From an early period, the Roman church had been accustomed to treat contemptuously, as well as cruelly, all who dissented from its doctrines, or objected to its government, and this feeling was continued down to the age of the Reformation, in spite of the tone of liberalism which was beginning to shine forth in the writings of some of its greatest ornaments. Some research among the dusty, because little used, records of national archives and libraries would no doubt bring to light more than one singular caricature upon the "heretics" of the middle ages, and my attention has been called to one which is possessed of peculiar interest. There is, among the imperial archives of France, in Paris, among records relating to the country of the Albigeois in the thirteenth century, a copy of the bull of pope Innocent IV. giving directions for the proceedings against dissenters from Romanism, on the back of which the scribe, as a mark of his contempt for these arch-heretics of the south, has drawn a caricature of a woman bound to a stake over the fire which is to burn her as an open opponent of the church of Rome. The choice of a woman for the victim was perhaps intended to show that the proselytism of heresy was especially successful among the weaker sex, or that it was considered as having some relation to witchcraft. It is, by a long period, the earliest known pictorial representation of the punishment of burning inflicted on a heretic. [Illustration: _No. 143. Burning a Heretic._] The shafts of satire were early employed against Luther and his new principles, and men like Murner, already mentioned, Emser, Cochlæus, and others, signalised themselves by their zeal in the papal cause. As already stated, Murner distinguished himself as the literary ally of our king Henry VIII. The taste for satirical writings had then become so general, that Murner complains in one of his satires that the printers would print nothing but abusive or satirical works, and neglected his more serious writings. _Da sindt die trucker schuld daran, Die trucken als die Gauchereien, Und lassen mein ernstliche bücher leihen._