The Gesta of 1300 A.D.A., also Florenzen, is the first gesta (campaign-cycle) of the Florentines: from Florence in 1300 A.D.A. down to the gate of Hell.
| Protagonists | Luca de’ Medici, Lucio Spini, Fernandín, Niki, Varys, Alberich |
| Spanish entry | Gesta de 1300 A.D.A. |
Florence
The guide is a semi-amnesiac Dante, Durante Alighieri, prior of Florence, back from Hell and Purgatory, having glimpsed Paradise, who fears he left a door open behind his verses. As prior (July–August) he votes to exile the heads of the Bianchi and Neri, some related to his wife’s family, the Donati. When a cursed emissary sickens his son, he asks the gonfalonier and Archbishop Zenobius for an escort of a Medici, a Spini and a German, founding the group. The plot: a secluded conclave of priors, a midnight-to-noon safe-conduct, a cross-shaped oath of secrecy, a plot to kill the poet. Their patron is Salvestro de’ Medici, gonfalonier of justice.
The journey
- In the selva oscura near Fiesole, the three furies and their double kill the page Fernandín; Niki, the Discalced Carmelite, replaces him.
- From Genoa they sail to Lusignan Cyprus and the Holy Land, meet Jacques de Molay, and face chromatic dragons: blue on the coast, green in the forest, and red, the “flame of Islam”, guarding Hell’s gate at the Horns of Hattin. Luca loses his left hand, which returns as a cursed mark.
- Beside Golgotha stands the Nobiskrug, inn-customs house of those who deny, “entrance to heaven or to Hell”. At Jericho (Ur-Draxa, the first city, turned garden) a shaft opens to the abyss. The stone all pursue, the black Grail, corrupts its bearer and opens or seals the gate.
The war of six armies
The greater design: gather the world’s dark powers (devils, the dead, void invaders, dragons, desert hosts) to be redeemed in one conflagration. The Florentines are its instruments, each tested by his flaw; one must make the ultimate sacrifice so that “everything is resolved”. Thence the long descent into Dante’s Hell; survivors bore the mark forever.
Open questions
- The chronicle breaks off: the war’s outcome and the fate of the stone, the red dragon and Jericho are unrecorded.