Astronomical Lore in Chaucer Part 5

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

"He pa.s.seth 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 compa.s.s is my spere!

Alas! whan shal I mete yow, herte dere,'" etc.[127]

Meanwhile Venus has pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sage, then, simply refers to the swift motion by which in a very short time Mercury pa.s.ses 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...o...b..t 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. Ja.n.u.s'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 Africa.n.u.s 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 a.s.sociated 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 pa.s.sing through other regions not suited to sustain its heat, set on fire the place through which it pa.s.sed; 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 G.o.d to be wors.h.i.+pped 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 astonis.h.i.+ng 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 ma.s.s 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 G.o.ds" ranking them just below the supreme eternal Being; and to Plato these celestial G.o.ds were infinitely superior to the anthropomorphic G.o.ds of the popular religion, who resembled men in their pa.s.sions 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 h.e.l.lenistic 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 G.o.d'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 a.s.sert, with the same a.s.surance 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 att.i.tude 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 att.i.tude towards astrology has been called forth by pa.s.sages 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 pa.s.sages Professor T. R. Lounsbury[145] holds that Chaucer was far ahead of most of his contemporaries in his att.i.tude toward the superst.i.tious practices connected with the astrology of his day; that his att.i.tude 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 workmans.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sages 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 att.i.tude 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 a.s.sociated 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 pa.s.sages 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 superst.i.tious practices in his own time without debasing one of his chief characters, one of the three rivals in magnanimity, and so spoiling the n.o.ble temper of the story and entirely defeating its purpose.