Unlike the tales of the Knight and the Clerk, no literary ancestor lies behind the Pardoner's Tale which can help to account for certain elements in Chaucer's creation that continue to puzzle and delight us. The Pardoner himself, it is true, certainly owes something to Faux-Semblant of the Roman de la Rose, and the tale he tells has numerous analogues, but the personification of Jean de Meung's poem hardly reflects the complexity of the Preacher of Rouncivale, nor has any exemplum yet discovered aroused the controversy his sermon has. Yet in the absence of a direct source, other medieval documents can offer insight into Chaucer's creation. The Pardoner, after all, does declare himself a preacher, and the subject he preaches about is avarice: both the occupation and the sin were much discussed in the Middle Ages. I shall therefore draw upon medieval treatises on preaching, together with homiletic material on avarice and pertinent exegetical traditions, in order to reexamine the Pardoner and the remarkable tale he tells.
I say reexamine because some work has already been done. Since the Pardoner does preach, his sermon has been analyzed to see whether it follows the suggestions found in contemporary artes praedicandi. These works set forth the rationale of medieval homilies, commenting on such matters as how and where the preacher should
divide his sermon; not surprisingly the Pardoner's Tale seems to conform to these dicta. Yet, if the mechanics of sermon-making have been noted, what these manuals and other sources have had to say about the kind of man a preacher should be has not. This is unfortunate, for a glance at any number of works that discuss preaching might have offered an answer to one of the more celebrated cruces of the Pardoner's Tale.
Since Kittredge, critics have wondered why the Pardoner must stop to think of "som honest thyng" to tell the pilgrims; in a recent article, John Halverson has summarized the commentators' bewilderment:
It is inconceivable that a professional homilist like the Pardoner should need time to recall a moral tale, his stock in trade.
Then, like many critics before him, Halverson offers a "psychological" explanation: "the inference seems inescapable that he is reacting ironically to the implied derogation [of the gentils' request for a moral tale]. " Appealing as this interpretation may be, I think more than psychological inference may guide us here. In a passage of the De Doctrina Christiana which was to have great influence, Augustine advises the orator of God's word to prepare himself in the following manner:
Ipsa hora iam ut dicat accedens, priusquam exerat proferentem linguam, ad deum leuet animam sitientem, ut ructet quod biberit, uel quod impleuerit, fundat.
When the hour in which he is to speak approaches, before he begins to preach, he should raise his thirsty soul to God, in order that he may give forth what he shall drink, or pour out what shall fill him.
(trans. D. W. Robertson, Jr.)
Furthermore, Augustine continues, let the man who would both know and teach learn everything which should be taught, and acquire "a skill in speaking appropriate to an ecclesiastic," but when the time comes for speech itself, the preacher should follow the advice of Matthew:
Take no thought how or what to speak: for it shall be given you in that hour what to speak. For it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you.
In the later Middle Ages this advice was not forgotten, though direct illumination by divine wisdom became less frequent; therefore a typical ars praedicandi by the thirteenth-century French preacher Astazius, while honoring the precept, nevertheless counsels prelates to prepare their sermons beforehand:
Advertendum quod sancti doctores qui in Ecclesia praecesserunt sine sumpto themate praedicabant nec praedicationis materiam ordinabant, quia non indigebant aliquo directivo, cum praedicarent Spiritu Sancto inspirante. Unde praedicabant prout Spiritus Sanctus dabat eis. Sed moderni qui non stint sancti nec divina scientia illustrati, primo antequam praedicent, praedicantionis materiam ordinare debent.
We should note that the holy doctors who have preceded us in the Church used to preach without a prepared text, nor did they arrange the material they preached. For they did not need an ordering method, since they would preach with the Holy Spirit inspiring them. Thus they preached as the Holy Spirit gave them. But today, preachers who are not saints nor illuminated by divine knowledge should, before they preach, first arrange the material of their sermon.
The passage in Chaucer now becomes clear. When he grants the pilgrims' request, the Pardoner's words seem almost a direct parody of Augustine's formula:
Eucharist. This interpretation gains added force when we recognize that Corny ale is the Pardoner's draught, not spiritual illumination, and when he later describes how he spits out his venom "under hewe / Of hoolynesse, to semen hooly and trewe" (C. 421-22), thePardoner literally pours out, in the manner Augustine has described, the poison that fills him. Some have seen the cake and ale which the Pardoner consumes as an ironic reference to thethe Pardoner is mocking the very act of preaching itself. His inspiration is not the Holy Ghost's, but is his own, and inevitably it will fail."I graunte, ywis," quod he, "but I moot thynke
Upon som honest thyng while that I drynke."(C. 327-28; F. N. Robinson, 2d ed.)
Even before he speaks, Chaucer has alerted us that the Pardoner's spiritual insight is suspect; yet as dispensator of sound doctrine, the Christian preacher should, indeed must, be alive to the spiritual sense of Scripture. If he is not, if he is a man of the letter and desires worldly wealth rather than his spiritual treasure in heaven, he is then one who adulterates God's word, and he will fall into temptation and the devil's snare. This verse from the First Epistle to Timothy ("But those who desire to become rich, fall into temptation, and into the snare of the devil") was interpreted by Nicholas of Lyra, among others, as referring specifically to preachers. And this verse is especially significant for the Pardoner, as it immediately precedes the sentence he has taken for his theme, Radix malorum est cupiditas.
Indeed, the very text in which this sentence appears, Paul's First Epistle to Timothy, was regarded in the Middle Ages as a biblical directive which authorized the use of allegorical interpretation. As a group, the Epistles of Paul to Timothy and Titus came to be known as the epistolae pastorales, for, as A. Médèbielle explains, "Elles tracent les règles à suivre pour diriger et instruire le peuple fidèle et pour le choix des ministres sacrés." In this regard the Letters were especially important for Augustine and subsequent preachers in that they taught the disciples what and how they should teach others. Any man, Augustine writes, who teaches in Church should have these three Epistles before his eyes. The substance of what the pastor should teach may be summarized as sound doctrine; to determine what that doctrine was, however, the preacher had to discern the hidden meaning of the text. The whole of the De Doctrina Christiana, as well as many other texts, had just this purpose: to teach preachers how to discover the spiritual sense.
particular scriptural passage of Now the Pardoner
himself "was in chirche a noble ecclesiaste," (A. 708), and therefore
should know how to read a text spiritually; furthermore, the allegorical exposition of thethe day was always a common feature in medieval sermons, one which a preacher of the Pardoner's experience certainly would have known and used. Yet because he is a self-confessed, unrepentant sinner, the Pardoner is incapable of admitting anything more than the
literal sense of what he says. Thus when he introduces figures such as
a dove or an Old Man, figures that seem to call for an allegorical
interpretation, we find his dove has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit, but rather is a barnyard purveyor, and the Old Man's too solid flesh blurs whatever symbolic significance he seems
to demand. The Pardoner is not a spiritual man, and the very manner of the fiction he tells reveals his lack of faith. In the words of Rabanus Maurus, following Paul, Symbolum fidei et spei nostrae non scribitur in charta et atramento, sed in tabulis cordis carnalibus. [The symbol of our faith and hope is not written on paper with ink, but on the fleshly tablets of the heart.] His ghostly heart empty, the Pardoner wears his corporeal heart on his sleeve; an act of audacity and defiance, but ultimately the act of an inwardly hollow man.
That a man as unconcerned with the evils of gluttony and "dronkenesse" as the Pardoner is should eat and drink before he inveighs against these vices seems quite in character. Yet we remember Augustine's exhortation that the preacher give forth what he shall drink. The Pardoner drinks ale, and we may be certain that no thought of that spiritual wine that was a common symbol for divine preaching ever crossed his mind. "Vinum dicitur divina praedicatio," says Alain de Lille; but those who preach "with an eye to human favor or worldly gain" are frauds: they are like the hucksters and innkeepers who Isaiah says "mix wine with water":
Unde Isaias (1:22): Caupones vestri miscent vinum aqua. Ille doctor vel praedicator miscet vinum aqua qui docet vel praedicat intuitu favoris humani vel terreni emolimenti.
Preachers of this sort are especially insidious, for, as Alain notes in his Summa de Arte Praedicantium, the "silly and scurrilous words they use have the effect of making their audience somewhat effeminate":
In illa praedicatione est aqua vino mista in qua puerilia et scurrilia verba, et animos quodammodo effeminantia ponuntur.
Thus with the Pardoner the spiritual draught that fills the good preacher's vessel has not been diluted but actually transformed into the moist and corny ale he guzzles by the wayside; furthermore, those who partake with him are in danger of becoming like him. If his sermon has had the effect the Pardoner intended, he will have made each listener his "ape" (A. 706): not only will the avaricious preacher have fired the pilgrims' desire for his money-increasing relics, but the Pardoner will also have had each buyer mimic him in all his effeminacy. There could hardly be an insult more stinging to the Host, the
first customer approached, than to be compared to the effeminate Pardoner. Our innkeeper will have none of it; he reacts violently, and by revealing the Pardoner's wanting virility, he appropriately exposes a symbol of this preacher's spiritual sterility as well.
When the Pardoner compares himself to a dove, the creature he has in mind is similarly of this world, not the next. For when he preaches, the Pardoner takes pains
to strecche forth the nekke,
And est and west upon the peple I bekke,
As dooth a dowve sittynge on a berne.(C. 395-97)
This image is so effective precisely because it is vividly literal, because it steadfastly refuses to be symbolic. The dove was so common an emblem for the Holy Ghost (and indirectly the spirit that informs the good preacher) in the Middle Ages, one might have seen even "lewed" folks' eyebrows rise when the Pardoner appropriates it for himself. Yet the man is consistent: spiritual understanding is absent, the tangible reality is all.
Both the ale the Pardoner drinks and the dove he compared himself to tell us something about the kind of man the Pardoner is. So too, I think, does the oak tree of his Tale, under which the rioters find their just reward. This oak seems to have been Chaucer's invention; at least it exists in none of the printed analogues, where one searches in vain for mention of any tree, much less an oak. Usually the treasure is found in a forest or grove, in a cave or river. The oak certainly locates the scene more specifically, yet the tree's allegorical significance also seems a telling comment on the Pardoner and rioters alike.
The Old Man advises the rioters that, if they "be so leef / To fynde Deeth," they should
turne up this croked wey,
For in that grove I lafte hym, by my fey,
Under a tree, and there he wole abyde;
Noght for youre boost he wole him no thyng hyde.
Se ye that ook? Right there ye shal hym fynde.(C. 760-65)
As Death is given an increasingly specific location, from grove, to tree, to oak, to the gold the sinners will soon discover, the Old Man at the same time scores the rioters' increasingly dogged determination to find that "privee theef." The tension thus created is enough to guarantee the scene's success, yet the scene is heightened if the oak symbolizes duritia desperationis, the obduracy of despair, as it does in an exegetical tradition, or if we associate it with the idea of hardness and determination, as Chaucer does elsewhere in his work; we sense that the very landscape reflects the inner condition of these men. That avarice, as the root of all evil, was sometimes pictured as the trunk of the tree of the seven deadly sins strengthens our conviction that this oak is not so much a locational marker as it is a signpost. But the rioters do not perceive that the setting in which they find the gold constitutes a warning: to them, the tree is nothing more than a tree. In this they resemble the Pardoner, who also is unaware of any symbolic meaning; they neither see nor understand as they should, nor is this surprising, for their spiritual blindness, as I shall now show, is the result of avarice.
If medieval discussions of preachers and their sermons provide insights into the Pardoner and his Tale, what the commentators had to say about the sin of avarice also ought to prove illustrative. After all, the Pardoner declares himself a covetous man, and the only theme he preaches constitutes the chief condemnation of the vice in Scripture. Avarice was attacked in many tracts and exempla written during the Middle Ages; among these one in particular immediately relates to the Pardoner's spiritual vacuity. In his Summa de Exemplis, John of San Giminiano compared the covetous man to a shadow for seven reasons: the third had to do with that shadow which led to inner barrenness:
Tertio quorum umbra sterilitatis inductiva, quia nihil quasi crescit ubi est continua umbra.
Sic semina divinorum verborum non possunt crescere et fructus producere ubi est avaricia
et divitiarum cura sollicita.The third is the shadow that induces sterility, since almost nothing grows where there is continuous shade.
Thus the seeds of divine words cannot grow and produce fruit where there is avarice and anxiety-ridden
studying after riches.
Avarice, then, can well be the ultimate cause of the Pardoner's subservience to the letter. It is an especially pernicious sin for a preacher to be guilty of, since it is "the ax of preaching," as
Guilelmus Peraldus puts it in his Summa de virtutibus et vitiis, that must eradicate this sin:
Ad avariciam quasi ad radicem omnium malorum praecipue adhibenda esset securis praedicationis. Frustra laboratur in extirpatione malorum si rami amputantur et radix ista relinquitur.
The ax of preaching must be applied to avarice especially as though to the root of all evil. He labors in vain to uproot evil if the branches are cut and this root remains.
What exactly was this sin, and what were its effects? The questions are important, for their answers will affect our evaluation of the Pardoner's Tale.
One might begin with the implications of the text the Pardoner knows by heart: "Radix malorum est cupiditas." Cupiditas, as the Glossa Ordinaria and many other sources tell us, translates the Greek philargyria, which strictly means the love of money; not surprisingly, some commentators, including Augustine, read the verse as radix omnium malorum avaritia. From this narrow definition avarice quickly grew to have the meaning of any immoderate desire for more than is necessary, be it money or "external goods." Thus avarice was the specific sin of pecuniae amor, as it appears in lists of the seven deadly sins, and the sin of excessive avidity for things in general. Using this distinction, the Church fathers were able to reconcile the statement in Timothy with Ecclesiasticus 10:15: The beginning of all sin is pride. Every sin was understood to involve a twofold action: the soul turned away from God in pride, and towards a created thing through avarice. Pride and avarice thus became inseparably linked: whenever the chapter in Timothy was mentioned, a discussion of its relation to the verse from Ecclesiasticus was sure to follow. Some critics have thought the Pardoner overweeningly proud; it would be remarkable were he not so.
As one might expect, avarice was accounted a very grave sin; John of San Giminiano notes how it leads to "spiritual death":
Similiter, avaricia veneno cupiditatis extinguit vitalem calorem charitatis, et ita est causa mortis spiritualis.
Similarly, avarice extinguishes the vital warmth of charity
with the venom of cupidity, and thus is the cause of spiritual death.
We remember the Pardoner's telling threat:
Thus spitte I out my venym under hewe
Of hoolynesse, to semen hooly and true.(C. 421-22)
and realize that the certain victim of the Pardoner's poison is the Pardoner himself.
Peraldus also thought avarice as bad an infirmity of the spirit as there could be:
inter infirmitates spirituales ipsa est pessima, vel una de peioribus.
Among spiritual infirmities this [i.e., avarice] is the worst, or one of the worst.
Part of the illness, Peraldus continues, is that the avaricious man refuses to be cured: he holds Christ, the celestis medicus, as though he were danger itself: he judges "tantus medicus quasi ad mortem." At the climax of his Tale, the Pardoner prays that Christ, "oure soules leche," grant the pilgrims His pardon, "For that is best, I wol yow nat deceyve" (C. 916-18): the statement is utterly true, and the irony arising from its inapplicability to the Pardoner almost unendurable.
To St. Paul, however, the most pernicious effect of avarice was that, as the root of all evil, it drew men from the faith (1 Tim. 6:10). When the commentators elaborated on this verse, they isolated one further consequence: cupidity leads men into vain and empty speech. Hugh of St. Cher's comment is typical:
A quibus [faith and good conscience] aberrantes, conversi sunt in vaniloquium.
Wandering from which, they deal in empty speech.
Bromyard agrees, and in a sermon on the circumcision of the spirit, Bonaventure quotes St. Bernard on 1 Timothy 6:10:
Habentes victum et vestitum, his contenti simus, spiritualis etiam circumcisio debet esse
in omnibus sensibus corporis nostri, videndo, audiendo, gustando, tangendo, paucitate
utamur, et maxime in loquendo.... Loquacitas
est vitium pessimum, et Deo et hominibus odiosum et displicibile: unde debemus esse circumcisi lingua, id est pauca et utilia loqui.
We have food and clothing: let us be content with these, for one ought to be spiritually circumcised in all our bodily senses. In seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, let us be sparing, and especially in speaking. Loquacity is a most miserable vice, hateful and displeasing to both God and man. Therefore we ought to be circumcised in speech, that is, speaking little and to the point.
Critics have wondered for many years why the Pardoner, his magnificent Tale brought to its moving conclusion, presses on, indulging in what Kittredge called "a wild orgy of reckless jesting." Chaucer, I think, would have replied, "But it is his nature to talk too much"; the Pardoner is an avaricious man, and his many words confess the fact more than he knows.
The Pardoner is literal, and he is literal because he is avaricious. Not only his story, but the very manner in which he tells it, points to his spiritual condition. The subject of the Pardoner's exemplum is, of course, avarice; as we shall now see, the most arresting figure in that Tale, the Old Man, is, with the Pardoner himself, Chaucer's greatest embodiment of the effects of that sin.
The Old Man in the Pardoner's Tale has become something of a cause célèbre; so famous, in fact, that he has not only been the subject of articles, but articles on these articles have appeared. The Old Man has been many things to many people: a symbol of Death, Death's Messenger, the Wandering Jew to some, to others Paul's Vetus Homo, Old Age, Odin, or literally just an old man. What has caused this embarrassment of interpretation? One reason, it seems to me, lies in the fact that Pardoner presents this figure in exactly the same manner each of his other figures has been presented. Everything about the man seems to cry out for an allegorical interpretation; as a man who lives and dies by the letter, however, the Pardoner has refused to allow him anything but a literal sense. For the reader, the effect is astonishing: we are given no answer; we are left to see for ourselves. We may follow the Old Man's directions blindly, as the rioters do, or we may come to see through their experience that his "wey" is "croked" as Dante's via is diritta. Yet in any attempt to fathom the meaning of this mysterious guide, there are two considerations at least which I think should guide us. One is that pains of avarice and has since repented. As such he is a walking text on as the man's "greet age" is stressed, we should not be surprised to find him exhibiting some signs of senectitude. The other and more important is that since he appears in what is essentially a sermon on avarice, we might therefore reasonably expect him either to represent the sin or warn us against it. The Old Man does both: in appearance and speech, this figure embodies the vice he speaks against. The Old Man is not Avarice, just as he is not Old Age or any other single state or thing, but it seems he is a man who has suffered thethe evils of avarice; understanding him, however, seems to he the reader's prerogative.
What do we know of the Old Man? He appears to be Chaucer's invention, this figure, completely wrapped, save his face, who is asked to justify his existence. "Why lyvestow so longe in so greet age?" the proudest of the three seekers after death demands. The Old Man's answer is his history:
"For I ne kan nat fynde
A man, though that I walked into Ynde,
Neither in citee ne in no village,
That wolde chaunge his youthe for myn age;
And therfore moot I han myn age stille,
As longe tyme as it is Goddes wille.
Ne Deeth, allas! ne wol nat han my lyf
Thus walke I, lyk a restelees kaityf,
And on the ground, which is my moodres gate,
I knokke with my staf, bothe erly and late,
And seye, 'Leeve modder, leet me in!
Lo how I vanysshe, flesshe, and blood, and skyn!
Allas, whan shul my bones been at reste?
Mooder, with yow wolde I chaunge my cheste
That in my chambre longe tyme hath be,
Ye, for an heyre clowt to wrappe in me!'
But yet to me she wol nat do that grace,
For which ful pale and welked is my face."(C. 721-38)
Let us begin with the
chest. Robinson assures us that this is a clothes chest, not a coffin;
recently, however, commentators have suggested that it might be a money
chest, "filled with the florins that
he has been hoarding." This I think an exceedingly tempting interpretation, for it provides a strong structural link between the Old Man and the gold (he has left it by the
oak, rather than has discovered it there), and it lends, as we shall
see, great power and meaning to his words. Unfortunately, evidence to
support this claim has been, for the most part, conjecture; some will ask, with Alfred David, "Where is this chamber with the
chest full of possessions that he says he would exchange for a
hair-cloth?" Once again, medieval sermon books suggest an answer.
Among the many exempla that illustrated the addicting power of avarice, one seems to have particularly appealed to preachers. The version given here is the liveliest, and was reported by Owst in his Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England:
When a certain very rich rustic, who was hard-hearted both to the poor and towards his own soul, had amassed so much wealth that he had a chest filled with money and other treasures, he had it set in front of him as he lay sickening on his deathbed. By the time that the priest could be summoned to make his Will, the sick man had already lost power of speech. The priest, accordingly, suggested a plan to his wife and brother, whereby a "Ha!" from the patient might be taken to indicate approval of what was proposed to him, and silence as the mark of disapproval. Having won agreement for his plan, our priest said to the testatorDo you wish to bequeath your soul to God after your decease, and your body to Mother Church for burial?, and the latter replied, "Ha!" Then the priest said to himDo you wish to leave twenty shillings to the fabric of your church, where you have chosen to be buried? But the other made no reply and kept a complete silence. Forthwith the priest pulled him violently by the ear, whereat the man cried"Ha!" Then the priest said Write down twenty shillings for the church fabric: for see, he has granted it with his "ha!" After that the priest pondered how he could get for himself the chest with the aforesaid treasure. So he said to the sick manI have some books, but I have no chest to keep them in. That coffer over there would be most useful to me. Would you like me, therefore, to have that coffer to put my books in? But
the other said nothing whatever to these remarks. Then the priest pinched his ear so hard that those who were present declared afterwards that the pinch drew blood from the man's ear. Then the enfeebled rustic, in a loud voice, said to the priest before them allO you greedy priest, by Christ's death, never shall you have from me as much as a farthing of the money which is in that chest! Having spoken thus, he turned to his devotions and expired. Accordingly, his wife and relatives divided the money between them. This happened in England, so it is said.
Bromyard tells a similar story of a dying man who had lost his power to speak. The priests who were standing about him saw he was near death, and urged him to think of his soul. They shouted in his ears that if he wished to receive the sacraments, he should at least make some sign with his hands, mouth, or face, but they were unable to get any sign from him. Then a certain associate of the fellow said:
ego cito habebo ab eo signum et apposuit manum ad cistam que erat ad pedes eius in qua erat pecunia sua et cor suum et thesaurus suus quasi volens eam aperire vel apportare et statim quasi expergefactus et quasi nitens caput erigere et voce et vultu triste signum vite ostendit.
I will quickly get a sign from him, and he placed his hand on the chest which was by his feet, as though he wished to open it or carry it away. In this chest was the fellow's money and his heart and his treasure, and immediately, as if startled from sleep and striving to raise his head, he speedily gives a sign with sad face and voice.
In another story, Bromyard speaks of a man who, when he was to be given extreme unction, hid his right hand from sight. The priest asked him where his hand was and why he did not bring it forth, and the man replied, "Sub me teneo in ea clavem ciste mee."
This is the kind of chest, then, that the Old Man offers to change for a "heyre clowt"; before all else, we should realize the magnitude of the transaction. A "clowt" is a piece of cloth, next to nothing; indeed, the words began to acquire this figurative meaning in Middle English, a userer "wold not gyff þerfor be valour of a sh[red] clowte." Yet the Old Man would willingly exchange his chest for it. If the chest were filled with treasure, he would indeed be giving up all that he had. Unlike the dying men in the exempla, it seems our venerable figure has renounced the sin of avarice; by wishing to clothe himself in a hair-shirt, a traditional emblem for penance, he indicates that he would like to do satisfaction for his sin. The Old Man's affinities with the Wandering Jew would indicate that, in Dewey Faulkner's phrase, "like the Jew, he is being forced to wander eternally for having offended God grievously in some way." Avarice, I submit, has been the offense, and the Old Man's wandering, his penance.
But why does the Old Man offer to exchange his chest with his mother, the earth? John Steadman has noted that commentators writing against cupidity would frequently portray the earth as the mother a man must return to stripped of his worldly possessions. Due to the nature of the sin, the earth often chides the avaricious man: "Hear," cries Alain de Lille against the miserly man, "hear what the elements declare against you, and especially the earth, your mother. Why dost thou do injury to your mother, why bearing violence against me, who produced you from my bowels?" Chaucer reverses the situation: the Old Man pleads with the earth, and the sincerity of his petition makes us feel that his repentance has been long-standing and heartfelt.
If we look at the Old Man in this way, as a repentant sinner, we can also see why he is old. Chaucer might have gotten the idea from the sixth chapter of the Epistle to Timothy, the same chapter that gave him the Pardoner's theme. The Old Man quotes Paul's precepts to the rioters, though without much effect. Innocent III's De Contemptu Mundi might also have contributed to the character's formation. At least since Seneca, however, avarice has been the bane of the old: Caeteris vitiis in homine senescentibus, sola avaritia juvenescit [When the other vices in man have grown old, avarice alone flourishes]. Bromyard's explanation of this fact is novel, but symptomatic. He notes that as a man more eagerly clutches his own goods when other men come near him, so does an old man amass temporal goods when he sees many men like him who are nearing death and the loss of their goods. Chaucer himself, in the Reeve's Prologue, specifically links old age and avarice:
Foure gleedes han we, which I shal devyse,
Avauntyng, liyng, anger, coveitise;
Thise foure sparkles longen unto eelde.
(ll. 3883-85)
It seems natural enough, then, that Chaucer chose to make this man old. But in doing so, Chaucer also realized how powerful the associations that would accompany such a figure would be. No longer just a repentant miser, the Old Man becomes an archetype, a reminder to every man who covets wealth that terrible beyond measure is the affliction this sin brings against the soul. For the Old Man has wandered to the ends of the earth seeking expiation for his sin, and with it the peace of Death. And as of now, he has not found it. But this changes before our eyes, for even the object of the Old Man's search, the exchange of youth for old age, may be seen in terms of avarice. For if longevity is one of the vice's qualities, this does not mean that the young are therefore immune: Avaritia enim non parcit sent nec iuveni. In the young rioters I think the Old Man finds three who figuratively would exchange their youthful desire for his former passion. Thus we might see the Old Man as a distinguished player in an ancient drama, an expiation myth which requires some sort of exchange to effect the protagonist's release. In Chaucer's version, expiation is wedded to Christian notions of repentance, satisfaction, and understanding. We see the Old Man at the moment of exchange and release; it is a timeless moment that recurs whenever the soul is struck by greed. The Old Man is perfectly honest with rioters and readers alike; what separates us from them is our greater understanding of his words. Death, Old Age, no matter what signification we assign him, the Old Man should be seen within the context of Chaucer's sermon on avarice. He is a figure who delights, who instructs, but who most of all leaves very few unmoved. He is a different guide, another text, from the Pardoner.
Old Man, This essay has dealt with the Pardoner and the telling of his Tale. As a preacher who scorns God, the Pardoner lacks spiritual insight, and therefore is excessively literal. His inspiration is his own, and the conclusion of the Tale vividly demonstrates how his inspiration fails. Like the Old Man, the Pardoner is a victim of the sin of avarice; unlike thethe Pardoner remains defiant. He is a remarkable figure in a remarkable Tale, one that will continue to delight and puzzle us the more we understand.
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