of the
reformed churches, in the neighborhood of the Gate of St. Antoine and
the Gate of St. Marceau! Added to these palpable proofs of the court's
complicity with the heretics, was the no less scandalous fact that
marriages and baptisms, celebrated "after the fashion of Geneva," were
of frequent occurrence; that the nuptials of young De Rohan, cousin of
Antoine of Navarre, and Mademoiselle de Brabancon, niece of the Duchess
d'Etampes, had been performed on St. Michael's Day, and in the presence
of Conde and the Queen of Navarre, by Theodore Beza himself; and that in
a masquerade in the royal palace Charles the Ninth had worn a cap which
bore an unmistakable resemblance to a bishop's mitre![1236]

[Sidenote: Tanquerel's seditious declaration.]

While legate and nuncio labored to put an end to these hateful
manifestations by personal solicitation addressed to Catharine, to
Cardinal Chatillon, and others,[1237] the priests and monks were no less
active in stirring up the passions of the people to open resistance. In
the scholastic halls of the College de Harecourt, one Tanquerel, a
doctor of the Sorbonne, enunciated the dangerous maxim that "the Pope
can depose heretical kings and emperors." At this menacing declaration,
which, under a king in his minority and a regency divided in its
sentiments on religious questions, was much more than a theoretical
abstraction, the government took alarm. The Parliament of Paris
investigated the offence, and the doctrine of Tanquerel was severely
condemned. Tanquerel himself having fled from the city to avoid the
consequences of his rashness, the Dean of the Sorbonne was required, by
order of the supreme court, to utter in his name a solemn recantation in
the presence of the assembled theologians and of a committee of
parliament; and two theologians were deputed to St. Germain to beg the
king's forgiveness.[1238]

[Sidenote: Jean de Hans.]

The preachers were not behind the doctors in the use of seditious
language. They attacked the government and its entire policy; and one of
their number--Jean de Hans--while delivering Advent discourses in the
church of St. Barthelemi, in the very neighborhood of the palace, so
distinguished himself for the extravagance of his denunciations, that he
was arrested and carried off to the court at St. Germain. Yet such was
his well-known popularity with the Parisians, that it was found
necessary to effect his capture by a troop of forty armed men; and