ad pursued its course, becoming more general and more fierce;
the creed of the Reformers had spread very much; their number had very
much increased; permanent churches, professing and submitting to a fixed
faith and discipline, had been founded; that of Paris was the first, in
1555; and the example had been followed at Orleans, at Chartres, at
Lyons, at Toulouse, at Rochelle, in Normandy, in Touraine, in Guienne, in
Poitou, in Dauphiny, in Provence, and in all the provinces, more or less.
In 1561, it was calculated that there were twenty-one hundred and fifty
reformed, or, as the expression then was, rectified (dressees), churches.
"And this is no fanciful figure; it is the result of a census taken at
the instigation of the deputies who represented the reformed churches at
the conference of Poissy on the demand of Catherine de' Medici, and in
conformity with the advice of Admiral de Coligny." [_La Reformation en
France pendant sa premiere periode,_ by Henri Luttheroth, pp. 127-132.]
It is clear that the movement of the Reformation in the sixteenth century
was one of those spontaneous and powerful movements which have their
source and derive their strength from the condition of men's souls and
of whole communities, and not merely from the personal ambitions and
interests which soon come and mingle with them, whether it be to promote
or to retard them. One thing has been already here stated and confirmed
by facts; it was specially in France that the Reformation had this truly
religious and sincere character; very far from supporting or tolerating
it, the sovereign and public authorities opposed it from its very birth;
under Francis I. it had met with no real defenders but its martyrs; and
it was still the same under Henry II. During the reign of Francis I.,
within a space of twenty-three years, there had been eighty-one capital
executions for heresy; during that of Henry II., twelve years, there were
ninety-seven for the same cause, and at one of these executions Henry II.
was present in person, on the space in front of Notre-Dame: a spectacle
which Francis I. had always refused to see. In 1551, 1557, and 1559,
Henry II., by three royal edicts, kept up and added to all the
prohibitions and penalties in force against the Reformers. In 1550, the
massacre of the Vaudians was still in such lively and odious remembrance
that a noble lady of Provence, Madame de Cental, did not hesitate to
present a complaint, in the name of h