[338] Journal d'un bourgeois, 442. Not Blois, as the Hist. ecclésiastique, i. 10, and, following it, Soldan, Merle d'Aubigné, etc., state. Francis had left Blois as early as in September for the castle of Amboise, see Herminjard, Corresp. des réformateurs, iii. 231, 226, 236.
[339] "Ne me puis garder de vous dire qu'il vous souviengne de l'opinion que j'avois que les vilains placars estoient fait par ceux guiles cherchent aux aultres." Marg. de Navarre to Francis I., Nérac, Dec., 1541, Génin, ii. No. 114. Although Margaret's supposition proved to be unfounded, it was by no means so absurd as the reader might imagine. At least, we have the testimony of Pithou, Seigneur de Chamgobert, that a clergyman of Champagne confessed that he had committed, from pious motives, a somewhat similar act. The head of a stone image of the Virgin, known as "Our Lady of Pity," standing in one of the streets of Troyes, was found, on the morning of a great feast-day in September, 1555, to have been wantonly broken off. There was the usual indignation against the sacrilegious perpetrators of the deed. There were the customary procession and masses by way of atonement for the insult offered to high Heaven. But Friar Fiacre, of the Hôtel-Dieu, finding himself some time later at the point of death, and feeling disturbed in conscience, revealed the fact that from religious considerations he had himself decapitated the image, "in order to have the Huguenots accused of it, and thus lead to their complete extermination!" Recordon, Protestantisme en Champagne, ou récits extraits d'un MS. de N. Pithou (Paris, 1863), 28-30.
[340] A. F. Didot, Essai sur la typographie, in Encyclop. moderne, xxvi. 760, apud Herminjard, iii. 60.
[341] That is, 1535 New Style. For it will remembered that, until 1566, the year in France began with Easter, instead of with the first day of January. Leber, Coll. de pièces rel. à l'hist. de France, viii. 505, etc.
[342] "Combien que ... nous eussions prohibé et défendu que nul n'eust dès lors en avant à imprimer ou faire imprimer aulcuns livres en nostre royaulme, sur peine de la hart." As neither of these disgraceful edicts was formally registered by parliament, they are both of them wanting in the ordinary records of that body, and in all collections of French laws. The first seems, indeed, to have disappeared altogether. M. Crapelet, Études sur la typographie, 34-37, reproduces the second, dated St. Germain-en-Laye, February 23, 1534/5, from a volume of parliamentary papers labelled "Conseil." Happily, the preamble recites the cardinal prescription of the previous and lost edict, as given above in the text. M. Merle d'Aubigné carelessly places the edict abolishing printing after, instead of before, the great expiatory procession. Hist. of the Reformation in the Time of Calvin, iii. 140.
[343] Félibien, Hist. de la ville de Paris, ii. 997.
[344] Soissons MS., Bulletin, xi. 255.
[345] I. e., gaînier, sheath-or scabbard-maker. Hist. ecclésiastique, i. 10; Journal d'un bourgeois, 444; see Varillas, Hist. des révol. arrivées dans l'Eur. en matière de rel., ii. 222.
[346] "Qui ad se ea pericula spectare non putabant, qui non contaminati erant eo scelere, hi etiam in partem pœnarum veniunt. Delatores et quadruplatores publice comparantur. Cuilibet simul et testi et accusatori in hac causa esse licet." J. Sturm to Melanchthon, Paris, March 4, 1535, Bretschneider, Corpus Reformatorum, ii. 855, etc.
[347] The name and the affliction of this first victim give Martin Theodoric of Beauvais an opportunity, which he cannot neglect, to compare him with a pagan malefactor and contrast him with a biblical personage. "Hunc gladium ultorem persenserunt quam plurimi degeneres et alienigenæ in flexilibus perversarum doctrinarum semitis obambulantes; inter alios, paralyticus Lutheranus Neroniano Milone perniciosior. Cui malesano opus erat salutifer Christus, ut sublato erroris grabato, viam Veritatis insequutus fuisset. At vero elatus, in funesto sacrilegi cordis desiderio perseverans, flammis combustus cum suis participibus seditiosis Gracchis, exemplum sui cunctis hæreticis relinquens deperiit. Et peribunt omnes sive plebeii, sive primates," etc. Paraclesis Franciæ (Par. 1539), 5.