[118] Le protestantisme en Champagne: Récits extraits d'un manuscrit de N. Pithou, seigneur de Chamgobert concernant l'histoire de la fondation, etc., de l'église réf. de Troyes dès 1539 à 1595, par Ch. L. B. Recordon (Paris, 1863), 31-33.
[119] The original of this remarkable record, the more significant from the subsequent position of Louise as a determined enemy of the Protestants, may be seen in Journal de Louise de Savoie, Coll. de mémoires (Petitot), xvi. 407.
[120] See Mézeray's bitter words respecting Cardinal Duprat's last hours and character, Abrégé chronologique, iv. 584.
[121] "Poi me disse che per opera del Reverendissimo di Granmont non si faria cosa buona in questa cosa, perche et lui et il Gran Cancellario di Francia erano huomini più disposti a fare quattro guerre die una pace." Cardinal Campeggio to Cardinal Salviati, apud H. Laemmer, Monumenta Vaticana hist. ecclés. sæculi XVI. illustrantia, ex tab. sanctæ sedis Apostolicæ secretis, Frib. Brisg., 1861, 67.
[122] The Manichæism of the Albigenses is maintained by Mosheim, Gieseler, Schmidt, etc. A good summary of the evidence in favor of this view is given in an article in the London Quarterly Review for April, 1855. The defence of the Albigenses from this serious charge is ably conducted by George Stanley Faber in his "Inquiry into the History and Theology of the Ancient Vallenses and Albigenses" (London, 1838). One of the more recent apologists is F. de Portal, in his "Les descendants des Albigeois et des Huguenots" (Paris, 1860).
[123] At Arras, for instance, in 1460, a number of men and women were burned alive as Vaudois, after having been entrapped into an admission of their guilt by a treacherous advocate. Too late they exposed the deceit practised upon them, and protested their innocence. The alleged crimes were: flying to their place of assembly by witchcraft, adoring the devil, trampling upon the cross, blasphemy, riotous feasting, and vile offences against morality—staple charges recurring again and again, ad nauseam, whenever persecuted men and women have been compelled to meet secretly for God's worship. See L. Rossier, Histoire des protestants de Picardie (Paris, 1861), 1-4; and more at length, Chronicon Cornelii Zantfliet, which styles the sufferers heretics a hundred times worse than Waldenses. Martene et Durand, Vet. Scriptorum ampliss. collectio (Paris, 1729), vii. 501.
[124] If, as Adolphe Müntz concludes, after a critical examination of style, etc. (Nicolas de Clémangis; sa vie et ses écrits, Paris, 1846), the famous treatise De ruina Ecclesiæ, or De corrupto Ecclesiæ statu, emanated not from Clemangis at Avignon, but from some member of the University of Paris hostile to the Popes of Avignon, yet the undisputed writings of Clemangis contain denunciations of the corruptions of the church quite as decided as any found in the spurious treatise. In his tract De Præsulibus Simoniacis, for example, he declares that the degradation of the clergy, fostered by the cupidity of the episcopate, had indeed made God's house a den of robbers. It was "rapinæ officina in qua venalia exponuntur sacramenta ... in qua peccata etiam venduntur," etc. Müntz, 53. Certainly it would be hard to portray the life of the priests in darker colors than they appear in the letters of C. to Gerson, the authenticity of which is not challenged. See the extracts in Von Polenz, Calvinismus in Frankreich, i. 115. According to Nicholas de Clemangis, the chaste priest was a rare exception, and an object of ridicule to his companions.
[125] The complicated motives inducing the Council of Constance to acquiesce in the cruel sentence of Huss were skilfully traced as far back as by the learned Mosheim, Institutes of Eccles. Hist. (ed. Murdoch), ii. 429, note.
[126] This rare poem has been reprinted, with the unimportant passages omitted, in the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. franç., v. (1857) 268, etc.