The Summoner's Occupational Disease.

THE pilgrims which Geoffrey Chaucer described in his Prologue to the Canterbuty Tales (c. 1387) included all social ranks and vocations. Many of the tightly drawn portraits of these travellers were treated satirically, pointing up the evils of the time. The religious figures especially, the Prioress, Monk, Friar and Pardoner, all ofwhom were guilty ofsome kind ofclerical abuse, came in for severe comment. But, undoubtedly, the most vcious sketch of all is that of the Summoner, an officer of the Church whose duty it was to ferret out delinquents in morals, especially in matters of fornication and adultery, and to bring them before the ecclesiastical courts. This figure was the most hated and feared church official in the Middle Ages, and Chaucer's picture is unusually caustic. The Summoner had, from old acquaintance, whores and bawds as his agents, who informed him of all their clients, whether it was 'Sir Robert or Sir Huwe, or Jakke, or Rauf'. But for a quart ofwine or a purse he might allow a fellow to have his concubine a while. And yet, Chaucer says that this man himself was as hot and lecherous as a sparrow, a man who 'ful prively a fynch eek koude he pulle'.1 To round out the picture, the Summoner suffered from an unusually virulent disease: