Robert Etienne (or Stephens, as he is called by English scholars) was more fortunate than Dolet. Up to the age of twenty-five he continued in the Romish Church, professing a doubtful sort of orthodoxy, like many other celebrated men of that day; and it is probable that he would have continued in this undecided equivocal state all his life, but for the virulent attacks made upon him by certain theologians, who were violent in proportion to their stupidity. His quarrel with the Sorbonne began as early as 1523, when that same body, which in 1470 had invited the first printers to Paris, took alarm at the agitation of men’s minds and turned fiercely against its own work. The presumption of a young man, and he a layman, to correct a text of Scripture, seemed monstrous. The publication of his Latin Bibles in 1528 and 1532, and more especially that of the small portable Bible in 1534, aggravated their hostility. But all this was as nothing to the rage excited by his edition of the Latin Bible in 1545, wherein he had collected the notes of that learned professor of Hebrew, Francis Vatable. In these notes the active inquisitors of the Sorbonne found a number of heretical propositions, such as a denial of the existence of purgatory, of the efficaciousness of confession, and so forth. Hitherto Robert had been able to escape the fate of his heterodox brother Dolet, through the intervention of the king and the influence of John du Bellay and others. But against this last tempest the royal authority seemed powerless. The Faculty of Theology instituted proceedings against him, when, unhappily for him, Francis I. died; and although Robert Etienne found an equally kind patron in his successor, the character of the new king was more impressionable. The Sorbonne attacked him more violently, and foreseeing that Henry would be unable to protect him, he quitted France, as Clement Marot, Olivetan, Amyot, and most of the professors of the Royal College had done before him. Beza tells us that all learning was suspected, and that hence many good but learned Catholics were numbered among the heretics. A man was liable to be condemned for not lifting his cap on passing an image (and they were at the corner of almost every street), for not kneeling at the sound of the _Ave Maria_ bell, and for eating meat on fast days. Clement Marot was sent to prison and narrowly escaped burning for eating some bacon during Lent. Ils vinrent à mon logement: Lors se va dire un gros paillard, Par là, morbleu, voilà Clement, Prenez-le, il a mangé le lard! The fasting, or not fasting, on certain days soon became a test of orthodoxy.