The manufacture of relics became
an organized branch of industry; and festivals of fools and festivals
of asses were invented by the jovial priests themselves in travesty of
sacred mysteries, as a welcome relaxation from the monotony of
prescribed ecclesiastical ceremony. Pilgrimages increased in number
and frequency; new saints were created by the dozen; and the disbelief
of the clergy in the doctrines they professed was manifest even to the
most illiterate, whilst contempt for the ceremonies they practised was
openly displayed in the performance of their clerical functions. An
illustration of this is the joke of the priests related by Luther, who
were wont during the celebration of the Mass, when the worshippers
fondly imagined that the sacred formula of transubstantiation was
being repeated, to replace the words _Panis es et carnem fiebis_,
"Bread thou art and flesh thou shalt become," by _Panis es et panis
manebis_, "Bread thou art and bread thou shalt remain."

The scandals as regards clerical manners, growing, as they had been,
for many generations, reached their climax in the early part of the
sixteenth century. It was a common thing for priests to drive a
roaring trade as moneylenders, landlords of alehouses and gambling
dens, and even in some cases, brothel-keepers. Papal ukases had proved
ineffective to stem the current of clerical abuses. The regular clergy
evoked even more indignation than the secular. "Stinking cowls" was a
favourite epithet for the monks. Begging, cheating, shameless
ignorance, drunkenness, and debauchery, are alleged as being their
noted characteristics. One of the princes of the empire addresses a
prior of a convent largely patronized by aristocratic ladies as "Thou,
our common brother-in-law!" In some of the convents of Friesland,
promiscuous intercourse between the sexes was, it is said, quite
openly practised, the offspring being reared as monks and nuns. The
different orders competed with each other for the fame and wealth to
be obtained out of the public credulity. A fraud attempted by the
Dominicans at Bern, in 1506, _with the concurrence of the heads of the
order throughout Germany_, was one of the main causes of that city
adopting the Reformation.

In addition to the increasing burdens of investitures, annates, and
other Papal dues, the brunt of which the German people had directly or
indirectly to bear, special offence was given at the beginning of the
sixteenth century by th