Meantime, parliament had not been slack in obeying the command to search diligently for the authors and publishers of the placards. Many reputed "Lutherans" had been arrested, some of whom, it was given out, pretended to reveal the existence of a plot of the reformers to fall upon the good Christians of the metropolis while assembled in their churches for divine worship, and assassinate them in the midst of their devotions! The credulous populace made no difficulty in accepting the tale. Paris shuddered at the thought of its narrow escape, and some hundreds of thousands of men and women reverently crossed themselves and thanked heaven they had not fallen a prey to the blood-thirsty designs of a handful of peaceable and unarmed adherents of the "new doctrines!" As for Francis himself, a grave historian tells us that his apprehensions were inflamed by the very mention of the word "conspiracy."[343]
Abundance of victims.
The investigation had been committed to practised hands. The prosecuting officer, or lieutenant-criminel, Morin, was as famous for his cunning as he was notorious for his profligacy. Moreover, the judicious addition of six hundred livres parisis to his salary afforded him a fresh stimulus and prevented his zeal from flagging.[344] The timidity or treachery of one of the prisoners facilitated the inquest. Terrified by the prospect of torture and death, or induced by hope of reward, a person, obscurely designated as le Guainier, or Gueynier,[345] made an ample disclosure of the names and residences of his former fellow-believers. The pursuit was no longer confined to those who had been concerned in the distribution of the placards. All reputed heretics were apprehended, and, as rapidly as their trials could be prosecuted, condemned to death. There was a rare harvest of falsehood and misrepresentation. No wonder that innocent and guilty were involved in one common fate.[346]
It does not come within the scope of this history to give an edifying account of the courage displayed by the victims of the frenzy consequent upon the placards. The very names of many are unknown. Among the first to be committed to the flames was a young man, Barthélemi Milon, whom paralysis had deprived of the use of the lower half of his body.[347] His unpardonable offence was that copies of the placard against the mass had been found in his possession. A wealthy draper, Jean du Bourg, had been guilty of the still more heinous crime of having posted some of the bills on the walls. For this he was compelled before execution to go through that solemn mockery of penitence, the amende honorable, in front of the church of Notre Dame, with but a shirt to conceal his nakedness, and holding a lighted taper in his hand; afterward to be conducted to the Fontaine des Innocents, and there have the hand that had done the impious deed cut off at the wrist, in token of the public detestation of his "high treason against God and the king." A printer, a bookseller, a mason, a young man in orders, were subjected to the same cruel death. But these were only the first fruits of the prosecution.[348] However opinions may differ respecting the merits of the cause for which they suffered, there can be but one view taken of their deportment in the trying hour of execution. In the presence of the horrible preparatives for torture, the most clownish displayed a fortitude and a noble consciousness of honest purpose, contrasted with which the pusillanimous dejection, the unworthy concessions, and the premeditated perjury of Francis, during his captivity at Madrid not ten years before, appear in no enviable light. The monarch who bartered away his honor to regain his liberty[349] might have sat at the feet of these, his obscure subjects, to learn the true secret of greatness.
The great expiatory procession.
The punishment of the persons who had taken part in the preparation and dissemination of the placards was deemed an insufficient atonement for a crime in the guilt of which they had involved the city, and, indeed, the whole kingdom. As the offence excelled in enormity any other within the memory of man, so it was determined to expiate it by a solemn procession unparalleled for magnificence. Thursday, the twenty-first of January, 1535, was chosen for the pageant. Along the line of march the streets had been carefully cleaned. A public proclamation had bidden every householder display from his windows the most beautiful and costly tapestries he possessed. At the doors of all private mansions large waxen tapers burned, and, at the intersection of all side streets, wooden barriers, guarded by soldiers, precluded the possibility of interruption.
Early on the appointed morning, the entire body of the clergy of Paris, decked out in their most splendid robes and bearing the insignia of their respective ranks, assembled in Notre Dame, and thence in solemn state marched to the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, to meet the king. Sixteen dignitaries bore aloft the precious reliquary of Sainte Geneviève; others in similar honor supported the no less venerated reliquary of Saint Marcel. Those skilled in local antiquities averred that never before had the sacred remains of either saint been known to be brought across the Seine to grace any similar display.
At Saint Germain l'Auxerrois—that notable church under the very shadow of the Louvre, whose bell, a generation later, gave the first signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day—the royal court and the civil and municipal bodies that had been permitted to appear on so august an occasion, were in waiting. At length the magnificent column began its progress, and threading the crowded streets of St. Honoré and St. Denis, made its way, over the bridge of Notre Dame, to the island upon which stood and still stands the stately cathedral dedicated to Our Lady. Far on in the van rode Éléonore, Francis's second queen, sister to the emperor, conspicuous for her dignified bearing, dressed in black velvet and mounted on a palfrey with housings of cloth of gold. In her company were the king's daughters by his former wife, the "good Queen Claude," all in dresses of crimson satin embroidered with gold; while a large number of princesses and noble ladies, with attendant gentlemen and guards, constituted their escort.
The monastic orders came next. Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, Carmelites, all were there, with burning tapers and highly prized relics. The parish churches were represented in like manner by their clergy; and these were followed by the chapter of the cathedral and by the multitudinous professors and scholars of the university. Between this part of the procession and the next, came a detachment of the Swiss guards of the king, armed with halberds, and a band of skilled musicians performing, on trumpets, hautboys, and other instruments, the airs of the solemn hymns of the church.
An honorable place was held by the ecclesiastics of the "Sainte Chapelle," originally built by Louis the Ninth, in the precincts of his own palace, for the reception of the marvellous relics he brought home from Holy Land. Those relics were all here, together with the other costly possessions of the chapel—the crown of thorns, the true cross, Aaron's rod that budded, the great crown of St. Louis, the head of the holy lance, one of the nails used in our Lord's crucifixion, the tables of stone, some of the blood of Christ, the purple robe, and the milk of the Virgin Mary—all borne in jewelled reliquaries by bishops.