The Pardoner: Topics of Religion
Religion in Medieval England
The key to understanding the Pardoner is establishing religious context of medieval England. Christianity is the most significant religion operating within the Pardoner’s character and The Canterbury Tales as a whole. In fact, there is a lack of accurate depictions of other religions, such as Jewish, Muslim, and pagan groups. [1]
There is a misconception that fourteenth century Christians were ignorant and conformed blindly to religion and religious authorities. In reality, however, they were proactive in expressing their problems with the Church. [2] The Church was not entirely against dissent; they enacted a series of reforms to better support the laity. [3] Chaucer questions religious institutions and beliefs by unbiasedly addressing different moral and ethical situations through his poetry. [4] The Tales is too ambiguous to decipher what Chaucer meant to communicate about religion. But Chaucer does depict diverse perspectives of Christian religious thought in the pilgrims’ characterization, which are more accurate of the time. [5]
The Pardoner’s Social Role & Church Dissenters
The Pardoner is employed by the Church; his job is to pardon (hence his name) or forgive the sins of the congregation. However, his characterization is satirical, which academic Rosemary Horrox considers a fact. [6] For example, the Pardoner admits he is a fraud: “‘By this gaude have I wonne, yeer by yeer, / An hundred mark sith I was pardoner”. [7] A fourteenth century puritan reading can interpret the Pardoner as Chaucer praising sin. [8] Commentators of the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century interpreted the Pardoner’s ironic portrayal as Chaucer criticizing corruption within the Church. [9] Earlier writers believe Chaucer sympathized with Church reformists from his time known as the Lollards, who were led by John Wycliffe. [10]
Literary scholars are more interested in analyzing the Pardoner as an individual rather than solely a symbol of Church corruption; he sells access to fake relics, a type of indulgence, in exchange for the forgiveness of one’s sins. [11] It is reductive to think of the Pardoner as solely symbolizing corruption because Chaucer’s contemporaries recognized indulgences as possibly corrupt, yet simultaneously as a means for salvation. [12] Seeing a relic was one way of absolving one’s sins. [13] The forgiveness of sins was important to Christians because it determined where one’s soul went in the afterlife: heaven, hell, or purgatory. [14] Some people went on pilgrimages for relics. [15] He can be thought of as a medieval traveling salesman as he traveled throughout England selling access to relics: “Thanne shewe I forth my longe cristal stones, / Y crammed ful of cloutes and of bones; / Relikes been they, as wenen they echon. / Thanne have I in latoun a shulder-bon, / Which that was of an holy Jewes sheep”. [16] Yet, a Jewish person’s sheep’s shoulder bone is obviously not a relic; the Pardoner sold fake relics, which connects to his satirical characterization. Lollards were against relics and pilgrimages. [17]
Analyzing the Pardoner’s Sexuality in a New Way
There are queer interpretations of the Pardoner that are discussed by others on this page. However, establishing another way to think about it can be helpful. Academic Karma Lochrie imagines breaking down the idea of medieval heteronormativity and removing the Middle Ages from the uncertain labeling of heteronormativity throughout history. [18] Heterosexuality is the desire for the opposite sex reflected. Heteronormativity is heterosexuality reflected in everything from who we think we are as a country, to what it means to be human, while excluding others from these same meanings and communities. [19]
The 2003 Supreme Court Case Lawrence v. Texas proved how the labels heteronormative and heterosexual can be misused in contemporary society, which makes them more likely to be misused when applied to the past, such as in medieval studies. [20] This is the Perverse Presentism methodology Lochrie suggests to practice, which is avoiding the use of what we do not know in the present to what we cannot know about the past, such as the meaning of heterosexuality, homosexuality, or even queer. [21]
Lochrie imagines ending the homo/hetero divide because it can be limiting. Instead, Lochrie introduces the idea of taking the “hetero” of heterosexual and “syncrasy” of “idiosyncrasy,” which means mixing together. [22] Lochrie presents Heterosyncracies as a more descriptive term of multiple sexualities and genders that can be excluded under the labels of heteronormative and homosexual, which also broadens the way the Pardoner’s sexuality can be analyzed, namely when he tells the Host to “[kiss his relics]”. [23] This can be interpreted as a sexual joke, which in turn is used to interpret the Pardoner as queer.
[1] Bale, Anthony. “‘A maner Latyn corrupt’: Chaucer and the Absent Religions”. Chaucer and Religion. (2010): 64.
[2] Rhodes, Jim. “Religion”. Chaucer: An Oxford Guide. (2005): 81.
[3] Rhodes, “Religion”, 85.
[4] Rhodes, “Religion”, 82.
[5] Rhodes, “Religion”, 82-3.
[6] Horrox, Rosemary. “The Pardoner”. Historians On Chaucer: The ‘General Prologue’ To The Canterbury Tales, 1st ed (2014): 443.
[7] Chaucer, “The Pardoner’s Prologue”, The Canterbury Tales, VI. 389-390, p. 453.
[8] Watson, Nicholas. “Christian Ideologies”. A Companion to Chaucer. (2000): 82.
[9] Horrox, “The Pardoner”, 443-44.
[10] Horrox, “The Pardoner”, 444.
[11] Horrox, “The Pardoner”, 445.
[12] Horrox, “The Pardoner”, 445.
[13] Horrox, “The Pardoner”, 446.
[14] Rhodes, “Religion”, 91.
[15] Rhodes, “Religion”, 92.
[16] Chaucer, “The Pardoner’s Prologue”, The Canterbury Tales, VI. 347-351, p. 452.
[17] Rhodes, “Religion”, 93.
[18] Lochrie, Karma. Heterosyncracies: Female Sexuality When Normal Wasn’t. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (2005): xiii.
[19] Lochrie, Heterosyncracies, xii.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Lochrie, Heterosyncracies, xvii.
[22] Lochrie, Heterosyncracies, xix.
[23] Chaucer, “The Pardoner’s Prologue”, The Canterbury Tales, VI. 943-44, p. 472.
A Look at how the Pardoner undermines Church Authority
Who is the Pardoner?
The Pardoner and his tale present a loaded question; is this character likeable at all? On the surface, he appears to be a fraud and a hypocrite, preaching about his own character flaws in his prologue and then demonstrating these flaws after his tale. On one hand, he undermines his own moral superiority by behaving just as hypocritically as the other pilgrims. On the other hand, he expresses cleverness and self-awareness like no other pilgrim.
Maik Goth presents the Pardoner as part of a long-running literary tradition: the Vice. The Vice, as Goth puts it, is “an allegorical personification of evil” prominent in literature and theater in Chaucer’s time. [1] The Pardoner fulfills this role in his prologue when he gives a long speech about both what he believes to be the worst of sins and the sin of which he is most guilty. Greed, or avarice as the Pardoner puts it, seeps through the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale to its very end. Goth puts the takeaway quite explicitly:
“As he expounds the themes of radix est malorum cupiditas in his sermons at the same time, he builds up an ironical tension between his proneness to avarice and his preaching against it. In such behavior, there lurks a hint at the Pardoner’s allegorical implications because it turns him into the embodiment of the vice itself.” [2]
The more the Pardoner tells us that money is the root of all evil, the more questionable he becomes. This makes his already villainous qualities even worse by making him look like a hypocrite. Goth’s interest in the Pardoner connects to his desire to prove Chaucer’s interest in theater in his own time. Thus, the Pardoner’s villainous attributes are not only villainous in and of themselves but have a performative edge to them. Goth later ties the Pardoner to the literary development that lead to Shakespeare’s Iago and Milton’s Satan. All three are known as charismatic manipulators, masterminds, and arch villains specifically because of their deception.
The Pardoner reveals a lot more about himself than most pilgrims do, especially during his prologue. John M. Ganim writes on confession as a device of medieval literature and how it appears in The Canterbury Tales. Regarding confession’s historical context, Ganim writes:
“Confession resulted in an increased awareness of the moral status of the individual, especially in terms of his or her intent and conduct. It contributed to the increasing articulation of the private life and of the self by which we measure the depth of modernity.” [3]
The Pardoner’s tangential prologue qualifies for such a confession. If confession should reveal the morality of the speaker, then the Pardoner makes apparent his villainous qualities and identifies himself of ill repute. However, many other pilgrims would deny or distract from their moral failings, especially those who retract their authority to shift blame for potentially offensive tales. He references in his introduction, “The Pardoner is traditionally accorded some access to saving grace, and in some recent studies his self-exposure is celebrated as redeeming Chaucer’s entire project.” [4] The Pardoner’s Prologue does this by showing the Pardoner’s unexpected self-awareness, but the redemptive qualities are questionable. In his prologue, the Pardoner tells the other pilgrims the exact ways in which he japes his various audiences. In doing so, he (supposedly) directly quotes his pitch to the pilgrims, effectively regaling them with the exact same pitch. He begins his prologue by saying:
‘Lordings,’ quod he, ‘in chirches whan I preche,
I peyne me to han an hauteyn speche,
And ringe it out as round as gooth a belle,
For I can al by rote that I telle.
My theme is alwey oon, and ever was—
“Radix malorum est Cupiditas.” [5]
From the very beginning, he signals that he is about to subject the pilgrims to his traditional gambit in the exact way he’d run it on his typical congregation. The extent to which anything the Pardoner says is genuine, including the tale itself, is questionable.
The Pardoner’s “Faith”
Given the Pardoner’s immorality and insincerity, he expresses Chaucer’s disdain for the clergy more strongly than almost any other character. His avarice and corruption are not uncharacteristic of pardoners of his time, but his confessing these traits to his own ends twists the confession narrative discussed earlier. According to Ganim, “By representing the individual as constituted by the narrative that he or she tells about himself or herself, in response to implicit or explicit questions, as if to a confessor, writers like Chaucer and Boccaccio secularize the process of confession and adapt it to literary rather than theological and moral means.” [6] The tradition of confession, at the time of The Canterbury Tales, referred to the sacrament of confession that took place between a sinner and a priest. The Pardoner takes a subject of a private nature and expounds it upon a group of almost thirty. If abusing a position of clerical authority for profit wasn’t enough, then there might be a laundry list of ways the Pardoner subverts the church.
The way he offers his pardons seems blasphemous too. Linda Georgianna refers to the moment after his tale in which he offers his relics and pardons to the pilgrims:
“The Pardoner’s invitation to reoccupy a distanced, privileged position, along with his sudden juxtaposition of Christ’s pardon with his own copious supply of paper ones, whatever they say about the Pardoner’s character, ask readers and pilgrims to reexamine the grounds of their belief in divine pardon and consider how best to access forgiveness of sin.” [7]
The mere concepts of confession and forgiveness as they appear in the Church have been recontextualized and questioned by their association with the Pardoner. Including a corrupt pardoner on the pilgrimage on its own does not provide nearly as much commentary as the way Chaucer’s Pardoner is utilized.
There are aspects of the Pardoner’s profession that feel both unique to his character and like a further abuse of the Church as an institution. Rosemary Horrox points out that it’s completely possible that the Pardoner wasn’t a licensed preacher. [8] Not only were pardoners not typically licensed to preach, but the Pardoner performs clerical duties in the churches he visits, despite somewhat admitting he was no cleric himself. [9] Breaking the Church’s laws for the sake of self-promotion is both a bold move and an indicator to how easily the system was manipulated.
Chaucer’s Faith
One of the most difficult things to reconcile with the Pardoner is Chaucer’s own religiosity. Despite being rife with anticlericalism, The Canterbury Tales are full of religious themes and narratives. Roger Ellis examines the instances of religious tales, including the Pardoner’s Tale. According to him, “The Pardoner’s Tale” is not only a prominently religious stories, but are two of the tales which scholars refer to constantly when looking at the other religious tales. [10] The Pardoner’s Tale appears rather sermon-like as well, especially with closing lines like: “O cursed sinne of alle cursednesse! / O traitours homicide, O wikkednesse! / O glotonye, luxurye, and hasardrye!” [11] Ellis discusses the sermon-like qualities of the tale, as well as its religious conventions–vice as a metaphor, symbols of death, and ultimately “[moving] its audience to an act of faith” [12]–as well as how the tale mirrors the pilgrimage itself:
“Just as the various emblems in the tale have showed the pilgrims indirectly to themselves — poised, like the rioters, mid-way on their journey to an uncertain end — so now, for a moment, the Pardoner lets them see themselves clearly, in the physical context of their pilgrimage.” [13]
Goth–mentioned previously as comparing the Pardoner to a broader tradition–acknowledges that the Pardoner’s use of religious tradition to his own ends falls into the convention of the Vice. [14] This aligns with the notion that the Pardoner is a villain twisting Church rhetoric for profit. So far, all evidence portrays the concept of pardons and pardoners as prone to corruption.
Even harder to come to terms with is the tale’s ending. The reaction to the sort of question Georgianna presents is unknown, as the Host very loudly shuts the Pardoner down before he can keep pushing his relics. According to Horrox, “What the Pardoner’s fellow pilgrims thought, or might be expected to think, about him and his pardons is left unclear.” [15] Unfortunately, “unclear” is the operative word when dealing with Chaucer. The only reason the Host becomes angry with the Pardoner is because the Pardoner calls him out specifically, calling him “moost envoluped in sinne.” [16] The audience gets no explanation as to whether the Pardoner’s tricks worked or not, since the Host outright prevents it.
[1] Goth, Maik. “I.3: Scenes from the History of the Vice”. From Chaucer’s Pardoner to Shakespeare’s Iago: Aspects of Intermediality in the History of the Vice. (2009): 14.
[2] Goth, “II.5.1.1: Motivation and the Root of Evil”. 48.
[3] Ganim, John M. “Chaucer, Boccaccio, Confession, And Subjectivity”. In The Decameron And The Canterbury Tales: New Essays On An Old Question. (2000): 131.
[4] Ganim, “Chaucer, Boccaccio, Confession, And Subjectivity”. 128.
[5] Chaucer, “The Pardoner’s Prologue”, The Canterbury Tales. VI. 329-334, p. 451.
[6] Ganim, “Chaucer, Boccaccio, Confession, And Subjectivity”. 140.
[7] Georgiana, Linda. “Anticlericalism in Boccaccio and Chaucer: The Bark and the Bite”. In The Decameron And The Canterbury Tales: New Essays On An Old Question. (2000): 168.
[8] Horrox, Rosemary. “The Pardoner”. In Historians On Chaucer: The ‘General Prologue’ To The Canterbury Tales. (2014): 451.
[9] Horrox, “The Pardoner”. 451.
[10] Ellis, Roger. “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale”. In Patterns Of Religious Narrative In The Canterbury Tales. (1986): 298.
[11] Chaucer, “The Pardoner’s Tale”, The Canterbury Tales. VI. 895-897, p. 471.
[12] Ellis, “The Pardoner’s Tale”. 260.
[13] Ellis, “The Pardoner’s Tale”. 261.
[14] Goth, “II.5.3: ‘Fals Fame’: The Pardoner and the Tradition of the Backbiter”. 76.
[15] Horrox, “The Pardoner”. 459.
[16] Chaucer, “The Pardoner’s Tale”, The Canterbury Tales. VI. 942, p. 472.
