...Well this is based on Chaucer’s view on the society around him. “In Chaucer's time, corruption in the Catholic Church was quite prevalent as the practice of selling indulgences became one of deception and greed.” (Mwestwood, 2008). Chaucer strongly felt that the Church of England during fourteenth century was corrupt. So characters connected to the church were the opposite of what you would expect from someone who is strongly associated with the church. Even so the he shows how these characters often try to justify the way they act through the way they show and interpret their faith. Chaucer took this opportunity to scrutinize the church, because like many other during the time period he felt drawing attention to their mistakes would make them correct themselves. So this is the significance of the great tale. Chaucer wanted a change in the world, he wanted a world where those typically poor could do as they please because they had the money...
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...Miranda Coker Mrs. Ashley Coker English IV Honors 9 January 2015 The Corruption of the Medieval Catholic Church in The Canterbury Tales In the Fourteenth Century, the Catholic Church took over Ireland, England, and almost all of Europe. Through a number of Crusades, which spanned about two hundred years, the church acquired a great amount of wealth. As a result of this tremendous accumulation of wealth, as well as an over emphasis on lavish places of worship, cathedrals were built in all of the larger cities. However, the communities of the middle and lower class in society suffered from poverty, resulting in sickness and death (“Greed and Corruption in The Canterbury Tales” 1). Why sit back, turn a deaf ear, and watch the people suffer and die while spending a fortune on places of worship? This is most likely the reason why Geoffrey Chaucer portrays some characters in The Canterbury Tales, such as the Pardoner, Friar, and Monk, as being greedy and often hypocritical. The Pardoner is a perfect example of this corruption. His work in the church is to hear the confessions of wrong-doers and pardon them of their sins. As he travels, he confesses to using a particular tale to manipulate his audiences. The Pardoner explains that he pushes guilt into the people by telling them that greed is the root of all evil, in order to coax them into giving him offerings. These offerings go directly into his greedy hands. Hardly a man of God, he demonstrates or reveals his self-centered...
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...“indulgences” by the Catholic Church to absolve sin of consumers -Stressed the idea that the Bible is the central religious authority, countering the corrupt Papal authority at this time, and that humans may reach salvation only by their faith-not by their deeds as Catholics heavily preached Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany 1517 Divided the Catholic Church, the 95 Theses were the key spark to the Protestant Reformation. As Protestantism emerged, a religion framed after Luther’s ideas expressed in the 95 Theses, his doctrines greatly influenced religion and culture for years to come. ACT OF SUCCESSION Made during Henry VIII's reign passed by the Parliament...
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...Since the beginning of documented history, it has been noted on many occasions that pandemics have swept the world claiming the lives of millions. Among them are the Antonine Plague, HIV/AIDS, and the Black Death. While the Bubonic plague has occurred many times throughout the world’s history, the Black Death was a devastating epidemic that occurred in the late fourteenth century that spread to all areas of Europe. In totality, it caused the deaths of more than fifty million people. The devastation caused by the Black Death resulted in a total restructuring of everyday life in fourteenth century Europe. The Black Death was a disease that first originated in China in the early 1330’s. Over a period of ten years, the disease had killed more than...
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... Due to increasing disagreements within the community and the Catholic Church, there became a need for the Church to reform; this Reformation became a catalyst for the witch-hunt by increasing society’s fear of the devil and social anxiety. These witch-hunts mainly targeted women, seeing as they were considered to be midwives and healers, they became legally more vulnerable to these hunts. It can be seen that witchcraft was the embodiment of a fear of instability, so in countries where the Catholic Church had much more stability, there are evidently less witch-hunts. The witch-hunts died out as the religious situation across Europe settled down and stabilized. Beginning in the early fourteenth century until about 1650, early modern Europeans were in the process of a religious reformation. The Reformation heightened awareness of evil within European culture and caused more harm than good to society. As fears arose, new beliefs emerged and in an attempt to understand these fears, people began to look for other ways to combat this new presence evil. Ironically, the very means people sought to protect themselves was what increased the paranoia of witchcraft leading to the death of many. By combining the reformation within the church and the already rooted ideas of witch craft and magic, Europeans soon began to use witch hunts as a scapegoat for their socially anxieties. Because the Catholic Church was much weaker in places like the Holy Roman Empire, France, and Italy than...
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...During the sixteenth century, many people were coming to terms with the corruption of the church. This realization led to anti-catholicism, or an opposition to the catholic church. Once this idea took hold, people began to trust in rationalism, which is displayed in Spenser’s works by his reminiscence of Roman literature themes. Spenser further showed his disdain for Catholicism by writing about the negative effects it has on one in his poetry (Hager). In The Faerie Queene, Spenser negatively portrays the Catholic church as a monster called Errour. He writes that Errour vomit is “...full of books and papers” (I.XX.178). These books and papers are representative of Catholic texts (Hager). Additionally, The Faerie Queene is described as. “...An epic of Protestant nationalism in which the villains are infidels or papists, the hero is King Arthur, and the central value is married chastity” (Beadle et al.). As a person prominent in society, Edmund Spenser’s religious beliefs, or lack thereof, motivated individuals...
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...relationship. It resulted for The Prioress is sent to a nunnery, where she was to learn about and build a close connection, devotion, and bond with God. The Prioress depicts the corruption and deception that the Catholic Church had faced and been accustomed to in the fourteenth century. In modern times, the Prioress would be equivalent to a nun, because of the strong dedication, devotion, and sole bond one share with a...
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...discovery, an age of exploration and a time where the very boundaries of knowledge were expanded since the end of the Roman Empire. One of the first things a student of the time is struck by is how similar the arguments at the dawn of this age are with the ones faced by contemporary people. Before analyzing that, it may be a good idea to get an idea of what the world was like, how people thought and what the hopes and dreams of the people of the time were. To do this, we first need to understand how that Europe came to be. The Black Death was the pivotal event of the High Middle Ages. In the span of a few short years the entire face of Europe changed. The plague began with the end of the Medieval Warm Period, which ran from the tenth century to the fourteenth. This shift to colder weather in Europe leads to widespread famine and years of uncertainty. Up until this time, Europe had enjoyed a rising population as well as a rising standard of living. People will increase their population to the limit of their food production. When people can no longer expand food production, then a day of reckoning will occur. Most good arable farmland was under cultivation and most of the marginal farmland was cultivated which produced much less food than the good arable farmland. The change to colder wetter weather proved devastating to the population. This, of course, had economic effects. As food production became more erratic, malnutrition flourished. In addition there is scholarship...
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...The Plague If there is one part of life that humans have trouble overcoming it is natural disasters. They are unexpected, incurable, and often unconquerable. One specific type of natural disaster is that of sickness. Plagues are disastrous evil afflictions of an epidemic disease causing a high rate of mortality. A historically famous plague in the fourteenth and fifteenth century is the Black or Bubonic Plague. The social and economic effects of the plague in Europe were harmful to the population and economy. The Black Plague is an Oriental Plague marked by inflammatory boils and tumors of the glands. Such break outs were found in no other feverish disease. Inflammatory boils often appeared and black spots which indicated decomposition of the body ultimately appeared on the skin. Another symptom of the plague was openings with a discharge of offensive matter. Due to the significant pain and rapid spread of the plague medicine was ultimately never found, although attempted. People consumed in the plague died within three days of getting it. The plague began in 1333, fifteen years before it broke out in Europe. Many natural disasters were engulfing the Asian countries; floods, starvation, droughts, and the plague. A drought and food shortage had crucified the country which was started by floods of the Kiang and Hoai Rivers. After all of these disastrous events still an earthquake, continued floods, and food shortage ended in late 1300’s. Around 1339 in northwestern Europe...
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...CANICOSA, Albert Joshua F. BSLM4A Research Paper in Legal Research On June 26, 2015, the United States of America made history when the United States Supreme Court decided that the denial of same sex marriage violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. In their ruling, the Supreme Court held that “The Fourteenth Amendment requires a State to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-State.” (Obergefell et al. v. Hodges, Director, Ohio Department Of Health, et al., 576 U.S. __ No. 14-556 (2015) making same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states, giving them as Justice Anthony Kennedy said “equal dignity in the eyes of the law”. Though most are happy with the decision, there are some who are not glad with it. In his dissent Chief Justice John Roberts believes that it is not the Supreme Court’s duty to decide whether a law should be passed or not. “Judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be” he adds “the Constitution authorized courts to exercise neither force nor will but merely judgment.” And because of the decision that the court made, people who are against same sex marriage will be forced to accept it. Many conservatives are disappointed with the decision; some of them are moving to make a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. In an interview, Republican Presidential Candidate and Florida Governor...
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...Who treated the lepers? Where were they treated? Although, there were educated doctors in the Medæval Times, it is important to note that doctors were usually not the arbiters of the disease. In fact, often priests or other clergy [see the Bible and Leprosy section] and sometimes, even the paupers diagnosed this disease. It is also interesting to note that the title “Leprosy” was often misused and employed to describe a range of other disfiguring illnesses. When diagnosed, (although they were likely not to admit it!) many doctors didn’t know how to treat leprosy so the cure was often isolation. The lepers were banished to Leper Hospitals and Leper Colonies. Leper Hospitals were the commonplace lepers were sent to help stem the spread of the disease. Leprosy was prevalent in Norway in the Medæval Times and, there are many records of Leper Hospitals and the disease still strewn over the country. Although Leper Hospitals were putrid places, Leper Hospitals also often housed the poor and sick – those desperate or hungry enough to risk infection because they were surprisingly wealthy places. Due to the communities’ fear of lepers and the disease, people not only paid taxes to the hospitals but also donated, paid tolls and left endowments to the hospitals. (Endowments accounted for much of the average hospital’s wealth!) Depending on the hospital and financial status of the leper, lepers could be asked to pay admission fees, too! A leper colony was a place that the lepers...
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...In Chaucer’s day, the theoretical function of the Pardoner’s office was to collect money for the church to use toward charity (“Pardoner’s Prologue” 258). There were specific rules about how they were to obtain those funds, and they were granted authority under a pope to sell indulgences to parishioners. The Pardoner’s position was included in the realm of the first estate, and was supposed to help improve society as a whole by encouraging charitable giving (“Pardoner’s Prologue” 258). Unfortunately, corruption quickly found its way into this clerical office. Pardoners, as human beings like everyone else, succumbed to avarice. They began to preach flowery sermons in order to appeal to the emotions of the common citizens and convince them to pay unnecessarily for extra favors or worthless relics, and collected the extra funds for their own motives. Chaucer used this pretext to comment on the first estate. Interestingly enough, the travelers in The Canterbury Tales call on the Pardoner to tell his tale because they want to hear a story with...
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...were in great demand. By the fourteenth century England was more urbanized; in two centuries the population in London arose from 18,000 people to 45,000 people. This means that merchants and craftsmen had more possible clients in a more reduced space. Also, common people like the yeoman were able to get small pieces of land to farm. As a result to urbanization and factors like the Black Death; merchants, craftsmen, and peasants were benefited. Little by little, the division among the estates began to become blurry. It was inevitable to notice the rising of the middle class; first, second, and third estate people were well aware as were the writers and thinkers of the time such as William Langland and Geoffrey Chaucer who reflect these changes on their writings and even show how they support these changes. In early medieval times, the idea that the world was to be run under a system that separated people according to their roles on society led to the feudal system. Important people in the church supported this idea therefore there no one would question it. In the 11th century, Bishop Aldebaron of Laon in France wrote: “triple is the house of God, which is thought to be one: some pray (1st estate), others fight (2nd estate), still others work (3rd estate); which three are joined together and may not be torn asunder”. Throughout the middle age the rigid cycle of the feudal system and division of estates were very clear but by the fourteen century they...
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...The Decline of the Church The Renaissance Italy: Birthplace of the Renaissance Italian Renaissance Humanism Machiavelli and Power Politics Leonardo Da Vinci Global Travel and Trade The African Cultural Heritage West African Kingdoms The Europeans in Africa Native American Cultures Maya Civilization The Empires of the Incas and the Aztecs The Spanish in the Americas and the Aftermath of Their Conquest The Impact of Technology Christian Humanism and the Northern Renaissance Luther and the Protestant Reformation The Spread of Protestantism The Catholic Reformation 2 WESTERN CIVILIZATIONS The French Revolution Napoleon Bonaparte The Industrial Revolution Advancing Industrialism Colonialism China and the West Social and Economic Realities Nineteenth-Century Social Theory: conservatism, liberalism & socialism The Radical View of Marx and Engels Picasso and the Birth of Cubism Futurism, Fauvism and Non Objective Art The Birth of Motion Pictures Freud and the Psyche Total War and Totalitarianism The First World War The Russian Revolution Nazi Totalitarianism The Second World War Identity and Liberation: Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X 3 WESTERN CIVILIZATIONS The Black Death The most devastating natural catastrophe of the early modern era was the bubonic plague, which hit Europe in 1347 and destroyed one third to one half of its population within less than a century. Originating in Asia...
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...During the fourteenth century Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales. The Canterbury Tales included several fictitious pilgrims, each having a prologue to describe them and a story to tell. The Pardoner, Chaucer's final pilgrim, acts and looks in a way deplorable to the rest of the travelers. The Pardoner is "man" most notable for his greed, physical abnormalities, and denial of the fictitious. His tale condemns his own nature, and shows the effects of alcohol on the human superego. Chaucer's description of the Pardoner is crucial to an understanding of his tale. The Pardoner's prologue although short, introduces the pardoner as a greedy man, who is willing to take advantage of others to get his fortune. His primary role as a pardoner is to...
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