The missionaries of the Calvinists were very largely drawn from converted members of the clergy, both secular and regular, and from those who had made a profession of teaching. For the purposes of propaganda these were precisely the classes most fitted by training and habit to arouse and instruct the people. Tracts were multiplied, and they enjoyed, notwithstanding the censures of the Sorbonne, a brisk circulation. The theater was also made a means of propaganda, and an effective one. Picardy continued to be the stronghold of the Protestants throughout this period, though they were also strong at Meaux and throughout the north-east, at Orleans, in Normandy, and in Dauphine. Great progress was also made in the south, which later became the most Protestant of all the sections of France. [Sidenote: Catholic measures] Catholics continued to rely on force. There was a counter-propaganda, emanating from the University of Paris, but it was feeble. The Jesuits, in the reign of Henry II, had one college at Paris and two in Auvergne; otherwise there was hardly any intellectual effort made to overcome the reformers. Indeed, the Catholics hardly had the munitions for such a combat. {203} Apart from the great independents, holding themselves aloof from all religious controversy, the more intelligent and enterprising portion of the educated class had gone over to the enemy. But the government did its best to supply the want of argument by the exercise of authority. New and severe edicts against "the heresies and false doctrines of Luther and his adherents and accomplices" were issued. The Sorbonne prohibited the reading and sale of sixty-five books by name, including the works of Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, Dolet, and Marot, and all translations of the Bible issued by the publishing house of Estienne. The south of France had in earlier centuries been prolific in sects claiming a Protestantism older than that of Augsburg. Like the Bohemian Brethren they eagerly welcomed the Calvinists as allies and were rapidly enrolled in the new church. Startled by the stirring of the spirit of reform, the Parlement of Aix, acting in imitation of Simon de Monfort, [Sidenote: 1540] ordered two towns, Merindol and Cabrieres, destroyed for their heresy. The sentence was too drastic for the French government to sanction immediately; it was therefore postponed by command of the king, but it was finally executed, at least in part. [Sidenote: 1545] A ghastly massacre took place in which eight hundred or more of the Waldenses perished. A cry of horror was raised in Germany, in Switzerland, and even in France, from which the king himself recoiled in terror.