History of the Protestants of France, from the commencement of the Reformation to the present timeFélice, G. de (Guillaume)
History
History of the Protestants of France, from the commencement of the Reformation to the present time
Félice, G. de (Guillaume)
Protestants -- France
Orders were immediately issued to seize the Sacramentarians, dead or
alive. The criminal-lieutenant, Jean-Morin, obtained the assistance
of a certain sheath or scabbard-maker, who had been a summoner
for the secret meetings, and whose life had been promised him on
condition that he should lead the serjeants to the houses of the
heretics. Some, warned in time, took flight; the others, men and
women, those who had condemned the placards, as well as those who had
approved them, were thrust alike pell-mell into the prisons.
It is reported that the civil-lieutenant, having entered the house of
one of them, Barthélemy Milon, a cripple, wholly helpless of body,
said to him: “Come, get thee up.” “Alas, sir,” replied the paralytic,
“it must be a greater master than you to raise me up.” The serjeants
carried him off, and the courage of his companions in captivity grew
firm through his exhortations.
Their trial was soon over. But for the Sorbonne and the clergy, the
blood of the heretics was not enough. Their object was to strike
the imagination of the people by a _generalissimo_ procession, and,
by persuading the king to be present, to bind him decisively to the
system of persecution. This _fête_ marks an important date in our
recital; for it was from this moment that the Parisian populace took
part in the contest against the heretics; and, once mounted on the
stage, they never quitted it until the end of the League. In the
chain of events, this procession, intermingled with executions, was
the first of the bloody days of the sixteenth century; the massacre
of St. Bartholomew, the Barricades, the murder of Henry III., and the
assassination of Henry IV., could but follow.
A chronicler of the time, Simon Fontaine, a doctor of the Sorbonne,
has left us a long description of this event. It took place on the
29th of January, 1535. An innumerable concourse had come from all the
surrounding country. “There was not the smallest piece of wood or
stone jutting from the walls which was not occupied, provided there
was room on it for anybody. The house-tops were covered with men,
great and small, and one might have supposed the streets to have been
paved with heads.”
Never had so many relics been paraded through the streets of Paris.
The reliquary of the Sainte-Chapelle was then first brought out.
Priests bore the head of St. Louis, a piece of the holy cross, the
true crown of thorns, a real nail, and also the spear-head which
had pierced the side of our Lord. The shrine of St. Geneviéve, the
patron saint of Paris, was carried by the corporation or company of
butchers, who had fitted themselves for the holy office by a fast of
several days, and each one was bent upon touching the precious relic
with the tip of his finger, or with his handkerchief, or cap.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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