of Munster, in Westphalia, and there renewed their
attempt to found the kingdom of Israel, with community
of property and polygamy. As in 1525, they were
promptly crushed by the German princes, Catholic and
Protestant, of the neighborhood; but their rising had
created some reverberation in France, and the Reformers
had been suspected of an inclination to take part
in it. “It is said,” wrote the Chancellor
de Granvelle, in January, 1535, to the ambassador
of France at the court of Charles V., “that
the number of the strayed from the faith in France,
and the danger of utter confusion, are very great;
the enterprise of the said strayed, about which you
write to me, to set fire to the churches and pillage
the Louvre, proves that they were in great force.
Please God the king may be able to apply a remedy!”
[Papiers d’Etat du Cardinal de Granvelle,
t. ii. p. 283.] The accusation was devoid of all foundation;
but nothing is absurd in the eyes of party hatred and
suspicion, and an incident, almost contemporaneous
with the fresh insurrection of the Anabaptists, occurred
to increase the king’s wrath, as well as the
people’s, against the Reformers, and to rekindle
the flames of persecution. On the 24th of October,
1534, placards against the mass, transubstantiation,
and the regimen as well as the faith of the Catholic
church, were posted up during the night in the thoroughfares
of Paris, and at Blois on the very chamberdoor of
Francis I., whose first glance, when he got up in
the morning, they caught. They had been printed
at Neufchatel, in Switzerland, where the influence
of the refugee William Farel was strong, and their
coarse violence of expression could not fail to excite
the indignation of even the most indifferent Catholics.
In their fanatical blindness factions say only what
satisfies their own passions, without considering
moral propriety or the effect which will be produced
by their words upon the feelings of their adversaries,
who also have creeds and passions. Francis I.,
equally shocked and irritated, determined to give
the Catholic faith striking satisfaction, and Protestant
audacity a bloody lesson. On the 21st of January,
1535, a solemn procession issued from the church of
St. Germain l’Auxerrois. John du Bellay,
Bishop of Paris, held in his hands the holy sacrament,
surrounded by the three sons of France and the Duke
de Vendome, who were the dais-bearers; and the king
walked behind, with a taper in his hand, between the
Cardinals of Bourbon and Lorraine. At each halting-place
he handed his taper to the Cardinal of Lorraine, folded
his hands, and humbly prostrating himself, implored
divine mercy for his people. After the procession
was over, the king, who had remained to dine with John
du Bellay, assembled in the great hall of the palace
the heads of all the companies, and taking his place
on a sort of throne which had been prepared for him,
said, “Whatever progress may have already been
made by the pest, the remedy is still easy if each