Chapter 35 - The Church, Religion and Culture

Summary

The chapter examines Chaucer’s attitude to the Church, and to the demands of living the Christian life in fourteenth-century England. The seeming double-mindedness of his scathing criticism of religious professionals, and yet his deeply held faith, arose from a desire to ask what it is to be a Christian. Taking up Chaucer’s own quest, the chapter asks how Christian was late medieval society, what was required of the ordinary parishioner in terms of practice and belief, and what opportunities were available for people to go beyond these basic expectations in their efforts to attain salvation? There were choices to be made but also many limitations upon the ordinary believer. So not everyone agreed on how best to reach heaven, and there were cultural as well as social gulfs that undermined the ideal of a unified Church. These were problems of which Chaucer seems to have been acutely aware.