Chaucer and Changing Priorities
A character in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales tells a story of an ancient knight who had a beautiful daughter whose beauty was exceeded only by her own chastity, gentleness and virtue. On day, as she walked through the market, she caught the eye of a lecherous and corrupt judge, who immediately set his heart on having her for his physical pleasure. He arranged for another criminal to bring a false charge to the court against the noble knight.
On the appointed day, this false witness came to the court. He claimed that the noble knight had stolen his slave girl at birth and that the girl was not his daughter at all. Though the knight brought many reputable witnesses on his behalf, and each in his turn testified and gave evidence that the girl was the knight’s offspring, yet the evil judge ruled against the poor knight. This judge ordered that the girl be brought to the court and placed under his care.
The sad knight returned home and called his daughter. He told her of the evil man’s scheme and the court order. With a heavy heart, he told her that she must die rather than be dishonored by the lecherous judge. Though she fainted from despair, yet the noble girl agreed, and asked only that her father use his expertise to make her death quick. She then fainted again, and as she lay there on the floor, the poor knight drew his sword and beheaded his beautiful daughter.
He brought her head to the judge, and when the people saw it, they rose up against the judge, tortured him, and finally hanged him and his accomplices.
This is a tragic story, and I do not agree with the knight’s actions, but I post it because of what it says about our modern culture. How far we have come! We have come so far from the values of the ancients! We do not value virtue at all.
Hypocrisy
Whenever someone in the public eye is caught in some indecency or tresspass, and that person happens to have expressed any traditional moral views on some prior date, then we hear the cries of “hypocrisy”. But is this hypocrisy? Is it hypocrisy if a man decries the evil of some sin and is later caught therein?
If I do things that I think are morally wrong, does that make me a hypocrite? If so, then we should all be hypocrites, or else none of us have a conscience. We should all of us admit that we are hypocrites, since we all sin against God and conscience, or else we have no God or conscience. Is the addict a hypocrite when he curses his addiction and longs to be free? Is the criminal a hypocrite when he feels his guilt? Is every man a hypocrite who ever goes against what he knows to be right?
Let’s go one step further. If I do things that I say are morally wrong, does that make me a hypocrite? If so, then we had better make ourselves hypocrites, or else watch our morality roll downhill, as I discussed in “The Check Valve of Society”. If none can say that anything that they do or have done is wrong, then will we see the moral standards of the society decline, because man errs continually, and so must continually add to the list of things that cannot be identified as wrong. he must lengthen the list of the acceptable. In fact we have seen this and are now watching helplessly as it happens around us.
If, however, hypocrisy means making myself seem that which I am not, then it is OK to call wrong “wrong” even if I am a perpetrator, because I can admit that I am a perpetrator and yet own my guilt. I can acknowlege my guilt and yet acknowlege the standard, because the standard is outside of myself. I do not determine the standard, and my failure does not affect it. I can point to the standard as long as I “point the finger” at myself.
