Depiction of the Church and Corruption in Chaucer's "The Prologue to the Canterbury tales"

 The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales is an estates satire. Medieval society was divided into three estates: the Church (those who prayed), the Nobility (those who fought), and the Peasantry (those who worked). 

In the late fourteenth century, a moral decline in the habits of the religious and the deterioration of religious exercises was causing great concern.

In the Host’s portraits of the pilgrims, the narrator sets out the functions of each estate and satirizes the members of the different estates illegal actions  and behavior – particularly those of the Church – fail to meet their duties. 

Religion is the center of the Canterbury tales as we learn that these characters are all making a holy pilgrimage to the church at Canterbury, a popular religious destination after Thomas Beckett, a priest, who was murdered inside the church and proclaimed a saint.

The prologue to Canterbury Tales provides a window into the debasement of Christianity under the Catholic Church during Chaucer's time.The Canterbury Tales shows how Christian values are, more often  used simply as a social tool for some unscrupulous members of the clergy to swindle the devout of their material wealth by appealing to their desire for atonement. The greed and scandalous lives of the clergy is being criticized.

The Catholic Church was an enormously powerful force in medieval society, and extremely wealthy. The elaborate, ornate, gilded cathedrals built to enshrine saints’ relics were very costly, and the Church also collected regular tithes from its members. By the late fourteenth century, people had begun to become deeply suspicious of the Church’s ostentatious wealth. After the Black Death, which wiped out at least a third of the population, many people no longer trusted the Church’s authority. Church official were often seen as corrupt, bribing and coercing people to obtain money for the church under false pretences. Since members of the church were not allowed to work for a living, they had to gain money by other means. Friars took a vow of poverty and roamed the countryside, relying on charitable donations for their livelihood. Summoners brought sinners to the church court for punishment. People bought indulgences from pardoners to purchase forgiveness for their sins.

The religious figures in The prologue to Canterbury Tales highlight many of the problems corrupting the medieval Church. Although The prologue to Canterbury Tales contain a variety of religious topics, the more religious stories implies Chaucer’s respect for Christian doctrine. However, Chaucer’s caricature of some members of the clergy alludes to the corruption of the Church during his time.

* The Prioress or Madame Eglantine's character serves as a sort of satire   in that she is a nun who lives a secular lifestyle. It is implied that she uses her religious lifestyle as a means of social advancement.attempts to be dainty and well-bred, and Chaucer makes fun of her by describing how she speaks French with a terrible accent and sings the liturgy straight through her nose. Although the Prioress should be devoted to Christ, she is more concerned with worldly matters: her clothes are richly bedecked, and her coral rosary that says “Love conquers all” serves as a decorative piece rather than a religious article.

 * The Monk, another religious character who is corrupt. The Monk is nothing like the usual monk many people imagine ,who studies, prays, and performs manual labor, Instead of reading in his cell, he prefers to go hunting, who is supposed to worship in confinement. He wears richly decorated clothing rather than the simple robes that one might expect a monk to wear. He is very modern since he ignores the rules of the monastery and wears his robe with gray fur lining at the sleeves. He also seems like he is more of a regular person than a monk.

* Friar - In medieval society, friars were mendicants, or beggars who could not work but had to live off the charity of others. But in the prologue to Canterbury tales  Friar is portrayed as a greedy hypocrite. Although they were supposed to be humble and modest, this Friar is jolly and wants to lead a comfortable life. Instead of ministering to lepers and beggars, as friars are supposed to do, the Friar cultivates relationships with rich men so that he can make a profit. Rather than the simple cloaks of a beggar, the friar wears expensive clothing.  the Friar is a not-so-pious religious figure. But his sins are all the more reprehensible because friars, more than any other religious group, were pledged to a life of poverty

* The Summoner is another supposedly devout religious figure who is actually a hypocrite. In medieval society, summoners brought people to the ecclesiastical court to confess their sins. He has a disgusting skin disease that makes his face pimpled and scaly.The Summoner and Pardoner, who travel together, are the most corrupt and debased of all the pilgrims. 

*The Pardoner openly admits to selling false relics to parishioners. In this story, the Pardoner walks around with religious relics, preaching about the dangers of greed and money, and then selling the promise of salvation if those who he is preaching to gives him money. His profession is somewhat dubious—pardoners offered indulgences, or previously written pardons for particular sins, to people who repented of the sin they had committed. The Pardoner tells to the pilgrims that he does his job for the sole purpose of gaining more money. But instead of seeming sorrowful or remorseful, the Pardoner seems to take pride in his corruption. 

In the prologue to Canterbury tales Chaucer illustrates the illegal actions of the Catholic church during his time period with these  characters who were belong solely to the Church . These characters like, the Prioress , the Monk, the Friar, the Pardoner gives preference to the worldly things instead of being religious , spiritual and faithful to God, 

Although most of the religious characters appear in the prologue to Canterbury tales to show the corruption of the church and its people, there are two important characters that Chaucer depicts to show the faith in Christ as he seems to believe it should be.

* The Parson the only devout churchman in the company, the Parson lives in poverty, but is rich in holy thoughts and deeds. The pastor of a sizable town, he preaches the Gospel and makes sure to practice what he preaches. He is everything that the Monk, the Friar, and the Pardoner are not.The Parson's presence on the pilgrimage is necessary for precisely this reason: without him, we have no idea of what a religious figure ought to be, while, with him, we have an almost Christ-like point of comparison.

* The Plowman is the Parson’s brother and is equally good-hearted. A member of the peasant class, he pays his tithes to the Church and leads a good Christian life. The Plowman is a deeply religious man who demonstrates selflessness and his devotion to God, by maintaining a most admirable attitude despite being a peasant and shoveling manure. In the first introduction of the Plowman Chaucer describes his personality as loving his neighbor and being a most charitable and respectable man. The Plowman was the most recognizable medieval symbol of the poor and was associated with great virtue.

The Canterbury Tales depicts the desecration of Christianity by characters who are supposed to personify the Christian values and yet they seem to act in contradiction to those values. In fact, the established religion itself is clearly portrayed by Chaucer as the corrupting force. Having lost its divine mandate, Chaucer portrays a Catholic Church with a friar who is a womanizer, a monk who is a rebel, and a pardoner who is a schemer.

The emergence of the Catholic Church, with its centre in Rome, reveals an increasingly corrupted Christian Europe whose religious authority and divine mandate, as shown in Chaucer’s The prologue to Canterbury Tales, is being taken advantage of by unscrupulous individuals who are more interested in their personal aggrandizement than following the Christian values of charity, chastity, honesty, temperance, forgiveness of others, among many others.

Religious corruption is one of the largest themes in The prologue to  Canterbury tales. The main idea in the corruptible characters seems to be that they're all too preoccupied with something secular to spend too much time on faith.