Chapter 16: From Medieval to Modern Europe
Dante's The Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso), translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, can be found at
http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/dante/dante_contents.htm
You can find a fuller discussion of Copernicus at
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/copernicus/
A through discussion of Galileo, his life and scientific work, can be found at