Crudelitas Gallica

FROM THE ACTS OF THE PARLIAMENT
OF ROUEN.

Since in the Parliament the petition of the King’s Procurator General, exhibited on the 26th of May, had been recited, and regarding that matter, on the same day in the Great Chamber or Decury of the same Parliament, sentences were spoken, having known of many complaints, inquisitions, acts, and public letters, made in various places of the prefectures of Caen, Coutances, and Caux, and likewise of others, brought forth before the same Parliament, concerning illicit gatherings and sermons frequently held in the aforementioned places: and having heard the response of their delegates, who had been sent as legates to the King for these reasons.

THE SAME Parliament, with all its decuries assembled, having found that, contrary to the Edicts and Royal constitutions (which had then been published concerning those alone who were suspected of heresy, and were not obeying the holy Decrees of the Catholic Church † and during that time * were furtively holding gatherings, conventicles, and clandestine counsels for the sake of disseminating their doctrine and deceiving the common people), the errors of the heretics were budding more and more, and at this time this evil had grown so much, and grows hour by hour, that those gatherings and conventicles, which before this were held secretly among a few, are now celebrated so openly and publicly that many petty, unknown men, and of no account, preaching as Preachers

† Thus the Jerusalem priests once argued impiety against the prophets, and Christ, and all the Apostles and Martyrs. But the King-Cardinal cleverly substituted "Catholic" for the Roman Church, not Apostolic, but Apostatic.

* If all secret gatherings are condemned, the whole of that primitive Church should be condemned. But the doctrine which is taught in these gatherings is not hidden at all. Those, however, on the contrary, who bear it more bitterly than that their own mysteries be revealed to anyone? That, indeed, is finally to flee the light and seek the darkness.