eses committed to their pastoral supervision. In fact, when the
Council of Trent, by one of its first decrees, forbade a plurality of
benefices and enjoined residence, its action was regarded as an open
declaration of war against the French episcopate.[97] But if this abuse
is deplored by Roman Catholic historians as the fruitful cause of the
introduction and rapid progress of Protestantism,[98] the reformers,
viewing their work as an instrument specially designed by heaven for the
purification of a corrupt church, might well be justified in regarding
the negligence of the bishops as a wise providential arrangement. Many a
feeble germ of truth was spared the violence of persecution until the
kindly sun and the plentiful showers had conferred greater powers of
endurance. Happily for the reformers, the duty of watching for the first
appearance of reputed heresy, which belonged properly to the bishops,
was but poorly discharged by many of the deputies to whom they entrusted
it. Nor could a delegated authority always accomplish what might have
been done by a principal.[99]

[Sidenote: Revenues of the clergy.]

The annual revenues of the clergy of France were estimated by a Venetian
ambassador, with unsurpassed facilities for obtaining accurate
information, at six million crowns of gold, out of the fifteen millions
that constituted the total revenues of the kingdom. While the clergy
thus absorbed _two-fifths_ of the whole income of France, the king was
limited to one million and a half crowns, or just one-tenth, derived
from his particular estates.[100]

[Sidenote: Morals of the clergy.]

Wealth had engendered luxury and vice. Engrossed in the pursuit of
pleasure or personal aggrandizement, the vast majority of clergymen had
lost all solicitude for the spiritual welfare of their flocks. About
the middle of the century Claude Haton, curate of Meriot--certainly no
friend of the reformatory movement--wrote in his Memoires: "The more
rapidly the number of heretics in France increased, the more indifferent
to the discharge of their duty in their charges were the prelates and
pastors of the church, from cardinals and archbishops down to the most
insignificant curate. They cared little or nothing how anything went, if
they could but draw the income of their benefices at whatever place of
residence they had selected with a view to the promotion of their
pleasure.[101] They let their benefices out at the highest rate they
could g