With so much to distribute among the faithful, the Church had recourse, for insuring its repartition, to certain people who went about, supplied with official letters, and who offered to good Christians a particle of the heavenly wealth placed at the disposal of the successors of Peter. They expected in return some portion of the earthly riches their hearers might be possessed of, and which could be applied to more tangible uses than the “treasury.” The men entrusted with this mission were called sometimes questors, on account of what they asked, and sometimes pardoners, on account of what they gave.[436]
Many a man lives in our remembrance owing to his portrait. If his image had not been preserved by an artist of genius his memory would have been abolished. Who would remember, but for her tomb at Lucca, lovely Ilaria del Carretto? Many among us would not suspect that the long vanished pardoner ever existed if the master-painter, Chaucer, had not drawn, from life, his unlovely portrait. “Lordyngs,” says the one in the “Canterbury Tales”:
“Lordyngs, quod he, in chirches whan I preche,
I peyne me to have an hauteyn speche,
And ryng it out, as lowd as doth a belle,
For I can al by rote which that I telle.
My teeme is alway oon, and ever was;
Radix omnium malorum est cupiditas.”
In the pulpit he leans to the right, to the left, he gesticulates, wanders in his talk; his arms move as much as his tongue; it is a wonder to see and hear him:
“I stonde lik a clerk in my pulpit,