56 A MEDIAEVAL CITY

Church, moreover, with its complete segregation
from other estates of the realm had become un-
popular socially, while in its political and temporal
aspects it had become an immense corporation
with strong vested interests. Kings found it
necessary to fight it; religious reformers had to
rise up and overcome every form of repression used
against them. The decadence is exemplified in-
cidentally in the increasing poverty in material and
expression of the monastic chronicles, which practi-
cally died out by 1485. The period of turmoil and
change was yet to come.

Such was the general state of affairs. Never-
theless the forms and practices of the Church
continued. The granting of indulgences and pardons,
the inexhaustible demand for Peter's pence, went
on vigorously. A recognised means of publicly
raising funds was employed in February, 1455-6,
when the Archbishop proclaimed an indulgence of
forty days to those who would help the Friars
Preachers, whose cloister and buildings including
34 cells, together with their books, vestments,
jewels, and sacred vessels, had been destroyed by
fire.

The faith of the ordinary citizen was, however,
intact. The Church came into the people's life
daily. The citizen could not walk away from his
home without seeing a church, and meeting a priest
or a friar. He attended the Church services and
fulfilled his religious duties. Baptism, marriage,
death, illness, public rejoicing, soldiering, dramatic
entertainments, the language of daily life—all
these bore the stamp of the Church. The very
days of relief from work were holy-days, feast days
in the Church's calendar. Taking part in the
public processions on Corpus Christi Day, a great