With all the estates of Poland the Jews managed reasonably to agree save only with the Catholic clergy. This implacable foe of Judaism doubled his efforts as soon as the signal from Rome was given to start a reaction against the growing heresy of Protestantism and to combat all other forms of non-Catholic belief. The policy of Paul IV., the inquisitor on the throne of St. Peter, found an echo in Poland. The Papal Nuncio Lippomano, having arrived from Rome, conceived the idea of firing the religious zeal of the Catholics by one of those bloody spectacles which the inquisitorial Church was wont to arrange occasionally _ad maiorem Dei gloriam_. A rumor was set afloat that a poor woman in Sokhachev, Dorothy Lazhentzka by name, had sold to the Jews of the town the holy wafer received by her during communion, and that the wafer was stabbed by the "infidels" until it began to bleed. By order of the Bishop of Khelm three Jews who were charged with this sacrilege and their accomplice Dorothy Lazhentzka were thrown into prison, put on the rack, and finally sentenced to death. On learning of these happenings, the King sent orders to the Starosta of Sokhachev to stop the execution of the death sentence, but the clergy hastened to carry out the verdict,[52] and the alleged blasphemers were burned at the stake (1556). Before their death the martyred Jews made the following declaration: We have never stabbed the host, because we do not believe that the host is the Divine body (_nos enim nequaquam credimus hostiae inesse Dei corpus_), knowing that God has no body nor blood. We believe, as did our forefathers, that the Messiah is not God, but His messenger. We also know from experience that there can be no blood in flour. These protestations of a monotheistic faith were silenced by the executioner, who stopped "the mouths of the criminals with burning torches."