Dantes Empyrean and The Eye of God

Medieval Academy of America
Dante's Empyrean and the Eye of God

Author(s): Richard Kay
Source: Speculum, Vol. 78, No. 1 (Jan., 2003), pp. 37-65
Published by: Medieval Academy of America
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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.' To help the students visualize the descrip-
tion 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 concen-
tric 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.
3A 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.
4The 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
38 The Eye of God
ROSA CELESTIALE
1,
X
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 terrain"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.
52 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 oculi Domini
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
E m p y r e a n
OfRay
Lake N >
Primum Mobile
Fig. 2. The Empyrean in cross-section.
s~~~~~~~1 I I t 1
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 (lucidi-
ores) 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." 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.
7Ecclus. 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 II 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.
l "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 41
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.'6
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,
437blO-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
42 The Eye of God
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 de-
scribe 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 pieniI
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 43
cosi de li occhi miei ogne quisquilia
fug6 Beatrice col raggio d'i suoi,
che rifulgea da piii 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 pos-
sible 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).
44 The Eye of God
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 intellettual" (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 "cir-
cular 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 raggi6 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 dantescbi 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 45
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 sub-
stances 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 circum-
ference 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).
46 The Eye of God
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 him-
self, 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 expe-
rience 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 spec-
ulate 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 amphi-
theater 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 47
D
A
B
C
G
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.
48 The Eye of God
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 tym-
pan 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 am-
phitheater'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 ce-
lestial 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,s1 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 conse-
quences 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 anat-
omy.
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.
The Eye of God 49
Azimuth Lines.- -Mr-Erian
Almucantars
Zeni th*--
3;~~~~~~~-~.Circles
of
Eastern
North
Celestial' \ Circle of
Pole X X Capricorn
Latitude-
a"
Unequal 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.
50 The Eye of God
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 fea-
tures; 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 be-
cause 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 monachi 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.
59Not 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.
The Eye of God 51
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.6' (3) The third an-
terior 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 (@ocs6tS;
=
"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."
52 The Eye of God
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 / l'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 eye-
ball's center.
The Eye of God 53
OPTIC NERVE
ftft
SCERA
CHOROID
RETINA
ALBUMINOID
HUMOR CRYSTALLINE HUMOR
PUPIL
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 amphithe-
ater.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 up-
wards to enjoy the direct vision of God!"
54 The Eye of God
conjunctiva
uvea
\ ~~~~visible o"ris
scleraw
aqueous
(white)
X humor
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 am-
phitheater. 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
The Eye of God 55
sclera/
(white) X
pupil
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 xItxv 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).
56 The Eye of God
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 mul-
titude of angels-"tanta moltitudine volante" (Par. 31.20)-that mediate be-
tween 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 be-
tween 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, ac-
cording 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 aque-
ous 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 sec-
ond, 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
" 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.
The Eye of God 57
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, "vi-
sual 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 mul-
titude 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) Niccol6 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 Niccolo 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 fult."
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.
58 The Eye of God
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; look-
ing 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.
"KOpfj"
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 19.232-331, 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.
The Eye of God 59
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 rep-
resenting 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 fol-
lowing 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 hemi-
spheric 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 am-
phitheater'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.
60 The Eye of God
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 im-
portant 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 de-
scribed 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 re-
sults 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 com-
prehensive 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 heav-
ens 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.
The Eye of God 61
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 repre-
sented 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 coun-
terpart 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 ref-
erences 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, 19491, p. 91; trans., p. 126).
99
Sacrobosco, Sphere 2, ed. Thorndike, pp. 86-87; trans., pp. 123-24.
62 The Eye of God
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 pro-
vided 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 im-
portance of "losing the meridian" in the poem, for when the pilgrim leaves the
earth's surface, he has no meridian during his ascent;102 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 81 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...
The Eye of God 63
instead, it is "pura luce: / luce intellettiial, 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 under-
standing. 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 intellettual" 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."
64 The Eye of God
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 corre-
sponding 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."110 The
combination of these materials drawn from accepted scientific authorities, how-
ever, 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,11 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 un-
derstand, as a mind that, like other minds, was invisible but nonetheless mani-
fested itself physically through the eye, the mind's window.112 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).
The Eye of God 65
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 par-
allel 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: skipkay@ku.edu).

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