The plan of the universe through which Dante feigns himself to have journeyed is familiar to all readers of the Divine Comedy. Hell, as the Fathers taught, was a subterranean cavity, and Dante pictures it as an inverted cone, whose apex reaches the exact centre of Earth and therefore of the universe. It is situated vertically underneath Jerusalem, the centre of the inhabited Earth. He departs from the Fathers, however, in removing Purgatory from these dim regions, and placing it on an island in the midst of the ocean of the uninhabited hemisphere, exactly at the antipodes of Jerusalem. On this island rises a mountain whose immensely lofty summit reaches the upper regions of the atmosphere, and upon the summit is the Eden of our first parents. This original conception is an extraordinary gain, both from the artistic and the allegorical points of view; and it is in harmony with the idea of Aristotle, and of many mediæval writers, that the southern hemisphere was the “nobler” part of Earth. Here, then, man was permitted to dwell before the Fall, and hither come repentant souls, saved from Hell, but not yet pure enough to enter Heaven. Paradise consists of all the spheres of mediæval astronomy, and the poet rises from one to another until he finally reaches the all-embracing Empyrean, where his vision ends.

Nowhere does he describe this scheme in full, but it was evidently clear in his own mind, and by following him step by step in his journey it is easily reconstructed, and is represented in the accompanying diagram.

In the same way he never states how long a time he spent on this visionary journey, yet this also he had definitely determined, and in each Cantica he refers once to the period of time alloted to each realm.

In the last Circle but one of the Inferno, he is warned by Virgil that the time allowed is drawing to a close;[442] in the last but one of the Purgatorio Virgil urges him to make the best use of the time appointed;[443] and in the Paradiso, just before the final vision, St. Bernard tells him that the time of his trance is nearly over.[444]

In the first Canto, which is introductory to the whole Commedia, he mentions the time at which he assumes that his vision began. It was “nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita,”[445] which may mean simply that he was middle-aged, or comparing it with the passage in the Convivio quoted earlier (see p. 347), we may suppose it to mean that he was exactly in his 35th year. The season was spring—“la dolce stagione,”[446] and when night was over the sun rose among those stars which were with him at the Creation, which was believed to have taken place at the vernal equinox some sixty-five centuries before.

The expression “quelle stelle,”[448] however, shows us that Dante does not intend to be pedantically accurate, which would indeed be inartistic in a poem. He speaks several times of the supposed slow motion of the star sphere,[449] and although he never mentions its effect in shifting the place of the equinox continually among the stars, we can hardly imagine that he failed to understand this. He knew quite well, therefore, that the stars which accompanied the sun in that first springtime of the world could not be the same stars which rose with him now. But astronomers had agreed to call the part of the sky which contains the vernal equinox by its old name, and it would be exceedingly tiresome if he were to distinguish, every time he mentioned them, between the zodiacal constellations and the zodiacal signs; there shall be no occasion, therefore, to stop and consider which he means, and no ambiguity: he assumes once for all that they always have been and always are identical, that the “first point of Aries” or vernal equinox is now and always at the beginning of the constellation Aries. To this assumption he is consistent throughout.

Another important point to notice is that, since it is the time of the equinox, there is no difference between “temporary” and “equal” hours.[450] Days and nights are of equal length; sunrise and sunset are nearly at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., according to our modern method of reckoning.[451] In this way also, and without any sacrifice of astronomical accuracy, the poet has simplified his time references for his readers.

We must observe, however, that the day is as uncertain as the year; for, although it is certainly near the equinox, “quelle stelle” may mean exactly the first point of Aries or only the constellation Aries in general. From this Canto alone, therefore, we cannot be sure of the exact date.

From other allusions of various kinds, scattered throughout the Divine Comedy, we gather that Dante did intend a definite date to be understood, but unfortunately the data by which he means to fix it are themselves so ambiguous that commentators differ as to the day, the month, and the year. The question has so direct a bearing on Dante’s astronomy that we cannot shirk it; but for the present, leaving it aside, let us deal merely with the hour, which is distinctly stated from the first, and indicated in a number of passages so clearly that readers with an elementary knowledge of the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies can find little difficulty in following Virgil and Dante through their journey, seeing exactly how many days it required, and frequently at what hour of day or night they were in a particular spot. If my readers are not now in possession of this elementary knowledge, this book has been written in vain.

I give below a list of all the hour-indications, astronomical and others, for the sake of clearness and completeness; but I omit for the present those that indicate only the date, and merely call the days the first, second, etc. These passages, though they are only to be understood in a popular sense, prove quite as clearly as the elaborate astronomical explanations in the Convivio how deep an interest Dante always took in astronomy; and a study of them shows that he had carefully considered the positions of the heavenly bodies and their movements during the progress of the action in his poem.

TIME REFERENCES IN
THE DIVINE COMEDY