the
feast-days, had given its sanction to the prevalent error. Now, the
fears and suspicions of the theologians of the Sorbonne had, during the
past year, been aroused by the fame of Martin Luther's "heresy," and
they were ready to resent any attempt at innovation, however slight,
either in doctrine or in practice, as evidence of heretical
proclivities. Natalis Beda, the ignorant but pedantic syndic of the
theological faculty, entered the lists as Lefevre's opponent, and an
animated dispute was waged between the friends of the two combatants. Of
so great moment was the decision regarded by Poncher, Bishop of Paris,
that he induced Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, to write an essay in
refutation of the views of Lefevre.[137] But the Sorbonne, not content
with this, on the ninth of November, 1521, declared that he was a
heretic who should presume to maintain the truth of Lefevre's
proposition. Lefevre himself would probably have experienced even
greater indignities at the hands of parliament--whose members were
accustomed to show excessive respect to the fanatical demands of the
faculty--had not Guillaume Petit, the king's confessor, induced Francis
to interfere in behalf of the Picard professor.[138]

[Sidenote: Briconnet, Bishop of Meauz.]

To these two actors in the drama of the French reformation a third must
now be added. Guillanme Briconnet, Bishop of Meaux, stood in the front
rank of aspiring and fortunate churchmen. His father, commonly known as
the Cardinal of St. Malo, had passed from the civil administration into
the hierarchy of the Gallican Church. Rewarded for services rendered to
Louis the Eleventh and Charles the Eighth by the gift of the rich abbey
of St. Germain-des-Pres and the archbishopric of Rheims, he had, in
virtue of his possession of the latter dignity, anointed Louis the
Twelfth at his coronation. As cardinal, he had headed the French party
in the papal consistory, and, more obedient to his sovereign than to the
pontiff, when Louis demanded the convocation of a council at Pisa to
resist the encroachments of Julius the Second, the elder Briconnet left
Rome to join in its deliberations, and to face the dangers attending an
open rupture with the Pope. The cardinal was now dead, having left to
Guillaume, born previously to his father's entrance into orders, a good
measure of the royal favor he had himself enjoyed. The younger Briconnet
had been successively created Archdeacon of Rheims and Avignon, Ab