Lastly, there is the Pardoner. He is the hypocrite. He carried sham relics about with him, and sold pigs' bones for precious and holy remains warranted to heal sheep and cattle, to bring good harvests, to prolong life, to bring increase of sowing.
Of avarice and of swiche cursednesse
Is al my preching, for to make hem free
To yeve hir pense, and namely unto me.
. . . . . . . .
I wol non of the Apostles counterfete,
I wol have money, wollë, chese, and whete.
Al were it yeven of the pourest page,
Or of the pourest widewe in a village,
Al schulde hire children sterven for famine.
If such pictures as these could be drawn and freely circulated, the first step was taken towards the Reformation. Only the first step. Before Reformation comes there must be more than the clear eyes of the prophets able to see and to proclaim the truth. The eyes of the people must be washed so that they, too, can discern the truth behind these splendid vestments and this gorgeous structure of authority.
Such, so great, was the power and the wealth of the Church from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. Every street had its parish church with charities and Fraternities and endowments; colleges, Houses for priests, almeries, hospitals, were scattered all about the City; within and without the wall there were fifteen great Houses, whose splendor can only be understood by the ruins of Tintern, Glastonbury, Fountains, or Whitby. Every House was possessed of rich manors and broad lands; every House had its treasury filled with title-deeds as well as with heaps of gold and silver plate; every House had its church crowded with marble monuments, adorned with rich shrines and blazing altars and painted glass, such as we can no longer make. Outside, the humblest parish church showed on its frescoed walls the warnings of Death and Judgment, the certainty of Heaven and Hell. And they thought—priest and people alike—that it was all going to last forever. Humanity had no other earthly hope than a continuance of the bells of l'Ile Sonnante.
FOOTNOTES
[8] A kind of woollen shirt.
[9] The concluding psalms of the matin service.
[10] The Horæ, or canonical services, were matins, primes, tierce, sexts, nones, vespers, and complines.