In 1526, the university of Paris had authorised the printing of certain dissertations written by the rector Noël Béda against Fabri and Erasmus. King Francis wrote to the Parliament directing it to cause the sale of these books to be prohibited. He added the general instruction that no books, even such as might have been written by members of the university, were to be printed or sold which had not first been examined and approved by the members of the court deliberating together. It would appear from the King’s letter that he had sufficient sympathy with the reformers to be unwilling to have Erasmus attacked, and also that even in matters of theological doctrine, the final decision was entrusted, not to the faculty of theology, but to the court of Parliament. By 1531, however, the King had decided that, for theological questions at least, the responsibility for the control of literary production had better be left with the Sorbonne. In this year he gave a direct royal authorisation to the publisher Badius for the printing of the big treatise of Alberto Pio against Erasmus, which treatise had been duly approved by the divines. The fury of civil war and the bitterness of religious dissension gave a special character to the laws affecting printing and publishing and to the enforcement of these. In 1545, Etienne Polliot was sentenced for importing and selling heretical books. He was compelled to carry a bundle of his publications to the market-place, where he and his books were burned together. In 1546, the publisher Etienne Dolet, himself the author of a number of books, was burned in the Place Maubert, for his obstinate persistence in heresy. The ordinances of 1557 and 1560 punished with death, as guilty of treason, the printers, authors, sellers, and distributors of books which had been condemned as pernicious or libellous. The letters patent of 1563 fixed the penalty of hanging or strangling for the offence of printing a book without a royal authorisation. The ordinance of Moulins, of 1566, renews the same prohibition. Vitet[132] points out that the wars of the League had influence in securing a certain freedom for publishing. The government of the League did not undertake to free from restrictions the printing-presses of Paris. It prohibited them, however, only from such undertakings as seemed likely to prove of service to the enemies of the League. On the other hand, there was at Tours a government which was hostile only to such writings as were not royalist, and at Geneva another government the censures of which affected only that literature which was not Protestant. Through these three limited censures came into existence three fragments of publishing freedom. The power of the printing-press in influencing public opinion may, as far as France is concerned, be said to date from this period. Under the provisions of the Edict of Nantes, which bears date 1598, the production and sale of Protestant books were