1797

The year 1797 marks the abrupt end of the Venetian Republic, a political extinction that frames the historical backdrop of Dan Brown's Inferno. Napoleon Bonaparte's conquest of Venice in that year terminated the office of the doge, a lineage that had ruled for over a millennium. This historical fact is essential for understanding the poem inscribed on the back of Dante's death mask, which instructs the protagonists to "Seek the treacherous doge of Venice." The poem's reference to a doge who "severed the heads from horses" and "plucked up the bones of the blind" points not to Napoleon but to Enrico Dandolo, the doge who led the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Dandolo's actions—ordering the decapitation of the Horses of St. Mark's for transport and stealing the relics of Saint Lucia from Constantinople—are the specific acts of treachery the poem describes. Napoleon's 1797 conquest, however, provides the historical terminus that makes the search for a doge a search for a figure from a bygone era, not a contemporary threat.

The End of the Doges

Napoleon's 1797 campaign swept away the Venetian Republic, a state that had endured since the early Middle Ages. The conquest was not merely a military victory but a political annihilation: the doge, the city's chief magistrate, was deposed, and the elaborate machinery of the Venetian government was dismantled. This event is referenced in the novel as the definitive end of the dogal era, a fact that Robert Langdon and Sienna Brooks rely on when they deduce that the "treacherous doge" they seek must be a historical figure, not a living one. The novel's narrative uses this historical rupture to emphasize that the clues left by Bertrand Zobrist are embedded in the deep past, requiring a knowledge of medieval and Renaissance history to decode.

The Horses of St. Mark's and the Fourth Crusade

The poem's line about a doge who "severed the heads from horses" is a direct reference to Enrico Dandolo's actions during the Fourth Crusade. In 1204, Dandolo's forces sacked Constantinople and looted the four bronze horses that now adorn St. Mark's Basilica. To facilitate their transport by ship, the horses' heads were cut off, a fact that Langdon recalls from his research. The decorative collars on the horses were added later to conceal the seams. This act of cultural plunder, not Napoleon's later removal of the horses to Paris in 1797, is the treachery the poem describes. The novel's characters, guided by the curator Ettore Vio, identify Dandolo as the doge who committed this act, linking him also to the theft of Saint Lucia's bones—the "bones of the blind"—from Constantinople.

The Significance of 1797 in the Narrative

While 1797 is not the year of the treacherous act itself, it serves as a crucial chronological marker in the novel's puzzle. The year 1797 is the endpoint of the dogal era, and it is this endpoint that allows Langdon to understand that the "treacherous doge" must be a figure from the past, not a contemporary. The novel's plot hinges on the deciphering of a poem that points to a specific historical figure, and the year 1797 provides the necessary historical context for that identification. Without the knowledge that the doges ceased to exist in 1797, the poem's reference to a doge would be ambiguous. The year thus functions as a temporal boundary, clarifying that the search is for a historical actor, not a modern one.

Thematic Resonance

1797 also resonates thematically with the novel's concerns about power, conquest, and the fragility of civilizations. Napoleon's conquest of Venice mirrors the novel's central anxiety about a catastrophic event—Zobrist's plague—that could similarly upend the existing order. The year marks a moment when a seemingly eternal institution (the Venetian Republic) was swept away, just as Zobrist's virus threatens to sweep away the current global order. The novel's use of 1797 thus reinforces its meditation on historical rupture and the potential for sudden, transformative change, whether through military conquest or biological catastrophe.