The list of superstitious practices concerned with local cults, special patrons and assured salvation was a long one, and it lived long enough for Pascal to attack it in his Provincial Letters.
It was one of the principles of the evangelical humanists to restore the redemptive work of Christ to the centre of religious attention, and among the undoubted aberrations of late medieval piety was a cult of the virgin Mary which detracted from the proper place of Jesus in Christian devotion.
During the whole of this section Lijster's notes back-pedal heavily as he explains throughout that it is only abuses to which Folly is drawing attention, and that she does not wish to attack authentic indulgences, the legitimate cult of saints or non-superstitious practices.