In the third stanza of “Truth,” the speaker describes this world as a foreign country, and reminds his addressee that his true home is heaven. For modern readers, this sentiment might seem pretty extreme. After all, it doesn't seem like it leaves a lot of room for us to enjoy our lives, even if we do believe in heaven or hell. However, in medieval Catholicism contempt of the world, or contemptus mundi, was a popular theological position defined by the rejection of everyday life in favor of spiritual priorities.
Contemptus mundi likely originated in the ideas of the Greek Stoics, who encountered their followers to prioritize inner virtue. They suggested that someone who was firm in their values and lived in accordance with them would be immune to misfortune. Medieval followers of the contemptus mundi ethos translated this idea to a Christian context. For them, one could avoid being destroyed by the ups and downs of everyday life by placing trust not only in personal virtue, but also in divine providence, or the idea that God governs history and ensures that it ultimately bends towards justice.
“Truth” is directly influenced by several works in this tradition. The most famous is On the Consolation of Philosophy, a treatise by the sixth-century philosopher Boethius. Boethius had been imprisoned for crimes he did not commit, and while incarcerated composed his consolation. It’s a fascinating, complex, and emphatically poetic text, but the central idea is simple. Things in this world appear to be ruled by the arbitrary wiles of fortune. However, if we look at the world from a distance, we see that eventually, everything happens for the best, according to God’s will. Chaucer translated the Consolation of Philosophy into Middle English, and its ideas clearly influence the speaker’s trust in truth to deliver Philip from misfortune.
Other works of contemptus mundi were less comforting. During the middle ages, the most well-known text in the tradition was the monk Bernard of Cluny’s bitter satire De contemptu mundi, which emphasized the impermanence of all secular joys. Similarly, Pope Innocent III wrote an essay entitled “On the Misery of the Human Condition,” also translated by Chaucer. This stronger, more urgent form of contemptus mundi both informs the rejection of court life in the first and second stanzas of “Truth,” and also inspires the panicked tone of the third stanza, which emphatically urges Philip away from an inherently evil world.
Contemptus mundi was a popular and influential idea in the Middle Ages, voiced by a number of influential figures. However, it’s important to remember that, like any philosophical idea, it was not universally adopted. In The Revelations of Divine Love, the mystic Julian of Norwich casts the world as a beautiful place, where the love of God is everywhere visible. Romances like Gawain and the Green Knight celebrated the pleasures of life, from feasting to sensuality to wandering in the green world. In The Canterbury Tales and many of his other works, Chaucer himself voices a more complex relationship to worldly things. Although often bitterly satirical of human foibles, he also lingers with the joys of adventure and companionship.
