the condemned, provided that they abjured their errors within three months (February 8, 1541). The order was still suspended over their heads when at the close of 1543 Jean Meynier, Seigneur d'Oppède, a man of brutal ferocity, succeeded to the office of First President of the Parliament of Aix. The Waldenses again appealed to the King and were again protected (1544). Accordingly the Parliament despatched a messenger to the King with the false statement that the people of Mérindol were in open rebellion and were even threatening Marseilles. With the help of the Cardinal de Tournon they obtained upon this statement new letters-patent from the King revoking his former letters, and ordering that all who were found guilty of the Waldensian heresy should be exterminated (January 1, 1545) The decree was kept secret until an army had been collected; and then, on April 12, Oppède, who, in the absence of the Governor of Provence was acting as his deputy, called together the Parliament, read the decree, and appointed four commissioners to carry it into execution. Within a week Mérindol, Cabrières, and other villages were in ashes; and at Cabrières alone eight hundred persons, including women and children, are said to have been put to death. The work of destruction continued for nearly two months, and in the end it was computed that three thousand men, women, and children had been killed, and twenty-two villages burned, while the flower of the men were sent to the galleys. Many of the survivors fled the country to find a refuge in Switzerland.
If the execution of the " Fourteen of Meaux " falls far short of the massacre of the Vaudois as regards the number of its victims, its strictly judicial character makes it more instructive as an example of the treatment of heretics. In the year 1546 the Reformers of Meaux organised themselves into a Church after the pattern of that set up by the French refugees at Strassburg eight years before. They chose as their first pastor, a wool-carder, named Pierre Leclerc, a brother of the man who was burnt at Metz. Their number increased under his ministry, and the matter soon came to the ear of the authorities. On September 8 a sudden descent was made on the congregation, and sixty persons were arrested and sent to Paris to be tried by the Parliament. Their greatest crime was that they had celebrated the Holy Communion. On October 4 sentence was pronounced. Fourteen were sentenced to be tortured and burned, five to be flogged and banished; ten, all women, were set free, while the remainder were to undergo graduated forms of penance. The sentences were carried out at Meaux on October 7. Etienne Mangin, in whose house the services had always been held, and Leclerc, were carried to the stake on hurdles, the rest on tumbrils. They had all previously undergone what was known as " extraordinary " torture, and all had refused to reveal the names of other Reformers at Meaux. At the stake six yielded so far as to confess to a priest, thereby escaping the penalty of having their tongues cut out; the others who remained firm suffered
