The Pardoner In Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

In the late 1300s Geoffrey Chaucer began wrote The Canterbury Tales, a story which follows the religious journey of twenty-nine people, who represent many aspects of Medieval society, to the Canterbury Cathedral in southeast England. While on the pilgrimage the host of the tavern, where all the pilgrims meet, suggests that the pilgrims each tell a story for the group’s entertainment. Chaucer intended for all the voyagers to tell two stories, but he unfortunately died before he could finish the book and only got to write one story apiece. However, the goal of the storytelling contest is to tell the most moral story possible, and the one who wins receives a free meal, which the rest of the pilgrims will pay for. Although some of the other stories have good moral messages, “The Pardoner’s Tale” and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” are on different ends of the moral spectrum. “The Pardoner’s Tale” focuses on a pardoner who preaches against greed. While “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” exemplifies what all women want in their relationships: power. Although both “The Pardoner’s Tale” and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” demonstrate the value of the opinion of elders, the stories differ in their moral values and their storyteller’s values.

Both tales exhibit this idea from different perspectives to relfect the values of their context. The Pardoners Tale reflects a religious society where sin is punished

This is how the pardoner is able to make money; he uses his sermons to convict people and convince them to buy forgiveness for their sins. The pardoner preaches his sermons around the phrase, “Radix malorum est cupiditas.” The Latin meaning of what the pardoner preaches is “The love of money is the root of all evil” this is based out of 1 Timothy 6:10 stated in The Holy Bible. He develops his sermons using this to convict people of their greed so they do not mind buying their indulgences from him. In “The Pardoners Prologue”, the pardoner states, “What! Do you think, as long as I can preach / And get silver for the things I teach / That I will live in poverty, from choice?” Rather than be poor and respectable and have moral values, the pardoner would rather be greedy and preach fallacy to become wealthy. His sermons are a main factor that enable him to accomplish this. In Richard Firth Green’s analysis of, “Jean Gobi’s Pardoners Tales” Green states an account of a pardoner caught preaching false sermons, “A corrupt pardoner is hauled up before his bishop because he has been reported to have been sowing errors… specifically to have been preaching heresies.” This can also be used to show how a pardoner is a universal character in those times. The pardoner in “The Canterbury Tales” is not the only one who uses his sermons to benefit himself. Although his sermons are a main part of feeding his greed, his relics are also a major

In Canterbury Tales, Chaucer reveals hypocritical qualities in the Pardoner through vivid characterization, tone, and morality. The Pardoner's total lack of respect for the Church's expectations and the congregation allows Chaucer to display flaws in society. Chaucer is able to demonstrate scams and illustrate hypocrisy in the Church, and society in general through the techniques he uses in Canterbury Tales.

The Pardoner use deceit and lies to pray on the poor and innocent, his characterization represents the churches misuse of its vast power. Chaucer fortifies this idea when he describes the Pardoner as “And thus I preach against the very vice/I make my

The world is full of hypocrites and in the story “The Pardoner’s Tale”, Chaucer writes about a man who is living a life of sin. The Pardoner’s tale is an epologia of a pardoner who has the power from the church to forgive others for their sins but makes a living out of lying and tricking his audience. Throughout the Pardoner’s Tale he preaches about greed, drinking, blasphemy, and gambling but in the Pardoner’s Prologue he admits to committing these sins himself. The pardoner is really just a 14th century con artist who makes a living by his own hypocrisy.

Both the Pardoner and the Friar are portrayed as quick-thinking charlatans. Chaucer does seem to admire the Pardoner’s skill, and skilled he is, but his actions do not befit a man of the cloth. The Pardoner is spoken of as using bogus relics to con “poor up-country parsons” out of their hard-earned cash. These small hustles netted him “more in a day than the parson in a month or two”. When choosing his occupation, I’m sure the Pardoner did not see the light of the lord but rather, dollar signs. Chaucer goes on to say that yes, the pardoner did preach rather well and his stories were quite splendid, however that might be on account that he could “win money from the crowd”.

In the story, “The Pardoner’s Tales”, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the character the Pardoner in descriptive way. He describe the Pardoner’s corruption teaching and the way the Pardoner act in the tale. The religious that the Pardoner teaching is corrupted and very selfish, greediness, and gluttony. This thing are all opposite to what the real church religious is teaching. In the story, he tricks the people to buy his fake relics and other things by using the church’s believe. The Pardoner act and his teaching are all corrupted because of the church. It shows the side of greediness, gluttony and selfishness which highly reflect into himself and his believe.

One character Chaucer uses to ridicule hypocrisy is the Pardoner. Throughout the description of the pardoner, it is shown that he is corrupt. He uses lies and

In Canterbury Tales, the pardoner vouches for the pardoning of those who come to the church to confess their sins. Specifically in the Pardoner’s Tale, we see how he preaches to the church to repent for their greedy sin. This

The Pardoner and The Wife of Bath by Geoffrey Chaucer was a intriguing read. The Canterbury Tales teach the reader a life lesson through the telling of a story. The pardoner was full of greed and very money hungry. While the Wife of Bath was a old hag who just wanted loyalty and love from knight Arthur. The Pardoner and the Wife of Bath are both faced with decisions that could potentially end their lives. Loyalty and trust are expressed throughout the Wife of Bath. While the pardoner teaches greed and self-indulgence is also a sin when that is all you care about in life.

First of all, a main reason is how he took advantage of the villagers. The villagers giving their money to the Pardoner are seeking forgiveness, but he is just in it for the money. The Pardoner manipulated people into paying to see fake relics and openly boasted about the relics. He suggested that he had a kerchief of the Virgin Mary but really was a pillow case and a piece of sail he claimed was from St Peter's fishing boat. He also pockets the money

To add on to the corruption, earlier in the “General Prologue” the narrator mentioned how the Pardoner was adding to his irrelevent preaching of having relics. Such as the gobbet of Saint Peter, he goes as far as even saying he has a pillow case made of Our Lady’s veil. Indeed there were people who believed in such spiritual journeys who can be examples of the Pardoner cons, selling them holy relics and or promises of salvation which are frauds. This is more to add to the Pardoner’s deceptions, since his job was to get money from charitable enterprises to give back to those in need. “For in his trunk he had a pillowcase/ Which he asserted was Our Lady’s veil./ He said he had a gobbet of the sail/ Saint Peter had the time when he made bold/ To walk the waves…”(Chaucer 696-700). As shown the Pardoner was a skilled liar, not that the narrator believed him or many people did for that matter, but he was a compulsive liar running on greedy. One quality his tale talks about not having. After bringing attention to the inadequacies of the church workers, it is seemed that Chaucer continues to throw judgement to the Catholic Church through the tales of the characters.

The duality of his relics symmetrizes itself at the end of his tale, but not before he speaks of the oppositions of religion and sin that directly criticize his audience and, subconsciously, his own hypocrisy.

“That trick’s been worth a hundred marks a year/ Since I became a Pardoner, never fear…And tell a hundred lying mockeries more”(242). The epilogue of “The Pardoner’s Tale” provides a final view of the teller, who is not concerned with truth or morality. Is there any good at all in the Pardoner? Even though the Pardoner provides his services because of his greed, he knows intuitively that all those around him require spiritual and moral guidance. He is able to turn the villagers he dupes away from their greedy ways by telling them a story of death and destruction.