The pittance was an occasional relief to the usual strict dietary in the way of some exceptional or extra food or delicacy. In some monasteries, as at Durham, it was customary for the chief officials or obedientiaries to give a pittance to the whole convent on some special festival. In not a few monasteries there were special endowments for certain pittances, usually of early origin. This is a matter of decided interest in connexion with monastic fare; for it shows that early benefactors were so impressed with the usual ascetic fare of the religious that they desired to secure for them an occasional alleviation. The word “pittance” has been by some, rather absurdly, derived from _picta_, a small coin of Poitiers, imagining that it was originally a dole of that value; but almost every monastic roll with which we are acquainted spells it _pietancia_, and the true derivation comes from _pietas_ and implies pity or commiseration. There are lists of provisions made for pittances both on flesh days and fish days at St. Albans in the second volume of the annals of that house in the Rolls Series. In some houses it happened that a fashion set in of giving lands or rents for pittances, and their very frequency, as lands increased in value, and the sternness of rules of dietary relaxed, became an embarrassment. In these circumstances the whole question of the pittances required rearrangement, for it would have been extravagant and luxurious to continue to use such funds according to the primary intention of the pious founders. In such cases the whole funds of this kind were sometimes put in the custody of a particular obedientiary who expended them in accordance with the decision of the chapter and visitor, and was himself termed the pittancer.