We have remarked before upon the intimate connections of Louis XI. with Florence and the Medici. But it was not only the wish to preserve connections which were beneficial to his country which induced the king to take the side of the Republic. The strange mixture of bigotry and gross superstition with extreme contempt for the persons connected with the Church, even her highest dignitaries, which certainly never existed in such a degree as with this prince, are here revealed. The man who had faith in amulets and portable altars, who, as the Bishop de Seyssel informs us in his panegyric, knelt from time to time before lead and tin figures of the Madonna fastened to the brim of his hat, so that the people thought him mad, allowed the disputes of his clergy to grow to a schism when he found them opposed to his projects, or thought them connected with the attempts at conspiracy by which he constantly believed himself threatened. Wherever his authority was questioned, he regarded the Pope and clergy as hostile powers, and their conduct unfortunately often added strength to such views. When he confined the Cardinal La Balue in an iron cage, which still may be seen in the castle of Loches in Touraine, the latter had deserved severer punishment for his dishonourable treason. Just at this time many reasons combined to irritate him, and the accusations hurled against him in the sermons preached at Paris by the Franciscan Antoine Fradin, which found their echo in popular tumults, did not help to pacify him.