The Pardoner's Tale

The Pardoner's Tale is one of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. In the order of the Tales, it comes after The Physician's Tale and before The Shipman's Tale; it is prompted by the Host's desire to hear something positive after that depressing tale. The Pardoner initiates his Prologue—briefly accounting his methods of conning people—and then proceeds to tell a moral tale.


The tale itself is an extended exemplum. Setting out to kill Death, three young men encounter an Old Man who says that they will find him under a nearby tree. When they arrive they discover a hoard of treasure and decide to stay with it until nightfall and carry it away under cover of darkness. Out of greed, they murder each other. The tale and prologue are primarily concerned with what the Pardoner says is his "theme": Radix malorum est cupiditas ("Greed is the root of [all] evils").