Lefèvre's commentary on the Pauline Epistles.
But the enthusiastic devotion of Lefèvre and his more impetuous disciple to the tenets of the Roman church was to be shaken by a closer study of the Scriptures. In 1508 Lefèvre completed a Latin commentary upon the Psalms.[134] In 1512 he published a commentary in the same language on the Pauline Epistles—a work which may indeed fall short of the standard of criticism established by a subsequent age, but yet contains a clear enunciation of the doctrine of justification by faith, the cardinal doctrine of the Reformation.[135]
Foresees the coming reformation.
Thus, five years before Luther posted his theses on the doors of the church at Wittemberg, Jacques Lefèvre had proclaimed, in no equivocal terms, his belief in the same great principles. But Lefèvre's lectures in the college and his written commentary were addressed to the learned. Consequently they produced no such immediate and startling effect as the ninety-five propositions of the Saxon monk. Lefèvre was not himself to be an active instrument in the French reformation. His office was rather to prepare the way for others—not, perhaps, more sincere, but certainly more courageous—to enter upon the hazardous undertaking of attempting to renovate the church. His faithful disciple, indeed, has preserved for us a remarkable prophecy, uttered by Lefèvre at the very time when he was still assiduous in his devotion to the Virgin Mary and the saints. Grasping Farel by the hand, the venerable doctor more than once addressed to him the significant words, which made a deep impression on the hearer's mind: "Guillaume, the world is going to be renewed, and you will behold it!"[136]
Controversy with Beda.
The Sorbonne's declaration.
Lefèvre did not intermit his biblical studies. In 1518 he published a short treatise on "the three Marys," to prove that Mary the sister of Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, and "the woman which was a sinner," were not one and the same person, according to the common belief of the time. Unfortunately, the Roman church, by the lessons set down for the feast-days, had given its sanction to the prevalent error. Now, the fears and suspicions of the theologians of the Sorbonne had, during the past year, been aroused by the fame of Martin Luther's "heresy," and they were ready to resent any attempt at innovation, however slight, either in doctrine or in practice, as evidence of heretical proclivities. Natalis Beda, the ignorant but pedantic syndic of the theological faculty, entered the lists as Lefèvre's opponent, and an animated dispute was waged between the friends of the two combatants. Of so great moment was the decision regarded by Poncher, Bishop of Paris, that he induced Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, to write an essay in refutation of the views of Lefèvre.[137] But the Sorbonne, not content with this, on the ninth of November, 1521, declared that he was a heretic who should presume to maintain the truth of Lefèvre's proposition. Lefèvre himself would probably have experienced even greater indignities at the hands of parliament—whose members were accustomed to show excessive respect to the fanatical demands of the faculty—had not Guillaume Petit, the king's confessor, induced Francis to interfere in behalf of the Picard professor.[138]
Briçonnet, Bishop of Meauz.
To these two actors in the drama of the French reformation a third must now be added. Guillanme Briçonnet, Bishop of Meaux, stood in the front rank of aspiring and fortunate churchmen. His father, commonly known as the Cardinal of St. Malo, had passed from the civil administration into the hierarchy of the Gallican Church. Rewarded for services rendered to Louis the Eleventh and Charles the Eighth by the gift of the rich abbey of St. Germain-des-Prés and the archbishopric of Rheims, he had, in virtue of his possession of the latter dignity, anointed Louis the Twelfth at his coronation. As cardinal, he had headed the French party in the papal consistory, and, more obedient to his sovereign than to the pontiff, when Louis demanded the convocation of a council at Pisa to resist the encroachments of Julius the Second, the elder Briçonnet left Rome to join in its deliberations, and to face the dangers attending an open rupture with the Pope. The cardinal was now dead, having left to Guillaume, born previously to his father's entrance into orders, a good measure of the royal favor he had himself enjoyed. The younger Briçonnet had been successively created Archdeacon of Rheims and Avignon, Abbot of St. Germain-des-Prés, and Bishop of Lodève and Meaux. His title of Count of Montbrun gave him, moreover, a place in the nobility.[139] Meantime a reformatory tendency had early revealed itself in the efforts made by the young ecclesiastic to enforce the observance of canonical discipline by the luxurious friars of the monastery of St. Germain. Here, too, he had tasted the first fruits of the opposition which was before long to test his firmness and constancy.
Briçonnet had been appointed Bishop of Meaux (March 19, 1516) about the same time that Francis the First despatched him as special envoy to treat with the Pope. It would seem that the intimate acquaintance with the papal court gained on this occasion, confirming the impressions made by a previous diplomatic mission in the time of Louis the Twelfth, convinced Briçonnet that the church stood in urgent need of reform; and he resolved to begin the work in his own diocese.