The Summoner’s Prologue and Tale

Summary

I. John of Wales, Communiloquium, I.iv.4 459

II. John of Wales, Communiloquium, I.iii.11 460

III. Li Dis de le vescie à prestre (ed. Willem Noomen) 463

The Prologue to The Summoner’s Tale begins another round in the quarrel between the Summoner and the Friar, whose own tale about a summoner carried off to hell has just very effectively discredited not only this particular Canterbury summoner, but summoners in general. In the preamble to his tale, the Summoner is quick to draw an association between the devil and friars, suggesting thereby their rightful place in hell. His anecdote about a friar who is ravished to hell in a vision is blatantly provocative. Seeing no other friars there, the friar asks the angel who is acting as his guide if any friars ever come into hell. For an answer, the angel leads him to Satan, from whose “ers” swarm, as bees from a hive, “Twenty thousand freres on a route” (III, 1695).

Visions of hell are, of course, common in medieval literature and Satan is often depicted as occupying the lowest place there (Dante, Inferno, 34.28ff). Chaucer’s version of this motif in the Summoner’s Prologue is distinguished by the image of Satan’s “ers” and its location as a place of punishment for the miscreant and sinful, although this kind of story and this way of representing Satan did occur in the Middle Ages, “usually in vulgar jests or curses.” Without reference to friars, Chaucer uses the same motif in The Romaunt of the Rose to indicate how the sinful Wikked Tonge will be punished: “For thou shalt for this synne dwelle/ Right in the devels ers of helle” (7575–6).

Similar portrayals of Satan appear in the art of the period. Francisco Traini’s The Last Judgement, a fresco in the Camposanto of Pisa, which may have been seen by Chaucer during his travels in Italy in 1373, presents a powerful illustration of Satan’s defecation of man the sinner. Both Giotto’s Last Judgment (c. 1306) at Padua and the Last Judgment of Giusto di Menabuoi in the parish church of Viboldone near Milan also depict a large Satan consuming and excreting sinners.