Paradiso 28: Potential Judeo-Muslim Influence on Dante’s Angelological-Astrological Correlation
Leon Jacobowitz-Efron (Shalem College, Jerusalem)
Dante Notes / March 3, 2024
The notion of the angelic nature of the sphere moving intelligences is older than Dante, but the elaboration of an exact correspondence between the celestial spheres and the Celestial Hierarchy of the false Dionysius seems to be due to the poet himself.[1] (Clement Charles Julian Webb, 1914)
This precise one-to-one correspondence between heavens and angelic orders seems to be peculiar to Dante… I have not found it in any other Christian writer who has adopted the notion of angelic motor intelligences.[2] (Stephen Bemrose, 1983)
Dante's angelology is unique for its identification of each order of angels with Aristotle's mover-intelligences of the celestial spheres.[3] (Danteworlds, Uni. of Austin, 2023)
One of the hallmarks of Dante’s angelology is his harmonious correlation of the nine angelic orders of Catholic theology with the nine celestial spheres of medieval Ptolemaic astronomy (Conv. 2.5.6-18 and Par. 28). This correlation elegantly inserts the scientific Aristotelian principle of mover-intelligence into Christian cosmology by describing members of each angelic order as exclusively producing the motions of a corresponding astral body. Thus, the sphere closest to the earth, the Moon, revolves due to the influence of the lowest angelic order, and the farthest sphere, the Primum Mobile, revolves due to the influence of the highest order.
The following note demonstrates that the claims of Dantean originality quoted above are baseless, as such ideas were readily available in the Latin translations of the works of Jewish Philosopher Moses Maimonides (Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, Rambam 1135-1204) and—more importantly—such ideas were already identified in Christian scholastic sources with Jewish philosophy.
Although Maimonides’s correlation does not use the Areopagite hierarchies as per Webb’s phrasing, nor is Maimonides a “Christian writer,” to quote Bemrose, the thrust of both Webb’s and Bemrose’s claims is debatable, since Dante did not write his works in an intellectual vacuum.[4]
Much of Dante’s knowledge on specific issues is based on Albertus Magnus (1200-1280), who summarizes and commented on a vast spectrum of topics, including angelology,[5] and who profusely references Jewish and Muslim authorities in his works, including Maimonides (Moyses Aegyptus and Moyses Judaeus).[6]
It is essential to emphasize that I do not claim Dante necessarily knew Maimonides’s work in its Latin translation. Rather, I claim that the field of Dante Studies today cannot seriously refer to Dante’s ideas on this issue as original in the intellectual climate of the Latin West.
Dante’s Angelological Correlation
The notion that Aristotelian mover-intelligences are angelic in nature is first expressed by Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, 980-1037) and taken up by many Western philosophers. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) attributes this function to angels from a single angelic order, the Virtues,[7] while two noteworthy figures to reject this notion are Albertus Magnus and Robert Kildwardby (c.1212-1279).[8] Dante’s angelology elaborates on this staple of angelology by matching each of the nine angelic orders with one of the nine celestial spheres, from Moon to Primum Mobile.[9]
The earliest Dantean mention of this correlation is found in the Convivio.[10] However, the most substantial reference to it is Paradiso 28.[11] In a vision that suggests Pseudo-Dionysus’ description of the Primum Mobile,[12] the angelic orders circle the tiny resplendent point of the Triune God like a magnificent ‘solar system,’ with the smaller circles closest to the Godhead, composed of the senior orders and spinning the fastest.[13]
70. “Dunque costui che tutto quanto rape
l'altro universo seco, corrisponde
al cerchio che più ama e che più sape:
73. per che, se tu a la virtù circonde
la tua misura, non a la parvenza
de le sustanze che t'appaion tonde,
76. tu vederai mirabil consequenza
di maggio a più e di minore a meno,
in ciascun cielo, a sua intelligenza”.
[...]
98. ne la mia mente, disse: “I cerchi primi
t’hanno mostrato Serafi e Cherubi.
Così veloci seguono i suoi vimi,
101. per somigliarsi al punto quanto ponno;
e posson quanto a veder son soblimi.
Quelli altri amori che ’ntorno li vonno,
104. si chiaman Troni del divino aspetto,
per che ’l primo ternaro terminonno;”
Dante uses the Areopagite’s ordering[14] to artfully create a harmonizing visual in which the hierarchy of blessedness and virtue among the angels correlates to the relative speed of each celestial body. This parallelism, considered by some to be original to Dante, is, in fact, Judeo-Muslim in origin.
Judeo-Muslim Angelological Correlation
Like some Christian theologians, many Jewish and Muslim theologians held that Aristotle’s separate substances moving the celestial spheres were the angels of scripture.[15] A direct reference, close to Dante’s correlation, appears in the treatise attributed to Al-Ghazali, The Book of What Is to Be Withheld from People Not Suited for It (al-maḍnūn bihī ʿala ghayr ahlihī المضون به على غير اهله), where the following is written (emphasis mine):[16]
They [the philosophers] also believe that bodies are governed by the heavens, the heavens by the souls, the souls by the various orders of the angels, and the angels by the ‘Light of Lights,’ who has dominion over the whole universe.[17]
The notion of angelic orders as movers of the spheres is succinctly stated here. However, although Al-Ghazali was well known in the Latin West as Algazel, this particular treatise was not available in a Latin translation. When Albertus Magnus mentions the same belief, as we shall see presently, he attributes it specifically to Jews rather than to Muslims.
We, therefore, turn to Maimonides’s influential work, the Guide for the Perplexed (דלאלה אלחאירין, Dalâlat al-Hâ'rîn in Judeo-Arabic),[18] the angelology of which was available in the Latin West via its thirteenth-century Latin translation. The Guide’s influence among Christians is unsurprising.[19] Jewish versions of Arabic philosophy used familiar Biblical examples, while Muslim versions of Arabic philosophy used the more unfamiliar Quran.[20] Maimonidean thought is, therefore, not irrelevant when trying to understand Dante.
A significant difference between Christian, Maimonidean, and Muslim Angelology pertains to the number of angels. Maimonides and the Muslims believed that since angels in the strict sense are the mover-intelligences of Aristotle,[21] there need be only as many angels as there are spheres to be moved. Bonaventure, Aquinas, and the author of De erroribus philosophorum, among others, condemned this view.[22] Since Maimonides’s astronomy counts nine celestial spheres and assigns a tenth intelligence to the sub-lunar world (the Agent Intellect of intellectus agens), it follows that only ten angels exist:[23]
The later philosophers assumed ten Intelligences, because they counted the spheres containing stars and the all-encompassing sphere, [...] There are altogether nine spheres [...] nine Intelligences correspond to the nine spheres; the tenth Intelligence is the Active Intellect. [...] The relation of the latter to the elements and their compounds is the same as that of the Intelligences to their respective spheres.
Maimonides’s Book of Knowledge (ספר המדע, Sefer HaMada in Hebrew; henceforth BoK)[24] was only partially available in Latin during Dante’s lifetime.[25] It clarifies what the Guide’s cosmology only implies by assigning Hebrew names to the angelic orders. These are derived primarily from the Prophets, especially Ezekiel 1.4-28, and partially overlap the Christian lists which derive names from the New Testament as well.[26]
They [the grades/maàlot] are called Hayyot HaQodesh, and they are above all others: Ofannim, Er'ellim, Hashmallim, Seraphim, Angels, Elohim, B'nei Elohim, Cherubim, and Ishim. These are all ten appellations used to name the angels according to their ten orders…
The term Maimonides uses, paralleling the Christian angelic 'order,' is 'maàla' (מעלה, Pl. maàlot מעלות), which literally means ‘grade,’ or ‘rank.’[27] Each Maimonidean order comprises a single member, unlike the Christian preference for angelic multitudes. However, the names Maimonides uses are confusingly taken as fixed grammatical forms from scripture and are all grammatically plural.[28] One of the reasons for the single-member nature of each order is that Maimonides maintains that angels differ from one another according to their position in the celestial hierarchy, with each grade and respective sphere emanating from its superior.[29] This is the Maimonidean solution to the challenge of differentiation for nonmaterial substances, which Aquinas famously solves by making each angel its own single-member species.[30]
Since the BoK was not fully translated into Latin Dante is unlikely to have known it. We will, therefore, not go into the curious similarities between its angelology and Dante’s.[31] Suffice to note here that the BoK explains that the tenth angel, called Ishim, is the Agent Intellect.[32] Thus, it clarifies that the lowermost mover-intelligence in the Guide (responsible for the sub-lunar world) and the lowermost angelic order named in the BoK (Ishim) are one and the same. This implies that the remaining nine names in the BoK belong to the remaining nine mover-intelligences of the Guide (i.e., the moon is moved by the Cherubim, Mars by the Seraphim, and so on).[33]
The differences between Dante’s and Maimonides’s models are coincidental. Dante uses Christian angelology and the common Ptolemaic sphere arrangement. Maimonides uses a different Jewish list of angelic orders and Jabir ibn Aflah's (Geber, c. 1100-c. 1160) non-Ptolemaic and less common sphere arrangement.[34] Both systems describe the same essential concept.
This understanding, that the orders named in the BoK correlate with the Guide’s mover-intelligences, is not modern. Moses Cordovero (1522-1570), the illustrious sixteenth-century kabbalist, writes matter of factly that:[35]
“Ten divided orders (sects, כתות) of angels oversee the functioning of the spheres… the ten angelic orders and their appellations, which Maimonides named at the beginning of his book […] are the Hayyot. They are the closest to the Creator, and then the Ofanim […] Er’elim […] and the Seraphim.”
Moreover, as we shall see presently, non-Jews, too, understood the Guide as describing such a correlation, even though such a correlation is not explicitly stated in the text. It is possible that the equivalence of angelic hierarchies and mover-intelligences was intuitive to them, since both were seen as ontological gradations between the infinite God and the finite sub-lunar world. In any case they managed to make this connection without recourse to the BoK for additional details.
Dante’s Access to Maimonidean Angelology
A final question remains: did Dante’s Christian contemporaries know of this Maimonidean correlation of spheres and angelic hierarchies, and could Dante have known of it via those contemporaries?
In De causis et processu universitatis (1264–1267) Albertus paraphrases and glosses the authoritative Liber de causis, which he attributes to “a certain Jew called David” (David Judaeus quidam).[36] He writes (emphasis mine):[37]
Now the orders of intelligences, which we have defined, some say are the angelic orders, and they call the intelligences ‘angels.’ And this is what Isaac and Rabbi Moses [Maimonides] and other Jewish philosophers say. But we do not hold this to be true.
Some modern scholars consider this quote a typical rejection of the angel-intelligence correlation.[38] However, the statement that “they call the intelligences ‘angels’” is secondary to the central assertion of this paragraph, which employs the term ‘orders’ to describe the mover-intelligences and claims Jewish philosophers and specifically Maimonides believe these are one and the same as the angelic orders.
Dante could have, therefore, known of the ‘Jewish’ model linking celestial motions with angelic orders via the Latin translation of the Guide (available since before 1240) or—much more likely—via its criticism by Albertus. Clearly, the statements that this part of Dantean cosmology is “peculiar to Dante” and that Dante was unique in his “identification of each order of angels with Aristotle's mover-intelligences of the celestial spheres” are exaggerations.
One might conclude by noting that Dante Studies as a field is sometimes blinded by its Christian-centeredness. Western history was never homogeneously Christian. Indeed, one could argue that, since Jews settled in Italy as early as the first century BCE and likely earlier,[39] they were a part of European history before Christians were. Any intellectual history of a Western thinker must consider not only available translations of Muslim and Jewish ideas or references to them by Christians but also the prospect that sometimes ideas are mediated without leaving a trace. This is even truer when dealing with a transcultural interreligious discipline like angelology.[40] Thus, while it is unreasonable to expect most Dante scholars to surmount the Arabic and Hebrew language barriers, at the very least, one may expect them to avoid intemperate claims on Dante’s originality.
[1] Clement Charles Julian Webb, Studies in the History of Natural Theology (Oxford, 1970), 67-68 n.1. Text of lectures from 1914.
[2] Stephen Bemrose, Dante’s Angelic Intelligences: Their Importance in the Cosmos and in Pre-Christia Religion (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1983), 85 n. 20.
[3] University of Austin, Texas, “Notes to Par. 28.16-29.145,” Danteworlds, 25 January 2023. https://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/paradiso/09primum.html
[4] For a general introduction to Islamic and Jewish influences on Dante, see Luis M. Girón Negrón, “Islamic and Jewish Influences,” in Zygmunt G. Barański and Lino Pertile eds. Dante in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 200-20.
[5] On Albert as a Dantean mediator of knowledge, see Bruno Nardi, “Varietà: Raffronti fra alcuni luoghi di Alberto Magno e di Dante,” Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 80 (1922), 295-303. Eugenio Massa, “Alberto Magno (Alberto de la Magna, Alberto di Colgna, Alberto),” in Enciclopedia Dantescha, 2005; Paget Toynbee, “Alberto di Cologna,” in A Dictionary of Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante, 1968. Paget Toynbee, “Some Unacknowledged Obligations of Dante to Albertus Magnus,” Romania 24, no. 95 (1895), 399-412.
[6] A sample of Albert’s authoritative use of Maimonides includes Albertus, De coelo et mundo 1.3.10; 1.4.1; 2.3.11; Meteororum 1.1.12; Metaphysicorum Libri XIII 11.2.24; De somno et vigilia 3.1.5; De motibus animalium 1.1.5, 1.1.4-5, 2.2.5; De natura locorum 1.4; De vegetabilibus et plantis 6.1.8, 6.1.28; De causis et processu universitatis 1.4.8, 2.1.6; 2.1.9; 2.2.9; 2.4.2; 2.4.12. Comentarii Sententiarum 1.28.B.2; 1.37.L.24; Comentarii Sententiarum 4.1.B.10; 4.7.A.4; Summa theologiae 1.1.5; 1.18.73; 1.18.75; 1.20.80. See Albertus Magnus, Opera Omnia, ed. August Borgnet (Paris: Bibliopolam, 1890-95), vol. 4: 89, 92, 196; 492; vol. 6: 651; vol. 9: 184, 264-67, 300; 535; vol. 10: 166, 194; 429-431, 443, 449, 492, 573, 585; vol. 26: 56, 264-65; vol. 29: 22, 156; vol. 31: 28, 760, 780, 869.
[7] Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles 3.80.11; cf. Aquinas, Summa theologiæ 1.113.3.
[8] Bemrose, Dante’s Angelic Intelligences, 45-55; David Keck, Angels and Angelology in the Middle Ages (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 22; Enrico Cerulli, “Avicenne et Laurent de Avicenne et Laurent de Médicis a propos d’un passage de l’Altercazione,’ Studia Islamica 11 (1959), 20 note 2; Yossef Schwartz, “Divine Space and the Space of the Divine: On the Scholastic Rejection of Arab Cosmology” in Repräsentationsformen und Konzeptionen des Raums in der Kultur des Mittelalters: Freiburger Colloquium 2009, Tiziana Suarez-Nani and Martin Rohde eds. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 108.
[9] Note that while Averroes equated the Prima Causa (God) with the Primum Mobile, Dante follows Avicenna, who, to ensure the immutability of God, detached him from the flux of the sub-lunar world by making the Primum Mobile an intermediate emanated from God. By the same token, creation, too, was made an indirect mediated process, as Dante explains in his second angelological canto, Paradiso 29.
On Avicenna and Averroes (Ibn Rushd, 1126-1198), see Bemrose, Dante’s Angelic Intelligences, 87-88. On the first researchers noting neo-platonic and Avicennian influence on Dante’s creation theory, see Zygmunt G. Barański, "Dante tra dei Pagani e Angeli” in Filologia e Critica 9, Rome (1984), 296-297. Cf. Moses Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, 2.6 passim: “The intelligence which moves the uppermost sphere cannot be the Absolute Being.” All of the excerpts from the Guide for the Perplexed use Friedländer’s English translation: Moses Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, tr. Friedländer M. (New York, 1956), 158.
On Dante’s partially indirect creation, see Par. 29.19-36, cf. Par. 7.124-138. Cf. Brunetto Latini, Tresor 1.7.1; Maimonides, the Book of Knowledge, 2.3; Albertus, De causis, 1.4.8; Albertus, Opera Omnia, vol. 10: 430.
[10] The exposition of the poem Voi che ‘ntendendo il terzo ciel movete (Conv. canz. I; 2.5.6-18; cf. Par. 8.37) summarizes Dante’s angelological beliefs referencing angels as mover-intelligences (Conv. 2.4.2), the intellectual nature of sphere-propulsion (cf. Conv. 2.5.18), angels as source of astral influence (Conv. 2.6.10), and God (nostro Sire) as ultimate source of angelic power and, consequently, as holding sway over both spheres and Poet (Cf. Mon. 2.2.2-3; Par. 2.121-132).
Convivio 2.5.6-18 suggests that each angelic order is responsible for moving a matching celestial sphere, using Brunetto Latini’s (1220-1265) Tresor’s ordering of the hierarchies (Latini, Tresor (1) 1.12-13), itself follows St. Gregory’s (Gregory, Homilia XXIII). The movers of Venus (the third planet) mentioned in the poem are thus identified as the third order in Gregory’s account, the ‘Thrones.’
[11] A connection between spheres and angels is implied in Inf. 3.40’s statement that the so-called ‘Neutral Angels’ are deprived of their place in the heavens so as not to mar their appearance (Caccianli i ciel per non esser men belli). The plural, cieli, hints at the celestial spheres, making the astral beauty a reflection of angelic beauty, itself originating in God.
[12] De divinis nominibus: II, 5, A644; De coelestis hierarchiæ: VIII, 1, C205; VIII, 4, A212; XV, 2, C328; XV, 9, D337.
[13] Par. 28.67-104, 127-129; cf. 2.123.
[14] De coelestis hierarchiæ VI, 2, A201; Par. 29.98-126; 29.130-133; cf. Par. 28.133-135.
[15] Conv. 2.4.2-8; 3.4.9 and 3.7.5. Some Jewish and Muslim philosophers holding this opinion include Maimonides, Abraham Ibn Daud (c. 1110-c. 1180), Nachmanides (Moshe ben Nahman, Ramban, 1194-1270), Dante’s contemporary Gersonides (Levi ben Gerson, Ralbag, 1288-1344), Isaac Abarbanel (1437-1508). Avicenna, Averroes and Al-Ghazali (Algazel, c. 1058-1111). See, Maimonides, Guide, 2.6 passim; Ibn Daud, HaEmunah HaRama, 4.3; Nachmanides, Comm. to Deuteronomy, 18.9; Comm. to Deuteronomy 2.1; Gersonides, Comm. to Job, 39.30; 41.26; Abarbanel, Comm. to Genesis, 1.1-2; 28.12; Avicenna, Metaphysics, 10.1; Averroes, Incoherence of the Incoherence, disputations 3, 16; Averroes, Sermo de sustantia orbis, Destructio destructionis philosophiae Algazelis, De animae beatitudine seu Epistola de intellectu (Venice, 1550). 23v.. 53v.; Al-Ghazali, Metaphysics, 1.5; 4.1.1; 4.3.1; J. T. Muckle ed. Algazel’s Metaphysics: A Mediaeval Translation (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1967), 90, 105, 121.
[16] Note that there are three works bearing the same title, sometimes translated as The Mysteries of the Human Soul, attributed to Al-Ghazali. One of these is an abridged version, and another, found in a Persian manuscript, is quite different from the others. See, Frank Griffel, The Formation of Post-Classical Philosophy in Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 442-43; Nasrollah Pourjavady, Majmuah-ye Falsafi-e Maraghah: A Philosophical Anthology from Maraghah (Tehran: Iran University Press, 2002), iii-v. On the supposed misattribution of this work to Al-Ghazali, see W. Montgomery Watt, “The Authenticity of the Works Attributed to al-Ghazali,” The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1/2 (April 1952), 36-37. See also, Maurice Bouyges, Essai de chronologie des œvres d’Algazel, Ed. Michel Allard (Beirut: L'Institue de Lettres Orientales de Beyrouth, 1959), 52-54.
[17] Al-Ghazali, The Mysteries of the Human Soul, 3.1. Translation from Al-Ghazali, The Mysteries of the Human Soul, tr. Abdul Qayyum Hazarvi (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 2001), 22.
[18] A full Latin translation, probably made in Provence, was available before the 1240s. See, Wolfgang Kluxen, "Literargeschichtliches zum lateinischen Moses Maimonides”, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 21 (January-June 1954), 23-50. More on the Guide’s Latin translation see: Yossef Schwartz, “Persecution and the Art of Translation: Some New Evidence Concerning the Latin Translation of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed” Yod - Revue des études hébraïques et juives 22 (2019), 49-77; Yossef Schwartz, ‘To Thee in Silence Praise’: Meister Eckhart’s Reading in Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv, 2002), 43-47.
[19] On Maimonidean influence in the Latin West, see Görge K. Hasselhoff, Dicit Rabbi Moyses. Studien zum Bild von Moses Maimonides im lateinischen Westen vom 13. bis zum 15. Jahrhundert. (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2004).
On the many Christian theologians referencing Maimonides, including Aquinas, Meister Eckhart, Duns Scotus, Albertus Magnus, Roland of Cremona, Alexander of Hales, Tomas of York, Vincent of Beauvais, Giles of Rome, and many others, see Schwartz, To Thee in Silence Praise, 47-64; Yossef Schwartz, “Meister Eckhart and Moses Maimonides: from Judaeo-Arabic Rationalism to Christian Mysticism” in A Companion to Meister Eckhart, Christopher M. Bellitto ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 390-91.
[20] Yossef Schwartz, “Celestial Motion, Immaterial Causality and the Latin Encounter with Arabic Aristotelian Cosmology,” in Albertus Magnus und der Ursprung der Universitätsidee, Ludger Honnefelder ed. (Berlin: Berlin University Press 2011), 281.
[21] Note that for Maimonides the word malàkh (מלאך, angel) is a homonym signifying several forces. An entire chapter in the Guide is dedicated to its various uses, denoting celestial spheres, emissaries of different types, natural laws of the sub-lunar world, and even some functions of the human mind. The term’s strict sense, however, refers to the separate intellects that move the celestial spheres. We refer here only to the latter meaning. See Maimonides, Guide, 2.6. For the use of ‘angel’ in relation to the separate intellects, see Maimonides, Guide, 2.2-11. For the difference between the two usages, see Maimonides, Guide, 2.7.
[22] While Aquinas names Maimonides in his criticism, the author of De erroribus, condemns this notion in almost every chapter but oddly does not ascribe this specific error to Maimonides in the chapter devoted to him.
On Bonaventure’s and Aquinas’s criticism, see Bonaventura, Collationes in Hexaemeron, 5.2.26; Bonaventure, The Works of Bonaventure – V. Collations on the Six Days, tr. José de Vinck (New Jersy: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1970), 88-89; Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 1.50.3; Thomas Aquinas, Opera Omnia (Rome: Typographia Polyglotta, 1889), 331.
On the criticism of De erroribus, see Friedländer, 157-158; Pseudo-Aegidius Romanus, De erroribus philosophorum 1.13; 2.14; 6.15; 7.18; 8.4-5; 9.7. passim.
Note that De erroribus was traditionally attributed to Giles of Rome (Aegidius Romanus, c.1243-1316). This attribution is now doubted. See, G. Bruni, “Di alcune opere inedite e dubbie di Egidio Romano,” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 7 (April 1935): 193–196; Yossef Schwartz, “Divine Law and Human Justification in Medieval Jewish-Christian Polemic,” in Lex und Ius: Beiträge zum Grundlegung des Rechts in der Philosophie des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2012), 136 note 37. Aegidius Romanus, Errores Philosophorum. Ed. by J. Koch (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1944), xxxiv–xxxvi; Hasselhoff, Dicit Rabbi Moyses, 189–191.
[23] Maimonides, Guide, 2.4; Friedländer, 157-58.
[24] The BoK is the first book of the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides’s magisterial summa on the entire corpus of Jewish law. Aimed at an international Jewish audience, it is written in Rabbinic Hebrew rather than in the more exclusive intellectual language of Andalusia, Judeo-Arabic.
[25] A portion of the chapter we shall refer to from the BoK, known as the Fundaments of the Torah, was translated, and referred to as De fundamentis Legis in Raymund Martini’s anti-Jewish polemic Pugio fidei (c. 1270). See, Raymundus Martinus, Pugio fidei, 2.4; Raymundi Martini OP, Pugio fidei adversus mauros et iudaeos (Paris: Henault, 1651), 270. Martini, however, did not work with a translation but with the Hebrew original, and his partial translation does not cover our paragraphs.
[26] Maimonides, Book of Knowledge, 1.2.5-9. All English translations of the Book of Knowledge are mine.
Maimonides’s fondness for homonyms may cause some confusion. In the Guide (3.1-7), he provides an intentionally incomplete gloss of the mystical vision of Ezekiel 1 (the Biblical source of some of the orders’ names in the BoK). This gloss uses the same names to denote completely different concepts. Thus, Ofannim, for example, is used to refer to the four elements, while the singular Ofan seems to refer to the primary matter. Such polysemy is not uncommon in Maimonides’s hermeneutics.
[27] The Hebrew term is reminiscent of Dante’s slightly different usage “orders of gradation” (ordini delli gradi), which describes the hierarchy between angels, humans, and brute animals (Conv. 3.7.6). Indeed, the mid-fourteenth century Moisé di Gaio da Rieti (1388-c.1466) in his Judeo-Italian treatise Filosofia naturale (1440-1460) translated the Maimonidean term maàlot into Italian as dieci gradi, demonstrating early understanding of these terms as identical.
Mosè da Rieti, Filosofia Naturale e Fatti di Dio, ed. Irene Hijmans-Trump (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 314; On the dating of the work, see Mosè da Rieti, Filosofia Naturale, 9. On Rieti’s biography see Alessandro Guetta, “’Lev levavi ha-ne’ehav: Ha-qinah šel Mošeh ben Yizhaq mi-Rie’ti al petirat išto,” Teuda 19 (2003), Alessandro Guetta, “Moses da Rieti and His Miqdash Me’at,” Prooftexts 23 (2003), 5; Alessandro Guetta, “Mosheh De Rieti (XIVe-XVe Siècle), Philosophe, Scientifique et Poete.” Revue des études juives 158 (Juillet-Decembre 1999), 578; and Mosè da Rieti, “Liqqutim MiRefu’ot,” eds. Leibowitz, Yehoshua and Shlomo Marcus, Kiryat sefer 42 (1966-1967), 109.
Dante’s phrasing is also mirrored in the Latin translations of Muslim philosophers speaking of “gradi angelorum” and saying that “the first grade of being is the order of the disembodied angels that are called intelligences” (primus gradus est ordo angelorum spoliatorum qui vocantur intelligentiae).
Al-Ghazali, Metaphysics, 5.9; J. T. Muckle ed. Algazel’s Metaphysics: A Mediaeval Translation (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1967),196-97; Avicenna, Metaphysics, 10.1; Avicenna, Avicenna Latinus: Liber de philosophia prima sive scientia divina, S. Van Riet ed. (Louvain, 1980), 522.
[28] In the Guide, Maimonides notes that the Biblical use of the plural sometimes does not refer to a plurality of entities but rather is a figure of speech signifying a single entity. Maimonides, Guide, 3.3; Friedländer, 256 etc.
[29] This is an opinion Dante does not hold but which resonates in the poetry of Paradiso 28.127-129. Cf. Par. 2.133-138.
[30] Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 1.50.2.
[31] These similarities include a reference to a hierarchy of knowledge among the angels and the limitations of angelic knowledge (cf. Par. 21.92-96), and a mention of a reverse correlation between sphere size and angelic virtue (cf. Par. 28.73-78). See Maimonides, Book of Knowledge, 1.2.5-9: “And all these forms [the angels] live and know the Creator and know him most deeply, each form according to its grade, not according to its size. Even the very first grade cannot fully conceive the truth of the Creator as He is.”
[32] Maimonides, Book of Knowledge, 1.4.6; 1.7.1 cf. Maimonides, Guide, 2.36; Friedländer, 225-226. cf. Michael Schwartz, The Guide of the Perplexed [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Tel Aviv University Press, 2002), vol. 1: 89, note 10.
Book of Knowledge, 1.7.1: “[The prophet] when the spirit is upon him, his soul mingles with the angelic grade [maàla] called Ishim [“Men”], and he becomes another man [“ish acher”] and understands that he is no longer as he was but that he has been exalted beyond the grade of other wise men.” The name Ishim (literally ‘men,’ in the plural), here used to describe a single angelic entity, is a reference to the Biblical description of prophets as ‘men of God’ (Judges 13.6; Deuteronomy 33.1; Samuel 1. 9.10; Kings 1, 12.22 passim.) and to the supposed fact that a prophet’s mental union with the Agent Intellect is the cause prophetic vision. The notion that Prophets are above wise men and below the angels appears also in Al-Ghazel, Metaphysics, 5.10, see Muckle ed., Algazel’s Metaphysics, 197. Cf. Conv. 3.7.6.
[33] The full list would be: Sublunar world-Ishim; Moon-Cherubim; Mercury-B’nei Elohim; Venus-Elohim; Sun-Mal'àkhim (literally Angels or messengers); Mars-Seraphim; Jupiter-Ḥashmallim; Saturn-Er’ellim; Fixed-Stars-Ofannim; Primum Mobile-Ḥayyot HaQodesh.
[34] Maimonides follows Islah al-Majisti by Jabir ibn Aflah, which positions Mercury and Venus above the sphere of the sun. Thus, the moon, which is the sphere governing the element of water, is first. After it, is the Sun governing fire. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are considered together to be influencing the element of air (hence the vibrant nature of air, caused by its being influenced by many celestial spheres). Finally, the sphere of the fixed stars governs the earth. For the convenience of the reader the above table re-arranges Maimonides's angelic list, correlating it to the Ptolemaic sphere order. See, Maimonides, Guide, 2.9-10; Friedländer, 164-165.
[35] Moses Cordovero, On the Matter of Angels, 6-7. That modern scholars off-handedly make the same inference, see for example Ze’ev Harari, “A New Edition of Tagmulei HaNefesh” Tarbitz 52 (1983), 536.
[36] Albertus, De causis, 2.1.1; See Albertus, Opera Omnia, vol. 10: 433. Albertus is probably not referring to Abraham ibn Daud whom he calls ‘Avendavid’. See for example De motibus animalium 1.1.5. Albertus Albertus, Opera Omnia, vol. 9: 267. Many had initially attributed De causis to Aristotle. Aquinas was the first to identify it as a reworking of Proclus’s Elements of Theology. On the Liber de causis’s importance and Aquinas’s identification, see Cristina D’Ancona, “The Liber de causis” in Interpreting Proclus from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Cambridge University Press, 2014), 137.
Dante’s references it as Libro di cagioni or Libro de le cagioni, and never attributes it to Aristotle, implying he may have been skeptical about this attribution. Conv. 3.2.4; 3.6.4; 2.7.2; 4.21.9. Paget Toynbee, “Causis, De,” in A Dictionary of Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante, 1968; Attilio Mellone, “De Causis,” in Enciclopedia Dantescha, 2005.
On the popularity of De causis among Jews, who translated it into Hebrew no less than three times in that period, see Girón Negrón, “Islamic and Jewish Influences,” 214.
[37] Albertus, De causis, 1.4.8; Albertus, Opera Omnia, vol. 10: 431: “Ordines autem intelligentiarum, quas nos determinavimus, quidam dicunt esse ordines angelorum et intelligentias vocant angelos. Et hoc dicunt Isaac et Rabbi Moyses et ceteri philosophi Iudaeorum. Sed nos hoc verum esse non credimus.”
[38] Isabel Iribarren and Matin Lenz eds., Angels in Medieval Philosophical Inquiry: Their Function and Significance (Ashgate, 2008), 32; Katja Krause and Henryk Anzulewicz, “From Content to Method: The Liber de causis in Albert the Great,” in Reading Proclus and the Book of Causes vol. 1 (Brill, 2019), 199.
[39] Leonard Victor Rutgers, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome: Evidence of Cultural Interaction in the Roman Diaspora (Brill, 1995), 96.
[40] Schwartz, “Divine Space and the Space of the Divine,” 90-91.