function.69 Hence the lens was-significantly for my theme-called "the divine part of the eye" (divinum oculi).70

Unfortunately, Galen left no diagrammatic representation of the eye to clarify his description; and although his medieval followers agreed in general, they dif- fered in details and clarity. Hunain's diagram (Fig. 6) is the earliest that illustrates the texts I have cited;71 however, to make it easier to follow the next stage of the argument, I provide diagrams of the relevant features of the anterior half of the Galenic eyeball in longitudinal section (Fig. 7) and its exterior aspect (Fig. 8), as medieval Latin medical anatomists conceived it. We are now prepared to see how the principal features of Dante's Empyrean correspond to those of the human eye as described by Galen and his followers.

ANATOMICAL PARALLELS IN THE EMPYREAN

God As the source of the Ray, God corresponds to the lens, which is the immediate

source of extramitted rays.72 Furthermore, the circular shape of the lens as seen from the front matches God's appearance to the pilgrim as three superimposed circles ("tre giri / . . . d'una contenenza," Par. 33.116-17). It is not immediately apparent, however, just where the object of this vision is located relative to the hemispheric amphitheater. To be sure, it is located on the central axis formed by the Ray, to which the lago and the circular ranks of sedi are concentric; it is problematic, however, how high above the lago he is supposed to be. The Galenic anatomists whose works Dante could have known placed the lens at the center of the spherical eyeball,73 and hence the center of the lens was equidistant from all points on the surface of the eye's anterior hemisphere. If such were the position of God's image in the empyreal amphitheater, then it would be on the same level with the Virgin Mary and the other saints seated in the topmost rank. The prob- lem, then, is to discover whether this was the case.

The answer is implied by the nature of the beatific vision. "Blessedness," Be- atrice declares, "is founded on the act of vision (si fonda / I'esser beato ne l'atto che vede)" (Par. 28.109-10). Without seeing God, then, one cannot be blessed. Later, the narrator restates this fundamental truth: the divine light makes the Cre- ator visible "to every creature that has his peace only in beholding him (a quella

69 Galen, De usu partium 10.1, trans. May, 2:463; cf. Hunain, Ten Treatises, trans. Meyerhof, p. 3; Constantine, De oculis 1.1.1 and 1.2.2, ed. Pansier, 2:167-68.

70 Duke-Elder, Anatomy, p. 17, citing no source. 71 Reproduced from Lindberg, Theories of Vision, p. 35 (cf. p. 229, n. 14), based on a manuscript

dated to 1196; an inferior rendition in Meyerhof, p. 5. A crude drawing illustrating Galen's De usu partium is reproduced as the frontispiece to vol. 2 of May's translation (Vatican Library, MS Urb. gr. 69, fol. 118r). See also n. 63, above.

72 The lens in turn receives its power from the brain, which corresponds to God himself (see p. 63, below); consequently, it is God's image, not God himself, that is the subject of the present discussion.

73 See, for instance, Hunain's diagram (Fig. 6) and n. 66, above. Following Alhazen, the perspectivist tradition, including Bacon, Witelo, and Pecham, located the lens (correctly) well forward of the eyeball's center.

52 The Eye of God

The Eye of God

OPTIC NERVE

ALBUMINOID

HUMOR PUPIL

CRYSTALLINE HUMOR

Fig. 6. The eye according to Hunain ibn Ishaq. Reproduced, by permission of the University of Chicago Press, from David C. Lind-

berg, Theories of Vision from al-Kindi to Kepler (Chicago, 1976), p. 35.

creatura / che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace)" (Par. 30.101-2). Consequently, there can be no doubt that each and every one of the blessed souls in the Empyrean is looking at God. The poet provided an exception that proves this rule:

Di contr' a Pietro vedi sedere Anna, tanto contenta di mirar sua figlia, che non move occhio per cantare osanna

(Par. 32.133-35)

(Opposite Peter you see Anna sitting, so content to gaze upon her daughter that she moves not her eyes as she sings Hosanna.)

Anna, in other words, looks fixedly at the Virgin Mary, who is almost, but not quite, diametrically opposite her on the uppermost level of the amphitheater (see Fig. 1). At least one commentator jumped to the conclusion that Anna cannot in

consequence be looking at God, because he assumed, without a shed of textual authority, that God must be located somewhere above the rim of the amphitheater.74 But this would involve the poet in a contradiction, since by definition a blessed soul must see God to enjoy the beatific vision, whereas Anna has her gaze

74 Thus Singleton ad Par. 32.133-35: "Mother gazes constantly at daughter, instead of gazing upwards to enjoy the direct vision of God!"

53

The Eye of God

conjunctiva \ \ uvea

visible % / or

\\iris r,( "iris"

aqueous sclera humor (white)

cornea \ (transparent) pupil

(foramen uveae)

Fig. 7. The anterior half of the eye according to medieval Latin medical anatomists.

fixed on Mary. The contradiction disappears, of course, if Anna could see both God and Mary simultaneously, which would be the case if God's image were on the same level as the edge of the amphitheater. Theologically, this solution is ap- pealing, as it places all of the blessed equidistant from the object of their vision, irrespective of its intensity, which is indicated by the graduated ranks of the amphitheater. We can accordingly take God's image in the Empyrean to be a precise parallel to the location of the lens in the eyeball.

Finally, the lens is a fitting analogue for God because, according to Galen, all the other parts of the eye exist for its sake (propter quid). As has been remarked above, this godlike character of the lens caused it to be known as "the divine part of the eye" (divinum oculi). Thus in every respect Dante's God is aptly represented as the lens of God's Eye, "so that," as the poem says in another connection, "the correspondence is exact between the ring and finger" (Par. 32.56-57).

The lake of light Dante's raggio, as already noted, corresponds to the light extramitted from the

lens; descending to the surface of the ninth heaven, it is reflected back from the Primum Mobile to form the "circular figure" of the lago, or lake of light. If this takes place in God's Eye, the outward-bound Ray must pass through the hole in the grapelike tunic known as the foramen uveae, or pupil, and next through the outer surface of the hemisphere, which corresponds to the invisible cornea; and then returning back from the Primum Mobile, the Ray floods the pupil with light to form the lake. The correspondence between the lago and the pupil is suggested by a significant reversal: the pupil, when viewed from outside the human eye, appears to be wholly dark; the lago, by contrast, is just the opposite, its most

54

The Eye of God

Fig. 8. Exterior view of the human eye.

distinctive character being that it is composed of light, which enables it to be the immediate source of illumination in the Empyrean (Par. 30.100-102). But the strongest reasons to identify the lago with the pupil are that both are circular figures and that both are similarly located, one being as it were the central arena of the heavenly amphitheater and the other being centered on the anterior pole of the ocular sphere's geometrical axis.75

The blessed and their seats The blessed are first identified, by Beatrice, as "the assembly of the white robes

('I convento de le bianche stole)" (Par. 30.129). Color readily identifies the white robes with the white tunic, or sclera, and the identification is all the stronger because both are garments.76 As already shown, the reader must reconstruct the layout of the amphitheater from scattered references, but once it is discovered that the seats are arranged not only in circular ranks, like lines of latitude, but also in vertical files, divided by longitudinal lines, the pattern proves to be one that anyone can observe in the visible part of the eye's iris (Fig. 8). Since medieval anatomists synonymized the iris and the uvea, taking what today is called the iris to be the visible portion of the grapelike tunic (Fig. 7), the same pattern of radiating lines and concentric circles could by extrapolation be extended to the whole surface of the uvea, which would thus correspond to the configuration of the seats in the hemispheric amphitheater.

75 For the topography of the human eye, see Duke-Elder, Anatomy, p. 78 (fig. 65). 76 Dante used tunica in its anatomical sense: "la tunica de la pupilla," Convivio 3.9.13; gonna is

used as its equivalent at Paradiso 26.72. Galen's Greek term xtzTv was translated into Latin as pan- niculus, "a piece of fabric," and hence a "membrane," by Constantine, De oculis 1.3.6-8, ed. Pansier, 2:169-71; but also as tunica, e.g., in the Liber oculorum of Jesu Haly, translated before 1279 by Dominicus Marrochini, ed. Pansier, 1:200-201 (see Lindberg, Catalogue, no. 194).

55

The analogy is not altogether anatomically correct, however, because in the human eye the white tunic encloses the grapelike one, whereas the white robed saints are presumably seated on the seats that constitute the outer surface of the hemisphere. The discrepancy may well be attributed to poetic license, but that appeal perhaps assumes too readily that God's Eye must replicate ocular anatomy in every respect, for within the fiction of the poem it is clear that the whole Em- pyrean was "established by eternal law" (Par. 32.55), that is, by God's omnipotent will, and that in doing so he sometimes transcended natural law (31.76-78).

The conclusion to be drawn from all these parallels must be that there is a remarkable correspondence between the principal features of the Empyrean and the structures of the anterior half of the Latin Galenic eye: God is the lens; the raggio exits like an extramitted visual ray; the lago is a reverse image of the pupil; the seats are arranged in a pattern found in the iris, or uvea; and the blessed are clothed in white robes corresponding to the sclera, or white tunic. These parallels should be sufficient to confirm my hypothesis, but there are two more, less obvious perhaps, but nonetheless impressive.

ANGELS AND VISUAL SPIRITS

In addition to the beati, Dante's empyreal hemisphere is filled with a vast multitude of angels-"tanta moltitudine volante" (Par. 31.20)-that mediate between God and his saints, constantly circulating from one to the other (31.1-18). As we know, they, too, were part of the first creation, having been produced as part of the primal Ray's triform effect (Par. 29.28). Since Dante describes the angels in the Empyrean as transparent to the divine light (Par. 31.19-24),77 they might be identified with the transparent aqueous humor that fills the space between the uvea and the lens (above, n. 65), but instead it seems to me more likely that Dante ignored that invisible substance in his image of God's Eye and instead equated the angels with the plenitude of visual spirit (spiritus visibilis) that, according to Galen, permeated the aqueous humor. What the eye emitted, according to Galen's extramission theory, was pneuma, which originated in the brain, passed through the lens, and emerged from the pupil to coalesce with the ambient air.78 In his treatise De usu partium Galen asserts that "the space between the crystalline humor [the lens] and the grapelike tunic [the iris] contains a thin liquid [the aqueous humor] and that the region around the pupil is full of pneuma...."79 Then he adduces two reasons to believe that pneuma is present in living subjects: first, after death the eyeball shrivels even though filled with aqueous humor; and second, that when one eye is closed, the pupil of the other dilates, because the pneuma coming from the brain is concentrated in the active eye.80

77 Cf. Convivio 3.7.5: angels "sono sanza grossezza di materia, quasi diafani per la purita de la loro forma."

78 Lindberg, Theories of Vision, pp. 10-11 and esp. n. 63. Galen describes the process most fully in De placitis Hipprocratis et Platonis 7.4, ed. and trans. Phillip De Lacy, Corpus Medicorum Graecorum 5/4/1, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1980-81), 2:449-53, which Dante could not have known because the first Latin translation was made in 1490. See n. 55, above.

79 Galen, De usu partium 10.5, trans. May, 2:476. 80 Galen, De usu partium 10.5, trans. May, 2:476-77.

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Dante could have known this passage in any one of three Latin translations of the De usu partium,81 but its basic content would also have been available to him in Constantine the African's De oculis, which was a standard medical textbook.82 Constantine turns Galen's Greek term pneuma into Latin as spiritus visibilis, "visual spirit." In a passage ultimately derived from Galen's De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis,83 Constantine explains that when one eye is closed, the visual spirit is diverted to the other, open eye: "hence the hole of the tunic that is called the uvea is necessarily dilated on account of the multitude (multitudinem) of the substance of the spirit."84

Wherever Dante learned the Galenic theory of visual spirits, he undoubtedly held it to be correct, since he not only expounded it in Convivio 3.9.9, where the visual spirit is singular ("lo spirito visivo"), but also alluded to it in Paradiso 30.47, where the pilgrim's "spiriti visivi" are plural visual spirits.85 The variation is crucial for my interpretation, because it authorizes the identification of the multitude of angels with the visual spirits, which in the medical tradition are usually singular. Nor does Dante permit us to doubt that angels are spirits, for although most often he uses spirito (or spirto) to designate a human soul, still on at least one occasion in the Comedy the word surely refers to an angel (Purg. 17.55).86

There is, then, a marked parallel between, on the one hand, the Galenic "mul- titudo of the substance of the spirit" issuing from the lens to fill the uvea and, on the other, the Dantesque "moltitudine" of angel spirits circulating between God and his saints. Moreover, Galen's visual spirit not only issues from the lens to join the air, which when illuminated by the sun or some other external light source becomes the spirit's instrument for perceiving external objects, but significantly, when a perception returns to the eye, it also is the visual spirit alone that conveys the incoming data back to the lens, and thence to the brain.87 Consequently Dante's angels also resemble the visual spirits in their circulating, mediating func-

81 The three known Latin translations of Galen's De usu partium are (1) a translation from the Arabic that abbreviated Galen's books 1-11 into nine tractates, according to Pietro d'Abano; (2) Pietro's own translation from the Greek, made before 1310 and now lost; and (3) Niccolo6 da Reggio's translation from the Greek, made in 1317. See Lynn Thorndike, "Translations of Works of Galen from the Greek by Peter of Abano," Isis 33 (1942), 649-53, at p. 649, n. 4; and idem, "Translations of Works of Galen from the Greek by Niccolo6 da Reggio (c. 1308-1345)," Byzantina-Metabyzantina 1 (1946-49), 213-35, at pp. 214 and 232 (no. 53). Version (1) survives in many manuscripts and in early printed collections of Galen's works (Venice, 1490, vol. 1, fols. 16r-32r; Pavia, 1515, vol. 1, fols. 52r-67r); version (3) is also printed in the 1515 Opera, vol. 1, fols. 67r-131r. I have not been able to consult any of these Latin versions.

82 See n. 55, above. 83 Galen, De placitis 7.4, ed. Lacy, 2:451; cf. Hunain, Ten Treatises, trans. Meyerhof, pp. 27-31,

esp. p. 29, lines 23-30. 84 Constantine, De oculis 4.1.16, ed. Pansier, 2:176: "unde foramen panniculi qui dicitur uvea per

multitudinem substantie spiritus necessario dilatatur." Cf. Pansier, 2:177: "proinde multa quantitas spiritus visum facientis necessaria fuit."

85 But cf. Paradiso 26.71: "lo spirto visivo." 86 Possibly also at Paradiso 12.68 and certainly at De vulgari eloquentia 1.2.4 (see Pier Vincenzo

Mengaldo ad loc.); full discussion by Paolo Mugnai in Enciclopedia dantesca, 5:387-90, s.v. "spirito," including both Galenic and angelic senses of the term.

87 Constantine, De oculis 4.2.22, ed. Pansier, 2:179-80; cf. Hunain, Ten Treatises, trans. Meyerhof, pp. 38-39.

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tion within God's Eye.88 In conclusion, then, the empyrean angels, no less than the Ray, the amphitheater, and the circular pool of light, have their analogues in medieval optics.

THE ARACHNOID MEMBRANE AND "LA NOSTRA EFFIGE"

One final feature of Dante's Empyrean seems to have been suggested by the medieval optical tradition. The poem ends with the pilgrim's vision of God; looking up at the source of the Ray (Par. 33.49-53), Dante-personaggio first sees the triune God as three interrelated circles (115-20), and then the one representing the Son "appeared to me depicted with our effigy (mi parve pinta de la nostra effige)" (Par. 33.131). Clearly the pilgrim has seen Christ in his twofold nature, both divine and human, though for a while he cannot understand how the new "image" (imago, 138) is related to the circle, until he is miraculously given the answer, which the narrator does not reveal (133-41).89

This vision of "our effigy" is a familiar ocular phenomenon commonly expe- rienced when looking into someone else's eye. Today the reflection is understood to be from the cornea, but the ancient Greeks located it in the pupil, which is why the "hole of the uvea" (foramen uveae) came to be called the pupilla, or "little doll."90 By Dante's time, however, it seemed impossible that anything could be reflected from a hole, so the phenomenon was assigned instead to a reflective surface behind the pupil, namely, the weblike film known as the "spider's web" (aranea or arachnoid membrane) that, according to Galen, covered the anterior surface of the lens.91 This explanation was given by Hunain and translated into Latin by Constantine the African:

If a man looks fixedly and steadfastly into the eye of his companion-at a time when it is healthy-he sees his own image (suam faciem) in it. The cause of this is the reflection of his look at that moment by the thin membrane which covers the exterior half of the lens like the solidified [film of] grease on broth after it is cooled. For this film is more

88 For angels as sphere movers and astral influences, see Stephen Bemrose, Dante's Angelic Intelli- gences: Their Importance in the Cosmos and in Pre-Christian Religion, Letture de Pensiero e d'Arte 62 (Rome, 1983), pp. 77-113; for their contacts with humans, Enciclopedia dantesca, 3:270. Although Dante clearly indicates that in the Empyrean they circulate between God and the blessed (Par. 30.64- 69 and 31.4-12), it is not clear what this circulation signifies.

89 On the poem's climax, see Ronald B. Herzman and Gary W. Towsley, "Squaring the Circle: Paradiso 33 and the Poetics of Geometry," Traditio 49 (1994), 95-125.

90 Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., 2 vols. (Oxford, 1940), 1:980, s.v. "KOpil" 3; Oxford Latin Dictionary, ed. P. G. W. Glare (Oxford, 1982), p. 1521, s.v.

"pupilla." 91 Galen, De usu partium 10.6, trans. May, pp. 478-79: "[the crystalline humor's] own proper tunic

is not only 'like the skin stripped down from a dried onion' [Odyssey 19.232-33], but is also even thinner and clearer than thin cobwebs, and what is more remarkable, it does not extend around all the crystalline humor.... All of the part, however, that looks to the outside and is in contact with the grapelike tunic puts on this thin, brilliant tunic. Moreover, the image of the pupil takes shape in this as in a sort of mirror; for it is smoother and more glistening than any mirror." Definitely not available to Dante was the more extensive description of the arachnoid in Galen's Anatomical Procedures; see Galen on Anatomical Procedures: The Later Books, trans. W. L. H. Duckworth (Cambridge, Eng., 1962), p. 40.

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polished and shining than all other bright, luminous and polished bodies, and clearer than they.92

Consequently, the pilgrim's vision of the human form imposed on the circle representing God the Son has its counterpart in the facies that was supposed to be reflected from the weblike membrane covering the lens. Evidently Dante was following the Galenic tradition of optical anatomy in having his vision of "our effigy" superimposed on the lens of God's Eye, and indeed it seems plausible to suppose that the very idea of having the human form appear at the source of the divine ray was also suggested to him by the same tradition.93

3. CONCLUSIONS AND CONSEQUENCES

My hunch at the blackboard now has been confirmed and elaborated. The structures of Dante's Empyrean all correspond to features of the eye found in authoritative medieval Latin descriptions of ocular anatomy, and especially in the treatise De oculis translated by Constantine the African, which was undoubtedly the best representative of the Galenic tradition available to Dante. Specifically, the raggio seen by the pilgrim is like the visual ray that in some extramission theories of vision flows from the lens through the pupil to form a new medium of vision, which corresponds to the triform effect of Dante's Ray that creates Nature and Supernature as the media of God's love. In the Galenic tradition, this light fills the circular pupil before extramission, whereas Dante has it do so afterwards, as a reflection from the Primum Mobile. For Dante, the raggio, passing above and beyond the circular figura, gave rise to a third ocular feature, the hemisphere of light that forms the seats of the blessed, which resembles the uvea in its hemispheric shape and in its pattern of radiating lines and concentric circles. Fourthly, the white robes of the blessed are analogous to the white of the eye, which is also a garment, being the tunic known as the sclera. Furthermore, the angels circulating between God and the blessed correspond to the visual spirits, or pneuma, that fill the concavity of the uvea. The circular lens, or glacial humor, as the seat of vision and the source of the visual ray and spirits, is readily equated with the site where Dante's pilgrim sees God as three superimposed circles at the center of the amphitheater's rim, just as the lens was often supposed to stand at the center of the eye. The seventh, last, and most remarkable correspondence is the human effigy that appears to the pilgrim on one of these divine circles, just as Galenists thought

92 Hunain, trans. Meyerhof, p. 37; Constantine, De oculis 4.2.21, ed. Pansier, 2:179: "si aliquis studiose in oculo alterius cernit, videt in eo suam faciem. Causa, quia visus ad pupillam convertitur propter panniculi splendorem qui dicitur aranee tela. Est enim super crystallinum sicut adeps super jura coagulatus, que nimis rutilans et clara est."

93 In Convivio 3.9.7-8 Dante explains that the forms of visible things enter the eye and pass through the aqueous humor until they are stopped by its boundary, just as they would pass through the glass of a mirror until stopped by its lead backing. Vasoli (ad loc.) thinks that the stopping point must be the retina (as if Dante had anticipated Kepler!) because the crystalline lens is transparent; but he has overlooked the aranea, the reflective membrane covering the anterior surface of the lens. Dante's apparent sources for this passage, given by Vasoli and discussed by Gilson (Medieval Optics, pp. 64- 67), do not identify the structure that stops the visual rays.

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an observer could see his facies reflected in the weblike cover of the lens. This set of correspondences is all the more impressive because the only anatomical features of the anterior half of the eye that are omitted are ones that anatomists described as transparent, and hence invisible-the cornea and the aqueous humor. Taken together, these comprehensive equivalences are so many and so appropriate that they cannot be dismissed as mere coincidence. The principal conclusion of this investigation, therefore, must be that the poet constructed his Empyrean as the image of God's Eye.

This hypothesis has also proven to have explanatory value, because it has led to unnoticed implications in Dante's description of the Empyrean. The most important of these is the reflective work of the Ray in creating not only the nine lower heavens but also the tenth one as well. Another unsuspected bonus is the reconfiguration of the celestial amphitheater as a hemisphere. Last, and perhaps the most surprising, is the location of God at the center of the amphitheater's uppermost circle, which explains how Anna can enjoy the beatific vision.

The objective attained here is a limited one. I have attempted only to show that the features of Dante's Empyrean correspond to those of the human eye as described in sources he might have read; I make no claim to have identified his immediate sources, which would be difficult, if not impossible, because we are dealing with commonplaces in the clerical culture of the Latin West circa 1300.94

Despite those disclaimers, I should not conclude without suggesting how my results can enrich the reading of a poem about man's relations with God. This is especially to be expected because the image of God's Eye comes at the poem's end, where previously scattered themes are being combined into larger, more comprehensive master images that serve to unite and explain all that has gone before. Accordingly, to ascertain the full significance of my discovery would require a comprehensive, book-length survey of the entire Comedy, in lieu of which I can offer here only a few samples of the ways in which the image of God's Eye can expand our understanding of the larger themes of the poem.

The Empyrean Perhaps the most fruitful by-product of my investigation is the recognition that

the Empyrean is a hemisphere that is divided into ranks and files corresponding to the lines of celestial latitude and longitude, and also that it resembles the heavens as they are viewed from the earth, being the portion above a given horizon. That the supernatural Empyrean resembles Nature is not surprising, because both

94 The moralized optics of Peter of Limoges (d. 1306) is an unlikely source of influence because he considers only the effects of God's Eye as they can be deduced from the Bible. Thus the oculus Dei sees all, instills fear, elicits tears, promotes hard work, confers spiritual fortitude, cures sick souls, and brings them to heaven (Tractatus moralis de oculo 15). For access to this text, I am indebted to Richard Newhauser, who is editing it for the Corpus Christianorum. On the work, see Lindberg, Catalogue, no. 99; David L. Clark, "Optics for Preachers: The De oculo morali by Peter of Limoges," The Michi- gan Academician 9 (1977), 329-43; Richard Newhauser, "Nature's Moral Eye: Peter of Limoges' Tractatus moralis de oculo," Sewanee Mediaeval Studies 6 (1995), 125-36; and Dallas George Denery II, "Seeing and Being Seen: Vision, Visual Analogy and Visual Error in Late Medieval Optics, Theology and Religious Life," Ph.D. diss., University of California (Berkeley, Calif., 1999), pp. 103-59.

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were created simultaneously by the Ray, and their identical origin and geometry suggest that the tenth heaven may resemble the lower ones in other ways as well. Most obvious is the division of the sphere of Supernature into visible and invisible hemispheres, which is replicated in Nature by the hemispheres of light and dark- ness that divide not only the earth but all the planets illuminated by the sun-one of Dante's favorite images for God.95 More specific and significant, however, are further correspondences based on astrology and astronomy, which for Dante were a single science called astrologia.96

One of the first lessons the pilgrim learns from Beatrice is that the souls he encounters in the nine lower heavens all have their abode in the Empyrean, where the degree of their participation in the beatific vision is determined, at least ini- tially, by astral influence (Par. 4.28-39 and 49-60). The poet proceeds to illustrate this principle abundantly in the seven planetary heavens by having the "natives" of each (in the astrological sense) display the astrological properties appropriate to their star.97 The reader has thus been prepared to expect the heavens of Nature to correspond with the grades of blessedness, which in the Empyrean are represented by the ranks of seats resembling circles of latitude. Such correlations can in fact be discerned in the uppermost tiers of the hemisphere, which are firmly linked to corresponding heavens. The topmost tier contains Mary, whose triumph is seen in the heaven of the fixed stars (Par. 23.73-120); above her are a host of angels matching the angels who are the primary subject in the heaven of the Pri- mum Mobile (28.16-29.81); below her, in the second tier, sits Eve, who for Dante is related to Saturn, and thus to the seventh heaven, as Eden is to the Golden Age (Purg. 28.138-41). Consequently the Empyrean proves to be the spiritual counterpart of Nature, and this symmetry exemplifies the work of divine providence, which by means of the Ray concreated both the modes of salvation and their appropriate rewards.

Given that the Empyrean is a hemisphere visible above its horizon, it should, according to the science of astronomy, also possess a meridian. Sacrobosco, in his introduction to astronomy, gives the following definition: "The meridian is a circle passing through the poles of the world and through our zenith, and it is called 'meridian' because, wherever a man may be and at whatever time of year, when the sun with the movement of the firmament reaches his meridian, it is noon for him."98

The zenith of the Empyrean is readily identified as the center of the lago (see Fig. 5), but can any of its diameters be said to pass "through the poles of the world" (Sacrobosco means the north and south poles)?99 Only one line in the Rose

95 Convivio 3.12.6: "lo sole spirituale e intelligibile, che e Iddio." Among the Comedy's many references to the sun, these surely refer to God: Purgatorio 7.26, Paradiso 9.8, 10.53, 15.76, 18.105, 23.29, 25.54, and 30.126.

96 Convivio 2.13.8 and 28-29; 2.3.4 and 6; 4.15-16. 97 For extensive documentation, see Kay, Dante's Christian Astrology. 98 Sacrobosco, Sphere 2: "Est autem meridianus circulus quidam transiens per polos mundi et per

zenith capitis nostri. Et dicitur meridianus quia, ubicumque sit homo et in quocumque tempore anni, quando sol raptu firmamenti pervenit ad suum meridianum, est illi meridies" (ed. Lynn Thorndike, The "Sphere" of Sacrobosco and Its Commentators [Chicago, 1949], p. 91; trans., p. 126).

99 Sacrobosco, Sphere 2, ed. Thorndike, pp. 86-87; trans., pp. 123-24.

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can be so described, namely, the one that runs from Mary's seat to Lucy's (see Fig. 1),100 because in the Convivio Dante used the names Maria and Lucia to designate imaginary cities located respectively at the earth's north and south poles.101 This identification is confirmed by Bernard's allusion to the role of Mary in defining the empyreal meridian: "Here thou art for us the noonday torch of charity (Qui se' a noi meridiana face / di caritate)" (Par. 33.10-11). We already know that this line in the amphitheater separates those of the blessed who came before Christ from those who came after him (32.19-21); with its identification as a meridian, a larger intended image snaps into focus. Christ, "the Sun of justice (Sol justitiae)" (Mal. 4.2), is being likened to the sun at its zenith, and salvation history is accordingly figured by the daily course of the sun, ascending to the meridian of the Incarnation and then descending. Again, divine providence is ev- idenced in the structure of the Empyrean, for the image of Christ the Sun shows how God from the moment of creation foresaw the pattern of salvation and provided for its fulfillment. Furthermore, this meridian image interlocks with that of God's Eye, because, as is plain from Sacrobosco's definition, on earth there is not one meridian but many, each one relative to an observer. In the Empyrean the position of the required observer, at the center of the horizon's circle, is occupied by the lens: God, then, is the eternal observer, who generates the Empyrean's horizon and meridian relative to himself. Alison Cornish has pointed out the importance of "losing the meridian" in the poem, for when the pilgrim leaves the earth's surface, he has no meridian during his ascent;'02 but now it is evident that what he has lost is only his human perspective, which in the Empyrean is replaced by the view from God's Eye.

God As shown above, the empyreal horizon implies (by Dante's definition) a second,

corresponding hemisphere that is invisible. In Dante's cosmology God himself is represented by this unseen hemisphere; the visible hemisphere that forms God's Eye is not God but an effect of God, created by the Ray, so that God's Eye is an image of God. It is formed by the light "which makes the Creator visible (visibile face) to every creature that has his peace only in beholding Him,"103 and that light is in turn made by the Ray.104 The existential status of God's Eye is determined by the light that created and sustains it, and here Dante is unequivocal: the light of the Ray is no ordinary, material light such as we perceive in the physical world;

100 Giuseppe C. Di Scipio has argued that this line cuts through the center of the vertical file of seats running from the Virgin Mary to John the Baptist: The Symbolic Rose in Dante's "Paradiso," L'Interprete 42 (Ravenna, 1984), p. 49.

101 Convivio 3.5.10-11: "Imaginando adunque, per meglio vedere, in questo luogo ch'io dissi [the north pole, 5 8] sia un cittade e abbia nome Maria .... E qui [diametrically opposite] imaginiamo un'altra cittade, che abbia nome Lucia." Dante's names for the poles are unprecedented and have resisted explanation: see Vasoli on Convivio 3.11 (pp. 347-49).

102 Alison Cornish, Reading Dante's Stars (New Haven, Conn., 2000), chap. 5, "Losing the Merid- ian," pp. 79-92.

103 Paradiso 30.100-102: "Lume e la su che visibile face / lo creatore a quella creatura / che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace."

104 Paradiso 30.106: "Fassi di raggio ...."

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instead, it is "pura luce: / luce intellettual, piena d'amore" (Par. 30.39-40). Hence the image formed by this intellectual light is visible, not to the senses, but only to the intellect. God's Eye, like other human organs attributed to God in Scripture, is only a "sign (segno)" adequated to the human power of understanding (in- gegno), "since only through sense perception does it apprehend that which it afterwards makes fit for the intellect."105 It is an image of God, just as was the vision in Paradiso 28 that represented him as the point of light (16-18) from which "the heavens and all nature are dependent" (42), surrounded by the nine concentric circles of the angelic orders (24-39), each moving at a speed propor- tionate to the degree of its vision of God (100-102, 106-11). The raison d'etre of both these images is to provide an analogy based on vision for the Creator's relation to his creatures.

The visual model implied by God's Eye is that of Galenic medicine. According to Galen, the brain produces the visual spirit (pneuma), which fills the eyeball and passes through the pupil to sense the exterior world;106 similarly, God emits the Ray that creates the Empyrean and produces Nature by the triform effect. Dante's model for theophany, then, is a fiction because it represents God by an image of human vision; but the analogy is nonetheless justified because man, of course, was made in God's image (Gen. 1.26-27), so in some sense human vision should have its divine counterpart. Indeed, the perception that the human image is somehow related to that of God forms the climactic revelation of the Comedy (Par. 33.130- 32), for the pilgrim sees the reflection of his own image.

Images of vision For Dante, humans and angels are the creatures that most resemble God, and

the likeness consists in the power of intelligence. For such creatures, "the good of the intellect" (Inf. 3.18) is to participate in the divine intellect as much as possible, which is to say that, to the best of their ability, they become godlike by understanding. Since it is well known that Dante regularly represents this intellectual process of deiform contemplation in terms of vision, his usage can be sketched briefly. When first created, the angels were only potentially intelligent ("a tanto intender presti," Par. 29.60); the modest ones, who did not fall, had their vision ("le viste," 61) exalted and thereafter never turned their eyes ("viso," 77) from God. The most obvious instance of such intellectual vision is the visio beata en- joyed by the blessed in the Empyrean, thanks to the "luce intellettiial" that is Dante's equivalent of the theologians' lumen gloriae.107 Dante's use of the vision metaphor is best exemplified, however, in the pilgrim's upward progress through all ten heavens, for his progressive increase in understanding is accomplished by an act of vision each time he is transported to a higher heaven by looking at Beatrice's eyes, which reflect a ray from above.108 These brief examples suffice to

105 Paradiso 4.37-48, esp. 38 and 40-42: "per far segno ... / Cosi parlar conviensi al vostro in- gegno, / per6 che solo da sensato apprende / ci6 che fa poscia d'intelletto degno."

106 Constantine, De oculis 4.1.16, ed. Pansier, 2:176. 107 Gilson, Medieval Optics, pp. 250-56. 108 E.g., Paradiso 1.64-66 and 18.16-18. Further references are conveniently assembled by Federico

Tollemache in Enciclopedia dantesca, 4:120, s.v. "occhio."

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show that when men and angels are fulfilling their potential as intellectual beings, Dante describes the process by using metaphors derived from human vision. Since they are most like God when "seeing" him thus, and moreover are made in God's image, one would expect that God's understanding, to which they approach, would also be comparable to human vision. Dante fulfills that expectation with the implicit vision metaphor of God's Eye. It completes and complements Dante's abundant vision images of angelic and human intellection by providing a corresponding image of God.

Science and fiction God's Eye is an image in two senses: it is not a real eye but the image of one

that has been created by the Ray; it is also an image of God that has been created by the poet. In the latter sense, as a poetic image, Dante's Eye of God, like many other features of his poem, can be characterized as a kind of science fiction.109 The elements of the image that were derived from optics and medicine are scientific in the modern sense, but the underlying concept, that God could be represented by an eye, was supplied by "the divine science, which is called theology."10 The combination of these materials drawn from accepted scientific authorities, however, was not science in any sense but instead an act of creative extrapolation, and hence a fiction. What is more, Dante treated his scientific materials with poetic license, most evidently by employing the extramission theory of vision that he rejected in the Convivio,1" but also apparently by relying on God's omnipotence to resolve difficulties.

The result was an image that represented God in terms that anyone could understand, as a mind that, like other minds, was invisible but nonetheless mani- fested itself physically through the eye, the mind's window.'12 To perceive the image, however, required a level of scientific knowledge well above that of the ordinary reader; indeed, it seems to have surpassed that of the narrator, whose comprehension was not of the highest degree, since he was destined to view God from the third tier with Beatrice. Dante the poet apparently conceived his role as the creator of the Comedy to be that of a demiurge. His art followed nature and, aided by revelation, Supernature as well. One of the major lessons of the Paradiso is that God's creation contains some mysteries known only to the Creator, while others are discoverable by unaided human reason, and yet others can be rightly determined by reason only with the guidance of revelation. Dante the demiurge constructed his poema sacro on this model, to teach his reader by experience the

109 A few instances of Dante's "science fiction": how Pier della Vigna's thornbush talks (Inf. 13.40- 45); how Guido da Montefeltro's flame talks (Inf. 27.7-18); how shades grow lean (Purg. 25.34- 108); why terrestrial flora are not everywhere the same (Purg. 28.97-117); and of course Beatrice's explanation of why there are spots on the moon (Par. 2.49-148). Many more are discussed by Boyde in Dante Philomythes.

110 Convivio 2.13.8: "la scienza divina, che e Teologia appellata." "I Convivio 3.9.10.; see also n. 21, above. 112 The passions of the anima are said to appear "a la finestra di le occhi" in Convivio 3.8.10. Vasoli

ad loc. cites a parallel passage in Albertus Magnus, De animalibus 1.2.3: "occulos esse tamquam flores [var. fores] animae." Dante, however, more closely echoes Cicero: "oculis et auribus ... quae quasi fenestrae sint animi" (Tusculanae disputationes 1.20.46).

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limits and proper use of human reason. Consequently it is wholly in accord with the purpose of the poem to have it incorporate features that are understood by neither the pilgrim nor the narrator, but which can be perceived by an alert and ingenious reader, if only as a reminder of the limitations of human understanding as exemplified by the narrator. Thus our appreciation of the poet's message is deepened by the recognition that he modeled his Empyrean in the image of an eye.

Finally, one may wonder why it has taken almost seven centuries for this to be apparent. Perhaps Dante's contemporary readers were slow to recognize the parallel between the action of the raggio and the extramission theory of vision because the most learned of them (including Dante) had adopted the newly fashionable intromission theory. At any rate, the discovery has had to wait for a combination of factors, chief of which is the great progress made during the last generation by historians of medieval science and philosophy in our knowledge of medieval optics and theories of vision. Hardly less significant is the increasing interest in ways in which Dante incorporated elements of these fields into his poem. Without this happy combination of resources and interest, my hunch at the blackboard would have gone no further.

Richard Kay is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045-2130 (e-mail: [email protected]).

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Documents

Dante's Empyrean and the Eye of God