Root of all evils

In an age where Rome was the seat of not only spiritual but also socioeconomic and political power, any criticism of their business was borderline social suicide. Literature of the age was largely laudatory, glorifying some saint or another and extolling the benefits of a Christian life through verse and alliteration. Curiously, however, it would appear that in his Pardoner’s Tale Geoffrey Chaucer was less than pleased with the state of affairs in Christendom. The Pardoner tells a cautionary tale about three men who, despite initially setting out to abolish Death and avenge all those who had fallen by his hand, instead destroy one another in a bout of greed-driven conspiracy and rage. Superficially, the fable might appear to fall cleanly in line with central Christian virtues of humility and meekness. However, below the surface some rather radical subversive elements critical of corruption were stirring, as the characters were representative of a Roman Catholic Church that had lost its way in pursuit of its once-noble goals.

The three men, of course, are immediately reminiscent of the Holy Trinity of Catholic tradition — the father, son, and holy spirit. Together the three comprise the foundational aim of Catholic worship, and should be considered symbolic of Christian doctrine in its entirety. The trio had set out to “slay this false traitor Death” (line 699)¹, not unlike Christian teachings of Jesus’ mission on Earth. His was a quest to open the gates of heaven and grant immortality to all those willing to believe in him, a goal only achievable through his ultimate self-sacrifice and the cutting of a significant amount of dogmatic red tape. The explicit intention of the Roman Catholic Church, founded thereafter, was to extend the shepherd’s salvational message to the maximum amount of sheep; to introduce as many adherents as possible to the good news of an immortality after death.

However, much like the three men in the Pardoner’s story, over the centuries the magisterium became distracted from their heroic commission. Corruption ran rampant — especially in Chaucer’s contemporary England — and the vices of priests and bishops were brought to light in later years by the public grievances of Martin Luther and other Protestant reformers. For Chaucer, however, this sort of whistle-blower mentality was downright revolutionary thinking and enough to warrant ostracism if not full-on excommunication. For this reason, the poet obscured his critiques under crafty metafictional devices and the guise of a fictional storyteller from whom he was supposedly relating the tales secondhand.

The Pardoner himself adds another layer of complexity to Chaucer’s criticism. The man, one nominally in service of the Church and preaching against avarice, was probably the greediest character who appears in The Canterbury Tales. “Of avarice and of such cursedness / Is all my preaching, to make them generous / To give their pennies, and namely unto me,” he tells the pilgrims, condemning avarice and requesting donations in the very next breath (lines 400–2)¹. The author cast this hypocrite to reflect the inherent hypocrisy of many of the Church’s foot-soldiers — men whose lives were ostensibly devoted to humility and piety who also fancied the same currency as a beggar on the street. These men used their power and societal influence to extort wealth from their constituents, and apparently our friend Geoffrey wasn’t about to stand idly by and watch the thieves stab and poison their message.