The Host's "offensive" language

In the links between the Tales, Chaucer continues to give us clues to prompt us to see Christ concealed within the Host. A prominent objection to his identity as Christ is his offensive language--but wait. The innkeeper speaking profanely of things sacred is not our object; we are pursuing a hidden message, not surface comedy.
     First, let's establish what the Middle Ages understood to be offensive, that is, sinful language. To use God's name or refer to elements of Christ's passion and death as part of everyday conversation, was trivializing the sacred. For example: Christ's Holy Name, Christ's cross, By God's curse. Such phrases were believed to offend God. They were sinful and to be avoided. Today's values, to a great extent, appear to have changed.
   
Now to the Tales. Chaucer, in the General Prologue just before we meet the Host, says that "Christ himself spoke very broadly (freely) in holy writ / And you well know it is no villainy." This guides our view of the Host's words as simple and direct, assuming his expressions to be neither comedy, nor blasphemy.
     His supposedly objectionable language is scattered among the Tales. His ventings, rather than "offensive to God," are direct references to Christ's passion and death. These are personal recollections:

God's worshipful passion
By the cross
By blood and bones

But the most meaningful of the Host's outbursts is "Harrow, by nails and by blood."
     Chaucer and his contemporaries knew that Christ had been born to die. A medieval recounting of Christ's death says, "the godhead went into hell, / And harrowed it." This tells us that Christ's first action, after he died, was to harrow hell.
     Harrowing is the release of souls of the worthy, who had been waiting through time for their Savior. His coming freed them to enter paradise. This consummation of God's plan was described in a poem of the Middle Ages called The Harrowing of Hell.
     It is also commemorated in the ancient tradition of the Apostles' Creed: Christ "Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, died and was buried: He descended into hell: The third day he rose again from the dead."
     Then the Host's precise recollection--"Harrow, by nails and by blood"--recalls His harrowing of hell, as a consequence of being crucified.

To state the obvious, for those who would insist on the Host's words as blasphemy, we need only realize that God Himself could not use God's name in vain, nor could He blaspheme.
     Next time, we will consider the Host's confrontation by the loathsome, contemptible Pilgrim Pardoner.