The influence on parochial life of the Sunday sermon and what went with it can hardly be exaggerated. It was not only that it was at this time that the priest instructed his people in their faith and in the practice of their religion; but the pulpit was the means, and in those days the sole means, by which the official or quasi-official business of the place was announced to the inhabitants of a district. The great variety of matters that had necessarily to be brought to the notice of the parishioners would have all tended to make the pulpit utterances on the Sunday, in a pre-Reformation parish, both interesting and instructive. In this chapter it is proposed to illustrate some of the many features presented at the time of the Sunday sermon; and first as to the regular religious teaching of faith and morals. The first duty of the Church, after seeing to the administration of the Sacraments and the offering of the Sacrifice of the Altar, was obviously to teach and direct its children in all matters of belief and practice. This was done from the pulpit, which was in all probability an unpretentious wooden erection, perhaps in the screen, or at the chancel arch. In one case there is given the cost of the erection of a pulpit of wood; another churchwardens’ account speaks of “clasps for” the pulpit (?), possibly hinges for the door; a third tells of “a green silk veil for the pulpit”; and a fourth of “cloth and a pillow” for it. The chief interest, however, is not in the thing itself, but in its use. [Illustration: PULPIT, 1475, ST. PAUL’S, TRURO] It is impossible to think that Chaucer’s typical priest was a mere creation of his imagination. The picture must have had its counterpart in numberless parishes in England in the fourteenth century. This is how the poet’s priest is described:-- “A good man was ther of religioun, And was a poure parsoun of a town; But riche he was of holy thought and werk. He was also a lerned man, a clerk, That Christe’s Gospel trewely wolde preche, His parischens devoutly wolde he teche. * * * * * But Christe’s lore and His Apostles twelve He taughte, but first he folwede it himselve.” It will be remembered, too, that the story Chaucer makes his priest contribute to the _Canterbury Tales_ is nothing else than an excellent and complete tract, almost certainly a translation of a Latin theological treatise, upon the Sacrament of Penance.