The Pardoner’s Tale Spirituality and the Church

The Story of the Three Revelers

It is written in a plain style with no decoration of any kind. Although it

serves as an EXEMPLUM (parable), it is based upon a folktale that has its

origins in Europe and in Asia. Many of these analogues are ancient and

feature 3 revelers, who are in search for Death, although conversely

sometimes fleeing from it.

Deathas contradiction

• The contradiction in the story: • Death, which should be something immaterial is

represented as material.• Why?• Death does of course affect the material body

but in a Christian understanding, death’s true importance is connected to the health of the soul.

• In the same way, Chaucer highlights the mistake of buying and selling pardons (bits of paper that says sins are forgiven), something material, instead of seeking God’s true forgiveness, which is immaterial.

The Questioning of Spirituality and Pressure for Reform of the Catholic Church

• Tension between the spiritual and the physical is at work in the epilogue. The Host resents the Pardoner’s offer to buy one of his relics and angrily assails him: ” Thou woldest make me kisse thyn olde breech,/And swere it were a relyk of a seint,/ Though it were thy fundement depeint!”(lines 948-950)

• The Host is drawing attention to this gruesome practice of the veneration of unsavory holy relics, apparently true from stories told about the relic of St. Thomas A Becket’s own underwear kept in Canterbury Cathedral.

• By looking at ‘The Pardoner’s Tale’ from a historical vantage point, we can draw two major themes from it:

• 1/ questioning the relationship between our own outward forms and inward spirituality

• 2/ the blatant corruption of some of the Catholic Clergy. In the 16th century this pressure for reform became the movement of Martin Luther, who brought about a complete schism in the church.

Old Man• He tells the revelers he is seeking in vain to

exchange,” his youthe for myn age” (line724). Not even Death will take his place , he complains, which is why he is wandering as far as India, knocking upon the earth, his mother’s gate, begging to be let in.

Who could he be?• 1/ The Wandering Jew• 2/An allegorical picture of the universality of Death

(characteristic of medieval art) poingnant during the outbreak of plagues during the BLACK DEATH

Accused of being “Death’s spy”, the old man tells them they will finds Death under the tree. Instead they find gold. Where do the eight bushels of gold florins take the revelers to?