light. In these we see the hypocrisies and sensualities of both
monks and friars, relieved somewhat by the virtues of the simple
parish priest or poor parson, in contrast with the wealth and
luxury of the regular clergy, as monks were called, in their
princely monasteries, where the lordly abbot vied with both baron
and bishop in the magnificence of his ordinary life. We see before
us the Mediaeval clergy in all their privileges, and yet in all
their ignorance and superstition, shielded from the punishment of
crime and the operation of all ordinary laws (a sturdy defiance of
the temporal powers), the agents and ministers of a foreign power,
armed with the terrors of hell and the grave. Besides the prioress
and the nuns' priest, we see in living light the habits and
pretensions of the lazy monk, the venal friar and pardoner, and the
noisy summoner for ecclesiastical offences: hunters and gluttons
are they, with greyhounds and furs,, greasy and fat, and full of
dalliances; at home in taverns, unprincipled but agreeable
vagabonds, who cheat and rob the people, and make a mockery of what
is most sacred on the earth. These privileged mendicants, with
their relics and indulgences, their arts and their lies, and the
scandals they create, are treated by Chaucer with blended humor and
severity, showing a mind as enlightened as that of the great
scholar at Oxford, who heads the movement against Rome and the
abuses at which she connived if she did not encourage. And there
is something intensely English in his disgust and scorn,--brave for
his day, yet shielded by the great duke who was at once his
protector and friend, as he was of Wyclif himself,--in his severer
denunciation, and advocacy of doctrines which neither Chaucer nor
Duke of Lancaster understood, and which, if they had, they would
not have sympathized with nor encouraged. In these attacks on
ecclesiastics and ecclesiastical abuses, Chaucer should be studied