“This carpenter wende he were in despeir”: Misinterpretation and the Nightmare in Chaucer's Miller's Tale

Abstract

John the Carpenter's reaction to the fake stupefaction of “hende” Nicholas in The Miller's Tale provides some of the poem's more sardonic comic elements. Not only is John characterized as foolish for believing his lodger's warnings about the upcoming deluge, but his response to seeing Nicholas sat silent and agape in his bedroom—casting as he does a “nyght-spel” to ward off elves, wights, and evil spirits (I.3479–80)—presents a picture of John as a credulous and unlearned man, completely at odds to the type of scholarly sophistication that Nicholas (ostensibly) represents.1 This of course is confirmed at the very end of the tale, where John's credulity, his misinterpretation of Nicholas's pained cry of “Water!”, results in his very literal downfall. If John is a figure of ridicule for both Nicholas (as a “sely jalous housbonde” [I.3404]) and the pilgrim-Miller (as a stand-in for the pilgrim-Reeve or carpenters in general [I.3142]), it is a sentiment that is also shared by modern readers. For most scholars, John's comically unsophisticated nature is a given. Discussing the absurd devotion John agrees to utter as he sits in the kneading tub (“Now, Pater-noster, clom!” [I.3638]), Gerald Morgan argues that the reduction of religious sincerity to folly is a theme that lies at the very heart of the Miller's Tale.2 In a similar way, John Block Friedman, Patrick J. Gallacher, and Sonja Mayrhofer each make pejorative references to “superstition” when assessing John's fears that Nicholas is being accosted by evil spirits.3 And yet, the extent to which John's apotropaic strategies in ll. 3474–86 can actually be considered superstitious—irrational, heterodox—is an issue that has yet to be fully resolved. Henry Ansgar Kelly's forensic examination of the licitness of John's actions certainly raises the bar, but this treatment, however laudable, neglects to consider the diagnosis of “despeir” (I.3474) and the enactment of the night spell within the specific context of reacting to—or, more accurately, misinterpreting—the tenor of Nicholas's performance.4 With Nicholas's reputation as a commercial astrologer established from the outset (I.3192-98), John's reactions are entirely logical, orthodox even, when confronted with the apparent fallout of an art that in certain moralistic circles was believed to involve traffic with demons. As will be discussed in more detail below, the protective procedures enacted by John and the identification of the attacking agents (“elves,” “wightes,” “nyghtes verye”) make much more sense within the milieu of contemporary medicomagical theory about the etiology of despair and the nocturnal assault (nightmare) tradition. It is an association that seems to have been current amongst early copiers of the Canterbury Tales: the otherwise obscure phrase “nyghtes verye” is pointedly rendered as “nyghtesmare” in Cambridge University Library MS Dd.4.24 text of the tale (ca. 1410).5With this in mind, Peter Brown's analysis of the theatrics of Nicholas's bedroom performance can be taken one step further.6 John may well have been persuaded after the fact that observations of the moon predicted the date and time of the flood (I.3514–21), but his initial, instinctive response to Nicholas's stupor speaks to a belief that something other than mechanical celestial forces governed access to “Goddes pryvetee.” Following an initial overview of the reputation of astrology in medieval moralistic thinking at the end of the fourteenth century, the remainder of this article will focus on the social and intertextual logic of John's apotropaic actions.7 Indeed, it is important to note from the outset that the lived reality evoked by the night spell is not confined solely to the Miller's Tale. References to such beliefs are interspersed throughout Fragments I and III of the Canterbury Tales. The allusions to nocturnal fiends (I.4288), elves (III.864, 873), fairies (III.872), incubi (III.880), and the makeup of demonic bodies (III.1462, 1507) in the Reeve's Tale, the Wife of Bath's Tale, and the Friar's Tale provide a framework through which to analyze the relative cogency of John's fears. John may not have fully understood Nicholas's performance—a misreading that foreshadows events to come8—but he cannot be considered “superstitious” in the sense that his actions were irrational. Quite the contrary. Confronted with the possibility that Nicholas had been overcome by the evil spirits used in his art, the night spell represents a coherent technique for preventing further fallout from a melancholy-induced demonic attack.At the beginning of the Miller's Tale Chaucer paints a vivid picture of Nicholas's astrological predilections. A poor scholar living partly off the charity of friends (I.3220), Nicholas supplements his income by performing certain services for the Oxford population: Whilom ther was dwellynge at OxenfordA riche gnof, that gestes heeld to bord,And of his craft he was a carpenter.With hym ther was dwellynge a poure scoler,Hadde lerned art, but al his fantasyeWas turned for to lerne astrologye,And koude a certeyn of conclusiouns,To demen by interrogaciouns,If that men asked hym, in certein houresWhan that men sholde have droghte or elles shoures,Or if men asked hym what sholde bifalleOf every thyng; I may nat rekene hem alle. (I.3187–98)Through the use of “interrogations”—a form of judicial astrology whereby the answer was derived from observing the constellations at the time the question was asked—Nicholas is able to predict the weather and determine a client's fortune.9 We learn later that the tools of his trade include a copy of Ptolemy's famed Almagest,10 counting stones, an astrolabe, and a variety of unnamed books “grete and smale” (I.3208–210). Previous scholarship has argued that the vain and commercially minded Nicholas should be seen as the antithesis of the ideal Oxford student, exemplified by the lean and threadbare pilgrim-Clerk.11 Whereas Nicholas neglects his studies and squanders his money on astrological equipment, perfumes, and musical instruments (“on which he made a-nyghtes melodie / so swetely that all the chambre rong” [I.3214–15]), the pilgrim-Clerk assiduously avoids such frivolities, eschewing “robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie” in favour of books of “Aristotle and his philosophie” (I.295–96). Ptolemy (and all he represents) does not factor into the idealized portrait of the pilgrim-Clerk; astrology, it is implied, is not a discipline that a true man of letters should follow.Divination through the observation of the stars has long occupied an ambiguous place in medieval theology. Probably on account that he himself had been an eager astrologer in his Manichean youth, Augustine is particularly vehement against the practice, arguing in De civitate Dei (ca. 426) that the ascription of causal power to the stars alone contravenes the divine will of God. Likewise, he uses the example of twins who experience different fortunes in life to refute the idea that the position of the stars at one's birth—calculated through a horoscope—decided one's fate. Such a deterministic understanding of the cosmos also served to undermine the very concept of free will. Quite unequivocally, Augustine describes astrology as being without any value (nihil valere) at all.12 These statements build upon assertions previously made in De doctrina Christiana (ca. 397) where, as part of a wider diatribe against magic and superstition, he explicitly argues that using the constellations to determine someone's character and predict the future is a great mistake (magna dementia est).13 Simply put, astrology is a blasphemous art that encourages consort with demons: Hinc enim fiet ut occulto quodam iudicio divino cupidi malarum rerum homines tradantur illudendi et decipiendi pro meritis voluntatum suarum, illudentibus eos atque decipientibus praevaricatoribus angelis, quibus ista mundi pars infima secundum pulcherrimum ordinem rerum divinae providentiae lege subiecta est.14[In this way it happens that, by some inscrutable divine plan, those who have a desire for evil things are handed over to be deluded and deceived according to what their own wills deserve. They are deluded and deceived by corrupt angels, to whom in God's most excellent scheme of things this lowest part of the world has been subjected by the decree of divine providence.]Augustine's negative views on divination through the stars have formed the basis of studies in their own right and need not be recounted here.15 For the purposes of this article it suffices to say that his works formed the fundamental touchstone where later commentaries on astrology's licitness are concerned. Isidore of Seville (d. 636), for example, records that while astronomy (astronomiae) is mainly concerned with the charting of the mechanical motions of the universe, astrology (astrologiae) is a superstitious practice that involves augury through the stars.16 As knowledge accumulation in the West became much more formalized from the twelfth century onwards though the influx of new scientific works from the Islamic world, the vague dividing line between licit astronomy and illicit astrology remained firmly in the thoughts of philosophers and exegetes. Discussing the various categories of divination, the Parisian teacher Hugh of St. Victor (d. 1141) included the practice of determining fate via the stars (horoscopica) as one of the subclassifications of “vain mathematics” (mathematicam vanam) alongside soothsaying and augury.17 It was a topic that also occupied the interests of the English political theorist John of Salisbury, who explored the moral and formal differences between mathematica doctrinalis (licit knowledge; astronomy) and mathesis reprobatae (illicit divination; astrology) in book 2, chapter nineteen of the Policraticus (ca. 1159).18 Although there is much in common between astronomy and astrology, the latter, he says pointedly, “exceeds the bounds of reason” (sobrietasis mensuram excedit).19 The likening of divination to irrationality is an argument later employed by the French philosopher and strident critic of astrology Nicholas of Oresme (d. 1382), who notes in Livre de divinacion that (false) visions can occur when adherents of occult practices have been “put out of [their] senses by [their] art.”20 This equivalence was, of course, hardly new, with Plato noting the etymological link between prophecy (mantike) and madness (manike) as early as the Phaedrus (ca. 370 BCE).21 The influence of such beliefs on the narratology of the Miller's Tale cannot be overlooked. John's musings that his lodger had lost his mind (“This man is falle, with his astromye / In some woodnesse” [I.3451–52]) is not some idle denigration of Nicholas's curiosity about the stars, a (metatextual) criticism of unproductive labor that echoes the confessional against alchemy in the Canon's Yeoman's Tale (VIII.898–971),22 but a diagnosis based on centuries of popular polemic.23Even defenders of astrology, such as the pseudonymous author of the highly influential Speculum Astronomiae (ca. 1277), felt the need to qualify their art by explaining what it was not. Written, it has been hypothesized, as a response to the 1277 Condemnations of Paris, which sought to purge the teaching of heretical material—including astrology—from the Parisian schools, the Speculum Astronomiae begins with a disclaimer as to its similarities to necromancy, or black magic: Quoniam enim plures ante dictorum librorum necromantiam palliant, professionem astronomiae mentientes, libros nobiles de eadem fetere fecerunt apud bonos, et graves et abominabiles reddiderunt.24[For, since many of the previously mentioned books by pretending to be concerned with astrology disguise necromancy, they cause noble books written on the same subject (astrology) to be contaminated in the eyes of good men, and render them offensive and abominable.]The author, who may have been the famed Dominican theologian Albertus Magnus, then proceeds with an overview of the various subcategories of astrology, including “interrogations” (chaps. 9, 14) and “elections” (chaps. 10, 15). As intimated above, interrogations were a form of judicial astrology that involved using the situation of the stars at the client's nativity (i.e., their horoscope), and that of the day and time of the interrogation, to answer questions about future events. In the parlance of astrology, interrogations thus had a radical intention (intentione radicali).25 In a similar way, elections involved “choos[ing] the favourable hour for beginning any project for one whose nativity is known.”26 Generally, interrogations were considered more dubious than elections: article 167 of the 1277 Paris Condemnations, for example, specifically mentions the error of practicing interrogationes. However, the author of the Speculum Astronomiae falls back on the traditional defense that since such practices only dealt with possible outcomes, they could not be considered deterministic. As such, judicial astrology did not contravene the idea of free will. As elaborated upon by later apologists such as Pierre d'Ailly (d. 1420), the power of the stars influenced the workings of the body, not the soul, and did not bind anyone to a single possible outcome.27 In what will have a bearing on our later discussion of “hende” Nicholas, only a fraudulent or demonically compromised astrologer ever dealt in absolutes when discussing the future.The contamination of astrology with necromancy is a topic to which the author of the Speculum Astronomiae returns in chapters 11, 16, and 17. Here, he acknowledges that licit astrological and illicit necromantic images are similar in construct and intention (to harness the power of the celestial rays), but that necromantic rituals also involved more arcane procedures, such as the creation of suffumigations and the invocation of the names of demons.28 The question as to whether astrologers actually harnessed animate demonic power in their predictions of future events remained a topic of contention throughout the fourteenth century. Writing in response to the latent astrological interests of his friend and master Pierre d'Ailly, Jean Gerson, the Chancellor of the University of Paris (d.1429), composed numerous rebuttals against the astrological arts as part of his wider attempts to purge the universal Church of what he deemed irregular and divergent practice.29 In De erroribus circa artem magicam et articulis reprobatis, for example, Gerson expresses his disdain for those who display a “lustful curiosity” (curiositatem libidinosam) for trying to ascertain future events. Such people, he says, will surely become the victims of demons.30Gerson of course was not the only late medieval writer devoted to exposing the material and spiritual fraud of judicial astrology. Nicholas Oresme, noted above, and Henry of Langenstein (d. 1397) were equally strident critics.31 Although Oresme and Langenstein's anti-astrology tracts did not enjoy wide circulation, their arguments were certainly borne out of wider contemporary concerns about trusting the stars rather than God. Chaucer himself echoes this pessimistic view of astrology in the Franklin's Tale. When the brother of lovelorn Aurelius remembers that while studying at Orleans a fellow student had in his possession a volume of “magyk natureel” (V.1125), he confides in Aurelius that such a book may contain knowledge of how to create illusions, thus solving the quandary of Dorigen's flippant vow to marry Aurelius should he remove all the rocks from the Brittany coast. On describing the book, which “spak muchel of the operaciouns / Touchynge the eighte and twenty mansiouns / That longen to the moone” (V.1129–31a), the Franklin—whether in-character or as Chaucer's mouthpiece—makes the following interjection: . . . and swich folyeAs in oure dayes is nat worth a flye—For hooly chirches feith in oure bileveNe suffreth noon illusioun us to greve. (V.1131b-34).Although it appears that the Clerk utilizes natural magic rather than conjuring spirits as part of his astrological practices, the fact that he greets Aurelius and his brother with the ominous statement that he knew “the cause of [their] comyng” (V.1176) and entertains them with fantastical illusions at supper clouds the reader's understanding as to what type of power is at play in order to make such an unerringly accurate prediction and create the “sighte[s] merveillous” (V.1206). Such ambiguity is compounded by the Clerk (and his like) being described equally as “tregetours” (tricksters), “magician[s],” and “philosopher[s]” (V.1143, 1184, 1585).32 Either way, in lines 1261–96 we are provided with a detailed description of the Clerk of Orleans in his element. From using his “Tolletanes” (Toledan Tables) to predict the movements and motions of the planets relative to the fixed stars, to ascertaining the “firste mansioun” of the moon, the Clerk gives a virtuoso performance of his craft, using his “magik” to make it seem as though the rocks had disappeared.33 Even here, the Franklin (or Chaucer?) cannot resist editorializing that the Clerk knew other “observaunces / for swiche illusiouns and swiche meschaunces” (V.1291b-92), casting further doubt as to how he actually achieved his result: was it the successful calculation of an unusually high tide using mathematical virtuosity, or secret traffic with demons to obfuscate the senses?34Beyond theological polemics and literary texts, the implication that astrologers practiced necromancy is something that can also be discerned in the wider historical record. The mathematician and Arabic-Latin translator Michael Scot (d. 1236) enjoyed much contemporary fame as an astrologer. Beginning his career in the (presumed) hotbed of necromantic activity that was Toledo before joining the retinue of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (ca. mid 1220s),35 Scot's reputation was sealed with the publication of his trilogy of original works: the Liber introductorius, the Liber particularis, and the Physionomia (ca. 1232). The Liber introductorius, especially, was concerned exclusively with the art of astrological computation and divination. With this introductory text betraying Scot's understanding (if not moral acceptance) of how to use demons to divine the future—mentioning, for example, that astrolabes could be used to summon evil spirits and that spirits of the air could be conjured through knowledge of the stars—it is not surprising that on Scot's death rumors abounded as to the source of his powers.36 The declaration made by Henry of Avranches in a poem to Frederick II that “the announcer of fate had succumbed to fate” (l. 84) may not imply that Scot was in league with demons per se, but it does highlight his unusual competency as an “augur” and “scrutinizer of the stars” (ll. 57–58).37 For some, it was perhaps too unusual. The inclusion of Scot in the fourth bolgia of the eighth circle of hell in Dante's Inferno (Canto XX, ll. 115–17), a place reserved for sorcerers and astrologers, shows quite explicitly the negative attitudes that could be attached to astrologers who were just a little too good at their job—in Chaucerian terms, a little too adept at peering into “Goddes pryvetee.” The circulation of necromantic texts in Scot's name in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries only confirms the belief that such unerring accuracy could only have been accomplished through diabolical means.38While Scot would likely have been horrified by his postmortem reputation as a magician, this is not to say that other, less cautious astrologers did not flaunt their reliance on demons. In a commentary on Johannes de Sacrobosco's influential astronomical text De sphaera mundi (ca. 1230s), the Italian polymath Cecco d'Ascoli (d. 1327) argued that the terrestrial and celestial spheres were in fact governed by evil spirits.39 In a nod to a similar argument made in the Speculum astronomiae, he also notes that astrological images could be constructed to allow communication with demons.40 With such heretical views as these, it is not surprising that d'Ascoli was condemned by the Inquisition and burnt at the stake, even if the exact details of the indictment are lost to time.Not all court proceedings against astrologers were as vague as the d'Ascoli affair. In one of the more famous historical examples dating to 1441, the astrologer and Oxford native Roger Bolingbroke, along with Thomas Southwell, John Hume, Margery Jourdemayne (“The Witch of Eye”) and Eleanor Cobham, the Duchess of Gloucester, were accused of performing treasonous black magic against Henry VI. The crime originated in a horoscope purportedly drawn up by Bolingbroke and Southwell that predicted the king's early death.41 Following his arrest and public display at St. Paul's cross, where he was forced to renounce his “craft of nygromancie,” Bolingbroke was found guilty and hung, drawn, and quartered. For their part in the affair, Jourdemayne was burnt at the stake and Southwell died in prison a day before his scheduled execution, with Hume being pardoned and Eleanor Cobham forced to undertake public penance. Echoing John Ashenden's assertion (ca. 1350) “nigromancy [is] sometimes confused with astronomy,”42 and Roger Bacon's complaint (ca. 1267) that those who work with licit astrological images are almost always denounced as magicians,43 the Bolingbroke plot is a perfect example of the lack of true demarcation between the two disciplines in the popular mindset. For most critics, the Venn diagram was almost a circle.To return to the Miller's Tale, the above overview of the moral status of astrology adds extra nuance to the portrait of “hende” Nicholas. Given Oxford's reputation as a seat of astrological learning, with the abovementioned John Ashenden (d. 1368), Walter of Evesham (d. 1330), and Simon Bredon (d. 1372) forming some of the more well-known experts in the field, Nicholas is well placed to follow in his illustrious forebearers’ footsteps.44 In this respect his desire “to lerne astrologye” as an Oxford student can hardly be considered unorthodox. Neither can his forays into local, commercial astrology through the casting of “interrogaciouns” be seen as unusual. Although, as noted by Sophie Page, written evidence for the working habits of low-level astrologers in England is scarce, especially in the fourteenth century, the surviving notebook of Londoner Richard Trewythian (BL MS Sloane 428, ca. 1455) provides a tantalizing analogue to the type of services Nicholas himself offered.45 According to his notes Trewythian also conducted such mundane tasks for clients as predicting the weather, taking personal horoscopes, and performing interrogations (see against Miller's Tale, II.3196–97). Unlike Nicholas, Trewythian also used his knowledge to predict the most astrologically advantageous time for medical treatments.46In light of the above, the description of Nicholas's astrological equipment also needs reevaluation. Much like the Toledan Tables employed by the Clerk of Orleans in the Franklin's Tale, Ptolemy's Almagest was a foundational text for computing the motions and movements of the stars, more astronomy than astrology. By itself, anyone who owned a copy of the Almagest could hardly be accused of necromancy. Read against the allusive reference to “bookes grete and smale” (I.3208), however, doubts start to arise. The fact that these “bookes” are unnamed is more telling than has previously been given credit. Here, Chaucer seems to be making a lexical distinction between a named (licit) volume and a collection of unnamed (perhaps illicit) textbooks, between a key part of the scientific curriculum and texts that needed to be kept secret so as not to incite the interests of the religious authorities. As Richard Kieckhefer famously argued, the “clerical underworld” of the school and university system was rife with practitioners of dubious magic, including necromancy.47 Unnamed books containing powerful rites and spells, drawing from the same wellspring of cosmological knowledge as works of judicial astrology, were highly prized by scholars and students seeking advancement and extra income in a saturated job market. 48 While most magical works circulated anonymously without a title—a bricolage of spells, curses, and charms that makes it almost impossible to trace an exact textual history—some of the more prominent magical texts were indeed named. The Ars Notoria and Liber Juratus Honorii (both ca. 1200s), two works of ceremonial magic that were known to have circulated in fourteenth-century England, are precisely the type of handbooks that so troubled the author of the Speculum astronomiae: dubious texts that contaminated a pure, orthodox science with devotions to dangerous and animate forces.49The reference to “bookes grete and smale” occurs in a passage that includes descriptions of visual, olfactory, and aural ostentation. Nicholas's room is adorned with an expensive red woolen cloth and sweet-smelling herbs. It is a place where he nightly “made melodie” on his psaltery (I.3205–207; 3212–13). Such frivolities may also have extended to Nicholas's reading habits. Unnamed, potentially illicit manuscripts were precisely the type of “curious” text that did indeed circulate amongst medieval student populations, as attested by the Franklin's Tale (V.1120). If astrolabes were used in necromantic rites as Michael Scot suggests, then the cumulative evidence in these passages forces the reader to recognize from the outset that Nicholas was no pilgrim-clerk. He is as far from the ideal as can be. Framed by the enduring popular belief that astrology and necromancy were one and the same,50 Nicholas's poor scholarly habits force John to respond to his lodger's “wyle” as only a pious churchgoer knew how. Nicholas is scolded not just for unlocking “Goddes pryvetee” and the hidden knowledge contained therein (I.3454). but for how he was presumed to have gone about it. Performing a nyght-spel was the only possible recourse when there were demons in the house.Nicholas and Alisoun hatch their adulterous scheme on a Saturday while John is visiting nearby Osney, likely on business (I.3400). The reader is conspicuously kept in the dark as to the details of their plan. Although we are told that two days’ worth of supplies are to be brought to Nicholas's room and that Alisoun should feign ignorance as to his whereabouts, we are not made privy to the rules of the game. Nor, indeed, are we told how Nicholas intends to use his clerical learning to his and Alisoun's advantage (I.3299–3300, 3405).51 Ironically the reader is unable to pry into Nicholas’ own “privetee.” It is only on the Sunday evening that John finally realizes something is amiss. Worried that his lodger might be dead, John commands his young servant Robin to go up to Nicholas's room to “looke how it is” (I.3433).52 Hearing no response after calling and knocking, Robin proceeds to peer into a cat hole near the bottom of the door: And at that hole he [Robin] looked in ful depe,And at the laste he hadde of hym a sight.This Nicholas sat evere capyng upright,As he had kiked on the newe moone.Adoun he gooth, and tolde his maister sooneIn what array he saugh this ilke man. (I.3442–47)This, of course, is exactly what Nicholas intended. Drawing upon his knowledge of the stars, his performance has been precisely calibrated to correspond to the rising of the new moon, that is, when the moon and sun are in conjunction and night is at its darkest. In this way, he offers a wholly theatric yet suitably portentous one week countdown to the prophesized flood (“That now a Monday next, at quarter nyght / Shal falle a reyn” [I.3516–17a]).53 Given Nicholas's attested skill in judicial astrology—he would not have a lengthy client list otherwise—his later statement to John that he divined the future by “look[ing] in the moone bright” (I.3515, my italics) is less a metatextual criticism of his astrological inexpertise, an inability to tell a full moon from a new moon, and more, I suspect, a joke relating to his mark's ignorance of the technicalities of lunar prognostication.54 Indeed, it is an ignorance of the mechanics of astrology, a misunderstanding of how the future is divined, that governs John's reaction to what Robin has to say: This carpenter to blessen hym bigan,And seyde, “Help us, Seinte Frydeswyde!A man woot litel what hym shal bityde.This man is falle, with his astromye,In some woodnesse or in som agonye.I thoghte ay wel how that it sholde be!Men sholde nat knowe of Goddes pryveteeYe, blessed be alwey a lewed manThat noght but oonly his bileve kan!” (I.3448–56)There are many layers of meaning to unpack here. As mentioned above, the belief that the practice of astrology caused madness is a commonplace criticism, expressed most notably by Chaucer's contemporary, Nicholas of Oresme. Astronomy's designation as a false and spiritually barren art is of course similar to how alchemy is portrayed in the Canon's Yeoman's Tale. Just like the confessional of the hapless Canon's Yeoman, which details the depths to which alchemists plummet in their futile efforts to turn base metals into gold (“but to hir purpos shul they nevere atteyne” [VIII.1399]), so too the term “woodnesse” in the Miller's Tale line 3452 suggests a similarly frenzied and unproductive obsession on the part of Nicholas.55 The alchemist and astrologer are each frantically driven by curiosity yet both are spiritually blind. Indeed, the Yeoman's declaration that the pursuit of alchemy turns mirth to sorrow, bleeds practitioners of their wealth, and that Christ himself does not wish the secrets of the Philosopher's Stone to be revealed (“wol nat that it discovered bee” [VIII.1468]) finds a ready echo in John's own concerns about the licitness of astrology and the dangers of pulling back the veil of the everyday sensory universe. The Yeoman's final warning that alch