The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale Contents
- Social / political context
- Religious / philosophical context
- Literary context
- l.1-40: The link between The Physician's Tale and The Pardoner's Prologue
- The Pardoner's Prologue - l.41-100
- The Pardoner's Prologue - l.101-138
- The Pardoner's Prologue - l.139-174
- The Pardoner's Tale - l.175-194
- The Pardoner's Tale - l.195-209
- The Pardoner's Tale l.210-300: Gluttony and drunkenness
- The Pardoner's Tale l.301-372: Gambling and swearing
- The Pardoner's Tale l.373-422: The rioters hear of death
- The Pardoner's Tale l.423-479: The rioters meet an Old Man
- The Pardoner's Tale l.480-517: Money
- The Pardoner's Tale - l.518-562: Two conspiracies
- The Pardoner's Tale - l.563-606: Love of money leads to death
- The Pardoner's Tale l.607-630: Concluding the sermon
- The Pardoner's Tale l.631-657: Selling relics and pardons
- Final link passage l.658-680: Anger and reconciliation
The Pardoner's Prologue - l.41-100
Synopsis of l.41-100 of The Pardoner's Prologue
The passage is framed by two statements of the Pardoner's constant theme: 
Radix malorum est cupiditas, Money is the root of all evil (love of).
The Pardoner describes how he uses the opportunity of preaching a sermon to encourage people to offer him money. They believe that they are buying relics and other objects which he claims have spiritual powers. Alternatively, they can offer money in honour of certain relics, in the hope of receiving a pardon for their sins. However, he admits that such objects are worthless fakes.
Commentary on l.41-100 of The Pardoner's Prologue
l.41 Lordynges: common address to an audience, ‘Ladies and gentlemen'.
l.42 peyne me: I take pains
hauteyn: elevated, impressive (French haut ‘high'. Many words for upper-class, elegant concepts were—and still are—words borrowed into English from French)
l.44 kan al by rote: know everything off by heart
l.45,46 theme: the ‘text' on which a sermon is centred, a quotation from the Bible:
- Here it is Money is the root of all evil (love of), ‘Radix malorum est cupiditas', from Paul's first letter to a young Christian leader, Timothy, 1 Timothy 6:10
- It is, of course, ironic that the Pardoner preaches on this particular quotation, given that he hopes to make money out of his listeners.
l.48 bulles: official church documents / papal bulls
alle and some: all of them
l.49 lige lordes seel: the official seal of our liege lord (could be either the king or the local bishop). This seal shows that his ‘letter patent' genuinely authorises him to sell pardons
l.50 my body to warente: as guarantee / protection for myself. The common idiom of using the word ‘body' as equivalent to ‘self' is used. A warente is a noun meaning a guarantee. ‘To warente' means ‘as protection'
l.51 ne preest ne clerk: anyone in [3holy orders]:
- Priests were ordained to preside over Mass; clerks were literate church workers who might lead a church service or read the Bible aloud
- Chaucer' indicates that there is always a danger that a proper priest may try to stop the Pardoner's preaching, guessing what he is up to
- The impressive display of documents and seals is to give the Pardoner protection from such an event.
l.54-5 the list of important church leaders who are said to have issued the Pardoner's documents include ‘patriarchs', a title used for the bishops of certain Mediterranean cities and even the pope. The visual display of lots of apparently authoritative letters and official seals convinces people of the honesty of the Pardoner.
l.57 To saffron: to season, spice up: an image from cookery. The Pardoner sprinkles Latin words in his preaching (like saffron in cooking) to make an impression. Saffron, very expensive, was used lavishly in high class cookery at the time.
l.59-60 relics: bits of cloth and bone purporting to belong to dead saints are inside crystal containers, so that they can be displayed to encourage onlookers to greater devotion
- Chaucer describes what these ‘props' are made of - bits of cloth and bone - rather than telling us their spiritual significance (eg. possibly a saint's veil or the bones of a martyr)
- Thus he makes us see them just as physical objects, not as something holy.
l.61 been: ‘are' (the word ‘are' was only used in the North at this period)
l.62 latoun: a shiny but fairly cheap metal
l.62-77 This scam is directed at the anxieties of an agricultural community:
- The pardoner claims that his sheep bone comes from the flock of some Old Testament patriarchs who herded sheep and goats (presumably someone like Jacob) and so can cure animal diseases
- The good-man (farmer) is advised to drink water in which the bones have been dipped to make his animals produce abundant young
- The details (fasting and taking the water before cock-crow) all add an air of serious, medicinal procedure to this bogus recommendation.
l.65 Boon: bone. Many genuine relics were the bones of saints
l.69 hool: ‘whole', healthy
l.72 Taak kep eek: pay attention too
l.74 er: before
l.77 stoor: store, stock: his animals
l.78-83 The claim that this water will stop a husband suspecting his wife of an affair (even when he knows the truth of her fault, l.82) amuses Chaucer's audience. It would be obvious that those attracted to paying for the sheep's bone will be guilty wives:
- Part of Chaucer's witty presentation relies on the reader guessing things, especially things that make us feel clever or enjoyably superior to people in the text.
l.80 potage: thick soup, usually of barley, beans, and vegetables: basic everyday food of ordinary people:
- The sentence's grammar shows the Pardoner is targeting wives at this point: ‘let his [i.e. the husband's] soup be made with this water'.
l.83 preestes: typical of the anticlerical mode this text is written in; Chaucer satirically imagines an extremely unfaithful wife might have had affairs with two or three priests:
- Because of their vow to remain celibate, priests were particularly the butt of suspicion and satire, which often accused them of seducing other men's wives.
l.84 miteyn: mitten:
- Like the pottage, this is an object belonging to poor people's everyday experience: people would wear fingerless mittens to keep their hands warm. It's also, like a sheep-bone, a cheap trick for a cheat to produce
- The human anxieties these supposed holy relics are targeting are not spiritual ones but practical, day-to-day issues: wives who had had affairs and farmers wanting a bigger crop
- Note that the desired results, however, also depend on the victim donating some money.
l.88 So that he offer: So long as he offers
groat: this was worth four pence, quite a lot of money
l.90 wight: person
l.91 that hath: Chaucer's English doesn't use who as a relative pronoun, so that here = ‘who'
l.92 dar nat … yshryven be: ‘dare not confess and be absolved':
- To be shriven was to confess your sins to a priest and to receive absolution. This was the reassurance that God would forgive the sins of those who truly repented of them and intended to live a better life in future
- Chaucer here touches on a common problem. People like pardoners undermined the spiritual authority of parish priests, whose parishioners might try to avoid a proper confession (because of embarrassment) and do something like this. However, they are paying a pardoner for what is actually an empty promise of forgiveness.
The rhythm of The Pardoner's Prologue
Rhythm, metre, lines of verse
Chaucer's verse form here, as in most of The Canterbury Tales, is the iambic pentameter. Each line is shaped to have five strong stresses in a line ( / = strong stress)
x / x / x / x / x /. See Literary context > Chaucer's metre: iambic pentameter for further detail
Using the rhyming couplet
Chaucer sets up the (subconscious) expectation that there will be a rhyming word at the end of each couplet:
- This can then be used to Chaucer to place emphasis on significant words, as well as on a clever and surprising word
- Because we anticipate that rhyme word, there is also a feeling of waiting for it
- The clinching effect of the two rhyming words, coming so close together, can give an aural effect of pairing
- Chaucer exploits that too: sometimes the paired words are juxtaposed in a surprising way and do not go logically, decently or morally together.
Investigating the rhythm of The Pardoner's Prologue l.41-100
- Find some examples of where Chaucer uses the reader's reaction to couplet rhymes:
- For emphasis
- For surprise
- For bringing ideas together.
- How often in the Prologue do you find a line where the natural way of speaking the line also coincides naturally with the iambic expectation?
- Are these lines particularly emphatic as a result?
- You may need to sound an optionally silent e or elide one vowel into another to produce an exactly iambic metrical line
- As a start, try one or both of these ways of pronouncing the sound in lines: 42, 44, 47, 48, 49, 99
- Now look whether they are needed for any other lines
- Which lines become exact if you do this?
- Where are there lines that do not fall naturally into the expected pattern?
- Identify those lines which clearly require the reader to start with a strong stress
- Identify those lines where two strong stresses fall together
- Such devices can wake up the reader's mind, and, by breaking mental expectations, create a sense of rapidity, vehemence, firmness or forcefulness
- Looking at the examples you have already found, see whether breaking the rhythmic expectations creates such an effect.
Investigating the effect of Chaucer's word choice l. 41 – 100
- Which features of the wording in this section help to build up an impression that the Pardoner relies on outward show, pretence and blarney?
- Select the words, details and images in l.47-60 that carry associations of show, an impressive but empty display?
- How do the wording and details in lines 60-88 suggest that the Pardoner's tricks work best on uneducated country folk?
- The theme of the pardoner's sermons is ‘Love of money is the root of all evil' (l. 46, 138)
- How does Chaucer introduce the theme of making money in l. 87-9, 98-100?
Investigating your reactions to l. 41-100 of the The Prologue
- As you read l. 41-100 is your dominant response that the passage is comic, satirically laughing at the gullible people and exposing the Pardoner's grotesque tricks? OR that it is a serious condemnation of the Pardoner's callous abuse of his position in the Church?
- Do you enjoy the satire more at:
- The Pardoner's expense?
- His victims' expense?
- Both the Pardoner's and his victims' expense?
- What is the effect of focusing on a particular target for Chaucer's satire here?
- Why do you think the Pardoner's peddling of false relics and pardons is associated by Chaucer with the theme of death?
- How many different links do you see between his activities and death?
- What is the effect of Chaucer putting the Pardoner's satirical sermon into a first person narrative, rather than simply painting a third-person description of what a deceitful Pardoner might do?
- For further information on sermons see: Literary context > Medieval literary conventions and The Pardoner's Prologue > Sermons (last heading on page)
- English Standard Version
- King James Version
1Let all who are under a yoke as bondservants regard their own masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be reviled. 2Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brothers; rather they must serve all the better since those who benefit by their good service are believers and beloved. False Teachers and True Contentment Teach and urge these things. 3If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, 4he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, 5and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. 6But godliness with contentment is great gain, 7for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. 8But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. 9But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. 11But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. 12Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, 14to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15which he will display at the proper time - he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen. 17As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. 18They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, 19thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life. 20O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge, 21for by professing it some have swerved from the faith. Grace be with you.
1Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honour, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed. 2And they that have believing masters, let them not despise them, because they are brethren; but rather do them service, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort. 3If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness; 4He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, 5Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself. 6But godliness with contentment is great gain. 7For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. 8And having food and raiment let us be therewith content. 9But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. 10For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. 11But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. 12Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses. 13I give thee charge in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things, and before Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession; 14That thou keep this commandment without spot, unrebukable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ: 15Which in his times he shall shew, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; 16Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen. 17Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; 18That they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate; 19Laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life. 20O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: 21Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen.
Person who dispensed indulgences in return for contributions of alms in the Middle Ages. Frequently guilty of promoting abuses of the system.
The delivery of Christian teaching in the form of a sermon.
A talk which provides religious instruction and encouragement.
The physical remains of people considered especially holy or objects which have come into contact with their remains.
Disobedience to the known will of God. According to Christian theology human beings have displayed a pre-disposition to sin since the Fall of Humankind.
The Christian Bible consists of the Old Testament scriptures inherited from Judaism, together with the New Testament, drawn from writings produced from c.40-125CE, which describe the life of Jesus and the establishment of the Christian church.
The 'Apostle to the Gentiles' (d. c. CE 65). Paul had a major role in setting up the Early Church and is believed to be the author of several letters in the Bible.
Name originally given to disciples of Jesus by outsiders and gradually adopted by the Early Church.
Relating to irony, in which a comment may mean the opposite of what is actually said.
1. Term for a worshipping community of Christians.
2. The building in which Christians traditionally meet for worship.
3. The worldwide community of Christian believers.
Edicts from the Pope which define Roman Catholic doctrine.
In certain Christian denominations leader of the Christian community within a geographical area.
A person whose role is to carry out religious functions.
1.) To make someone a minister or priest. 2.) To decree or order.
The central religious service of the Roman Catholic Church, incorporating praise, intercession and readings from scripture. The central action is the consecration of the bread and wine by the priest.
Literate person whose job in church (when many could not adequately read) was to announce readings, lead congregational responses, make legal entries in ledgers etc.
The Christian Bible consists of the Old Testament scriptures inherited from Judaism, together with the New Testament, drawn from writings produced from c.40-125CE, which describe the life of Jesus and the establishment of the Christian church.
The supreme governor of the Roman Catholic Church who has his headquarters in Rome, in Vatican City. In certain circumstances, his doctrinal utterances are deemed infallible.
The language of the ancient Romans which gradually became the language of the part of the Christian Church which owed allegiance to Rome.
In the New Testament the term is used of all Christians but gradually came to describe an especially holy person.
In the New Testament the term is used of all Christians but gradually came to describe an especially holy person.
Some one who suffers for their beliefs or faith, typically by being killed.
A 'testament' is a covenant or binding agreement and is a term used in the Bible of God's relationship with his people). The sacred writings of Judaism (the Hebrew Bible). These also form the first part of the Christian Bible.
The principal ancestors of the Israelites: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
In the Old Testament the son of Isaac and Rebekah and twin brother of Esau. He wrestled with God and was often devious.
Going without any food (and sometimes drink) for a specified period.
Opposed to the power and influence of the clergy or the Church, especially in the realm of politics and public life.
A genre which ridicules some one or something. It can be poetry, drama or fiction.
A genre which ridicules some one or something. It can be poetry, drama or fiction.
To admit wrongdoing. In Christian practice, confession often forms part of communal worship; in addition formal confession may be made privately to a priest.
the action of a priest releasing people from their sins after confession
Middle English term for the process of being cleansed from one's sins by a priest, as the outcome of confession.
Disobedience to the known will of God. According to Christian theology human beings have displayed a pre-disposition to sin since the Fall of Humankind.
The formal declaration of God's forgiveness, pronounced by a priest.
The Bible describes God as the unique supreme being, creator and ruler of the universe.
The act of turning away, or turning around from, one's sins, which includes feeling genuinely sorry for them, asking for the forgiveness of God and being willing to live in a different way in the future.
Area with its own church, served by a priest who has the spiritual care of all those living within it.
1. The part of a service of Christian worship where people say sorry to God for not living according to his will.
2. The practice of privately telling a priest of wrongdoing.
1. The action of forgiving; pardon of a fault, remission of a debt.
2. Being freed from the burden of guilt, after committing a sin or crime, through being pardoned by the one hurt or offended.
A line containing five metrical feet each consisting of one stressed and one unstressed syllable.
A comment on an evil action, where financial gain is considered the primary underlying cause.
A comment on an evil action, where financial gain is considered the primary underlying cause.
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