p. 278: A countryman who had lived many years in the
Hercinian woods, in Germany, at last came into a
populous city, demanding of the people therein, what God
they did worship. They answered him, that they
worshipped Jesus Christ. Whereupon the wild wood-man
asked the names of the several churches in the city,
which were all called by sundry saints, to whom they
were consecrated. "It is strange," said he, "that you
should worship Jesus Christ, and he not have a temple in
all the city dedicated to him."

Probably not less than one third of the jests current in Europe in the
16th century turned on the ignorance of the Romish clergy--such, for
instance, as that of the illiterate priest who, finding _salta per tria_
(skip over three leaves) written at the foot of a page in his mass-book,
deliberately jumped down three of the steps before the altar, to the
great astonishment of the congregation; or that of another who, finding
the title of the day's service indicated only by the abbreviation _Re._,
read the mass of the Requiem instead of the service of the Resurrection;
or that of yet another, who being so illiterate as to be unable to
pronounce readily the long words in his ritual always omitted them, and
pronounced the word Jesus, which he said was much more devotional.

There is a diverting tale of a foolish curé of Brou, which is well
worthy of reproduction, in _Les Contes; ou, les Nouvelles Récréations et
Joyeux Devis_, by Bonaventure des Periers--one of the best story-books
of the 16th century (Bonaventure succeeded the celebrated poet Clement
Marot as _valet-de-chambre_ to Margaret, queen of Navarre):

It happened that a lady of rank and importance, on her way to Châteaudun