Though the mass of the parish clergy were innocent of the charges brought against their superiors, [539] still they were very ignorant and illiterate. At the end of the seventeenth century, there were said to be hardly twelve persons in the whole Turkish dominions thoroughly skilled in the knowledge of the ancient Greek language; it was considered a great merit in the clergy to be able to read, while they were quite ignorant of the meaning of the words of their service-books. [540] While there was so much in the Christian society of the time to repel, there was much in the character and life of the Turks to attract, and the superiority of the early Ottomans as compared with the degradation of the guides and teachers of the Christian Church would naturally impress devout minds that revolted from the selfish ambition, simony and corruption of the Greek ecclesiastics. Christian writers constantly praise these Turks for the earnestness and intensity of their religious life; their zeal in the performance of the observances prescribed by their faith; the outward decency and modesty displayed in their apparel and mode of living; the absence of ostentatious display and the simplicity of life observable even in the great and powerful. [541] The annalist of the embassy from the Emperor Leopold I to the Ottoman Porte in 1665–1666, especially eulogises the devoutness and regularity of the Turks in prayer, and he even goes so far as to say, “Nous devons dire à la confusion des Chrêtiens, que les Turcs têmoignent beaucoup plus de soin et de zèle à l’exercice de leur Religion: que les Chrêtiens n’en font paroître à la pratique de la leur.... Mais ce qui passe tout ce que nous experimentons de dévot entre les Chrêtiens: c’est que pendant le tems de la prière, vous ne voyez pas une personne distraite de ses yeux: vous n’en voyez pas une qui ne soit attachée à l’objet de sa prière: et pas une qui n’ait toute la révérence extérieure pour son Créateur, qu’on peut exiger de la Créature.” [542] Even the behaviour of the soldiery receives its meed of praise. During the march of an army the inhabitants of the country, we are told by the secretary to the Embassy sent by Charles II to the Sultan, had no complaints to make of being plundered or of their women being maltreated. All the taverns along the line of march were shut up and sealed two or three days before the arrival of the army, and no wine was allowed to be sold to the soldiers under pain of death. [543]