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 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.'"[31]
The idea of purgatory, not as a place definitely located like Dante's
Mount of Purgatory, but rather as a period of punishment and probation, is
expressed in these lines from _The Parlement of Foules_ (78-84):
"'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.[32] Again, in extolling the married life, the poet says
that its virtues are such
"'That in this world it is a paradys.'"[33]