In the personal conflict between the Friar and the Summoner, the Friar’s attack is on the Summoner’s intelligence. On the personal level, the Summoner’s response makes the Friar seem a raving idiot. Getting even with the Friar for his tale of a wicked summoner, the Summoner tells of a wicked friar. The Summoner’s story shows the Summoner’s disdain for the pilgrim Friar and the Summoner’s belief that the message the friar in the tale espouses is of a blasphemous nature, one that inverts and perverts the essence of his Christian order.
When the friar enters Thomas’ house and learns that the man is dying, he sees a perfect opportunity to increase his coffers under the guise of the Church’s needs. In doing so, he commits one of the most horrible sins of the Middle Ages, that of simony — using the offices of the church for one’s own personal gain. Indeed, the friar should be a character of purity and good works; instead the reader sees him inverting the meaning of his order and becoming the primary source of deceit and corruption by using the church for his corrupt actions. Again, the friar’s hypocrisy and simony is evident when he assures Thomas and Thomas’ wife that he has prayed for the soul of their dead child and for the health of Thomas when, in fact, the reader knows intuitively that he has done no such thing.
