The Monk Satire

the Church as an unstable organization. Monks at the time had abused their freedom to have an exciting life like Chaucer’s Monk. To win the contest, The Monk describes his tale “By tragedy is meant a kind of story, such as old books preserve, of how from glory And the renown of high prosperity From time to time men tumble wretchedly” (Morrison 185) Interestingly, he uses events from historical text as his tale. Of high status, powerful downfalls of such worthy individuals like Lucifer to Adam eating from the forbidden tree in his paradise. He continues to talk about of these events but is then interrupted by The Knight because of how tedious listening to his stories are getting. The satire represented here is that The Monk’s inability to tell

Simply a pardoner is literally “Preachers of indulgence (in England called pardoners incurred as much notoriety as the indulgences themselves.” (Shaffern 49) Shaffern adds on that pardoners gained much attention for heinous scams that what they sold were important to daily lives of followers of God but many pardoners falsely claimed authenticity. Relics of a Saint is an example that would go for a large amount of money and countless times fakes were sold. Indulgences are a gift of cleansing sins of a soul for remaining in purgatory the place in the afterlife that determines fate. “The Pardoner’s Tale” begins with three men learning that their friend was killed by death and they decide to take their revenge by killing death. Despite their goal, they plot to kill each other because of large amounts of gold they found under a tree an old man waiting for death to take him told them. Thus, introducing the satirical irony of finding death. The Pardoner himself claims “The relics and the pardons that I bring here in my pouch, no man in the whole land Has finer, given me by the pope’s own hand.” (Morrison 334) He says his relics are more valuable than any other but knows himself is just fraudulent. To add on “a power not within his purview; absolution could be provided only by clergy such as priests and bishops,” (Rossignol 66). Legitimate purification of sins

On the other hand, The Summoner retaliates and responds with an insult in his tale about a greedy Friar. Friars ranked low due to their duty to the church of being “took vows of poverty and supported themselves begging, and whose founding mission was to spread the word of God through preaching and to relieve the suffering of the diseased and outcast.” (Rossignol 56) This job speaks low class and Huberd the name of this Friar believes making money for himself is more of a priority than helping the ill. The Summoner’s duties were to issue fines to citizens who committed crimes and the punishment would be as bad as excommunication from the church. Simply Summoners in Medieval England could take bribes as another corrupt problem in this religious society. He claims that money is more important than excommunication because money can clear bad thoughts. These two characters clash in each other tales show satire between characters of the church estate. Friars and Summoners were greedy like the majority of the other