He found their religion at a low ebb, the regular clergy apathetic and sensual, the bishop little obeyed, the laity divided by the family feuds of their rulers, unchaste and ignorant.
Moreover, even after discounting the bias of his enemies, there is evidence to prove that his championship of the Church was not the outcome of his zeal for Christianity; for he was notoriously drunken, unchaste, avaricious and almost insanely ambitious.