Galileo and Milton: Florence and London

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GALILEO AND MILTON

FLORENCE AND LONDON:

In Progress:

Milton ponderously wrote in Paradise Lost:

He scarce had ceas't when the superior Fiend

Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield

Behind him cast; the broad circumference

Hung on his shoulders like the Moon, whose Orb

Through Optic Glass the Tuscan Artist views

At Ev'ning from the top of Fesole ,

Or in Valdarno, to descry new Lands,

Rivers or Mountains in her spotty Globe.

. . .

His Legions, Angel Forms, who lay intrans't

Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strew the Books

In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades

High overarch't imbow'r;

Milton was writing on Galileo, whom he had visited at Fiesole and, perhaps, Arcetri. He described that sight through Galileo's Telescope, which still exists, today in Florence's Museo di Storia della Scienza , the Museum of the History of Science, in a palace on the Arno River. Milton embedded that sight through Galileo's telescope of the spotty moon into his hellish vision of the shield-carrying Lucifer/Satan.

My interest in Galileo and Milton's encounter began as an undergraduate deeply interested in Milton and desiring to continue in seventeenth-century studies and at the same time wanting to investigate Milton's Italian journeying. Many years later, having become a medievalist and researching Brunetto Latino , Dante Alighieri's teacher, I found myself also visiting the two places associated with Galileo Galilei in John Milton's memory, Vallombrosa and Fiesole, because Latino had written about the Abbot Tesauro of Vallombrosa and had likewise written agains the treachery of Catiline at Fiesole, both episodes becoming important in Dante's Commedia.

[Not Finished]

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