te for them an actual abode of fire, resembling
that of which in their favourite religious shows they were wont to
present the mimic semblance to the multitude. It was they who became
in England as elsewhere the purveyors of charms and the organisers of
pious frauds, while the learning for which their Order had been famous
was withering away into the yellow leaf of scholasticism. The Friar in
general became the common butt of literary satire; and though the
populace still remained true to its favourite guides, a reaction was
taking place in favour of the secular as against the regular clergy in
the sympathies of the higher classes, and in the spheres of society
most open to intellectual influences. The monks and the London
multitude were at one time united against John of Gaunt, but it was
from the ranks of the secular clergy that Wyclif came forth to
challenge the ascendancy of Franciscan scholasticism in his university.
Meanwhile the poet who in the "Poor Parson of the Town" paints his
ideal of a Christian minister--simple, poor, and devoted to his holy
work,--has nothing but contempt for the friars at large, and for the
whole machinery worked by them, half effete, and half spasmodic, and
altogether sham. In King Arthur's time, says that accurate and
unprejudiced observer the "Wife of Bath," the land was filled with
fairies--NOW it is filled with friars as thick as motes in the beam of
the sun. Among them there is the "Pardoner," i.e. seller of pardons
(indulgences)--with his "haughty" sermons, delivered "by rote" to
congregation after congregation in the self-same words, and everywhere
accompanied by the self-same tricks of anecdotes and jokes,--with his
Papal credentials, and with the pardons he has brought from Rome "all
hot,"--and with precious relics to rejoice the hearts of the faithful,
and to fill his own pockets with the proceeds: to wit, a pillowcase
covered with the veil of Our Lady, and a piece of the sail of the ship
in which St. Peter went out fishing on the Lake of Gennesareth. This
worthy, who lays bare his own motives with unparalleled cynical
brutality, is manifestly drawn from the life;--or the portrait could
not have been accepted which was presented alike by Chaucer, and by his
contemporary Langland, and (a century and a half later) in the
plagiarism of the orthodox Catholic John Heywood. There, again, is the
"Limitour," a friar licensed to beg, and to hear confession and grant
absolution, w