Monday
Donald Trump really does pervert everything he touches. We are in the season of forgiveness so, on the one hand, he hands out pardons like a mob boss and, on the other, speeds up executions. One of those executed was a man who, while present during a murder, didn’t actually pull the trigger. Even members of his jury felt he didn’t deserve the death penalty.
My friend Glenda Funk suggested comparing him to Chaucer’s Pardoner, an excellent idea. For good measure, I also compare him to the Pardoner’s execrable friend and companion, the Summoner.
Trump has been pardoning war criminals, Republican grifters, and people who have committed perjury to cover up for him. Undoubtedly more pardons are on their way, including preemptive pardons for his family, his close associates, and possibly even for himself. According to Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith and Lawfare blog’s Matthew Gluck, “The vast majority of the 94 people who have received clemency from Trump have a personal or political connection to him.”
The Pardoner is one of Chaucer’s most reprehensible pilgrims. He makes his living selling indulgences, which is to say, papal pardons. Since most people seeking forgiveness couldn’t see the pope directly, the system of indulgences was devised. The pardoners who sold them kept a cut for themselves while remanding the rest to Rome. The system was so corrupt and such a cash drain on parts of the Holy Roman Empire that it contributed to the German princes supporting Martin Luther’s breakaway movement.
The Pardoner is a conman worthy of Trump. Noted for his flamboyant hair, he passes off pigs’ bones as though they were saints’ relics to draw in penitents. As a result, he makes far more than the Parson, one of Chaucer’s exemplary pilgrims:
And in a glass container he had pigs’ bones.
But with these relics, when he found
A poor parson dwelling in the countryside,
In one day he got himself more money
Than the parson got in two months;
And thus, with feigned flattery and tricks,
He made fools of the parson and the people.
For contrast’s sake, here’s Chaucer’s Parson, who knows who he is working for. Think of him as the equivalent of the public servant who puts country over self:
He knew how to have sufficiency in few possessions.
His parish was wide, and houses far apart,
But he did not omit, for rain nor thunder,
In sickness or in trouble to visit
Those living farthest away in his parish, high-ranking and low,
Going by foot, and in his hand a staff.
He gave this noble example to his sheep,
That first he wrought, and afterward he taught.
He took those words out of the gospel,
And this metaphor he added also to that,
That if gold rust, what must iron do?
For if a priest, on whom we trust, should be foul
It is no wonder for a layman to go bad;
And it is a shame, if a priest is concerned:
A shit-stained shepherd and a clean sheep.
Well ought a priest to give an example,
By his purity, how his sheep should live.
The Pardoner is particularly Trump-like in the openness of his grift. Just as Trump sold “Trump Steaks” without bothering to remove the previous labels, so the Pardoner openly admits to his fellow pilgrims that his relics are fakes. And like Trump in 2016 openly boasting of cheating the system, the Pardoner wants to be admired for his craftiness:
My theme is always the same, and ever was —
‘Greed is the root of all evil.’
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 delights in showing how he bamboozles his suckers—or as Trump calls them, “the poorly educated”:
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.
Then I take pains to stretch forth the neck,
And east and west upon the people I nod,
As does a dove sitting on a barn.
My hands and my tongue go so quickly
That it is joy to see my business.
Of avarice and of such cursedness
Is all my preaching, to make them generous
To give their pennies, and namely unto me.
For my intention is only to make a profit,
And not at all for correction of sin.
I care not a bit, when they are buried,
Though their souls go picking blackberries!
Most impressive is the way the Pardoner then goes on practice his grift on the very pilgrims with whom he has shared his trade secrets. Following a magnificent story about avarice—one of Chaucer’s best—he targets his fellows. Suddenly the pigs’ bones have become saints’ bones again:
If any of you will, of devotion,
Offer and have my absolution,
Come forth straightway, and kneel down here,
And meekly receive my pardon…
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.
The Pardoner should have chosen a meeker pilgrim. Would that Republicans took a page from the Innkeeper’s response:
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!”
Whew!
I add the Summoner because, like Trump, he has two systems of justice for his own pardon system. A medieval police officer who is charged with summoning law breakers to court,he will allow a man to keep his concubine with a wine bribe or escape excommunication with a hefty sum. “A man’s soul [is] in his purse” is how he puts it:
For a quart of wine he would allow
A good fellow to have his concubine
For twelve months, and excuse him completely;
Secretly he also knew how to pull off a clever trick.
And if he found anywhere a good fellow,
He would teach him to have no awe
Of the archdeacon’s curse (of excommunication) in such a case,
Unless a man’s soul were in his purse;
For in his purse he would be punished.
“Purse is the archdeacon’s hell,” he said.
He also employs secret information to exert control over young people, perhaps to exact sexual favors:
In his control he had as he pleased
The young folk of the diocese,
And knew their secrets, and was the adviser of them all.
In other words, despite our having a democratic republic constructed upon such enlightenment principles as the rule of law and public accountability, it has taken no more than one man and a complicit party to return us to the Middle Ages. Chaucer would have had a field day with our president.