and power as expressed in works written in the vernacular. The translatio studii topos had been tainted by the Lollards, a fact of far greater cultural weight than the celebratory comments which John Trevisa166 and Geoffrey Chaucer had made concerning the transference of learning from Greek into Latin and from Latin into English. “God woot that in alle these langages and in many moo” the scientific conclusions transmitted in his Treatise on the Astrolabe have been “suffisantly lerned and taught,” asserts Chaucer, adding that “diverse pathes leden diverse folk the righte way to Rome.”167 However, subsequent political events in England were inimical to the promotion of such a positive view of the relationship between learning and linguistic diversity. There seemed to be one straight and narrow road to Rome, and anyone who wandered by the way could be at risk. The fate of Reginald Pecock did not bode well for any ambitious attempt to reclaim the vernacular for orthodoxy. It is not surprising, then, that there is no affirmation of the translatio auctoritatis from Latin into English of the type which, most memorably, Dante had been able to make for his own “illustrious vernacular.”168
In France and Italy, discourses concerning the intersections of authority and fallibility sometimes Wgured within sophisticated discussions of the ethical credentials of vernacular authors and their texts. In England they manifested themselves in a particularly dangerous way, within a dialectic that (in its most extreme form) questioned the efficacy of the teaching and sacramental actions of a man of great authority if his life did not accord with his official status, and countenanced the possibility of women claiming some of the prerogatives of the doctor, praedicator, and lector. These crucial differences may be seen as both causes and effects of the very different textual cultures of England and of continental Europe. The following book’s identification of the peculiarities and problems of the English scene will, I hope, throw light on the ideological conflicts which underpin Chaucer’s two most problematic authority-figures, the Pardoner and Wife of Bath.
CHAPTER 1
De officio praedicatoris
Of Preaching, Pardons, and Power
“Three things are necessary for the one exercising an act of preaching,” claims the English cleric Robert of Basevorn in his Forma praedicandi of 1322.1 And they are: appropriate authority, sufficient knowledge, and fitting attributes or conditiones—including an impeccable moral character and fine reputation. These categories offer an appropriate framework of analysis for many features of the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale, and we shall be recuperating them in the following chapter. Chaucer displays an interest in all three, though for him the most important category concerns the conditiones of the preacher. Does the moral fallibility of the man corrupt his moral message? If the speaker cannot be trusted, can his words? The poet’s confrontation of these issues constitutes one of his most elaborate and sustained investigations of problems which were at the cutting edge of late-medieval theory of textual authority.
Basevorn’s tria necessaria are, however, the product of a long process of scholastic disputation and discussion, which bears the hallmark of the thirteenth-century University of Paris, wherein the role and function of the preacher enjoyed much scholarly attention. This is hardly surprising, given that Paris was then the preeminent center of theological learning. Many of the most substantial analyses of the officium praedicatoris issued from that intellectual milieu, to spread across late-medieval Europe.2 It is important that those intellectual origins be acknowledged, particularly since it was in Paris that the broader theology of priestly authority and fallibility received a remarkably full elaboration, thus establishing the parameters within which the specific magisterium of preacher supposedly functioned or operated in parallel. A fundamental premise of the present study is that medieval discourses of authority, far from occupying autonomous ideological and sociopolitical spheres of operation, implicated each other and were crucially interrelated. Late-medieval ideologies of priestly office in general and the office of preacher in particular amply bear out and support this principle— as does the third major ideology discussed below, which concerns the nature and effectiveness of indulgences. Following a gift of alms and the standard penitential procedures, these “relaxations” or “absolutions” were supposed to pay all or part of the sinner’s debt of punishment out of the Church’s vast spiritual treasury, comprising the immeasurable merits of Christ Himself and replenished with the merits of saints and martyrs both ancient and modern. The Pardoner’s claims as preacher are in many respects inseparable from his claims as pardoner, and the value of his discourse is complexly interrelated with the value of his letters of authorization as a licensed distributor of indulgences on the one hand, and on the other with the value of his indulgences themselves. This can be appreciated only after a comprehensive review of the respective yet often comparable powers of preachers, priests, and pardoners, along with the challenges to their institution which came from both inside and outside Christian orthodoxy.
I. CONSTRUCTING THE PREACHER: AUTHORITY, KNOWLEDGE, ATTRIBUTES
Interest in the officium praedicatoris was precipitated by many factors, including the emphasis placed by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) on the clergy’s obligation to teach and preach, and the development of the new orders of preaching friars, who rapidly became well represented at university level. Furthermore, the thirteenth century saw a considerable growth in the number of preachers’ aids and handbooks: concordances to the Bible, compilations designed to make authoritative doctrine easily accessible, collections of exempla or illustrative stories for use in sermons, and artes praedicandi, treatises on the forms and rhetorical techniques of the sermons themselves.3 The activity of preaching itself was described in the most glowing terms. According to Humbert of Romans (c. 1200–1277), who was elected Master-General of the Order of Preachers in 1254, the office of preaching is apostolic, angelic, and divine; its foundation, which is holy Scripture, excels all the other sciences.4 It is little wonder, then, that late-medieval clerics should have analyzed in minute detail the nature, requirements, and responsibilities of the officium praedicatoris.
In discussions of issues of authority and authorization, a firm distinction was made between those who teach by virtue of their public office and those who, lacking such an office, have to be specially licensed. The tensions between the mendicant friars and the secular clergy are clearly evoked by Jean de Pouilly’s quodlibet (1312) on the subject, when someone has the privilege of preaching in the parish of a curate who also wishes to preach, which of them has the priority?5 Jean, himself a secular master, predictably decides in favor of the parish priest: the priest preaches as an essential part of his function, whereas the friar must have a special commission. Is it possible, then, for a monk to preach, or a layman, or indeed a woman? An anonymous treatise preserved in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS Lat. 455 assures us that, in accordance with canon law, monks and layfolk can preach only with the special permission of a bishop.6 The case of women was more clear cut. Our anonymous treatise flatly declares that women cannot preach because of their nature (they are inferior to men, and were led into error by the devil) and because of civil law, which debars them from public office.7 (A full account of such attitudes will be included in Chapter 3, below.) It is hardly surprising, then, that the Wife of Bath’s teaching by citation of authorities should have troubled Chaucer’s Friar so much (III(D) 1274–77). And we may feel the full force of the Pardoner’s joke that, in the case of marriage, the Wife of Bath is a “noble prechour” (III(D) 165). Furthermore, this is a spectacular case of the kettle’s calling the pot black, for the Pardoner, like the Wife, has usurped the noble office of preacher—a point to which we shall return.
Moving on to the issues of knowledge and preparation, it may be noted that all the schoolmen insist that the preacher should have adequate learning for his task and prepare himself fully for it. Among many others, Raymond Rigaud took a very dim view of the lazy person who assumes the office of preacher and confessor. Does such a person sin mortally if he chooses not to improve himself through study, though he has the ability to do so?8
