Placards, Affaires des. On the night of 17-18 October 1534, posters with booklets attached, attacking the Mass in intemperate sacramentarian terms, appeared all over Paris and even in François Ier's appartments at Amboise. They were the work of Antoine Marcourt, a follower of the Zurich Reformer Zwingli. The king, alarmed by this ‘sedition’, instigated repressive measures against religious extremists, which were intensified after a second outbreak of posters on 13-14 January 1535: all printing was banned, a list of proscribed ‘Lutherans’, including Clément Marot, was published, and scores of suspects were burned; the king himself led a huge penitential procession through Paris. Repression ended in May, but left bitter memories amongst the Reformers.
[Michael Heath]
