further advised the regent to ask the pope to send over to France pontifical delegates invested with his own powers to watch and to try in his name “even archbishops, bishops, and abbots, who by their deeds, writings, or discourses, should render themselves suspected of a leaning towards heresy.”  Louise of Savoy, without any appearance of being hurt by the attack made by the Parliament on the acts of the king her son, eagerly followed the advice given her; and on the 20th of May, 1525, Clement VII., in his turn, eagerly appointed four delegates commissioned to try all those suspected of heresy, who, in case of condemnation, were to be left to the secular arm.  On the very day on which the pope appointed his delegates, the faculty of theology at Paris passed censure upon divers writings of Erasmus, translated and spread abroad in France by Berquin; and on the 8th of January, 1526, the Bishop of Amiens demanded of the Parliament authority “to order the body to be seized of Louis de Berquin, who resided in his diocese and was scandalizing it by his behavior.”  The Parliament authorized his arrest; and, on the 24th of January, Berquin was once more a prisoner in the Conciergerie, at the same time that orders were given to seize all his books and papers, whether at his own house or at that of his friend the Lord of Rambure at Abbeville.  The great trial of Berquin for heresy was recommenced, and in it the great name of Erasmus was compromised.

When the question was thus solemnly reopened, Berquin’s defenders were much excited.  Defenders, we have said; but, in truth, history names but one, the Princess Marguerite, who alone showed any activity, and alone did anything to the purpose.  She wrote at once to the king, who was still at Madrid “My desire to obey your commands was sufficiently strong without having it redoubled by the charity you have been pleased to show to poor Berquin according to your promise; I feel sure that He for whom I believe him to have suffered will approve of the mercy which, for His honor, you have had upon His servant and yours.”  Francis I. had, in fact, written to suspend until his return the proceedings against Berquin, as well as those against Lefevre, Roussel, and all the other doctors suspected of heresy.  The regent transmitted the king’s orders to the pope’s delegates, who presented themselves on the 20th of February before the Parliament to ask its advice.  “The king is as badly advised as he himself is good,” said the dean of the faculty of theology.  The Parliament answered that “for a simple letter missive” it could not adjourn; it must have a letter patent; and it went on with the trial.  Berquin presented several demands for delay, evidently in order to wait for the king’s return and personal intervention.  The court refused them; and, on the 5th of March, 1526, the judgment was read to him in his prison at the Conciergerie.  It was to the effect that his books should be again burned before his eyes, that he should declare his approval of so just a sentence, and that he should earn the compassion of the church by not refusing her any satisfaction she might demand; else he should himself go to the stake.