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CHAPTER 2

Moral Fallibility

Chaucer’s Pardoner and the Office of Preacher

. . . bone predicacion

vient bien de male entencion,

qui n’a riens a celui valu,

tout fac’ele aus autres salu,

car s’il prennent bon example,

cil de vaine gloire s’en anple. (5083–88)

[Good preaching may well come from an evil intention; although worth nothing to the preacher, it may bring salvation to others who learn a good example from it while he is so filled with vainglory.]¹

Thus speaks Lady Reason in the part of the Roman de la Rose which was composed by Jean de Meun—a scholar writing at the time when university discussion concerning the officium praedicatoris and the requisite attributes of priests was at its height. This passage may have been the basic inspiration for Chaucer’s conception of his preaching Pardoner:

. . . many a predicacioun

Comth ofte tyme of yvel entencioun (VI(C) 407–8)

But Chaucer’s knowledge of the relevant discourses goes far beyond what may be found in the Rose. And he exploited them in ways undreamed of by Jean de Meun.

Philosophical warrant and precedent for the Pardoner’s position can be found in Aristotle (as quoted in our previous chapter), insofar as Chaucer daringly implements the principle that ars and technical/professional knowledge have little or no importance as far as the virtues are concerned, and can exist in profusion where good morality is absent: ad virtutes autem scire quidem parum aut nihil potest. It would be harder to find a cleverer bastard than the Pardoner. Particularly galling is the fact that this bastard has a point: he can tell a moral tale, and does just that. The in-your-face quality of this performance is astonishing, and unparalleled in medieval literature. But Chaucer’s text also offers a reality-check. The Pardoner is a big fish only in a small sociopolitical pond. Pace the self-aggrandizing rhetoric in which he indulges, quaestores actually occupied a lowly position in the ecclesiastical power-structure. The ways in which Chaucer’s character deviates from his licit terms of reference as a pardoner must be considered in some detail, to bring out the nature and extent of his many fallibilities. This inquiry is crucial, since the requirements and responsibilities of the Pardoner’s profession have been occluded in modern criticism, together with the manner in which he exceeds his brief by assuming the priestly duties of preaching and granting absolution. Therefore an essential part of my project is recuperation of the theory and practice of indulgences and the official terms of reference of those who issued or “made” them and those who dispensed them. In light of this evidence, we may reconsider the vexed topic of the Pardoner’s sexuality, to investigate the ways in which this can be seen as deviant, and the extent to which this matters within the ethical economy of the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale.

I. ALMS AND THE MAN: THE DEVIANT PARDONER

Chaucer’s Pardoner claims to possess an impressive (incredible?) amount of documentation, including “Bulles of popes and of cardynales, / Of patriarkes and bishopes” (VI (C) 342–43).² One seems to be of special importance. Before he begins to preach, he will display “Oure lige lordes seel on my patente” (337), so that no man, whether priest or clerk, should disturb him in his work. This almost certainly refers to some kind of royal license permitting the Pardoner to ply his trade. The Pardoner in John Heywood’s Pardoner and the Frere (published in 1533) also has a “patent” bearing “our lyege lorde seale” (99)—the influence of Chaucer’s line is evident— which later is described in more detail. If you “dysturbe me any thynge,” the Pardoner threatens the Friar, you will be

. . . a traytour to the kynge;

For here hath he graunted me, under hys brode seale,

That no man, yf he love hys hele,

Sholde me dysturbe or let in any wyse.

And yf thou dost the kynges commaundement dispise,

I shall make the be set fast by the fete! (270–76)³

Heywood’s editors identify the “brode seale” with the Great Seal of Westminster, but we cannot know if the dramatist thought that Chaucer’s Pardoner also had such a document.⁴ What does seem quite clear is that both authors envisaged the real-life models of their characters as needing both secular and spiritual authorization. Chaucer’s figure is specifically identified as a pardoner “of Rouncivale” (I(A) 670), i.e., he is raising funds for the hospital of the Blessed Mary of Rouncesval, Charing Cross. It seems improbable that, in real life, this hospital would have given each and every one of its (very numerous) quaestores an actual patent roll, bearing the royal seal, multiple copies having been obtained from the crown. It seems more likely—certainly this would have been a lot cheaper—for the hospital to have kept an original document and handed out notarized copies to its agents.⁵ But of course, Chaucer may have engaged in some poetic exaggeration here, since he was seeking to contrast the Pardoner’s grand documentation with his shabby activities.

Turning now to the matter of his spiritual credentials: the Pardoner’s documentation would probably have included a copy made from the master papal license held in his London hospital. However, there is no reference to such a thing in Chaucer’s text. What is mentioned is the Pardoner’s collection of “bulles,” these being the documents which announce and describe the indulgences he will dispense as his clients give alms to one or more of the various charitable causes for which he is collecting. I speak of “various” causes advisedly, since the Pardoner’s horizons seem to extend beyond Charing Cross. In the General Prologue he is said to have returned recently “fro the court [i.e., the papal court] of Rome” (I(A) 671, cf. 687), and near the end of his tale he claims—with typical hyperbole—to have been given “relikes and pardoun . . . by the popes hond” (VI(C) 920–22). These claims are (to some extent) supported by the “vernycle” badge sewn on his cap, evidence of a visit to one of the main attractions of St. Peter’s, the relic of a cloth bearing the image of Christ’s face.⁶ The Pardoner certainly did not have to go to Rome to acquire any documentation relating to his work for the Rouncesval hospital. It would seem, then, that he is dispensing indulgences for other organizations and enterprises, for there is nothing to suggest that Chaucer (or at least “Chaucer” the narrator) is casting doubt on his character’s Roman sojourn. Here, then, is a larger-than-life, composite figure, with several types of quaestor being rolled into one. Just as Chaucer’s Knight is a veteran of an extraordinary—indeed, impossibly—large number of battles, so the Pardoner proudly displays his profession’s equivalent of “campaign ribbons,” in some profusion. “Ne was ther swich another pardoner” (I(A) 693): he is the extreme test-case of his trade, the best and the worst of his kind—and the emphasis falls heavily, of course, on “the worst.”

Precisely what form did the Rouncesval indulgences take? In the late fourteenth century there was a significant change of practice, whereby certain indulgences—instead of being issued on the basis of papal (or episcopal) grants directly associated with the church or hospital in question—fell within the purview of authorized confraternities which offered collective indulgences to their members, along with the right to choose their own confessors.⁷ Chaucer’s Pardoner might therefore be distributing confraternity letters, with the associated papally granted privileges (including indulgences), rather than collecting specifically on the basis of the indulgences hitherto granted to Rouncesval itself (although these were subsumed in the privileges). This seems eminently plausible, although in my view it is impossible to limit the Pardoner’s stock-in-trade to one particular type of pardon, given the all-inclusive nature of this representative figure.⁸ All of this directly bears on one particular crux in the Pardoner’s Tale, the passage where Chaucer’s character promises to “entre” the names of those who donate alms “in my rolle anon” (VI(C) 911). This could be a tally of the people who have donated alms,⁹ and hence been issued with individual indulgences by the Pardoner. Alternatively, the Pardoner could be recording their names for fraternity membership, one of the benefits of which was participation in such an organization’s collective indulgence. I think the latter is the more likely explanation.

Parallels may be found in other English writings. The Pardoner described at Piers Plowman, B Prol. 68–75, seems to be peddling fraternity membership; each client is tapped on the head with his “brevet” (bull) as a sign that he or she has been admitted. Even more explicitly, his equivalent in Heywood’s Pardoner and the Frere lists the benefits of membership of the “fraternitie” for which he works (467, cf. 487), which include substantial burial rights—a well-arrayed “herse” surrounded by “torches and tapers” burning brightly, with bells solemnly ringing “and prestes and clerkes devoutly syngynge” (469–75). A parody “roll” is read aloud by the pardoner-figure in the anonymous “ship of fools” poem entitled Cocke Lorrelles Boat (printed by Wynkyn de Worde, perhaps in 1510).¹⁰

The pardoner sayd I wyll rede my roll

And ye shal here the names poll by poll

Theref of ye nede not fere.

Here is fyrst Cocke Lorell the knyght

And symkyn emery mayntenauce agayne ryght

With slyngethryfte fleshemonger. . .

A list of stereotypes familiar from estates satire follows. Cocke Lorrell then demands that the pardoner should tell him

What profyte is to take thy pardon.

Shewe vs what mede is to come

To be in this fraternyte.

“This pardon is new founde,” comes the answer, established beside London Bridge in the stews, where men offer “manye a franke” to certain “relygyous women” who are “kynde and lyberall”! The text proceeds to parody the burial rights which fraternities commonly offered. When “ony brother” dies, dogs shall carry him to church, and the corpse shall be covered with a pall made of old blue stockings, recently come from Rome.

Such a broad reductio ad absurdum is, of course, some distance away from the tone and tenor of the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale, but its humor may encourage a more skeptical approach to the status of Chaucer’s character qua pardoner. Thus far, we have been giving this figure the benefit of the doubt. It may now be admitted that at least some of his credentials are questionable (or, rather, the credentials of at least one of the types of pardoner he is embodying are questionable). There is historical evidence aplenty to indicate that certain “false pardoners” simply pretended to have been licensed by the pope or his officials for their own unscrupulous purposes, in order to extort money for themselves. Hence the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 sought to forbid certain quaestores who, “misrepresenting themselves (se alios mentiendo), preach certain abuses,” from being admitted to advertise their indulgences “unless they exhihit genuine letters either of the Apostolic See or of the diocesan bishop.”¹¹ Given that Chaucer’s Pardoner has his “lige lordes seel” to display, he might be deemed innocent of that accusation.¹² Against that, however, is the fact that during the 1380s warrants were issued to arrest persons mendaciously claiming to be collecting alms for the Rouncesval Hospital.¹³ Chaucer makes no definite pronouncement on this matter, but the dubious elements in the Pardoner’s portrait certainly add up and are utterly consistent: supposed to be working for the hospital particularly associated with abuses of the system of selling pardons; possessing a suspiciously large number of documents (are some, or indeed all, fakes?) and patently unauthentic relics; of strange—apparently feminoid—appearance¹⁴ and unscrupulous character; claiming powers which far exceed his authority and terms of reference; exploiting his position (whether real or assumed) for personal profit. All in all, a character who is either guilty, or with good reason suspected, of a wide and quite appalling range of moral shortcomings.

It is utterly clear, I believe, that his activities betray and bring into disrepute his supposed profession as quaestor, fundraiser for charitable causes. Given the bad press which indulgences have received, particularly from scholars with Protestant leanings (whose legacy has lingered long in Chaucer criticism),¹⁵ the claim that pardoning had any merit to be devalued in the first place may seem a surprising one to make. But it is high time, I believe, that we recuperated the idealism which marks the foundational theology of indulgences, its affirmation of divine love and expression of religious communality and mutuality. St. Bonaventure is an eloquent witness among many others who saw in indulgences an endorsement of the recommendation of Galatians 5:2 to “bear one another’s burdens.” Taking these “burdens” as spiritual burdens, Bonaventure suggests that, if a heavy penance is imposed on someone, it is quite possible for someone else to “bear it for him in part or in whole.”¹⁶ A comparison is offered with what happens in nature. In the case of the animal body, one member may expose itself to mitigate the hurt which threatens another member, as when the arm seeks to shield the head. Assuming “there is a connection and likeness between the mystical body and the natural body, it seems that one member can and should bear the burdens of the other.” A comparison with human conduct is also offered. A creditor does not care who pays what he is owed, whether the debtor himself or someone else; indeed, “he accepts payment for the same from either.” Likewise God, being at once “more indulgent and yet more eager to receive payment than a man of this world,” is content to have one person make satisfaction for another. Finally, Christ “was punished and by His punishment he made satisfaction”—not, of course, for His own sin, but for another’s. Thus, Christ rendered satisfaction for us all. Since “we are all one in Christ and are His members, we ought also to be imitators of Him.” Following His example, then, one individual can and should render satisfaction for another. For all these reasons, Bonaventure concludes, it is quite reasonable for a penalty to be commuted to another person, the debt of punishment thereby being paid. Here, then, is a humane—and quite moving, in my view—rationale for the dispensation of merit from the thesaurus mysticus, that vast repository of spiritual wealth which may be distributed in relation to the needs and capabilities of all its beneficiaries, whether they be rich or poor in material terms. This doctrine implicates a solidarity which is at once natural, human, and divine, an inclusiveness which derives from our shared membership of the savior’s mystical body.

Such lofty sentiments are quite lost on Chaucer’s Pardoner, who feels no bond with his victims:

I wol have moneie, wolle, chese, and whete,

Al were it yeven of the povereste page,

Or of the povereste wydwe in a village,

Al sholde hir children sterve for famyne. (VI(C) 448–51)

Bonaventure had seen indulgences as a leveling device which brought their recipients together in terms of the value of the spiritual benefits received, despite any differences in material wealth: the conferral of a pardon was not a purchase, but rather an exercise of the Church’s liberality. He had applied the metaphor of how a rich man, going to a tavern, receives the same wine as does a poor old woman, in making the point that the pardon is worth the same to both; in discussing the same issues Aquinas had noted that the worth of a pardon was not related to a person’s ability to pay for it (cf. pp. 84–85 above). In the Pardoner’s view, however, that vetula paupercula is a professional challenge—a sort of acid test of his powers of persuasion. The more straitened her circumstances, the higher the stakes and the greater his pleasure in success. Here is no compassion, no recognition of human mutuality or Christian solidarity.¹⁷

So rapacious is the Pardoner’s greed that it has become a driving force which is no respector of persons: indeed, the amount of money he gains seems less important than the pleasure he takes in exacting it. He is rather reminiscent of the greedy merchant castigated in the Roman de la Rose immediately before the critique of the immoral preacher with which this chapter opened: here is a man whose passion for acquiring the property of others is like trying to drink the Seine dry—he “will never be able to do it, because there will always be some left.” The more he has the more he wants, and the more he longs for what he lacks; thus an “agonizing conflict tears at his vitals and tortures him” (Rose, 5049–59). Something of that obsessiveness has gone into Chaucer’s character.

The Pardoner cares nothing for the model of apostolic poverty (“I wol noon of the apostles countrefete”; 447), in blatant opposition to those many theologians who affirmed that, whereas other classes of men “are obliged to worry about the necessities of life,” preachers must not be anxious about what they eat, drink, or wear, since their Father will look after their needs for such things (cf. Matthew 6:31–32).¹⁸ Expounding and elaborating on this passage, Humbert of Romans advises preachers to “Consider the birds of the air: they do not sow or reap or gather into barns” and “Consider the lilies of the field, see how they grow! They do not work or spin. But I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed like one of them” (Matthew 6:26–29). Men should not have any doubt that God will do the same for them, given that they “are worth more in his sight” than such creatures are. St. Gregory the Great is quoted as saying that “the preacher ought to have such confidence in God that, although he himself makes no provision at all for his own support in his present life, he knows for sure that he is not without such support. In this way his mind will not be occupied with temporal affairs, and he will be free to devote himself to making provision for the eternal good of others.”¹⁹ Furthermore, Humbert continues, Christ Himself gave evident proof of this when he sent out his disciples to preach “without any bag or wallet and without shoes”—and they lacked nothing (cf. Luke 22:35). Humbert is writing as a Dominican friar, of course, but such sentiments were deemed appropriate to the secular priesthood as well. Hence Thomas of Chobham can remark that the goods of clerics are the goods of paupers, since clerics should distribute their goods to the poor, apart from what they need to reserve for themselves, avoiding superfluity.²⁰

Clearly, Chaucer’s Pardoner is obsessed with making provision “for his own support in his present life” and deeply disinterested in the eternal good of others. “Those who are sent to collect alms must be moderate and discreet,” declares the sixty-second canon of the Fourth Lateran Council. But this character is neither. The Lateran Fathers had added that quaestores should not “take lodging in taverns or other disreputable hostels,” nor run up large bills.²¹ The Spanish canonist Raymond of Peñafort O.P. (1185–1275) complained of how pardoners go from church to church with their letters of remission, preaching abuses and spending their time carousing and drinking.²² Now, whether Chaucer’s character intends to overindulge (or actually is overindulging as he tells his tale) in the hostelry referred to in VI(C) 321,²³ his tale-telling certainly raises the specter of the tavern as the devil’s church (cf. 469–70),²⁴ of which the Pardoner himself is a keen member. And some of the money he spends on his personal entertainment comes, it is evident, from sources which could ill afford to lose it. Almsgiving was supposed to provide sustenance for the poor, but the Pardoner has moved far from the traditional justification for almsgiving—indeed he has inverted it, by making himself the material beneficiary of his trade in indulgences.

More specifically, he has perverted the traditional justification of preaching pro questu, as may be illustrated with reference to Thomas of Chobham’s treatment of the question, does a preacher sin mortally in preaching for alms?²⁵ It would seem so, Chobham postulates, because preaching is spiritual work, and it is not licit to use spiritual work to acquire temporal reward; Scripture frequently condemns those preachers who “seek the things that are their own: not the things that are Jesus Christ’s” (Philippians 2:21). On the other hand, St. Paul declares that by all means Christ may be preached, and he rejoiced and will rejoice in this (Philippians 1:18).²⁶ Furthermore, the Lord affirms that the laborer is worthy of his hire (Luke 10:7). Besides, if it was forbidden to preach to acquire gifts, a lot of churches would be in trouble—for in time of necessity they have sent out their preachers to obtain alms from the faithful. Chobham seeks to resolve this problem by arguing that the obtaining of temporal reward is not the final cause as such but rather the consequence of the actual final cause, which is devotion. Devotion is the preacher’s true motivation in preaching; from this quite impeccable final cause follows the collection of alms and the advantage of the church. The preacher must preach to excite the devotion of the faithful, Chobham explains, but because devotion cannot be proved better than by making offerings and donating gifts, a good man’s preaching pro questu may be justified because he is preaching on account of devotion, from which temporal reward follows. Therefore, when one speaks of preaching “for” (pro) alms, that “for” does not indicate the final cause itself, but rather the consequence of the final cause—because the devotion of the faithful is the final cause of the preaching, from which follow almsgiving and the advancement of the Church. If someone preaches in order to collect alms for the renewal of the Church or the construction of bridges or the maintenance of the poor, the principal intention (principalis intentio) must be that the hearts of the faithful are stirred to devotion, while the secondary intention may be that the faithful are seen offering and giving alms on account of this preaching, because such behavior affords clear evidence that the hearts of the faithful have been excited appropriately.

That noble principalis intentio is flagrantly violated in the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale.²⁷ But the Pardoner’s deviancy qua pardoner goes far beyond the mere confusion of final causes in preaching pro questu, however reprehensible that in itself may be. For he far exceeds the statutary obligations and authorized duties of a licensed dispenser of indulgences in two crucial—and quite damning—ways, in claiming extensive powers of absolution and the full officium praedicatoris, as I now hope to show, beginning with Chaucer’s deployment of theological discourses relating to absolution in the presentation of this “noble ecclesiaste.”

The Pardoner’s arrogation of the power of absolving people from sin, “by the auctoritee / Which that by bulle ygraunted was to me” (V1(C) 387–88), is quite shocking. Naturally, he fails to clarify either his own subordinate position or the limited role which, according to the official theology, indulgences were to play within the economy of salvation. In the first instance, quaestores were only pronuntiatores (to use Albert the Great’s term) of indulgences, the mere “announcers” who “published” and recommended them in their preaching (cf. above, p. 88). Turning to the indulgences themselves, they were supposed to reduce or remove completely only the temporal²⁸ punishment (or poena) for sin which remains after the sacrament of confession and absolution, as administered by a priest, has removed the moral guilt (or culpa). Indulgences were granted on the major condition that the recipients were genuinely contrite and had made, or were going to make, proper confession and appropriate satisfaction, this being a common formula in medieval publication of pardons (as explained in our previous chapter). To take one representative English example, the indulgence which John Trillek, Bishop of Hereford (from 1344 through 1360), granted when he consecrated altars at Vowchurch, accorded forty days of indulgence to all legally appropriate persons “who, truly sorry for their sins, penitent and confessed,” visited the church on each of certain designated saints’ days, or made some charitable contribution toward its upkeep or embellishment.²⁹ Now, pardons do not benefit “those who are in mortal sin, and consequently, true contrition and confession are demanded as conditions for gaining all indulgences” (as Aquinas said).³⁰ While it is true that Chaucer’s Pardoner does go through the motions of warning that only those free from the “blame” of unshriven sin may offer to his relics and be absolved by his bulls (377–84), the main point behind that statement is reassurance of the Canterbury pilgrims that no-one among them should let any feelings of shame hinder them from offering—once again, self-interest is paramount, his ambition being to collect as much money as possible.³¹ The emphasis is consistently placed on his own (utterly dubious) importance in the process of absolution.

This becomes even more blatant at the end of his tale, when the Pardoner goes so far as to declare that he has the power to absolve his clients—those who “offre” or donate alms—so cleanly and purely that they shall enter heaven without hindrance:

I yow assoille, by myn heigh power,

Yow that wol offre, as clene and eek as cleer

As ye were born. . .(913–15)

It is an honour to everich that is heer

That ye mowe have a suffisant pardoneer

T’assoille yow in contree as ye ryde,

For aventures whiche that may bityde. (931–94)

Looke which a seuretee is it to yow alle

That I am in youre felaweshipe yfalle,

That may assoille yow, bothe moore and lasse,

Whan that the soule shal fro the body passe. (937–40)

In fact, the worth of indulgences were deemed to owe nothing whatever to the moral qualities of their mere “publisher”/dispenser (or indeed of the eminent authority-figure who actually made the indulgences, as has been made clear in our previous chapter); to argue otherwise would be to countenance something rather like Wycliffite dominium theory, or even Donatism.³² By the same token, the immoral character of the preacher was not supposed to devalue the divine words he preached, and when Walter Brut dared to suggest that a good layman or lay woman was more worthy to confect the Eucharist than an immoral priest, the vigorous response was that consecration non est actus personalis sed dei tantum—hence it is neither promoted by the goodness of the minister nor impeded by his wickedness.³³ Any “heigh power” of absolution possessed by an indulgence derived from the pardon itself and not from the pardoner.

In marked contrast to the Pardoner’s formulations is the following statement from the Alliterative Morte Arthure (a text variously dated c. 1440 and shortly before 1400), which clearly specifies where the true power and authority lie. Sir Craddok vows that he

. . .will pass in pilgrimage this pas to Rome

To purchase me pardon of the Pope selven,

And of the paines of Purgatory be plenerly assoiled . . . (3496–98)³⁴

A pardon from the pope himself cannot be anything other than genuine— but, more importantly for our purpose here, Craddock seems fully aware that it is the pardon itself (clearly a plenary indulgence) which will “assoil” him from the pains of purgatory.

“I assoille him,” “I yow assoille,” “I am in youre felaweshipe . . . ”:in addition to placing that theologically incorrect emphasis on the “I,” Chaucer manipulates different meanings of “assoille.” The crucial distinction to be drawn here is between “judiciary” absolution and “penitential” absolution. As Pierre Bersuire O.S.B. (d. 1362) succinctly put it, “Duplex est igitur absolutio, secundum quod est duplex forus”: there are two kinds of absolution inasmuch as there are two kinds of court or tribunal.³⁵ That is to say, absolutio can have the sense of “release or dismissal,” as used to describe (for example) discharge from office, or release from obligation or debt in a secular legal sense. Moreover, one may speak of pardons as “absolving” insofar as they release their possessor from the debt of sin and hence its punishment. This is the meaning borne by the term “assoiled” in the Morte Arthure passage quoted above. It may also be found in William Lyndwood’s account of how Christ’s supererogatory merit contributed hugely to the thesaurus mysticus: the smallest drop of his blood, he explains, is sufficient for the absolution (absolutio) of our sins.³⁶

But in such statements absolutio does not, of course, carry the specific, technical sense of “the formal act of a priest or bishop pronouncing the forgiveness of sins by Christ to penitent sinners” (to quote the definition of penitential absolution from the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church).³⁷ Only a properly ordained priest can “absolve” in foro pœnitentiali, judge a sinner’s contrition and grant him absolution. And only then can his indulgence actually work, its own specific release or absolutio—just from poena—take effect. As that most popular of all Middle English poems, The Pricke of Conscience (c. 1350), succinctly puts it,

. . . pardon of papes and bisschopes,

Þat es granted here als men hopes,

May availe þair saules in purgatory,

Þat has purchaced it here worthyly,

If þai of þair syn had contricion

And war shrifen byfor þat pardon,

Þan may pardon after þair dede

In purgatory þam stand in stede. (IV.3804–11)³⁸

To think otherwise is to blur together the very different powers of the two keys, of jurisdiction and of ordo. The separation of the powers conferred by holy orders from those conferred by jurisdiction—expressed by reference to the two keys which Christ gave to St. Peter and his successors— was widely accepted, as our previous chapter has indicated. Lyndwood’s Provinciale, following Aquinas and Hostiensis (Henry of Segusio, d. 1271), explains that the effect of the key of jurisdiction is the remission of sin, which is achieved through indulgences, for this remission does not appertain to the dispensation of the sacraments but to the dispensation of the common goods of the Church; and therefore legates, although not priests, can make (facere) indulgences.³⁹ For absolution in the tribunal of penance, holy orders are necessary—and here the key of ministry is in operation, which entails the power of binding and loosing. This is the only means by which the moral guilt (or culpa) is removed.

However, Chaucer’s Pardoner attempts to dispense with this vital transaction between priest and penitent, apparently offering a one-stop service: obtain an indulgence from him (following the donation of alms), and nothing else is required; into the bliss of heaven you shall go, absolved “as clene and eek as cleer / As ye were born” (914–95). There is confusion here— a deliberate ploy, perhaps, on the Pardoner’s part—between the two senses of absolution, “judicial” absolution and “penitential” absolution, that which may be gained through an indulgence and that which must be gained through confession to a priest.⁴⁰ Particularly telling is the Pardoner’s use of the phrase “I yow assoille,” a clear echo of the priestly formula of indicative absolution, “Ego te absolvo.” Yet again, Chaucer may be indicating how far the Pardoner has trespassed into the territory traditionally reserved for the priest. It may be recalled how English bishops fulminated about how quaestores were casually absolving from all kinds of heinous sin, including usury, robbery, perjury, and even murder.⁴¹ Two charges are interwoven here: such individuals are on the one hand assuming a role to which they have no legal right, and on the other they are exercising that role in a quite outrageous way, lacking measure, distinction, or any sense of scale. Chaucer’s character may be guilty on both those counts.

In other words, the Pardoner may be claiming (however obliquely) the power to absolve not only a poena but also a culpa, from guilt as well as punishment—a practice all too common among English pardoners of the time, according to the statement in the Oxford petition of 1414 which attacks pardoners who, “although not in holy orders, preach publicly and pretend falsely that they have full powers of absolving both from punishment and from guilt (a poena et a culpa), along with other blasphemies, by means of which they plunder and seduce the people.”⁴² However, the extent and level of deliberate fraud or simple misunderstanding, and hence the degree of confusion, was even more endemic than that. Since this matter has already been discussed in our previous chapter, one example from Chaucer’s time may suffice here, concerning Urban VI’s authorization of the (quite disastrous) “crusade” which Henry Despenser, Bishop of Norwich, mounted against Clement the Antipope in 1383. The forma absolutionis included in the papal documentation makes it clear that participants were to be granted a plenary indulgence (“ab omnibus peccatis tuis”), the necessity of confession and contrition being emphasized (“ore confessionis et corde contritis”).⁴³ Here I quote from Thomas Walsingham’s Historia anglicana. However, in Henry Knighton’s chronicle this same indulgence is described as offering absolution from both punishment and guilt (“a poena et culpa absolvebat”).⁴⁴ The latter opinion seems to have been a widely held one; it reappears in a Wycliffite sermon which complains about the claim of Urban’s followers “to han power of Crist to assoille alle men that helpen in her cause, for to gete this worldli worshipe to assoile men of peyne and synne bothe in this world and in the tothir.”⁴⁵ The Lollard writer is assuming that such absolution from both punishment and guilt is a doctrine held and promoted in all seriousness by the establishment, and as such is an appropriate object of his wrath. After all, there was a widespread—though of course mistaken— belief that plenary indulgences offered absolution a pena et a culpa.⁴⁶ That belief was by no means confined to the uneducated, despite the attempts of certain members of the establishment to place the blame there.⁴⁷

Hence it would be very risky indeed to suggest that in Chaucer’s day the Pardoner’s arrogation of powers of absolution (which may include the implication that he can absolve a poena et a culpa) was taken seriously only by the most ignorant and vulnerable members of society. Given the cacophony of competing voices in the period, many having at least the semblance of authority, literary criticism should refrain from rushing in where angels feared to tread. All this having been said, however, it is reasonable to conclude that the less well educated, and the poor, were more vulnerable to moral monstrosities like Chaucer’s Pardoner. The poet himself seems convinced that it is the “lewed peple” (437) who are habitually plundered and seduced by members of his unfraternal brotherhood.⁴⁸ Langland thought likewise, and paints a picture of how “lewed men leved” an avaricious pardoner for his extravagant promises of absolution—“Of falshede of fastynge, of avowes ybroken”—and “Comen up knelynge to kissen his bulle” (Piers Plowman, Prol. 70–73).

Continuing our inquiry into the claims made by Chaucer’s Pardoner for his powers of absolution, it may now be asked: when he says that, thanks to his ministrations, someone’s soul will go to heaven, fully absolved, after death (911–15), does this mean that he is dispensing plenary indulgences as correctly understood, i.e., documents which signal release from all the punishment (poena) due for sin, though not from the culpa (that being a misunderstanding, as already noted)? The Pardoner could well have plenary indulgences in his possession (whether obtained in England or abroad). But even if this were so, he would still be guilty of exaggeration and misrepresentation, since the benefits which ensue from such pardons cannot, of course, be obtained simply by making a charitable donation and being entered into the Pardoner’s “roll.” The element of exaggeration is even greater in Heywood’s presentation of an unscrupulous pardoner in The Foure PP—

Give me but a peny or two pens

And, as sone as the soule departeth hens,

In halfe an houre or thre quarters at moste

The soule is in heven with the Holy Ghost (147–50)

—but obviously comparable with Chaucer’s. The crucial point is that possession of pardons—even plenary pardons, correctly issued and understood— does not make one exempt from divine punishment, as William Lyndwood (among many others) makes perfectly clear. People should beware of neglecting good works in the future simply because they possess indulgences, Lyndwood declares.⁴⁹ They may think themselves immune, but they can still be “bound” or convicted on the charges of negligence and contempt. Satisfaction has to be made properly, penitence which has been enjoined must be performed. Very similar views are expressed at the end of Passus VII (B-text, 174–95), where the dreamer declares that while the efficacy of pardons must be believed (“This is a leef of our bileve”), nevertheless at the day of judgment trust in such things “is noght so siker [sure] for the soule . . . as is Dowel.” “A pokeful [bagful] of pardon,” “indulgences doublefold,” and membership in all the fraternities of friars⁵⁰ may be rated as worth a mere piecrust if Dowel does not help you, if your good works are insufficient.

No doubt Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims expect to gain substantial indulgences after visiting the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket and performing the necessary rituals—and that is precisely the point. A certain amount of good work is involved; specific requirements must be met. There is no way in which the penitential procedure can be short-circuited, and the Pardoner is sinning gravely by claiming otherwise. Indeed, his performance may be seen as a travesty of the entire process in which the pilgrims are engaged, striking at the very heart of their religious observances—a point which gains more force from his display and exploitation of relics which Chaucer identifies as fraudulent. At the beginning of the Lateran canon (no. 62) which stipulates measures for policing the activities of quaestores is found an attack on those who “expose for sale⁵¹ and exhibit promiscuously the relics of the saints,” to the great injury of the Christian religion.⁵² In an attempt to stop this happening, it is decreed that “old relics may not be exhibited outside of a vessel or exposed for sale. And let no one presume to venerate publicly new ones unless they have been approved by the Roman pontiff.” In future, prelates must not allow those who come to their churches, wishing to venerate relics, to be “deceived by worthless fabrications or false documents as has been done in many places for the sake of gain.” Fine words—but Chaucer’s Pardoner is able to ply his fraudulent trade unchecked. His worthless fabrications stand in marked contrast to the genuine relics of St. Thomas at Canterbury, the ultimate destination of all Chaucer’s tale-tellers.

What, then, of his preaching; may that also be regarded as fraudulent in some way? Chaucer strongly hints that the Pardoner has usurped an office to which he has no legal entitlement:

I stonde lyk a clerk in my pulpet, And whan the lewed peple is doun yset, I preche so as ye han herd bifoore, And telle an hundred false japes moore. (VI(C) 391–94. Italics mine)

Quaestores did not possess the officium praedicatoris by virtue of their occupation. As the sixty-second Lateran canon puts it, “they may not preach anything to the people but what is contained” in the letters which they had obtained from either the Apostolic See or the diocesan bishop.⁵³ In similar vein, William Lyndwood declares that the office of preaching does not pertain to such people; their authority extends only to asking for charitable help and expounding (the verb used is exponere, meaning to set forth or “publish”) any indulgence they may have.⁵⁴ In other words, pardoners were supposed to explain the nature of their indulgence, its importance, and the reasons for its making. This activity could easily be regarded as, or mistaken for, or shade into, “preaching.” No “sermon” (if such it may be called) which may specifically be identified as a pardoner’s seems to have survived, but there are references aplenty to the preaching activities of pardoners. What is meant here? The pardoners’ exposition of the terms of their indulgences, and/or “preaching” or moral admonition which arose naturally out of such exposition? Some light may be thrown on the problem by John Heywood’s lively dramatization of a confrontation between a pardoner and a friar:

FRERE: Date et dabitur vobis

Good devout people, this place of scrypture

PARDONER: Worshypfull maysters, ye shall understand

FRERE: Is to you that have no litterature—

PARDONER: That Pope Leo the tenth hath granted with his hand,

FRERE: Is to say in our englysshe tonge—

PARDONER: And by his bulles confyrmed under lede,

FRERE: As “departe your goodes the poorefolke amonge”

PARDONER: To all maner people, bothe quycke and dede,

FRERE: And God shall than gyve unto you agayne:

PARDONER: Ten thousande yeres and as many lentes of pardon

FRERE: This in the gospell so is wryten playne.

PARDONER: Whan they are dede, theyr soules for to guardon,

FRERE: Therfore gyve your almes in the largest wyse,

PARDONER: That wyll with theyr peny or almes dede

FRERE: Kepe not your goodes—fye, fye on covetyse!

(The Pardoner and the Frere, 189–204)

These two rapacious characters are competing to win alms from their audience, the one refusing to give way to the other; thus the situation degenerates into a shouting match. But their scripts are very different. The Friar proceeds to expound the thema or opening text of his sermon, “Give and it shall be given unto you” (Luke 6:38), whereas the Pardoner gives an account of the bull—by Pope Leo X, whose indulgences were attacked by Luther—which authorized the pardons he has on offer. Chaucer’s Pardoner sounds more like Heywood’s Friar than Heywood’s Pardoner. The implication would seem to be that Chaucer’s figure—perhaps like many of his real-life models—is exceeding his very limited authority as “publisher” and dispenser of indulgences.

It must be acknowledged that terms relating to preaching—both in Latin and in vulgari—could be used in loose, nontechnical senses.⁵⁵ Several good examples may be found in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, where Jenkyn is said to “preche” to Alisoun from his book of wicked wives (III (D) 641), and her old husbands are accused—quite unfairly—of preaching to her about the wiles of women (247, 366, 436–37). But in his prologue Chaucer’s Pardoner claims the right and the wherewithal to preach in the full professional and technical sense of the term; indeed, this text reads as a cathena of passages from the artes praedicandi (duly subverted by the Pardoner, to be sure).⁵⁶ It is indubitable that he is being presented, first and foremost, as a preacher—and there is no way in which we may mute the question, should he be preaching in the full, official sense of the term which Chaucer’s text presumes? The answer, I believe, lies in that crucial line, “I stonde lyk a clerk in my pulpet”—which intimates that he is not a “clerk” and hence is an inappropriate occupant of that “pulpet.”⁵⁷ Similarly, in the prologue to Piers Plowman Langland attacks a pardoner who preaches “as he a preest were” (68). Although he, like Chaucer’s Pardoner, can produce a document of authorization (bearing “bissopes seles”), it is evident that his credentials do not justify all the activities in which he is engaged. Furthermore, Langland’s point is not only that this pardoner lacks the right to do what he is doing but also that he is morally unsuited for the task, due to his avaricious nature. Chaucer’s Pardoner appears to have been cut from the same cloth.

If, then, it be accepted that the Pardoner’s profession per se does not authorize him to absolve or to preach in the ways he himself defines, the further question presents itself, could at least some aspects of this authority derive from another source—because, quite independently of his status as pardoner, he is also an ordained priest, maybe even a friar, particularly in view of the fact that friars often preached indulgences?⁵⁸ The case for the Pardoner being a friar is insupportable. There is no reason whatever to suppose that his “cappe” (I(A) 683) is the “biretta” worn by Augustinian canons⁵⁹—no description is given of it, and it could well be a fashion item rather than some sort of religious headgear—and surely the Pardoner’s references to “my brethren” (VI(C) 416) simply designates his fellow-pardoners.⁶⁰ Of course, it is perfectly possible that Chaucer has borrowed some notions concerning mendicant poverty to help characterize the Pardoner (largely to set up some specific ideals which, quite outrageously, he is not living up to): here I have in mind the reference to the Pardoner’s begging activity at l. 443 and the allusion to apostolic poverty at l. 447. But that does not make him a friar. In any case, those ideals were not exclusively the prerogative of friars.

Besides, the interests of friars and pardoners often diverged quite sharply, and they could come into direct competition; it would therefore be a mistake to lump them together.⁶¹ A document (dated 1350) included in the register of William de la Zouche, Archbishop of York, makes it clear that, if friars and pardoners should appear at the same time at “churches, chapels, or other ecclesiastical places,” then the friars must be allowed to do their work first, preaching “the word of God to the clergy and to the people wishing to hear it” and receiving “the alms of the faithful freely given by the urging of divine charity.”⁶² Only then may the quaestores take their turn, going about their business “following the form prescribed by sacred canons.” One can easily imagine what Chaucer’s Pardoner would have said about that: his pride could scarcely have tolerated it. And Heywood’s Pardoner and Friar squabble over who has priority in addressing one and the same audience. The latter complains to the parish priest who invited them into his church and now regrets it,

FRERE:. . .I desyred hym, ywys, more than ones or twyse

To holde his peas tyll that I had done,

But he wolde here no more than the man in the mone.

PARDONER: Why sholde I suffre the more than thou me?

Mayster Parson gave me lycence before the,

And I wolde thou knewyst it. (The Pardoner and the Frere, 554–59)

Commenting on the Pardoner’s portrait in the General Prologue, the Riverside Chaucer remarks, “this Pardoner’s participation in the Mass seems to indicate that he has clerical status.”⁶³ But this statement is misleading— at once vague and lacking in supporting evidence—and quite at variance with the blatant implication of VI(C) 391, as quoted above, that he is not a cleric. The appellation “ecclesiaste” (I(A) 708) means simply that he is a preacher,⁶⁴ a fact which is blatantly obvious; the issue of whether he should be preaching is a different matter. Chaucer’s account of the Pardoner’s hairstyle has provoked some critical debate (is it meant to be ugly or attractive?), but at any rate he does not appear to possess the clerical tonsure.

The Pardoner seems to be particularly good at singing the “offertorie” (I(A) 710), which was performed when offerings were made at Mass. The Lay Folks Mass Book (York Use) has the priest and his assistants (ministri) singing this,⁶⁵ but it certainly was not necessary for a priest, or anyone in holy orders, to do so—the task was essentially that of a chorister.⁶⁶ In these terms, then, there is nothing here to clarify the Pardoner’s official status. But Chaucer’s reference to the Pardoner’s preaching after the offertory⁶⁷ highlights another major issue—namely, the importance of that part of the service for the livelihood of priests and pardoners alike. With the priest’s approval, a visiting pardoner could promote (or “preach,” in the looser sense of the term) the indulgences he had available for distribution—a major opportunity for him to advertise his wares. Langland complains about how “the parisshe preest and the pardoner” enter into a conspiracy to fleece the people and share the takings which should go to the poor of the parish (B Prol., 81–82). Presumably he is referring to the alms which changed hands when the pardoner distributed his indulgences, but he might also have in mind the offertory gifts as well—an appealing guest speaker would no doubt swell the congregation and hence the collection.⁶⁸ The bishop should not allow his “sel” (presumably the seal on the document which authorizes the pardoner to collect alms in his diocese) to be used in a way which deceives the people, Langland asserts. However, it is not “by the bisshop” that “the boy” preaches in a given church: that is a consequence of the (selfinterested) compliance of the parish priest (78–80). In similar vein, a stringent letter issued in 1356 by John de Grandisson, Bishop of Exeter, accuses church officials of being so “damnably blinded by greed of the money so collected” that they “not only permit, but even most wickedly assist, advise and protect” certain impious quaestores “both of the Hospitals of the Holy Spirit and St John but also of other privileged places” in going about their nefarious business.⁶⁹

Not all relationships between parish priests and pardoners were so amicable, however. A bull sent in 1369 by Urban V to William Wittlesey, Archbishop of Canterbury, against quaestores working in England for the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem,⁷⁰ tells an extraordinary tale of turf wars and bitter faction-fighting, as such individuals promoted their services as preachers and fundraisers in a highly aggressive and, indeed, illegal manner.⁷¹ The common declaration that the pardoners under scrutiny must show their letters of authorization moves into an account of how, far from doing this, they have made counter-claims about their legal rights, and indeed have made life difficult for those who, in their view, fail to respect their privileges and hinder their collection of alms. One of their stratagems is to go to the church of a rector or vicar “on some feast day, especially when the people are accustomed to make their offerings” and read aloud a document relating to their fundraising activities or recite the names of the members of their brotherhood or fraternity: they do this for such a long time that “the mass for that day can no longer decorously be celebrated there. And thus they cause such rectors and vicars to be wickedly deprived of the offerings which come to them in masses of this type.”⁷² Those belligerent spoiling-tactics may serve to make it abundantly clear that although pardoners and parish priests often worked together, their very different professional functions should not be confused (cf. our earlier caveat against lumping together the activities of pardoners and friars), even though that was probably what happened in the minds of many parishioners—and no doubt the pardoners themselves often found it profitable to exploit such confusion.

What, then, of Chaucer’s statement that the Pardoner “Wel koude . . . rede a lessoun or a storie” (I(A) 709)? The former term, as the Riverside Chaucer suggests, may refer to a reading from the Epistolary, the traditional collection of “Epistles” based on the Pauline Letters of the New Testament, but it had a wide range of possible meanings.⁷³ The latter is even harder to interpret. “Storie” could loosely designate a moral narrative deriving from the Bible or indeed some other respected source (cf. the Pardoner’s use of the term “stories” at VI(C) 436 and 488); in this sense the Pardoner’s Tale itself is a “storie.”⁷⁴ Therefore, at I(A) 709, could Chaucer be thinking merely of his character’s preaching activities? That is unlikely, given the coupling of “storie” with “lessoun” and indeed with “offertorie” (710), which seems to indicate that Chaucer has in mind features of church services which are distinct from preaching, which is mentioned last in this sequence (711–13).⁷⁵ It is just possible that both “lessoun” and “storie” refer to the Epistle, the former term designating genre and the latter, content, for the Epistolary comprised materials relating to the history of the early Church. And it may be admitted that great store should not be set by a word so obviously selected for its rhyme with “offertorie,” a precise term quite crucial for Chaucer’s description of the point at which the Pardoner preaches. However, major questions concerning the Pardoner’s official role (or lack of it) are raised here, particularly in view of the suggestion that “storie” may designate the Gospel,⁷⁶ and so we must pursue our inquiry a little farther.

One did not have to be an ordained priest to “rede” either the Epistle or the Gospel during the Mass.⁷⁷ It was the task of the subdeacon to read the Epistle and of the deacon to read the Gospel—and the latter privilege was quite jealously guarded.⁷⁸ Now, the subdeaconate and deaconate were major orders, along with priesthood, which ruled out marriage.⁷⁹ And yet—at III(D) 163–68 the Pardoner tells the Wife of Bath that he is seeking a wife. True, these lines have proved notoriously difficult to interpret (cf. pp. 151–52, 154 below), but no matter how jocular they are deemed to be, and whether or not the Pardoner is physically capable of marriage, it would seem strange indeed if he were to jest about entering a state which his official position had totally ruled out. The case for him being in major orders is, therefore, problematic at best—and if it be accepted that he is not, then his pulpit activities are at best inappropriate and at worst quite irregular and illegal, depending on the weighting one gives to the terms “lessoun” and “storie.” If the Pardoner is indeed presuming to read the Gospel during Mass—and I myself find that theory very weak—he is far out of line, since for that one had to be ordained at least to the level of deacon. The case that, in reading the “lessoun,” he is usurping the subdeacon’s privileges seems much stronger.⁸⁰

The Pardoner’s social and professional status is, I believe, best understood in the light of a document on which we already have drawn, Bishop John de Grandisson’s 1356 condemnation of both “impious quaestors” and the greedy officials who aid and abet them.⁸¹ Those pardoners are “neither friars nor clergy but often laymen or married men (laicos aut conjugatos),”⁸² yet they ply “their business in the office of preaching on solemn days within the solemnities of masses, an office which is not permitted to lesser deacons” (i.e., if subdeacons—who, as noted above, are in major orders—are barred from the predicandi officium, how much more should it be refused to such unauthorized pardoners?). Furthermore, “they indifferently absolve and free from usury and robbery without due satisfaction, even in cases reserved to the bishop or his superiors, and many times a poena et a culpa, to use their own words.” That is, I believe, Chaucer’s Pardoner to the life: a layman or at best a man in minor orders (with aspirations to becoming a married man, if we are to believe his own statement),⁸³ a figure who has taken upon himself, with no legal warrant, the officium praedicatoris and certain other functions properly reserved for those in major orders, particularly the power to absolve which is reserved to priests alone. To add insult to injury, he dispenses absolution quite cavalierly, making inflated claims for what he is offering and failing to insist on the necessary satisfaction for sin.

In sum, it would seem that there is nothing in Chaucer’s text to alleviate the charge that the Pardoner has usurped prestigious roles to which he has no right. As far as his preaching is concerned, it is very doubtful indeed if he has been officially “sent” in the manner intimated by Romans 10:15 (“How will they preach, unless they be sent?”). We have seen how Robert of Basevorn—quite typically—drew on this sententia when defining the criterion of authority, one of the “three things” which, he declares, “are necessary for the one exercising an act of preaching.” Chaucer’s Pardoner would unequivocally have failed to meet this criterion, though there is some room for debate concerning the specific quality and quantity of his failure, as I hope the above discussion has intimated. We may now proceed to consider how the Pardoner fares in relation to Robert’s two other criteria, “competent knowledge” and “purity of life.”

II. PRECHYNG FOR COVEITYSE: THE DEVIANT PREACHER

Moving away from the question of whether the Pardoner should be acting the way he does to the question of whether he has the wherewithal to do so, it is apparent that, although by no means a highly educated man, he does possess sufficient knowledge for the job. Raymond Rigaud could not have faulted him on that score at least (cf. p. 38 above). True, the Pardoner himself says all that he preaches has been learned off by heart—“I kan al by rote that I telle”⁸⁴—and it is all about one (opening) topic—that is, Radix malorum est Cupiditas (VI(C) 332–34). Yet his prologue and tale reveal a working knowledge of parts of the Bible, of exempla, of current theory of preaching and of the then-fashionable “thematic” sermon;⁸⁵ he knows Avicenna, at least by name. Neither is his technical competence and skill in doubt. In the third part of his Cura pastoralis St. Gregory had advised the preacher to suit his style to his audience, a recommendation echoed and amplified in many late-medieval artes praedicandi and priest’s handbooks.⁸⁶ Alexander of Ashby, prior of the Augustinian house at Ashby in Northamptonshire between 1205 and 1215, remarks in his De modo artificioso predicandi that the levity (levitas) of a lively story (iocundum exemplum) edifies the unlearned.⁸⁷ Richard of Thetford (X. 1245?) declares that “reasoning through examples” is very effective with layfolk, claiming the authority of Aristotle “as much as Boethius and Gregory” for his contention that the laity “delight in sensible examples” (sensibilibus gaudent exemplis).⁸⁸ The Pardoner’s version is that uneducated people love old tales:

Thanne telle I hem ensamples many oon

Of olde stories longe tyme agoon.

For lewed peple loven tales olde;

Swiche thynges kan they wel reporte and holde. (VI(C) 435–38)

He is highly aware of the capacities of his audience, and of the necessity of suiting his preaching to those capacities. The brilliant exemplum which he eventually offers the Canterbury pilgrims, the story of the three revelers in search of death, reveals a fine sense of the rhetorical and affective power of exempla. Preaching, says Ralph Higden, should inflame the human disposition (affectus) toward God,⁸⁹ and the Pardoner claims the ability to do just that, in spite of himself.

The artes praedicandi offer lists of essential requirements for effective preaching, considered from the point of view of technical skill and audience appeal. For instance, in his De eruditione praedicatorum Humbert of Romans states that God’s representative should have clear diction, awareness of the intricacies and resources of language, a voice with a definite resonance, the ability to use a style the listener can easily understand, a moderate pace of delivery, succinct presentation without verbosity, simplicity of speech without excessive rhetorical ornamentation, prudence in varying his sermons according to the type of hearer, and pleasantness of speech.⁹⁰ Chaucer’s Pardoner seems to possess most of these skills and graces, having a voice as resonant as a bell,⁹¹ an impressive way with words, and considerable stylistic competence. But he is, perhaps, inclined to overdo the rhetoric.⁹² Some of the purple passages in the preamble to his exemplum, such as

O wombe! O bely! O stynkyng cod,

Fulfilled of dong and of corrupcioun! (VI(C) 534–35)

would probably not have found favor with Humbert of Romans. Seneca, declares Humbert, stated that “A speech which is concerned with truth ought to be simple and straightforward.”⁹³ “Other arts are a matter of ingenuity,” he continues; in the art of preaching we are concerned with something much more serious. “A sick man does not look for an eloquent doctor. If the doctor who can cure him can also make an elegant speech about what has to be done, that is like having a helmsman who is also handsome.” Having made every due allowance for changes in fashions of preaching between the time of Humbert and that of Chaucer,⁹⁴ the point remains a valid one, especially since many medieval clerics related extravagance in preaching to desire for earthly gain.⁹⁵ For example, Alan of Lille complained that “there are some who make earthly gain the motive for their preaching, but their preaching is extravagant (sumptuosa); such are rather merchants (mercenarii) than preachers, and so their preaching is to be heard and endured. That is why the Lord says: ‘Do what they tell you to do, but do not follow the example they set’” (Matthew 23:3).⁹⁶ Certainly, Chaucer’s Pardoner is something of a merchant, an expert in the art of selling his wares dearly.

It is possible, furthermore, that he habitually engages in “extravagant” preaching in a different sense, by overdoing the gestures with which he emphasizes the crucial points in his disquisition:

Thanne peyne I me to strecche forth the nekke,

And est and west upon the peple I bekke,

As dooth a dowve sittynge on a berne.

Myne handes and my tongue goon so yerne

That it is joye to se my bisynesse. (VI(C) 395–99)⁹⁷

Thomas Waleys’ De modo componendi sermones offers a particularly lively version of the standard warning about observing modesty in one’s use of gestures and bodily motions. The preacher should “not be like a motionless statue but should show some seemly movements,” he explains, and then proceeds to describe what he regards as unseemly movements: