02 ROME, THE ESCORIAL, AND VERSAILLES
into four basic tenets and announced by royal edict. In worldly matters the Pope had no authority over kings; his spiritual power was also subordinate to the authority of general Councils; Gallican rights and customs were inviolable; and finally (this declaration was new) the judgment of the Pope in matters of faith was not unchangeable unless the Church concurred in it. These decisions were declared laws of the state, and all colleges and universities were compelled to swear fealty to them. Anyone who wished to obtain the doctorate had to defend them in one of his theses, but in Rome Pope Innocent burned them and refused to confirm the bishops whom the King ap- pointed. After six years the number of vacant dioceses had increased to thirty-five.
Louis' actions did not meet with the world's approval. Therefore he took occasion to prove his Catholic zeal in another way, and pro- ceeded to root out the Protestants. The nature of a unified state could no longer put up with the separate political organization of the Huguenots, who had their own constitution, their own armies and fortresses, and the right to convene Councils. A King so omnipotent and godlike also took it very much amiss that there should be subjects who considered his faith erroneous. Richelieu had only partly de- stroyed their power, and Mazarin had also suffered them to live in peace. This second Cardinal even declared that his red hat did not prevent him from according recognition to the services rendered by the Protestants. But his royal master entertained the ambition to be a new Constanrine and Theodosius, Little by little he curtailed the room inside which the heretics lived. They summoned courage to resist, forcibly reopened their churches which the King had ordered locked, and gathered round their preachers on the ruins of such houses of worship as had been destroyed. The government answered by sending out bloody dragoons, the missionaires bottes to convert them. Madame de Maintenon, mindful of her Calvinist past, condemned this brutal use of force, and was of the same mind in this regard as the Pope. He said that Christ had not employed this method that men must be led into the temple, and not dragged in by the hair. But the use of arms resulted in such numbers of conversions among those who did not go into exile that the Edict of Nantes could be abrogated
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