The Canterbury Tales: The Pardoner's Tale Hypocrisy Quotes

Although the Pardoner's characterization of what he's doing as "Cristes hooly werk" may not ring hollow to us and the pilgrims just yet, by the time the he's concluded his description of his methods, it certainly will. The Pardoner makes it clear that his "work" is to win as much money as possible to line his own pocket—hardly an exercise in Christian charity. Evidently, local priests and clerics were suspicious of the traveling pardoners, who had a reputation for gouging their parishioners.

With these lines we get the first inkling of the Pardoner's hypocritical greed: he rails against avarice (greed) in his sermons in order to make his listeners more generous with their coins. Although the Pardoner's theme might not be hypocritical if he were spending the money on charity, he's clearly using it to line his pocket, shaming others for their greed in order to satisfy his own.

The understood goal of the medieval preacher was always supposed to be the salvation of souls through the correction of sin. Just by taking the pulpit, the Pardoner signaled to others that this was his goal, too. But this guy doesn't care at all about that, and he freely admits it. Chaucer's letting us in on one of the big concerns of the medieval church, which knew that this kind of thing was rampant among its traveling friars and pardoners. The preaching wasn't exactly being done as it was intended.

The Pardoner insists that he's not the only one preaching a sermon for the wrong reasons: some preach sermons in order to please or flatter another, and use "ypocrisye" to get ahead. This is a pretty dim view of humanity; the Pardoner seems to think that everyone's as morally bankrupt as he is.

Here's another of his evil intentions for a sermon: to take revenge on someone who's wronged him or his family. The Pardoner makes sure to do this "under hewe of hoolynesse." Being able to get back at someone by religious shaming is really taking advantage of your position as a church officer. Not that "sermons of rebuke" weren't acceptable, but in this case the Pardoner wasn't doing it to call the listeners to task. He was doing it as a personal vendetta.

The Pardoner is the first person to admit that he's a hypocrite: rarely do we get such a clear definition of what it means to be one than the Pardoner's characterization of himself as "preaching against the same vice I practice." Is it easier to condemn a vice that you're personally familiar with in your own life? Not that it's the Pardoner's intent, but can you help people more effectively with a problem if you've experienced it yourself? Like having people in recovery counsel others with substance abuse problems? Side note: isn't "cupidity" a great word?

It's tempting to see the Pardoner's ability to inspire true shame and repentance in others without ever once being affected by these feelings himself as evidence that he's totally hard-hearted and unredeemable. Do you think he sees his "confession" of his greed as a kind of penitence? Does he care about his own immortal soul?

The life of the apostles was precisely the one a traveling preacher like the Pardoner was supposed to be imitating; it was this lifestyle that provided the historical precedent for his own. He even mocks the ascetic lives of the apostles—no basket weaving for him (some of the apostles made baskets to earn money for their preaching).

It's clear where the Pardoner comes down on the medieval controversy over whether a morally bankrupt preacher could teach morality in spite of his shortcomings: he can, even if he's totally evil. See our "Character Analysis" of the Pardoner to see what some scholars think he meant by describing himself as "ful vicious."