Avarice

Avarice is presented as both a moral disease and a system of exploitation. It is the vice that the Pardoner repeatedly denounces in public while privately making it the sole purpose of his preaching. His familiar maxim, “Radix malorum est Cupiditas,” means that greed is the root of evil; yet the maxim also exposes the contradiction at the heart of his ministry, because the preacher’s own greed governs his words, gestures, and treatment of his listeners.

Definition and Repeated Theme

The Pardoner has one permanent subject: avarice and the corruption associated with it. He knows his sermon by heart and presents its theme as an established formula, “Radix malorum est Cupiditas.” The repetition gives the phrase the sound of a liturgical refrain, but its moral authority is undermined by the speaker’s confession that greed—not pastoral concern—is what brings him to the pulpit.

The vice is therefore defined through a tension between what the sermon says and what the sermon does. Avarice is condemned as a spiritual evil, yet it also supplies the mechanism by which the Pardoner operates. His language has a public moral meaning, while his private intention is acquisitive. The same words can direct an audience away from greed and direct its money toward the preacher.

The Pardoner’s Hypocrisy and Method

The Pardoner openly admits that he can preach against the very vice that defines his own conduct. He says that he is guilty of avarice, but that other people can still be persuaded by his preaching to abandon the sin and repent. This apparent success does not redeem him, because he immediately distinguishes moral effect from personal motive: repentance is not his principal concern, and he preaches only to satisfy his greed.

His method depends on converting moral fear into payment. He speaks against avarice and “all such cursedness” so that his listeners will give their pence, but the money is intended for him. The sermon thus becomes a commercial instrument disguised as religious instruction. He does not need to believe the virtue he recommends; he needs only to perform it convincingly enough to make the audience respond.

The Pardoner’s craft lies in this separation of doctrine from intention. His tongue and hands can spin an elaborate yarn, and he takes pleasure in the skill with which he does so. He presents himself as authoritative and holy, using the appearance of sanctity to make his performance credible. The more effectively he condemns greed, the more effectively he can profit from the fear and repentance his words produce.

Avarice in the Tale of the Three Rioters

The embedded moral tale gives avarice a narrative form. Three rioters discover treasure and decide to spend it in mirth and pleasure, treating the sudden wealth as Fortune’s gift. Their first response to the gold is not gratitude, restraint, or concern for justice, but immediate consumption: the treasure is something to be spent as quickly and freely as it arrived.

Their fellowship changes when greed encounters the prospect of possession. The three men resolve to kill Death, but the search for an abstract enemy is displaced by suspicion and violence among themselves. Two of the rioters kill the third, while the surviving pair plan to poison one another. The gold that seemed to promise shared pleasure instead reorganizes their relationship around concealment, rivalry, and betrayal.

The result is a closed chain of avaricious intention. The two killers meet homicide, and the false poisoner also dies. Their deaths are not accidental interruptions of the plot; they are the logical consequences of treating wealth as an absolute object of desire. The treasure does not merely accompany the violence. It generates the distrust that makes violence possible and turns every companion into an obstacle to personal possession.

Irony, Judgment, and Consequences

The Pardoner’s tale is morally effective even though its teller is morally compromised. He can move listeners toward repentance while remaining attached to the vice he condemns. This creates a sharp irony: the preacher’s doctrine is sound enough to expose the rioters’ destruction, but his own practice reproduces the same acquisitive logic in a different form. He condemns greed in order to obtain money through the audience’s response to his condemnation.

The tale closes by extending its warning beyond the three rioters. The speaker asks that God forgive his listeners’ trespasses and guard them from avarice, then presents his holy pardon as protection from the sin. Yet the appeal remains entangled with the Pardoner’s self-interest. Even the offer of spiritual safety can become part of the transaction through which he seeks profit.

Avarice therefore governs both the story within the story and the surrounding act of narration. In the rioters’ case, greed destroys friendship through murder and poison. In the Pardoner’s case, it corrupts religious speech by making repentance a route to personal gain. The maxim “Radix malorum est Cupiditas” consequently functions as doctrine, plot principle, and self-indictment: greed is the root of the rioters’ deaths, but it is also the hidden root of the Pardoner’s performance.