After this examination made by great “solemnity of lights,” the doctors declared themselves for the authenticity of the miracle;[450] which was not in reality more surprising than that at the cathedral at Naples, where the blood of the patron saint of the town may still be seen to liquify several times a year, and for several days each time.

In every country of Europe the pardoners en­joyed, not to say en­dured, the same rep­u­ta­tion and acted in the same man­ner. Be it France, Germany, Italy, or Spain, they were found living, so long as there re­mained any, as Chaucer’s par­don­er did. In France, Rabelais has the cheaters cheated by his beloved Panurge. The clever vaurien used to place his penny in their plate so skil­fully that it seemed to be a silver piece: for which he made bold to take change, leaving only a farth­ing. “ ‘And I did the same,’ said he, ‘in all the churches where we have been.’—‘Yea, but,’ said I, ‘you . . . are a thief, and com­mit sac­ri­lege.’—‘True,’ said he, ‘as it seems to you; but it does not seem so to me. For the par­don­ers give it me as a gift when they say, in of­fer­ing me the relics to kiss: Cen­tup­lum ac­ci­pies—that is, that for one pen­ny I take a hundred; for ac­ci­pies is spok­en by them ac­cord­ing to the man­ner of the He­brews, who use the fu­ture tense in­stead of the im­per­a­tive, as you have in the book, Dil­iges Dom­i­num, id est, dilige.’ ”[451] {331}

Pardoners, of course, never appear on the boards of the old French theatre, but to be derided:

“Pardoner: I mean to show you the comb of the cock that crowed at Pilate’s, and half a plank of Noah’s great ark. . . . Look, gentlemen, here is a feather of one of the seraphs near God. Don’t think it is a joke; here it is for you to see.

“Triacleur: Gogsblood! ’tis the quill from a goose he has eaten at his dinner!” and so on.[452]

The same in Spain. Lazarillo de Tormes, the page of many masters, happens, at one time, to be in the service of a pardoner: the very same individual Chaucer had described two hundred years before. He, too, knows how to use Latin when profitable: “Hee woulde alwayes bee informed before he came, which were learned and which not. When he came to those which he understood were learned, he woulde be sure never to speake worde of Latin, for feare of stumbling: but used in suche places a gentle kind of Castilian Spanish, his tong alwayes at libertie. And contrariwise whensoever hee was informed of the reverend Domines (I meane such as are made priestes more for money than for learning and good behaviour), to hear him speake amongs suche men you would saye it were St. Thomas: for hee woulde then two houres together talke Latin, at lest which seemed to bee, though it was not.”[453] A trick which, as is well known, Sganarelle, many years after, did not disdain to use when put upon his last shifts as the “Médecin malgré lui.”

Pardoners lived merrily; certain it is that after a busy day they must have been cheerful companions at the inn. The thought of the multitude of sins they had pardoned, of excommunications they had removed, {332} of penalties they had remitted—themselves mere vagabonds threatened with the jail or gallows—the knowledge of their impunity, the strangeness of their existence, the triumphant success of the mad harangues in which they attributed to themselves the keys of heaven, must have made their hearts swell with uncontrollable merriment. Their heads were filled with anecdotes, sacred or profane; native coarseness and assumed devotion, the real and the artificial man, jostled each other to the sound of jugs and vessels clattering on the table. See in the margin of an old psalter the lean figure of Master Reynard[454]: a crozier between his paws, a mitre on his head, he is preaching a sermon to the wondering crowd of ducks and geese of the poultry yard. The gesture is full of unction, but the eye shaded by the tawny hair has a cruel glitter, which ought to give warning of the peroration. But no, the poultry yard clucks devoutly and fears nothing; woe to the ducks when the mitre has fallen: “And Thou, Lord, shalt laugh at them,” says the psalmist on the same page.

A singular knowledge of the human heart those individuals must have had, going through such strange experiences day by day. Never were more unworthy beings supposedly clothed with greater supernatural powers. The deformed monster squatting on the apse of the cathedral laughs and grimaces hideously on his airy pedestal. And up to the clouds rise the fretted spires; the chiselled pinnacles detach themselves like lace upon the sky; the saints pray their eternal prayer under the porch; the bells send forth their peals into space, and souls are seized with a thrill, with that mysterious awe caused by the sublime. The monster laughs; hearts believe themselves purified, but he has seen their ugly sores, a sinister hand will touch them and prevent their cure; the edge {333} of the roof reaches the clouds; but his look goes through the dormer window, he detects a cracking beam, worm-eaten boards giving way, and a host of obscure creatures slowly pursuing under the wooden shafts their secular labour of destruction: he laughs and grimaces hideously.

On the tavern bench the pardoner is still seated. There come Chaucer, the knight, the squire, the friar, the host—old acquaintances. We are by ourselves, no one need be afraid to speak, the foaming ale renders hearts expansive; and the unseen coils of that tortuous soul unfold to view, he gives the summary of a whole life, the theory of his existence, the key to his secrets. What matters his frankness? he knows that it cannot hurt him; time and again has the bishop brought his practices to light, but the crowd always troops around him. And who knows if his companions—who knows if his more enlightened companions, to whom he shows the concealed springs of the automaton—will, to-morrow, believe it lifeless? their memory, their reason will tell them so, yet still their heart will doubt. If custom is the half of belief, theirs is well-rooted; how much more that of the multitude! And the pardoner himself, do you suppose that he always sees clearly what he is, do you think that his scepticism is absolute? he for whom nothing is holy, whose very existence is a perpetual mockery of sacred things, he also has his hours of doubt and terror, he trembles before that formidable power which he said he held in his hands, and of which he has made a toy; he does not possess it, but others may, and he stands aghast; the monster looks upon himself and is afraid.

Very easy it was to lead the popular belief into the channel of the marvellous. Decrees had been deemed necessary to prevent the conjuring up of spectres or ghosts in those long watches passed with the dead; disobedience {334} was attempted, people believed they succeeded. In presence of the horrible a strange reaction of the heart would take place, a wind of madness passed predisposing men to see and believe anything, a nervous and demoniacal merriment seized upon all, and dances and lascivious games were started. Dancing went on in the cemeteries during the solemn vigils of religious feasts, there was dancing also during the watch for the dead. The Council of London, in 1342, prohibited “the superstitious customs which cause prayer to be neglected, and unlawful and indecent meetings” held in such places.[455] The Council of York, in 1367, also forbade “those guilty games and follies, and all those perverse customs . . . which transform a house of tears and prayers, into a house of laughing and excess.” The palmers’ gild of Ludlow allowed its members to go to night-watches of the dead, provided that they abstained from raising apparitions and from indecent games.[456] As to professional sorcerers, the belief in them was so profound that they were sent to the stake, as happened to Petronilla of Meath, convicted of having manufactured powders with “spiders and black worms like scorpions, mingling with them a certain herb called milfoil, and other detestable herbs and worms.”[457] She had also made such incantations that “the faces of certain women seemed horned like the heads of goats”; {335} therefore she had her due punishment and “was burnt before an immense multitude of people with all the accustomed ceremonial.” Such facts explain the existence of the pardoner.