Dante's Accomplishments

Perceived by many to be an intellectual Dark Age, due to propaganda, the Medieval era contrarily, as agreed on by scholars, had many advancements and discoveries in the realm of science were made. The Historic record reveals that, “The society and culture of the High Middle Ages was complex, dynamic, and innovative…throughout the cultural sphere an unprecedented intellectual ferment developed” (World Book). Advancement in science through history has given humanity more clear view and new perspectives on how the world works. Born in the mid thirteenth century during the High and Late Middle Ages, Dante, the author of Paradiso, had unrestrained access to the academic world and the science that filled it. Although viewed as a religious work Paradiso produces many examples of the advancements in medieval science, such as astronomy, and the experimental method providing Dante the scientific platform to explain the universe he experienced in a plausible way. Intellectuals during the Middle Ages considered astronomy to be of paramount importance for any scholar to study. Dante, however was especially keen to astronomy, writing in his book Convivio that astronomy is “high and noble because of its certainty, as coming from a most perfect and regular principle” (II Convivio Ch 13). Dante’s Paradiso happens to be both Ptolemaic and Aristotelian in its

However, Dante was able to make The Divine Comedy seem feasible in the High Middle Ages. The primitive science utilized by Dante constructed a world that was believed to be astronomically correct, and incorporated means of verifying the information that was written in his allegory by the experimental method. Thus Dante ultimately gave an authoritative explanation the sphere of theology that was backed by the science of his