mistaken for, or shade into, “preaching.” No “sermon” (if such it may be called) which may specifically be identified as a pardoner’s seems to have survived, but there are references aplenty to the preaching activities of pardoners. What is meant here? The pardoners’ exposition of the terms of their indulgences, and/or “preaching” or moral admonition which arose naturally out of such exposition? Some light may be thrown on the problem by John Heywood’s lively dramatization of a confrontation between a pardoner and a friar:
FRERE: Date et dabitur vobis
Good devout people, this place of scrypture
PARDONER: Worshypfull maysters, ye shall understand
FRERE: Is to you that have no litterature—
PARDONER: That Pope Leo the tenth hath granted with his hand,
FRERE: Is to say in our englysshe tonge—
PARDONER: And by his bulles confyrmed under lede,
FRERE: As “departe your goodes the poorefolke amonge”
PARDONER: To all maner people, bothe quycke and dede,
FRERE: And God shall than gyve unto you agayne:
PARDONER: Ten thousande yeres and as many lentes of pardon
FRERE: This in the gospell so is wryten playne.
PARDONER: Whan they are dede, theyr soules for to guardon,
FRERE: Therfore gyve your almes in the largest wyse,
PARDONER: That wyll with theyr peny or almes dede
FRERE: Kepe not your goodes—fye, fye on covetyse!
(The Pardoner and the Frere, 189–204)
These two rapacious characters are competing to win alms from their audience, the one refusing to give way to the other; thus the situation degenerates into a shouting match. But their scripts are very different. The Friar proceeds to expound the thema or opening text of his sermon, “Give and it shall be given unto you” (Luke 6:38), whereas the Pardoner gives an account of the bull—by Pope Leo X, whose indulgences were attacked by Luther—which authorized the pardons he has on offer. Chaucer’s Pardoner sounds more like Heywood’s Friar than Heywood’s Pardoner. The implication would seem to be that Chaucer’s figure—perhaps like many of his real-life models—is exceeding his very limited authority as “publisher” and dispenser of indulgences.
It must be acknowledged that terms relating to preaching—both in Latin and in vulgari—could be used in loose, nontechnical senses.55 Several good examples may be found in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, where Jenkyn is said to “preche” to Alisoun from his book of wicked wives (III (D) 641), and her old husbands are accused—quite unfairly—of preaching to her about the wiles of women (247, 366, 436–37). But in his prologue Chaucer’s Pardoner claims the right and the wherewithal to preach in the full professional and technical sense of the term; indeed, this text reads as a cathena of passages from the artes praedicandi (duly subverted by the Pardoner, to be sure).56 It is indubitable that he is being presented, first and foremost, as a preacher—and there is no way in which we may mute the question, should he be preaching in the full, official sense of the term which Chaucer’s text presumes? The answer, I believe, lies in that crucial line, “I stonde lyk a clerk in my pulpet”—which intimates that he is not a “clerk” and hence is an inappropriate occupant of that “pulpet.”57 Similarly, in the prologue to Piers Plowman Langland attacks a pardoner who preaches “as he a preest were” (68). Although he, like Chaucer’s Pardoner, can produce a document of authorization (bearing “bissopes seles”), it is evident that his credentials do not justify all the activities in which he is engaged. Furthermore, Langland’s point is not only that this pardoner lacks the right to do what he is doing but also that he is morally unsuited for the task, due to his avaricious nature. Chaucer’s Pardoner appears to have been cut from the same cloth.
If, then, it be accepted that the Pardoner’s profession per se does not authorize him to absolve or to preach in the ways he himself defines, the further question presents itself, could at least some aspects of this authority derive from another source—because, quite independently of his status as pardoner, he is also an ordained priest, maybe even a friar, particularly in view of the fact that friars often preached indulgences?58 The case for the Pardoner being a friar is insupportable. There is no reason whatever to suppose that his “cappe” (I(A) 683) is the “biretta” worn by Augustinian canons59—no description is given of it, and it could well be a fashion item rather than some sort of religious headgear—and surely the Pardoner’s references to “my brethren” (VI(C) 416) simply designates his fellow-pardoners.60 Of course, it is perfectly possible that Chaucer has borrowed some notions concerning mendicant poverty to help characterize the Pardoner (largely to set up some specific ideals which, quite outrageously, he is not living up to): here I have in mind the reference to the Pardoner’s begging activity at l. 443 and the allusion to apostolic poverty at l. 447. But that does not make him a friar. In any case, those ideals were not exclusively the prerogative of friars.
Besides, the interests of friars and pardoners often diverged quite sharply, and they could come into direct competition; it would therefore be a mistake to lump them together.61 A document (dated 1350) included in the register of William de la Zouche, Archbishop of York, makes it clear that, if friars and pardoners should appear at the same time at “churches, chapels, or other ecclesiastical places,” then the friars must be allowed to do their work first, preaching “the word of God to the clergy and to the people wishing to hear it” and receiving “the alms of the faithful freely given by the urging of divine charity.”62 Only then may the quaestores take their turn, going about their business “following the form prescribed by sacred canons.” One can easily imagine what Chaucer’s Pardoner would have said about that: his pride could scarcely have tolerated it. And Heywood’s Pardoner and Friar squabble over who has priority in addressing one and the same audience. The latter complains to the parish priest who invited them into his church and now regrets it,
FRERE:. . .I desyred hym, ywys, more than ones or twyse
To holde his peas tyll that I had done,
But he wolde here no more than the man in the mone.
PARDONER: Why sholde I suffre the more than thou me?
Mayster Parson gave me lycence before the,
And I wolde thou knewyst it. (The Pardoner and the Frere, 554–59)
Commenting on the Pardoner’s portrait in the General Prologue, the Riverside Chaucer remarks, “this Pardoner’s participation in the Mass seems to indicate that he has clerical status.”63 But this statement is misleading— at once vague and lacking in supporting evidence—and quite at variance with the blatant implication of VI(C) 391, as quoted above, that he is not a cleric. The appellation “ecclesiaste” (I(A) 708) means simply that he is a preacher,64 a fact which is blatantly obvious; the issue of whether he should be preaching is a different matter. Chaucer’s account of the Pardoner’s hairstyle has provoked some critical debate (is it meant to be ugly or attractive?), but at any rate he does not appear to possess the clerical tonsure.
The Pardoner seems to be particularly good at singing the “offertorie” (I(A) 710), which was performed when offerings were made at Mass. The Lay Folks Mass Book (York Use) has the priest and his assistants (ministri) singing this,65
