It was this enormous wealth of the Polish church and its clergy, actual and potential, that made the Polish nobility very restless, and gradually led it as a class to an open revolt from the Roman Catholic Church and to a determined opposition to the Roman clergy, its pretensions, its greed, and its exactions. This all the more so, since owing to its great wealth, the Polish clergy had lost its religion and its moral authority. It was far more concerned about its social position, its political influence, and its tithes than about religion and morals. Monastic discipline was loose. The ignorance of the lower clergy was proverbial. Simony was the order of the day, paving the way to higher ecclesiastical appointments. The higher clergy were wholly indifferent to religion, and cared far more for comfort, luxury, and the enjoyment of life than for the things of the spirit. Bishop Zebrzydowski of Cracow used to say: “Believe in a goat, if you wish, only pay me your tithes.”[335] John Drohojowski, learned, prominent, and influential, for years bishop of Kuyavia, preached only twice in his church during that time.[336] Indifferent as the Polish clergy were in matters of religion and morals, they were never found napping in matters of property and the exaction of tithes. It was this greed, this completely materialistic character of the Polish clergy, together with their immense wealth resulting in great influence and unscrupulous power, that chiefly paved the way in Poland for Hussitism in the fifteenth century and for the Reformation in the sixteenth century. As early as 1406 and 1407 the Polish nobility in conventions at Piotrków assembled deliberated regarding measures to safeguard itself against the exploitation of the clergy.[337] In 1432, owing to a war with the Teutonic Knights and the need of large sums of money, regular taxation of the clergy was being considered.[338] In the course of the first half of the fifteenth century, due very likely to the unprecedented grants of Wladislaus Jagiello to the church, the nobility proposed a confiscation of ecclesiastical estates.[339] This proposal, as we shall see later, was repeated again several times in the sixteenth century. At that time the nobility protested also against the concentration of prebendaries and benefices in the hands of a few specially favored and privileged ecclesiastics, and against the exportation of annates to Rome.[340] These protests, too, were renewed in the sixteenth century. In 1544 the Diet voted that the king take steps to secure the Pope’s consent to the retention of the papal tax within the country for purposes of defense.[341] The desired papal consent had evidently not been given, for the Diet of 1567 voted the retention of the annates, with the king’s consent, even though against the wishes of the Pope.[342] These annates amounted to 21,266 florins annually,[343] and were to strengthen the national treasury (Skarb rawski). But according to the