Affair of the Placards

The Affair of the Placards (poster Affair ) in 1534 was an incident that triggered a scandal in which anti-Catholic posters in Paris and four major cities of France.

On the night of Sunday, October 18, 1534, posters were posted in Paris, Blois, Rouen, Tours and Orléans, which were seen as a direct attack on the Catholic concept of the Eucharist. Also inside the royal castle of Amboise, a poster was found; saw this King Francis I, not only as a personal insult, but also as an attack on its security. Thus the somewhat conciliatory religious policy of the king, who had not least under the influence of his sister, Margaret of Angoulême, tried the (then still Lutheran ) Protestants ended in his country from persecution by the anti-reform Supreme Court, the Parlement of Paris, to protect.

The placards - loosely translated - the title of " article about the horrible, great and intolerable abuses of the Popish Mass, which stand in direct opposition to the Holy Supper of Our Lord, the sole Mediator and Saviour Jesus Christ." The priests are considered to be " miserable sacrificers, which, as if they were our Redeemer, to take the place of Christ. " Through a " jumble of ringing, howling, chanting, ceremonies, Kerzenlichterei, adulation, panels and other types of mischief " hinders the fair, the actual meaning of the Lord's Supper. As authors, the then leader of the French Protestants, Guillaume Farel, or - more probably - Antoine de Marcourt, a pastor from Neuchâtel suspects.

A week after the attacks were carried out poster atonement processions in the Catholic churches of Paris, at the same time a large reward for information leading to those responsible has been suspended. The first sentences were spoken two weeks later, the first execution by bonfire took place on November 13.

The undisguised polemic poster author was (also) a disappointment for reform-minded Catholics in France; they polarized and hardened the religious fronts. So the king immediately confirmed his unswerving faith in the Catholic Church; the general indignation prompted several prominent Protestants to flee, including John Calvin and Clement Marot.

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