[740] Registres du Conseil du 15 juillet 1527. Journal de Balard, p. 119. Bonivard, Chroniq. pp. 471, 472.

[741] Besson, Mémoire du Diocèse de Genève, p. 87.

[742] Registres du Conseil des 18, 19, 23, 24 juillet 1527. Bonivard, Chroniq. ii. p. 468. Journal de Balard, pp. 121-124.

CHAPTER IV.
THE BISHOP-PRINCE FLEES FROM GENEVA.
(July and August 1527.)

=BISHOPERS AND COMMONERS.=

FROM this time parties in Geneva took new forms and new names. There were not simply, as before, partisans of the foreign domination and Savoy, and those of independence and Switzerland: the latter were divided. Some, having Hugues and Balard as leaders, declared for the bishop; others, with Maison-Neuve and Porral at their head, declared for the people. They desired not only to repel the usurpations of Savoy, but also to see the fall of the temporal power of the bishop in Geneva. 'Now,' said Bonivard, 'that the first division into mamelukes and huguenots has almost come to an end, we have the second—that of bishopers (évêquains) and commoners (communiaires).' These two parties had their men of sense and importance, and also their hotheaded adherents; as, for instance, De la Thoy on the side of the commoners, and Pécolat, the man of whom it would have been least expected, among the bishopers. A singular change had been effected in this former martyr of the bishop: the jester had joined the episcopal band. Was it because he was at heart catholic and even superstitious (he had ascribed, it will be remembered, the healing of his tongue to the intervention of a saint), or because, being a thorough parasite, he preferred the well-covered tables of the bishopers? We know not. These noisy partisans, the vanguard of the two parties, were frequently quarrelling. 'They murmured, jeered, and made faces at each other.'

At the same time this new division marked a step made in advance by this small people. Two great questions were raised, which sooner or later must rise up in every country. The first was political, and may be stated thus: 'Must we accept a traditional dominion which has been established by trampling legitimate rights under foot?' (This was the dominion of the bishop.) The second was religious, and may be expressed thus: 'Which must we choose, popery or the Gospel?' Many of the commoners, seeing the bishop and the duke disputing about Geneva, said that these two people were fighting for what belonged to neither of them, and that Geneva belonged to the Genevans. But there were politicians also among them, lawyers for the most part, who founded their pretensions on a legal basis. The bishops and princes of Geneva ought by right, as we have seen, to be elected at Geneva and not at Rome, by Genevans and not by Romans. The issue of the struggle was not doubtful. How could the bishop make head against magistrates and citizens relying on positive rights, and against the most powerful aspirations of liberty that were awaking in men's hearts? How could the Roman doctrine escape the floods of the Reformation? Certain scandals helped to precipitate the catastrophe.

On the 12th of July some huguenots appeared before the council. 'The priests of the Magdalen,' they said, 'keep an improper house, in which reside several disorderly women.' There were among the Genevans, and particularly among the magistrates, men of good sense, who had the fear of God before their eyes and confidence in him in their hearts. These respectable laymen (and there may have been priests who thought the same) had a deep conviction that one of the great defects of the middle ages was the existence of popes, bishops, priests, and monks, who had separated religion from morality. The council attended to these complaints to a certain extent. They banished from Geneva the persons who made it their business to facilitate illicit intercourse, obliged the lewd women to live in a place assigned them, and severely remonstrated with the priests.[743] The first breath of the Reformation in Geneva attacked immorality. It was not this affair, however, which gave the bishop his death-blow; it was a scandal occasioned by himself, and in his own house. 'Halting justice' was about to overtake the guilty man at last.

=ABDUCTION OF A YOUNG WOMAN.=