ABSTRACT
Heresy was not unknown in France at the end of the Middle Ages, but, except in Dauphine and Provence where there was an infiltration of Waldensianism from Piedmont, it was not in any sense an organised movement. Francis had sworn an oath at his coronation to defend the Catholic faith and to extirpate heresy from the kingdom. The task facing Francis was that of eradicating heresy without stifling the intellectual movement which he had so far encouraged. From the first he showed himself uncompromisingly hostile to Lutheranism in its more explicit form. Francis had always opposed heresy in theory, but in the 1520s this had not been easy to define. The placards changed everything. They showed that a line did exist between orthodoxy and dissent. Francis's attitude to heresy definitely hardened after 1534, though he continued to befriend Protestants abroad. During the 1530s and 1540s heresy made deep inroads into French society.
