The
Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340-1400) is a collection of stories
supposedly told by a set of pilgrims as they make their way to Canterbury. As
well as the tales themselves, the pen-portraits of the storytellers are of
great interest. Here is an account of Chaucer’s “Pardoner”.
The Pardoner
Chaucer finds
it difficult to approve of most of the pilgrims who earn their living from
religion, and the Pardoner is no exception. This is a man who takes advantage
of gullible people by promising to free them from the pains of Hell by selling
them pardons for their sins, supposedly signed by the Pope. He will also sell
“holy relics”, charging absurd prices for such things as old bits of wood that
came, according to him, from Christ’s cross. He is therefore a 14th
century con-artist.
When the
Pardoner is invited by “mine Host”, Harry Bailey, to follow the tale told by
the Physician, it soon becomes clear that his main purpose for undertaking this
pilgrimage is to make a quick buck or two, either from his fellow pilgrims or
from anyone else he might meet along the way. However, we also get to see that
this is an “honest rogue”, who is completely open about what he does, and he
turns out to be almost likeable.
He demands a
drink before he will tell his tale, and we can imagine him getting more and
more loquacious as the alcohol takes effect.
The prologue
to his tale is in the form of a confession of his business methods, of which he
is clearly inordinately proud. Indeed, this is nothing short of a lengthy boast
at what a brilliant conman he is.
“… I have
won, year by year,
A hundred
marks since I was a pardoner.
I stand like
a clerk (priest) in my pulpit,
And when the
common people are sitting down
I preach just
as you have heard before
And tell a
hundred false stories more”. [my own translation from the original]
The nature of
his tale
The sermon
that he refers to is on the familiar text from the Letter to Timothy that he
quotes in Latin, “Radix malorum est Cupiditas”, or “the love of money is the
root of all evil”. He then pleads with
his “congregation” to refrain from avarice, which they can best do by parting
with their cash. The Pardoner makes no secret of the fact that he is the most
avaricious person there, but, so what, it’s a living isn’t it?
He will have
performed this trick in every village he has passed through on his travels, his
pulpit being a simple folding stand and box that he erects in an open space,
possibly even directly outside the parish church to encourage the pretence that
he is acting as the Pope’s representative.
He now
proceeds to preach his sermon on the text quoted above, and it constitutes one
of the most satisfying tales in the whole canon, being well told and with a
wonderful twist in the story. It is a moral tale, and one that we can well
imagine a person such as the Pardoner giving out as part of his “patter”. We
can easily envisage his village audiences being gripped by its ingenuity and
listening intently as it is told.
The
Pardoner’s Tale
Three young
men have been drinking and enjoying themselves, obviously to excess. The
Pardoner really goes to town on the evils of drink, whilst doubtless downing
his third or fourth pint of ale contributed by his fellow pilgrims. We can
imagine this demagogue catching the moment when he knows that his oratory has
captured his audience before he gets going on the story proper.
As the men
sit outside the tavern, they see a funeral procession passing by. They ask a
boy to tell them who has died, and it turns out to be a friend of theirs. He
had, in the boy’s words, been visited by a thief whom men call Death, who has
“a thousand slain” with the pestilence.
The three men
decide, there and then, that they must seek out “this false traitor Death, he
shall be slain, he that so many slayeth”.
They come
across an old man, who tells them that he has seen Death, and that they will
find him in a grove, under a tree. What they actually find is a pile of gold
coins, which causes them to forget all about their search for Death.
Now fully
sober, the three work out a plan as to how they are going to guard this
treasure and get it home safely. They draw lots, and the youngest is sent to
the town to fetch food and wine so that they can wait until nightfall before
taking the treasure home without being noticed.
When he has
gone, the other two work out that splitting the gold between two of them will
profit them better than a three-way split, so they decide to murder their
friend when he comes back.
The third
young man has had similar thoughts, although he would prefer not to share the
treasure at all. He therefore visits an apothecary when he reaches town and
buys some rat poison, which he pours into two of the wine bottles that he has
bought to take back to the clearing in the woods.
As the
Pardoner says, you can work out the rest of the story for yourselves. The two
conspirators carry out their plan then decide that, before burying the body,
they need a drink. And so all three find Death, just as the old man said they
would.
The Pardoner
pushes his luck
The Pardoner,
his story complete, now forgets himself completely and carries on with the
sales pitch. He assails his fellow pilgrims with another diatribe about the
consequences of avarice and urges them to buy his pardons and relics, pointing
out how lucky they are to have him as one of their number, given that any fatal
accident along the way will not result in the victim going to Hell, as long as
they have bought their pardon from him first.
He then makes
the mistake of turning to the Host as his first customer, who sees through all
this claptrap in two seconds flat, threatening the wretched man with instant
castration. This shuts up the Pardoner
up, and it is left to the Knight to calm everyone down and urge the Host and
the Pardoner to “kiss and make up” which, perhaps surprisingly, they do.
So ends the
Pardoner’s Tale, which has been described as the most perfect short story in
English literature. If this is true, it is the linking of the teller and the
tale that makes it so. It is certainly arguable that this section of the
Canterbury Tales is the best thing that Chaucer ever wrote.
© John
Welford
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