THE FRIAR AND THE SOMPNOUR.—­His satire extends also to the friar, who has not even that semblance of virtue which is the tribute of the hypocrite to our holy faith.  He is not even the demure rascal conceived by Thomson in his Castle of Indolence: 

... the first amid the fry,

* * * * *

A little round, fat, oily man of God,
Who had a roguish twinkle in his eye,
When a tight maiden chanced to trippen by,

* * * * *

Which when observed, he shrunk into his mew,
And straight would recollect his piety anew.

But Chaucer’s friar is a wanton and merry scoundrel, taking every license, kissing the wives and talking love-talk to the girls in his wanderings, as he begs for his Church and his order.  His hood is stuffed with trinkets to give them; he is worthily known as the best beggar of his house; his eyes alight with wine, he strikes his little harp, trolls out funny songs and love-ditties.  Anon, his frolic over, he preaches to the collected crowd violent denunciations of the parish priest, within the very limits of his parish.  The very principles upon which these mendicant orders were established seem to be elements of evil.  That they might be better than the monks, they had no cloisters and magnificent gardens, with little to do but enjoy them.  Like our Lord, they were generally without a place to lay their heads; they had neither purse nor scrip.  But instead of sanctifying, the itinerary was their great temptation and final ruin.  Nothing can be conceived better calculated to harden the heart and to destroy the fierce sensibilities of our nature than to be a beggar and a wanderer.  So that in our retrospective glance, we may pity while we condemn “the friar of orders gray.”  With a delicate irony in Chaucer’s picture, is combined somewhat of a liking for this “worthy limitour."[17]

In the same category of contempt for the existing ecclesiastical system, Chaucer places the sompnour, or summoner to the Church courts.  Of his fire-red face, scattered beard, and the bilious knobs on his cheeks, “children were sore afraid.”  The friar, in his tale, represents him as in league with the devil, who carries him away.  He is a drinker of strong wines, a conniver at evil for bribes:  for a good sum he would teach “a felon”

                     ... not to have none awe
    In swiche a case of the archdeacon’s curse.

To him the Church system was nothing unless he could make profit of it.

THE PARDONERE.—­Nor is his picture of the pardoner, or vender of indulgences, more flattering.  He sells—­to the great contempt of the poet—­a piece of the Virgin’s veil, a bit of the sail of St. Peter’s boat, holy pigges’ bones, and with these relics he made more money in each parish in one day than the parson himself in two months.

Thus taking advantage of his plot to ridicule these characters, and to make them satirize each other—­as in the rival stories of the sompnour and friar—­he turns with pleasure from these betrayers of religion, to show us that there was a leaven of pure piety and devotion left.