ABSTRACT
The pulpit thus became a site for the conflicting powers of God and devil as well as demonstrating the progress of that conflict. The wretchedness of mankind stated by Mercy and Mankind at the beginning is made manifest in the action and returned to at the end. The mercy of the beginning is as abundantly present at the end but has proved its worth. Titivillus was a familiar minor devil in the later middle Ages, a collector of words and syllables skipped over in divine service and noter of chatter in church, all to be used as evidence against clergy and laity at the Last Judgement. He is neatly characterized in the late fifteenth-century anecdote: a Cistercian abbot noticed a devil going from monk to monk in the choir picking up missed words and syllables and dropping them into a large sack he was carrying.
