O firste moevyng! Crueel firmament,
With thy diurnal sweigh that crowdest ay
And hurlest al from est til occident
That naturelly wolde holde another way,
Thy crowdyng set the hevene in swich array
At the bigynnyng of this fiers viage,
That crueel Mars hath slayn this mariage.
– Geoffrey Chaucer
The Canterbury Tales, The Man of Law’s Tale. As Constance begins her dangerous voyage for Syria, the Man of Law says that a cruel "firste moevyng" – God – drives the planets in the opposite way to their natural daily motion, making disaster inevitable. God’s move has set the heavens in such an arrangement that a malevolent Mars has killed this marriage, he adds. There is a sense of foreboding and a foreshadowing of tragic events to come here.