in the chair of St. Peter; the seraphim, cherubim, and thrones, surrounding the Almighty, as real as the cardinals surrounding the Pope; the three great orders of angels in heaven as real as the three great orders, bishops, priests, and deacons, on earth; and the whole system of spheres each revolving within the one above it and all moving about the earth, subject to the primum mobile, as real as the feudal system of western Europe, subject to the emperor.[1]
Let us look into this vast creation—the highest achievement of theology—somewhat more closely.
Its first feature shows an evolution: the earth is no longer the flat plain inclosed by four walls and solidly vaulted above, as theologians of previous centuries had believed it, under the inspiration of the monk Cosmas; it is no longer a mere flat disk with sun, moon, and stars hung up to give it light, as the earlier cathedral sculptors had figured it; it has become a globe at the center of the universe. Encompassing it are ten successive, transparent spheres, nine of them rotated by angels about the earth, and each carrying one of the heavenly bodies with it: that nearest the earth carrying the moon; the next. Mercury; the next, Venus; the next, the sun; the next three. Mars, Jupiter, and, Saturn. The tenth heaven, inclosing all these, was the empyrean This was immovable,—the boundary between creation and the great outer void; and here, in a light which no one can enter, the Triune God sat enthroned—the "music of the spheres" rising to him as they move.
In attendance upon the Divine Majesty, thus enthroned are vast hosts of angels, and these are divided into three hierarchies, one serving in the empyrean, one in the heaven between the empyrean and the earth, and one on the earth.
Each of these hierarchies is divided into three choirs or orders; the first, into the orders of Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; and the main occupation of these is to chant incessantly, to "continually cry" the divine praises.
The order of thrones conveys God's will to the second hierarchy—which serves in the movable heavens. This second hierarchy is also made up of three orders. The first of these, the
- ↑ For the central sun, hierarchy of angels, and concentric circles, see Dante, Paradiso, canto xxviii. For the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, showing to Virgil and Dante the great theologians of the middle ages, see canto x, and in Dean Plumptre's translation, vol. ii, pp. 56 et seg.; also Botta, Dante, pp. 350, 351. As to Dante's deep religious feeling and belief in his own divine mission, see J. R. Lowell, Among my Books, vol. i p. 36. For a remarkable series of colored engravings showing Dante's whole cosmology, see La Materia della Divina Commedia di Dante dichiarata in vi tavole da Michelangelo Caetani, published by the monks of Monte Cassino, to whose kindness the writer is indebted for his copy.
