The audacity displayed by these catholic bands emboldened some of the huguenots. If Savoyards came to strengthen their faith in Geneva, ought they to hesitate to show theirs? Some hot-headed members of the Reform permitted themselves to be carried away to the committal of reprehensible acts. Whenever they went to the Franciscan cloister, the first object that struck their eyes was the image of St. Anthony of Padua, a miracle-monger of the thirteenth century, having eight other saints on each side of it. These pious figures, ranged over the convent gate, irritated the huguenots. It was vain to tell them that pictures are _the books of the ignorant_: the reformers answered that if the catholic prelates left the duty of teaching the people to _idols_, they would prefer remaining at home in their chairs. ‘If you had not taken the Bible from the Church,’ said the huguenots, ‘you would have had no necessity to hang up your paintings.’ Accordingly, between eleven and twelve o’clock one Saturday night, nine men carrying a ladder approached the convent, raised it silently against the porch, and then, with hammers and chisels, began to destroy the images. They cut off the head and limbs of the saint, leaving only his trunk; they did the same to the others, and threw the fragments into the well of St. Clair. The night passed without any disturbance, but in the morning there was a great uproar in the city. ‘What a piteous sight!’ said the devout assembled before the porch of St. Francis. The iconoclasts, who were discovered after a little time, were punished, but the images were not restored. ‘Alas!’ said the Friburgers, ‘Geneva is about to pull down the altars of the Romish faith!’—‘It is,’ answered the Bernese, ‘because upon these very altars the bishop desired to burn the venerable charters of her people, and has sprinkled them with the blood of her most illustrious citizens.’[544]... Sensuous worship no longer pleased the Genevans. Those labored pictures, those sculptured angels, those dazzling decorations, that charm of ceremonies and edifices, those shafts and pediments, those unintelligible chants, those intoxicating perfumes, those mechanical performances of the priests, with their gold and lace—all these things disgusted them exceedingly. Since God is a spirit, they said, those who worship him must worship him in spirit, by the inward faith of the heart, by purity of conscience, and by offering themselves to God to do his will.