During the first years of Francis I.’s reign (from 1515 to 1520) young and ardent Reformers, such as William Farel and his friends, were but isolated individuals, eager after new ideas and studies, very favorable towards all that came to them from Germany, but without any consistency yet as a party, and without having committed any striking act of aggression against the Roman church.  Nevertheless they were even then, so far as the heads and the devoted adherents of that church were concerned, objects of serious disquietude and jealous supervision.

[Illustration:  William Farel——­181]

The Sorbonne, in particular, pronounced vehemently against them.  Luther and his progress were beginning to make a great noise in France.  After his discussion with Dr. Eck at Leipzig in 1519 he had consented to take for judges the Universities of Erfurt and Paris; on the 20th of January, 1520, the quoestor of the nation of France bought twenty copies of Luther’s conference with Dr. Eck to distribute amongst the members of his committee; the University gave more than a year to its examination.  “All Europe,” says Crevier, “was waiting for the decision of the University of Paris.”  Whenever an incident occurred or a question arose, “We shall see,” said they of the Sorbonne, “what sort of folks hold to Luther.  Why, that fellow is worse than Luther!” In April, 1521, the University solemnly condemned Luther’s writings, ordering that they should be publicly burned, and that the author should be compelled to retract.  The Syndic of the Sorbonne, Noel Bedier, who, to give his name a classical twang, was called Beda, had been the principal and the most eager actor in this procedure; he was a theologian full of subtlety, obstinacy, harshness, and hatred.  “In a single Beda there are three thousand monks,” Erasmus used to say of him.  The syndic had at court two powerful patrons, the king’s mother, Louise of Savoy, and the chancellor, Duprat, both decided enemies of the Reformers.  Louise of Savoy, in consequence of her licentious morals and her thirst for riches; Duprat, by reason of the same thirst, and of his ambition to become an equally great lord in the church as in the state; and he succeeded, for in 1525 he was appointed Archbishop of Sens.  They were, moreover, both of them, opposed to any liberal reform, and devoted, in any case, to absolute power.  Beaucaire de Peguilhem, a contemporary and most Catholic historian,—­for he accompanied the Cardinal of Lorraine to the Council of Trent,—­calls Duprat “the most vicious of bipeds.”  Such patrons did not lack hot-headed executants of their policy; friendly relations had not ceased between the Reformers and their adversaries; a Jacobin monk, De Roma by name, was conversing one day at Meaux with Farel and his friends; the Reformers expressed the hopes they had in the propagation of the gospel; De Roma all at once stood up, shouting, “Then I and all the rest of the brotherhood will preach a crusade we will stir up the people; and if the king permits the preaching of your gospel, we will have him expelled by his own subjects from his own kingdom.”  Fanatical passions were already at work, though the parties were too unequal as yet to come to actual force.