Church Corruption In Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

In Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, there are many entertaining values and moral lessons. In Geoffrey Chaucer's, The Canterbury tales, a group of pilgrims are journeying to the holy site of Canterbury. Due to the long journey, the host plans to start a contest between the pilgrims. Each pilgrim has to tell an entertaining story and the pilgrim with the most entertaining story wins a free dinner. After reviewing the two tales “ The Pardoner's Tale” and “ The Wife of Bath's Tale” told by Chaucer, one tale effects me the most. Out of the two tales, I believe “The Pardoner's Tale” has better moral values and is more entertaining than, “The Wife of Bath”.

In medieval times, the Church had become predominate in both the culture and domestic affairs of everyday people. The Church was in charge of governing laws, taxing people, and was a big participant in every form of social event from baptism to the funeral. Sadly, with power comes corruption, and the Church was not above this standard. Many churches began to abuse their power and took advantage of the ignorance of the common people. Chaucerâs Pardoner is the embodiment of a stereotypical church official who has become corrupt with power. None of his actions relate to his perceived moral principles, clerical status, or to the theme in his

The bible reads that specific rules must be followed in order to be considered holy and christian. The Summoner was considered misuse his authority by Chaucer. He does so by asking for breaking the rules of the church and bible; he accepts bribes of those who have been punished by excommunication. As a someone who works at a religious work environment, he shows lack of morals and ethics. His profession was to determine whether the person person who committed the spiritual crime gets to stay, or be exterminated from the church. With his

The Pardoner in “Pardoner’s Tale” describes himself and his greed in saying “Let me briefly make my purpose plain; I preach for nothing but for greed of gain” (1-2) The pardoner would “beg from kirk to kirk and never do an honest job of work” (11-12) He preached that the people needed to give him money. Furthermore, he sold archetypes of Biblical artefacts as well to gain money cheating and lying to the people. But Chaucer also calls out the corrupt religious leaders in the “Wife of Bath’s Tale” when he says that “women can now go safely up and down by every bush or under every tree; there is no other incubus but he, So there is really no one else to hurt you and he will do no more than take your virtue.” (53-56) Which means that those with high class or friars would rape women that were alone. In both stories, Chaucer shows how corrupt the political leaders were in his

“The Pardoner’s Tale” illustrates the effects of revenge, sin, and greed. A pardoner is a man who sells religious relics of forgiveness to sinners. However, Chaucer’s Pardoner is an untrustworthy character who sells fake tokens for a profit. He boasts of his great ability to preach, and ironically, his favorite topic is greed. “The

In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer’s character, The Pardoner, is a church official who altered the peoples mind by cheating the people into believing any nonsense. “Then I show forth my long glass cases, crammed full of clothes and bones: all the people believe that they are holly relics” (The Pardoner’s Tale, 1). The Pardoner’s avarice and ability to deliver

Chaucer wrote the book: The Canterbury Tales, in which a group of men going on a journey all tell a tale. Within each tale is a moral lesson as well as each tale consists of a corrupt action committed within the church and is conveyed by those kind of characters within the story. One of the tales that Chaucer tells in his book is called: The pardoner 's tale. Within this tale the pardoner (who is telling the tale) is a preacher who often gives sermons but admits that he does is solely for money and not to condemn people of their sins. (Greed) He tells a tale of men sitting around drinking when they hear a death by a servant who says this person was killed by a mysterious death. So the men, being drunk, decide to avenge this man, and so they go to seek him out. Meeting an old man he directs them to an old oak tree in a grove where he says he just left death. On they go, and when they come to the grove they see eight thousand bushels of coins in which greed overtakes and they decide to take the money. The younger one goes into town from bread and wine, but while doing so gets poison for the two others so he can own their share or the money. While the other two men by the money plot to kill the younger when to get his share, he the younger one returns. The two men

[attention getter]. Geoffrey Chaucer, in his novel The Canterbury Tales, deals with many tales of medieval life and morals. The writing follows a large group of pilgrims who have all been challenged to tell their best tale, one that teaches a valuable lesson, on the journey to Canterbury. Two of the stories told, “The Pardoner’s Tale” and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”, make their points in very notable ways. The Pardoner tells a story of three men who come to pay for indulging in the sin of greed, while the Wife of Bath recounts a story of questionable morality involving a knight struggling for redemption after breaking his code of honor. Though The Canterbury Tales presents two sound stories, “The Pardoner’s Tale” is clearly better story based on its adherence to the central plot, its use of personification, and its moral.

The reader should now know Geoffrey Chaucer disapproves of the Church and deems it to almost only be full of hypocrites because of people such as the Friar and the Pardoner being a part of it and doing what sinful deeds they do against God and the followers who they are supposed to be protecting and taking care of. If it was not for the Parson existing, or even clergy members, then the generalization of him believing the entire Catholic Church was a hypocrisy would be entirely true, but that is not the case. Still, maybe Chaucer made such an implication because he had a bad past with the Church, but then again in the story he was traveling to a religious shrine, so he must not have such a bad past when it comes to Catholicism. There must have been a root to his disdain towards the Church as in, he was conned by a pardoner or a friar or even grew up seeing only hypocrisy from the Catholic Church, which could have molded his opinion of it. Instead of making, The Canterbury Tales, a full on attack against the Church, he decided to make it a comical, satirical piece, which was a very intelligent move by him. Satire was used to talk about controversial things, but to be approached indirectly through humor, which made people more comfortable while discussing it because it was not extremely serious. Chaucer knew that and exploited it throughout his story, which made it such a marvel. He truly was able to get his position of most Catholic Church 's clergy members to be deceitful in their deeds and in their vows across to a gigantic network of people, which was

In The Canterbury Tales, out of “The Miller’s Tale”, “The Wife of Bath”, and “The Pardoner’s Tale”, “The Pardoner’s Tale” should win the storytelling contest. The contest rules include that the story must have a moral and be entertaining. “The Pardoner 's Tale” meets both of those requirements. The moral is a valuable lesson, and also entertaining by incorporating dramatic irony into the story for the reader.

Calling the Church body “his apes” exemplifies the opinion Chaucer holds about the Church, as he believes they are like monkeys, blindly following others, unaware of their own stupidity. In terms of blindly following, the double entendre of the word “apes” comes into play, as it is defined as “imitating another person”. The members of the Church blindly imitate what they see in the Church, leading to a society of corrupted followers. Chaucer continues to present the hypocrisy prevalent in the Church through the character of the Pardoner, as he preaches, “For my intent is only pence to win,” (“Pardoner’s Prologue” 117). Through these lines, the audience receives their first image of the Pardoner’s satirical hypocrisy as, in his sermons, he preaches against greed while, at the same time, uses the guilt of his audience to feed his own. His preaching include encouraging the members of the Church to be giving with their money and make donations. This action would not seem hypocritical at all to those unaware of the fraud that occurs behind the

Of all intelligence and intuition attributed to man, it is not enough to overcome the characteristics that will lead to the downfall of our own kind. Such characteristics take root in man and protrude out of him no matter how hard he tries to deny their presence. Man himself is aware of these characteristics and they play a part on all forms of entertainment, and fuel almost all actions made by man. In “The Pardoner’s Tale” written by Chaucer, the theme of pride and greed leading to demise is prominent.

The Pardoner in The Canterbury Tales speaks of greed as “the root of all sin” and of himself as doing “Christ’s holy work”; although, he “practices” avarice himself he has no guilt of his thievery. The Pardoner deceives the towns people by falsifying professionalism by “speak[ing] a few works in Latin” and displaying his “bishop’s seal” on his “license” disguising himself as a trustworthy person.

The Friar breaks the vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and stability; therefore, he is the most corrupt pilgrim in The Canterbury Tales. The Friar is apart of the Clergy, or the religious or Church class. To be apart of the Church, you must take the vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and stability. Chaucer is making fun of the clergy and saying that most of the members do not honor their vows.

Historically, the church in the medieval ages was corrupt and money hungry. Geoffrey Chaucer depicts this corruption through The Pardoner’s Tale. Specifically, the Pardoner was a prime example of abusing the power of the church, “I preach, as you have heard me say before/And tell a hundred lyin mockeries more”(Chaucer 142). The Pardoner admits that he follows the narrative of corruption in the