Canterbury Tales And Decameron Attitude Towards Religion

The church grew corrupt with its absolute power. The pope was considered a figure of authority and was viewed as a ruler. The church grew corrupt with its absolute power. The pope was considered the ultimate authority .Martin Luther led the reformation of the church.

The Black Death and Great Famine of 14th century Europe were major crises, so when the Church, who was suppose to have an answer to everything, could not stop such occurrences, the people’s relationship with the Church was completely altered. Many scholars of the church died due to wide spread diseases and hunger ravaging Europe, leaving less adequate people behind to run the church. At the same time, those scholars that where alive did not give the people much hope or security because they were unable to give answers as to how to diminish these disasters. In return, the people slowly began to explore elsewhere for such answers, weakening the Church’s monopoly over the people’s every move. This expansion of thought brought about the emergence

Overall, there were two big aspects leading to a reduce of faith in the Church. First, there was the failure to help the suffering, then the wealth the Church had while everyone else was suffering. The formerly good reputation of priests declined as they did not know what to do. They experimented with different measures and while some of them actually did help, most of them only added to the confusion. Another important aspect was that the Church became richer.

The Decameron is a frame narrative written by Boccaccio. He is writing about the Plague he witnesses in the city of Florence. The Plague is called the “Black Death” which kills thirty percent of Europe’s population. This story explains how serious this disease is because it shows how men and women fled from Florence to a countryside to prevent from catching it. The disease is carried by flees, unfortunately, there were rats on the ships heading to Europe, the flees would bite the rats and then the flees bite the humans who eventually contracted this disease. These people are not aware of this in this time period and have several different assumptions on what is really causing this outbreak. The uninfected talk about what the Black Death is, the causes of the disease, how contagious this plague is, and the effects it has on their society and their responses to the plague.

Many different groups of people were very unhappy with the church because they felt that it was no longer spiritual; it was becoming a huge political phenomenon. Overall, people felt that the church had too much power. John Wycliffe, Marsilius of Padua, and Dante Alighieri in particular are perfect examples of those who were vocal about their opinions of the church. Because of their documents, it is clear that the church had become a corrupted society.

In the 1300s’ the black plague struck parts of Asia, Europe and parts of northern Africa. Many people believed that this was an act of God, and it disrupted the growth of the people of Europe. This was big on the Church because priests left their duties, and the Church was on the decline. Although there were many ways the church was on the decline, the black plague is the main reason. The priests abandoned their duties, many people suffered, and the church became richer. Therefore, I believe the black plague played a key role on the churches decline.

Initially, the people of medieval Western Europe obeyed the church without question, including rulers during the time, who often times actually had less power than the Roman Catholic church. During these times, “Any blow suffered by the church was a direct blow to [a man’s] own morale.”12 As the plague tightened its grasp on the aspects of life, people began to question the church in large. People felt as though the church, best equipped to be in touch with God, had given no warning, and when it was too late pointed out the people's mistakes.13 Additionally, priests, who some would expect to be spared from the plague, were just as touched, if not in more danger when still administering the Last Rites. It was commented that, “The best of the clergy died, the worst survived.”14 Accordingly, those who cared for themselves lived longer during the plague than others who attempted to care for others. “... Parishes remained altogether unserved and beneficed Parsons had turned away from the care of their benefices for fear of death.”15 The priests that did survive were increasingly failing to fulfill their duties, and instead seeking better paid conditions.16 “Paid clerics would serve only if they were paid excessive salaries… priests hurried off to… where they could get more money than in their own benefices…”17 Perhaps in accordance to this, primarily the wealthy retained complete faith in the Roman Catholic Church, while others in Western Europe began searching for alternative gods and new sources of comfort.18 During that search there was a surge of religious fervor comparable to that shown later during the Age of Exploration. By the end of the Black Death, the majority of medieval people of Western Europe were no longer blinded by the supposed immortality of the Roman Catholic Church. Those that saw

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s the Canterbury Tales he writes about a man who claims can sell indulgences, and makes many questionable assertions. Some of his traits can be seen today in the republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump. The similarities between the two are seen throughout the pardoner’s apologia, and tale, and show how lying, hypocrisy, and contradicting oneself were issues since before the 14th century.

Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales demonstrated the effect of the plague on literature, as it is filled with fleshed-out characters of varying social classes, described in intricate detail and description not common to literature before the Black Plague (Sayre 455). In all these matters, the Black Plague changed Europe forever. Distrust in the church and religion grew as a result of the plague and, due to the social

The Canterbury Tales, a collection of tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, was written in Middle English at the end of the 14th century (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2011). It is considered to be the best work of literature in English in the Middle Ages (Johnston, 1998). Chaucer uses literary devices as no one had ever done. In addition, he chose to use English instead of Latin. This masterpiece is structured in a similar way as Bocaccio's Decameron. The tales are organized within a frame narrative (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2011) explained in the General Prologue by the narrator: a group of pilgrims that are going to visit St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury's Cathedral. These pilgrims are from different estates of the medieval society: nobility, the

What an absurd image it could be if the priests purify sinners' soul with golden coins rather than faith? How ridiculous it could be if monks give up helping the poor but pursue the life with luxurious clothes and endless lust? In Geoffrey Chaucer's frame tale The Canterbury Tale, translated by Nevil Coghill, the dark inside the facade of the church has been seen through. By illustrating vivid characters from all classes of the church, The Canterbury Tale constructs the decayed climate in the Medieval period . It discloses the corruption of the church, reflect the greed and hypocrisy of the clergies.

The woman was fair skinned and her body was slim. She wore a stripped silken

Towards the end of the Middle Ages and into the duration of the Renaissance, the Medieval Church’s social and political power dwindled. Centuries prior the Catholic Church gained a surplus of control, largely due to the stability it maintained during the chaotic breakdown of the Western Roman Empire . Yet toward the end of the Middle Ages the Church set in motion factors that would ultimately lead to its downfall as the definitive figure of authority. However, despite political and social controversy surrounding the church, the institutions it established cleared a path for a new way of thinking, shaping society in an enduring way.

The Executioner's Song is a story of a rather eccentric man - Gary Gilmore; and the events in between his phase of being released from the prison and being executed. The story begins with the reunion of Gary and Brenda,who are cousins. Gary gets another chance to work and improve his life. While he begins well at the professional level, he fails at his many attempts in the dating scene. He then meets Nicole, with whom in the rest of the novel he shares a tumultuous relationship with. Given his obessesion with Nicole, Gary gets back to his old bad ways. This same obession turns into a rage and Gary subsequently starts