The Friar in The Canterbury Tales

In Geoffrey Chaucers Canterbury Tales, the mendicant is depict as a gentlemans gentleman lacking any veritable piety and one of enigmatic integrity. The Friar exemplifies the corruption that had run short rampant in the Catholic church beginning in the 12th century, that led to the intersection of Martin Luthers ninety-five theses in the early 16th century, until is was at long last curbed by Pope Pius V in 1567. This corruption is displayed in the character of the Friar some(prenominal) blatantly and inconspicuously. Chaucer sardonically reveals the degenerate actions of the Friar by enlarge his personal and professional affairs. In this way Chaucer makes his opinion of the Friar quite evident; additionally, he underscores this opinion through his strategical use of language. \nChaucers etymological conclusivenesss reveal a diachronic context that is non other stated in The Canterbury Tales. His decision to omit Latin haggling from the vocabulary of the Friars prolo gue serves to immediately alert the proofreader of a dichotomy amongst the Friars speculate piety and his actual allegiance to theology. For the Friar to arrest effectively performed his job he would have to have been at least(prenominal) moderately well intimate in the Bible which, at the time, was only written in Latin. This absence of Latin in the Friars prologue is Chaucers way of representing an absence of God in the Friars life. Chaucer displays the Friars clean-living depravity in saying, For though a widow hadde not a shoe, So winning was his In Principio (his blessing), Yet he would have a farthing ere he went. This treacherous method of begging is echoed on a bigger scale by historian Robert W. Shaffern in his article The Pardoners Promises: treatment and policing indulgences in the fourteenth-century English church. Shaffern speaks ...Sources distinctly show that pardoners (including friars) exploited the penitential fervor of their era. They spread anomalo us teachings and despoiled simple rustics out...