Medieval Cosmology and Free Will: Dante and Cecco d'Ascoli

This text is not fitting, so he responds to Dante: "You come from afar with stammering rhyme, [...] Go, as befits you, straight and limping. You will arrive, like those who arrive well, much clearer than Sardinian stone. Your word binds me closely, and you do not hold mine lightly." Both will nevertheless express, regarding Astrology and Metaphysical Cosmography, the same doctrines, the same celestial structure, and above all the same vision of free will. On this occasion, we will take inspiration from their works to describe the constitution and correspondences of the physical and metaphysical universe that were being formed and taking shape in this period, resuming some classical and traditional themes that would subsequently become the basis for many of our discussions. The first fundamental aspect, which is an important point of subsequent astrological speculation, is that the Universe is made to human measure: "By grace of human creature / God made the heavens and the earthly world, / creating in it divine figure / in likeness of his worthy form, / placing it in the profound horizon, / where it damns itself, or becomes benign." (Acerba, Book II, Chapter I) This is a theme that will prove fundamental later and that takes up an ancient theme that flourishes only in this period: the harmony and specularity of the Micro and Macrocosm. Historically, this theme was reintroduced by Bernard Silvestris around the mid-12th century with his book Cosmographia, but was properly developed by Saint Hildegard of Bingen, scientist, philosopher, and prophet who begins one of her most famous books with the vision of Cosmic Man: "And I saw a Man of such height that from the summit of the heavenly clouds he reached to touch the abyss: so that his shoulders upward were above the clouds in the most serene ether; from shoulders down to the loins, under the clouds, he was in another white cloud, from loins to knees, in the air that immediately surrounds the earth; from knees to calves in the earth; from calves down to the soles of his feet in the waters of the abyss: for he stood upon the abyss. He had turned toward the East and looked eastward and toward the South." Hildegard thus divides the Man-Universe into 5 fundamental regions: three celestial, one terrestrial, and one subterranean. This will be the prototype of a classic cosmographic subdivision that will continue until the mid-17th century. Like her, Dante will divide the structure of the Universe into: an elemental world: subterranean and devoid of intelligence and the light of the Sun, identified as Dante's Hell; a material world: where human action takes place, comprising Purgatory, where forms are material and sensible; a planetary world: where the experience of the Seven Planets unfolds, where individual forms still exist; a stellar world: relating to the Fixed Stars, where spirits assume increasingly superpersonal and universal aspects; the Empyrean: a point of transcendence between Human and Divine, where the White Rose resides. From the Empyrean, Love spreads and through the primum mobile transmits motion to all Creation, to every star, and from there to every planet, heaven, or sphere. The planets, moreover, are not simple inanimate instruments but are the physical manifestation of celestial beings or intelligences that receive and collect divine virtues and spread them to the world: "The principle that moves these wheels / Are separate intelligences: / They do not stand remote from divine splendor, / They do not cease the acts of moving powerfully, / Our minds cannot be hidden / From their intellects of shining virtue." (Acerba, Book I, Chapter II) The virtues of the one God thus spread and are collected by angelic intelligences to which kindred spirits unite, arranged hierarchically according to a pre-established order that Dante synthesizes in his description of Paradise. These celestial intelligences then spread their virtues on earth, influencing and inspiring human souls that follow the inspiration or inclination of planets without being bound to them. Here the two poets are the full expression of preparation for the true Renaissance. While accepting and considering astrology fundamental as a form of understanding universal realities and connections, or as a form of metaphysical key, they are fully opposed to divinatory and fatalistic astrology. Dante places in the fourth ditch of the Eighth Circle the soothsayers and fatalistic astrologers like Guido Bonatti and Michael Scot with their faces turned behind their shoulders by the law of contrapasso. Similarly, Cecco d'Ascoli paraphrases about soothsayers and witches: "Each of these, in the full moon / calling spirits with their muses / know the future by chance and fortune: / By noise of enchanted palms, / By the forked bone that closes, / these damned souls know the future [...]" (Acerba, Book IV, Chapter III) Both, while being deeply convinced of the influence of intelligences corresponding to planets and stars, are also convinced of the existence of two realities hierarchically superior to all stars and planets: the will of Man and the will of God. Cecco d'Ascoli will say that planetary influence acts only if the soul becomes vile, servile, and thievish: "[The Stars] Do not create necessity in each movement, / But well dispose human creature, / By quality which the soul following, / Abandons free will and becomes vile / Servile and thievish [...]" (Acerba, Book II, Chapter I) While by its nature it should be a lady dominating over other stars: "[...] But the beautiful soul similar to the maker, / By its value, can overshadow these, / If its gentle will does not incline. / When influence comes from those, / If its virtue is not disrupted by these, / Then it is lady over all stars" (Acerba, Book I, Chapter II)