Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/318

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of their scattered forces. Little wonder if during the next twenty-five years of their direst need they looked for consolation and support to the free city among the Alps and to the strong manVho ruled it.

The new war with Charles V, which broke out in April, 1536, left the French King no leisure for the suppression of heresy. But after the truce at Nice and the interview with the Emperor at Aiguës-Mortes (July 14, 1538) Francis began to address himself in earnest to his task. After two partial Edicts, the first addressed to the Parliament of Toulouse (December 16, 1538), and the second to the Parliaments of Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Rouen (June 24, 1539), he issued from Fontainebleau on June 1, 1540, a general Edict of great severity. It introduced a more efficient and rapid procedure for the trial of heretics, which, with a slight modification made by the Edict of Paris (July 23, 1543), enlarging the powers of the ecclesiastical Courts, remained in force for the next nine years. On August 29, 1542, another Edict was addressed to the Parliament of Toulouse, followed on the next day by a mandamus to those of Paris, Bordeaux, Dijon, Grenoble, and Rouen. The Parliament of Aix required no such stimulus. Meanwhile the Sorbonne had been engaged in drawing up twenty-six articles in which the true Catholic faith on all the disputed points was set forth. It was their answer to the French translation of the Institutio which Calvin had completed in 1541 from the second and greatly enlarged Latin edition. The articles were ratified by a royal Ordinance of July 23, 1543. The answer of the Parliament of Paris had been of a more material character. On July 1, 1542, it issued a long Edict concerning the supervision of the press, of which the first clause ordered all copies of the Institutio to be given up within twenty-four hours. On February 14, 1544, these were solemnly burnt, with other books, including several printed by Étienne Dolet. This was shortly followed by the publication of the first Index Expurga-torius issued by the Sorbonne, which was registered by the Parliament ten months later,

In this policy of repression the King had the active support of four men; the Inquisitor-General, Matthieu Ory; the first President of the Parliament of Paris, Pierre Lizet, soon to become even more notorious as the President of the Chambre Ardente; the Chancellor, Guillaume Poyet, who had succeeded the moderate Antoine du Bourg on November 12, 1538; and foremost among them, the Cardinal de Tournon, now all powerful with the King, and practically his first minister. Though the Cardinal was a liberal patron of learning and letters, he was a relentless and untiring foe to the new religious doctrines. "He is worth to France an Inquisition in himself," said a contemporary. It is significant also that just at this time Francis lost one of his ablest and most enlightened ministers, and the French Reformers one of their best friends in Guillaume du Bellay, who died in January, 1543.

With such a man in power as the Cardinal de Tournon there was not