But, dame, here as we ryde by the weye,
Us nedeth nat to speken but of game,
And lete auctoritees, on Goddes name,
To prechyng and to scoles of clergye. (Friar’s Prologue, III(D) 1271–77)
The sources and significance of the Friar’s unease will be sought in Chapters 3 and 4. Suffice it to note here that, in the tale which the Wife tells, a romance text is turned inside out to present an ugly old woman as the intellectual and moral superior of a rapist-knight. Thus the conventional dictum that “gentle is as gentle does” is given new life, the claim that nobility of soul is to be valued over nobility of birth becomes more than a pious cliché. Moreover, women may be valued for their wisdom rather than their beauty; the repulsive (to the male gaze which, predictably, is the dominant viewpoint of the text) body of the old woman fades into insignificance as her voice utters the most authoritative and compelling of statements, Dante, both poet and sage, being ostentatiously cited as a major source. One of the most repulsive bodies in the Canterbury Tales houses a mind and soul which are in possession of an impressive body of doctrine. And she is the creation of an aging woman who, in her own self-portrayal, professes corporeal appetites of a kind which had been zealously condemned by generations of clerics. On the same argument, the possibility that the Pardoner’s body—whether physically imperfect, effeminate/feminized and/or sullied by lust (heterosexual or homosexual?)—may be militating against his presumption of authority serves to problematize even further an already fraught depiction, offering the prospect of even deeper deviancy.
Archbishop Arundel’s Constitutions of 1407/9 sought to eradicate all the dangerous Wycliffite opinions which had been circulating at the time when Chaucer was creating those perplexing “fallible authors,” the Pardoner and Wife of Bath. The Constitutions denounced unlicensed preaching, banned mention of the sins of the clergy or anything which might undermine orthodox instruction on the sacraments in sermons aimed at the general public, and forbade all other teachers from concerning themselves with disputatious matters of theology. Unlicensed translation of Biblical passages into English was also forbidden—and this applied not only to the “Lollard Bible” in whatever version, in part or entire, but also to extracts from the holy Scriptures as included in vernacular books and treatises, and indeed those vernacular books and treatises themselves. Moreover, the ownership of an English Bible translation made in the time of Wyclif or later was prohibited, except in the case in which special diocesan permission had been given.110
In the Oxford translation debate of circa 1401 scholars had clinically debated if knowledge of God should hierarchically proceed from the Latinate clergy to the laity, if layfolk could cope with a text so stylistically difficult as the Bible, and if the barbarous English language was capable of serving as a vehicle for the communication of divine truth.111 When issues of social control impinged on the consciousness of the Church authorities, however, the situation acquired a new urgency. They “came to see that the vernacular lay at the root of the trouble,” “that the substitution [of English for Latin] threw open to all the possibility of discussing the subtleties of the Eucharist, of clerical claims, of civil dominion, and so on.”112 In such a climate, all English writings, no matter how much or how little theology they contained, no matter how unimpeachable their orthodoxy may have been, could fall under suspicion. In the later fifteenth century a copy of the Canterbury Tales was produced for the prosecution during a heresy trial. As Anne Hudson says, if this manuscript “had included, for instance, the Pardoner’s Tale, or, even more, the Parson’s Tale, it could on a rigorous interpretation” of the relevant Constitution have been “regarded as indicative of heresy.”113 One might also mention The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, which features a woman who is highly competent in the academic discipline of disputation and adept at deploying authorities from the Bible and the writings of the Church Fathers. Writing in 1415 in the wake of the Oldcastle rebellion, which was seen as a consequence of Lollardy, Thomas Hoccleve warned women to keep to their station in life. Given that they are weak-minded and uneducated, “lewed calates” [i.e., strumpets] should confine themselves to spinning and traditional sources of gossip rather than vainly attempting to construct arguments based on the Bible and to engage in disputation on topics from which God has barred them.
Some wommen eeke, thogh hir wit be thynne,
Wold argumentes make in holy writ!
Lewed calates! sittith doun and spynne,
And kakele of sumwhat elles, for your wit
Is al to feeble to despute of it!
To Clerkes grete / apparteneth þat aart
The knowleche of þat, god hath fro yow shit;
Stynte and leue of / for right sclendre is your paart. (144–52)114
Alisoun of Bath has done all this, and more—for she tells a tale in which the social order is challenged inasmuch as a poor woman of low birth manifests moral dominion over a churlish aristocrat. Nicholas Watson makes the point well that the Canterbury Tales, “playing, as they so disruptively do, with the most important contemporary arguments over teaching and religious authority,” are “a product” of “a world which is crucially pre-Arundelian.”115 The post-Arundelian world was very different—a narrower, more repressive one.
And yet—as already noted, Chaucer’s Friar does voice his concern about the Wife of Bath making arguments in holy writ and engaging in the “aart” of disputation which is the prerogative of “clerkes grete”: his admonition to leave the auctoritees “to prechyng and to scoles of clergye” probably had as much resonance in the 1390s as it would have had in the early 1400s. The contrast between these two eras should not be made too sharply. It would be imprudent to exaggerate the scope of Chaucer’s intellectual freedom and the extent to which he could safely play with “important contemporary arguments,” make game out of earnest, and/or say true words in jest. Take, for instance, Harry Bailly’s reaction to Chaucer’s “povre Persoun of a toun,” a man “riche . . . of hooly thoght and werk” (I(A) 478–79). When this highly idealized figure takes Harry to task for his virulent swearing, he exclaims, “I smelle a Lollere in the wynd,” and warns the Canterbury pilgrims that this “Lollere” is going to “prechen us somwhat” (II(B1) 1173–77). Harry seems to be in a jocular mood. He is not saying that the Parson is an actual Lollard, merely that right now this man is talking like one (the reference being to Lollard contempt for oaths).116 And he is perfectly happy to introduce the Parson’s “predicacioun” rather than making any move to censure or curtail it. The Shipman, who now insists on telling his own tale, continues Harry’s highly reductive comparison by imagining that the Parson will preach exclusively from Biblical quotations and introduce “difficulte” (hard and/or controversial material), sowing cockle (a weed) “in our clene corn” (1180–83). In other words, if the Parson continues to act like a Lollard they can expect the clean corn of orthodoxy to be infiltrated and sullied with the weeds of heresy. Here, then, two inveterate swearers join forces to combat what they construct as excessive religiosity, their weapon being ridicule—the Parson is being put down by having his religious zeal insultingly likened to Lollard extremism. But deadly earnest may be seen as underlying this game—an argument which may be supported by a complaint in Alexander Carpenter’s Destructorium viciorum (1429) about how those “who hear cursed transgressors of God’s commandments daily blaspheming God with lies and horrible oaths” are “ashamed to silence them and refrain from such transgressions themselves, lest they be called Lollards and heretics, or of the Lollard sect.”117 A more comprehensive protest had been made a little earlier, shortly before 1426, by John Audelay, priest to “þe lord Strange” (presumably Lord Strange of Knokin, in Shropshire).118 In the second of the poems which survive uniquely in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 302, Audelay objects to the way in which poor devout priests can be branded as Lollards and hypocrites, their ardent devotions and unceasing work for Holy Church being valued as nothing.