Crudelitas Gallica

Dear and faithful subjects. Everyone has been able to understand and see that, from the time we ascended to the throne, the extirpation of heresies and false dogmas has been our greatest and primary concern. For although the greatest affairs and the impediments of war have often been placed before us, yet we have applied ourselves diligently to this matter, even though those affairs have pressed upon us so that we could not provide for that matter, which has always been proposed to us with the highest zeal, by the foresight of our counsels. But while we are forced to dissemble and serve our own necessary times, and that to our greatest trouble and pain, it has happened that the leaders and authors of those heresies and dogmas in this kingdom, who for a long time had kept themselves and their clever and hostile counsels private and hidden, like fire and flame under ash, to spread the conflagration more widely, already for some years, having been induced and persuaded by the Genevan preachers, men of no good omen, have broken out at one and the same time in most parts of our kingdom, with the worst examples and offenses to men, into every kind of scandal, whatever it pleased them to conceive, to the highest contempt and prejudice of our religion, so much so that it is most necessary to curb their force and impetus by some harsher method.

† He held a most powerful kingdom for twelve years, whose every strength he consumed in extirpating religion; what did he achieve? By his fires and flames, he thus ignited light in the darkness, so that for one, a thousand Christians were made.

Pharaoh once did not feel the plagues of God calling him back from persecution itself.

Because of the subsidy he obtained from the Protestants, whom he now wishes to stab through the side of their own people.

One city is cleverly named, situated outside of Germany, with the name of the Protestants suppressed, but the thing itself must be watched, not the words, so that the fraud of the King-Cardinal may be revealed.

† Truly, that is kicking against the goad.