Go Forth And Sin No More
...From the serpent's temptation of gluttony in the Old Testament to the temptation of lust in The Scarlet Letter, the testing of one's morality has constantly resonated with authors and their readers. In The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer presented exemplums of greed in "The Friar's Tale," pride in "The Nun's Priest's Tale," and faith in "The Franklin's Tale" to illustrate the tests of morality his characters and his readers faced on a daily basis.
In "The Friar's Tale," the summoner's character is tempted by greed. Summoners were officials in ecclesiastical courts who summoned people to attend services and worked in a similar way to ushers. Unlike a respectable person, the summoner in the tale has no qualms with using his position of power to take advantage of others, for "Certyn he knew of briberyes mo Than possible is to tell in yeres two" (III 1367-1368). He "Hadde alwey bawds redy to his hond" (1339-1440) who would tell him which people to exploit next. This corruption upsets the narrator, a friar, and he sets out to show the consequences of such vile acts of sin. On a routine day while the summoner was "waityng on his pray" (1376) the devil disguised as a yeoman rode in the forest. The yeoman tests the summoner's character by tantalizing him with gold and silver. The summoner's insatiable thirst for monetary gain causes him to heartily attempt to gain that money, only to discover that the yeoman was the devil. Both "rydest for the same entente" (1452) of purchasing people's souls, however the summoner refuses to join the devil in his literal work of destroying people's souls. While this could be seen as not giving in to temptation, it is not the evils of Satan he is retreating from. Charles J. Owen Jr. attributes this to "charactersÂ…constantly appealing to morality to clothe their betrayals". He is merely afraid of the pits of hell and uses...
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