about how quaestores were casually absolving from all kinds of heinous sin, including usury, robbery, perjury, and even murder.41 Two charges are interwoven here: such individuals are on the one hand assuming a role to which they have no legal right, and on the other they are exercising that role in a quite outrageous way, lacking measure, distinction, or any sense of scale. Chaucer’s character may be guilty on both those counts.
In other words, the Pardoner may be claiming (however obliquely) the power to absolve not only a poena but also a culpa, from guilt as well as punishment—a practice all too common among English pardoners of the time, according to the statement in the Oxford petition of 1414 which attacks pardoners who, “although not in holy orders, preach publicly and pretend falsely that they have full powers of absolving both from punishment and from guilt (a poena et a culpa), along with other blasphemies, by means of which they plunder and seduce the people.”42 However, the extent and level of deliberate fraud or simple misunderstanding, and hence the degree of confusion, was even more endemic than that. Since this matter has already been discussed in our previous chapter, one example from Chaucer’s time may suffice here, concerning Urban VI’s authorization of the (quite disastrous) “crusade” which Henry Despenser, Bishop of Norwich, mounted against Clement the Antipope in 1383. The forma absolutionis included in the papal documentation makes it clear that participants were to be granted a plenary indulgence (“ab omnibus peccatis tuis”), the necessity of confession and contrition being emphasized (“ore confessionis et corde contritis”).43 Here I quote from Thomas Walsingham’s Historia anglicana. However, in Henry Knighton’s chronicle this same indulgence is described as offering absolution from both punishment and guilt (“a poena et culpa absolvebat”).44 The latter opinion seems to have been a widely held one; it reappears in a Wycliffite sermon which complains about the claim of Urban’s followers “to han power of Crist to assoille alle men that helpen in her cause, for to gete this worldli worshipe to assoile men of peyne and synne bothe in this world and in the tothir.”45 The Lollard writer is assuming that such absolution from both punishment and guilt is a doctrine held and promoted in all seriousness by the establishment, and as such is an appropriate object of his wrath. After all, there was a widespread—though of course mistaken— belief that plenary indulgences offered absolution a pena et a culpa.46 That belief was by no means confined to the uneducated, despite the attempts of certain members of the establishment to place the blame there.47
Hence it would be very risky indeed to suggest that in Chaucer’s day the Pardoner’s arrogation of powers of absolution (which may include the implication that he can absolve a poena et a culpa) was taken seriously only by the most ignorant and vulnerable members of society. Given the cacophony of competing voices in the period, many having at least the semblance of authority, literary criticism should refrain from rushing in where angels feared to tread. All this having been said, however, it is reasonable to conclude that the less well educated, and the poor, were more vulnerable to moral monstrosities like Chaucer’s Pardoner. The poet himself seems convinced that it is the “lewed peple” (437) who are habitually plundered and seduced by members of his unfraternal brotherhood.48 Langland thought likewise, and paints a picture of how “lewed men leved” an avaricious pardoner for his extravagant promises of absolution—“Of falshede of fastynge, of avowes ybroken”—and “Comen up knelynge to kissen his bulle” (Piers Plowman, Prol. 70–73).
Continuing our inquiry into the claims made by Chaucer’s Pardoner for his powers of absolution, it may now be asked: when he says that, thanks to his ministrations, someone’s soul will go to heaven, fully absolved, after death (911–15), does this mean that he is dispensing plenary indulgences as correctly understood, i.e., documents which signal release from all the punishment (poena) due for sin, though not from the culpa (that being a misunderstanding, as already noted)? The Pardoner could well have plenary indulgences in his possession (whether obtained in England or abroad). But even if this were so, he would still be guilty of exaggeration and misrepresentation, since the benefits which ensue from such pardons cannot, of course, be obtained simply by making a charitable donation and being entered into the Pardoner’s “roll.” The element of exaggeration is even greater in Heywood’s presentation of an unscrupulous pardoner in The Foure PP—
Give me but a peny or two pens
And, as sone as the soule departeth hens,
In halfe an houre or thre quarters at moste
The soule is in heven with the Holy Ghost (147–50)
—but obviously comparable with Chaucer’s. The crucial point is that possession of pardons—even plenary pardons, correctly issued and understood— does not make one exempt from divine punishment, as William Lyndwood (among many others) makes perfectly clear. People should beware of neglecting good works in the future simply because they possess indulgences, Lyndwood declares.49 They may think themselves immune, but they can still be “bound” or convicted on the charges of negligence and contempt. Satisfaction has to be made properly, penitence which has been enjoined must be performed. Very similar views are expressed at the end of Passus VII (B-text, 174–95), where the dreamer declares that while the efficacy of pardons must be believed (“This is a leef of our bileve”), nevertheless at the day of judgment trust in such things “is noght so siker [sure] for the soule . . . as is Dowel.” “A pokeful [bagful] of pardon,” “indulgences doublefold,” and membership in all the fraternities of friars50 may be rated as worth a mere piecrust if Dowel does not help you, if your good works are insufficient.
No doubt Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims expect to gain substantial indulgences after visiting the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket and performing the necessary rituals—and that is precisely the point. A certain amount of good work is involved; specific requirements must be met. There is no way in which the penitential procedure can be short-circuited, and the Pardoner is sinning gravely by claiming otherwise. Indeed, his performance may be seen as a travesty of the entire process in which the pilgrims are engaged, striking at the very heart of their religious observances—a point which gains more force from his display and exploitation of relics which Chaucer identifies as fraudulent. At the beginning of the Lateran canon (no. 62) which stipulates measures for policing the activities of quaestores is found an attack on those who “expose for sale51 and exhibit promiscuously the relics of the saints,” to the great injury of the Christian religion.52 In an attempt to stop this happening, it is decreed that “old relics may not be exhibited outside of a vessel or exposed for sale. And let no one presume to venerate publicly new ones unless they have been approved by the Roman pontiff.” In future, prelates must not allow those who come to their churches, wishing to venerate relics, to be “deceived by worthless fabrications or false documents as has been done in many places for the sake of gain.” Fine words—but Chaucer’s Pardoner is able to ply his fraudulent trade unchecked. His worthless fabrications stand in marked contrast to the genuine relics of St. Thomas at Canterbury, the ultimate destination of all Chaucer’s tale-tellers.
What, then, of his preaching; may that also be regarded as fraudulent in some way? Chaucer strongly hints that the Pardoner has usurped an office to which he has no legal entitlement:
I stonde lyk a clerk in my pulpet, And whan the lewed peple is doun yset, I preche so as ye han herd bifoore, And telle an hundred false japes moore. (VI(C) 391–94. Italics mine)
Quaestores did not possess the officium praedicatoris by virtue of their occupation. As the sixty-second Lateran canon puts it, “they may not preach anything to the people but what is contained” in the letters which they had obtained from either the Apostolic See or the diocesan bishop.53 In similar vein, William Lyndwood declares that the office of preaching does not pertain to such people; their authority extends only to asking for charitable help and expounding (the verb used is exponere, meaning to set forth or “publish”) any indulgence they may have.54 In
