[96] The devout Romanist, Sœur Jeanne de Jussie, testifies, with mediæval frankness, to the dissolute lives of the Romish clergy: “Il est bien vray que les Prelats et gens d’Église pour ce temps ne gardoient pas bien leurs vœus et estat, mais gaudissoient dissolument des biens de l’Église tenant femmes en lubricité et adultère, et quasi tout le peuple estoit infect de cest abominable et detestable péché: dont est à scavoir que les péchéz du monde abondoient en toutes sortes de gens, qui incitoient l’ire de Dieu à y mettre sa punition divine” (Le Levain du Calvinisme, p. 35; cf. minutes of the Council of Geneva at p. 241). Even the nuns of Geneva, with the exception of the nuns of St. Clara, to whom Jeanne de Jussie belonged, were notorious for their conduct; cf. Herminjard, Correspondance, etc. v. 349 n.
[97] Cf. Wildermuth’s letter to the Council of the Two Hundred in Bern, telling that Farel was in prison at Payerne: “Would that I had twenty Bernese with me, and with the help of God we would not have permitted what has happened” (Herminjard, Correspondance, etc. ii. 344).
[98] Doumergue, Jean Calvin, etc. i. 42.
[99] Doumergue, Jean Calvin, etc. i. 35.
[100] Cordier, Corderius, Cordery, was a well-known name in Scottish parish schools a century ago, where his exercises were used in almost every Latin class. He became a convert of the Reformed faith, and did his best to spread Evangelical doctrines by means of the sentences to be turned into Latin. He followed his great pupil to Geneva, and died there in his eighty-eighth year.
[101] Doumergue, Jean Calvin, etc. i. 126.
[102] Corpus Reformatorum, xlix. p. 121.
[103] I owe this inference to my brother, Professor Lindsay of St. Andrews; he adds that Plautus was greatly studied in the time of Calvin’s youth in France.
[104] Cf. his letter to Francis Daniel, where he speaks about the publication of the Commentary; says that he has issued it at his own expense; that some of the Paris lecturers, to help its sale, had made it a book on which they lectured, and hopes quod publico etiam bono forte cessurum sit (Herminjard, Correspondance, etc. ii. 417).
[105] In a letter to Francis Daniel, of date Oct. 27th, 1553, Calvin calls Gerard “our Friend”; and in another, written about the end of the same month, he describes with a minuteness of detail impossible for anyone who was not in the inner circle, the comedy acted by the students of the College of Navarre, which was a satire directed against Marguerite, the Queen of Navarre, and Gerard Roussel, and the affair of the connection of the University of Paris and the Queen’s poem, entitled le Miroir de l’âme pécheresse; cf. Herminjard, Correspondance, etc. iii. 103-11.