d to the bishop. Indeed, it was stipulated that every book
treating of the faith, and printed within the past twenty years, should
be submitted to him for examination. Nor was the council satisfied to
leave the discovery of heresy to accident. It was particularly enjoined
upon every bishop that he, or some competent person appointed by him,
should visit any portion of his diocese in which the taint of unsound
doctrine was reported to exist, and compel three or more persons of good
standing, or even the entire body of the inhabitants of a neighborhood,
to denounce under oath those who entertained heretical views, the
frequenters of secret conventicles, and even those who merely held aloof
from the conversation of the faithful. Lest this stimulus to informers
should prove insufficient to extract the desired knowledge, the threat
was added that persons refusing to testify would be treated as
suspected, and themselves proceeded against.[283]

[Sidenote: The councils of Bourges and Lyons.]

Not less severe toward the "Lutheran" doctrines did the other two
provincial councils show themselves. At the Council of Bourges, the
Cardinal of Tournon presided as archbishop--a prelate who was to attain
unenviable notoriety as the prime instigator of the massacre of Merindol
and Cabrieres, of which an account will be given in a subsequent
chapter. Besides the usual regulations for the censure of heretical
books and the denunciation of "Lutherans," the decrees contain the
significant direction that the professors in the University of Bourges
shall employ in their instructions no authors calculated to divert the
students from the ceremonies of the church--a caution deriving its
importance from the circumstance that the university, under the
patronage of Margaret of Angouleme, now Duchess of Berry as well as
Queen of Navarre, had become a centre of reformatory activity.

The letter in which the king had called upon the Archbishop of Lyons to
convene the clergy of his province, declared that Francis had ever held
the accursed sect of the "Lutherans" in hatred, horror, and abomination,
and that its extirpation was an object very near his heart, for the
accomplishment of which he would employ all possible means;[284] and the
Council of Lyons responded by cordial approval and by the enactment of
fresh regulations to suppress conventicles, to prevent the farther
dissemination of Luther's writings, and, indeed, to forbid all
discussion of mat