They lived in a way completely patriarchal; dwelling in isolated cabins, and with habits of the utmost frugality.

We read in one of their old histories that a whole convent of Benedictines was terrified at the voracity of a German sculptor who was repairing their chapel.

They implored him to look elsewhere for his food; for that he and his sons consumed enough to exhaust the whole stock of the monastery.
In no part of Europe was the good sense of the people so effectively opposed to the unreasonable practices of Catholicism in those days.
The Frisons successfully resisted the payment of tithes; and as a punishment (if the monks are to be believed) the sea inflicted upon them repeated inundations.

They forced their priests to marry, saying that the man who had no wife necessarily sought for the wife of another.

They acknowledged no ecclesiastical decree, if secular judges, double the number of the priests, did not bear a part in it.