The prelates were much excited when Beza concluded. His reference to episcopal elections stung them to the quick. Lorraine angrily accused him of insulting not only the sacerdotal, but the royal authority, since it was Francis the First that had taken away the election of the priesthood from the people.[1155] Beza, replying, said that this very act was an evidence of the radical disturbance of the ancient order, when avarice, ambition, and unworthy rivalry between monks and canons rendered such a change necessary. Pressed again to sign the article submitted two days before, Beza persisted that it was unjust to endeavor to compel the Protestants to subscribe to that to which the prelates refused their own indorsement.[1156]
Peter Martyr and Lainez the Jesuit.
The discussion was next carried on between the doctors of the Sorbonne and Beza and Martyr. The latter spoke in Italian,[1157] and won universal applause; but he was rudely interrupted by the Cardinal of Lorraine, who said that he did not want to hear a foreign language. A little later, a Spaniard, Lainez, the second general of the rising order of Jesus, who had just reached Paris in the train of the Cardinal Legate of Ferrara, begged permission to speak. Leave was granted him, and he indulged in an address much more remarkable for its coarse invective than for its weight of argument.[1158] Not content with dissuading his hearers from listening to the Protestant ministers as persons already sufficiently convicted of error, he called them apes and foxes,[1159] and advised that they be sent to Trent, where the Pope had convoked a free council to which they might have free access. He condemned the French for holding a separate council, and reprobated the discussion of topics of such importance as those now under consideration in the presence of women, and of men trained to war. After these gentle hints respecting the qualifications of the queen and his noble auditors to act as judges, he approached the all-absorbing question of the real presence—a feeble part of his speech in which we may be excused from following him. The remainder of the day was spent in warm debate, which continued until the approach of night. Just as all were rising and about to leave, however, the queen called to her Beza and the Cardinal of Lorraine, and adjured them in God's name to strive for the establishment of peace. A knot of friends gathered around each; the conference was renewed amid much confusion and noise; but the darkness soon necessitated an adjournment.[1160]
Close of the Colloquy of Poissy.
It was the last day of the Colloquy of Poissy. If anything more had until now been needed to demonstrate the futility of all hopes based upon an open discussion regulated solely by the caprice of the Cardinal of Lorraine, it was certainly furnished by the experience of the last session. Catharine, however, was loth to abandon the scheme from which she had expected such important results to flow. With her usual incapacity to understand the strength of religious convictions deeply implanted in the soul, she still hoped to secure, from a private interview of the more moderate Roman Catholics with a few of the leading Protestants, a plan of agreement that might serve to unite both communions. Some of her more conscientious advisers shared in the same sanguine expectations.
A private conference.
The Roman Catholic champions.
The Abbé de Salignac.
Five Roman Catholic ecclesiastics were chosen to confer with as many Protestant ministers. They were selected as well for learning and ability as for reputed moderation of sentiment.[1161] The Bishops Montluc of Valence, and Du Val of Séez in Normandy, the Abbé's de Salignac and Bouteiller, and D'Espense, doctor in the Sorbonne, were probably all believed to be half inclined to fall in with the reformatory current. Of Montluc and D'Espense, mention has already more than once been made. Bouteiller, it will be remembered, was the priest who had officiated in the Cardinal of Châtillon's episcopal palace at Beauvais, the last Easter preceding, when the communion was administered under both kinds, "after the fashion of Geneva."[1162] Salignac was a timid man, a fair sample of the "Nicodemites," who had proved the bane of the Reformation in France. For thirty years he had held, and to some extent—if we may credit his own words—professed the same doctrines as Calvin, continually exhorting his hearers to turn from an empty, formal worship, to Christ as the only Saviour. Confessedly he had not rejected "that false doctrine"—for thus he did not hesitate, in his private correspondence with a Protestant, to designate the Romish creed—so openly as the reformers were wont to do; but he claimed to have won the universal approval of the best men around him by his attacks upon "Babylon," which he had approached sometimes "by mines," sometimes "in open warfare," according to time and circumstances.[1163] Since no violent opposition seems ever to have been made, no persecution ever to have arisen against Salignac, and in view of the fact that the conflict of the last thirty years had been sufficiently sanguinary and little calculated to reassure timid combatants, it is highly probable that the prudent abbé's subterranean operations greatly outnumbered his more valiant exploits. Well might the reformers, who knew that victory was to be obtained, not by burrowing under the ground, but by facing the perils of the battle-field, exclaim:
Non tali auxilio nec defensoribus istis
Tempus eget.