Simply Greed

I ride in the very back of the party in the General Prologue and is fittingly the most marginalized character in the company. My profession is somewhat dubious—pardoners offered indulgences, or previously written pardons for particular sins, to people who repented of the sin they had committed.I am as corrupt as others in my profession, but my frankness about my own hypocrisy is nevertheless shocking. I bluntly accuses myself of fraud, avarice, and gluttony—the very things that I preache against. And yet, rather than expressing any sort of remorse with my confession, I takes a perverse pride in the depth of my corruption. My earnestness in portraying myself as totally amoral seems almost too extreme to be accurate. My boasts about my corruption may represent my attempt to cover up my doubts or anxieties about the life of crime (in the name of religion) that I have adopted. It is possible to argue that I sacrificed my own spiritual good to cure the sins of others. Yet I don't seem to really consider my spiritual corruption a real sacrifice, since I love the money and the comfort it brings me. Either way, I quickly cover up my statement, which shows at least a flicker of interest in the good of other people, with a renewed proclamation of my own selfishness: “But that is nat my principal entente; / I preche nothyng but for coveitise” (432–433).

The Pardoner

Along with receiving the indulgence, the penitent would make a donation to the Church by giving money to me. Eventually, this “charitable” donation became a necessary part of receiving an indulgence. Paid by the Church to offer these indulgences,I was not supposed to pocket the penitents’ charitable donations. That said, the practice of offering indulgences came under critique by quite a few churchmen, since once the charitable donation became a practice allied to receiving an indulgence, it began to look like one could cleanse oneself of sin by simply paying off the Church. Additionally, widespread suspicion held that pardoners counterfeited the pope’s signature on illegitimate indulgences and pocketed the “charitable donations” themselves.After telling the group how I gull people into indulging my own avarice through a sermon I preaches on greed, I tell of a tale that exemplifies the vice decried in my sermon. Furthermore, I attempts to sell pardons to the group—in effect plying my trade in clear violation of the rules outlined by the host.

A Tale Of Greed

Is first described about a group of young Flemish people who spend their time drinking and reveling, indulging in all forms of excess. After commenting on their lifestyle of debauchery, I  enters into a tirade against the vices that they practice. First and foremost is gluttony, which I identify as the sin that first caused the fall of mankind in Eden. Next, I attacks drunkenness, which makes a man seem mad and witless. Next is gambling, the temptation that ruins men of power and wealth. Finally, I denounced swearing.I argue that it so offend God that I forbade swearing in the Second Commandment—placing it higher up on the list than homicide. After almost two hundred lines of sermonizing, I finally returns to my story of the lecherous Flemish youngsters.