In a treatise entitled ‘Fruits of the Tongue’, which grows out of what he admits is almost entirely a translation taken from ‘Guglielmo di Frencia’ (William Peraldus, Summa de vitiis), Domenico Cavalca describes preachers who want only to show off to educated audiences as ‘adulterers of the word’:

These show-off preachers are also described as those ‘great literary men without conscience’ who are the ‘worst men in the world’ (‘gli peggiori uomini del mondo sono li grandi letterati senza coscienza’). Although it is important for men to have sufficient knowledge in order to teach others, Cavalca reminds his reader that Augustine says that many saints were perfect in the desert, however unlearned (‘quantunque idioti’). The enterprise of vernacularization, of which the Frutti are a part, is for the benefit of the unlearned, as Cavalca often repeats: ‘I as a simple person speak in the vernacular to simple and unlearned men’ (‘io come semplice parlo in volgare per uomini semplici ed idioti’).