"the whole tribe [of clergy] is so universally loathed that even a chance meeting is thought to be ill-omened—and yet they are gloriously self-satisfied. in the first place, they believe it is the highest form of piety to be so uneducated that they can’t even read. then when they bray like donkeys in church, repeating by rote the psalms they haven’t understood, they imagine they are charming the ears of their heavenly audience with infinite delight. many of them too make a good living out of their squalor and beggary, bellowing for bread from door to door, and indeed making a nuisance of themselves in every inn, carriage, or boat, to the great loss of all other beggars. this is the way in which these smooth individuals, in all their filth and ignorance, their boorish and shameless behavior, claim to bring back the apostles into our midst! . . . as if indeed the deadliest enemies of the church were not these impious pontiffs [popes] who allow christ to be forgotten through their silence, fetter him with their mercenary laws, misrepresent him with their forced interpretations of his teaching, and slay him with their noxious way