Medieval attitudes to poverty and wealth

Medieval attitudes to poverty and wealth were based on the teachings of Christ. The key priority was not to set one's heart on worldly riches, but to focus on storing up spiritual riches:

Poverty

Though there were enormous contrasts between rich and poor in the fourteenth century, there was also a strong ideal that poverty was a positive state. Being poor on earth was considered better than having riches:

• A prosperous person might be diverted from seeking salvation by the cares of his or her wealth
• However, the simplicity of a poor person's lifestyle meant they were more likely (in theory) to be concerned with the values of heaven. Poor people and—particularly--those who voluntarily embraced a simple life were less contaminated by materialism and the desire for the pleasures of this world. They were believed to be in a state that made it easier to concentrate on the life of the soul and virtue
• It was widely believed that Jesus and the disciples had been poor. That the Church should imitate this, was a central argument of the Wycliffites, the followers of the reformer John Wyclif
• When Saint Bernard founded the first monasteries and St Francis founded the friars, the ideal of poverty was central to their vision. Thus, monks, nuns and friars swore oaths of poverty, chastity and obedience (to their religious order). They were supposed to spend their lives in prayer but also in work of various kinds, manual or intellectual. 

A wealthy church

In the face of all the teaching about the virtues of poverty, the wealth of the Medieval Church caused great disquiet. It was not just deceitful when churchmen made money from charging people to see or buy relics, for example. It was also seen as contrary to the example of poverty and anti-materialism that the Church was meant to stand for. 

The Pardoner isn't a priest, monk or friar, only a church official. Some pardoners were laymen. However, Chaucer is using his lust for money to typify the kind of materialism that contemporary critics condemned generally in the Medieval Church.

The love of money is the root of all evil

It is ironic that Chaucer's avaricious Pardoner takes as his main text a well known verse from the Bible. It comes from Paul's first letter to Timothy (1 Timothy 6:10). In the Latin Bible of Chaucer's time (known as the Vulgate Bible), the text reads:

• The word cupiditas (cupidity in English) means ‘desire' and, in particular, desire for worldly things
• The opposite of this is caritas (love of God and desire for godly things): this is what they believed humans should really be filled with). 

Chaucer's concern with pride and avarice

Avarice or covetousness (greed for money and material things) is one of the so-called deadly sins, believed to be particularly dangerous to the soul. (See The Seven Deadly (or Cardinal) sins). Traditionally the Church taught that pride was the worst sin, the one that led to disobedience against God. Chaucer frequently highlights this in The Canterbury Tales, sometimes describing upstarts — especially among the lower classes — in terms of the sin of pride and not merely social pretentiousness or conceit.

Avarice and love of money, however, were also strongly condemned. To the medieval mind, getting absorbed in the pursuit of worldly things distracted humans from the real priority, serving God and endeavouring to gain God's grace and go to heaven. In The Canterbury Tales, avarice is probably the vice that Chaucer most attacks and satirises.

Summary

• Contemporary medieval Christian thinking and ethics strongly disapproved of wealth and the pursuit of worldly pleasure.

In the light of this there was disgust at:

• The great wealth accumulated by the Church by the fourteenth century
• The elements of worldliness and avarice exhibited by some churchmen.

Chaucer's Pardoner is a figure who serves as a focus for that disapproval in multiple ways.

• Tweet