The Summoner And The Pardoner In The Canterbury Tales

Both the Summoner and the Pardoner are corrupt religious officials. A Summoners job is to bring people before the church so that they can confess their sins, and were typically lower class. The Summoner in The Canterbury Tales, does not do his job well. He let’s men keep their mistresses for a year just for a quart of wine. The Summoner does this because he too is guilty of these sins. He would drink a lot, and when he got drunk he would attempt to speak Latin in order to sound smart, which proved his ignorance. Geoffrey Chaucer describes him as a scoundrel and a very dishonest man. The Pardoner was also dishonest with no moral principles. A Pardoner is supposed to sell indulgences, but this Pardoner sold fake religious relics under false pretenses.