Note 116 — Chapter XI · THE REFORMATION, POLITICALLY CONSIDERED

Persecution soon began. The king’s adoring sister, Margaret, Duchess of Alençon (afterwards Queen of Navarre), was the friend of Briçonnet, but was powerless to help at home even her own intimates.116 At first the king and his mother encouraged the movement at Meaux while sending out a dozen preachers through France to combat the Lutheran teaching;117 but in 1524, setting out on his Italian campaign, the king saw fit to conciliate his clergy, and his clerical chancellor Du Prat began measures of repression, the queen-mother assenting, and Briçonnet’s own brother assisting. Already, in 1521, the Sorbonne had condemned Luther’s writings, and the Parlement of Paris had ordered the surrender of all copies. In 1523 the works of Louis de Berquin, the anti-clerical friend of Erasmus, were condemned, and himself imprisoned; and Briçonnet consented to issue synodal decrees against Luther’s books and against certain Lutheran doctrines preached in his own diocese. Only by the king’s intervention was Berquin at this time released.