The historical events alluded to in the Divine Comedy are so often of unknown date to us, that few of them help as much as might be expected. Judge Nino’s widow remarried on June 24, 1300, and as he speaks of her as having already put off her widow’s weeds,[552] this might indicate that we are in 1301, but it is not conclusive, since they would probably be discarded three months before she was actually the wife of another. On the other hand, Can Grande della Scala, who is said in a fourteenth century chronicle to have been born on March 9, 1291, is described as only nine years old.[553] Dante might possibly have been mistaken by a year in the date of his birth, but he cannot have been ignorant of the death of his friend Guido Cavalcanti. The cry of anguish from Guido’s father will be remembered by all readers of the Inferno, after Dante has spoken of his friend in the past tense:—
“Di subito drizzato gridò: Come, Dicesti egli ebbe? Non viv’ egli ancora? Non fiere gli occhi suoi lo dolce lome?”[554]
And as Dante hesitates a little, Cavalcante sinks back into his tomb of punishment, and does not reappear. Before Dante leaves the place, feeling compunction, he charges Farinata to tell the father that his son is still among the living, and that the sinister hesitation was due to another cause than he thought. Now it is beyond dispute that Guido died in August 1300, for he was buried in the cemetery of St. Reparata in Florence on August 29, 1300, according to official records still extant;[555] and Dante had a share in banishing him amongst other exiles to the unhealthy place where he contracted the illness of which he died. The year 1300, in which Dante held the official position which obliged him to do this, was burned into his mind, as we see in his letter, mentioned by Lionardo Bruni, in which he says that all his misfortunes sprang from the time of his priorate.
How then can we believe that he here imagines himself speaking in the spring of 1301, unless we assume that Cavalcanti had really guessed the true cause of his hesitation, and that what Dante said afterwards was a kindly lie? Is this in character with his uncompromising, even ruthless straightforwardness? Unless therefore some really satisfactory way of escape can be found from this incident and the “centesim’ anno” I fear we must reluctantly abandon the theory of 1301, championed so skilfully by Angelitti and others, and must agree with the majority that Dante means us to understand the year 1300.
The early commentators seem to have taken for granted that Dante was correct in his astronomical data, without taking any particular trouble to verify them. Jacopo della Lana in commenting Par. xxi. 14 says that in 1300 in the month of March Saturn was in Leo, and was in the 8th degree of that sign; and in order that we should know what was the disposition of the whole sky at that time he further informs us that Jupiter was in Aries in the 24th degree, and Mars in Pisces in the 11th degree, that the sun was near the beginning of Aries, and Venus in Pisces (these two are evidently taken simply from Dante). Mercury was in Virgo (with the sun in Aries! in this case Mercury would have been visible nearly the whole night), and the moon in . Here there is said to be a blank in all the MSS. The moon was too much for Della Lana, whether the difficulty was in finding her position or in reconciling it with that given by Dante. The Ottimo and Benvenuto da Imola copy Della Lana with little change, both giving the positions of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in degree and sign, but the sun only as near the beginning of Aries, Venus in Pisces, and Mercury in Virgo. (It is astonishing that neither should have noticed this gross error.) Benvenuto boldly adds that the moon was in Libra, doubtless because Dante’s description so required it at the beginning of his poem.
Nor do these early commentators seem to feel any difficulty about the date on which the Vision began. From Inf. i. 38-40 they generally conclude that it was the day of the equinox, which they say vaguely fell in the middle of March “mezzo Marzo,” and from Inf. xxi. 112-114 all except Boccaccio (who interprets March 25) take it to be Good Friday.[556] No discrepancy seems to have been felt here: they merely remark that in 1300 Easter fell in March, and more than two hundred years passed before anyone pointed out that this was wrong.
At last a work appeared in 1554, called “Del Sito, Forma, et Misure dello Inferno di Dante,” in which the author, Giambullari, remarked that according to astronomical calculations the Paschal Moon was not full on the night between Thursday and Good Friday in 1300, but on the morning of April 5th. This excited a good deal of interest, and many theories have since been put forth to reconcile Dante’s astronomical data with the facts of the year 1300.
Dr. Moore thinks the date of entering the Inferno was Good Friday, April 8, 1300, but that Dante uses instead of the real moon the ecclesiastical moon, which, as we know, is a conventional body revolving according to Meton’s cycle, and sometimes appearing on tables as full two or three days before or after the real Full Moon. Dr. Moore finds that this ecclesiastical moon, was full on April 7, 1300.[557] But would Dante trouble about the ecclesiastical moon, and would his readers know anything about it? Its only use was for determining Easter, and this was done for the people by the Church. The real moon was extremely important for astrologers, for whose benefit Tables and Almanachs were chiefly drawn up; the real moon was useful to everyone as light-giver and time recorder. It is surely inconceivable that a Florentine who wished to arrange a midnight festival, or to start on a night-journey, would consult a calendar to find out on what date the ecclesiastical moon would be full! And the ecclesiastical moon does not alter the position of Venus.
According to another suggestion, Dante followed a tradition as to the position of all the “seven planets” at the Creation, and for this reason not only was his sun in Aries, but the moon full and opposite, and Venus in Pisces. Venus is said to have this position in a picture of the Creation in a Church at San Gemignano.[558] Compare also Milton’s moon at her creation:—
“ ... Less bright the moon, But opposite in levelled west, was set, His mirror, with full face borrowing her light From him.”[559]