Francis himself ascended a ladder and placed it where the other image had stood, then kissed it and descended with tears in his eyes. Thrice he kneeled and prayed, the bishop of Lisieux, his almoner, reciting fair orisons and lauds to the honour of the glorious Virgin and her image. Again the trumpets, clarions and hautboys played the _Ave Regina cælorum_, and the king, the cardinal of Louvain, and all the nobles presented their tapers to the Virgin. Next day the Parlement, the provost and sheriffs, came and put an iron trellis round the silver image for fear of robbers.[107] Never were judicial and ecclesiastical punishments so cruel and recurrent as during the period of the Renaissance. It is a common error to suppose that judicial cruelty reached its culmination in the Middle Ages. Punishments are described with appalling iteration in the pages we are following. The Place de Grève was the scene of mutilations, tortures, hangings and quarterings of criminals and traitors, the king and his court sometimes looking on. Coiners of false money were boiled alive at the pig-market; robbers and assassins were broken on the wheel and left to linger in slow agony (_tant qu'ils pourraient languir_). The Lutherans were treated like vermin, and to harbour them, to possess or print or translate one of their books, meant a fiery death. In 1525 a young Lutheran student was put in a tumbril and brought before the churches of Notre Dame and St. Genevieve, crying mercy from God and Mary and St. Genevieve; he was then taken to the Place Maubert, where, after his tongue had been pierced, he was strangled and burnt. A _gendarme_ of the Duke of Albany was burnt at the pig-market for having sown Lutheran errors in Scotland; before his execution his servant was whipped and mutilated before him at the cart-tail, but was pardoned on recantation.