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Religious character in the Canterbury tales
How does chaucer's tale mirror the medieval period in canterbury tales
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Recommended: Religious character in the Canterbury tales
Canterbury Tales: The Monk
Corruption under pretence of purity within the Catholic Church has been an ongoing issue dating
father back than anyone can remember. During the medieval times, the Catholic Church had become
widely notorious for hypocrisy, abuse of clerical power and the compromise of morality throughout.
Geoffrey Chaucer made a fine and somewhat darkly comical example of this through The Monk, from the
Canterbury Tales. The Monk is enlisting in a pilgrimage maybe for his love of riding, or to further line
his pockets while pardoning people for their sins. According to the main four orders of friars in the
Middle Ages, monks are supposed t take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. The contents of this
essay clearly suggest The Monk does not particularly care for these vows and is more interested in riding
and taking money for his own indulgences.
The Monk is first introduced as "a fair for the maistrie."(Line 165), already claiming he is above
the average person’s importance. The Monk is then explained as having a deep love of riding, which is
usually a rich man’s hobby, and definitely not that of a supposed humble and simple Monk who should be
known for staying within the walls of the cloister and devoted to books and prayer. Referring to St.
Benedict’s Rule of basically praying and working, The Monk pays his rule no heed thus giving the idea of
a somewhat careless, selfish Monk. The Monk is further described as this in the following passage:
“What sholde he studie and make hymselven wood
Upon a book in cloystre alwey to pour
Or swynken with his hands and laboure
As Austin bit? How shal the world be served?
Lat Austyn have his owene swynk to hym reserved!” (Lines 184-188)
The Monk shamelessly indulged in his out-of-character hobbies such as riding by dressing richly
for it with lined sleeves, expensive gray fur and a gold pin fastened under his chin. He wore a double
breasted cloak with a Flemish beaver hat. Of course he is still an esteemed Monk, and proving that with
his infamous crowned haircut as that of a holy and worthy monk.
The Monk loved eating and dressing well, and is described as being “ful fat and in good poynt”
(Line 200) with bright eyes, a supple boots and horses in the best shape. His favourite food was a fat
...traight from the tavern world – survival is more important to him, unlike those of the court world who live by honour, and care not if it leads to their death, but only that they one day may come to be ‘honourable’, whether dead or alive. He closes with the comment that what he has told us is his ‘catechism’. This suggests an idea that his religion is to avoid honour, and ever to question its value.
robe, which covers him all the way down to his feet, and a cape with a large,
"The Warrior Monk." The New Yorker, May 29, 2017, 34. Literature Resource Center (accessed October 30, 2017). http://link.galegroup.com.proxy.kennesaw.edu/apps/doc/A493823441/LitRC?u=kennesaw_main&sid=LitRC&xid=9984816d.
To construct Saint Peters Basilica, Archbishop Albert borrowed money from the Fuggers (wealthy banking family). To pay for this loan Pope Leo X gave permission to Archbishop Albert to sell indulgences in Germany. An indulgence is a way to reconcile with God, by confessing your sins to a priest and perform a penance. By the later Middle Ages people believed that indulgence removed all their sins and ensured entry to heaven. The selling of indulgence troubled Luther, he thought people were ignorant to believe that they didn’t have to repent after they bought an indulgence.
Benedict who founded a group of monks and established a universal order for monks to follow. Adding to this, nuns called each other sisters and monks called each other brother. Moreover, the idea of asceticism was a life of self- denial where monks would descend themselves. Monks would descend themselves from sex, marriage, having a family, greed, processions, because to own and do such things they would be further away from God. Therefore, the universal order monks and nuns lived a lifestyle allowing them to be higher to the gods and live a life of
Chaucer uses the prologue to the Monk's Tale as one more opportunity for satiric, self-referential comedy. Within the story he is a necessarily opaque character. Significantly, the Host assumes that Chaucer is, at best, a mid-ranking government official and not an artist capable of constructing a landmark piece of literature such as the Canterbury Tales.
Tuite's only fault in this article is perhaps that she tries to tackle too much. (Something else I'm discovering as I try to summarize it.) Essentially, she tries to prove the existence of visible homoerotic elements in The Monk, and their link to antiCatholicism. No small feat. She quotes Coleridge in his review of The Monk as saying, the novel blends "with an irreverent negligence, all that is most awfully true in religion with all that is most ridiculously absurd in superstition" (1). The reason this is problematic for Coleridge, according to Tuite, is that it reveals the inherent hypocrisy in the English Church, that is, that the Church condemns, with superstitious intensity, the rituals and superstitions of the Catholic Church. Coleridge fears, "Lewis' contamination of Protestantism by Catholicism" (2). Since at this time a great deal of the English State/Church depended on the assumption that Catholicism was low and wrong and Protestantism the ultimate right, the parallels drawn between Protestantism and Catholicism by Lewis were ...
For two months, Merton traveled through various parts of Asia, India, Thailand, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. There, he gave several lectures on interreligious dialogue and Catholicism, as well as learned from many of his contemporaries of various religious backgrounds. Although Merton tragically died during this trip, it was still extremely important to shaping his view of Buddhists. In one lecture, he said “I have left my monastery to come here not just as a research scholar or even as an author (which I also happen to be). I come as a pilgrim who is anxious to obtain not just information, not just “facts” about other monastic traditions, but to drink from ancient sources of monastic vision and experience…to become a better and more enlightened monk” Here, Merton was able to leave his monastery and fully engage with the religion he had been in dialogue in for so many years—not just depend on his own private
of wealth. "This Monk was therefore a good man to horse;" (p 120 line 193)
"The word 'monk' comes from the greek 'Monakos' which means 'alone'. In the beginning it stood for ascetic who was not married and lived alone. Cenobites did not use this word. However it quickly acquired a deeper meaning: a person who is 'one' in his inmost being. It means a person united within himself, a person with a single gaze, a single desire."
The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 68, No. 3 (Jul., 1982), pp. 513-514, JSTOR.Web.5 April 2014
First and foremost, the Archdiocese and the Catholic Church spawned a culture of secrecy whe...
Their obedience to god should supersede any form of self-interest; monks shall always place god ahead of personal matters. As secular Christians’ devoutness to god is neither as intense nor as committed they do not hold the same values in their daily lives that are held by the monks. Obedience is expected without hesitation, as it represents genuine faith in God. Silence denotes another quality that distinguishes Christians and monks forming the distinction between them. Monks are pupils and should not be speaking as speaking is reserved for the master. If they must speak, they are to speak in a humble manner. This subordination of speech illustrates another step in the formation of a barrier between the monastery and the outside world. Humility is another of the defining characteristics that differentiate monasteries from secular Christians. Unlike secular Christians the monks are required to refrain from satisfying their desires, endure any form of temptation, and be content with the self-assigned
The Church was run by a Pope, monks, and nuns, and priests. The Pope was the head of the Catholic Church. The Pope was views as God’s representative, and the populous looked up to them on how to live and pray. It was the Pope’s choice, to decide what the church would teach. Pope Benedict forced all monks and nuns to take three vows, in order to practice in the Church. A vow of poverty, to give up all worldly goods; a vow of chastity to stay single; a vow of obedience to promise to obey the church and the rules of the monastery (Benedictine Rules). Nuns were women who prayed, weaved, practiced teaching, and wrote books, while monks devoted majority of their lives to the discipline of prayer.
Christian Monasticism is a way of life either individual or communal that is dedicated to separating the individual from the physical world and perfecting performances that make the individual worthy for God who manifests through Jesus Christ. With the legalization of Christianity in 313CE and its subsequent dominance throughout the Roman Empire, many Christians rejected the growing Christian populism and entered the desert in search of God. These eremites or “one who lives in the dessert” abandoned the dominant social system and instead focused on a life to God through anachoresis or “withdrawal.” Overtime, hermits gathered in cloistered communities to be monos or “alone” together, influencing the English term “monk”.