[134] Calvin à l'Eglise de Poitiers, Lettres Françaises, tom. ii. p. 12. See also Lièvre, Hist. des Prot. du Poitou, tom. i. p. 33.
[135] Calvin aux fidèles de Poitiers, Lettres Françaises, i. p. 433.
[136] 'Rasis capitibus sicut sacerdotis Isidis atque Serapidis.'—Hieron. xiii. in Ezech. cap. xliv.
[137] 'Optimis et splendidis sacerdotiis, se protinus abdicat.'—Calvini Opusc. lat. p. 90.
[138] Lettre de Ste Marthe à Calvin, found by Jules Bonnet in the library at Gotha (MSS. no. 404).
[139] Desmay, Vie de Calvin hérésiarque, pp. 48, 49. Levasseur, Annales de Noyon, pp. 1161, 1168. Drelincourt, p. 171. We possess a deed by which Calvin sells to one of the king's mounted sergeants his field of the Tuilerie for the sum of 10 livres tournois.
CHAPTER VII.
THE EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS OF PARIS IN 1534.
(Summer 1534.)
=PROGRESS OF THE GOSPEL IN FRANCE.=
CALVIN found Paris very different from what he had left it, when he had quitted it in such great haste eight months before. The times seemed favourable to the Gospel. The King of England, although remaining catholic at heart, had resolved to emancipate himself from the dominion of Rome: this event had created a great sensation throughout Europe, and men asked whether Francis I. would not imitate 'his good brother.' He did not seem far from it. At that time he was uniting with the protestant princes of Germany, he was restoring one of them to his states, and laying before the French clergy articles of faith drawn up by the author of the Confession of Augsburg. Calvin knew of these strange acts of the monarch, and it was partly this which had induced him to return to Paris. Francis I. was not the only person in France who felt new aspirations. There was in all classes a leaning towards a reformation. The learned called for liberty of thought, and desired to see the reign of the monks come to an end. Certain statesmen wished to deliver France from the enslaving influence of Rome, even while maintaining its catholicity. William du Bellay, the king's most active minister, called Bucer the reformer, 'an excellent professor of the best theology;'[140] and wrote to him: 'Everything bids us be hopeful: the king's taste for a better learning (that is, for the Holy Scriptures) increases day by day.'[141] Bucer himself, who was full of hope, communicated it to his friends: 'The pope's reign is falling very low in France,' he wrote, 'and many people long for Jesus Christ.'[142] The clergy became uneasy, and a Franciscan friar complained that 'the heresy of Luther having entered France, had already covered so much ground, as almost to call itself her mistress, even in Paris.'[143] Noblemen and men of letters, citizens, students, and many of the lower classes hailed the Reformation as the commencement of a new day. 'All who have any sense,' it was said, 'whatever be their age or sex, when they hear the truth preached, forsake bigotry.'