Chaucer humorously makes use of this astrological superstition that the planets cause rains in the Lenvoy a Scogan:
“To-broken been the statuts hye in hevene
That creat were eternally to dure,
Sith that I see the brighte goddes sevene
Mow wepe and wayle, and passioun endure,
As may in erthe a mortal creature.
Allas, fro whennes may this thing procede?
Of whiche errour I deye almost for drede.”[165]
Here it is not the planets’ positions that cause the rain, but the planets are weeping as mortals do and their tears are the rain. In the next stanza we learn that even Venus, from whose sphere divine law once decreed no tear should ever fall, is weeping so that mortals are about to be drenched. And it is all Scogan’s fault!
“By worde eterne whylom was hit shape
That fro the fifte cercle, in no manere,
Ne mighte a drope of teres doun escape.
But now so wepeth Venus in hir spere,
That with hir teres she wol drenche us here.
Allas! Scogan! this is for thyn offence!
Thou causest this deluge of pestilence.”[166]
So the ultimate cause of the rain was Scogan’s offense. And in the next stanza we learn what that offence was. Instead of vowing to serve his lady forever, though his love is unrequited, Scogan has rebelled against the law of love:
“Hast thou not seyd, in blaspheme of this goddes,
Through pryde, or through thy grete rakelnesse,
Swich thing as in the lawe of love forbode is?
That, for thy lady saw nat thy distresse,
Therefor thou yave hir up at Michelmesse!”[167]
I have said that Chaucer makes wide use of the astrological beliefs of his century in portraying character and have shown how some of the strange astrological ideas of the people of his time are reflected in Chaucer’s poetry. It remains to consider somewhat more closely the relations between astrological faith and conduct, and Chaucer’s application of these relations to the dramatic action in his poems.
The inevitable logical outcome of astrological faith is the doctrine of Necessity. The invariability of the celestial motions suggested to early astrologers that there must be a higher power transcending and controlling them, and this power could be none other than Necessity. But, since the stars by their movements and positions were the regulators of mundane events and human affairs, it followed that human destiny on the earth was also under the sway of this relentless power of Necessity or Fate. Now it was the Stoics alone who developed a thorough-going fatalism and at the same time made it consistent with practical life and virtue. They taught that man could best find himself in complete submission to the divine law of destiny. The early Babylonian astrologers who originated the doctrine of necessity did not develop it to its logical consequences. Reasoning from certain very unusual occurrences that sometimes took place in the heavens, such as the appearance of comets, meteors and falling stars, they reached the conclusion that divine will at times arbitrarily interfered in the destined course of nature. So priests foretold future events from the configuration of the heavens, but professed ability to ward off threatened evils by spells and incantations, or, by purifications and sacrifices, to make the promised blessings more secure.
Now the fatalism of Chaucer’s characters is something like this. The general belief in the determination of human destiny by Fortune or Necessity is present and is expressed usually at moments of deep despair, when the longings of the heart and the struggles of the will have been relentlessly thwarted. When the Trojans decree that Criseyde must go to the Greeks in exchange for Antenor, Troilus pleads with Fortune:
“Than seyde he thus, ‘Fortune! allas the whyle!
What have I doon, what have I thus a-gilt?
How mightestow for reuthe me bigyle?
Is ther no grace, and shall I thus be spilt?
Shal thus Criseyde awey, for that thou wilt?
Allas! how maystow in thyn herte finde
To been to me thus cruel and unkinde?
. . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . .
Allas! Fortune! if that my lyf in Ioye
Displesed hadde un-to thy foule envye,
Why ne haddestow my fader, king of Troye,
By-raft the lyf, or doon my bretheren dye,
Or slayn my-self, that thus compleyne and crye,
I, combre-world, that may of no-thing serve,
But ever dye, and never fulle sterve?’”[168]