Chaucer Had It Right

Certain incidents this week reminded me of the time almost 60 years ago when I spent a summer selling ice cream bars and foot-long hotdogs on the carnival grounds of many a state and county fairgrounds in the Midwest. Sometimes after work – usually after midnight – some of us would go through the house of mirrors to get some kicks after a 16-hour day. We laughed at the absurd, grotesque images our faces and bodies made as we groaned and screamed through the walkways.

The incidents this week were about as distorted. Californians supporting gay marriage, led by a married Catholic, are working to get a measure on the ballot that would ban divorce in the state. Californians, with the money and sidewalk support of the Mormon and Catholic churches, rejected a proposal last year to allow same-sex marriages because they wanted to “protect traditional marriages.” So the supporters of gay marriage said, “Gee, if homophobes are so sure their marriage would go on the rocks in Gay Bay, why not just ban divorces?” Problem solved. The supporters of the divorce ban are funding the measure attempt by selling T-shirts for $12 emblazoned with stick figures chained at the wrists.

At the present time no states ban divorce. Some countries do. The Roman Catholic Church absolutely prohibits divorce – unless a lot of money changing hands magically changes the term “divorce” to “annulment.” I never did understand how a thirty-year marriage blessed with six children could turn into an annulment, but cold, hard cash into a bishop’s coffers can bend church law into the miracle of finding another trophy wife. I have been led to believe that about $5,000 leads to the miracle, but what do I know? The U.S. divorce rate is now at 47.9 percent, with evangelical Christians leading the pack of altar splitters. Maybe it has something to do with being “born again.”

Here Comes That Shroud Again

It seems whenever a church gets in trouble with its constituents it opens its medieval closet of tricks and pulls out a relic or two to bamboozle its patrons. Shortly after the Sisters of Mercy, a major Irish order of Roman Catholic nuns, offered $193.5 million to settle claims against it for allowing rape, molestation, beatings, and cruelty in its schools and orphanages in Ireland, the Vatican released a story about a Vatican researcher proving that the Shroud of Turin was actually Christ’s winding sheet.

Barbara Frale insists in a book that a nearly invisible text that can be seen only through photo analysis proves the shroud came from Christ’s time on earth. The shroud is not normally available for study. Frale said Greek, Latin, and Aramic words near the edge of the shroud include the words “Jesus Nazarene” and records that he was sentenced to death. Being a disputed relic, the shroud is stored securely at Turin Cathedral and is shown only every ten years. A reporter who has followed the shady history of the shroud irreverently wrote that the mark looked like a “Fruit of the Loom” label.

Why the Vatican released this story is certainly open to question. Just six weeks before this heavenly revelation there was a big story out of Rome that an Italian professor of organic chemistry had “reproduced” the shroud with all of its markings by using materials available in the Middle Ages. The shroud stored in the Turin Cathedral shows the back and front of a bearded man with long hair, arms crossed at chest, with the entire winding sheet marked by blood from wounds of the wrists, feet, and side. In 1988 the Shroud of Turin was exposed to carbon dating at labs at Oxford University, Zurich, and the University of Arizona. This process dated the shroud as being made between 1260 and 1390, which was near the peak of the relic and pilgrimage scams which brought about the Protestant Reformation a couple of centuries later.

Geoffrey Chaucer, Social Critic and Storyteller of the 14th Century

When I heard about the Shroud of Turin again and the idea that the Vatican was trying to sell this story to the world, evidently to help distract the public from the wretched stories of rape, buggery, and beatings coming out of the Irish Report, I immediately thought of The Pardoner’s Tale in Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales.” Readers may remember some of the stories of the characters on pilgrimage, particularly of the Wife of Bath, the Monk, the Knight, the Prioress, and others on the road to Canterbury Cathedral. Chaucer was of the 14th century middle-class, the son of a wine merchant. He served in military, political, and diplomatic posts practically all of his 40 adult years. His most fascinating characters were of the medieval church. He admired some and laughed at others. Chaucer’s story of the “saintly” pardoner, a man who sold junk, hair cuttings, animal and human bones as saintly relics reminds one of Wall Street sharks dealing with sub-prime loans. Chaucer summed him up this way:
His wallet lay before him brimful of pardons (indulgences for sale) from the very seat of Rome…
He said he had a piece of the very sail St. Peter, when he fished in Galilee
Before Christ caught him, used upon the sea. He had a latten (brass) cross
Embossed with stones, and in a glass he carried some pig’s bones.
And with these holy relics, when he found some village parson grubbing his poor ground
He would get more money in a single day, then in two months would come the parson’s
Way….He was in church a noble ecclesiastic. But best of all he sang the offertory
(when the collection plate is passed). For he understood that when this song was sung
Then he must preach, and sharpen up his tongue to rake in the cash,
As well he knew his art, so he sang out gaily, with full heart.

Chaucer was not one to mince words. He used the language of the streets and taverns. When I studied Chaucer in college at Moorhead State, Dr. Byron Murray used to separate the boys and girls to different classrooms for some of the more bawdy, ribald tales. He was a kind gentleman who didn’t want to embarrass anyone.

“I’ll Be Bound If I Don’t Help You Carry Them Around…”

In the Pardoner’s Tale the “authorized seller of relics” is attempting to get money out of one of his fellow travelers, telling him if he kissed his relics for money he would go to heaven. The skeptic soon put the pardoner in his place: “I’ll do nothing of the sort, for love or riches! You’d make me kiss a piece of your old britches and for a saintly relic make it pass although it had the tincture of your ass. By the cross of St. Helen (believed to have discovered the cross of Jesus 200 years after the crucifixion), I wish I had your balls here in my hand for relics! Cut’em off, and I’ll be bound if I don’t help you carry them around. I’ll have the things enshrined in a hog’s turd.” Well, I warned you. Chaucer didn’t mince words.

I think women would enjoy spending some time with the Wife of Bath’s tale. It has more “marriage counseling” in it than a semester of university psychobabble. Chaucer’s description of this fascinating character:

“She had been an excellent woman all her life. Five men in turn had taken her to wife. Omitting other youthful company…Her teeth were set with little gaps between (very sexy in the 14th century), easily on her ambling horse she sat. A skirt swathed up her hips and they were large. She was a good fellow, a ready tongue was hers. All remedies of love she knew by name, for she had all the tricks of that old game.”

There’s no doubt that Chaucer felt that women should play a more prominent role in all phases of life, particularly business and religion. Chaucer was such a powerful writer the church didn’t dare take him on. He summed up women’s views through the Wife of Bath’s Tale:”In the state that God assigned to each of us I’ll persevere. I’m not fastidious. In wifehood I will use my instrument as freely by my Maker it was lent…My husband shall enjoy it night and morrow when it pleases him to come and pay his debt. But a husband, and I’ve not been thwarted yet, shall always be my debtor and my slave.” A very interesting 21st century position – but made in the 14th.

Another Piece of the Cross

During this month the Vatican also unveiled another relic to counter the effects of the Irish Report. The Irish government has asked the Roman Catholic Church for $1.5 billion to help pay for the 14,000 people suing the church and the government because of the abuse committed by priests and nuns. The government is liable because it had approved the programs of the church in schools and orphanages. This is what you get when you don’t separate church and state.

A 6th century reliquary called the Crux Vaticana containing what might be shards of Jesus’ cross was added to the church’s religious art collection in Rome. Pearls, sapphires, emeralds and other gems encrust the foot-high object. Supposedly it was presented to the Vatican in the late 500’s. Legend has it that cross fragments are stored in churches around the world, including Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and in Rome’s Holy Cross Basilica. If all of these fragments were reassembled, I wonder how big the cross would be?

At the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, the Vatican decided that every Catholic church had to have a relic on its altar. That’s when the fun started. If priests did not fulfill this obligation they were excommunicated. Pope Benedict seems to have revived interest in praying to relics. A French priest is currently touring the United States with the bones of Mary Magdalene – and is said to be having a successful tour. The bones of 19th century nun St. Therese of Lisieux were escorted around Great Britain in September and October, making 28 stops. Reporter David Farley wrote: “If the thousands of devotees who came to witness these lovely bones are any indication, the faithful are hungering for a less sterile form of religion.”

The relic requirement was lifted in 1969 so the cult of relics was declared officially dead. But if you are still interested in building your case for the clicking of the pearly gates, you can buy the vertebrae of St. Redempta, a sixth century martyr, complete with authentic papers and a papal wax seal, for $2,500 at A.R. Broomer, LTD in New York City. If that’s a little heavy for your pardoner’s wallet, a bone shard of St. Patrick can be had for $495 – but with no authentication papers. A piece of flesh from Pope Pius X is only $350.

Broomer’s at one time or other has sold a thorn from the crown of thorns, the Virgin Mary’s breast milk, the swaddling clothes of Jesus, a sliver of wood from THE manger, Joseph’s walking stick, a strand of the Virgin Mary’s hair, and physical parts from practically all the Apostles. At one time in the Middle Ages 18 churches claimed they had the foreskin of Jesus on their altar. Charles IV, the 14th century Holy Roman emperor, held an annual relics show showing off his prize possession, the breast of Mary Magdalene. But Renaissance Prince Albrecht of 16th century Brandenburg topped them all with his collection. If you could afford to buy his entire collection, you could earn 39,245,120 years of remission from Purgatory.

I’m so glad some people can ignore this battle of the relics to do work with real parts of the body. Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medecine, recently explained how organs can be replaced. As an example, a “soup” of cells is shaped in the form of a bladder and placed in an incubator. Six weeks later a bladder is removed from the incubator and transplanted to a patient. It can be made in three sizes: small, medium, and large. Now, there is a miracle of the human mind.

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