[601] According to Claude Haton (p. 38), a part of the emigrants were, by the king's permission, drawn from the prisons of Paris and Rouen. Nor does the pious curate see anything incongruous in the attempt to employ the released criminals in converting the barbarians to the true faith. However, although Villegagnon was a native of Provins, where Haton long resided, the curate's authority is not always to be received with perfect assurance.
[602] The reconciliation between the statements of the text (in which I have followed the unimpeachable authority of the Hist. ecclés. des églises réformées) and the assertion of the equally authoritative life of Coligny by Francis Hotman (Latin ed., 1575, p. 18, Eng. tr. of D. D. Scott, p. 70). that Coligny's "love for true religion and vital godliness, and his desire to worship God aright," dated from the time of his captivity after the fall of St. Quentin (1557), and the opportunity he then enjoyed for reading the Holy Scriptures, is to be found probably in the view that, having previously been convinced of the truth of the reformed doctrines, he was not brought until then to their bold confession and courageous espousal—acts so perilous in themselves and so fatal to his ambition and to his love of ease. Respecting Villegagnon's promise to establish the "sincere worship of God" in his new colony, see the rare and interesting "Historia navigationis in Braziliam, quæ et America dicitur. Qua describitur autoris navigatio, quæque in mari vidit memoriæ prodenda: Villegagnonis in America gesta, etc. A Joanne Lerio, Burgundo, etc., 1586." Jean l'Hery or Léry was a young man of twenty-two, who accompanied the ministers and skilled workmen whom Villegagnon invited to Brazil, partly from pious motives, partly, as he tells us, from curiosity to see the new world (page 6). Despite his sufferings, the adventurous author, in later years, longed for a return to the wilderness, where among the savages better faith prevailed than in civilized France: "Ita enim apud nos fides nulla superest, resque adeo nostra tota Italica facta est," etc. (page 301).
[603] Jean Léry, ubi supra, 4-6.
[604] What Villegagnon actually believed was an enigma to Léry, for the vice-admiral rejected both transubstantiation and consubstantiation, and yet maintained a real presence. Léry, 58, 54. Cointas had at first solemnly abjured Roman Catholicism, and applied for admission to the Reformed Church. Ibid., 46.
[605] Léry himself is in doubt respecting the exact occasion of the change in Villegagnon's conduct. Some of the colonists were fully persuaded "inde id accidisse, quod a Cardinali Lotharingo, aliisque qui ad eum e Gallia scripserunt ... graviter fuisset reprehensus, quod a Catholica Romanensi Ecclesia descivisset: hisque literis eum ita perterritum fuisse, ut sententiam repente mutaverit." Others believed him guilty of premeditated treachery: "Post meum tamen reditum accepi Villagagnonem cum Card. Lotharingo consilium jam inivisse, antequam e Gallia excederet, de vera Religione simulanda, ut facilius auctoritate Colignii maris præfecti abuterentur," etc. Hist. navig. in Brasiliam, 62, 63.
[606] The Protestants were bearers of a Bellerophontic letter, addressed to the magistrates of whatever French port they might enter, intended to compass their destruction as heretics and rebels. They made the harbor of Hennebon, in Brittany, whose Protestant officers disclosed the secret plan and welcomed the half-famished fugitives. Léry, 304-330; Hist. ecclés., i. 102; La Place, Commentaires de l'estat de la rel. et républ., 25.
[607] De Thou, ii. 381-384; Hist. ecclés., 100-102; Léry, 339 et passim; La Place, ubi supra. "Clarissimi, erudissimique viri D. Nicolai Villagagnonis, equitis Rhodii, adversus novitium Calvini ... dogma de sacramento Eucharistiæ, opuscula tria, Coloniæ, 1563." In the preface of the first of these treatises, Villegagnon denies the reports of his fickleness and cruelty as slanders of the returning Protestants, and defends his conduct in throwing the three monks into the sea. In a dedication to Constable Montmorency (dated 1560) he clears himself from the charge of atheism brought against him because he expelled the ministers "on discovering the vanity of their religion." There are subjoined Richier's articles, etc.
[608] Hist. ecclés., i. 61.
[609] Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., i. 61-63.
[610] Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., i. 63-71.