of one of the mendicant orders which traveled about preaching and making their livings by begging. Part of the animosity between the two characters may be due to these orders of friars, which had been formed relatively recently, interfering with the work of the summoners. Once a friar had taken confession and given absolution to someone they could not be charged in an ecclesiastical court with the same sin. The Friar's tale has no clear original source like many of Chaucer's tales but it is of a type which is common and always seems popular: "the corrupt official gets their comeuppance". The tale itself continues in the denigration of summoners with its vivid description of the work of a summoner. This includes bribery, corruption, extortion and a network of pimps and wenches acting as informants making this important clerical office seem more like a 14th-century protection racket. The Friar then says that luckily friars are not under summoners' jurisdiction but the Summoner snaps back that neither are women in , meaning brothels; which were licensed to operate by archdeacons. Indeed the Friar in the Prologue seems to be more worldly than was acceptable: he would rather seduce women and hang out in taverns than minister to the poor and the sick or go out on a hunt rather than attend to spiritual duties in a monastery; for that matter he cares little about a poor widow who gives her last penny to him instead of feeding her starving child; Chaucer ironically remarks that the Friar is in the "business" of seeing unmarried women linked to men (see the comment about above). In other words, the Friar and the Summoner are hypocritical competitors in the same "rackets"(extortion and pimping) although the Friar is more "virtuous" as unlike the Summoner he does not engage in blackmailing. Film adaptations Pasolini adapted the Friar's story in his 1972 Canterbury Tales. In the film the Devil is portrayed by Franco Citti, part of a recurring theme of Citti playing demonic and immoral characters in The Trilogy of Life (as Ser Ciappelletto in The Decameron and is an ifrit in Arabian Nights). References External links "The Friar's Tale" – a plain-English retelling for non-scholars. The Canterbury Tales