Affaire des Placards
The affair of the placards ( Poster affair ) of 1534 was provoked an incident in which anti-Catholic posters in Paris and four major cities of France a scandal.
On the night of Sunday, October 18, 1534, posters were posted in Paris , Blois , Rouen , Tours and Orléans that were perceived as a direct attack on the Catholic concept of the Eucharist . A poster was also found inside the Royal Castle of Amboise ; King Francis I saw this not only as a personal insult, but also as an attack on his safety. This ended the somewhat conciliatory religious policy of the king, who, not least under the influence of his sister, Margaret of Navarre , had tried to protect the Protestants (then still Lutheran) in his country from persecution by the anti-reform supreme court, the Parlement of Paris, to protect.
The posters were entitled - loosely translated - Article about the terrible, great and intolerable abuses of the papist mass, which stand in direct contrast to the Holy Communion of our Lord, the sole mediator and Savior Jesus Christ . The priests are regarded as "miserable sacrifices, who, as if they were our savior, put themselves in the place of Christ." Measure the real meaning of the sacrament. The then leader of the French Protestants, Guillaume Farel , or - more likely - Antoine de Marcourt , a pastor from Neuchâtel, are believed to be the authors .
One week after the posters were posted, atonement processions were carried out in the Catholic parishes of Paris , and at the same time a high reward was offered for pointing out those responsible. The first sentences were pronounced two weeks later and the first execution at the stake took place on November 13th. The printer Antoine Augereau was charged with printing the posters; he was hanged on December 24th and burned at the stake.
The undisguised polemics of the poster author was (also) a disappointment for reform-minded Catholics in France; it polarized and hardened the denominational fronts. Thus the king immediately confirmed his unwavering faith in the Catholic Church; The general indignation led various prominent Protestants to flee, including Johannes Calvin and Clément Marot .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Quoted from: Bernard Cottret: Calvin , Payot 2009, p. 111.