[Sidenote: The councils of Bourges and Lyons.] Not less severe toward the "Lutheran" doctrines did the other two provincial councils show themselves. At the Council of Bourges, the Cardinal of Tournon presided as archbishop--a prelate who was to attain unenviable notoriety as the prime instigator of the massacre of Mérindol and Cabrières, of which an account will be given in a subsequent chapter. Besides the usual regulations for the censure of heretical books and the denunciation of "Lutherans," the decrees contain the significant direction that the professors in the University of Bourges shall employ in their instructions no authors calculated to divert the students from the ceremonies of the church--a caution deriving its importance from the circumstance that the university, under the patronage of Margaret of Angoulême, now Duchess of Berry as well as Queen of Navarre, had become a centre of reformatory activity. The letter in which the king had called upon the Archbishop of Lyons to convene the clergy of his province, declared that Francis had ever held the accursed sect of the "Lutherans" in hatred, horror, and abomination, and that its extirpation was an object very near his heart, for the accomplishment of which he would employ all possible means;[284] and the Council of Lyons responded by cordial approval and by the enactment of fresh regulations to suppress conventicles, to prevent the farther dissemination of Luther's writings, and, indeed, to forbid all discussion of matters of faith by the laity. At the same time the council unconsciously revealed the necessity imposed on the private Christian to investigate for himself the nature and grounds of his belief, by strongly reprobating the disastrous custom of admitting into sacred orders a host of illiterate, uncultivated persons of low antecedents--beardless youths--and by confessing that this wretched practice had justly excited the contempt of the world.[285] [Sidenote: Financial help bought by persecution.] Everywhere the clergy conceded the subsidy required by the exigencies of the kingdom. But they left Francis in no doubt respecting the price of their complaisance. This was nothing less than the extermination of the new sect that had made its appearance in France. And the king comprehended and fell in with the terms upon which the church agreed to loosen its purse-strings. No doubtful policy must now prevail! No more Berquins can be permitted to make their boast that they have been able, protected by the king's panoply, to beard the lion in his den! [Sidenote: Insult to an image.]