their battle against Lollardy in the early 1390s. It was generally conceded that women can teach privately, in the sense of “familiarly conversing” with a few others (to follow Aquinas’s formulation),63 but not publicly, in church. Within their own religious houses, abbesses and prioresses can instruct their nuns and reprehend vices, explains Thomas of Chobham (c. 1158/68–c. 1233/36), who was appointed sub-dean of Salisbury sometime between October 1206 and circa 1208.64 But it is not licit for such women to expound holy Scripture by preaching. They can read from the Apostles and from legends of saints, and at their matins read from the Gospels. However, they are not allowed to put on sacred vestments or read from the Epistles or the Gospels at the celebration of the mass, on account of the impurity of their menses and because of the danger of concupiscence, for priests or other clerics upon seeing them would be inflamed with lust.
By the same token, a layman could teach his servants and family, but (unless specially licensed) not a gathering of all-comers in a public place, far beyond the walls of the house wherein he ruled as paterfamilias. Every good man should “preach” in his own home and in private places, to his family and neighbors, explains Thomas of Chobham. He may do this by recalling what he has heard in good sermons—thus, by reporting and repeating, he can expound holy Scripture. However, he most certainly may not expound holy Scripture in church or in other public places. Georges Duby is quite correct in saying that “the opposition between private life and public life is a matter not so much of place as of power,”65 but in view of the testimonies here quoted I myself would wish to emphasize the conjunction rather than the disjunction of place and power.
When the schoolmen spoke of the “secret” sins of priests they usually did not have in mind the notion of misdemeanors perpetrated within the boundaries of what we might call “personal” or “private” morality, but rather sins of which a priest’s congregation was ignorant. Of course, the schoolmen’s treatment of sins which are perpetrated in the very act of public teaching (including vainglory and flattery) as opposed to those which are not (including covetousness and lust) raises larger issues. But no-one actually said that it is worse for a preacher to be vainglorious than to be lecherous; neither does the notion of “privacy,” as invoked in attempts to defend President Clinton’s rights as a private individual and citizen, actually apply here. For if the lecherous behavior of a preacher were to become known, it would scandalize the members of his congregation, who would justifiably feel that he was failing to “practise what he preached.”66 And in the eyes of his superiors and ultimately of God a sinful priest was just as culpable for his “private” failings as for those committed in the exercise of his office. In short, here we are dealing largely with matters relating to public and private places, information and power, rather than to public and private life as envisaged in later centuries.
In public places, when a priest preached it was deemed crucial that he enjoyed the confidence of his audience. True, it could be (and often was) argued that his personal fallibility did not damage his authoritative message; there was widespread acceptance of the notion that a clever sinner could well make an excellent teacher. But that missed the crucial point, as developed in scholastic thought concerning the officium praedicatoris, that a good pastor owed his flock his devotion; rhetorical skill and intellectual competence alone were simply not enough. In practical terms, the sight of an immoral priest exhorting his listeners to moral behavior, or daring to consecrate the sacraments, could cause them deep offense—as when the Viennese Beguine Agnes Blannbekin (d. 1315) records with horror how a congregation recoiled from a priest who, having “deflowered a young virgin,” presumed to celebrate Mass the very next day.67 Acutely aware of this problem, the schoolmen put themselves in a difficult (if not ethically dubious) position by promoting a policy of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” My review of the abundant evidence has indicated a frequent concern, which sometimes smacks of obsession, with official secrecy. If the preacher’s sins become known publicly, he may prove a source of scandal. Better to maintain silence, then, and keep the congregation in the dark, if at all possible or for as long as possible. Thomas of Chobham’s comments on this matter are illuminating, indeed surprising. His Summa de arte praedicandi includes a lively attack on those who have proclaimed abroad or “published” (publicauerunt) their “sin as Sodom, and they have not hid it” (cf. Isaiah 3:9).68 A man can, quite commendably, hide his wickedness out of reverence for God and benefit to his neighbor, thereby avoiding the scandal which “publication” of his wicked works would cause. Thomas excels himself by illustrating this point with reference to the story in Genesis (see especially 31:34) of how the godly Rachel hid the idols of Laban in camel dung (fimus camelorum), that being how Chobham interprets the Vulgate text’s stramen cameli—actually a reference to a pack-saddle (or “camel’s furniture” as the Douai translation puts it).69 According to the narrative, Rachel hides Laban’s idols under the stramen, “and sat upon them,” informing Laban that she cannot get up because “it has now happened to me, according to the custom of women” (i.e., she is menstruating).70 Chobham ignores that last detail, interpreting Laban’s gods as customary or habitual sins of the kind attacked by St. Paul when he condemns those “whose end is destruction: whose God is their belly: and whose glory is in their shame: who mind earthly things” (Philippians 3:19). Yet—and here is the main surprise of Thomas’s excursus—such sins should be hidden from those “many plotters and spies who inquire into the sins of preachers.” The prudent preacher should deceive those who inquire into his misdeeds, so that they may be addressed within himself, so to speak; thus, rather than being gloried in, his sins will rot and stink in his heart. And since they should be covered up in this way, a man must, as it were, sit upon his sins and hide them under his posterior regions, ensuring that they do not appear to the sight of men. Just as no-one should bare his bottom in public, neither should he reveal his sins to others!71
It was not, of course, that any medieval moralist wished to condone a priest’s immoral life. The divine punishment which such a sinner would ultimately suffer was imagined with some relish.72 And there are treatises aplenty which describe the purification process through which a priest should pass before presuming to serve his flock—especially before administering holy communion, “confecting” (cf. the Latin verb conficere) the sacrament of the Eucharist. The traditional position was that priests who failed to live up to such (fittingly) high standards should be left to God, and hopefully their fallibilities would not become known to their congregations. For, if so, layfolk might presume to judge their superiors, thereby threatening the jealously guarded hieratic relationship between shepherd and flock.
Chaucer’s Pardoner, however, makes no secret of his moral deviancy. Indeed, he positively revels in exhibiting it to the audience of Canterbury pilgrims; given this ostentatious public display, the risk of scandal is great. If the standard scholastic critique were applied, it could be said that the effect of his preaching is thereby destroyed, since the pilgrims are bound to take more notice of his bad personal example than of his good narrative exemplum. It is hardly surprising, then, that after his tale is told he should receive insults rather than alms. Moreover, the Pardoner sins in the very act of preaching (in the sense explained above), due to his vainglory and greed for gain—here we are dealing with deviancy appertaining to his relationship with God rather than that with his audience. Of course, he sins in other ways as well, his lechery being evident (though defining the precise form or forms it takes has proved controversial in current scholarship). Complexity is heaped upon complexity when we realize that pardoners were generally not licensed to preach. Therefore it is possible to argue that— quite apart from his moral unworthiness for the task—Chaucer’s character has usurped an office to which he has no legal right. To make matters even worse, he exceeds his brief as a distributor of pardons, claiming far more for them than his license allows. And could it be that at least some of those pardons—like all of his relics—are fakes? Indeed, is the Pardoner himself a fake, not a properly licensed quaestor at all?
These interpretive challenges are further complicated by the fact that, in Chaucer’s day, not everyone was prepared to endorse orthodox attempts to contain the immoral preacher and/or priest. The schoolmen we have cited had carefully demarcated
