[416] The inquisitor, Nicolas Oritz, who presided at the trial of the five students. The paper here mentioned still exists in the library of Geneva, 113, with this title:—"Copy of a paper of the Inquisitor Houriz, given to the prisoners for the Word at Lyons, to be conveyed to M. Calvin to retain."
[417] This gentleman, whose name is not known, corresponded by letter with Calvin, his countryman and friend. Shortly before his arrest he wrote to Calvin on the subject of a fire, which had almost entirely destroyed the town of Noyon, sparing, however, the house of the Reformer: "I have no doubt," said he, "that God has left this testimony against those of your town, who eight or ten days before had burnt in effigy Monsieur de Normandie and the rest."—Latin Letter of Calvin of 15th February 1553.
[418] Laurent de Normandie.
[419] The reading of this letter, filled with the most lively and disinterested testimonies of affection for Farel, calls to one's mind the beautiful preface of Calvin's Commentary on the Epistle of St. Paul to Titus, dedicated to Farel and Viret:—"I do not think," says Calvin, "that there have ever been friends who have lived together in such fast friendship and concord, as we have done during our ministry. I have been a fellow-pastor here with both of you. So far from there having been any appearance of envy between you and me, I always regarded us as one. We have since been separated. As for you, Master William, the Church of Neuchatel, which you have delivered from the tyranny of the Papacy, and won over to Christ, called you to be its pastor; and as for you, Master Peter, you stand in a similar relation to the Church of Lausanne. Each of us, however, guards so well the place committed to us, that by our united efforts, the children of God assemble within the fold of Jesus Christ, and are even united in one company."—Dedication of 29th November 1549.
[420] On the back.—To my kind brethren and friends, the brothers Christopher and Thomas Zollicoffre, merchants of Saint Gall, dwelling at Lyons. Pardon the mistake as to the names and the haste.
The 21st May 1552. The Seigneury of Berne, informed of the arrest of the five Scholars of Lausanne, had written to the King of France to solicit the deliverance of their "pensionaires." The burgomaster of Zurich, John Hab, obtained an audience of this prince and found him inflexible. The following year, March 1553, the Bernese solicited anew the pardon of the five prisoners, condemned by the official of Lyons and the parliament of Paris. It is to this last intercession, urged forward by Calvin and Viret, that the letter of the Reformer to the brothers Zollicoffre refers.
[421] In a letter to the King of the 15th March, Messieurs of Berne had made strong complaint of the conduct of the Cardinal de Tournon, who, after having promised them to interest himself in behalf of the five students, had, with the utmost rigour, instituted proceedings against them. In a second letter, written three days later, they represented to this prince the innocence of their scholars, arrested at Lyons before they had sojourned there a single day, and condemned to death, although they had neither preached, nor dogmatized, nor excited any disturbance in the kingdom. They concluded by saying,—"We very humbly pray your Majesty to bestow them on us as a pure, royal, gratuitous, and liberal gift, which we shall esteem as great and precious, as if a present had been made us of an inestimable amount of gold and silver." These petitions were of no avail. Inspired by the fatal genius of the Cardinals of Tournon and of Lorraine, Henry II. confirmed the sentence of the parliament of Paris.
[422] The letter to which allusion is here made is lost; and one cannot sufficiently deplore the disappearance of documents, which would have shed a fuller light on the relations of Calvin with the Reformer of England.
[423] Seigneur of Picardy, no doubt one of the ancestors of that illustrious confessor, Louis de Marolles, who expiated in the galleys of Marseilles the crime of his resistance to the dragooning zeal of Louis XIV. and the pressing solicitations of Bossuet. "The hour of liberty," says M. Charles Weiss, "never struck for that unfortunate one. He died in 1692 in the Hôpital des Forçats at Marseilles, and was interred in the Turkish cemetery, the ordinary burial-place of the Reformed who died in the galleys, faithful to the last in the religion for which they had suffered."—Histoire des Refugiés Protestantes de France, tom. i. p. 101. See also the book entitled Histoire des Souffrances du bien heureux martyr, M. Louis de Marolles. La Haye, 1699.
[424] This was doubtless Madame de Cany. See note, p. 295.