the indulgence which John Trillek, Bishop of Hereford (from 1344 through 1360), granted when he consecrated altars at Vowchurch, accorded forty days of indulgence to all legally appropriate persons “who, truly sorry for their sins, penitent and confessed,” visited the church on each of certain designated saints’ days, or made some charitable contribution toward its upkeep or embellishment.29 Now, pardons do not benefit “those who are in mortal sin, and consequently, true contrition and confession are demanded as conditions for gaining all indulgences” (as Aquinas said).30 While it is true that Chaucer’s Pardoner does go through the motions of warning that only those free from the “blame” of unshriven sin may offer to his relics and be absolved by his bulls (377–84), the main point behind that statement is reassurance of the Canterbury pilgrims that no-one among them should let any feelings of shame hinder them from offering—once again, self-interest is paramount, his ambition being to collect as much money as possible.31 The emphasis is consistently placed on his own (utterly dubious) importance in the process of absolution.
This becomes even more blatant at the end of his tale, when the Pardoner goes so far as to declare that he has the power to absolve his clients—those who “offre” or donate alms—so cleanly and purely that they shall enter heaven without hindrance:
I yow assoille, by myn heigh power,
Yow that wol offre, as clene and eek as cleer
As ye were born. . .(913–15)
It is an honour to everich that is heer
That ye mowe have a suffisant pardoneer
T’assoille yow in contree as ye ryde,
For aventures whiche that may bityde. (931–94)
Looke which a seuretee is it to yow alle
That I am in youre felaweshipe yfalle,
That may assoille yow, bothe moore and lasse,
Whan that the soule shal fro the body passe. (937–40)
In fact, the worth of indulgences were deemed to owe nothing whatever to the moral qualities of their mere “publisher”/dispenser (or indeed of the eminent authority-figure who actually made the indulgences, as has been made clear in our previous chapter); to argue otherwise would be to countenance something rather like Wycliffite dominium theory, or even Donatism.32 By the same token, the immoral character of the preacher was not supposed to devalue the divine words he preached, and when Walter Brut dared to suggest that a good layman or lay woman was more worthy to confect the Eucharist than an immoral priest, the vigorous response was that consecration non est actus personalis sed dei tantum—hence it is neither promoted by the goodness of the minister nor impeded by his wickedness.33 Any “heigh power” of absolution possessed by an indulgence derived from the pardon itself and not from the pardoner.
In marked contrast to the Pardoner’s formulations is the following statement from the Alliterative Morte Arthure (a text variously dated c. 1440 and shortly before 1400), which clearly specifies where the true power and authority lie. Sir Craddok vows that he
. . .will pass in pilgrimage this pas to Rome
To purchase me pardon of the Pope selven,
And of the paines of Purgatory be plenerly assoiled . . . (3496–98)34
A pardon from the pope himself cannot be anything other than genuine— but, more importantly for our purpose here, Craddock seems fully aware that it is the pardon itself (clearly a plenary indulgence) which will “assoil” him from the pains of purgatory.
“I assoille him,” “I yow assoille,” “I am in youre felaweshipe . . . ”:in addition to placing that theologically incorrect emphasis on the “I,” Chaucer manipulates different meanings of “assoille.” The crucial distinction to be drawn here is between “judiciary” absolution and “penitential” absolution. As Pierre Bersuire O.S.B. (d. 1362) succinctly put it, “Duplex est igitur absolutio, secundum quod est duplex forus”: there are two kinds of absolution inasmuch as there are two kinds of court or tribunal.35 That is to say, absolutio can have the sense of “release or dismissal,” as used to describe (for example) discharge from office, or release from obligation or debt in a secular legal sense. Moreover, one may speak of pardons as “absolving” insofar as they release their possessor from the debt of sin and hence its punishment. This is the meaning borne by the term “assoiled” in the Morte Arthure passage quoted above. It may also be found in William Lyndwood’s account of how Christ’s supererogatory merit contributed hugely to the thesaurus mysticus: the smallest drop of his blood, he explains, is sufficient for the absolution (absolutio) of our sins.36
But in such statements absolutio does not, of course, carry the specific, technical sense of “the formal act of a priest or bishop pronouncing the forgiveness of sins by Christ to penitent sinners” (to quote the definition of penitential absolution from the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church).37 Only a properly ordained priest can “absolve” in foro pnitentiali, judge a sinner’s contrition and grant him absolution. And only then can his indulgence actually work, its own specific release or absolutio—just from poena—take effect. As that most popular of all Middle English poems, The Pricke of Conscience (c. 1350), succinctly puts it,
. . . pardon of papes and bisschopes,
Þat es granted here als men hopes,
May availe þair saules in purgatory,
Þat has purchaced it here worthyly,
If þai of þair syn had contricion
And war shrifen byfor þat pardon,
Þan may pardon after þair dede
In purgatory þam stand in stede. (IV.3804–11)38
To think otherwise is to blur together the very different powers of the two keys, of jurisdiction and of ordo. The separation of the powers conferred by holy orders from those conferred by jurisdiction—expressed by reference to the two keys which Christ gave to St. Peter and his successors— was widely accepted, as our previous chapter has indicated. Lyndwood’s Provinciale, following Aquinas and Hostiensis (Henry of Segusio, d. 1271), explains that the effect of the key of jurisdiction is the remission of sin, which is achieved through indulgences, for this remission does not appertain to the dispensation of the sacraments but to the dispensation of the common goods of the Church; and therefore legates, although not priests, can make (facere) indulgences.39 For absolution in the tribunal of penance, holy orders are necessary—and here the key of ministry is in operation, which entails the power of binding and loosing. This is the only means by which the moral guilt (or culpa) is removed.
However, Chaucer’s Pardoner attempts to dispense with this vital transaction between priest and penitent, apparently offering a one-stop service: obtain an indulgence from him (following the donation of alms), and nothing else is required; into the bliss of heaven you shall go, absolved “as clene and eek as cleer / As ye were born” (914–95). There is confusion here— a deliberate ploy, perhaps, on the Pardoner’s part—between the two senses of absolution, “judicial” absolution and “penitential” absolution, that which may be gained through an indulgence and that which must be gained through confession to a priest.40 Particularly telling is the Pardoner’s use of the phrase “I yow assoille,” a clear echo of the priestly formula of indicative absolution, “Ego te absolvo.” Yet again, Chaucer
