The function of a pardoner in Chaucer’s time was to collect money for charitable purposes and to be the pope’s special agent in dispensing or rewarding contributors with certain pardons as a remission for sins. He could visit churches, receive money in the pope’s name and dispense indulgences. The pardoner’s tale displayed how greed and avarice can only bring treachery and death, the money causes them to behave in ways that lead to their demise.
In the prologue, the pardoner admits that he is a fraud and is motivated by greed and avarice and many sins that he himself displays. He preaches that money is the root of all evil but sells relics to others which is supposed to bring them great fortune; he also states that many of his sermons are the product of evil intentions. When asked to tell a tale he agrees only after he has food and wine to eat and drink.
He begins his tale about a group of young people who spend most of their time drinking and partying excessively, he names gluttony, drunkenness, gambling and swearing as a few sins they commit. As they drink a coffin passes and they are told its one of their old friends who was killed by the hands of death; the three personified death and decided to search for him and slay him in order to avenge the death of their old buddy. On the search they passed an old man who searched for youth again, he said “death won’t even take him” when he said this the three demanded to be lead to where death resided, the old man told them death was under the oak tree in the groove, when the approached the tree death wasn’t there, but eight bushels of gold.
All three friends automatically began to plot on ways to receive a larger amount if not all the money, the older two sent the youngest back to town for food and wine, while he was away they decided to kill him and slit the money two ways instead; unknowingly the younger one had