The Pardoner's Prologue And Tale Analysis

Over a century prior to Luther’s “blasphemous” reformation, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in his Canterbury Tales rhetoric warranting excommunication by the Catholic Church. Specifically, “The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale” interprets certain church practices as inherently immoral, a notion insinuating that the most influential organization in Europe was flawed. However, the pardoner’s characterization had merit; the Medieval Period saw the corruption of the papacy through indulgences, a practice catalyzed by a religious fervor in the wake of the Black Death.
Europe was not prepared, geographically and spiritually, for the throes of the mid-fourteenth century. Mark Damen of Utah State records that the Black Death, a plague spread by fleas, cut a swath through the continent, killing a third of all citizens. Furthermore, it produced a duality of conscience; those who acknowledged mortality gave into vices, and others sought penance. This disparity is highlighted in “The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale” when the character refers to those who attend the sermons and later provides a story of men who
Paul Bishop, history instructor at Hillsborough Community College, writes that selling indulgences, the practice of erasing sin, became a common occurrence that drew the ire of some, including Martin Luther. The church thought it a secondary method of penance, but it grew too rampant (4-5). In inserting his view, Chaucer characterizes the pardoner as being corrupted by the very sins he decries, especially greed and gluttony (139-140, 160-163). Unfortunately, the hypocrisy is well-founded, as Jack Arnold of RPM Magazine notes that “celibacy for clergy became Roman Church law . . . [but later] the abodes of clergy were often dens of corruption.” Thus in history and writing, the power and eventual greed of the Church incited its fall from