FREE ESSAY ON CANTEBURY TALES

CANTEBURY TALES

Canterbury Tales 
In discussing Chaucer's collection of stories called The Canterbury Tales, an interesting
picture or illustration of the Medieval Christian Church is presented. However, while
people demanded more voice in the affairs of government, the church became corrupt --
this corruption also led to a more crooked society. Nevertheless, there is no such thing
as just church history; This is because the church can never be studied in isolation,
simply because it has always related to the social, economic and political context of the
day. In history then, there is a two way process where the church has an influence on the
rest of society and of course, society influences the church. This is naturally because
it is the people from a society who make up the church....and those same people became
the personalities that created these tales of a pilgrimage to Canterbury. The
Christianization of Anglo-Saxon England was to take place in a relatively short period of
time, but this was not because of the success of the Augustinian effort. Indeed, the
early years of this mission had an ambivalence which shows in the number of people who
hedged their bets by practicing both Christian and Pagan rites at the same time, and in
the number of people who promptly apostatized when a Christian king died. There is
certainly no evidence for a large-scale conversion of the common people to Christianity
at this time. Augustine was not the most diplomatic of men, and managed to antagonize
many people of power and influence in Britain, not least among them the native British
churchmen, who had never been particularly eager to save the souls of the Anglo-Saxons
who had brought such bitter times to their people. In their isolation, the British Church
had maintained older ways of celebrated the major festivals of Christianity, and
Augustine's effort to compel them to conform to modern Roman usage only angered them.
When Augustine died (some time between 604 and 609 AD), then, Christianity had only a
precarious hold on Anglo-Saxon England, a hold which was limited largely to a few in the
aristocracy. Christianity was to become firmly established only as a result of Irish
efforts, who from centers in Scotland and Northumbria made the common people Christian,
and established on a firm basis the English Church. At all levels of society, belief in a
god or gods was not a matter of choice, it was a matter of fact. Atheism was an alien
concept (and one dating from the eighteenth century). Living in the middle ages, one
would come into contact with the Church in a number of ways. First, there were the
routine church services, held daily and attended at least once a week, and the special
festivals of Christmas, Easter, baptisms, marriages, etc.. In that respect the medieval
Church was no different to the modern one. Second, there were the tithes that the Church
collected, usually once a year. Tithes were used to feed the parish priest, maintain the
fabric of the church, and to help the poor. Third, the Church fulfilled the functions of
a 'civil service' and an education system. Schools did not exist (and were unnecessary to
a largely peasant society), but the Church and the government needed men who could read
and write in English and Latin. The Church trained its own men, and these went to help in
the government: writing letters, keeping accounts and so on. The words 'cleric' and
'clerk' have the same origin, and every nobleman would have at least one priest to act as
a secretary. The power of the Church is often over-emphasized. Certainly, the later
medieval Church was rich and powerful, and that power was often misused - especially in
Europe. Bishops and archbishops were appointed without any training or clerical
background, church offices changed hands for cash, and so on. The authority of the early
medieval Church in England was no different to that of any other landowner. So, the
question that haunted medieval man was that of his own salvation. The existence of God
was never questioned and the heart-cry of medieval society was a desire to know God and
achieve intimacy with the divine. Leading a life pleasing to God was the uppermost
concern, and the wide diversity of medieval piety is simply because people answered the
question, 'How can I best lead a holy life?' in so many different ways. Beginning with
The Pardoner's Tale, the theme of salvation is truly paramount. Chaucer, being one of the
most important medieval authors, uses this prologue and tale to make a statement about
buying salvation. The character of the pardoner is one of the most despicable pilgrims,
seemingly along for the ride to his next gig as the seller of relics. For myn entente is
nat but for to winne,/ And no thing for correccion of sinne, admits the pardoner in his
prologue. As a matter of fact, the pardoner is only in it for the money, as evident from
this passage:
I wol none of the Apostles countrefete: I wold have moneye, wolle, cheese, and whete, Al
were it yiven of the pooreste page, Or of the pooreste widwe in a village -- Al sholde
hir children sterve for famine. Nay, I drinke licour of the vine And have a joly wenche
in every town. 
In his tale, the Pardoner slips into his role as the holiest of holies and speaks of the
dire consequences of gluttony, gambling, and lechery. He cites Attila the Hun with, Looke
Attila, the grete conquerour,/ Deide in his sleep with shame and dishonour,/ Bleeding at
his nose in dronkenesse. The personification of the deadly sins, along with his story of
the three greedy men that eventually perish at the hands of their sin is a distinct
medieval device. The comic twist that Chaucer adds to the device, though, is that the
Pardoner in himself is as the personification of sin, as is evident from the passages of
his prologue. At the conclusion of his tale, the Pardoner asks, Allas, mankinde, how may
it bitide/ That to thy Creatour which that thee wroughte,/ And with his precious herte
blood boughte,/ Thou art so fals and unkinde, allas?. He then goes on to offer each
pilgrim a place...for a price, of course. The Pardoner's place in Chaucer's idea of
redemption becomes evident in the epilogue of the tale. After offering the host the first
pardon (For he is most envoluped in sinne and, supposedly, the equivalent of Chaucer),
the host berates the pardoner, saying, I wolde I hadde thy coilons in myn hond,/ In stede
of relikes or of saintuarye./ Lat cutte him of. By this, the idea of the pardoner as the
most important man on the pilgrimage is brought to fruition and Chaucer makes the main
point of this tale: Salvation is not for sale. Another example of the medieval obsession
with redemption. However, some did not accept this and questioned the church -- It was
what they wanted other than a holy life with a Old-Testament God; That style of thinking
evenually lead to a more gentle, mother-figure as a goddess -- The Cult of the Virgin.
The eminent question then becomes, Why would people change from a long-lasting,
Old-Testament God to a mother-like goddess ? The answer is simply because they thought
their new found Goddess would never be as harsh on people as the often criticized male
like aspect of God. In both current Catholicism and that of the medieval period, Mary is
worshipped with more fervor than even God or Jesus. Church after church was (and still
is) erected in her name. Her likeness graced statues and stained glass with as much
frequency as Jesus' bloody head. The worship of Mary is fervent, institutionalized, and
approved of by the Christian church. Is she not a goddess? Mary simply took the place of
the female aspects of the spirit that were once worshipped as Roman or Anglo-Saxon
goddesses. The medieval period, stretching approximately from the late seventh century to
the early sixteenth, was bound together under one constant--Roman Catholic Christianity.
But beneath this curtain of Christianity many legends were being formed and passed down,
as old pagan traditions became assimilated into a newly Christian society. The two
religious forms were becoming intertwined. They seemed at this time to be tolerant of
each other, not entirely distinct. A peoples habits and thought processes are not easily
changed, and being that the Anglo-Saxons of Britain were not Christians until the
mid-600's, a period of transition can be expected . At least, a fascination with their
pagan ancestors existed, at most, the practice of the old ways. Examples of a fascination
with magic, worshipping more than one god-like figure, and a continuing love for
worshipping goddesses, exist in many texts written in this period. Yet, this does not
mean that every village had a sorceress in their midst, but literature usually reflects
the society within which it emerges. At the time of The Canterbury Tales, many of a
people who were Christians officially, politically, and in most cases at heart, saw that
there were elements of paganism and sorcery which is tolerated and respected. The society
in which Chaucer writes these stories is Christian as well, politically and
spiritually--could it be that they tolerated and respected paganism and magic? Perhaps
the separation of the two is not necessary and was not complete at this point in time.
Not only was magic a pagan tradition that persisted throughout the Middle Ages..another
tradition, changing at the time, reflected the transition from worshipping the unseen
forces in the world as many gods, to one, omnipotent God. Although the people were
Christians, they took the separation of spiritual powers far beyond the creation the
Trinity. The specific powers or emphasis given to each saint carries on even into today's
Catholic tradition. The medieval period may have had some of this (although many of the
saints were not even born yet...) but in their literature, many immortal and powerful
creatures are found. This form of Paganism existed in Britain of the Middle ages, full of
spiritual beings, full of magic, alive with heavenly power existing on Earth. It has been
the nature of the Christian men in power through the ages to, for fear, deny their people
the knowledge of the un-Christian richness in their ancestry, and so the traditions that
were not masked as Christian are lost to students of Christian history and literature.
But it seems this period had not seen such extensive discrimination. The two ways of the
world were not quite so separate then, and matters of the occult were not yet labeled as
evil. This again implies that perhaps the two forms of religious thought do not have to
be completely separate. There are strong similarities for them to coincide and complement
each other, and for an entire people trying to make the Christian transition, maybe this
complementing was necessary. However, the age of forceful patriarchy and witch-burning
would not come about for several hundred years. Each new way of leading a holy life was
thought to be progressively more acceptable to God by its proponents than the ones that
had gone before. Such 'new ways' were normally inspired by a desire to break away from
the corruption and worldliness which was perceived in the older or more established forms
of Godly living. These new ways often became corrupt themselves and over time breakaways
from them were hailed as a newer and more perfect way of following God. This
roller-coaster ride of corruption and reform is basically the story of popular medieval
religion as man battled to define and discover what it really meant to be a Christian. In
an effort to escape persecution, but to also flee the evil, prevalent in the world and to
seek God free from many ' worldly ' distractions, monks began to assemble as communities
of Christians . These communities, although they had little organization, were regarded
as possessing the best Christian life by having a solitary, ascetic, celibate existence
where the ' world ' had been totally renounced and had been entirely replaced with
heavenly contemplation. These ' new ' martyrs were usually just called monks: theirs was
a life of daily martyrdom as they constantly died to self and lived totally for God. The
monks paid particular veneration to the physical remains of the martyrs (relics) and were
therefore connected to the martyrs who they replaced. The rise of ascetic monasticism and
relic worship however was quite controversial -- Both the worship of relics and ascetic
monasticism however became mainstays of this Medieval religion, and the idea that monks
were a new form of martyr persisted over time. Both monks as well as martyrs were looked
upon as holy men. In relating this solitary world to readers, there is also a monk in
Chaucer's work -- He is someone who combined godliness and worldliness into a profitable
and comfortable living. He was the outrider or the person in charge of the outlying
property....which lead him to enjoy hunting, fine foods, and owning several horses. Monks
renounced all their worldly belongings and by taking vows of poverty, chastity and
obedience, joined a community of monks. Their lives were spent in communal worship,
devotional reading, prayer and manual labor all under the authority of the abbot of the
monastic house. Particular monks often had particular jobs- the cellarer or the
infirmarer for example, and these like every aspect of monastic life were laid down in
the 'Rule'. Monks were nearly always of noble extraction (one had to have wealth in order
to give it up) but could also be given to the monastery as children (called oblates) to
be brought up as monks. Hindsight has blurred our vision of the Medieval monk and the
result is that the modern Christian mindset has condemned him for his selfish escapism
from the world and for his apparent neglect of those who needed Christ outside of the
cloister. The Medieval mindset was very different. The monastery was an integral part of
the local community -- it probably owned most of the farming land in the area- and the
fortunes of the people in any area were bound up with the spirituality of its monastic
house. The monks were on the front line of the spiritual battle-it was they who did
battle in prayer for their community, who warded off devils and demons and who prayed
tirelessly for the salvation of the souls of those in their community. Rather than being
the cowards of Christianity unable to take the strain of living a Christian life in the
real world, the monks were like spiritual stormtroopers interceding for an area against
its supernatural enemies in mudh the same way as a local lord in his castle protected an
area against its physical enemies. The people gave gifts to both lord and abbot in return
for a service. The Pardoner also represents the tradition of faith -- in respect to the
church of his time. The Pardoner is representative of the seamy side of the corrupt
church and a broken or twisted (if you will) faith. The faith of a bureaucracy, which is
what the church had become. The Pardoner was a church official who had the authority to
forgive those who had sinned by selling pardons and indulgences to them. Although, the
Pardoner was a church official, he was clearly in the church business for economic
reasons. The Pardoner, a devious and somewhat dubious individual had one goal: Get the
most money for pardons by almost any means of coercion necessary. A twisted and ironic
mind, has basically defined himself through his work for a similarly corrupt church. In
contrast, the Plowman has nothing but a seemingly uncomplicated and untwisted faith. The
Plowman has the faith of a poor farmer, uncomplicated by the bureaucracy of the church.
The Pardoner is probably on this journey because he is being required to go by the church
or he sees some sort of economic gain from this voyage, most likely from selling
forgiveness to the other pilgrims. The Plowman on the other hand is probably on this
voyage because of his sincerity and faith in its purpose. While this was the story of
religion at 'grass-roots' level, at the organizational and hierarchical level, the church
developed along a different line. It became more organized, more bureaucratic, more
legal, more centralized and basically more powerful on a European scale. This process was
spearheaded by the papacy and reached its pinnacle under Pope Innocent III in the early
13th Century. He embodied what became known as the 'papal monarchy' - a situation where
the popes literally were kings in their own world. The relative importance of spiritual
and secular power in the world was a constant question in the middle ages with both
secular emperors and kings, and the popes asserting their claims to rule by divine
authority with God's commands for God's people proceeding out of their mouths. The power
of the church is hard to exaggerate: its economic and political influence was huge, as
its wealth, movements like the crusades, and even the number of churches that exist from
this period truly show its greatness. By the early 10th century, a strange malaise seems
to have entered the English church. There are comments from this time of a decline in
learning among churchmen and an increase in a love for things of this earthly world. Even
more of these lax standards had begun a decline in the power structure of the church
which included a decrease in acceptable behavior amongst churchmen and a growing use of
church institutions by lay people as a means of evading taxes. Christianity affected all
men in Europe at every level and in every way. Such distances however, led to much
diversity and the shaping of Medieval religion into a land of contrasts. One can also see
how man's feelings of extreme sinfulness and desire for God are quite evident in these
tales. Still, we are told that history repeats itself because nobody listens to it, but
more realistically history repeats itself because man is essentially the same from one
generation to the next. He has the same aspirations, fears and flaws; yet the way that
these are expressed differs from age to age. This is why each period of history is
different. The fact that man is the same yet different is what makes the study of the
people who formed the medieval church directly applicable to Christians' lives and
experiences today.