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Thursday
Yesterday I suggested that, if Kamala Harris is Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, then Donald Trump is the Pardoner. I initially thought of Trump as this character only because he faces off with Alisoun midway through her prologue, but the more I thought about it, the more the comparison fits. As a skilled conman, the Pardoner provides insight into both how Trump regards his own fraudulent schemes and how they can come back to bite him.
Alisoun is a figure so vibrant and full of life that she is positively Shakespearean—and in fact, Chaucer’s characters may have made Shakespeare possible. (For instance, I see resemblances between the Wife and Falstaff, whom Harold Bloom regards as the Bard’s most three-dimensional figure.) The Pardoner, on the other hand, is a creepy and somewhat weird huckster whom other pilgrims put firmly in his place. Chaucer despises him to the same degree that he enjoys Alisoun although, being Chaucer, he also makes him memorable.
The Pardoner sells papal pardons or indulgences, which people could buy in lieu of actually journeying to Rome to see the pope. A pardon was a way of buying your way out of Purgatory for some sin you had committed, and it was a major source of revenue for the Vatican. It was also subject to abuse and became a major target of both Martin Luther (who objected to it on religious grounds) and the German princes who supported Luther (who didn’t like how indulgences were draining large sums out of their principalities). More than a century before Luther triggered the Protestant Reformation, Chaucer was calling out corruption in the church.
Chaucer’s Pardoner is a poster child for this corruption, carrying around fake saint relics in order to help sales. As Chaucer reports,
There was no other pardoner like him.
For in his pouch he had a pillow-case,
Which he said was Our Lady’s veil;
He said he had a piece of the sail
That Saint Peter had, when he went
Upon the sea, until Jesus Christ took him.
He had a cross of latten covered with stones,
And in a glass container he had pigs’ bones….
And thus, with feigned flattery and tricks,
He made fools of the parson and the people.
Like Trump, the Pardoner knows that a distinctive style helps with sales, and like Trump he has flamboyant hair:
This Pardoner had hair as yellow as wax,
But smooth it hung as does a clump of flax;
By small strands hung such locks as he had,
And he spread them over his shoulders;
But thin it lay, by strands one by one.
But to make an attractive appearance, he wore no hood
For it was trussed up in his knapsack.
It seemed to him that he rode in the very latest style;
With hair unbound, save for his cap, he rode all bare-headed.
Where he most resembles Trump, however, is in the upfront way he carries out his fraud. When I see him revealing the tricks of his trade to the other pilgrims, I think of the brazen way that Trump all but reveals his tricks to the suckers he takes in (for instance, the “Trump Stakes,” which carried the brand names of whatever store he had bought them from). In the prologue to his tale, the Pardoner reveals his methods to people he will later attempt to sell indulgences to:
First I pronounce from whence I come,
And then my papal bulls I show, each and every one.
Our liege lord’s seal on my letter of authorization,
I show that first, to protect my body,
So that no man be so bold, neither priest nor clerk,
To hinder me from doing Christ’s holy work.
And after that then I tell forth my tales;
Indulgences of popes and of cardinals,
Of patriarchs and bishops I show,
And in Latin I speak a few words,
With which to add spice to my preaching,
And to stir them to devotion.
Then I show forth my long crystal stones,
Crammed full of rags and of bones —
Relics they are, as suppose they each one.
The Pardoner then proceeds to list all the miraculous cures that (so he tells his marks) the indulgences will bring about, everything from their sick animals to getting them into heaven. It’s a profitable business, the Pardoner boasts:
By this trick have I won, year after year,
An hundred marks since I was pardoner.
I stand like a clerk in my pulpit,
And when the ignorant people are set down,
I preach as you have heard before
And tell a hundred more false tales.
He cheerfully admits to his own hypocrisy: without skipping a beat, he tells his fellow pilgrims how he loves to preach against avarice. This he follows up with a tale—one of Chaucer’s best—about how three men find death in a treasure they chance upon. (They kill each other off.)
And then, thinking that it doesn’t matter that he has revealed himself as a conman, he attempts to sell indulgences to his fellow pilgrims, starting with the host. “How lucky you are to have me with you,” he tells them:
Look what a safeguard is it to you all
That I happen to be in your fellowship,
Who can absolve you, both more and less (every one),
When the soul shall from the body pass.
I advise that our Host here shall begin,
For he is most enveloped in sin.
Come forth, sir Host, and offer first right now,
And thou shall kiss the relics every one,
Yea, for a fourpence coin! Unbuckle thy purse right now.
By this point, however, the Pardoner appears to have become blinded by own success, thinking he can sell anything to anyone. These include his fellow pilgrims, to whom earlier he has revealed his trade secrets. Those who enjoy watching Kamala Harris call out Trump out will recognize a similar takedown from the Host. He’s not about to unbuckle his purse:
Thou would make me kiss thine old underpants,
And swear it was a relic of a saint,
Though it were stained by thy fundament!
But, by the cross that Saint Helen found,
I would I had thy testicles in my hand
Instead of relics or a container for relics.
Have them cut off, I will help thee carry them;
They shall be enshrined in a hog’s turd!
The Pardoner is so angry that he cannot speak, and it takes the Knight, an exemplar of chivalry, to restore peace. The point for our purposes is that, when a fraudster is ripping everyone off, going high won’t necessarily work. These people revel in their hypocrisy and so are impervious to shame.
Sometimes a direct attack, accompanied by choice language and some humor, is the best way to stand up to a bully.
