The Friar’s Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer

A Canterbury Tale in which one unpleasant pilgrim has a dig at another one!

Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are notable for the tale between the tales, namely the framework within which the tales are told. In part, these consist of running battles between certain of the pilgrims who have developed a thoroughgoing dislike for each other. One such pair are the Friar and the Summoner, whose tales are told at each other’s expense.

In 14th century England, a mendicant friar was a member of a religious order, such as the Franciscans, who were forbidden to own property and had therefore to depend on the charity of the community in which they lived. They were supposed to earn their living by doing good deeds and preaching the gospel, but many became corrupt, such as the Friar on Chaucer’s pilgrimage. This is a man who hears confessions for a price, and the more he is paid, the more valuable will be his absolution.

Men such as this were always going to be at daggers drawn with summoners, whose job was to issue summonses to ecclesiastical courts, and who had their own protection rackets to operate. A summoner who was willing to overlook an offence, for a price, was hardly going to be best pleased to find that a friar had got there first and absolved the offender, again for a price. Chaucer was…