[45] Gaspar Grossmann, (Megander,) from Zurich, minister of the Church of Berne. In 1537 he presided in the Synod of Lausanne, where the errors of Caroli were condemned, and in the following year became pastor of the Church at Zurich.
[46] Letter without date, written evidently a little before the meeting of the Synod of Lausanne, which took place about the middle of the month of May 1537.—Ruchat, Histoire de la Réformation en Suisse, tom. v. p. 24-40.
[47] Peter Caroli, of Rosay in Brie, doctor of the Sorbonne, known by his disputes with Farel and with Calvin. His unsettled disposition, as well as interested motives, led him towards the work of the Reformers; he sought the friendship of Le Fevre of Etaples, at Paris, and in 1534, went to Geneva, where the license of his manners drew upon him the censures of Farel and also of Viret, against both of whom he vowed thenceforward an irreconcilable hatred. Called afterwards as minister to Neuchatel and to Lausanne, he attacked the doctrines of the Reformers, maintained the necessity of prayers for the dead, and saw his doctrine condemned in the Synod of Lausanne. (May 1537.) Banished by the Senate of Berne, he retired to France, went back to the Church of Rome, and died miserably in that city, after an agitated and wandering career.
[48] Is this Maurus Musæus, a French gentleman, who was converted to the Gospel, the friend of Bucer and of Œcolampadius? We are here left to loose conjecture in the absence of positive testimony.
[49] Such is the address: To my very dear brother, Viret, Minister of the Church of Lausanne.—The minister, Peter Viret, one of the three great Reformers of French Switzerland. Born at Orbe in 1511, he completed his education at the University of Paris, and from the time of his return to his own country, devoted himself to the preaching of the reformed doctrine, which he spread at Orbe, at Payerne, and at Granson. Gifted naturally with persuasive genius and eloquence, he was sent by Farel to Geneva in 1534, and there held a public disputation against the Dominican Furbiti. He contributed powerfully to the establishment of the Reformation in that city. Named two years after (1537) Pastor of the Church of Lausanne, he served that charge until 1538, the period of his destitution by the Senate of Berne, and of his retirement to Geneva with the more illustrious members of the Vaudois clergy. Compelled by his weak state of health to leave Switzerland, he removed in 1561 to the South of France, wrought in the work of the ministry in the churches of Nîmes, of Lyons, of Orange, and died in 1571, either at Orthes or Pau. The numerous writings of Viret mentioned by Senebier, Hist. Litt. de Genève, tom. i. pp. 156-159, prove him to have been an original writer, though rather diffuse, and ingenious and eloquent as a moralist.
[50] Antony Froment, originally from Dauphiny, one of the earlier missionaries of the Reformation at Geneva. He was nominated pastor of the Parish of Saint Gervais in 1537; at a later period he resigned the ministry, was attached as secretary to Bonnivard in the work of drawing up the Chronicles of that town and city, and died, leaving behind some curious memoirs on the history of the religious revolution of which he had been one of the instruments at Geneva. Senebier, Hist. Litt. de Genève, tom. i. pp. 93 and 150. These memoirs were published in 1855 at Geneva. 1 vol. 4to., by M. Gustave Revilliod.
[51] Louis du Tillet, senior curate of Claix in Poitou, and fellow-student of Calvin, then in retirement at Geneva, under the name of Mr. de Hautmont. In the year following he returned to France. See, in this Collection, three Letters of Calvin to Louis du Tillet, (1538.)
[52] Antoine Saunier, regent of the College of Geneva.
[53] Simon Grynée, a learned theologian and professor of the belles lettres, the friend of Erasmus and of Melanchthon, rector of the Academy of Basle. His intercourse with Calvin dates from the epoch of the first visit of the Reformer to that town, (1535, 1536.) They became more intimate when Calvin, banished from Geneva, returned anew to seek an asylum at Basle, and was hospitably entertained in the house of Grynée, to whom he dedicated, in testimony of his remembrance, his Commentary on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, (18th October 1539.) Two years afterwards, Simon Grynée died of the plague. His nephew, James Grynée, discharged the office of Dean of the Church of Basle, and was the correspondent and friend of Théodor de Bèze.
The calumnious accusations directed by Caroli against the doctrine of Farel and of Calvin having spread at Basle, the latter considered it his duty, in a letter to Grynée, to expose the whole history of the controversy with Caroli, in order to oppose the entire calumny. See the two letters of Grynée to Calvin.—Simonis Grynæi Epistolæ. Edit. de Streuber. Basle, 1847, pp. 50-53.