Geoffrey Chaucer lived in a time where religion was of ultimate importance. The Dukes, Kings, and even the great Holy Roman Emperor (supposedly) paid reverence to the seat of Saint Peter in Rome. However, Chaucer also lived in a period where this monolith of Latin Christendom was showing signs of deep fractures, fractures that would lead to the Protestant Reformation a century and a half later. Chaucer was a man of deep religious conviction. Despite this, or perhaps due to this, Chaucer uses the Canterbury Tales to criticize the Church, but more broadly to criticize many of his fellow Christians.
It is far too simple to paint the Catholic Church of the fourteenth century as one united “Holy and Catholic Apostolic church.” The phrase “Catholic”