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Celestial spheres
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==Literary and visual expressions== {{Quote box | quote = "Because the medieval universe is finite, it has a shape, the perfect spherical shape, containing within itself an ordered variety....<br />"The spheres ... present us with an object in which the mind can rest, overwhelming in its greatness but satisfying in its harmony." | source = [[C. S. Lewis]], ''[[The Discarded Image]]'', p. 99. | width = 40% | align = right }} [[Image:Paradiso Canto 31.jpg|left|thumb|[[Dante Alighieri|Dante]] and [[Beatrice Portinari|Beatrice]] gaze upon the highest Heaven; from [[Gustave Doré]]'s illustrations to the ''[[Divine Comedy]], Paradiso'' Canto 28, lines 16–39.]] In [[Cicero]]'s ''[[Dream of Scipio]],'' the elder [[Scipio Africanus]] describes an ascent through the celestial spheres, compared to which the Earth and the Roman Empire dwindle into insignificance. A commentary on the ''Dream of Scipio'' by the Roman writer [[Macrobius]], which included a discussion of the various schools of thought on the order of the spheres, did much to spread the idea of the celestial spheres through the [[Early Middle Ages]].<ref>Macrobius, ''Commentary on the Dream of Scipio,'' transl. by William Harris Stahl, New York: Columbia Univ. Pr., 1952; on the order of the spheres see pp. 162–165.</ref> [[Image:Oresme Spheres crop.jpg|right|thumb|Nicole Oresme, ''Le livre du Ciel et du Monde,'' Paris, BnF, Manuscrits, Fr. 565, f. 69 (1377)]] Some late medieval figures noted that the celestial spheres' physical order was inverse to their order on the spiritual plane, where God was at the center and the Earth at the periphery. Near the beginning of the fourteenth century [[Dante]], in the ''[[Paradiso (Dante)|Paradiso]]'' of his ''[[Divine Comedy]]'', described God as a light at the center of the cosmos.<ref>C. S. Lewis, ''The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature,'' Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1964, p. 116. {{ISBN|0-521-09450-X}}.</ref> Here the poet ascends beyond physical existence to the [[Empyrean]] Heaven, where he comes face to face with God himself and is granted understanding of both divine and human nature. Later in the century, the illuminator of [[Nicole Oresme]]'s {{Lang|fr|Le livre du Ciel et du Monde}}, a translation of and commentary on Aristotle's [[On the Heavens|''De caelo'']] produced for Oresme's patron, [[Charles V of France|King Charles V]], employed the same motif. He drew the spheres in the conventional order, with the Moon closest to the Earth and the stars highest, but the spheres were concave upwards, centered on God, rather than concave downwards, centered on the Earth.<ref>Nicole Oreseme, "Le livre du Ciel et du Monde", 1377, retrieved 2 June 2007.[http://expositions.bnf.fr/ciel/grand/1-025.htm]</ref> Below this figure Oresme quotes the [[Psalms]] that "The heavens declare the Glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork."<ref>Ps. 18: 2; quoted in Nicole Oresme, ''Le livre du ciel et du monde,'' edited and translated by A, D. Menut and A. J. Denomy, Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Pr., 1968, pp. 282–283.</ref> The late-16th-century Portuguese epic ''[[The Lusiads]]'' vividly portrays the celestial spheres as a "great machine of the universe" constructed by God.<ref>Luiz Vaz de Camões, ''The Lusiads'', translated by Landeg White. Oxford University Press, 2010.</ref> The explorer Vasco da Gama is shown the celestial spheres in the form of a mechanical model. Contrary to Cicero's representation, da Gama's tour of the spheres begins with the Empyrean, then descends inward toward Earth, culminating in a survey of the domains and divisions of earthly kingdoms, thus magnifying the importance of human deeds in the divine plan.
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