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The above image, from the Moralia in Job, shows a monk and a novice (or layman) felling a tree. © Bibliotheque Municipale, Dijon <click to enlarge>

… they obtain from a rich man a valueless and despised plot in the heart of a great wood, by much feigning of innocence and long importunity, putting in God at every other word. The wood is cut down, stubbed up and levelled into a plain, bushes give place to barley, willows to wheat, withies to vines; and it may be that to give them full time for these operations, their prayers have to be somewhat shortened. ...and so all the whole earth is full of their possessions; and though the gospel does not permit them to take thought for the morrow, they have such a reserve of wealth accruing from their wealth that they could enter the ark in the same spirit of security as Noah who had nothing left outside to look to.
[Walter Map, archdeacon and satirist.(12)]

What shall they answer who seize other men’s goods and have then given them away in alms? They will say: ‘O Lord, in they name we have done charitable deeds, we have fed the poor, clothed the naked, received the stranger at the gate.’ The Lord will answer: ‘You speak of what you have given away, but you do not mention the fact that you have stolen it in the first place. You are mindful of those whom you have fed, but you have forgotten those whom you have destroyed.
[Gerald of Wales, archdeacon of Brecon and satirist.(13)]

… settle the Cistercians in some barren retreat which is hidden away in an overgrown forest: a year or two later you will find splendid churches there and fine monastic buildings, with a great amount of property and all the wealth you can imagine.
[Gerald of Wales, archdeacon of Brecon; satirist and reformer.(14)]

For where they plant their foot they destroy villages, take away tithes and curtail by their privileges all the power of the prelacy.
[Archbishop Pecham of Canterbury, late thirteenth century - letter to Edward I.(15)]

He lauded the Order to the skies Ä there was only one matter in which the Cistercians displeased God: when it came to lands made over to them, they exercised their rights too freely and, more intent on law than on justice, seemed insufficiently mindful of their duty to those men committed to their lordship. In all else he said that they were like angels of God: in their renunciation of food and clothing, in discipline, in charity ® in the practice of every kind of holiness to please him whose appropbation they desired.
[Wulfric of Haselbury, twelfth-century recluse (17)]

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