Read Ebook: Astronomical Lore in Chaucer by Grimm Florence M Florence Marie

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 322 lines and 35951 words, and 7 pages

Appendix 79

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

CHAUCER'S SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE

CHAUCER'S COSMOLOGY

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.

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

"O blisful light, of which the bemes clere Adorneth al the thridde hevene faire!"

"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;"

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.

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."

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;"

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."

"And ther he saugh, with ful avysement, The erratik sterres, herkeninge armonye With sownes fulle of hevenish melodye."

"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?'"

"'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;"

"That of the tryne compas lord and gyde is, Whom erthe and see and heven, out of relees, Ay herien;"

"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."

"His felawe wente and soghte him down in helle;"

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

"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."

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. The old man, Ianuarie, 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.'"

"'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. Again, in extolling the married life, the poet says that its virtues are such

"'That in this world it is a paradys.'"

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

"mannes help and his confort, His paradys terrestre and his disport."

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."

"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."

The idea of four elements 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 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.

"'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.'"

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet