The Summoner's Tale
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"The Summoner's Tale" is one of ''
The Canterbury Tales ''The Canterbury Tales'' () is a collection of 24 stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. The book presents the tales, which are mostly written in verse, as part of a fictional storytelling contest held ...
'' by
Geoffrey Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer ( ; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...
. The tale is a fierce counterpunch to the preceding tale by the Friar, who had delivered an attack on summoners. Summoners were officials in
ecclesiastical court In organized Christianity, an ecclesiastical court, also called court Christian or court spiritual, is any of certain non-adversarial courts conducted by church-approved officials having jurisdiction mainly in spiritual or religious matters. Histo ...
s who delivered a summons to people who had been brought up on various charges; the office was prone to corruption, since summoners were infamous for threatening to bring people up on charges unless they were bought off. The Friar had accused them of corruption and taking bribes, and the Summoner seeks to address the Friar through his own story.


Sources

The Summoner in fact tells several tales, all of them directed at
friar A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders in the Catholic Church. There are also friars outside of the Catholic Church, such as within the Anglican Communion. The term, first used in the 12th or 13th century, distinguishes the mendi ...
s. The main tale of a grasping friar seems to contain many original elements composed by Chaucer but Jill Mann suggests that it is based on "The Tale of the Priest's Bowels", a French thirteenth-century
fabliau A ''fabliau'' (; plural ''fabliaux'') is a comic, often anonymous tale written by jongleurs and clerics in France between c. 1150 and 1400. They are generally characterized by sexual and scatological obscenity, and by a set of contrary attitud ...
: "A pious priest, when on his deathbed, was urged by two holy friars to revoke some of the charitable bequests he has already made, so that he may give something to their order. The priest promises to give them a precious jewel, which turns out to be a gaseous release from his bowels." The bawdy story the Summoner tells in his
prologue A prologue or prolog (from Ancient Greek πρόλογος ''prólogos'', from πρό ''pró'', "before" and λόγος ''lógos'', "speech") is an opening to a story that establishes the context and gives background details, often some earlier st ...
seems to be an inversion of a story in
Caesarius of Heisterbach Caesarius of Heisterbach (c. 1180 – c. 1240), sometimes erroneously called, in English, Caesar of Heisterbach, was the prior of a Cistercian monastery, Heisterbach Abbey, which was located in the Siebengebirge, near the small town of Oberdollend ...
's ''Dialogus miraculorum''. In Caesarius's story, a monk ascends to heaven and finds his fellow
Cistercian The Cistercians (), officially the Order of Cistercians (, abbreviated as OCist or SOCist), are a Catholic religious order of monks and nuns that branched off from the Benedictines and follow the Rule of Saint Benedict, as well as the contri ...
s living under the cloak of the
Virgin Mary Mary was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Saint Joseph, Joseph and the mother of Jesus. She is an important figure of Christianity, venerated under titles of Mary, mother of Jesus, various titles such as Perpetual virginity ...
. In the Summoner's version the friar descends into hell and not seeing any other friars believes they are all such goodly men, but the angel who accompanies him says to
Satan Satan, also known as the Devil, is a devilish entity in Abrahamic religions who seduces humans into sin (or falsehood). In Judaism, Satan is seen as an agent subservient to God, typically regarded as a metaphor for the '' yetzer hara'', or ' ...
: :Hold up thy tayl, thou Sathanas!' quod he; :'Shewe forth thyn ers, and lat the frere se :Where is the nest of freres in this place!' With that the ''freres'' (friars) fly out of Satan's ''ers'' (arse), swarm about the room and disappear back up his ''ers''.


Plot summary

A friar went to preach in a marshy region of
Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ) is an area of Northern England which was History of Yorkshire, historically a county. Despite no longer being used for administration, Yorkshire retains a strong regional identity. The county was named after its county town, the ...
called
Holderness Holderness is an area of the East Riding of Yorkshire, on the north-east coast of England. An area of rich agricultural land, Holderness was marshland until it was drained in the Middle Ages. Topographically, Holderness has more in common wit ...
. In his sermons he begged for donations for the church and afterward he begged for charity from the local residents. The Friar interrupts the story, calling the Summoner a liar, but is silenced by the Host. The friar in the story continued to beg house by house until he came to the house of Thomas, a local resident who normally indulged him, and found him ill. The friar spoke of the sermon he had given that day, commenting on the excellent way he had glossed the biblical text (and making the famous comment that "Glosynge is a glorious thyng") – and essentially ordered a meal from Thomas's wife. She told the friar that her child had died recently. The friar claimed that he had a revelation that her child had died and entered heaven. He claimed that his fellow friars had a similar vision, for they are more privy to God's messages than laymen, who live richly on earth, as opposed to spiritual riches. The friar claimed that, among the clergy, only friars remain impoverished and thus are closest to God; and told Thomas that his illness persists because he had given so little to the church. Thomas claimed that he had indeed given "ful many a pound" to various friars, but never fared the better for it. The friar, characteristically, is irritated that Thomas is not giving all of his money solely to him, and points out to him that a "ferthyng" (a farthing) is not worth anything if split into twelve. Continuing to lecture Thomas, the friar began a long sermon against anger ("ire"), telling the tale of an angry king who sentenced a knight to death, because, as he returned without his partner, the king automatically assumed that the knight had murdered him. When a third knight took the condemned knight to his death, they found the knight that he had supposedly murdered. When they returned to the king to have the sentence reversed, the king sentenced all three to death: the first because he had originally declared him murdered, the second because he had declared him the agent of the first's death, and the third because he did not obey the king's order to kill the second. The friar continued to sermonize against anger with the story of another ireful king, Cambises, who was a drunkard. When one of his knights claimed that drunkenness caused people to lose their co-ordination, Cambises drew his bow and arrow and shot the knight's son to prove that he still had control of his reflexes. The friar then told of
Cyrus Cyrus () is a Persian-language masculine given name. It is historically best known as the name of several List of monarchs of Iran, Persian kings, most notably including Cyrus the Great, who founded the Achaemenid Empire in 550 BC. It remains wid ...
, the Persian king who had the River Gyndes destroyed because one of his horses had drowned in it. At the close of this sermon, the friar asked Thomas for money to build the brothers'
cloister A cloister (from Latin , "enclosure") is a covered walk, open gallery, or open Arcade (architecture), arcade running along the walls of buildings and forming a quadrangle (architecture), quadrangle or garth. The attachment of a cloister to a cat ...
. Thomas, annoyed by the friar's hypocrisy, told the friar that he had a gift for him that he was sitting on, but that he would only receive it if he promised to split it up equally between each of the friars. The friar readily agreed, and put his hand down behind Thomas's back, groping round – and Thomas let out a fart louder than a horse could make. The friar became immediately angry, and promised to repay Thomas for his fart, but, before he could, the servants of the house chased the friar out. The enraged friar found the lord of the village and told him of the embarrassment he suffered, angrily wondering how he was supposed to divide a fart into twelve. The lord's squire spoke up with a suggestion, in return for a "gowne-clooth" from his master: take a cartwheel, and tell each of twelve friars to lay his nose at the end of a spoke. Then the friar of the tale could sit in the centre of the wheel and fart, and each of the spokes would carry the smell along to the rim – and therefore, divide it up between each of the friars.


Analysis

The Summoner uses the tale to satirise friars in general, with their long sermonising and their tendency to live well despite vows of poverty. It reflects on the theme of
cleric Clergy are formal leaders within established religions. Their roles and functions vary in different religious traditions, but usually involve presiding over specific rituals and teaching their religion's doctrines and practices. Some of the ter ...
al corruption, a common one within ''The Canterbury Tales'' and within the wider 14th-century world as seen by the
Lollard Lollardy was a proto-Protestantism, proto-Protestant Christianity, Christian religious movement that was active in England from the mid-14th century until the 16th-century English Reformation. It was initially led by John Wycliffe, a Catholic C ...
movement. The attitude of the lord implies that he is as unimpressed as any layman with the friars. Neither the Summoner's nor " The Friar's Tale" leave either of them looking particularly good. After the Friar's tale the Summoner does not use his own tale to defend summoners but rather he replies with his own attack. The short stories warning about ire within his main story are possibly a comment on the unheeded anger between both of them. He is described as being lecherous with his red face disfigured with
boils A boil, also called a furuncle, is a deep folliculitis, which is an infection of the hair follicle. It is most commonly caused by infection by the bacterium ''Staphylococcus aureus'', resulting in a painful swollen area on the skin caused by an ...
and—like the Miller and the Cook—quite drunk. His shield is described as a
barley Barley (), a member of the grass family, is a major cereal grain grown in temperate climates globally. It was one of the first cultivated grains; it was domesticated in the Fertile Crescent around 9000 BC, giving it nonshattering spikele ...
cake. Among his other attributes is
extortion Extortion is the practice of obtaining benefit (e.g., money or goods) through coercion. In most jurisdictions it is likely to constitute a criminal offence. Robbery is the simplest and most common form of extortion, although making unfounded ...
—dealing out false summons to court and either tricking foolish persons to bribe him with tavern feasts—or being beaten up by a potential victim; also theft-taking more than his share of court fines; and being a
pimp Procuring, pimping, or pandering is the facilitation or provision of a prostitute or other sex worker in the arrangement of a sex act with a customer. A procurer, colloquially called a pimp (if male) or a madam (if female, though the term "pimp" ...
and then blackmailing victims. He also wears a garland of oak leaves; since such a garland proclaimed the wearer was a "King of Outlaws" (e.g.
William Wallace Sir William Wallace (, ; Norman French: ; 23 August 1305) was a Scottish knight who became one of the main leaders during the First War of Scottish Independence. Along with Andrew Moray, Wallace defeated an English army at the Battle of St ...
), Chaucer's readers would have recognised the Summoner as a corrupt clerical servant (as satirised in " The Friar's Tale"). Chaucer ironically remarks that the Summoner only friend among the Pilgrims is the equally greedy and hypocritical church official Pardoner


Film adaptations

Pasolini Pier Paolo Pasolini (; 5 March 1922 – 2 November 1975) was an Italian poet, film director, writer, actor and playwright. He is considered one of the defining public intellectuals in 20th-century Italian history, influential both as an artist ...
adapted the tale in his film ''
The Canterbury Tales ''The Canterbury Tales'' () is a collection of 24 stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. The book presents the tales, which are mostly written in verse, as part of a fictional storytelling contest held ...
'' with John Francis Lane as the corrupt friar, Hugh McKenzie-Bailey as the dying Thomas, Anita Sanders as Thomas's wife (her scenes were later removed and are now lost) and Settimo Castagna as the Angel. Pasolini also adapts the scene from the Summoner's prologue where the Devil defecates corrupt friars from his anus.


References


External links


Read "The Summoner's Tale" with interlinear translationModern Translation of the ''Summoner's Tale'' and Other Resources at eChaucer
* ttps://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu/sumt1/ Ruth Evans, "Gender and Sexual Identities in the ''Summoner’s Prologue'' and ''Tale"'' {{The Canterbury Tales Summoner's Tale