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After Giles Palot was burned to death, Sylvie’s mother went into a depression. For Sylvie this was the most shocking of the traumas she suffered, more seismic than Pierre’s betrayal, even sadder than her father’s execution. In Sylvie’s mind, her mother was a rock that could never crumble, the foundation of her life. Isabelle had put salve on her childish injuries, fed her when she was hungry, and calmed her father’s volcanic temper. But now Isabelle was helpless. She sat in a chair all day. If Sylvie lit a fire, Isabelle would look at it; if Sylvie prepared food, Isabelle would eat it mechanically; if Sylvie did not help her get dressed, Isabelle would spend all day in her underclothes. Giles’s fate had been sealed when a stack of newly printed sheets for Bibles in French had been found in the shop. The sheets were ready to be cut into pages and bound into volumes, after which they would have been taken to the secret warehouse in the rue du Mur. But there had not been time to finish them. So Giles was guilty, not just of heresy but of promoting heresy. There had been no mercy for him. In the eyes of the church, the Bible was the most dangerous of all banned books—especially translated into French or English, with marginal notes explaining how certain passages proved the correctness of Protestant teaching. Priests said that ordinary people were unable to rightly interpret God’s word, and needed guidance. Protestants said the Bible opened men’s eyes to the errors of the priesthood. Both sides saw reading the Bible as the central issue of the religious conflict that had swept Europe.
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