Essay on The Portrayal of the Clergy in the Canterbury Tales

The Portrayal of Religion and the Clergy in The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer, in his Canterbury Tales, felt that the Churchs turmoil experienced during the fourteenth century contributed to the a declining trust of clergy and left the people spiritually devastated. The repeated epidemics that the European Church experienced weakened the church by highlighting the clergys inability to face adversity. The clergys inability to provide relief for the people during a period of suffering did not turn people away from the church, but it did cause the people to question the value of the Churchs traditional practices. People looked for ways to gain greater control over their own spiritual destines and altered their perception of the†¦show more content†¦(Literary Companion Series 79-80) The characters who are most closely connected to the Church are the most corrupt in Chaucers tales. The imperfections of the clergy stem from their failures, misrepresentations, and abuses i n relation to the Church. The clergy make up about one-third of the pilgrims, the others, although not under religious vows, are also Christian. Chaucer was sending the message that everyone including the clergy and even the lay people were followers of the Church, but do not always follow the Churchs laws. The exposure and punishment of evil is a widely conceived religious view. The worst among the religious pilgrims, the worst people described in their tales. (Literary Companion Series 82) In the Pardoners Tale Chaucer shows corruptness in the Pardoner who is selling fake relics to the people of the Church. The Pardoner is more threatening than the other scoundrels in the pilgrimage because he has subverted mans most spiritual powers and challenged the necessity of the pilgrimage as a framework of the social world. When offering his relics for veneration, the Pardoner is asking the others on the pilgrimage to accept and show reverence to objects that are obviously fake. Th e sad truth is that the relics which the Pardoner calls the most fair in England, are probably some of the nicer relics being sold throughout the country. Chaucer knows that people although suspicious that the relics are not realShow MoreRelatedChaucer s The Canterbury Tales906 Words   |  4 PagesIn the general prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer’s, The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer reveals his dissatisfaction of the distribution of power and how that power was maintained in the Medieval England estate system, through the use of his physical description of each of the pilgrims and by the personality of specific members of each caste. 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