Corruption in Church and Society Reflected in The Canterbury TalesIn discussing Chaucer's collection of stories entitled The Canterbury Tales, a Interesting image or illustration of the medieval Christian Church is presented. However, as people demanded more say in government matters, the Church became corrupt – this corruption also led to a more twisted society. However, there is not only Church history; Indeed, the Church can never be studied in isolation, simply because it has always been linked to the social, economic and political context of the time. So there is a two-way process in history in which the Church has an influence on the rest of society and, of course, society influences the Church. This is naturally because it is the people of a society who make up the Church...and these same people became the figures who created these stories of pilgrimage to Canterbury. The Christianization of Anglo-Saxon England was to take place in a relatively short period of time, but this was not due to the success of the Augustinian effort. Indeed, the early years of this mission presented an ambivalence that is reflected in the number of people who hedged their bets by practicing both Christian and pagan rites, and in the number of people who quickly apostatized upon the death of a Christian king. There is certainly no evidence of large-scale conversion of ordinary people to Christianity at present. Augustine was not the most diplomatic of men and he managed to antagonize many prominent and influential people in Britain, notably the native British churchmen, who had never been particularly keen to save the souls of the Anglo- Saxons who had brought so many people. bitter times for their people. In its isolation, the British Church had retained ancient ways of celebrating the principal festivals of Christianity, and Augustine's efforts to force them to conform to modern Roman usage only angered them. At the time of Augustine's death (between 604 and 609 AD), Christianity had only a precarious hold on Anglo-Saxon England, a hold which was largely limited to a few members of the 'aristocracy. Christianity was only to become firmly established thanks to the efforts of the Irish who, from centers in Scotland and Northumbria, made the people Christian and established the English Church on solid foundations. At all levels of society, belief in one or more gods was not a matter of choice, it was a matter of fact..