Chaucer and His Times

by Grace E. Hadow

Ful looth were him to cursen for his tythes.[170]

Matters were further complicated by the wandering friars who recognised no jurisdiction save that of the Pope himself, and who, having fallen far from the noble ideal of poverty, chastity, and obedience, set by their founders, took unscrupulous advantage of the ignorance and superstition of the people, and, like the pardoners, often undermined the authority of the parish priests. The custom of commuting penance for a payment in money was spreading, and naturally opened the door to abuses of all kinds.

No wonder that Wycliff arose to thunder against these malpractices, and that his poor preachers gained such a following. It was not, in the majority of cases, that people had any quarrel with the doctrines of the Church—the number of recantations and paucity of martyrs among the early Lollards show that it was not doctrine that they wished to reform—but injustice and oppression were inevitably arousing a widespread, smouldering discontent which broke into flame now at this point, now at that. As we read the history of the time, we marvel at the patience and good-humour of the inhabitants of Merry England.

How far Chaucer was in sympathy with the Lollards it is difficult to say. His works contain but the barest reference to their existence, and the fact that the Host accuses the Parson of Lollardy, and that the Shipman expresses a pious horror of heresy, cannot be said to prove anything either way. It may be intended as a carefully concealed compliment to the influence of Wycliff, or, as seems more probable, it may simply be a chance reference in keeping with the spirit of the times. That the Shipman should be so terrified lest the saintly Parson should

... springen cokkel in our clene corn,[171]

that he feels impelled to break into his threatened sermon with the story of the merchant’s wife and the monk, is a subtle enough piece of satire, but whether Chaucer so intended it, or whether it is one of the happy accidents of genius, we have no means of knowing. The Parson is a devout Catholic, the Monk, with all his faults, is at worst but a forerunner of the fox-hunting squarson of later days, with all the geniality and good-fellowship of his race. If Chaucer attacks the clergy, it is only for those things which the best Churchmen of the day were denouncing with less wit but no less bitterness. Saints are rare at the best of times, and Chaucer, whose mission is to paint life as he finds it, gives good measure when he allows the Parson and the Plowman to form two of his nine-and-twenty pilgrims.

Few things, indeed, are more striking in Chaucer than the manner in which he combines caustic observation of the weaknesses and hypocrisies of men, with innate reverence for all that is pure and noble. That the same man should enjoy the coarse humour of the Friar and the Reve, and yet treat womanhood and childhood with such tender reverence, is one of the mysteries of human nature. Prof. Ten Brink, as has been said, believes that Chaucer passed through a phase of intense religious feeling. “A worldling has to reproach himself with all sorts of things,” he writes, “especially when he lives at a court like that of Edward III and is intimate with a John of Gaunt. Chaucer ... naturally seeks in religion the power for self-conquest and improvement. He was a faithful son of the Church, even though he had his own opinions about many things.... He was specially attracted by the eternal-womanly element in this system, which finds its purest realisation in the person of the Virgin Mother Mary. In moments when life seemed hard and weary, and when he was unable to arouse and cheer himself with philosophy and poetry, he gladly turned for help and consolation to the Virgin Mother.” Certainly his poetry is never sweeter or more dignified than when he is addressing this “haven of refut,” this

... salvacioun
Of hem that been in sorwe and in distresse.

Nothing better illustrates the simplicity and sincerity of Chaucer’s religious feeling, than the tale of little St. Hugh. The story of the Christian child decoyed away and murdered by the Jews was commonly believed in the Middle Ages. Indeed, it is said that more than one anti-Semitic outbreak in Russia during the past forty years has been provoked by the relation of similar tales, and we have just seen the conclusion of a “Blood-ritual” case of the kind. The fierce racial and religious hatred which underlies belief in the possibility of such a thing, is in itself sufficiently terrible, and the story affords ample opportunity for the expression of animosity towards these

... cursed folk of Herodes al newe,