[68] Almanach royal pour l'an 1724 (Paris), 34.
[69] Leo X. also obtained from Francis, as an equivalent for the concessions embodied in the concordat, the sum of 100,000 livres, as the dower of Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne, a princess of royal blood, married in 1518 to Lorenzo de' Medici, Count of Urbino, the Pope's nephew. The money was to be levied upon the next tithe taken from the revenues of the French clergy, which Leo thus authorized. Catharine de' Medici sprang from this marriage. See the receipt of Lorenzo for the instalment of a quarter of the dower, in the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. français, ix. (1860), 122.
[70] Mignet, Établissement de la Réforme à Genève, Mémoires, ii. 243. Étienne Pasquier draws a dark picture of the barbarism reigning at Paris at the accession of Francis. More highly honored than any other university of Europe, that of Paris had fallen so low that the Hebrew tongue was known only by name, and as for Greek, the attention given to it was more apparent than real. "Car mesmes lors qu'il estoit question de l'expliquer, ceste parole couroit en la bouche de plusieurs ignorans, Græcum est, non legitur." The very Latin, which was the language in ordinary use, was rude and clumsy. Recherches de la France, 831.
[71] La Harpe, Cours de litérature, vi. 405.
[72] Gaillard, Histoire de François premier (Paris ed., 1769), vii. 282-300. Félibien, among the many interesting documents he has preserved, reproduces one of the first programmes of the professors of the Collége Royal, preserved from destruction, doubtless, simply from the circumstance that it formed the ground of a citation of the professors by the syndic of the university (Beda), January, 1534, wherein he alleges that "some simple grammarians or rhetoricians, who had not studied with the faculty, had undertaken to read in public and to interpret the Holy Scriptures, as appears from certain bills posted in the streets and squares of Paris." In the programme, Agathius Guidacerius, Francis Vatable, P. Arnesius (Danesius), and Paul Paradisus figure as lecturing—the first two upon the Psalms, the third on Aristotle, and the last on Hebrew grammar and the book of Proverbs. Michel Félibien, Histoire de la ville de Paris (Paris, 1725), iv. 682.
[73] The law of 1523 thus sets forth some of their exploits: "Outre mesure multiplient leurs pilleries, cruautez et meschancetez, jusques à vouloir assaillir les villes closes: les aucunes desquelles ils out prinses d'assaut, saccagées, robées et pillées, forcé filles et femmes, tué les habitans inhumainement, et cruellement traitté les aucuns en leur crevant les yeux, et coupant les membres les uns après les autres, sans en avoir pitié, faisant ce que cruelles bestes ne feroient," etc. Isambert, Recueil des lois anc., xii. 216. See also Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris (1516), 36; and Lettres de Marguerite d'Angoulême, Nouvelle Coll., lettre 7.
[74] Journal d'un bourgeois (1516), 37.
[75] Ibid, (anno 1527), 328.
[76] Ibid., 36. It would appear that even this penalty did not deter them from the commission of their infamous crimes, for a fresh edict, in 1523 (Isambert, xii., 216), prescribes that for exemplary punishment "lesdicts blasphemateurs exécrables avant que souffrir mort, ayent la gorge ouverte avec un fer chaud et la langue tirée ou coupée par les dessouz; et ce faict penduz et attachez au gibet ou potence, et estranglez, selon leurs desmerites!"
[77] Journal d'un bourgeois, 327. The Marché-aux-pourceaux, or swine market, was a little west of the present Palais Royal, just outside of the walls of Paris, as they existed in the time of Francis I. See the atlas accompanying Dulaure, Histoire de Paris. In December, 1581, the Parliament of Rouen sentenced one Salcède to this horrible death. Bastard d'Estang, Les parlements de France, i. 428.