“next at this opposicioun,
Which in the signe shal be of the Leoun,”
thus: Earlier in the poem (l. 906) May 6 is mentioned and it is on this date that the events narrated so far are supposed to have taken place. In May the sun is in Taurus, so that the moon at her next opposition would have to be in the opposite sign, Scorpio. The reference must mean therefore:—“at the next opposition that takes place with the sun in Leo,” not the very next one with the sun in Taurus, nor the next with the sun in Gemini or Cancer. This reason for waiting until there should be an opposition with the sun in Leo, was astrological. Leo was the mansion of the Sun, so that the sun’s power when in that sign would be greatest.
[105] B. 5333-46.
[106] Book IV.: Metre V. 8-9.
[107] Ibid. 10-11.
[108] See [Appendix IX. p. 92 ff.]
[109] Hous of Fame, III. 1375-6.
[110] Book of the Duchesse, III. 408-9.
[111] Astrolabe, II. 35. 17-18. The attempt to explain the moon’s motion by supposing her to move in an epicycle was hopelessly wrong. Chaucer means here simply that the moon’s motion in her deferent is direct like that of the other planets (their apparent motion is in the direction west to east except at short periods of retrogression) but that the moon’s direction of motion in her epicycle is the reverse of that of the other planets.
[112] II. 35.