The Date and Duration of Dante's Journey

The Jubilee and the Crucifixion

I’ve been reading a lot of Dante lately. I just finished his Paradiso for the first time and now I am reading through The Sun and the Other Stars of Dante Alighieri. This book is incredible, not only because it addresses the cosmology of Dante and makes connections to modern astronomy, but because it was written by one of Dante’s descendants, the astrophysicist Sperello di Serego Alighieri.

One interesting section of the book addresses when Dante’s journey through the cosmos took place. Commentators all agree that Dante set a specific date for the beginning of the Commedy but they disagree as to the specific date. Sperello attempts to address the disagreements and come to a solution. Fortunately, Dante gives us several astronomical clues.

Sperello lays out the most important ones for us to consider:

1. It had to be a full moon

2. Venus needed to be visible in the morning in the constellation of Pisces

3. The Sun needed to be the sign of Aries

4. Mars and Saturn needed to be in the constellation of Leo

According to The Sun and Other Stars, most commentators place the date in spring 1300, the first jubilee year in history, between mid-March and April 8, the day of the full moon.

Vatican News states “Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed the first Jubilee in the year 1300. The Christian Jubilee is a spiritual reinterpretation of the ancient Hebrew tradition. While the biblical Jubilee focused on freeing slaves, the Christian version offers liberation from sins, and from the punishment due to sin that must be faced in Purgatory.”

However, this does not satisfy all of the important astronomical signs, specifically the position of Venus. Others have proposed that Dante began his journey one year later, 1301, in the night between March 24, 1300 and March 25, 1301.

More interesting evidence concerns the number of years that have passed since Christ’s death. Sperello states "Furthermore, in canto XXI of Inferno the devil Malacoda says that 1266 years have passed since the death of Christ. Dante in the Convivio wrote that the Messiah died in his thirty-fourth year, therefore in the year 35, because he was born in the year 1, since the year 0 does not exist. Therefore: 1266 + 35 = 1301. March 25 was also believed to be the date of Christ's death."

This is all well and good, but what about the jubilee year in 1300? This is an important symbol for Dante, so how does he address it? Well, the calendar used in Florence at the time began on March 25. That means that the night between March 24, 1300 and March 25, 1301 was still in the jubilee year.

Sperello continues: "Dante was lost in the forest on the night between March 24 and 25, 1301 and spent the whole following day there, and in the 'selva oscura' he met Virgil. They entered together Hell on the evening of March 25."

It took one day for Dante and Virgil to reach the center of the Earth. That would be Palm Sunday in 1301, March 26. “The times refer to Jerusalem, located at the center of the emerged lands, therefore on the fundamental meridian of the time.”

When Dante reaches the other side of the Earth, the times are referred to the Mountain of Purgatory, which was at the antipodes of Jerusalem. The time zone changes by 12 hours and Dante passed instantly from the evening of March 26 to the morning of the same day. It then took Dante and Virgil about 20 hours to reach the base of Purgatory, until just before dawn on March 27. Dante reached the top of Mt. Purgatory in just over three days, at noon on March 30.

Finally, Sperello says that the journey through Heaven probably lasted a day and a half and ended at midnight on March 31, which would be the date of Good Friday in 1301. All in all, it took Dante less than 7 days to travel the entire cosmos, from Hell to the Empyrean.

To attempt a conclusion on my own, it looks like Dante began his journey on the traditional date of Christ’s Crucifixion in history, March 25, and ended his journey on March 31, the date of Good Friday in 1301. In my limited understanding, he may have been taking the universal date of the Crucifixion and placing it his own particular time, leading Dante the Pilgrim from the Universal to the Particular in his poem.

Anyway, go read Dante!