Note 874 — CANTO XXXIV.
James Romanes Sibbald translation
’Neath whose summit: Jerusalem is in the centre of the northern hemisphere—an opinion founded perhaps on Ezekiel v. 5: ‘Jerusalem I have set in the midst of the nations and countries round about her.’ In the Convito, iii. 5, we find Dante’s belief regarding the distribution of land and sea clearly given: ‘For those I write for it is enough to know that the Earth is fixed and does not move, and that, with the ocean, it is the centre of the heavens. The heavens, as we see, are for ever revolving around it as a centre; and in these revolutions they must of necessity have two fixed poles.... Of these one is visible to almost all the dry land of the Earth; and that is our north pole [star]. The other, that is, the south, is out of sight of almost all the dry land.’