Erasmus on Monks

(from the Greek word for "solitary"). A member of a religious brotherhood who lives in a monastery and follows the particular discipline of his order.

"I don't believe any life would be more wretched than theirs if I [folly] didn't come to their aid in many ways. The whole tribe 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's 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 the other beggars. This is the way in which these smooth individuals, in all their filth and ignorance, their boorish and shameless behaviour, claim to bring back the apostles into our midst!"

Erasmus, Praise of Folly (1509)

[translated by Betty Radice, notes by A. H. T. Levi (1993)].