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