The Pardoner’s Tale: Radix Malorum est Cupiditas The Canterbury Tales, a collection of various stories, is among the best literary works written in Middle English. The central story of this composition is the journey of 29 pilgrims to Canterbury, England. In the story, each pilgrim was intended to tell a total of four stories as a form of entertainment for such long travel. The author, Geoffrey Chaucer, was an observer during the pilgrimage and the recorder of the tales. His writings exposed, in a very discrete manner, the severe corruption of the people during that period of time, especially within the Catholic Church; the institution promulgated humbleness and abstinence, yet it was characterized by its wealth. In this manner, Chaucer emphasized …show more content…
The Pardoner not only violated his vow of poverty, but also completely abandoned his humanity by placing himself above everyone else as shown in the following lines: “I'll have my money, wool, and food, though it/Be from some page whose poverty is dire/Or from the poorest widow in the shire;/Although her kids be starving, I'll be fine,/For I will drink the liquor of the vine/And have a jolly wench in every tow” ("The Pardoner's Tale” 448-453). This excerpt is critical in understanding how Chaucer intended to report the corruption of the church. Even though, it was very common to see many of the clergy “[exploit] their positions” to live in luxury and leisure, nobody dared to expose this truth (Walker). Correspondingly, this corruption has remained as time progressed and is very common today. As an example, taken form public record documents, many current events represent the same level of greed and immorality. Simply illustrated in common crimes like the following: the sentencing of a former Texas judge for using his office “as a criminal enterprise to enrich himself and others through extortion”, and also the sentencing of religious officials such as Laura Whittley, who was sentenced for bank fraud and money laundering ("Examples of Public