The authors and the actors of their comedies, poems, and pasquils were mostly artisans or tradesmen, belonging to the class out of which proceeded the early victims, and the later soldiers of the Reformation.

Their bold farces and truculent satire had already effected much in spreading among the people a detestation of Church abuses.

They were particularly severe upon monastic licentiousness.

"These corrupt comedians, called rhetoricians," says the Walloon contemporary already cited, "afforded much amusement to the people." Always some poor little nuns or honest monks were made a part of the farce.

It seemed as if the people could take no pleasure except in ridiculing God and the Church.
The people, however, persisted in the opinion that the ideas of a monk and of God were not inseparable.