How old is the pardoner

They can go blackberrying, for all I care! But let me briefly make my purpose plain; I preach for nothing but for greed of gain And use the same old text, as bold as brass, Radix malorum est cupiditas. Having demonstrated his propensity for avarice, deception and gluttony, some of the very vices he preaches against, the Pardoner now wears his hypocrisy firmly on his sleeve.

The story introduces a group of three tavern dwelling rioters who the Pardoner uses to demonstrate the vices of avarice and lust; gluttony and drunkenness; gambling and swearing - vices our Pardoner happily possesses himself. On their quest for Death, they encounter a very poor old man who informs them they may find Death in a nearby grove:. The rioters enter the grove and find not Death, but bushels of gold whereupon plots are hatched to do away with one or some of their cohorts to increase their portion of the find.

The moral of the tale is obvious - cupiditas and greed are the cause of moral bankruptcy and certain damnation. However being told by our self confessed avaricious Pardoner it seems inappropriate, inconsistent and extremely hypocritical given his boastful admissions of his own deceptive double dealings.

Gross, pg 5 The Pardoner preaches this moral tale for the masses and an accomplished performer who automatically goes through the mechanical motions of preaching a habitual sermon verbatim, up to and including, soliciting offerings for his fraudulent goods. Pearsall, pg The Pardoner has used his storytelling opportunity to demonstrate his superior preaching skills to his fellow pilgrims and disclosed the effectiveness with which he rorts his congregations. The basic irony is that in doing so he reveals his own inherently evil existence is ruled by cupiditas which in accordance with the medieval belief system, would realize the certainty of his own damnation Pearsall, pg After nigh on six hundred years, the Pardoner still evokes strong responses in readers and seems destined to remain an intriguingly contentious and enjoyably problematic character for literature scholars.

That said, the practice of offering indulgences came under critique by quite a few churchmen, since once the charitable donation became a practice allied to receiving an indulgence, it began to look like one could cleanse oneself of sin by simply paying off the Church. He presents himself as someone of ambiguous gender and sexual orientation, further challenging social norms. The narrator is not sure whether the Pardoner is an effeminate homosexual or a eunuch castrated male.

Since visiting relics on pilgrimage had become a tourist industry, the Pardoner wants to cash in on religion in any way he can, and he does this by selling tangible, material objects—whether slips of paper that promise forgiveness of sins or animal bones that people can string around their necks as charms against the devil.

After telling the group how he gulls people into indulging his own avarice through a sermon he preaches on greed, the Pardoner tells of a tale that exemplifies the vice decried in his sermon. Furthermore, he attempts to sell pardons to the group—in effect plying his trade in clear violation of the rules outlined by the host. Each story will be about a certain moral or come down to his catchphrase or life quote which is "Radix malorum est cupidatis" [2] which means "Love of money is the root of evil.

The Host asks the Pardoner to tell the group a merrier, farcical tale. The Pardoner agrees, but will continue only after he has food and drink in his stomach. Other pilgrims interject that they would prefer to hear a moral story, and the Pardoner again agrees. He tells the company about his occupation—a combination of itinerant preaching and selling promises of salvation. The parishioners always believe him and make their offerings to the relics, which the Pardoner quickly pockets.

The Pardoner admits that he preaches solely to get money, not to correct sin. He argues that many sermons are the product of evil intentions. It's possible to read the Pardoner's Tale as an allegory in which the characters and events represent abstract concepts rather than "real" people or situations. The presence of the mysterious stranger named Death more or less invites this interpretation.