Preface

In this study I seek to establish that Dante filled the planetary heavens of
his Paradiso with allusions to astrology. As far as I know, this is the first
systematic attempt to identify astrological allusions in the Commedia. A
novel proposal such as this is only likely to find general acceptance if it is
based on a mass of evidence that can be readily followed by a nonspecialist.
Consequently I have concentrated on only one isolated type of astrological
evidence, namely the properties of planets, because above all I wish to
convince the reader that Dante did make use of astrology. By linking
Dante and astrology, then, the tide of this book—Dante's Christian As-
trology—conveys the main thrust of the study; moreover, by adding the
qualification "Christian," it emphasizes Dante's departures from tradi-
tional astrology, which will gradually become apparent in the course of the
book. An alternate tide, which describes this monograph with cumber-
some precision, would be "Dante's use of the astrological properties of
planets in Paradiso 1—22."
In terms of literary theory, this is an old-fashioned book that relies on
comparison of texts, which is a conventional method of traditional philo-
logical and historical criticism. I have assumed that my reader is already
familiar with Dante and his work but not with astrology. I have not, how-
ever, attempted to sketch either the history or the technique of medieval
astrology, since excellent accounts of each are now available: S. J. Tester,
A History of Western Astrology (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1987)
and J. D. North, Chaucer's Universe (New York: Oxford University Press,
1988). Since both my sources and their authors are not well known, I have
described them at length in a biobibliographical appendix. Because this
study relies on astrological sources that are difficult of access, I have
quoted the texts extensively in the notes. In the text itself I have tried to
ease the reader's way by providing an English translation or paraphrase
of passages in Latin or Italian. For the Commedia, I have used Charles
Singleton's prose translation, The Divine Comedy (Princeton, N.J. : Prince-
ton University Press, 1970—1975) but have occasionally altered it when
greater precision was desirable. The Italian text of the Comedy is that of

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xii Preface

G. Petrocchi, La Commedia secondo l'antica- vulgata (Milan: Mondadori,

1966—1967), which conveniently accompanies Singleton's translation.
This book could not have been written without the generous financial
support of the University of Kansas, which gave me two sabbatical leaves
and a grant from the General Research Fund. And I have had more than a
little help from my friends and fellow scholars, to whom I am grateful not
only for instruction and bibliography, but also for their advice, encour-
agement, enthusiasm, sympathetic interest, and moral support: Patrick
Boyde, Anthony K. Cassell, Charles T. Davis, Ernst S. Dick, Glenn M.
Edwards, Thomas E. Hart, Robert B. Hollander, Jr., Amilcare Iannucci,
Christopher Kleinhenz, Maristella Lorch, Denise Low, John F. McGov-
ern, Edward Peters, Oliver C. Phillips, Sesto Prete, Nancy G. Siraisi, Jerry
Stannard, and Patricia Zupan. Special thanks are due to my wife, Sherry,
and to Richard R. Ring, for reading the entire manuscript with vigilance,
and also to James Helyar, for drawing the figure in Appendix 2. I also
profited from the criticism of participants in five International Congresses
on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University (1983—1989) and in
the annual meeting of the American Association for Italian Studies at the
University of Virginia (1990), where samples of my results were presented.
The first half of the Introduction appeared in The "Divine Comedy" and the
Encyclopedia of Arts and Sciences: Acta of the International Dante Symposium,
13-16 November 1983, Hunter College, New York, edited by Giuseppe Di
Scipio and Aldo Scaglione (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benja-
mins, 1988), as "Astrology and Astronomy" (pp. 147-162). For permission
to reproduce Frederick Goldin's translation of Folquet de Marseille from
Lyrics of the Troubadours and Trouvères, I am indebted to Doubleday, A
Division of Bantam, Doubleday, Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

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