[397] The Council of Trent, so often announced and as often adjourned, only commenced on the 13th December 1545.
[398] See the next letter.
[399] See note 1, p. 316. The ecclesiastical ordonnances had separated distinctly the domain of religious authority from that of the civil jurisdiction. To the Consistory belonged the right of private remonstrance, of public censure, and of excommunication. When the delict was punishable by corporal chastisement or by fine, the Consistory then referred the matter to the Council, who pronounced sentence, and enforced the penalty.
[400] Conrad Pellican, a pious and learned professor of the Academy of Zurich. Born in 1479, he evinced from his infancy an extraordinary taste for the study of the Hebrew language, in which he made rapid progress, and which, at a later period, he taught at Basle and at Zurich. Called to that latter town in 1526, he acquired the friendship both of Zuingli and of Bullinger, was a correspondent of Calvin, and died in 1556. The celebrated Peter Martyr succeeded him.—Melch. Adam, Vitæ Theologorum Germanorum, p. 162. et seq.
[401] Farel was then at Metz. See the Letter XCIII.
[402] The life of Farel was threatened more than once, by the Roman Catholics of Metz, as it had been formerly, when he was preaching the gospel in the valleys of the Jura and the Alps; but, like the Apostle Paul, nothing could quench his zeal for the promulgation of the truth.—Hist. des Martyrs, lib. iii.
[403] Ochino allowed himself to be entangled at a later period in those opinions which at this time he repudiated. He afterwards became one of the principal chiefs of the sect of the Anti-trinitarians.
[404] This letter, written from Strasbourg, has reference, as well as the following, to the journey which Calvin undertook, in 1543, for the evangelization of Metz.
A town of the Empire, and the seat of one of the three bishoprics which the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis incorporated with France, Metz received betimes the seed of the Reformation. The first missionaries were John Leclerc and John Chatelain, who suffered martyrdom, (1523-1524.) The Church, which they had helped to found by their testimony, enlarged under the cross of persecution. She demanded, in 1544, the free exercise of religion at the Diet of Ratisbon, but without obtaining it. The year following, she called Farel. The intrepid missionary answered the perilous appeal. Driven from the town by a sedition, he retired to the village of Montigny, where the Protestants flocked together to wait upon his preachings. The gates of the town were shut upon them by order of the Roman Catholic magistrates, and thus they perceived they were driven from their country. Received with kindness by the magistrates of Strasbourg, they had recourse to the intervention of the Protestant princes of Germany to obtain free access to their houses and property, as well as the free exercise of their worship. It was during these negotiations that Calvin left Geneva, and rejoined Farel at Strasbourg.—Bèze, Hist. Eccl. tom. iii. p. 431, and following.
[405] Charles presided in the following year at the Diet of Spires with extraordinary éclat, but strove in vain to bring the two parties to agreement. All that he obtained from the majority of that assembly was a declaration by which the points in dispute were to be submitted to a Council.