When Galileo Calculated the Exact Dimensions of Hell in Dante’s Inferno

We ven­er­ate Galileo Galilei for dar­ing to converse the sci­en­tif­ic reality within the face of extreme insti­tu­tion­al oppo­si­tion. He pub­licly acknowl­edged that the Earth revolves across the Solar in a time when the Church would moderately he did­n’t, dis­play­ing a bloody-mind­ed­ness that he appears to have acquired with age. Many years ear­li­er, within the first stage of his profession, he discovered him­self (cir­ca 1588) tasked by the Flo­ren­tine Acad­e­my with cal­cu­lat­ing the pre­cise dimen­sions of hell as described in Dan­te’s Divine Com­e­dy. Duti­ful­ly apply­ing him­self to this now-absurd-sound­ing work, he deter­mined that the beneath­world’s roof needed to be cen­tered in Jerusalem, as huge because the radius of the complete Earth, and at least 600 kilo­me­ters thick.

Not that any of this was primarily based on friv­o­lous rea­son­ing. As a mod­el for the dimen­sions of hel­l’s roof, for example, Galileo regarded over to Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi’s dome, which had topped the Flo­rence Cathe­dral for a cen­tu­ry and a half at that time. Galileo’s cal­cu­la­tions of hel­l’s dimen­sions con­tra­dict­ed an ear­li­er mod­el professional­posed by the schol­ar Alessan­dro Vel­lutel­lo. As a substitute, they sup­port­ed a mod­el devel­oped by archi­tect Anto­nio Manet­ti, whose draw­ings seem right here.

That Manet­ti was a fel­low Flo­ren­tine, and Vel­lutel­lo was from Flo­rence’s lengthy­time rival Luc­ca may nicely have depend­ed among the many moti­vat­ing fac­tors. However we should keep in mind that, within the six­teenth cen­tu­ry, peo­ple actual­ly did wish to get these info straight — if “info” be the prop­er time period.

The try and rec­on­cile scrip­ture with objec­tiv­i­ty absorbed the lives of many excessive­ly intel­li­gent peo­ple by way of­out the Mid­dle Ages and the Renais­sance. How­ev­er hope­much less that purpose could possibly be, the thought Galileo devot­ed to the prob­lem might have end result­ed in a gen­uine break­by way of. Math­e­mati­cian and sci­ence his­to­ri­an Mark Peter­son, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured right here on Open Cul­ture, has argued that his cal­cu­la­tions of Dan­te’s non-Euclid­ean, topol­o­gy-curved uni­verse — as we would plau­si­bly describe it in the present day — laid out the premise for what would turn into math­e­mat­i­cal physics. In any case, the younger Galileo’s lec­tures on the Flo­ren­tine Acad­e­my land­ed him a job as a math­e­mat­ics lec­tur­er on the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pisa, pretty much as good a rea­son as any for him to maintain his pri­vate doubts to him­self. Relating to sci­ence and reli­gion, as he should have recognized, you’ve obtained to select your bat­tles.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy: A Customer’s Information to Hell, Pur­ga­to­ry & Par­adise

Physics from Hell: How Dante’s Infer­no Impressed Galileo’s Physics

Beau­ti­ful nineteenth Cen­tu­ry Maps of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy: Infer­no, Pur­ga­to­ry, Par­adise & Extra

Visu­al­iz­ing Dante’s Hell: See Maps & Draw­ings of Dante’s Infer­no from the Renais­sance By way of At this time

A Dig­i­tal Archive of the Ear­li­est Illus­trat­ed Edi­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1487–1568)

Discover Divine Com­e­dy Dig­i­tal, a New Dig­i­tal Knowledge­base That Col­lects Sev­en Cen­turies of Artwork Impressed by Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

Based mostly in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the writer of the newslet­ter Books on Cities in addition to the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social internet­work for­mer­ly generally known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.