From Rise of Protestantism in France to Publication of the Institutes - James Aitken Wylie

pulpits. Shouting and gesticulating these men
awoke, now the anger, now the horror of their
fanatical hearers, by the odious epithets and terrible
denunciations which they hurled against
Lutheranism. They poured a host of mendicants
into the houses of the citizens. These, as instructed
beforehand, while they filled their wallets, dropped
seditious hints that "the Pope was above the king,"
adding that if matters went on as they were doing
the crown would not long adorn the head of
Francis.
Still further to move the people against the
queen's preachers, processions were organized in
the streets. For nine days a crowd of penitents, with
sackcloth on their loins and ashes on their heads,
were seen prostrate around the statue of St. James,
loudly imploring the good saint to stretch out his
staff, and therewith smite to the dust the hydra that
was lifting up its abhorred head in France.
Nor did the doctors of the Sorbonne agitate in
vain. The excitable populace were catching fire.
Fanatical crowds, uttering revolutionary cries,
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