or, as Eustache Deschamps attacks the pluralists—
'Prestres et clers qui tenez vos monciaulx
De chapelles, vous autres curiaulx,
Des povres clers ayez compassion:
Repartez leur ces biens ecclesiaulx,
Afin que Dieu vous soit propiciaulx:
Vous les tenez à vo dampnacion.'
Faux Semblant, in his sermon, or address, a small part only of which we consider, begins by telling his hearers that he lives, by preference, in obscurity, and may, therefore, chiefly be found where this is most readily obtained, viz., under a religious habit. With the habit, however, he does not put on the reality of religion. He attaches himself to powerful patrons; he goes about preaching poverty, but living on the best of everything; nothing can be more contrary to his experience than that religion is to be found at all under the robe of a monk; nor does it follow that men and women lead bad lives because they wear a worldly garb; very many, indeed, of the saints have been married, were parents of children, and men and women of the world.
He tells how he changes his habit from time to time; how, out of the religious life, he 'takes the grain and leaves the straw;' how he hears confession and grants absolution, as well as any parish priest; but how, unlike the parish priest, he will hear the confessions only of the rich, who can afford to pay; 'let me have the fat sheep, and the pastors shall have the lean.' So with the poor; he will not help any.
'Let dying beggars cry for aid,