The average person will desire the same salvation, or the ability to pay off a mortgage overnight, that has been described to them and will turn to the Pardoner and the false broker in search of it. The Pardoner exemplifies what it means for a literary character to have significant meaning. He serves as an archetype for greed that not only highlights topics that are still relevant today, but also does so in a way that can be translated into modern professions to see where these same behaviors of avarice still exist in society, such as the case study explored by The Wolf of Wall Street.
He is the prime example of the dangers of avarice that he so fervently preaches against. Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. Robert Boenig and Andrew Taylor. Yet Chaucer places him at the very bottom of humanity because he uses the church and holy, religious objects as tools to profit personally.
In the other great classic of the Middle Ages, Dante's Divine Comedy, Dante arranges hell into nine concentric circles. The first circle is reserved for the least offensive sinner, with each subsequent circle holding ever more evil sinners, finally ending in the most pernicious and vicious sinners, including betrayers such as Judas Iscariot and Brutus. In the ninth circle of Dante's Inferno, the circle just above the betrayers, are the simonists, those sinners who make a practice of selling holy items, sacraments, or ecclesiastical offices for personal profit.
The punishment for such perversion of holy objects was very severe. Consequently, in the hierarchy of the medieval church, the Pardoner and his sin are especially heinous. After telling the group how he gulls people into indulging his own avarice through a sermon he preaches on greed, the Pardoner tells of a tale that exemplifies the vice decried in his sermon. Furthermore, he attempts to sell pardons to the group—in effect plying his trade in clear violation of the rules outlined by the host.
SparkTeach Teacher's Handbook. Why are the characters in The Canterbury Tales going on a pilgrimage to Canterbury? Pearsall, pgs The Pardoner leads a sinister life and is consumed with cupiditas. He is depicted as smooth, delicate, lady-like and honey-tongued, duplicitous in his supposedly holy dealings, extremely rich from his deceitful profession and as a man whose very being is totally incongruous with his career as a servant of the Church.
By exploiting his congregants' desires to find salvation and lead good lives, he cynically sells them fake reliquaries as good luck charms and miracle cures and in doing so he bastardizes the Christian doctrine he preaches into a lucrative money making operation. From this we understand that earthy and manly obscenities, while not entirely socially acceptable, are at least tolerable when compared to the risk of being confronted with a tale of potentially unspeakable depravity that might issue forth should the Pardoner be given the freedom to speak his mind.
Duino, pgs This censorious action of the pilgrims is concordant with the account of the Pardoner in the General Prologue. Instead the pilgrims ask the Pardoner for a moral tale. Tellingly, he initially struggles to come up with a suitable exemplum for his travel companions.
Eventually he falls back on a sermon which comes out as well practiced and rote delivered, but not before confirming his arrogance by forcing the pilgrims to wait while he indulges his gluttony with ales and cakes.
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