Such confusion was ripe for exploitation—and exploited it was, by learned and lay, by high and low, by popes and pardoners. Our next chapter will consider the modes and mechanisms of exploitation which Chaucer attributes to his Pardoner. Here is a figure who, as I hope to show, far exceeds his authority as a mere announcer or pronuntiator of indulgences, in claiming the officium praedicatoris and quasi-sacerdotal powers of absolution which had no basis whatever in his letters of appointment. Pace the best efforts of the schoolmen, and the compilers of the priests’ handbooks who transmitted their determinations, too much of a market was indeed being made of the divine mercy. For Chaucer’s character that represented a major business opportunity, which never rises above the level of the material. This mercantile preacher risks eternal damnation through deviancy of a type (and on a scale) which, in my view, goes far beyond the much-discussed matter of his problematic sexuality.
CHAPTER 2
Moral Fallibility
Chaucer’s Pardoner and the Office of Preacher
. . . bone predicacion
vient bien de male entencion,
qui n’a riens a celui valu,
tout fac’ele aus autres salu,
car s’il prennent bon example,
cil de vaine gloire s’en anple. (5083–88)
[Good preaching may well come from an evil intention; although worth nothing to the preacher, it may bring salvation to others who learn a good example from it while he is so filled with vainglory.]1
Thus speaks Lady Reason in the part of the Roman de la Rose which was composed by Jean de Meun—a scholar writing at the time when university discussion concerning the officium praedicatoris and the requisite attributes of priests was at its height. This passage may have been the basic inspiration for Chaucer’s conception of his preaching Pardoner:
. . . many a predicacioun
Comth ofte tyme of yvel entencioun (VI(C) 407–8)
But Chaucer’s knowledge of the relevant discourses goes far beyond what may be found in the Rose. And he exploited them in ways undreamed of by Jean de Meun.
Philosophical warrant and precedent for the Pardoner’s position can be found in Aristotle (as quoted in our previous chapter), insofar as Chaucer daringly implements the principle that ars and technical/professional knowledge have little or no importance as far as the virtues are concerned, and can exist in profusion where good morality is absent: ad virtutes autem scire quidem parum aut nihil potest. It would be harder to find a cleverer bastard than the Pardoner. Particularly galling is the fact that this bastard has a point: he can tell a moral tale, and does just that. The in-your-face quality of this performance is astonishing, and unparalleled in medieval literature. But Chaucer’s text also offers a reality-check. The Pardoner is a big fish only in a small sociopolitical pond. Pace the self-aggrandizing rhetoric in which he indulges, quaestores actually occupied a lowly position in the ecclesiastical power-structure. The ways in which Chaucer’s character deviates from his licit terms of reference as a pardoner must be considered in some detail, to bring out the nature and extent of his many fallibilities. This inquiry is crucial, since the requirements and responsibilities of the Pardoner’s profession have been occluded in modern criticism, together with the manner in which he exceeds his brief by assuming the priestly duties of preaching and granting absolution. Therefore an essential part of my project is recuperation of the theory and practice of indulgences and the official terms of reference of those who issued or “made” them and those who dispensed them. In light of this evidence, we may reconsider the vexed topic of the Pardoner’s sexuality, to investigate the ways in which this can be seen as deviant, and the extent to which this matters within the ethical economy of the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale.
I. ALMS AND THE MAN: THE DEVIANT PARDONER
Chaucer’s Pardoner claims to possess an impressive (incredible?) amount of documentation, including “Bulles of popes and of cardynales, / Of patriarkes and bishopes” (VI (C) 342–43).2 One seems to be of special importance. Before he begins to preach, he will display “Oure lige lordes seel on my patente” (337), so that no man, whether priest or clerk, should disturb him in his work. This almost certainly refers to some kind of royal license permitting the Pardoner to ply his trade. The Pardoner in John Heywood’s Pardoner and the Frere (published in 1533) also has a “patent” bearing “our lyege lorde seale” (99)—the influence of Chaucer’s line is evident— which later is described in more detail. If you “dysturbe me any thynge,” the Pardoner threatens the Friar, you will be
. . . a traytour to the kynge;
For here hath he graunted me, under hys brode seale,
That no man, yf he love hys hele,
Sholde me dysturbe or let in any wyse.
And yf thou dost the kynges commaundement dispise,
I shall make the be set fast by the fete! (270–76)3
Heywood’s editors identify the “brode seale” with the Great Seal of Westminster, but we cannot know if the dramatist thought that Chaucer’s Pardoner also had such a document.4 What does seem quite clear is that both authors envisaged the real-life models of their characters as needing both secular and spiritual authorization. Chaucer’s figure is specifically identified as a pardoner “of Rouncivale” (I(A) 670), i.e., he is raising funds for the hospital of the Blessed Mary of Rouncesval, Charing Cross. It seems improbable that, in real life, this hospital would have given each and every one of its (very numerous) quaestores an actual patent roll, bearing the royal seal, multiple copies having been obtained from the crown. It seems more likely—certainly this would have been a lot cheaper—for the hospital to have kept an original document and handed out notarized copies to its agents.5 But of course, Chaucer may have engaged in some poetic exaggeration here, since he was seeking to contrast the Pardoner’s grand documentation with his shabby activities.
Turning now to the matter of his spiritual credentials: the Pardoner’s documentation would probably have included a copy made from the master papal license held in his London hospital. However, there is no reference to such a thing in Chaucer’s text. What is mentioned is the Pardoner’s collection of “bulles,” these being the documents which announce and describe the indulgences he will dispense as his clients give alms to one or more of the various charitable causes for which he is collecting. I speak of “various” causes advisedly, since the Pardoner’s horizons seem to extend beyond Charing Cross. In the General Prologue he is said to have returned recently “fro the court [i.e., the papal court] of Rome” (I(A) 671, cf. 687), and near the end of his tale he claims—with typical hyperbole—to have been given “relikes and pardoun . . . by the popes hond” (VI(C) 920–22). These claims are (to some extent) supported by the “vernycle” badge sewn on his cap, evidence of a visit to one of the main attractions of St. Peter’s, the relic of a cloth bearing the image of Christ’s face.6 The Pardoner certainly did not have to go to Rome to acquire any documentation relating to his work for the Rouncesval hospital. It would seem, then, that he is dispensing indulgences for other organizations and enterprises, for there is nothing to suggest that Chaucer (or at least “Chaucer” the narrator) is casting doubt on his character’s Roman sojourn. Here, then, is a larger-than-life, composite figure, with several types of quaestor being rolled into one. Just as Chaucer’s Knight is a veteran of an extraordinary—indeed, impossibly—large number of battles, so the Pardoner proudly
