The Church:
Through the ecclesiastical characters in The Canterbury Tales Chaucer
constructs a representative picture of the condition of the Church and her
ministers in his age. The Church had then become a hotbed of profligacy,
corruption, and rank materialism. The Monk, the Friar, the Summoner, the
Pardoner, and the Prioress are all corrupt, pleasure-loving, and materialistic
in outlook. They forget their primary duty of guiding and edifying the masses
and shepherding them to the Promised Land. The Monk is a fat. sporting fellow
averse to study and penance. The Friar is a jolly beggar who employs his tongue
to carve out his living. The Prioress bothers more about modish etiquette than
austerity. The Pardoner is a despicable parasite trading in letters of pardon
with the sinners who could ensure a seat in heaven by paying hard cash. The
Summoner is, likewise, a depraved fellow. These characters fully signify the
decadence that had crept into the Church. The only exception is the "Poor
Parson' apparently a follower of Wyclif who revolted against the corruption of
the Church.
14th Centuary Clergy People
There is a whole group
of ecclesiastical figures, representing in their numbers and variety the
diverse activities of the medieval church. Most of them are satirical
portraits, in their worldliness and materialism only too faithfully
representative of the ecclesiastical abuses against which Wycliffe struggled.
First of all there is a Monk, who cares only for hunting and good cheer. His
bald head shines like glass, his bright eyes roll in his head. He rides a sleek
brown palfrey, and has "many a dainty horse" in his stables. His
sleeves are trimmed with fine fur at the wrists ; his hood is fastened under
his chin with a gold love-not. As a companion figure to the hunting Monk,
Chaucer gives us "Madame Eglantyne," the Prioress. She is a teacher
of young ladies, speaks French "after the school of
Stratford-atte-bowe." is exquisite in her table-manners, counterfeiting as
well as she can the stately behaviour of court.
Other ecclesiastics are there, hangers-on and caterpillars of the church.
The Friar, intimate with hospitable franklins, innkeepers, and worthy women,
despises beggars and lazars. The Summoner is a repulsive person with
"fire-red cherubim face". The Pardoner "come from Rome all
note" has a bag full of pardons which he sells as relics of the holy
saints to gullible people. Chaucer's treatment of these evil churchmen is
highly good-natured and tolerant. He never takes the tone of moral indignation
against them. But he does better, he sets beside them, as the type of true
shepherds of the church, a "poor Parson," such as, partly under
Wycliff's influence, had spread over England, beginning that great movement for
the purification of the church which was to result, more than a century later,
in the Reformation. Chaucer paints the character of the Parson, poor in this
world's goods, but "rich of holy thought and work," with loving and
reverent touch. The Parson's brother travels with him—a Plowman, a "true
swinker and a good", who helps his poor neighbours without hire and loves
them as himself. He reminds us of Piers the Plowman, in the wonderful Vision
which is the antitype of Chaucer's work.
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