[281] If Francis was sanguine of success in suppressing the Reformation in his kingdom, there were others who went farther still. Barthélemi de Chassanée this very year (1527) chronicles the destruction of "Lutheranism" in France as an accomplished fact! The passage is not unworthy of notice. After explaining the significance of the fleurs-de-lis on the royal escutcheon by the wonderful efficacy of the lily as the antidote of the serpent's poison, and remarking that the kings of France had thrice extracted the mortal virus from the bite of Mohammed, "serpentis venenosi," the writer adds: "Et, his temporibus, videmus nostram fidem et religionem Christianam sanatam esse a morsu pestiferi serpentis Lutheri, qui infinitas hæreses in fide Christiana seminavit, quæ fuerunt extirpatæ a Rege nostro Francisco Christianissimo, qui non cessat insudare, ut Clemens summus Pontifex a sua Sede ejectus restituatur, quem Carolus Borbonius dux exercitus Caroli Austriaci electi in Imperatorem, in urbe obsederat hoc anno Domini 1527 die 6 Maii." Catalogus Gloriæ Mundi, fol. 143.
[282] Labbei Concilia, xix. fol. 1160.
[283] The reader may, if his patience will hold out, wade through the prolix decrees of the Council of Sens as published by Cardinal Duprat in 1529, and printed in Labbei Concilia (Venice, 1732), xix. 1149-1202. It is worthy of remark that the confiscation of the property of condemned heretics, if laymen, to the state, is ordered, "tanquam reorum læsæ majestatis." Fol. 1159.
[284] Labbei Concilia, xix. fol. 1139.
[285] The words of the decree are sufficiently distinct: "Illam plurimum gravem et onerosam ecclesiis, laicis vero contemtibilem, sacerdotum multitudinem, qui solent plerumque illiterati, moribus inculti, servilibus operibus addicti, imberbes, inopes, fictitiis titulis ad sacros ordines obrepere, non sine magno status clericalis opprobrio." Ibid., xix. fol. 1128. The decrees of the councils of Bourges and Lyons are given in Labbei Concilia, xix. 1041-1048, and 1095 etc.
[286] The image was affixed to the house of the Sieur de Beaumont, at the corner of the Rue des Hosiers and the Rue des Juifs. Félibien, Hist. de Paris, iv. 676.
[287] The strong language of the author of the "Cronique du Roi Françoys Ier" (edited by G. Guiffrey, Paris, 1860) may serve as an index of the popular feeling: "La nuict du dimenche, dernier jour de may, ... par quelque ung pire que ung chien mauldict de Dieu, fut rompue et couppée la teste à une ymaige de la vierge Marie ... qui fut une grosse horreur à la crestienté." Page 66.
[288] The silver image, though protected by an iron grating, fared no better than its predecessor. Stolen before the death of Francis, it was succeeded by a wooden statue, and, when this was destroyed by "heretics," by one of marble! The detailed accounts of the expiatory processions in Félibien, ii. 982, 983, in the Régistres du parlement, ibid., iv. 677-679, in G. Guiffrey, appendix to "Cronique du Roy Françoys Ier," 446-459, from MSS. Nat. Lib., in Gaillard, vi. 434, 435, and in the Journal d'un bourgeois, 348-351, give a vivid view of the picturesque ceremonial of the times. It must have been a very substantial compensation for the trouble to which the unknown author of the outrage of the Rue des Rosiers put the clergy, that the mutilated statue of the Virgin, having been placed above the altar in the church of St. Gervais, was said to have wrought notable miracles, and even to have raised two children from the dead! Journal d'un bourgeois, ubi supra. See also "Cronique du Roy Françoys Ier," 67, and especially the poem (Ibid., appendix, 459-464), in twenty-five stanzas of eight lines each, which, I fear, has nothing to recommend it, unless it be length!
[289] May, 1530. Félibien, ii 988, 989; Journal d'un bourgeois, 410.
[290] "Quæris, quid profecerim? Tot modis deterrens, addidi animum."