Note 78 — II DANTE AND POLITICAL LIBERTY

III, iv. init. Oxf., p. 365; Bemporad, p. 394. Dante combats and refutes the traditional argument in vogue in his day, which assumed that the creation of sun and moon in Gen. i. had a mystical reference to the Spiritual and Temporal powers respectively and argued that therefore, because the moon derives her light from the sun, the Temporal must owe its authority to the Spiritual; but, later in the chapter (Oxf., p. 366 sq.; Bemporad, p. 396), he seems to admit a workable analogy between the luminaries and the authorities.