The Calvinists generally held meetings in the open air where they could escape the restrictions that were placed on services held in any place of worship. The middle and lower classes attended them in large numbers, and the new faith spread rapidly through the enlightened world of Western Europe. John Knox, the renowned Scotch preacher, was a firm friend of Calvin, and {101} thundered denunciations from his Scotch pulpit at the young Queen Mary, who had come from France with all the levity of French court-training in her manners. The people of Southern France were eager to hear the fiery speech that somehow captured their imagination. As they increased in numbers and began to have political importance they became known as Huguenots or Confederates. To Catherine de Medici, the Catholic Regent of France, they were a formidable body, and in Navarre their leaders were drawn mainly from the nobles. Relentless persecution would probably have crushed the Huguenots of France eventually if it had been equally severe in all cases. As a rule, men of the highest rank could evade punishment, and a few of the higher clergy preached religious toleration. Thousands marched cheerfully to death from among the ranks of humble citizens, for it was part of Calvin's creed that men ought to suffer martyrdom for their faith without offering resistance. Judges were known to die, stricken by remorse, and marvelling at their victims' fortitude. At Dijon, the executioner himself proclaimed at the foot of the scaffold that he had been converted. The Calvinist preachers could gain no audience in Paris, where the University of the Sorbonne opposed their doctrines and declared that these were contrary to all the philosophy of ancient times. The capital of France constantly proclaimed loyalty to Rome by the pompous processions which filed out of its magnificent churches and paraded the streets to awe the mob, always swayed by the violence of fanatic priests. The Huguenots did not attempt to capture a stronghold, where it was boasted that "the novices of the convents and the priests' housekeepers could have driven them out with broomsticks." {102} Such rude weapons would have been ineffectual in the South-East of France, where all the most flourishing towns had embraced the reformed religion. The majority of the Huguenots were drawn from the most warlike, intelligent, and industrious of the population of these towns, but princes also adopted Calvinism, and the Bourbons of Navarre made their court a refuge for believers in the new religion.