Folly, having claimed various forms of indubitably foolish behaviour as her own, here tendentiously goes on to establish rights over forms of religious behaviour which could not easily be criticized with impunity, but about which Erasmus felt as strongly as Luther.
Much of Lucian's sceptical irreverence about the doings of the ancient gods is here applied to the contemporary Christian scene, with an important emphasis on clerical venality. In particular this paragraph appears to allude to the Philopseudes translated by More. The evangelical humanists were often bitterly opposed by the friars who had a virtual and lucrative preaching monopoly, and it is certain that the exploitation of the fear of death in later medieval religious practice was partly nourished by the economic needs of the clergy.