which the Mass and its celebrants were attacked in the coarsest and most offensive terms. Copies were also pasted up in Orleans and other towns, and one was even affixed to the door of the royal bedchamber at Amboise, where Francis was at the time residing. The people of Paris were thoroughly roused and frightened by what seemed to them a blasphemous outrage. The King was furious. A persecution began in Paris which far exceeded all its predecessors in rigour.
By the middle of November two hundred heretics were said to be in prison; before the end of the year this number was nearly doubled. By Christmas eight persons had been burned. Early in the following year (1535) the King returned to Paris, and on January 21 took part in a grand expiatory procession. This was followed by a public banquet, at which he made a long speech announcing once more his intention of exterminating heresy from his kingdom. The day of expiation closed with the burning of six more heretics. On January 25 seventy-three Lutherans, who had fled from Paris, were summoned by the town crier to appear before the Courts, or in default to suffer attainder and confiscation of their goods. Among these was the educational reformer, Mathurin Cordier, and the poet, Clément Marot. By May 5 there were nine more executions, making in all twenty-three. But the King was beginning to relent. On the death of the Chancellor, Cardinal Duprat (July 9), Francis appointed in his place Antoine du Bourg, who was favourable to the Reformers. On July 16 he issued an Edict from Coucy announcing that there were to be no further prosecutions except in the case of Sacramentarians and relapsed persons, and that all fugitives who returned and abjured their errors within six months should receive pardon. The reason for this milder attitude was that Francis was still angling for an alliance with the German Protestant Princes, and had renewed the négociations with Melanchthon. By the direction of Guillaume du Bellay, John Sturm, who held at this time a professorship at Paris, wrote both to Melanchthon and Bucer urging them to come to France for the purpose of a conference with the Paris theologians. Melanchthon consented; but the Elector John Frederick of Saxony refused to let him go, and the proposed conference had to be abandoned (August, 1535). At the same time the Sorbonne, to whom Melanchthon's paper of the preceding year had been submitted, expressed its entire disapproval of the project.
Bucer, however, still worked indefatigably on behalf of a reconciliation; and at the close of the year du Bellay was again in Germany, first assuring the diet of Protestant Princes assembled at Schmalkalden that his royal master had not burnt his Lutheran subjects from any dislike of their religious opinions, and then holding interviews with Melanchthon, Sturm, and others, in which he represented his master's theological views as differing not greatly from their own. It was all to no purpose. Princes and theologians alike had ceased to believe in the French King's sincerity.
