Little by little the idea of an actual commutation vanished, and was replaced by a different system, known as the theory of the “Treasury.” It had indeed become obvious as the use of indulgences spread, and they were more and more easily gained, that they could no longer be justified as offering to the sinner only his choice between {314} several sorts of even penances. They were something else. A short, well selected prayer, a small gift in money, would now exempt devout people from the greatest penalties and from numberless years of a possible purgatory; the one could scarcely be considered as the equivalent of the other; how was the equilibrium established between the two scales? The answer was that the deficiency was made up by the application to the sinner of merits, not indeed his own, but of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints, of which there was an inexhaustible “treasury,” the dispensation of which rested with the Pope and the clergy. This theory was acted upon long before being put forth in express words; it does not appear to have been more than vaguely alluded to before the fourteenth century, when Pope Clement VI, the “Doctor Doctorum,” gave a perfectly clear definition and exposition of the “treasury” system. In a bull of the year 1350, he explains that the merits of Christ are infinite, and those of the Virgin and the saints, superabundant. This excess of unemployed merit has been constituted into a treasury, “not one that is deposited in a strong room, or concealed in a field, but which is to be usefully distributed to the faithful, through the blessed Peter, keeper of heaven’s gate, and his successors.” However largely employed, there ought to be “no fear of an absorption or a diminution of this treasury, first on account of the infinite merits of Christ, as has been said before, then because the more numerous are the people reclaimed through the use of its contents, the more it is augmented by the addition of their merits.”[435] The treasury had therefore no chance of ever being found empty, since the more was drawn from it the more it grew. Such is in all its simplicity the theory of the “treasury,” which has ever since been maintained, with no change in the theory but much in the practice. {315} With so much to distribute among the faithful, the Church had recourse, for insuring its repartition, to certain people who went about, supplied with official letters, and who offered to good Christians a particle of the heavenly wealth placed at the disposal of the successors of Peter. They expected in return some portion of the earthly riches their hearers might be possessed of, and which could be applied to more tangible uses than the “treasury.” The men entrusted with this mission were called sometimes _questors_, on account of what they asked, and sometimes _pardoners_, on account of what they gave.[436]