Jacques de Vitry

A medieval chronicler, Jacques de Vitry, has left us a vivid account of Innocent’s death. He saw Innocent’s body in Perugia as it lay almost naked on his tomb. The body smelled, and looters had plundered the rich garments in which the pope was to be buried. Brevis…

1200) by Jacques de Vitry, for the use of preachers. Such exempla often provided the germ or plot for medieval secular tales in verse or prose. The influence of exempla can be seen in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1387–1400) in the haunting “The Pardoner’s Tale.”