Astronomical Lore in Chaucer

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.

* * *

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.

* * *

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.

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