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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Since 1695, when Patrick Hume, Milton's first annotator, published by subscription The Poetical Works of Mr. John Milton, the editors of Paradise Lost have consistently held that the “waters above the firmament” in the Miltonic cosmology are synonymous with or are contained in the crystalline sphere. I propose to demonstrate that in spite of their accord Milton's editors have been mistaken; that in the geocentric universe of Paradise Lost the crystalline sphere has only the functional role originally assigned to it in the thirteenth century by the astronomer-king Alphonso of Spain; and that the “waters above,” derived from theological rather than scientific sources, were located by the poet outside the primum mobile and never by him confused or identified with the crystalline sphere. This view, contrary to the tenor of historic scholarship, was put forth by the Jonathan Richardsons, father and son, early and sometimes disparaged commentators on Milton. In their Explanatory Notes and Remarks on Milton's Paradise Lost (London, 1734), they explicate P.L. VII.269 thus: “as Moses Gen. i. 7. says there were Waters above and Under the Firmament, Milton Supposes a Chrystalline Ocean, a Sea Clear as the Purest Chryslal, flowing round the New Creation, a Fence (beside the Wall, III, 721) against Chaos. But this is not the Chrystalline mention'd III.482. That was a Sphere, and for a Different use, nor is it a part of Milton's System.” Apparently no serious attention hitherto has been paid to this lone dissenting opinion. It is hoped that this study will encourage a fresh examination of several passages in Paradise Lost and that it will contribute to the understanding of Milton's cosmology as a whole.
1 I believe that I have considered every annotated edition of Paradise Lost contained in the fine Milton collection of the University of Illinois and every major study which treats of Milton's cosmology. The following is merely a representative list: P[atrick] H[ume], The Poetical Works of Mr. John Milton (London, 1695), pp. 218-219, 228; Thomas Newton, Paradise Lost (London, 1761), ii, 29-30; Henry J. Todd, The Poetical Works of John Milton (London, 1801), iii, 27; James Prendeville, Milton's Paradise Lost (London, 1840), p. 400; Thomas Keightley, An Account of the Life, Opinions, and Writings of John Milton (London, 1855), pp. 456, 459; Keightley, The Poems of John Milton (London, 1859), ii, 14; Henry G. Bohn, The Poetical Works of John Milton (London, 1861), i, 403; R. C. Browne, English Poems by John Milton (Oxford, 1872), ii, 262; David Masson, The Poetical Works of John Milton (London, 1874), iii, 161; John Bradshaw, The Poetical Works of John Milton (London, 1878), ii, 578-579; A. W. Verity, Paradise Lost (Cambridge, 1921), p. 548; T. N. Orchard, Milton's Astronomy of Paradise Lost (London, 1913), pp. 79-80; W. F. Warren, The Universe as Pictured in Milton's Paradise Lost (New York, 1915), pp. 38-39, 48-50; W. V. Moody, The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton (Boston, etc., 1924), p. 403; H. F. Fletcher, Milton's Rabbinical Readings (Urbana, 1930), pp. 133-139, 165-168; M. Y. Hughes, Paradise Lost (New York, 1935), p. 99; James H. Hanford, A Milton Handbook (New York, 1947), p. 222; Northrop Frye, Paradise Lost (New York, 1951), pp. 546, 548.
2 In the preface to his 1790 edition of Paradise Lost, Newton remarks: “Of Mr. Richardson's [the elder's] notes it must be said that there are strange inequalities in them, some extravagances, and many excellencies; there is often better sense than grammar or English; and he sometimes hits the true meaning of the author surprisingly, and explains it properly. He had good natural parts but without erudition or learning, in which he was assisted by his son, who is a man of taste and literature, as well as of the greatest benevolence and good nature” (unnumbered pages 4-5).
3 All references to Paradise Lost are from The Student's Milton, ed. Frank Allen Patterson (New York, 1946).
4 See, e.g., David Masson, The Poetical Works of John Milton (London, 1890), iii, 434; Moody, p. 402; Hughes, p. 97.
5 For historical data I have depended chiefly upon J. L. E. Dreyer, History of the Planetary Systems from Thales to Kepler (Cambridge, 1906). I have also consulted Sir Thomas L. Heath, Greek Astronomy (London, 1932), and Francis R. Johnson, Astronomical Thought in Renaissance England (Baltimore, 1937).
6 Simon Newcomb, Astronomy for Everybody, rev. R. H. Baker (New York, 1943), pp. 39-40; John C. Duncan, Astronomy (New York, 1946), pp. 115-118.
7 Dreyer, pp. 202-203.
8 Dreyer, p. 204.
9 Dreyer, pp. 278-279. Until the invention of the crystalline sphere there had been no more than 9 major spheres (those of the 7 planets, that of the fixed stars, and the primum mobile) in any cosmological system. Indeed, the 9th sphere, the primum mobile, was itself a very late development in European astronomy; it was added in the 13th century to account for the precession of the equinoxes as described by Ptolemy, whose great work was not known in Europe until Sacrobosco published his Tractatus de sphaera in 1256. Even the influence of Aristotle, who posited only 8 major spheres, was not felt in medieval Europe until the early years of that century; for in 1209 and again in 1215 the reading and teaching of the philosopher were forbidden by the Church, and not until 1254 were official orders issued providing for the inclusion of Aristotle in the Paris University curriculum. Thomas Aquinas (1227-74) taught that there were but 8 spheres, though he mentions the addition of another by some authorities; and Dante, a writer on astronomy as well as a poet, counts 9 in the Divina Commedia (ca. 1300). These facts being understood, it is plain that any European writer prior to the 13th century who locates the waters above the firmament outside the sphere of the fixed stars is placing them beyond the outermost sphere of the universe.
10 Dreyer, pp. 205, 371.
11 Keightley, for example, attributes to Milton an untenable thesis, then complains that the poet does not think clearly. On P.L. vii.269 he notes: “As the scriptures in sundry places represent the earth as being on the waters …, Milton, forgetting that he had made the earth globular, adopts this view. He then supposes the outer orb of the World to rest on a body of waters, ‘the waters which were above the firmament,‘ in a somewhat similar manner, and this body he seems to regard as the Crystalline of the Ptolemaic astronomy. He would appear to place it above the spheres of the planets and fixed stars (see iii. 482), and altogether his ideas seem inextricably confused.”
12 (Chapel Hill, 1948), p. 185. Though his is an interesting and valuable work, Williams furnishes an illustration of the kind of reasoning which, I believe, has led Milton scholars into error on the subject of the present study. Here is part of his summary of exegetical comment on Genesis i.6-7: “This word ‘firmament’ used in most translations, both Latin and English, made difficulties for the commentators, for the normal meaning of ‘firmament’ is the starry heaven beyond the planets, the eighth sphere of the fixed stars in the accepted astronomy. If then, some of the waters were put above the firmament, they were put above the eighth sphere. Hence, the waters above the firmament must be the ninth, or crystalline, sphere. Probably such an exegesis of Genesis i: 6-7 contributed materially to, if it did not entirely produce, the concept of the ninth sphere, which medieval astronomers added to the eight of Ptolemy. Certainly for many centuries the ‘waters above the firmament’ were accepted as the ninth sphere, and popular hexamerons of the Renaissance perpetuated this belief.” That I take issue with these remarks in toto will become apparent to the reader of this paper. I wish here to point out the contradiction between the statement made by Professor Williams on page 185 and the foregoing statement which he makes on page 54. My own investigation has convinced me that he is right in saying that the Renaissance commentators never identify the waters above the firmament with the crystalline sphere.
13 The following writers, among others, uphold the idea that the waters exist in liquid form: St. Basil the Great, Hexaemeron, Homily Three, tr. the Rev. Bromfield Jackson, in A Select Library of Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series (New York, 1895), p. 67a—future reference to this series will be to Fathers II: Bede (spurious), De Mundi Coelestis Terrestrisque Constitutione Liber, in Patrologiae Latinae, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris, various dates), xc, col. 893—future reference to this series will be to Migne; St. Chrysostom, Concerning the Statues, Homily ix, in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. Philip Schaff (New York, 1907), ix, 404a—future reference to this series will be to Fathers I. Among supporters of the belief that the waters are vaporous are: Honorius of Autun, De Imagine Mundi, Lib. i, Cap. cxxxviii, in Migne, clxxii, col. 146; Peter the Lombard, Sententiarum, Lib. ii, Dist. xiv, in Migne, cxcii, col. 680; St. Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London, 1922), iii, 223—future reference will be to Summa. A number of commentators discuss the theory that the waters above are ice or crystal, though they do not necessarily argue in its favor. See, e.g.: St. Basil the Great, Hexaemeron, Homily Three, in Fathers II, viii, 67a; St. Cyril of Jerusalem, The Catechetical Lectures of, ed. and tr. E. H. Gifford, in Fathers II, p. 52a; St. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram, Cap. x, in Migne, xxxiv, col. 272; Bede, De Natura Rerum Liber, Cap. vii, in Migne, xc, cols. 200-204; Peter the Lombard, Sententiarum, Lib. ii, Dist. xiv, in Migne, cxcii, col. 680; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa, iii, 223.
14 See Williams, Common Expositor, p. 55. Milton's contemporary, John Swan, however, opposes the majority opinion in his Speculum Mundi (Cambridge, 1635), p. 62: “For this out-spread firmament is by its office to separate; and to be, not above the waters, but between them: and therefore those waters which it separateth, cannot be such waters as are in the clouds, but rather above the concave of the firmament.”
15 John Swan also supports this view: “they do mistake who divide the Expansum into parts, as if in so doing they could absolutely cleare the matter in question: for it is not a part of the Firmament that is appointed to this separating office, but the whole Firmament; as any one may see, if he do but observe the words of God, producing and assigning it” (p. 66). Cf. the marginal note to Genesis i.6 in the King James version.
16 St. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram, Cap. x, in Migne, xxxiv, col. 272. Thus I render: “firmamentum enim non propter stationem, sed propter firmitatem, aut propter intransgressibilem terminum superiorum et inferiorum aquarum vocatum intelligere licet … .”
17 The Aristotelian arrangement of the elements may be briefly outlined as follows: The simple bodies—earth, water, air, and fire (all the elements except the fifth)—are contained within the sphere of the moon. Like everything outside it, this sphere is made of the quintessence, the fifth element. Earth is heavy, that is, it seeks the center of the universe; fire is light, tending toward the circumference; water and air are intermediates, heavy and light at the same time, though water is heavier than air. All the elements except fire gravitate toward the center, but the heavier by their greater weight push the lighter out of the way. Hence, the order of the elements within the sphere of the moon must be, from the center outward, earth, water, air, and fire. See The Student's Oxford Aristotle, ed. W. D. Ross (Oxford, 1942), iii, Physica, De Caelo, De Generatione et Corruplione.
18 Since Milton does not specifically describe the formation of the starry spheres or the crystalline sphere in either Raphael's or Uriel's account, and since the spheres are nevertheless a part of his system (the primum mobile and the crystalline are mentioned and the remainder clearly implied in m.481-483), it is logical to assume that all spheres come into being at the same time. Uriel describes the creation of the outermost sphere when he says, “The rest in circuit walles this Universe.” And it may be inferred that when the quintessence “walles” the World, more than one wall is made.
19 Milton's “Air” in this passage is the ether.
20 Though I arrived at this interpretation solely from a study of the poem, it was encouraging to discover support in the writings of the Church Fathers. “In the beginning, indeed, the water lay all over the surface of the earth. And first God created the firmament to divide the water above the firmament from the water below the firmament. For in the midst of the sea of waters the firmament was established at the Master's decree. And out of it God bade the firmament arise, and it arose” (John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Ch. ix, “Concerning the Waters,” in Fathers II, ix, 26). “As the excessive volume of water bore along over the face of the earth, the earth was by reason thereof ‘invisible’ and ‘formless.‘ When the Lord of all designed to make the invisible visible, He fixed then a third part of the waters in the midst; and another third part He set by itself on high, raising it together with the firmament by His own power; and the remaining third He left beneath, for the use and benefit of man” (Hippolytus, Commentary, in Fathers I, v, 163). Here, perhaps, is an explanation for “The rising world of waters dark and deep, / Won from the void and formless infinite” (P.L. iii.11-12).
21 Ether in Milton's epic has no distinctive form. The firmament is composed of ethereal air, which is also found in Heaven. The substance of Heaven is “ethereal Mould.” The sun, too, is of “this ethereal quintessence.” The planets, stars, and their spheres are likewise etherous. Even the crust of the World upon which Satan first alighted merely “seem'd Firm land.”
22 See note 13.