[147] Herminjard, i. 41, 205, 206.
[148] Lefèvre was placed in charge of the Léproserie, Aug. 11, 1521, and was appointed vicar-general au spirituel, May 1, 1523. Herminjard, i. 71 and 157.
[149] Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, 277, under date of 1526.
[150] "Moy et autres comme moy, lèverons une cruciade de gens, et ferons chasser le Roy de son Royaume par ses subjectz propres, s'il permet que l'Évangile soit presché." Farel au Duc de Lorraine, Herminjard, i. 483.
[151] Pierre de Sébeville au Chevalier Coct, Grenoble, Dec. 28, 1524: "Je te notifie que l'évesque de Meaulx en Brie, près Paris, cum Jacobo Fabro Stapulensi, depuis trois moys en visitant l'evesché, ont bruslé actu tous les imaiges, réservé le crucifix, et sont personellement ajournés a Paris, à ce moys de Mars venant, coram suprema curia, et universitate erucarum parrhissiensium, quare id factum est." Herminjard, i. 315.
[152] Fontaine, Histoire catholique, apud Merle d'Aubigné, Hist. de la Réform., liv. xii. The earliest Protestant chronicle, by Antoine Froment, of which there is a MS. fragment in the Library of Geneva, gives a slightly different form to Briçonnet's caution: "Autrefois, en leur preschant l'Évangile, il leur avoit dit, comme Sainct Paul escript au Gallates, que sy luy-mesme ou un Ange du ciel leur preschoit autre doctrine que celle qu'il leur preschoit, qu'ils ne [le] receussent pas." Herminjard, i. 158.
[153] Nisard, Histoire de la littérature française, i. 275. The only printed work in favor of which the claim of Lefèvre's translation to be the oldest in the French language could be disputed is the "Bible" of Guyars des Moulins, finished in 1297, and printed by order of Charles VIII. in 1487; but the greater part of this is a free translation, not of the Scriptures themselves, but of a summary—the "Historia scholastica" of Pierre le Mengeur (latinized "Comestor")—and is consequently no bible at all. See M. Charles Read, in Bulletin, i. 76, who remarks that, "everything considered, it may therefore be asserted that the translations of Lefèvre d'Étaples and of Olivetanus are the first versions without embellishment or gloss (non historiées et non glossées), and that thus the first two versions of the Bible into the language of the people are Protestant."
[154] The inventory of the library of the Count of Angoulême, father of Margaret and Francis I., consisting of nearly two hundred volumes, contains the title "Les Paraboles de Salomon, les Espistres Saint Jehan, les Espistres Saint Pol et l'Apocalipse, le tout en ung volume, escript en parchemin et à la main, et en françoys, couvert de velous changeant et a deux fermoeres, l'un aux armes de mon diet Seigneur, et l'autre aux armes de ma dicte dame." Aristotle, Boethius, Boccaccio, and Dante figure in the list, the latter both in Italian and in French. The inventory is printed in an appendix to the edition of the Heptameron of Margaret of Angoulême published by the Soc. dea bibliophiles français (Paris, 1853), a work enriched with many original documents of considerable value.
[155] This important letter of Lefèvre to Farel, July 6, 1524, first published in part from the MS. in the Geneva Library, in the Bulletin de l'hist. du prot. franç., xi. (1862), 212, is given in full by Herminjard, i. 220, etc.
[156] "O bone Deus, quanto exulto gaudio, cum percipio hanc pure agnoscendi Christum gratiam, jam bonam partem pervasisse Europæ! Et spero Christum tandem nostras Gallias hac benedictione invisurum."