Margaret of Navarre tells as an actual fact of a man who prayed for help in seducing his neighbor's wife, and similar instances of perverted piety are not wanting.

The passion for the relics of the saints led to an enormous traffic in spurious articles.

There appeared to be enough of the wood of the true cross, said Erasmus, to make a ship; there were exhibited five shin-bones of the ass on which Christ rode, whole bottles of the Virgin's milk, and several complete bits of skin saved from the circumcision of Jesus.
[Sidenote: Temporal power of the church] Finally, patriots were no longer inclined to tolerate the claims of the popes to temporal power.

The church had become, in fact, an international state, with its monarch, its representative legislative assemblies, its laws and its code.

It was not a voluntary society, for if citizens were not born into it they were baptized into it before they could exercise any choice.