The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340-1400) is a collection of stories supposedly told by a set of pilgrims as they make their way to Canterbury. As well as the tales themselves, the pen-portraits of the storytellers are of great interest. Here is an account of Chaucer’s “Pardoner”.
(The Pardoner from the Ellesmere MS)
The Pardoner
Chaucer finds it difficult to approve of most of the pilgrims who earn their living from religion, and the Pardoner is no exception. This is a man who takes advantage of gullible people by promising to free them from the pains of Hell by selling them pardons for their sins, supposedly signed by the Pope. He will also sell “holy relics”, charging absurd prices for such things as old bits of wood that came, according to him, from Christ’s cross. He is therefore a 14th century con-artist.
When the Pardoner is invited by “mine Host”, Harry Bailey, to follow the tale told by the Physician, it soon becomes clear that his main purpose for undertaking this pilgrimage is to make a quick buck or two, either from his fellow pilgrims or from anyone else he might meet along the way. However, we also get to see that this is an “honest rogue”, who is completely open about what he does, and he turns out to be almost likeable.
He demands a drink before he will tell his tale, and we can imagine him getting more and more loquacious as the alcohol takes effect.
The prologue to his tale is in the form of a confession of his business methods, of which he is clearly inordinately proud. Indeed, this is nothing short of a lengthy boast at what a brilliant conman he is.
“… I have won, year by year,
A hundred marks since I was a pardoner.
I stand like a clerk (priest) in my pulpit,
And when the common people are sitting down
I preach just as you have heard before
And tell a hundred false stories more”. [my own translation from the original]
The nature of his tale
The sermon that he refers to is on the familiar text from the Letter to Timothy that he quotes in Latin, “Radix malorum est Cupiditas”, or “the love of money is the root of all evil”. He then pleads with his “congregation” to refrain from avarice, which they can best do by parting with their cash. The Pardoner makes no secret of the fact that he is the most avaricious person there, but, so what, it’s a living isn’t it?
He will have performed this trick in every village he has passed through on his travels, his pulpit being a simple folding stand and box that he erects in an open space, possibly even directly outside the parish church to encourage the pretence that he is acting as the Pope’s representative.
He now proceeds to preach his sermon on the text quoted above, and it constitutes one of the most satisfying tales in the whole canon, being well told and with a wonderful twist in the story. It is a moral tale, and one that we can well imagine a person such as the Pardoner giving out as part of his “patter”. We can easily envisage his village audiences being gripped by its ingenuity and listening intently as it is told.
The Pardoner’s Tale
Three young men have been drinking and enjoying themselves, obviously to excess. The Pardoner really goes to town on the evils of drink, whilst doubtless downing his third or fourth pint of ale contributed by his fellow pilgrims. We can imagine this demagogue catching the moment when he knows that his oratory has captured his audience before he gets going on the story proper.
As the men sit outside the tavern, they see a funeral procession passing by. They ask a boy to tell them who has died, and it turns out to be a friend of theirs. He had, in the boy’s words, been visited by a thief whom men call Death, who has “a thousand slain” with the pestilence.
The three men decide, there and then, that they must seek out “this false traitor Death, he shall be slain, he that so many slayeth”.
They come across an old man, who tells them that he has seen Death, and that they will find him in a grove, under a tree. What they actually find is a pile of gold coins, which causes them to forget all about their search for Death.
Now fully sober, the three work out a plan as to how they are going to guard this treasure and get it home safely. They draw lots, and the youngest is sent to the town to fetch food and wine so that they can wait until nightfall before taking the treasure home without being noticed.
When he has gone, the other two work out that splitting the gold between two of them will profit them better than a three-way split, so they decide to murder their friend when he comes back.
The third young man has had similar thoughts, although he would prefer not to share the treasure at all. He therefore visits an apothecary when he reaches town and buys some rat poison, which he pours into two of the wine bottles that he has bought to take back to the clearing in the woods.
As the Pardoner says, you can work out the rest of the story for yourselves. The two conspirators carry out their plan then decide that, before burying the body, they need a drink. And so all three find Death, just as the old man said they would.
The Pardoner pushes his luck
The Pardoner, his story complete, now forgets himself completely and carries on with the sales pitch. He assails his fellow pilgrims with another diatribe about the consequences of avarice and urges them to buy his pardons and relics, pointing out how lucky they are to have him as one of their number, given that any fatal accident along the way will not result in the victim going to Hell, as long as they have bought their pardon from him first.
He then makes the mistake of turning to the Host as his first customer, who sees through all this claptrap in two seconds flat, threatening the wretched man with instant castration. This shuts the Pardoner up, and it is left to the Knight to calm everyone down and urge the Host and the Pardoner to “kiss and make up” which, perhaps surprisingly, they do.
So ends the Pardoner’s Tale, which has been described as the most perfect short story in English literature. If this is true, it is the linking of the teller and the tale that makes it so. It is certainly arguable that this section of the Canterbury Tales is the best thing that Chaucer ever wrote.