[530] “Rises upon mortals.” _Par._ i. 37. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6. THE ASSUMED DATE OF THE VISION. Even among Dante enthusiasts there must be many who are astonished at the warmth of the controversy concerning the assumed date of his Vision. To know whether he feigned himself to have entered the Inferno with Virgil in March or in April, in the year 1300 or in 1301, really does not help us to appreciate the music of his verse nor the depth of his thought; yet a wealth of learning and research has been poured out upon this problem, and some commentators seem ready to defend their opinions with their lives, if that would avail to convince their readers! The date is indeed intimately connected with the narrative of the _Divine Comedy_, since there are constant allusions to current events. By choosing a year earlier than the time at which he was writing, Dante is able not only to tell the spirits what is passing on the earth they have left, but to endow them with the power of prophesying to him events which are to come.[531] The peculiar interest of the problem for us just now is that astronomy has been called in to solve it. We have seen that the positions and movements of the heavenly bodies are all consistent with one another in his poem, but it is interesting to ask whether they are merely a consistent fiction or whether they correspond with facts. Did Dante arrange his moon and planets according to his feeling for scenery and the convenience of his time references, or did he take the positions as they really were at some particular date? If so, the full moon, Venus a morning star in Pisces, and Saturn in Leo, all together near a spring equinox, ought to help to fix that date. The year which is almost universally accepted, by the oldest as well as the most modern commentators, is 1300, chiefly on the authority of _Inf._ xxi. 112-114. Here Malacoda says that yesterday (the day of Dante’s entering the Inferno) it was 1266 years since the earthquake which accompanied the Crucifixion (see p. 370). Adding to this the 34 years which Dante has told us he believed to have elapsed between the Nativity and the Crucifixion,[532] we get 1266 + 34 = 1300. And the day is either the Church Festival commemorating the Crucifixion, _i.e._ Good Friday, which in 1300 fell on April 8, or March 25, which was believed to be the actual anniversary. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [531] _Inf._ x. 100-105. [532] _Conv._ IV. xxiii. 96-98. ------------------------------------------------------------------------