‘The kingdom of Christ is strengthened and established more by the blood of martyrs than by force of arms,’ said the doctor of Noyon one day.[587] At this period he had occasion to experience the truth of the statement. One day in the year 1527, a man thirty-six years old, of good family--he was related to M. de Lude--of ecclesiastical rank, prothonotary, and holding several benefices, Nicholas Doullon by name, having been accused of heresy, stood in front of the cathedral of Notre Dame, while an immense crowd of citizens, priests, and common people were looking on. The executioner had gone in the morning to the prison, stripped the prothonotary of his official robes, and having passed a rope round his neck and put a taper in his hand, had conducted him in this guise to the front of the church of the Virgin. The poor fellow had seen better days: he had often gone to the palaces of the Louvre, St. Germain, and Fontainebleau, and mingled with the nobles, in the presence of the king, his mother, and his sister; he had also been one of the officers of Clement VII. The good folks of Paris, whom this execution had drawn together, said to one another as they witnessed the sad spectacle: ‘He frequented the king’s court, and has lived at Rome in the pope’s service.’[588] Doullon was accused of having uttered a great blasphemy against the glorious mother of our Lord and against our Lord himself: he had denied that the host was very Christ. The clergy had taken advantage of the king’s absence, and had used unprecedented haste in the trial. ‘He was taken the Thursday before,’ and four days later was standing bareheaded and barefooted, with the rope about his neck, in front of the metropolitan church of Paris. Everybody was listening to hear the apology he would make to the Virgin; but they listened in vain: Doullon remained firm in his faith to the last. Accordingly, the hangman again laid hands on him, and the prothonotary, guarded by the sergeants, and preceded and followed by the crowd, was led to the Grève, where he was fastened to the stake and burnt alive.[589] The execution of a priest of some dignity in the Church made a sensation in Paris, especially in the schools and among the disciples of the Reform. ‘Ah!’ said Calvin subsequently, ‘the torments of the saints whom the hand of the Lord makes invincible, should give us boldness; for thus we have beforehand the pledge of our victory in the persons of our brethren.’