Seller of papal indulgences; The —’s Tale (Chaucer)

Usage examples of pardoner.

Powerful art Thou to do as Thou willest, there is none other God but Thee, the Gracious, the Most Bountiful, the Compassionate, the Bestower, the Pardoner, the Precious, the All-Knowing.

The rutted roads, always either too dusty or too muddy, carried an endless flow of pilgrims and peddlers, merchants with their packtrains, bishops making visitations, tax-collectors and royal officials, friars and pardoners, wandering scholars, jongleurs and preachers, messengers and couriers who wove the network of communications from city to city.

When bishops purchased benefices at the price of a year’s income, they passed the cost down, so that corruption spread through the hierarchy from canons and priors to priesthood and cloistered clergy, down to mendicant friars and pardoners.

Chaucer exemplifies this by showing an argument between the Pardoner (a church official of the secular variety) and the Friar, who is in direct competition with the Pardoner for money and religious influence over the parish villages they both travel through.

But many pardoners were out-and-out frauds, selling worthless pieces of paper, and even legitimate ones often kept more than their share of the proceeds.

Most pardoners, like this one, claimed to have come "straight from the court of Rome," with a bagful of pardons "al hoot" off the presses, though of course our Pardoner hasn't set foot outside England.

I might have told him that I was the king of my profession, the best of all pardoners, a genius hacker with the truly magic touch, who could slip into any computer ever designed and make it dance to my tune.

Churchmen of all casts, friars, priests, monks, holy sisters, pardoners, even two hermits, but by far the largest group were buyers and sellers headed for the London mar­ket.