dmiration of his extraordinary learning, his purity of
life--a rare excellence in a nobleman of the court of Francis the
First--his kindness and freedom from all ostentation, his uncompromising
hatred of every form of meanness and injustice,[269] and a fearless
courage which, in the eyes of the timid sage of Rotterdam, appeared to
fall little short of foolhardiness. Like most of the really earnest
reformers, De Berquin was originally a very strict observer of the
ordinances of the church, and was unsurpassed in attention to fasts,
feast-days, and the mass. It was indignation and contempt for the petty
persecution inaugurated by Beda and his associates of the Sorbonne that
first led him to examine the tenets of Lefevre. From Lefevre's works he
naturally passed to those of the German reformers. His curiosity turning
to admiration, he began to translate and annotate the most striking
treatises that fell into his hands. Not content with this, he set
himself to writing books on the same topics, and incidentally depicted
in no flattering colors the intolerance and ignorance of the Paris
theologians. As he made no attempt at concealment, his activity was soon
known.

[Sidenote: His first imprisonment.]

In the spring of 1523, De Berquin's house was visited, his books and
papers were seized, and an inventory was made. Beda was the leader of
the authorities in the whole affair. Parliament ordered the books and
manuscripts to be examined and reported upon by the theological faculty.
What the report would be, it was not hard to surmise. When such works
were found in De Berquin's possession as that entitled "Speculum
Theologastrorum," and another giving Luther's reasons for maintaining
the universal priesthood of Christian believers; when the notes in De
Berquin's own handwriting condemned as blasphemous, and as derogatory to
the power of the Holy Ghost, the ascription of praise to the Virgin Mary
as the "fountain of all grace"--but one answer could be expected to the
requisition of parliament. The books and manuscripts were pronounced
heretical; their author was commanded to retract. This De Berquin
refused to do, and he was, consequently, shut up in the
_conciergerie_--the civil prison within the walls of the ancient palace
in which parliament sat. Four days later he was transferred to the
dungeons of the Bishop of Paris, to be judged by him with the aid of two
counsellors of parliament and of such theologians as he should see f