The Bane of Flattery in the World of Chaucer and Langland

In our relativistic age the practice of flattery is not seen as a dangerous societal malaise, let alone as a mortal sin in flatterers and an inducement to sin in their victims. This tolerant view did not prevail in the medieval world. Constant attacks on the social and personal harm wrought by flatterers are made by patristic and scholastic authorities from Augustine's day to that of a near-contemporary of Chaucer and Langland, John Bromyard, whose tone grows especially vehement in his lengthy capitula on Adulatio in the Summa Praedicantium. Nor did this universal condemnation die out with the advent of Renaissance humanism. In The Praise of Folly Erasmus satirises the practice of flattery, saying it reigned in chief at the courts of princes, a charge echoed by his friend Thomas More in Utopia. Even before their era, voices were raised against the malaise, notably by Cicero in De Amicitia. He quotes Terence as saying "Flattery produces friends; the truth breeds hatred" and then adds: