Journey into the Afterlife in Palingenius’ Zodiacus vitae

The paper discusses the image of the afterlife as presented in Zodiacus vitae, a Latin-language philosophical
poem published in Venice in 1536, which caused its author, Marcello Palingenio Stellato, also
known as Palingenius, to be posthumously accused of heresy, exhumed and burned at the stake; his work
was listed in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (List of Prohibited Books). None of this, however, affected
the immense popularity that the poem for the next few centuries.
Although the main subjects of the work are issues of morality and ethics, it also includes elements of
the fantasy. In Book IX, which contitutes the elementary analysis, Palingenius takes his readers on a journey
to the Kingdom of the Moon, where the souls abide after death and where they are judged. Drawing
on the established descriptions of the netherworld, Palingenius presents his vision of a lunar Purgatory
and his Neoplatonic reflections on the nature of the soul and its destiny once it is freed of the bonds of
flesh.