Thursday, February 9, 2012

The Host's Lament

A comic image could provide a distracting surface characterization--that of an apparently henpecked husband. Many decades of laughter have concentrated on comedy in the Host's commentary and in so doing have perpetuated the impression of a single meaning. Let's look further.

The Host has a wife but she has not been mentioned before, because she is not part of the pilgrim company. She is never seen but merely commented upon in two brief snatches of the Host's conversation. And who would we recognize as the Host's/Christ's wife--the Church. She is the traditional Bride of Christ. The Host's reactions hold a dual intent, as an unhappy husband and as Christ expressing covert distress about his self-righteous wife. As a beleaguered husband, he reports his wife's faults, but breaks off, hesitant to say too much. The concern is the same for Chaucer. He dare not have his dissent regarding the Church become obvious.
     These are the Host's laments:

"When I punish my servants, my wife brings me weapons and cries, 'Slay the dogs everyone. And break them, both back and every bone!' If a neighbor will not bow to my wife in church, or is so fearless as to offend her, she attacks me to my face when she comes home. She feels I'm a milksop, a cowardly fool, who would not stand by her authority.
     "Someday she'll make me slay a neighbor, for she is strong in her arms, by my faith. That's what he will find, who offends her by his deeds or words."

These are chilling comments about a spouse. How could the poet fail to ask himself, "Would Christ use these methods if He walked the earth today?" Chaucer says enough for us to understand, but breaks off--before the intention becomes transparent.
     Evasions are contained in "Let's pass away from this matter" and "It doesn't matter! let it go." To criticize would be perilous, the Host tells us, because "It would be reported back to her." These comments taken seriously--rather than as comic exaggerations--portray a harridan, a tyrant.

H. C. Lea, in his The Inquisition of the Middle Ages, seems to be describing precisely what the Host refers to. Lea tells that torture had long been recognized as an effective tool and in the early 1300s Inquisitors were given permission to apply it without limitations to heretics. Thus, he states, "the Church grew harder and crueller and more unchristian." Paralleling the Host's caution about his wife's strong arms and being reported, Lea declares, "to human apprehension the papal Inquisition was wellnigh ubiquitous, omniscient, and omnipotent." The harsh, letter-of-the-law procedures of the fourteenth-century Church hardly reflect Christ's Gospel message of love and justice.
     The Host's fear, that he would "slay a neighbor," was well-founded. Just months after Chaucer's death the Inquisition sentenced an Englishman to be burned at the stake.

Suddenly, at a point in my research, this terrifying image of the Host's wife clearly became a portrait of the Church. The realization devastated me. As a Catholic, my feeling about my relationship to the Church had always been that of a loving child. She was my mother! The terror of this fourteenth -century portrayal brought anguish to my mind and heart.

Virginia had seen that image before I'd said a word about it. When I reached the final chapter of the book, her face grew serious, almost grim, as she said "You haven't mentioned the Host's wife," and added, "I recall Chaucer's description of her as a hard, cruel person." After a pause she said, "She must be the Church!"

The Host laments that his wife is cruel, demanding, quarrelsome, and unfeeling. If his words are those of an innkeeper, we see a dreadful married relationship. But, if uttered by Christ accusing the Church as cruel, demanding, quarrelsome, unfeeling, these traits are an apt description of the medieval Church's power and widespread action of the Inquisition. We may ask, "Where is the love and justice of Christ's teachings?" But such a question could not be spoken aloud in the fourteenth century without severe consequences. It took a courageous poet under cover of allegory to express such fears and frustrations.
     The facts of this dreadful image of the Church cannot be denied. I shuddered when it leapt out at me. I still shudder.

No comments:

Post a Comment