The Summoner's Tale

The main tale of a grasping friar seems to contain many original elements composed by Chaucer but Jill Mann suggests that it is based on "The Tale of the Priest's Bowels", a French thirteenth-century fabliau: "A pious priest, when on his deathbed, was urged by two holy friars to revoke some of the charitable bequests he has already made, so that he may give something to their order.

[3] In Caesarius's story, a monk ascends to heaven and finds his fellow Cistercians living under the cloak of the Virgin Mary.

The friar, characteristically, is irritated that Thomas is not giving all of his money solely to him, and points out to him that a "ferthyng" (a farthing) is not worth anything if split into twelve.

The friar then told of Cyrus, the Persian king who had the River Gyndes destroyed because one of his horses had drowned in it.

The enraged friar found the lord of the village and told him of the embarrassment he suffered, angrily wondering how he was supposed to divide a fart into twelve.

The Summoner uses the tale to satirise friars in general, with their long sermonising and their tendency to live well despite vows of poverty.

It reflects on the theme of clerical corruption, a common one within The Canterbury Tales and within the wider 14th-century world as seen by the Lollard movement.

Chaucer ironically remarks that the Summoner only friend among the Pilgrims is the equally greedy and hypocritical church official Pardoner Pasolini adapted the tale in his film The Canterbury Tales with John Francis Lane as the corrupt friar, Hugh McKenzie-Bailey as the dying Thomas, Anita Sanders as Thomas' wife (her scenes were later removed and are now lost) and Settimo Castagna as the Angel.

Pasolini also adapts the scene from the Summoner's prologue where the Devil defecates corrupt friars from his anus.