large congregations; and when Noel Beda and some other doctors of the Sorbonne ventured to accuse the King and Queen of heresy, and to stir up the people to sedition, Francis, on the matter being reported to him, issued from Melun an edict banishing the doctors from the city. The Queen of Navarre became in consequence highly unpopular with the orthodox, and, in a comedy played by the students of the College of Navarre on October 1, 1533, was with Roussel held up to ridicule under a thin disguise.
The desire of the King for the Pope's friendship led however to a fresh change of religious policy; and, as the result of the conference with Clement at Marseilles (October 1-November 12, 1533), Francis, while declining to join in a general crusade against the followers of Luther and Zwingli, agreed to take steps for the suppression of heresy in his own kingdom and received from the Pope a Bull for that purpose. An opportunity at once occurred for putting it into force. On November 1 the new Rector of the University of Paris, Nicolas Cop, in his customary Latin oration, enveloped in unmistakable terms the doctrine of Justification by Faith. It soon became known that this discourse had been written for him by a young scholar of Picardy, named Jean Cauvin, or, as he called himself, Calvin. The scandal was great; and the King on hearing of it immediately wrote to the Parliament enjoining it to proceed diligently against the "accursed heretic Lutheran sect." Within a week fifty Lutherans were in prison; and an edict was issued that anyone convicted by two witnesses of being a Lutheran should be burned forthwith, "It will be like the Spanish Inquisition" wrote Martin Bucer,
But the King's Catholic fever quickly cooled down. On January 24, 1534, he entered into a secret treaty with the German Protestant Princes; and when he returned to Paris in the first week of February the persecutions ceased. Evangelical doctrines were again preached in the Louvre. "I see no one round me but old women," was the complaint of a Sorbonne doctor from his pulpit; "all the men go to the Louvre." In the spring Guillaume du Bellay was sent for the second time on a mission to Germany, with the object of concerting with the German theologians some via media which should effect a reconciliation between the two religious parties. Accordingly he sent a request to Melanchthon to draw up a paper embodying suggestions which might serve as the basis for an oral conference. Melanchthon complied, and du Bellay returned to France with a paper, dated August 1, 1534, in which the various points in dispute were separately discussed and means of arranging them were suggested.
But these hopes of reconciliation were suddenly scattered to the winds by the rash act of some of the more fanatical Reformers. On the morning of October 18, 1534, the inhabitants of Paris awoke to find the walls of all the principal thoroughfares placarded with a broadside in
