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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [556] Moore, _Studies in Dante_ III. p. 146. ------------------------------------------------------------------------