Two years ago, I came across an interesting
piece of Medieval trivia ~ that scholars once believed God created Hell on
February 13th.
This was news to me. The bafflement was mighty! After studying the Faustian legend and writing about it in-depth to the point of severe
academic obsession, starting with the historical Faust in the late Medieval Period who allegedly sold his soul to the devil and working my way
up to Goethe’s epic closet drama published in the 19th century, I wondered how come I never heard about this
before?
Naturally, I had to do so digging and
satisfy my curiosity, and lately have decided this might make an interesting
blog post.
I began my information treasure hunt with
Google, (where else?), and discovered a post dated February 13, 2014 on a Benedictine website stating that this hellish event was marked in medieval calendars. Considering we are looking into
the Medieval Period, we must not forget that in those days theological
scholars believed they had also pinpointed the First Day of Creation according to
their Biblical calculations based on the Julian calendar, which is currently 13 days behind ours. (So, 'Hell Day' would be the 26th of February in our modern calculation of time assuming my online source hasn't already adjusted the date.)
My theory is, if you can understand how
they calculated the First Day, it should be fairly simple to see where ‘Hell
Day’ originated. Right?
Don’t worry, I won’t bore you with too much
history. (Hopefully!)

However, it is the Julian Calendar that still is
of interest to us, and indeed, is still used by Orthodox Christians. Despite the shift in the spring equinox,
March 25th continued to regarded as the First Day of Creation in both
the east and west during the Medieval period:
it seemed logical that Creation had to have taken place sometime within
the life-giving season of springtime. The day was also mystically significant
as it was the Feast of the Annunciation, the day of Christ’s conception.
Our information digging doesn’t stop there;
the majority of the earliest Christians up until the Middle Ages believed that Creation
began circa 5500 BC give or take a few years.
Yes, there were various calculations proposed, but for some time, this
was the basic accounting of years according to calculations of the Septuagint.
Okay, enough of calendar history!
According to the Medieval way of thinking, we
have March 25 as the Day of Creation and also the year c. 5500 BC as the Anno Mundi to work with,
so it is logical to assume scholars thought Hell must have been
created around or slightly before this date and about the same year ~February to March.
Curiously, we find that in Dante’s time it
was believed the First Day of Creation
took place when the sun was in the constellation Aries, a belief he recorded in
his poetic classic ‘The Divine Comedy’ (1308-1320):
“The hour was morning’s prime, and on his
way
Aloft the sun ascended with those stars
(Aries)
That with him rose when Love Divine first
moved
Those fair works: (...)”
~ Canto I, The
Divine Comedy, (Harvard Classics, Vol. 20)

(Image: Dante holding a copy of The Divine Comedy next to the entrance to Hell, the seven terraces of Mount Purgatory and the city of Florence, with the spheres of Heaven above. Fresco by Michelino, 1465)
Thanks to modern astronomy technology, we
can now test out this information with some stellar experimentation!
Looking at the sky with the Stellarium app,
we find that around 5500 BC the sun was indeed in Aries, right in sync with
Dante’s fine verses.
Using this year, we can also see why theologians and scholars thought Hell was created in February.
Not only is the sun in Aries in 5500 BC, it
is above the constellation Cetus ~ right over the head of the evil sea monster of Greek mythology that
was destroyed by Perseus. Remember the movie Clash of the Titans?
(Image: 12 PM screenshot of the sun Cetus, 5500
BC, from the Stellarium App. Assuming the
date February 13th is according to the Julian calendar, I’ve set the
date in the App to the 26th, taking into account that we are now 13
days ahead in the Gregorian Calendar.)
Now, get this...
Cetus
is also called the ‘Whale’ ~ a beast that was considered a symbol of Hell.
How did they come up with that?
In the Gospel of Matthew 12: 38-40 we find
the following:
“Then some of the scribes and Pharisees
answered him, saying: Master we would see a sign from thee. Who
answering said to them: An evil and adulterous generation seeketh a sign: and a
sign shall not be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet. For as Jonas was in the whale' s belly three days and three nights:
so shall the Son of man be in the heart of the earth three days and three
nights.” (Bible: Douay-Rheims edition.)
Using the symbol of Jonah and the whale, Christ was
foretelling His death, his following decent to the Underworld and His resurrection
that would happen three days later. In those days, both
the Limbo of the just souls and the Inferno of the damned were part of
‘Hell’. Christ descended to free the
just souls, and it is also believed He entered Hell, commanding Satan and all
the demons to bow before Him and acknowledge Him as the Lord God ~ the 'Harrowing of Hell'. Of interest, when St. Jerome translated this passage of the
Sacred Vulgate, he used the word ‘cetus’,
the same word as the whale constellation.

(Image: the constellation Cetus as a fish-tailed monster published in 'Urania's Mirror', 1825)
I also found a
Biblical Astronomy site online edited by Robert Scot Wadsworth that states
the name Mira for the bright star in Cetus is from the ancient Hebrew ‘marah’
meaning ‘rebel’, ‘rebellious’, ‘disobedient’ ~ a fitting star to be found in the
constellation representing Hell where Satan the rebel angel and all his
followers are doomed to remain for all eternity!
In ancient texts it
is common to see the gates of Hell depicted as a monster or whale swallowing
up the damned. You can find some incredible
examples in the following post published
in the British Library Medieval Manuscripts blog: “Prepare to Meet You Doom”. Oh heck, I'm borrowing one of their images... here it is:
(Image: detail of demons throwing sinner in to the mouth of hell from the 'Taymouth Hours', Yates Thompson MS 13, f. 142 r.)
Detail
of a bas-de-page scene showing the casting of souls into Hell, from the
‘Taymouth Hours’, - See more at:
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2014/02/prepare-to-meet-your-doom.html#sthash.4K2slu3g.dpuf
Detail
of a bas-de-page scene showing the casting of souls into Hell, from the
‘Taymouth Hours’, Yates Thompson MS 13, f. 142r. - See more at:
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2014/02/prepare-to-meet-your-doom.html#sthash.4K2slu3g.dpuf
There we have
it! Since it is believed Hell was
created for the devil and his angels before God turned His attentions to creating
the physical cosmos, if we take 5500 BC and observe the sun’s position in Cetus
in February, we can see how the scholars of those times arrived at their calculation,
February being before March, the month they believed God began his Great Work of Creation. Even when adjusting
the 5500 BC assumed date of Creation back and forth a decade or two, the sun is
still in Cetus, the Mouth of Hell. How
they arrived at the date, the 13th, I’m not sure: that’s another
mystery to unravel, which I shall leave to the experts in biblical astronomy.
***
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