Chaucer's Friar in Canterbury Tales Term Paper

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Chaucer's Friar

In the Canterbury Tales, the Friar's Tale and the Summoner's Tale are intended to be satires about the corruption of the church in the Middle Ages, and would have been considered comedic by the audience, but also as being quite close to the truth. Chaucer was very likely sympathetic with the early-Protestant Lollards and Reformers and intended this to be a humorous commentary on "the abuse that infected the medieval church" (Hallissy 138). Although the Friar and the Summoner work for the church, neither of them is even a remotely holy man, and their reasons for being on the pilgrimage are purely material rather than religious. Both of these characters equally corrupt and venal and have no real spiritual values but only an urge to satisfy their appetite for money (Pearsall 166). Chaucer does have a serious moral intent in these tales, and is condemning "the financial abuses corrupting God's church, eating it away from within" (Hallissy 147). These abuses including the buying and selling of church offices, theft of funds intended for the poor, the sale of masses and indulgences for the souls of the dead and general extortion of taxes, rents and donations from the common people. All of these were very well-known in the Late Middle Ages and contributed to outright rebellions against the church authorities by early Reformers like John Wycliffe in England and John Hus in Bohemia.

Franciscan friars took oaths of poverty, chastity and obedience, vowing the live as mendicants by begging for donations and doing good works among the poor. Chaucer's friar was "a preacher licensed to raise funds for his community within a specific geographical area," although in the General Prologue he is revealed to be a thief who keeps part of the money for himself (Hallissy 137). Moreover, he is a hypocrite for condemning the Summoner on the same grounds, since he has also broken his oath. In the medieval period, a Summoner worked for the ecclesiastical courts and presented orders for persons accused of immoral acts like prostitution, sodomy, witchcraft, adultery and fornication to appear before the church authorities.

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Chaucer's Summoner also forges these orders based on names of customers he obtains from pimps and prostitutes, and then collects bribes from his victims in return for destroying the papers. Both of these characters represent the reality that the church had become a stable career "for men without land and women without dowries," and was attracting too many people with material rather than spiritual motives (Hallissy 138).

Both Chaucer and the Friar damn this man to hell in the strongest terms, although the Friar fails to realize that he is also damned. A Bailiff wearing green is accompanying the pilgrims and makes pact of friendship with the Summoner, who does not know that his new friend is really a demon. He enters a town to continue his theft and extortion, including from a woman too old and ill even to appear before the ecclesiastical court, and the demon announces that he has condemned himself to hell. This greatly pleases the Friar, who is as hypocritical as the Sadducees and Pharisees of the Bible, and he even preaches one of his sermons warning that that Devil "may not tempt you beyond your might, for Christ will be your champion and knight" (Chaucer, III, D, 1659-1664). In return, the Friar insults the Summoner, saying that "friars and fiends are but little apart," and that at least 20,000 of them were residing in hell in the Devil's anus (Chaucer, III, D, 1674). Among his other duties, the Friar is supposed to return the money he collects to his brothers and also….....

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