[77] Le Levain du Calvinisme, pp. 74, 75, 247 (where Canus is called Alexander de Molendino). Froment, who had been compelled to quit Geneva, had returned to the town along with Alexandre Canus immediately after the departure of the Bishop on the 14th of July 1533.
[78] Furbiti permitted himself to use strong language. Even the Romanist chronicler, the nun Jeanne de Jussie, records that Furbiti “touched to the quick the Lutheran dogs,” and said that “all those who belonged to that cursed sect were licentious, gluttons, lascivious, ambitious, homicides, and bandits, who loved nothing but sensuality, and lived as the brutes, reverencing neither God nor their superiors” (Le Levain du Calvinisme, p 79).
[79] Caffard need not be taken to mean hypocrite: it was commonly used to denote a mendicant friar.
[80] The letter is given in Herminjard, Correspondance, etc. iii. 119 f.
[81] The MS. chronicle of Michel Roset is the source for the statement about the order to burn translations of the Scripture.
[82] Furbiti was released in April 1536 at the request of Francis I. of France. He was exchanged for Antoine Saunier, a Swiss Evangelical in prison in France. Such exchanges were not uncommon between the Protestant cantons and France.—Herminjard, Correspondance, etc. iii. 396 f.
A full account of the conferences between Farel and Furbiti is given in Lettres certaines d’aucuns grandz troubles et tumultes nuz à Genève, avec la disputation faicte l’an 1534, etc. (Basel, 1588). The booklet is very rare.
[83] Adjoining the house of Baudichon, with one building between them, was a large mansion occupied by the Seigneur de Thorens, a strong partisan of the Reformation. He was a Savoyard, expelled from his country because of his religious principles. He acquired citizenship in Bern. The Bernese, on the eve of their embassy, which reached Geneva on Jan. 4th, had bought this house, and placed M. de Thorens therein, intending it to be a place where the Evangelicals could meet in safety under the protection of Bern. It is probable that in time of special danger the Evangelicals met there for public worship. When the Council of Freiburg objected to Farel’s preaching, the Council of Geneva replied that the services were held in the house of the deputies of Bern. Cf. Herminjard, Correspondance, etc. ix. 459, f., 489 f.; Jeanne de Jussie, Le Levain du Calvinisme, pp. 91, 106, 107 (where the poor nun describes the various ceremonies of the Reformed cult with all the venom and coarseness of sixteenth century Romanism); Baum, Procès de Baudichon de la Maisonneuve accusé d’héresie a Lyon, 1534 (Geneva, 1873), pp. 110, 111; Doumergue, Jean Calvin, ii. 126 f., iii. 196-98.
[84] The poison was placed in some spinach soup, and the popular story was that Farel escaped because he did not like the food; that Froment had seated himself at table to take his share, when news was brought to him that his wife and children had arrived at Geneva—he rose from the table at once to go to meet them, and left the soup untasted. Poor Viret was the only one who took his share, and became very ill immediately afterwards. The prisoner’s confession, lately exhumed from the Geneva archives, tells another tale. The woman said that she stuffed a small bone with the poison, and placed it in Viret’s bowl; but was afraid to do the same to Farel’s because his soup was too clear. Cf. extracts quoted in Doumergue’s Jean Calvin, etc. ii. 133, 134 n.
[85] The Theses are given in Ruchat, Histoire de la Réformation de la Suisse, iii. 357.