After returning to Paris, and being admitted an advocate, he proceeded to Padua to continue his studies in jurisprudence, and went thence to the council of Trent to join his brother Charles d'Angennes de Rambouillet, who was there at the time as bishop of Le Mans.
The League also sent two agents to call upon his holiness to take the Catholics of France under his protection, and join in avenging the outrage done to the church, and also to represent with what little sincerity Henry had carried on the war against the Calvinists.
[1] The king, to refute these statements, and to justify himself with the pope, sent to Rome Claude d'Angennes, "of the beloved family of Rambouillet, a man of profound learning and singular eloquence",[3] who arrived there on the 23d of February, 1589.
He represented to his holiness, that the king was full of zeal for the Catholic faith, that the Cardinal de Guise was convicted of the crime of rebellion, and in this case the ecclesiastics of France, whatever might be their rank, were subject to secular jurisdiction, and particularly the peers of the kingdom, who had no other judges than the parlement of Paris, composed of peers, officers of the crown, and the ordinary judges, and if the king had derogated from the formalities of justice in the punishment which he had inflicted on the cardinal, this was a matter which concerned his parlement, and that by this he had not infringed any ecclesiastical privileges.
A fourth audience, on the 13th of March, was equally fruitless; the pope continued to refuse the absolution required, until the Cardinal de Bourbon and the Archbishop of Lyon were released.
When Sixtus was informed of the orders sent to the agents of the League, he was so alarmed, lest the Catholics of France should withdraw from their obedience to the papal authority, that he published in the consistory a decree or monitorium, in which he exhorted and commanded Henry, in ten days from the date of the publication of the monitorium, to set at liberty the Cardinal de Bourbon and the Archbishop of Lyon, and thirty days after their liberation to inform him thereof, else he declared him and all his abettors and adherents excommunicated, struck with all the censures contained in the sacred canons, and in the bull which was read on Holy Thursday.
The ministers of France left that city as soon as the decree was determined upon; the Bishop of Le Mans embarked at Leghorn, and after a fight with some pirates arrived safely at Marseille.
They discussed certain points, the king made objections, but at last he expressed himself satisfied, and thanked the bishops for having taught him what he knew not before, and protested that he recognised in his conversion the goodness and power of God.
He argued from the authority of most famous canonists, "that the ordinary, who has the power so to do, is permitted by the canons to absolve from excommunication and all other censures, when there is a legitimate cause which prevents the penitent from throwing himself at the feet of the sovereign pontiff.