Francis I of France had continued his policy of seeking a middle course in the religious rift in France until an incident called the Affair of the Placards. The Affair of the Placards began in 1534, and started with protesters putting up anti-Catholic posters. The posters were not Lutheran but were Zwinglian or "Sacramentarian" in the extreme nature of the anti-Catholic content—specifically, the absolute rejection of the Catholic doctrine of "Real Presence." Protestantism became identified as "a religion of rebels," helping the Catholic Church to more easily define Protestantism as heresy.