When the men of Montaillou complained among themselves about their lot, it did not occur to them to blame women for their troubles. They might label most women, including their own wives, “sows,” “whores,” or “devils,” but in the troubled years after the turn of the fourteenth century, these peasants reserved their more heartfelt invective for the priests. One man whose anticlerical hostility was inflamed by the tithe on sheep announced: “I wish all clerics were dead, including my own son, who is a priest.” Another, enraged by the bishop's agents who were sent to collect tithes on cattle, declared to his peasant cronies: “If only all the clerks and priests could go and dig and plough the earth …. As for the Bishop, let him meet me in a mountain pass; we will fight out this question of tithes, and I shall soon see what the bishop is made of!”

Tithes were a recurring topic at the all-male gatherings in the village squares. “We're going to have to pay the carnelages [the tithe on livestock],” said one villager to some friends in 1320. “Don't let's pay anything,” answered another of the men. “Let us rather find a hundred livres to pay two men to kill the Bishop.” “I'll willingly pay my share,” said a third. “Money could not be better spent.”

Village men with shared interests and occupations saw priests as intruders in their churches, which they considered their own property.