er despoiled, proscribed, and
murdered vassals, against the Cardinal de Tournon, the Count de Grignan,
and the Premier President Maynier d'Oppede, as having abused, for the
purpose of getting authority for this massacre, the religious feelings of
the king, who on his death-bed had testified his remorse for it. "This
cause," says De Thou, "was pleaded with much warmth, and occupied fifty
audiences, with a large concourse of people, but the judgment took all
the world by surprise. Guerin alone, advocate-general in 1545, having no
support at court, was condemned to death, and was scape-goat for all the
rest. D'Oppede defended himself with fanatical pride, saying that he
only executed the king's orders, like Saul, whom God commanded to
exterminate the Amalekites. He had the Duke of Guise to protect him; and
he was sent back to discharge the duties of his office. Such was the
prejudice of the Parliament of Paris against the Reformers that it
interdicted the hedge-schools (_ecoles buissonnieres_), schools which the
Protestants held out in the country to escape from the jurisdiction of
the precentor of Notre-Dame de Paris, who had the sole supervision of
primary schools. Hence comes the proverb, to play truant (_faire l'ecole
buissonniere--to go to hedge school_). All the resources of French civil
jurisdiction appeared to be insufficient against the Reformers. Henry
II. asked the pope for a bull, transplanting into France the Spanish
Inquisition, the only real means of extirpating the root of the errors."
It was the characteristic of this Inquisition, that it was completely in
the hands of the clergy, and that its arm was long enough to reach the
lay and the clerical indifferently. Pope Paul IV. readily gave the king,
in April, 1557, the bull he asked for, but the Parliament of Paris
refused to enregister the royal edict which gave force in France to the
pontifical brief. In 1559 the pope replied to this refusal by a bull
which comprised in one and the same anathema all heretics, though they
might be kings or emperors, and declared them to have "forfeited their
benefices, states, kingdoms, or empires, the which should devolve on the
first to seize them, without power on the part of the Holy See itself to
restore them." [_Magnum Bullarium Romanum, a Beato Leone Magno ad
Paulum IV.,_ t. i. p. 841: Luxembourg, 1742.] The Parliament would not
consent to enregister the decree unless there were put in it a condition
to the