Pope Clement VII. had recourse, two years after, to the same tactics: “It behoves,” he wrote to the Parliament of Paris, “in this great and marvellous disorder, which flows from the rage of Satan and from the rage and wickedness of his imps, that all the world should strive their utmost to guard the common safety, seeing that this abomination would not only embroil and destroy religion, but moreover all principality, nobility, laws, orders, and degrees.” The clergy held councils at Paris, under the presidency of the cardinal Duprat, and at Bourges under that of the archbishop François de Tournon, at which the Reformers were accused of having plotted an _execrable conjuration_, and the very-Christian king was exhorted to smother in his dominions these _viperous dogmas_. The obstinate heretics were to be exterminated, and the less guilty to undergo in prison a perpetual penitence, with _the bread of grief and the water of affliction_. We have somewhat anticipated our recital, in order to show who were the first authors of persecution in France. It will be seen that Italy played the chief part therein, by means of the regent, Louise de Savoie, with the cardinals, who are above all Roman princes, and with the monks and the priests, who profess to be the subjects of the Holy See, before any tie to their own country. This observation will reappear in different parts of this history, and we shall prove in its place, that the massacre of St. Bartholomew was, to use the expression of a modern writer, an _Italian crime_. Let us return now to the church of Meaux. The bishop of Briçonnet at first made head against the storm: he had even the hardihood to call the Sorbonnists Pharisees and hypocrites; but this firmness was of short duration; and when he found that he would have to answer for his acts before the Parliament, he retreated. It is unknown to what extent he abjured the faith he had preached. Everything was conducted with closed doors before a commission composed of two clerical counsellors, and of two lay counsellors of the Parliament. After having been condemned to pay a fine of two hundred livres, Briçonnet returned to his diocese, and tried so to live that there should be no more question about him (1523-1525). The new converts of Meaux were more resolute. One of them, Jean Leclerc, having affixed a placard to the cathedral door, in which he accused the pope of being Antichrist, was condemned, in 1523, to be whipped during three days in the crossways of the town, and branded on the forehead. When the executioner imprinted on him the stamp of infamy, a voice resounded from the crowd, saying, “Long live Jesus Christ and his tokens!” The astonished people looked around: it was the voice of his mother. The following year Jean Leclerc suffered martyrdom at Metz, which had not yet become a town of France.