Fallible Authors. Alastair Minnis

of Thetford (X. 1245?) declares that “reasoning through examples” is very effective with layfolk, claiming the authority of Aristotle “as much as Boethius and Gregory” for his contention that the laity “delight in sensible examples” (sensibilibus gaudent exemplis).⁸⁸ The Pardoner’s version is that uneducated people love old tales:

      Thanne telle I hem ensamples many oon

      Of olde stories longe tyme agoon.

      For lewed peple loven tales olde;

      Swiche thynges kan they wel reporte and holde. (VI(C) 435–38)

      He is highly aware of the capacities of his audience, and of the necessity of suiting his preaching to those capacities. The brilliant exemplum which he eventually offers the Canterbury pilgrims, the story of the three revelers in search of death, reveals a fine sense of the rhetorical and affective power of exempla. Preaching, says Ralph Higden, should inflame the human disposition (affectus) toward God,⁸⁹ and the Pardoner claims the ability to do just that, in spite of himself.

      The artes praedicandi offer lists of essential requirements for effective preaching, considered from the point of view of technical skill and audience appeal. For instance, in his De eruditione praedicatorum Humbert of Romans states that God’s representative should have clear diction, awareness of the intricacies and resources of language, a voice with a definite resonance, the ability to use a style the listener can easily understand, a moderate pace of delivery, succinct presentation without verbosity, simplicity of speech without excessive rhetorical ornamentation, prudence in varying his sermons according to the type of hearer, and pleasantness of speech.⁹⁰ Chaucer’s Pardoner seems to possess most of these skills and graces, having a voice as resonant as a bell,⁹¹ an impressive way with words, and considerable stylistic competence. But he is, perhaps, inclined to overdo the rhetoric.⁹² Some of the purple passages in the preamble to his exemplum, such as

      O wombe! O bely! O stynkyng cod,

      Fulfilled of dong and of corrupcioun! (VI(C) 534–35)

      would probably not have found favor with Humbert of Romans. Seneca, declares Humbert, stated that “A speech which is concerned with truth ought to be simple and straightforward.”⁹³ “Other arts are a matter of ingenuity,” he continues; in the art of preaching we are concerned with something much more serious. “A sick man does not look for an eloquent doctor. If the doctor who can cure him can also make an elegant speech about what has to be done, that is like having a helmsman who is also handsome.” Having made every due allowance for changes in fashions of preaching between the time of Humbert and that of Chaucer,⁹⁴ the point remains a valid one, especially since many medieval clerics related extravagance in preaching to desire for earthly gain.⁹⁵ For example, Alan of Lille complained that “there are some who make earthly gain the motive for their preaching, but their preaching is extravagant (sumptuosa); such are rather merchants (mercenarii) than preachers, and so their preaching is to be heard and endured. That is why the Lord says: ‘Do what they tell you to do, but do not follow the example they set’” (Matthew 23:3).⁹⁶ Certainly, Chaucer’s Pardoner is something of a merchant, an expert in the art of selling his wares dearly.

      It is possible, furthermore, that he habitually engages in “extravagant” preaching in a different sense, by overdoing the gestures with which he emphasizes the crucial points in his disquisition:

      Thanne peyne I me to strecche forth the nekke,

      And est and west upon the peple I bekke,

      As dooth a dowve sittynge on a berne.

      Myne handes and my tongue goon so yerne

      That it is joye to se my bisynesse. (VI(C) 395–99)⁹⁷

      Thomas Waleys’ De modo componendi sermones offers a particularly lively version of the standard warning about observing modesty in one’s use of gestures and bodily motions. The preacher should “not be like a motionless statue but should show some seemly movements,” he explains, and then proceeds to describe what he regards as unseemly movements: