Barbara Tuchman. The mystery of the XIV century (№ 396990)

Gerson and the other reformers condemned the too frequent excommunication for the fact that the person does not take communion or not in compliance with post. Empty Church, attend mass rarely, wrote Nicolas de Clemang in a large treatise on the sorrows of the Church "About Church decline and the recovery". Young people, in his words, seldom goes to Church, except on the days posts, and then only to look at the painted faces of the ladies in their low-necked dresses and hairstyles - "huge, hung with pearls the tower with the horns." People went to midnight service in Church with prayer, and with wanton songs and dances, and the priests played dice. Gerson condemned the complacency men went out in the middle of the Church service to drink, and "hearing the bells ringing, signifying the consecration of the bread and wine into the Church like herd of bulls". He spoke angrily about the playing cards, swearing, blasphemy; and that was during the feasts in the temples hung a lewd picture to tempt youth. The pilgrimage was an occasion for drunkenness, adultery, and ungodly pleasures.