Astronomical Lore in Chaucer

UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA

STUDIES IN
LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND CRITICISM

Number 2

ASTRONOMICAL LORE IN CHAUCER

BY

FLORENCE M. GRIMM, A. M.
Assistant in the University of
Nebraska Library

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE

Louise Pound, Ph. D., Department of English
H. B. Alexander, Ph. D., Department of Philosophy
F. W. Sanford, A. B., Department of Latin.

LINCOLN
1919

CONTENTS

ASTRONOMICAL LORE IN CHAUCER

I

Astronomy in the Middle Ages

The conspicuousness of astronomical lore in the poetry of Chaucer is due to its importance in the life of his century. In the mediaeval period, astronomy (or ‘astrology,’ for the two names were used indifferently to cover the same subject) was one of the vital interests of men. The ordinary man of the Middle Ages knew much more than do most men to-day about the phenomena of the heavens; conveniences such as clocks, almanacs, and charts representing celestial phenomena were rare, and direct observations of the apparent movements and the relative positions of the heavenly bodies were necessary for the regulation of man’s daily occupations. Furthermore, the belief in a geocentric system of the universe, which in Chaucer’s century was almost universally accepted, was of vast significance in man’s way of thinking. Accepting this view, all the heavenly bodies seemed to have been created for the sole benefit of man, inhabiting the central position in the universe; their movements, always with reference to the earth as a center, brought to man light, heat, changes of season—all the conditions that made human life possible on the earth.

Not only did the man of the Middle Ages see in the regular movements of the celestial spheres the instruments by which God granted him physical existence, but in the various aspects of heavenly phenomena he saw the governing principles of his moral life. The arrangement of the heavenly bodies with regard to one another at various times was supposed to exert undoubted power over the course of terrestrial events. Each planet was thought to have special attributes and a special influence over men’s lives. Venus was the planet of love, Mars, of war and hostility, the sun, of power and honor, and so forth. Each was mysteriously connected with a certain color, with a metal, too, the alchemists said, and each had special power over some organ of the human body. The planet’s influence was believed to vary greatly according to its position in the heavens, so that to determine a man’s destiny accurately it was necessary to consider the aspect of the whole heavens, especially at the moment of his birth, but also at other times. This was called “casting the horoscope” and was regarded as of great importance in enabling a man to guard against threatening perils or bad tendencies, and to make the best use of favorable opportunities.

It is not astonishing, then, that the great monuments of literature in the mediaeval period and even much later are filled with astronomical and astrological allusions; for these are but reflections of vital human interests of the times. The greatest poetical work of the Middle Ages, Dante’s Divina Commedia, is rich in astronomical lore, and its dramatic action is projected against a cosmographical background reflecting the view of Dante’s contemporaries as to the structure of the world. Milton, writing in the seventeenth century, bases the cosmology of his Paradise Lost in the main on the Ptolemaic system, but makes Adam and the archangel Raphael discuss the relative merits of this system and the heliocentric view of the universe. The latter had been brought forth by Copernicus a century earlier, but even in Milton’s day had not yet succeeded in supplanting the old geocentric cosmology.

The view of the universe which we find reflected in Chaucer’s poetry is chiefly based on the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, though it shows traces of very much more primitive cosmological ideas. The Ptolemaic system owes its name to the famous Alexandrian astronomer of the second century A. D., Claudius Ptolemy, but is based largely on the works and discoveries of the earlier Greek philosophers and astronomers, especially Eudoxus, Hipparchus, and Aristarchus, whose investigations Ptolemy compiled and, along some lines, extended. Ptolemaic astronomy was a purely geometrical or mathematical system which represented the observed movements and relative positions of the heavenly bodies so accurately that calculations as to their positions at any given time could be based upon it. Ptolemy agreed with his contemporaries in the opinion that to assign causes for the celestial movements was outside the sphere of the astronomer. This was a proper field of philosophy; and the decisions of philosophers, especially those of Aristotle, were regarded as final, and their teaching as the basis upon which observed phenomena should be described.

According to the Ptolemaic system the earth is a motionless sphere fixed at the center of the universe. It can have no motion, for there must be some fixed point in the universe to which all the motions of the heavenly bodies may be referred; if the earth had motion, it was argued, this would be proportionate to the great mass of the earth and would cause objects and animals to fly off into the air and be left behind. Ptolemy believed this reason sufficient to make untenable the idea of a rotatory motion of the earth, although he was fully aware that to suppose such a motion of the earth would simplify exceedingly the representations of the celestial movements. It did not occur to him that to suppose the earth’s atmosphere to participate in its motion would obviate this difficulty. The earth was but a point in comparison with the immense sphere to which the stars were attached and which revolved about the earth once in every twenty-four hours, imparting its motion to sun, moon, and planets, thus causing day and night and the rising and setting of the heavenly bodies. The irregular motions of the planets were accounted for by supposing them to move on circles of small spheres called ‘epicycles’, the centres of which moved around the ‘deferents’, or circles of large spheres which carried the planets in courses concentric to the star sphere. By giving each of the planets an epicycle and deferent of the proper relative size and velocity the varied oscillations of the planets, as far as they could be followed by means of the simple instruments then in use, were almost perfectly accounted for.

Though it was a purely mathematical system which only attempted to give a basis for computing celestial motions, Ptolemaic astronomy is of great importance historically as it remained the foundation of theoretical astronomy for more than 1400 years. Throughout the long dark centuries of the Middle Ages it survived in the studies of the retired students of the monasteries and of the few exceptionally enlightened men who still had some regard for pagan learning in the days when many of the Church Fathers denounced it as heretical.

Ptolemy was the last of the great original Greek astronomers. The Alexandrian school produced, after him, only copyists and commentators, and the theoretical astronomy of the Greeks, so highly perfected in Ptolemy’s Almagest, was for many centuries almost entirely neglected. The Roman State gave no encouragement to the study of theoretical astronomy and produced no new school of astronomy. Although it was the fashion for a Roman to have a smattering of Greek astronomy, and famous Latin authors like Cicero, Seneca, Strabo and Pliny wrote on astronomy, yet the Romans cared little for original investigations and contributed nothing new to the science. The Romans, however, appreciated the value of astronomy in measuring time, and applied to the Alexandrian school to satisfy their practical need for a calendar. What Julius Caesar obtained from the Alexandrian Sosigenes, he greatly improved and gave to the Empire, as the calendar which, with the exception of the slight change made by Gregory XIII, we still use.

The pseudo-astronomical science of astrology, or the so-called ‘judicial astronomy’ was pursued during the Roman Empire and throughout the Middle Ages with much greater zeal than theoretical astronomy. The interest in astrology, to be sure, encouraged the study of observational astronomy to a certain extent; for the casting of horoscopes to foretell destinies required that the heavenly bodies be observed and methods of calculating their positions at any time or place be known. But there was no desire to inquire into the underlying laws of the celestial motions or to investigate the real nature of the heavenly phenomena.

If the Roman State did not encourage astronomy, the Roman Church positively discouraged it. The Bible became and long remained the sole authority recognized by the Church Fathers as to the constitution of the universe. By many of the Patristics Ptolemaic astronomy was despised; not because it did not describe accurately the observed phenomena of the heavens, for it did this in a way that could scarcely have been improved upon with the facilities for observation then available; and not because it was founded upon the false assumption that the earth is the motionless center of the universe about which all heavenly bodies revolve; but because there was no authority in Scripture for such a system, and it could not possibly be made consistent with the cosmology of Genesis. Allegorical descriptions of the universe based on the Scriptures held almost complete sway over the mediaeval mind. The whole universe was represented allegorically by the tabernacle and its furniture. The earth was flat and rectangular like the table of shew bread, and surrounded on all four sides by the ocean. The walls of heaven beyond this supported the firmament shaped like a half-cylinder. Angels moved the sun, moon, and stars across the firmament and let down rain through its windows from the expanse of water above.

By no means all of the early Church Fathers were wholly without appreciation of the fruits of Greek astronomical science. Origen and Clement of Alexandria, while believing in the scriptural allegories, tried to reconcile them with the results of pagan learning. In the West, Ambrose of Milan and later Augustine, were at least not opposed to the idea of the earth’s sphericity, and of the existence of antipodes, although they could not get away from the queer notion of the waters above the firmament. A few enlightened students like Philoponus of Alexandria, Isidore of Seville, the Venerable Bede, and Irish scholars like Fergil and Dicuil, studied the Greek philosophers and accepted some of the pagan scientific teachings.

Fortunately the study of those ancient Latin writers whose works had preserved some of the astronomy of the Greeks had taken firm root among the patient scholars of the monasteries, and slowly but steadily the geocentric system of cosmology was making its way back into the realm of generally accepted fact, so that by the ninth century it was the system adopted by nearly all scholars.

About the year 1000 began the impetus to learning which culminated in the great revival of the Renaissance. One cause of this intellectual awakening was the contact of Europe with Arab culture through the crusades and through the Saracens in Sicily and the Moors in Spain. The Arabian influence resulted in an increased sense of the importance of astronomy and astrology; for, while the scholars of the Christian world had been devising allegorical representations of the world based on sacred literature, the Arabian scholars had been delving into Greek science, translating Ptolemy and Aristotle, and trying to make improvements upon Ptolemaic astronomy. The spheres of the planets, which Ptolemy had almost certainly regarded as purely symbolical, the Arabs conceived as having concrete existence. This made it necessary to add a ninth sphere to the eight mentioned by Ptolemy; for it was thought sufficient that the eighth sphere should carry the stars and give them their slow movement of precession from west to east. This ninth sphere was the outermost of all and it originated the “prime motion” by communicating to all the inner spheres its diurnal revolution from east to west. In mediaeval astronomy it came to be known as the primum mobile or “first movable,” while a tenth and motionless sphere was added as the abode of God and redeemed souls. The sun and moon were included among the planets, which revolved about the earth in the order Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn.

At first the astronomy taught in the universities was based on Latin translations of Arabic commentaries and paraphrases of Aristotle, which had made their way into Europe through the Moors in Spain. For several centuries Aristotle represented in the eyes of most scholastics “the last possibility of wisdom and learning.” But by the middle of the thirteenth century Ptolemy began to be rediscovered. The Ptolemaic system of planetary motions was briefly described in a handbook compiled by John Halifax of Holywood, better known as Sacrobosco. Roger Bacon wrote on the spheres, the use of the astrolabe, and astrology, following Ptolemy in his general ideas about the universe. The great mediaeval scholar and philosopher, Thomas Aquinas, was also familiar with the Ptolemaic system; but to most of the men of the thirteenth century Ptolemy’s works remained quite unknown. The real revival of Greek astronomy took place in the fourteenth century when scholars began to realize that new work in astronomy must be preceded by a thorough knowledge of the astronomy of the Alexandrian school as exhibited in the Syntaxis of Ptolemy. It was then that Greek and Latin manuscripts of works on astronomy began to be eagerly sought for and deciphered, and a firm foundation constructed for the revival of theoretical astronomy.

II

Chaucer’s Scientific Knowledge

It was in the fourteenth century that Chaucer lived and wrote, and his interest in astronomical lore is, therefore, not surprising. Although the theories of astronomy current in Chaucer’s century have been made untenable by the De Revolutionibus Orbium of Copernicus, and by Kepler’s discovery of the laws of planetary motion; although the inaccurate and unsatisfactory methods of astronomical investigation then in use have been supplanted by the better methods made possible through Galileo’s invention of the telescope and through the modern use of spectrum analysis; yet, of all scientific subjects, the astronomy of that period could most nearly lay claim to the name of science according to the present acceptation of the term. For, as we have seen, the interest in astrology during the Middle Ages had fostered the study of observational astronomy, and this in turn had furnished the science a basis of fact and observation far surpassing in detail and accuracy that of any other subject.

Practically all of Chaucer’s writings contain some reference to the movements and relative positions of the heavenly bodies, and to their influence on human and mundane affairs, and in some of his works, especially the treatise on The Astrolabe, a very technical and detailed knowledge of astronomical and astrological lore is displayed. There is every reason to suppose that, so far as it satisfied his purposes, Chaucer had made himself familiar with the whole literature of astronomical science. His familiarity with Ptolemaic astronomy is shown in his writings both by specific mention[1] of the name of Ptolemy and his Syntaxis, commonly known as the ‘Almagest,’ and by many more general astronomical references.

Even more convincing evidence of Chaucer’s knowledge of the scientific literature of his time is given in his Treatise on the Astrolabe. According to Skeat, Part I and at least two-thirds of Part II are taken, with some expansion and alteration, from a work on the Astrolabe by Messahala[2], called, in the Latin translation which Chaucer used, “Compositio et Operatio Astrolabie.” This work may have been ultimately derived from a Sanskrit copy, but from Chaucer’s own words in the Prologue to the Astrolabe[3] it is clear that he made use of the Latin work. The rest of Part II may have been derived from some general compendium of astronomical and astrological knowledge, or from some other of the treatises on the Astrolabe which Chaucer says were common in his time.[4]

Other sources mentioned by Chaucer in The Astrolabe are the calendars of John Some and Nicholas Lynne, Carmelite friars who wrote calendars constructed for the meridian of Oxford[5]; and of the Arabian astronomer Abdilazi Alkabucius.[6] In The Frankeleyns Tale Chaucer mentions the Tabulae Toletanae,[7] a set of tables composed by order of Alphonso X, king of Castile, and so called because they were adapted to the city of Toledo. Works which served Chaucer not as sources of information on scientific subjects but as models for the treatment of astronomical lore in literature were the De Consolatione Philosophiae of Boethius, which Chaucer translated and often made use of in his poetry; and the works of Dante, whose influence on Chaucer, probably considerable, has been pointed out by several writers, notably Rambeau[8] who discusses the parallels between The Hous of Fame and the Divina Commedia.

III

Chaucer’s Cosmology

Chaucer wrote no poetical work having a cosmographical background as completely set forth as is that in Dante’s Divine Comedy or that in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Although his cosmological references are often incidental they are not introduced in a pedantic manner. Whenever they are not parts of interpolations from other writers his use of them is due to their intimate relation to the life his poetry portrays or to his appreciation of their poetic value. When Chaucer says, for example, that the sun has grown old and shines in Capricorn with a paler light than is his wont, he is not using a merely conventional device for showing that winter has come, but is expressing this fact in truly poetic manner and in words quite comprehensible to the men of his day, who were accustomed to think of time relations in terms of heavenly phenomena.

Popular and scientific views of the universe in Chaucer’s century were by no means the same. The untaught man doubtless still thought of the earth as being flat, as it appears to be, as bounded by the waters of the ocean, and as covered by a dome-like material firmament through which the waters above sometimes came as rain; while, as we have seen, by the fourteenth century among scholars the geocentric system of astronomy was firmly established and the spheres and epicycles of Ptolemy were becoming more widely known. It is the view held by the educated men of his century that Chaucer’s poetry chiefly reflects.

1. The Celestial Spheres and their Movements

When we read Chaucer we are transported into a world in which the heavenly bodies and their movements seem to bear a more intimate relation to human life than they do in the world in which we live. The thought of the revolving spheres carrying sun, moon, and planets, regulating light and heat on the earth, and exercising a mysterious influence over terrestrial events and human destiny was a sublime conception and one that naturally appealed to the imagination of a poet. Chaucer was impressed alike by the vastness of the revolving spheres in comparison to the earth’s smallness, by their orderly arrangement, and by the unceasing regularity of their appearance which seemed to show that they should eternally abide. In the Parlement of Foules he interpolates a passage from Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis in which Africanus appears to the sleeping Scipio, points out to him the insignificance of our little earth when compared with the vastness of the heavens and then admonishes him to regard the things of this world as of little importance when compared with the joys of the heavenly life to come.[9]

“Than shewed he him the litel erthe, that heer is,
At regard of the hevenes quantite;
And after shewed he him the nyne speres.”

The regular arrangement of the planetary spheres clings often to the poet’s fancy and he makes many allusions to their order in the heavens. He speaks of Mars as “the thridde hevenes lord above”[10] and of Venus as presiding over the “fifte cercle.”[11] In Troilus and Criseyde the poet invokes Venus as the adorning light of the third heaven.[12]

“O blisful light, of which the bemes clere
Adorneth al the thridde hevene faire!”[13]

Mediaeval astronomers as we have seen, imagined nine spheres, each of the seven innermost carrying with it one of the planets in the order mentioned below; the eighth sphere was that of the fixed stars, and to account for the precession of the equinoxes, men supposed it to have a slow motion from west to east, round the axis of the zodiac; the ninth or outermost sphere they called the primum mobile, or the sphere of first motion, and supposed it to revolve daily from east to west, carrying all the other spheres with it. The thought of the two outer spheres, the primum mobile, whirling along with it all the inner spheres, and the firmament, bearing hosts of bright stars, seems to have appealed strongly to the poet’s imagination. In the Tale of the Man of Lawe the primum mobile is described as crowding and hurling in diurnal revolution from east to west all the spheres that would naturally follow the slow course of the zodiac from west to east.[14] Elsewhere the primum mobile is called the “whele that bereth the sterres” and is said to turn the heavens with a “ravisshing sweigh:”

“O thou maker of the whele that bereth the sterres, which that art y-fastned to thy perdurable chayer, and tornest the hevene with a ravisshing sweigh, and constreinest the sterres to suffren thy lawe;”[15]

The firmament, which in Chaucer is not restricted to the eighth sphere but generally refers to the whole expanse of the heavens, is many times mentioned by Chaucer; and its appearance on clear or cloudy nights, its changing aspects before an impending storm or with the coming of dawn, beautifully described.[16]

2. The Harmony of the Spheres

Some of the cosmological ideas reflected in Chaucer’s writings can be traced back to systems older than the Ptolemaic. The beautiful fancy that the universe is governed by harmony had its origin in the philosophy of the Pythagoreans in the fourth century B. C., and continued to appeal to men’s imagination until the end of the Middle Ages. It was thought that the distances of the planetary spheres from one another correspond to the intervals of a musical scale and that each sphere as it revolves sounds one note of the scale. When asked why men could not hear the celestial harmony, the Pythagoreans said: A blacksmith is deaf to the continuous, regular beat of the hammers in his shop; so we are deaf to the music which the spheres have been sending forth from eternity.

In ancient and mediaeval cosmology it was only the seven spheres of the planets that were generally supposed to participate in this celestial music; but the poets have taken liberties with this idea and have given it to us in forms suiting their own fancies. Milton bids all the celestial spheres join in the heavenly melody:

“Ring out, ye crystal spheres,
Once bless our human ears,
If ye have power to touch our senses so;
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time,
And let the base of heaven’s deep organ blow;
And with your ninefold harmony,
Make up full consort to the angelic symphony.”[17]

Shakespeare lets every orb of the heavens send forth its note as it moves:

“There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;”[18]

Chaucer, too, makes all nine spheres participate:

“And after that the melodye herde he
That cometh of thilke speres thryes three,
That welle is of musyke and melodye
In this world heer, and cause of armonye.”[19]

Only in unusual circumstances can the music of the spheres be heard by mortal ears. In the lines just quoted the celestial melody is heard during a dream or vision. In Troilus and Criseyde, after Troilus’ death his spirit is borne aloft to heaven whence he beholds the celestial orbs and hears the melody sent forth as they revolve:

“And ther he saugh, with ful avysement,
The erratik sterres, herkeninge armonye
With sownes fulle of hevenish melodye.”[20]

3. The Cardinal Points and the Regions of the World

More primitive in origin than the harmony of the spheres are references to the four elements, to the divisions of the world, and to the cardinal points or quarters of the earth. Of these, probably the most primitive is the last. The idea of four cardinal points, the “before,” the “behind,” the “right,” and the “left,” later given the names North, South, East, and West, appears among peoples in their very earliest stages of civilization, and because of its great usefulness has remained and probably will remain throughout the history of the human race. Only one of Chaucer’s many references to the cardinal points need be mentioned. In the Man of Lawes Tale (B.491ff.) the cardinal points are first suggested by an allusion to the four ‘spirits of tempest,’ which were supposed to have their respective abodes in the four quarters of earth, and then specifically named in the lines following:

“Who bad the foure spirits of tempest,
That power han tanoyen land and see,
‘Bothe north and south, and also west and est,
Anoyeth neither see, ne land, ne tree?’”

Of almost equal antiquity are ideas of the universe as a threefold world having heaven above, earth below, and a region of darkness and gloom beneath the earth. Chaucer usually speaks of the threefold world, the “tryne compas,” as comprising heaven, earth and sea. Thus in the Knightes Tale:[21]

“‘O chaste goddesse of the wodes grene,
To whom bothe hevene and erthe and see is sene,
Quene of the regne of Pluto derk and lowe,’”

Fame’s palace is said to stand midway between heaven, earth and sea:

“Hir paleys stant, as I shal seye,
Right even in middes of the weye
Betwixen hevene, erthe, and see;”[22]

Again in The Seconde Nonnes Tale, the name ‘tryne compas’ is used of the threefold world and the three regions are mentioned:

“That of the tryne compas lord and gyde is,
Whom erthe and see and heven, out of relees,
Ay herien;”[23]

4. Heaven, Hell and Purgatory

In mediaeval cosmology ideas of heaven, hell, and purgatory, as more or less definitely located regions where the spirits of the dead were either rewarded or punished eternally, or were purged of their earthly sins in hope of future blessedness, play an important part. According to Dante’s poetic conception hell was a conical shaped pit whose apex reached to the center of the earth, purgatory was a mountain on the earth’s surface on the summit of which was located the garden of Eden or the earthly paradise, and heaven was a motionless region beyond space and time, the motionless sphere outside of the primum mobile, called the Empyrean.

Chaucer’s allusions to heaven, hell and purgatory are frequent but chiefly incidental and give no such definite idea of their location as we find in the Divine Comedy. The nearest Chaucer comes to indicating the place of heaven is in The Parlement of Foules, 55-6, where Africanus speaks of heaven and then points to the galaxy:

“And rightful folk shal go, after they dye,
To heven; and shewed him the galaxye.”

Chaucer describes heaven as “swift and round and burning”, thus to some extent departing from the conception of it usually held in his time:

“And right so as thise philosophres wryte
That heven is swift and round and eek brenninge,
Right so was fayre Cecilie the whyte.”[24]

In using the terms “swift and round” Chaucer must have been thinking of the primum mobile which, as we have seen, was thought to have a swift diurnal motion from east to west. His use of the epithet “burning” is in conformity with the mediaeval conception of the Empyrean, or heaven of pure light as it is described by Dante.

Chaucer does not describe the form and location of hell as definitely as does Dante, but the idea which he presents of it by incidental allusions, whether or not this was the view of it he himself held, is practically the one commonly held in his day. That hell is located somewhere within the depths of the earth is suggested in the Knightes Tale;[25]—

“His felawe wente and soghte him down in helle;”

and in the Man of Lawes Tale;[26]

“O serpent under femininitee,
Lyk to the serpent depe in helle y-bounde,”

In the Persones Tale hell is described as a horrible pit to which no natural light penetrates, filled with smoking flames and presided over by devils who await an opportunity to draw sinful souls to their punishment.[27] Elsewhere in the same tale the parson describes hell as a region of disorder, the only place in the world not subject to the universal laws of nature, and attributes this idea of it to Job:

“And eek Iob seith: that ‘in helle is noon ordre of rule.’ And al-be-it so that god hath creat alle thinges in right ordre, and no-thing with-outen ordre, but alle thinges been ordeyned and nombred; yet nathelees they that been dampned been no-thing in ordre, ne holden noon ordre.”[28]

The word purgatory seldom occurs in a literal sense in Chaucer’s poetry, but the figurative use of it is frequent. When the Wife of Bath is relating her experiences in married life she tells us that she was her fourth husband’s purgatory.[29] The old man, Ianuarie[30], contemplating marriage, fears that he may lose hope of heaven hereafter, because he will have his heaven here on earth in the joys of wedded life. His friend Iustinus sarcastically tells him that perhaps his wife will be his purgatory, God’s instrument of punishment, so that when he dies his soul will skip to heaven quicker than an arrow from the bow. To Arcite, released from prison on condition that he never again enter Theseus’ lands, banishment will be a worse fate than the purgatory of life imprisonment, for then even the sight of Emelye will be denied him:

“He seyde, ‘Allas that day that I was born!
Now is my prison worse than biforn;
Now is me shape eternally to dwelle
Noght in purgatorie, but in helle.’”[31]

The idea of purgatory, not as a place definitely located like Dante’s Mount of Purgatory, but rather as a period of punishment and probation, is expressed in these lines from The Parlement of Foules (78-84):

“‘But brekers of the lawe, soth to seyne,
And lecherous folk, after that they be dede,
Shul alwey whirle aboute therthe in peyne,
Til many a world be passed, out of drede,
And than, for-yeven alle hir wikked dede,
Than shul they come unto that blisful place,
To which to comen god thee sende his grace!’”

Chaucer uses the idea of paradise for poetical purposes quite as often as that of purgatory. He expresses the highest degree of earthly beauty or joy by comparing it with paradise. Criseyde’s face is said to be like the image of paradise.[32] Again, in extolling the married life, the poet says that its virtues are such

“‘That in this world it is a paradys.’”[33]

And later in the same tale, woman is spoken of as

“mannes help and his confort,
His paradys terrestre and his disport.”[34]

When Aeneas reaches Carthage he

“is come to Paradys
Out of the swolow of helle, and thus in Ioye
Remembreth him of his estat in Troye.”[35]

Chaucer mentions paradise several times in its literal sense as the abode of Adam and Eve before their fall. In the Monkes Tale we are told that Adam held sway over all paradise excepting one tree.[36] Again, the pardoner speaks of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise:

“Adam our fader, and his wyf also,
Fro Paradys to labour and to wo
Were driven for that vyce, it is no drede;
For whyl that Adam fasted, as I rede,
He was in Paradys; and whan that he
Eet of the fruyt defended on the tree,
Anon he was out-cast to we and peyne.”[37]

5. The Four Elements.

The idea of four elements[38] has its origin in the attempts of the early Greek cosmologists to discover the ultimate principle of reality in the universe.

Thales reached the conclusion that this principle was water, Anaximines, that it was air, and Heracleitus, fire, while Parmenides supposed two elements, fire or light, subtle and rarefied, and earth or night, dense and heavy. Empedocles of Agrigentum (about 450 B. C.) assumed as primary elements all four—fire, air, water, and earth—of which each of his predecessors had assumed only one or two. To explain the manifold phenomena of nature he supposed them to be produced by combinations of the elements in different proportions through the attractive and repulsive forces of ‘love’ and ‘discord.’ This arbitrary assumption of four elements, first made by Empedocles, persisted in the popular imagination throughout the Middle Ages and is, like other cosmological ideas of antiquity, sometimes reflected in the poetry of the time.

The elements in mediaeval cosmology were assigned to a definite region of the universe. Being mortal and imperfect they occupied four spheres below the moon, the elemental region or region of imperfection, as distinguished from the ethereal region above the moon. Immediately within the sphere of the moon came that of Fire, below this the Air, then Water, and lowest of all the solid sphere of Earth. Fire being the most ethereal of the elements constantly tends to rise upward, while Earth sinks towards the center of the universe. This contrast is a favorite idea with Dante, who says in the Paradiso i. 112-117:

“‘wherefore they move to diverse ports o’er the
great sea of being, and each one with
instinct given it to bear it on.
This beareth the fire toward the moon; this
is the mover in the hearts of things that die;
this doth draw the earth together and unite it.’”

Elsewhere Dante describes the lightning as fleeing its proper place when it strikes the earth:

“‘but lightning, fleeing its proper site, ne’er
darted as dost thou who art returning thither.’”[39]

And again:

“‘so from this course sometimes departeth the
creature that hath power, thus thrust, to swerve
to-ward some other part,
(even as fire may be seen to dart down from
the cloud) if its first rush be wrenched aside
to earth by false seeming pleasure.’”[40]

The same thought of the tendency of fire to rise and of earth to sink is found in Chaucer’s translation of Boethius:[41]

“Thou bindest the elements by noumbres proporcionables, ... that the fyr, that is purest, ne flee nat over hye, ne that the hevinesse ne drawe nat adoun over-lowe the erthes that ben plounged in the wateres.”

Chaucer does not make specific mention of the spheres of the elements, but he tells us plainly that each element has been assigned its proper region from which it may not escape:

“For with that faire cheyne of love he bond
The fyr, the eyr, the water, and the lond
In certeyn boundes, that they may nat flee;”[42]

The position of the elements in the universe is nevertheless made clear without specific reference to their respective spheres. The spirit of the slain Troilus ascends through the spheres to the seventh heaven, leaving behind the elements:

“And whan that he was slayn in this manere,
His lighte goost ful blisfully is went
Up to the holownesse of the seventh spere,
In converse letinge every element.”[43]

“Every element” here obviously means the sphere of each element; “holownesse” means concavity and “in convers” means ‘on the reverse side.’ The meaning of the passage is, then, that Troilus’ spirit ascends to the concave side of the seventh sphere from which he can look down upon the spheres of the elements, which have their convex surfaces towards him. This passage is of particular interest for the further reason that it shows that even in Chaucer’s century people still thought of the spheres as having material existence.

The place and order of the elements is more definitely suggested in a passage from Boethius in which philosophical contemplation is figuratively described as an ascent of thought upward through the spheres:

“‘I have, forsothe, swifte fetheres that surmounten the heighte of hevene. When the swifte thought hath clothed it-self in the fetheres, it despyseth the hateful erthes, and surmounteth the roundnesse of the grete ayr; and it seeth the cloudes behinde his bak; and passeth the heighte of the region of the fyr, that eschaufeth by the swifte moevinge of the firmament, til that he areyseth him in-to the houses that beren the sterres, and ioyneth his weyes with the sonne Phebus, and felawshipeth the wey of the olde colde Saturnus.’”[44]

In this passage all the elemental regions except that of water are alluded to and in the order which, in the Middle Ages, they were supposed to follow. When in the Hous of Fame, Chaucer is borne aloft into the heavens by Jupiter’s eagle, he is reminded of this passage in Boethius and alludes to it:

“And tho thoughte I upon Boece,
That writ, ‘a thought may flee so hye,
With fetheres of Philosophye,
To passen everich element;
And whan he hath so fer y-went,
Than may be seen, behind his bak,
Cloud, and al that I of spak.’”[45]

Empedocles, as we have seen, taught that the variety in the universe was caused by the binding together of the four elements in different proportions through the harmonizing principle of love, or by their separation through hate, the principle of discord. We find this idea also reflected in Chaucer who obviously got it from Boethius. Love is the organizing principle of the universe; if the force of love should in any wise abate, all things would strive against each other and the universe be transformed into chaos.[46]

The elements were thought to be distinguished from one another by peculiar natures or attributes. Thus the nature of fire was hot and dry, that of water cold and moist, that of air cold and dry, and that of earth hot and moist.[47] Chaucer alludes to these distinguishing attributes of the elements a number of times, as, for example, in Boethius, III.: Metre 9. 14 ff.:

“Thou bindest the elements by noumbres proporciounables, that the colde thinges mowen acorden with the hote thinges, and the drye thinges with the moiste thinges”;

In conclusion it should be said that all creatures occupying the elemental region or realm of imperfection below the moon were thought to have been created not directly by God but by Nature as his “vicaire” or deputy, or, in other words, by an inferior agency. Chaucer alludes to this in The Parlement of Foules briefly thus:

“Nature, the vicaire of thalmyghty lorde,
That hoot, cold, hevy, light, (and) moist and dreye
Hath knit by even noumbre of acorde,”[48]

and more at length in The Phisiciens Tale. Chaucer says of the daughter of Virginius that nature had formed her of such excellence that she might have said of her creation:

“‘lo! I, Nature,
Thus can I forme and peynte a creature,
Whan that me list; who can me countrefete?
Pigmalion noght, though he ay forge and bete,
Or grave, or peynte; for I dar wel seyn,
Apelles, Zanzis, sholde werche in veyn,
Outher to grave or peynte or forge or bete,
If they presumed me to countrefete.
For he that is the former principal
Hath maked me his vicaire general,
To forme and peynten erthely creaturis
Right as me list, and ech thing in my cure is
Under the mone, that may wane and waxe,
And for my werk right no-thing wol I axe;
My lord and I ben ful of oon accord;
I made hir to the worship of my lord.’”[49]

What is of especial interest for our purposes is found in the five lines of this passage beginning “For he that is the former principal,” etc. “Former principal” means ‘creator principal’ or the chief creator. God is the chief creator; therefore there must be other or inferior creators. Nature is a creator of inferior rank whom God has made his “vicaire” or deputy and whose work it is to create and preside over all things beneath the sphere of the moon.

IV

Chaucer’s Astronomy

Chaucer’s treatment of astronomical lore in his poetry differs much from his use of it in his prose writings. In poetical allusions to heavenly phenomena, much attention to detail and a pedantic regard for accuracy would be inappropriate. References to astronomy in Chaucer’s poetry are, as a rule rather brief, specific but not technical, often purely conventional but always truly poetic. There are, indeed, occasional passages in Chaucer’s poetry showing so detailed a knowledge of observational[50] astronomy that they would seem astonishing and, to many people, out of place, in modern poetry. They were not so in Chaucer’s time, when the exigencies of practical life demanded of the ordinary man a knowledge of astronomy far surpassing that possessed by most of our contemporaries. Harry Bailly in the Introduction to the Man of Lawes Tale determines the day of the month and hour of the day by making calculations from the observed position of the sun in the sky, and from the length of shadows, although, says Chaucer, “he were not depe expert in lore.”[51] Such references to technical details of astronomy as we find in this passage are, however, not common in Chaucer’s poetry; in his Treatise on the Astrolabe, on the other hand, a professedly scientific work designed to instruct his young son Louis in those elements of astronomy and astrology that were necessary for learning the use of the astrolabe, we have sufficient evidence that he was thoroughly familiar with the technical details of the astronomical science of his day.

In Chaucer’s poetry the astronomical references employed are almost wholly of two kinds: references showing the time of day or season of the year at which the events narrated are supposed to take place; and figurative allusions for purposes of illustration or comparison. Figurative uses of astronomy in Chaucer vary from simple similes as in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, where the friar’s eyes are compared to twinkling stars[52] to extended allegories like the Compleynt of Mars in which the myth of Venus and Mars is related by describing the motions of the planets Venus and Mars for a certain period during which Venus overtakes Mars, they are in conjunction[53] for a short time, and then Venus because of her greater apparent velocity leaves Mars behind. One of the most magnificent astronomical figures employed by Chaucer is in the Hous of Fame. Chaucer looks up into the heavens and sees a great golden eagle near the sun, a sight so splendid that men could never have beheld its equal ‘unless the heaven had won another sun:’

“Hit was of golde, and shone so bright,
That never saw men such a sighte,
But-if the heven hadde y-wonne
Al newe of golde another sonne;
So shoon the egles fethres brighte,
And somwhat dounward gan hit lighte.”[54]

Besides mentioning the heavenly bodies in time references and figurative allusions, Chaucer also employs them often in descriptions of day and night, of dawn and twilight, and of the seasons. It is with a poet’s joy in the warm spring sun that he writes:

“Bright was the day, and blew the firmament,
Phebus of gold his stremes doun hath sent,
To gladen every flour with his warmnesse.”[55]

and with a poet’s delight in the new life and vigor that nature puts forth when spring comes that he writes the lines:

“Forgeten had the erthe his pore estat
Of winter, that him naked made and mat,
And with his swerd of cold so sore greved;
Now hath the atempre sonne al that releved
That naked was, and clad hit new agayn.”[56]

Chaucer’s astronomical allusions, then, except in the Treatise on the Astrolabe and in his translation of Boethius de Consolatione Philosophiae, in which a philosophical interest in celestial phenomena is displayed, are almost invariably employed with poetic purpose. These poetical allusions to heavenly phenomena, however, together with the more technical and detailed references in Chaucer’s prose works give evidence of a rather extensive knowledge of astronomy. With all of the important observed movements of the heavenly bodies he was perfectly familiar and it is rather remarkable how many of these he uses in his poetry without giving one the feeling that he is airing his knowledge.

1. The Sun

Of all the heavenly bodies the one most often mentioned and employed for poetic purposes by Chaucer is the sun. Chaucer has many epithets for the sun, but speaks of him perhaps most often in the classical manner as Phebus or Apollo. He is called the “golden tressed Phebus”[57] or the “laurer-crowned Phebus;”[58] and when he makes Mars flee from Venus’ palace he is called the “candel of Ielosye.”[59] In the following passage Chaucer uses three different epithets for the sun within two lines:

“The dayes honour, and the hevenes ye,
The nightes fo, al this clepe I the sonne,
Gan westren faste, and dounward for to wrye,
As he that hadde his dayes cours y-ronne;”[60]

Sometimes Chaucer gives the sun the various accessories with which classical myth had endowed him—the four swift steeds, the rosy chariot and fiery torches:

“And Phebus with his rosy carte sone
Gan after that to dresse him up to fare.”[61]
“‘now am I war
That Pirous and tho swifte stedes three,
Which that drawen forth the sonnes char,
Hath goon some by-path in despyt of me;’”[62]
“Phebus, that was comen hastely
Within the paleys-yates sturdely,
With torche in honde, of which the stremes brighte
On Venus chambre knokkeden ful lighte.”[63]

Almost always when Chaucer wishes to mention the time of day at which the events he is relating take place, he does so by describing the sun’s position in the sky or the direction of his motion. We can imagine that Chaucer often smiled as he did this, for he sometimes humorously apologizes for his poetical conceits and conventions by expressing his idea immediately afterwards in perfectly plain terms. Such is the case in the passage already quoted where Chaucer refers to the sun by the epithets “dayes honour,” “hevenes ye,” and “nightes fo” and then explains them by saying “al this clepe I the sonne;” and in the lines:

“Til that the brighte sonne loste his hewe;
For thorisonte hath reft the sonne his light;”

explained by the simple words:

“This is as muche to seye as it was night.”[64]

Thus it is that Chaucer’s poetic references to the apparent daily motion of the sun about the earth are nearly always simply in the form of allusions to his rising and setting. Canacee in the Squieres Tale, (F. 384 ff.) is said to rise at dawn, looking as bright and fresh as the spring sun risen four degrees from the horizon.

“Up ryseth fresshe Canacee hir-selve,
As rody and bright as dooth the yonge sonne,
That in the Ram[65] is four degrees up-ronne;
Noon hyer was he, whan she redy was;”

Many of these references to the rising and setting of the sun might be mentioned, if space permitted, simply for their beauty as poetry. One of the most beautiful is the following:

“And fyry Phebus ryseth up so brighte,
That al the orient laugheth of the lighte,
And with his stremes dryeth in the greves
The silver dropes, hanging on the leves.”[66]

When, in the Canterbury Tales, the manciple has finished his tale, Chaucer determines the time by observing the position of the sun and by making calculations from the length of his own shadow:

“By that the maunciple hadde his tale al ended,
The sonne fro the south lyne was descended
So lowe, that he nas nat, to my sighte,
Degrees nyne and twenty as in highte.
Foure of the clokke it was tho, as I gesse;
For eleven foot, or litel more or lesse,
My shadwe was at thilke tyme, as there,
Of swich feet as my lengthe parted were
In six feet equal of porporcioun.”[67]

We must not omit mention of the humorous touch with which Chaucer, in the mock heroic tale of Chanticleer and the Fox told by the nun’s priest, makes even the rooster determine the time of day by observing the altitude of the sun in the sky:

“Chauntecleer, in al his pryde,
His seven wyves walkyng by his syde,
Caste up his eyen to the brighte sonne,
That in the signe of Taurus hadde y-ronne
Twenty degrees and oon, and somewhat more;
And knew by kynde, and by noon other lore,
That it was pryme, and crew with blisful stevene.
‘The sonne,’ he sayde, ‘is clomben up on hevene
Fourty degrees and oon, and more, y-wis.’”[68]

Moreover, this remarkable rooster observed that the sun had passed the twenty-first degree in Taurus, and we are told elsewhere that he knew each ascension of the equinoctial and crew at each; that is, he crew every hour, as 15° of the equinoctial correspond to an hour:

“Wel sikerer was his crowing in his logge,
Than is a clokke, or an abbey orlogge.
By nature knew he ech ascencioun[69]
Of th’ equinoxial in thilke toun;
For whan degrees fiftene were ascended,
Thanne crew he, that it mighte nat ben amended.”[70]

Chaucer announces the approach of evening by describing the position and appearance of the sun more often than any other time of the day. In the Legend of Good Women he speaks of the sun’s leaving the south point[71] of his daily course and approaching the west:

“Whan that the sonne out of the south gan weste,”[72]

and again of his westward motion in the lines:

“And whan that hit is eve, I rene blyve,
As sone as ever the sonne ginneth weste,”[73]

Elsewhere Chaucer refers to the setting of the sun by saying that he has completed his “ark divine” and may no longer remain on the horizon,[74] or by saying that the ‘horizon has bereft the sun of his light.’[75]

Chaucer’s references to the daily motion of the sun about the earth are apt to sound to us like purely poetical figures, so accustomed are we to refer to the sun, what we know to be the earth’s rotatory motion, by speaking of his apparent daily motion thus figuratively as if it were real. Chaucer’s manner of describing the revolution of the heavenly bodies about the earth and his application of poetic epithets to them are figurative, but the motion itself was meant literally and was believed in by the men of his century, because only the geocentric system of astronomy was then known. If Chaucer had been in advance of his century in this respect there would certainly be some hint of the fact in his writings.

References in Chaucer to the sun’s yearly motion are in the same sense literal. The apparent motion of the sun along the ecliptic,[76] which we know to be caused by the earth’s yearly motion in an elliptical orbit around the sun, was then believed to be an actual movement of the sun carried along by his revolving sphere. Like the references to the sun’s daily movements those that mention his yearly motion along the ecliptic are also usually time references. The season of the year is indicated by defining the sun’s position among the signs of the zodiac. The Canterbury pilgrims set out on their journey in April when

“the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe course y-ronne.”[77]

In describing the month of May, Chaucer does not fail to mention the sun’s position in the zodiac:

“In May, that moder is of monthes glade,
That fresshe floures, blewe, and whyte, and rede,
Ben quike agayn, that winter dede made,
And ful of bawme is fletinge every mede;
Whan Phebus doth his brighte bemes sprede
Right in the whyte Bole, it so bitidde
As I shal singe, on Mayes day the thridde,”[78] etc.

The effect of the sun’s declination in causing change of seasons[79] is mentioned a number of times in Chaucer’s poetry. The poet makes a general reference to the fact in a passage of exquisite beauty from Troilus and Criseyde where he says that the sun has thrice returned to his lofty position in the sky and melted away the snows of winter:

“The golden-tressed Phebus heighe on-lofte
Thryes hadde alle with his bemes shene
The snowes molte, and Zephirus as ofte
Y-brought ayein the tendre leves grene,
Sin that the sone of Ecuba the quene
Bigan to love hir first, for whom his sorwe
Was al, that she departe sholde a-morwe.”[80]

More interesting astronomically but of less interest as poetry is his reference to the sun’s declination and its effect on the seasons in the Frankeleyns Tale, because here Chaucer uses the word ‘declination’ and states that it is the cause of the seasons. The reference is the beginning of Aurelius’ prayer to Apollo, or the sun:

“‘Apollo, God and governour
Of every plaunte, herbe, tree and flour,
That yevest, after thy declinacioun,
To ech of hem his tyme and his sesoun,
As thyn herberwe chaungeth lowe or hye;’”[81]

Once again in the Frankeleyns Tale Chaucer refers to the sun’s declination and the passage of the seasons:

“Phebus wex old, and hewed lyk latoun,[82]
That in his hote declinacioun
Shoon as the burned gold with stremes brighte;
But now in Capricorn adoun he lighte,
Wher-as he shoon ful pale, I dar wel seyn.”[83]

Chaucer is here contrasting the sun’s appearance in summer and winter. In his hot declination (his greatest northward declination in Cancer, about June 21) he shines as burnished gold, but when he reaches Capricornus, his greatest southward declination (about December 21) he appears ‘old’ and has a dull coppery color, no longer that of brilliant gold.

2. The Moon

From those references to the moon that occur in Chaucer’s poetry alone, it would be impossible to determine just how much he knew of the peculiarities of her apparent movements; for he alludes to the moon’s motion and positions much less frequently and with much less detail than to those of the sun. But a passage in the prologue to the Astrolabe leaves it without doubt that Chaucer was quite familiar with lunar phenomena. In stating what the treatise is to contain, he says of the fourth part: “The whiche ferthe partie in special shal shewen a table of the verray moeving of the mone from houre to houre, every day and in every signe, after thyn almenak; upon which table ther folwith a canon, suffisant to teche as wel the maner of the wyrking of that same conclusioun, as to knowe in oure orizonte with which degree of the zodiac that the mone ariseth in any latitude;”[84] As a matter of fact the treatise as first contemplated by Chaucer was never finished; only the first two parts were written. But Chaucer would scarcely have written thus definitely of his plan for the fourth part of the work unless he had had fairly complete knowledge of the phenomena connected with the moon’s movements.

The moon, in Chaucer’s imagination, must have occupied rather an insignificant position among the heavenly bodies as far as appealing to his sense of beauty was concerned, for we find in his poetry no descriptions of her appearance that can compare with his descriptions of the sun or even of the stars. He speaks of moonrise in the most general way:

“hit fil, upon a night,
When that the mone up-reysed had her light,
This noble quene un-to her reste wente;”[85]

He applies to her only a few epithets, the most eulogistic of which is “Lucina the shene.”[86] In comparing the sun with the other heavenly bodies the poet mentions the moon among the rest without distinction, as inferior to the sun:

“For I dar swere, withoute doute,
That as the someres sonne bright
Is fairer, clerer, and hath more light
Than any planete, (is) in heven,
The mone, or the sterres seven,
For al the worlde, so had she
Surmounted hem alle of beaute,” etc.[87]

On the other hand, the stars are elsewhere said to be like small candles in comparison with the moon:

“And cleer as (is) the mone-light,
Ageyn whom alle the sterres semen
But smale candels, as we demen.”[88]

Whenever Chaucer mentions the moon’s position in the heavens he does so by reference to the signs of the zodiac[89] and, as in the case of the sun, usually with the purpose of showing time. In the Marchantes Tale he expresses the passage of four days thus:

“The mone that, at noon, was, thilke day
That Ianuarie hath wedded fresshe May,
In two of Taur, was in-to Cancre gliden;
So long hath Maius in hir chambre biden,”[90]

and a few lines further on he states the fact explicitly:

“The fourthe day compleet fro noon to noon,
Whan that the heighe masse was y-doon,
In halle sit this Ianuarie, and May
As fresh as is the brighte someres day.”[91]

When Criseyde leaves Troilus to go to the Greek army she promises to return to Troy within the time that it will take the moon to pass from Aries through Leo, that is, within ten days:

“‘And trusteth this, that certes, herte swete,
Er Phebus suster, Lucina the shene,
The Leoun passe out of this Ariete,
I wol ben here, with-outen any wene.
I mene, as helpe me Iuno, hevenes quene,
The tenthe day, but-if that deeth me assayle,
I wol yow seen, with-outen any fayle.’”[92]

But while the moon is quickly traversing the part of her course from Aries to Leo, Criseyde, pressed by Diomede, is changing her mind about returning to Troy, and by the appointed tenth day has decided to remain with the Greeks:

“And Cynthea[93] hir char-hors over-raughte
To whirle out of the Lyon, if she mighte;
And Signifer[94] his candeles shewed brighte,
Whan that Criseyde un-to hir bedde wente
In-with hir fadres faire brighte tente.
. . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . and thus bigan to brede
The cause why, the sothe for to telle,
That she tok fully purpos for to dwelle.”[95]

The passage of time is also indicated in Chaucer’s poetry by reference to the recurrence of the moon’s phases. In the Legend of Good Women, Phillis writes to the false Demophon saying that the moon has passed through its phases four times since he went away and thrice since the time he promised to return:

“‘Your anker, which ye in our haven leyde,
Highte us, that ye wolde comen, out of doute,
Or that the mone ones wente aboute.
But tymes foure the mone hath hid her face
Sin thilke day ye wente fro this place,
And foure tymes light the world again.’”[96]

Chaucer refers more often to the phases of the moon than to any other lunar phenomenon, but most of these references to her phases are used for the sake of comparison or illustration and give us little idea of the extent of Chaucer’s knowledge. Mars in his ‘compleynt’ says that the lover

“Hath ofter wo then changed is the mone.”[97]

The rumors in the house of fame are given times of waxing and waning like the moon:

“Thus out at holes gonne wringe
Every tyding streight to Fame;
And she gan yeven eche his name,
After hir disposicioun,
And yaf hem eek duracioun,
Some to wexe and wane sone,
As dooth the faire whyte mone,
And leet hem gon.”[98]

Chaucer briefly describes the crescent moon by calling her

“The bente mone with hir hornes pale.”[99]

In Troilus’ prayer to the moon, the line

“‘I saugh thyn hornes olde eek by the morwe,’”[100]

is practically the only one in which Chaucer gives any hint of the times at which the moon in her various phases may be seen. The phase of the ‘new moon,’ when the moon is in conjunction with the sun (i. e., between the earth and the sun, so that we cannot see the illuminated hemisphere of the moon) is mentioned in the same poem:

“Right sone upon the chaunging of the mone,
Whan lightles is the world a night or tweyne.”[101]

There is a very definite description of three of the moon’s phases in the following passage from Boethius:[102] “so that the mone som-tyme shyning with hir ful hornes, meting with alle the bemes of the sonne hir brother, hydeth the sterres that ben lesse; and som-tyme, whan the mone, pale with hir derke hornes, approcheth the sonne, leseth hir lightes;” The moon ‘shining with her full horns’ means with her horns filled up as at full moon when she is in a position opposite both earth and sun so that she reflects upon the earth all the rays of the sun. The moon “with derke hornes” refers of course to the waning moon, a thin crescent near the sun and almost obscured in his light, which approaching nearer the sun is entirely lost to our view in his rays and becomes the new moon.

Chaucer’s most interesting references to the moon are found in the prayer of Aurelius to the sun in the Frankeleyns Tale. Dorigen has jestingly promised to have pity on Aurelius as soon as he shall remove all the rocks from along the coast of Brittany, and Aurelius prays to the sun, or Apollo, to help him by enlisting the aid of the moon, in accomplishing this feat. The sun’s sister, Lucina, or the moon, is chief goddess of the sea; just as she desires to follow the sun and be quickened and illuminated by him, so the sea desires to follow her:

“‘Your blisful suster, Lucina the shene,
That of the see is chief goddesse and quene,
Though Neptunus have deitee in the see,
Yet emperesse aboven him is she:
Ye knowen wel, lord, that right as hir desyr
Is to be quiked and lightned of your fyr,
For which she folweth yow ful bisily,
Right so the see desyreth naturelly
To folwen hir, as she that is goddesse
Bothe in the see and riveres more and lesse.’”[103]

In calling Lucina chief goddess of the sea and speaking of the sea’s desire to follow her, Chaucer is, of course alluding to the moon’s effect upon the tides; and in the line:

“‘Is to be quiked and lightned of your fyr,’”

the reference is to the fact that the moon derives her light from the sun.

Instead of leaving it to the sun-god to find a way of removing the rocks for him, Aurelius proceeds to give explicit instructions as to how this may be accomplished. As the highest tides occur when the moon is in opposition or in conjunction with the sun, if the moon could only be kept in either of these positions with regard to the sun for a long enough time, so great a flood would be produced, Aurelius thinks, that the rocks would be washed away. So he prays Phebus to induce the moon to slacken her speed at her next opposition in Leo and for two years to traverse her sphere with the same (apparent) velocity as that of the sun, thus remaining in opposition with him:

“‘Wherfore, lord Phebus, this is my requeste—
Do this miracle, or do myn herte breste—
That now, next at this opposicioun,
Which in the signe shal be of the Leoun,
As preyeth hir so greet a flood to bringe,
That fyve fadme at the leeste it overspringe
The hyeste rokke in Armorik Briteyne;
And lat this flood endure yeres tweyne;
. . . . . . . . . .
Preye hir she go no faster cours than ye,
I seye, preyeth your suster that she go
No faster cours than ye thise yeres two.
Than shal she been evene atte fulle alway,
And spring-flood laste bothe night and day.’”[104]

References to eclipses of the moon occur seldom in Chaucer. In the second part of the Romaunt of the Rose, which is included in complete editions of Chaucer’s works but which he almost certainly did not write, there is a description of a lunar eclipse and of its causes. Fickleness in love is compared to an eclipse:

“For it shal chaungen wonder sone,
And take eclips right as the mone,
Whan she is from us (y)-let
Thurgh erthe, that bitwixe is set
The sonne and hir, as it may falle,
Be it in party, or in alle;
The shadowe maketh her bemis merke,
And hir hornes to shewe derke,
That part where she hath lost hir lyght
Of Phebus fully, and the sight;
Til, whan the shadowe is overpast,
She is enlumined ageyn as faste,
Thurgh brightnesse of the sonne bemes
That yeveth to hir ageyn hir lemes.”[105]

This passage is so clear that it needs no explanation.

An eclipse of the moon, since it is caused by the passing of the moon into the shadow of the earth, can only take place when the moon is full, that is, in opposition to the sun. This fact is suggested in a reference in Boethius to a lunar eclipse:

“the hornes of the fulle mone wexen pale and infect by the boundes of the derke night;”[106]

In the next lines Chaucer mentions the fact that the stars which are lost to sight in the bright rays of the full moon become visible during an eclipse:

“and ... the mone, derk and confuse, discovereth the sterres that she hadde y-covered by hir clere visage.”[107]

3. The Planets

All the planets that are easily visible to the unaided eye were known in Chaucer’s time and are mentioned in his writings, some of them many times. These planets are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. According to the Ptolemaic system, which as we have seen, held sway in the world of learning during Chaucer’s century, the sun and moon were also held to be planets, and all were supposed to revolve around the earth in concentric rings, the moon being nearest the earth, and the sun between Venus and Mars. The circular orbit of each planet was called its “deferent” and upon the deferent moved, not the planet itself, but an imaginary planet, represented by a point. The real planet moved upon a smaller circle called the “epicycle” whose center was the moving point representing the imaginary planet. The deferent of each planet was supposed to be traced as a great circle upon a transparent separate crystal sphere; and all of the crystal spheres revolved once a day around an axis passing through the poles of the heavens. As the sun and moon did not show the same irregularities[108] of motion as the planets, Ptolemy supposed these two bodies to have deferents but no epicycles. Later investigators complicated the system by adding further secondary imaginary planets, revolving in Ptolemy’s epicycles and with the actual planets attached to additional corresponding epicycles. They even supposed the moon to have one, perhaps two epicycles and we shall find this notion reflected in Chaucer. The eighth sphere had neither deferent nor epicycle but to it were attached the fixed stars. This sphere as we have seen earlier, revolved slowly from west to east to account for the precession of the equinoxes, while a ninth sphere, the primum mobile, imparted to all the inner spheres their diurnal motion from east to west.

Chaucer’s poetical references to the planets, as we have found to be true in the case of the sun and moon, do not give us satisfactory evidence of the extent of his knowledge, but occasional passages from his prose works again throw light on these allusions. Chaucer refers to the planets in general as ‘the seven stars,’ as, for instance, in the lines:

“And with hir heed she touched hevene,
Ther as shynen sterres sevene.”[109]

and

“To have mo floures, swiche seven
As in the welken sterres be.”[110]

Chaucer was undoubtedly familiar with the irregularities of the planetary movements, and with the theory of epicycles by which these irregular movements were in his day explained, although it is not from his poetry that we can learn the fact. He uses the word ‘epicycle’ only once in all his works. In the Astrolabe when comparing the moon’s motion with that of the other planets, he says: “for sothly, the mone moeveth the contrarie from othere planetes as in hir episicle, but in non other manere.”[111]

In the Astrolabe[112] Chaucer explains a method of determining whether a planet’s motion is retrograde or direct.[113] The altitude of the planet and of any fixed star, is taken, and several nights later at the time when the fixed star has the same altitude as at the previous observation, the planet’s altitude is again observed. If the planet is on the right or east side of the meridian, and its second altitude is less than its first, then the planet’s motion is direct. If the planet is on the left or west side of the meridian, and has a smaller altitude at the second observation than at the first, then the planet’s motion is retrograde. If the planet is on the east side of the meridional line when its altitude is taken and the second altitude is greater than the first, it is retrograde; and if it is on the west side and its second altitude is greater, it is direct. This method would be correct were it not that a change in the planet’s declination or angular distance from the celestial equator might render the conclusions incorrect.

Chaucer mentions the irregularity of planetary movements in Boethius also when he says: “and whiche sterre in hevene useth wandering recourses, y-flit by dyverse speres.”[114] The expression “y-flit by dyverse speres” may have reference only to the one motion of the planets, that is, their motion concentric to the star-sphere; or it may be used to include also their epicyclic motion. Skeat interprets the expression in the former way; but the context, it seems, would justify interpreting the words “dyverse speres” as meaning the various spheres of the planets to-gether with their epicycles; i. e., both deferents and epicycles.

Of all the planets, that most often mentioned by Chaucer is Venus, partly, no doubt, because of her greater brilliance, but probably in the main because of her greater astrological importance; for few of Chaucer’s references to Venus, or to any other planet, indeed, are without astrological significance. Chaucer refers to Venus, in the classical manner, as Hesperus when she appears as evening[115] star and as Lucifer when she is seen as the morning star: “and that the eve-sterre Hesperus, which that in the firste tyme of the night bringeth forth hir colde arysinges, cometh eft ayein hir used cours, and is pale by the morwe at the rysing of the sonne, and is thanne cleped Lucifer.”[116] Her appearance as morning star is again mentioned in the same work: “and after that Lucifer the day-sterre hath chased awey the derke night, the day the fairere ledeth the rosene hors of the sonne,”[117] and in Troilus and Criseyde where it is said that

“Lucifer, the dayes messager,
Gan for to ryse, and out hir bemes throwe;”[118]

Elsewhere in the same poem her appearance as evening star is mentioned but she is not this time called Hesperus:

“The brighte Venus folwede and ay taughte
The wey, ther brode Phebus doun alighte;”[119]

Occasionally Venus is called Cytherea, from the island near which Greek myth represented her as having arisen from the sea. Thus in the Knightes Tale:

“He roos, to wenden on his pilgrimage
Un-to the blisful Citherea benigne,
I mene Venus, honurable and digne.”[120]

and in the Parlement of Foules;

“Citherea! thou blisful lady swete,”[121]

The relative positions of the different planets in the heavens is suggested by allusions to the different sizes of their spheres and to their different velocities. In the Compleynt of Mars the comparative sizes and velocities of the spheres of Mercury, Venus and Mars are made the basis for most of the action of the poem. The greater the sphere or orbit of a planet, the slower is its apparent motion. Thus Mars in his large sphere moves about half as fast as Venus and in the poem it is planned that when Mars reaches the next palace[122] of Venus, he shall by virtue of his slower motion, wait for her to overtake him:

“That Mars shal entre, as faste as he may glyde,
Into hir nexte paleys, to abyde,
Walking his cours til she had him a-take,
And he preyde hir to haste hir for his sake.”[123]

Venus in compassion for his solitude hastens to overtake her knight:

“She hath so gret compassion of hir knight,
That dwelleth in solitude til she come;
. . . . . . . . . . .
Wherefore she spedde hir as faste in her weye,
Almost in oon day, as he dide in tweye.”[124]

When Phebus comes into the palace with his fiery torch, Mars will not flee and cannot hide, so he girds himself with sword and armour and bids Venus flee. Phebus, who in Chaucer’s time was regarded as the fourth planet, can overtake Mars but not Venus because his sphere is between theirs and his motion is consequently slower than that of Venus but faster than that of Mars:

“Flee wolde he not, ne mighte him-selven hyde.
He throweth on his helm of huge wighte,
And girt him with his swerde; and in his honde
His mighty spere, as he was wont to fighte,
He shaketh so that almost it to-wonde;
Ful hevy he was to walken over londe;
He may not holde with Venus companye,
But bad hir fleen, lest Phebus hir espye.

“O woful Mars! alas! what mayst thou seyn,
That in the paleys of thy disturbaunce
Art left behinde, in peril to be sleyn?
. . . . . . . . . . .
That thou nere swift, wel mayst thou wepe and cryen.”[125]

In spite of his sorrow, Mars patiently continues to follow Venus, lamenting as he goes that his sphere is so large:

“He passeth but oo steyre in dayes two,
But ner the les, for al his hevy armure,
He foloweth hir that is his lyves cure;[126]
. . . . . . . . .
After he walketh softely a pas,
Compleyning, that hit pite was to here.
He seyde, ‘O lady bright, Venus! alas!
That ever so wyde a compass is my spere!
Alas! whan shal I mete yow, herte dere,’” etc.[127]

Meanwhile Venus has passed on to Mercury’s palace where he soon overtakes her and receives her as his friend:[128]

“hit happed for to be,
That, whyl that Venus weping made hir mone,
Cylenius, ryding in his chevauche,
Fro Venus valance mighte his paleys see,
And Venus he salueth, and maketh chere,
And hir receyveth as his frend ful dere.”[129]

Mercury’s palace was the sign Gemini and Venus’ valance, probably meaning her detrimentum or the sign opposite her palace, was Aries. ‘Chevauche’ means an equestrian journey or ride, and is here used in the sense of ‘swift course.’ The passage, then, simply refers to the swift motion by which in a very short time Mercury passes from Aries to a position near enough to that of Venus in Gemini so that he can see her and give her welcome. Mercury’s sphere being the smallest of the planets, his motion is also the swiftest.

The size of Jupiter’s orbit is not mentioned in Chaucer and that of Saturn’s only once. In the Knightes Tale Saturn, addressing Venus, speaks of the great distance that he traverses with his revolving sphere but does not compare the size of his sphere with those of the other planets:

“‘My dere doghter Venus,’ quod Saturne,
‘My cours, that hath so wyde for to turne,
Hath more power than wot any man.’”[130]

Besides the reference in the Compleynt of Mars to the conjunction of Venus and Mars[131], there are occasional references in Chaucer to conjunctions of other planets. In the Astrolabe[132] Chaucer explains a method of determining in what position in the heavens a conjunction of the sun and moon takes place, when the time of the conjunction is known. A conjunction of the moon with Saturn and Jupiter is mentioned in Troilus and Criseyde, in the lines:

“The bente mone with hir hornes pale,
Saturne, and Iove, in Cancro ioyned were,”[133]

4. The Galaxy

The Galaxy or Milky Way, which stretches across the heavens like a broad band whitish in color caused by closely crowded stars, has appealed to men’s imagination since very early times. Its resemblance to a road or street has been suggested in the names given to it by many peoples. Ovid called it via lactea and the Roman peasants, strada di Roma; pilgrims to Spain referred to it as the road to Santiago; Dante refers to it as “the white circle commonly called St. Janus’s Way”[134]; and the English had two names for it, Walsingham way and Watling-street.

Chaucer twice mentions the Galaxy; once in the Parlement of Foules, where Africanus shows Scipio the location of heaven by pointing to the Galaxy:

“And rightful folk shal go, after they dye,
To heven; and shewed him the galaxye.”[135]

In the Hous of Fame, the golden eagle who bears Chaucer through the heavens toward Fame’s palace, points out to him the Galaxy and then relates the myth of Phaeton driving the chariot of the sun, a story traditionally associated with the Milky Way:

‘Now,’ quod he tho, ‘cast up thyn ye;
See yonder, lo, the Galaxye,
Which men clepeth the Milky Wey,
For hit is whyt: and somme, parfey,
Callen hit Watlinge Strete:
That ones was y-brent with hete,
Whan the sonnes sone, the rede,
That highte Pheton, wolde lede
Algate his fader cart, and gye.
The cart-hors gonne wel espye
That he ne coude no governaunce,
And gonne for to lepe and launce,
And beren him now up, now doun,
Til that he saw the Scorpioun,
Which that in heven a signe is yit.
And he, for ferde, loste his wit,
Of that, and lest the reynes goon
Of his hors; and they anoon
Gonne up to mounte, and doun descende
Til bothe the eyr and erthe brende;
Til Iupiter, lo, atte laste,
Him slow, and fro the carte caste.’[136]

In narrating this story here, Chaucer may have been imitating Dante who refers to the myth in the Divine Comedy:

“What time abandoned Phaeton the reins,
Whereby the heavens, as still appears, were scorched,”[137]

and states its source and the use made of it by some philosophers in the Convivio:

“For the Pythagoreans affirmed that the sun at one time wandered in its course, and in passing through other regions not suited to sustain its heat, set on fire the place through which it passed; and so these traces of the conflagration remain there. And I believe that they were influenced by the fable of Phaeton, which Ovid tells at the beginning of the second book of the Metamorphoses.”[138]

V

Astrological Lore in Chaucer

Astrology, though resembling a science in that it makes use of observation and seeks to establish laws governing its data, is in reality a faith or creed. It had its beginning, so tradition tells us, in the faith of the ancient Babylonians in certain astral deities who exerted an influence upon terrestrial events and human life. The basis of this faith was not altogether illogical but contained a germ of truth.

Of all the heavenly bodies, the sun exerted the most obvious effect upon the earth; the sun brought day and night, summer and winter; his rays lured growing things from mother earth and so gave sustenance to mankind. But to the ancient peoples of the Orient the sun was also often a baneful power; he could destroy as well as give life. Therefore, the ancients came to look upon the sun as a great and powerful god to be worshipped and propitiated by men. And if the sun was such a power, it was natural to believe that all the other bright orbs of the sky were lesser divinities who exercised more limited powers on the earth. From this beginning, based, as we have seen, on a germ of fact, by the power of his imagination and credulity, man extended more and more the powers of these sidereal divinities, attributing to their volition and influence all the most insignificant as well as the most important terrestrial events. And if the heavenly bodies, by revolving about the earth in ceaseless harmony, effected the recurrence of day and night and of the seasons, and if their configurations were responsible for the minutest events in nature, was it not natural to suppose that, besides affecting man thus indirectly, they also influenced him directly and were responsible for his conduct and for the very qualities of his mind and soul? Perhaps the astonishing variety of the influences that the celestial bodies, from ancient until modern times, were supposed to exercise over the world and the life of mankind can be accounted for by imagining some such process of thought to have been involved in the beginnings of astrology.

It was but a step from faith in stellar influence on our earth to the belief that, as the heavenly movements were governed by immutable laws, so their influence upon the world would follow certain laws and its effects in the future could be determined as certainly as could the coming revolutions and conjunctions of the stars. Out of this two-fold belief was evolved a complex system of divination, the origin of which was forgotten as men, believing in it, invented reasons for believing, pretending that their faith was founded on a long series of observations. The Chaldeans believed that in discovering the unceasing regularity of the celestial motions, they had found the very laws of life and they built upon this conviction a mass of absolutely rigid dogmas. But when experience belied these dogmas, unable to realize the falsity of their presuppositions and to give up their faith in the divine stars, the astrologers invented new dogmas to explain the old ones, thus piling up a body of complicated and often contradictory doctrines that will ever be to the student a source of perplexity and astonishment.

On its philosophical side astrology was a system of astral theology developed, not by popular thought, but through the careful observations and speculations of learned priests and scholars. It was a purely Eastern science which came into being on the Chaldean plains and in the Nile valley. As far as we know, it was entirely unknown to any of the primitive Aryan races, from Hindostan to Scandinavia. Astrology as a system of divination never gained a foothold in Greece during the brightest period of her intellectual life. But the dogma of astral divinity was zealously maintained by the greatest of Greek philosophers. Plato, the great idealist, whose influence upon the theology of the ancient and even of the modern world was more profound than that of any other thinker, called the stars “visible gods” ranking them just below the supreme eternal Being; and to Plato these celestial gods were infinitely superior to the anthropomorphic gods of the popular religion, who resembled men in their passions and were superior to them only in beauty of form and in power. Aristotle defended with no less zeal the doctrine of the divinity of the stars, seeing in them eternal substances, principles of movement, and therefore divine beings. In the Hellenistic period, Zeno, the Stoic, and his followers proclaimed the supremacy of the sidereal divinities even more strongly than the schools of Plato and Aristotle had done. The Stoics conceived the world as a great organism whose “sympathetic” forces constantly interacted upon one another, governed by Reason which was of the essence of ethereal Fire, the primordial substance of the universe. To the stars, the purest manifestation of the power of this ethereal substance, were attributed the greatest influence and the loftiest divine qualities. The Stoics developed the doctrine of fatalism, which is the inevitable outcome of faith in stellar influence on human life, to its consequences; yet they proved by facts that fatalism is not incompatible with active and virtuous living. By the end of the Roman imperial period astrology had transformed paganism, replacing the old society of Immortals who were scarcely superior to mortals, except in being exempted from old age and death, by faith in the eternal beings who ran their course in perfect harmony throughout the ages, whose power, regulated by the unvarying celestial motions, extended over all the earth and determined the destiny of the whole human race.

Astrology, as a science and a system of divination, exerted a profound influence over the mediaeval mind. No court was without its practicing astrologer and the universities all had their professors of astrology. The practice of astrology was an essential part of the physician’s profession, and before prescribing for a patient it was thought quite as important to determine the positions of the planets as the nature of the disease.[139] Interesting evidence of this fact is found in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales where Chaucer speaks of the Doctour’s knowledge and use of astrology as if it were his chief excellence as a physician:

“In al this world ne was ther noon him lyk
To speke of phisik and of surgerye;
For he was grounded in astronomye.
He kepte his pacient a ful greet del
In houres, by his magik naturel.
Wel coude he fortunen the ascendent
Of his images for his pacient.”[140]

Yet in spite of the esteem in which astrological divination was held by most people in the Middle Ages, Dante, the greatest exponent of the thought and learning of that period, shows practically no knowledge of the technical and practical side of astrology. When he refers to the specific effects of the planets it is only to those most familiarly known, and he nowhere uses such technical terms as “houses” or “aspects” of planets. But Dante, like the great philosophers of the earlier periods, was undoubtedly influenced by the philosophical doctrines of astrology, and a general belief in the influence of the celestial spheres upon human life was deeply rooted in his mind. To him the ceaseless and harmonious movements of the celestial bodies were the manifestations and instruments of God’s providence, and were ordained by the First Mover to govern the destinies of the earth and human life.

We can see this conviction of Dante’s with perfect certainty when we read the Divina Commedia. For Dante’s poetry is highly subjective; on every page his own personal thoughts and feelings are revealed quite openly. Chaucer’s poetry, on the other hand, is objective; he tells us almost nothing directly about himself and what we learn of him in his writings is almost entirely by inference. Chaucer’s frequent use of astrology in his poetry would make it hard to believe that he was not considerably influenced by its philosophical aspects, at least in the general way that Dante was. Part and parcel of the dramatic action in most of his poems is the idea of stellar influences. Yet we cannot assert, with the same assurance that we can say it of Dante, that Chaucer believed, even in a general way, in the influence of the stars on human life. In Dante’s poetry, as we have said, the poet himself is always before us. Chaucer, with Socratic irony, always makes it plain to the reader that his attitude is purely objective, that he is only the narrator of what he has seen or dreamed, only the copyist of another’s story. Even when Chaucer makes himself one of the protagonists, as in the Hous of Fame and the Canterbury Tales, it is only that his narrative may be the more convincing. He tells a story and makes its protagonists actually live before us, as individual men and women. It is possible to imagine all of his use of astrology in his poetry not as the reflection of his own faith in its cosmic philosophy, but the expression of his genius for understanding people and truthfully describing life and character.

Considerable discussion as to Chaucer’s attitude towards astrology has been called forth by passages in which he speaks in words of scorn with regard to some of the practices and magic arts that were often used in connection with astrology. In the Astrolabe after describing somewhat at length the favorable and unfavorable positions of planets he says:

“Natheles, thise ben observauncez of iudicial matiere and rytes of payens, in which my spirit ne hath no feith, ne no knowing of hir horoscopum.”[141]

Again in the Franklin’s Tale he speaks in a similar disdainful tone of astrological magic:

“He him remembred that, upon a day,
At Orliens in studie a book he say
Of magik naturel, which his felawe,
That was that tyme a bacheler of lawe,
Al were he ther to lerne another craft,
Had prively upon his desk y-laft;
Which book spak muchel of the operaciouns,
Touchinge the eighte and twenty mansiouns
That longen to the mone, and swich folye,
As in our dayes is not worth a flye:
For holy chirches feith in our bileve
Ne suffreth noon illusion us to greve.”[142]

And elsewhere in the same tale he writes:

“So atte laste he hath his tyme y-founde
To maken his Iapes and his wreccednesse
Of switch a supersticious cursednesse.”[143]

Here follows a long description of the clerk’s instruments and astrological observances, ending in the lines

“For swiche illusiouns and swiche meschaunces
As hethen folk used in thilke dayes;
For which no lenger maked he delayes,
But thurgh his magik, for a wyke or tweye,
It seemed that alle the rokkes were aweye.”[144]

On the strength of these passages Professor T. R. Lounsbury[145] holds that Chaucer was far ahead of most of his contemporaries in his attitude toward the superstitious practices connected with the astrology of his day; that his attitude toward judicial astrology was one of total disbelief and scorn; and he even goes so far as to say that Chaucer was guilty of a breach of artistic workmanship in expressing his disbelief so scornfully in a tale in which the very climax of the dramatic action depends upon a feat of astrological magic.

A more satisfactory interpretation of the passages quoted above is advanced by Professor J. S. P. Tatlock,[146] who shows that Chaucer has taken great pains to place the setting of the Franklin’s Tale in ancient times and that he, in common with most of the educated men of his day, disapproved of the practices (except sometimes when employed for good purposes as, e. g. in the physician’s profession) and the practicians of judicial astrology in his own day, but thought of the feats and observances of astrological magic as having been possible and efficacious in ancient times. According to this view Chaucer’s attitude was one of disapproval rather than disbelief, and his disapproval was not for the general theory of astrology, but for the shady observances and quackery connected with its application to the problems of life in his time. It is to be noted, further, that wherever Chaucer speaks in the strongest terms against astrological observances he also uses religious language. This fact may point to a wise caution on his part lest his evident interest in astrology, (which was closely associated with magic, and hence, indirectly, with sorcery) might involve him in difficulties with Mother Church; and, as Professor Tatlock has pointed out, there is no reason to suppose that Chaucer’s religious expressions in these passages are insincere.

The Franklin’s Tale falls in the group of tales called by Professor Kittredge the “Marriage Group,”[147] that in which the Wife of Bath is the most conspicuous figure. The Wife of Bath’s tale had aroused a rather heated controversy among a number of the Canterbury pilgrims on the subject of the respective duties and relations of wives and husbands. If the critics have been right in placing the Franklin’s Tale where they do, it was Chaucer’s purpose to have the Franklin soothe the ruffled feelings of certain members of the party by telling a tale in which a husband (and wife), a squire, and a clerk, all prove themselves capable of truly generous behavior. If the tale was to accomplish its purpose the clerk must accomplish his magic feat of removing the rocks from the coast of Brittany, and must in the end generously refuse to accept pay from the squire when he learned that the latter had been too magnanimous to profit from his services. By setting the tale in pagan times, Chaucer was able to express the scorn he felt for certain superstitious practices in his own time without debasing one of his chief characters, one of the three rivals in magnanimity, and so spoiling the noble temper of the story and entirely defeating its purpose.

Thus the astrological passages in the Franklin’s Tale do not suggest total disbelief in astrology on Chaucer’s part, and much less do they show him to have been lacking in true artistic sense. Probably his attitude toward astrology was about this: he was very much interested in it, perhaps in much the same way that Dante was, because of the philosophical ideas at the basis of astrology and out of curiosity as to the problems of free will, providence, and so on, that naturally arose from it. For the shady practices and quackery connected with its use in his own day he had nothing but scorn.

But while Chaucer was at one with the educated men of his century in his attitude toward astrology, and with them had a strong distaste for certain aspects of judicial astrology, nevertheless he made wide use of the greater faith of the majority of people of his time in portraying character in his poetry. For men’s ideas and beliefs constitute a very important part of their character, and Chaucer knew this very well. Men believed that whatever happened to them, whether fortunate or unfortunate, could in some way be traced to the influence of the stars, the agents and instruments of destiny. The configuration of the heavens at the moment of one’s birth was considered especially important, since the positions and interrelations of the different celestial bodies at this time could determine the most momentous events of one’s life. Now the nature of the influence exerted by the different stars, especially the planets and zodiacal constellations, varied greatly. Mars and Venus, for instance, bestowed vastly different qualities upon the soul that was coming into being. Moreover, the power exerted by a planet or constellation fluctuated considerably according to its position. Each planet had in the zodiac a position of greatest and a position of least power called its ‘exaltation’ and ‘depression.’ Furthermore, the ‘aspect’ or angular distance of one planet from another altered its influence in various ways. If Mars and Jupiter, for instance, were in trine or sextile aspect the portent was favorable, if in opposition, it was unfavorable.[148] These ideas are frequently expressed in Chaucer, when the characters seek to understand their misfortunes or to justify their conduct by tracing them back to the determinations of the heavens at their birth. When Palamon and Arcite have been thrown into prison the latter pleads with his companion to have patience; this misfortune was fixed upon them at the time of their birth by the disposition of the planets and constellations, and complaining is of no avail:

“‘For Goddes love, tak al in pacience
Our prisoun, for it may non other be;
Fortune hath yeven us this adversitee.
Som wikke aspect or disposicioun
Of Saturne, by sum constellacioun
Hath yeven us this, al-though we hadde it sworn;
So stood the heven whan that we were born;
We moste endure it: this is the short and pleyn.’”[149]

In the Man of Lawes Tale the effect of the stars at the time of a man’s nativity is discussed somewhat at length. The Man of Law predicts the fate of the sultan by saying that the destiny written in the stars had perhaps allotted to him death through love:

“Paraventure in thilke large book
Which that men clepe the heven, y-writen was
With sterres, whan that he his birthe took,
That he for love shulde han his deeth, allas!
For in the sterres, clerer than is glas,
Is writen, god wot, who-so coude it rede,
The deeth of every man, withouten drede.”[150]

Then he mentions the names of various ancient heroes whose death, he says was written in the stars “er they were born:”

“In sterres, many a winter ther-biforn,
Was written the deeth of Ector, Achilles,
Of Pompey, Iulius, er they were born;
The stryf of Thebes; and of Ercules,
Of Sampson, Turnus, and of Socrates
The deeth; but mennes wittes been so dulle,
That no wight can wel rede it atte fulle.”[151]

When Criseyde learns that she is to be sent to the Greeks in exchange for Antenor she attributes her misfortune to the stars:

“‘Alas!’ quod she, ‘out of this regioun
I, woful wrecche and infortuned wight,
And born in corsed constellacioun,
Mot goon, and thus departen fro my knight;’”[152]

In the Legend of Good Women we are told that Hypermnestra was “born to all good things” or qualities, and then the various influences of the particular planets upon her destiny are mentioned:

“The whiche child, of hir nativitee,
To alle gode thewes born was she,
As lyked to the goddes, or she was born,
That of the shefe she sholde be the corn;
The Wirdes, that we clepen Destinee,
Hath shapen her that she mot nedes be
Pitouse, sadde, wyse, and trewe as steel;
And to this woman hit accordeth weel.
For, though that Venus yaf her great beautee,
With Jupiter compouned so was she
That conscience, trouthe, and dreed of shame,
And of hir wyfhood for to keep her name,
This, thoughte her, was felicitee as here.
And rede Mars was, that tyme of the yere,
So feble, that his malice is him raft,
Repressed hath Venus his cruel craft;
What with Venus and other oppressioun
Of houses, Mars his venim is adoun,
That Ypermistra dar nat handle a knyf
In malice, thogh she sholde lese her lyf.
But natheles, as heven gan tho turne,
To badde aspectes hath she of Saturne,
That made her for to deyen in prisoun,
As I shal after make mencioun.”[153]

The purpose of this astrological passage is plainly to show why Hypermnestra was doomed to die in prison. The qualities given her by the planets, as shown by her horoscope, were such that she was unable to violate a wife’s duty and kill her husband in order to save her own life.[154] Venus gave her great beauty and was also influential in repressing the influence of Mars who would have given her fighting qualities if his influence had been strong. The myth of the amour between Venus and Mars, which Chaucer makes the basis of his poem the Compleynt of Mars, would explain why Venus was able to influence Mars in this way. The feeble influence of Mars at Hypermnestra’s nativity is accounted for also in another way. His influence is feeble because of the time of year and through the “oppressioun of houses” both of which amount to the same thing, namely, a position in the zodiac in which his power is at a minimum.[155] The influence of Jupiter, we are told, was to give Hypermnestra conscience, truth, and wifely loyalty. That of Saturn was evil and the cause of her death in prison.

The specific influences of Saturn are mentioned in detail in the Knightes Tale. Almost all the ills imaginable are attributable to his power:

“‘My dere doghter Venus,’ quod Saturne,
‘My cours, that hath so wyde for to turne,
Hath more power than wot any man.
Myn is the drenching in the see so wan;
Myn is the prison in the derke cote;
Myn is the strangling and hanging by the throte;
The murmure, and the cherles rebelling,
The groyning, and the pryvee empoysoning;
I do vengeance and pleyn correccioun
Whyl I dwelle in the signe of the leoun.
Myn is the ruine of the hye halles,
The falling of the toures and of the walles
Up-on the mynour or the carpenter.
I slow Sampsoun in shaking the piler;
And myne be the maladyes colde,
The derke tresons, and the castes olde;
My loking is the fader of pestilence.’”[156]

In the line,

“Myn is the prison in the derke cote;”

imprisonment is for the second time attributed to Saturn’s influence. In an earlier passage in the Knightes Tale[157], (see [p. 59]) it is suggested when Palamon and Arcite’s imprisonment is said to be due to ‘some wicked aspect or disposition of Saturn’ at the time of their birth. Later in the story Palamon specifically states that his imprisonment is through Saturn:

“But I mot been in prison thurgh Saturne,”[158]

That Mars and Saturn were generally regarded as planets of evil influence is shown by a passage in the Astrolabe. Chaucer has just explained what the ‘ascendant’, means in astrology. It is that degree of the zodiac that at the given time is seen upon the eastern horizon. Now, Chaucer says, the ascendant may be ‘fortunate or unfortunate,’ thus:

“a fortunat ascendent clepen they whan that no wykkid planete, as Saturne or Mars, or elles the Tail of the Dragoun, is in the house of the assendent, ne that no wikked planets have non aspects of enemite up-on the assendent;”[159]

The Wife of Bath attributes the two principal qualities of her disposition, amorousness and pugnaciousness, to the planets Venus and Mars:

“For certes, I am al Venerien
In felinge, and myn herte is Marcien.
Venus me yaf my lust, my likerousnesse,
And Mars yaf me my sturdy hardinesse.
Myn ascendent was Taur, and Mars ther-inne.
Allas! allas! that ever love was sinne!
I folwed ay myn inclinacioun
By vertu of my constellacioun.”[160]

A little later in her Prologue the Wife contrasts the influences of Mercury and Venus. As a jibe at the Clerk who was in the company of Canterbury pilgrims she has just said that clerks cannot possibly speak well of wives, and that women could tell tales of clerks if they would. She upholds her statement thus: Wives are the children of Venus, clerks, of Mercury, two planets that are ‘in their working full contrarious:’