Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/50

Rh 15th October 1523 he issued a decree against those who, abusing the gospels, deny purgatory and the saints; on the 13th of December he preached against the "Lutheran pest." He joined himself with the Sorbonne against his former flock; launching out decrees of exile and condemnation like any Magister of Paris. No doubt he argued to himself that where he counselled flight, another would have lit the stake. But his apostasy caused him much hatred, as may be imagined. "This Bishop Briçonnet," says Antoine Froment, "fearing to lose his Bishopric and his life, turned his coat and became a persecutor of those whom formerly he had instructed. Soon after this miserable bishop, haunted by remorse, resigned his see and died of despair: a marvellous example of the horrible judgment of God against those who persecute the truth, having known it." This bitter tone, this acrimonious arrangement of simple facts (for Briçonnet died quietly enough, and maintained to the last his character of the enlightened man of culture), is common to all the Lutheran historians of the time. By the Catholics, also, he was regarded with suspicion and dislike. Already, some months before, Louisa of Savoy wrote in her diary: "By the grace of the Holy Ghost my son and I began to recognise the hypocrites white, black, grey, smoke-coloured, and of every hue, from which God in His infinite clemency has seen fit to preserve us." These hypocrites, we can have no doubt, were her pious neighbours of Meaux; Briçonnet, her correspondent; Lefebvre, who sent her the Epistles of St. Paul; Master Michael, her chaplain: all Lutherans at heart. Louisa never pardoned this attempt upon her faith; and Briçonnet, disdained by the reformers whom he had betrayed, was no less himself an