Canterbury Tales – Prologue
Characters
The knight
Squire
Yeoman
Nun (Prioress - a nun who is head of her convent
Monk
Friar
Merchant
Oxford Cleric
Lawyer
Franklin
Guildsmen
Cook
Skipper
Doctor
Wife of Bath
Parson
Plowman
Miller
Manciple
Reeve
Summoners are usually low-class characters whose job it is to bring people before the
ecclesiastical court for sins such as illicit intercourse.
Pardoner - Pardoners granted papal indulgences—reprieves from penance in exchange for charitable donations
to the Church. Many pardoners collected profits for themselves.
Friar - member of certain religious orders who practice the principles of monastic life and devote
themselves to the service of humanity in the secular world. Originally, their regulations forbade the
holding either of community or personal property, and the resulting dependence of friars on voluntary
contributions in order to live caused them to be known as mendicant orders.
Friars differed from monks in that the monk was attached to a specific community within which he led
a cloistered life, having no direct contact with the secular world. The friar, on the other hand, belonged
to no particular monastic house but to a general order, and worked as an individual in the secular
world. Thus, friar and monk are not synonymous terms, even though in popular usage monk is often
used as a generic term for all members of religious orders.
Franklin - A medieval English freeholder of nonnoble birth holding extensive property
Cleric - n medieval times the clergy were one of the few groups who could read, and
therefore were often employed to do bookkeeping and similar work.
Parson – priest of a particular church
Yeoman A yeoman owned his own land and often farmed it himself. His land would
be equivalent to 30 - 120 acres. A Medieval yeoman was required to be armed and
trained with a bow. Wealthy yeoman would be expected to also be trained and
armed with a sword, dagger and the longbow. Yeoman were therefore often
employed to guard and protector the nobility.
Manciple The person who purchased and managed the storage of food and other
provisions in a monastery.
Reeve The Reeve supervised all work on a lord's property. The Reeve ensured that
everyone began and stopped work on time
Convents, Courts and Colleges: The Prioress and the Second Nun
Julia Bolton Holloway http://www.umilta.net/equal4.html#prioress
On a pilgrimage, ideally, all were to be equal, kings with beggars, women with
men, which was a major reason for the pilgrimages performed by such women
as Saint Birgitta of Sweden, a member of that country's royal household, and
Margery Kempe, the wife of a Norwich burgess. But, from the Council of
Whitby until Vatican II, cloistered clergy were not to go on pilgrimage. Theirs
was the interior pilgrimage, their cloister with its well at the center a paradigm
of paradise amidst the wilderness of the world and its sinfulness. Chaucer's
cavalcade is satiric and comic. Pilgrims ideally were to walk, and preferably,
barefoot, on pilgrimages. We hear of Henry II doing so after his murder of the
Archbishop, Thomas Becket. Even Henry VIII, before his murder of Thomas
More, went so on pilgrimage to Walsingham. Chaucer, placing his pilgrims all
on horseback, is joking, a joke his medieval readers would have relished for its
code-switching and breaking with tradition, but to which modern readers miss,
having lost that canonical lore.