bot of
St. Germain-des-Pres, and Bishop of Lodeve and Meaux. His title of Count
of Montbrun gave him, moreover, a place in the nobility.[139] Meantime a
reformatory tendency had early revealed itself in the efforts made by
the young ecclesiastic to enforce the observance of canonical discipline
by the luxurious friars of the monastery of St. Germain. Here, too, he
had tasted the first fruits of the opposition which was before long to
test his firmness and constancy.

Briconnet had been appointed Bishop of Meaux (March 19, 1516) about the
same time that Francis the First despatched him as special envoy to
treat with the Pope. It would seem that the intimate acquaintance with
the papal court gained on this occasion, confirming the impressions made
by a previous diplomatic mission in the time of Louis the Twelfth,
convinced Briconnet that the church stood in urgent need of reform; and
he resolved to begin the work in his own diocese.

[Sidenote: Lefevre and Farel invited to Meaux.]

Weary of the annoyance and peril arising from the ignorance and malice
of his enemies, the theologians of the Sorbonne, Lefevre d'Etaples
longed for a more quiet home, where he might reasonably hope to
contribute his share to the great renovation descried long since by his
prophetic glance. He was now invited by Briconnet, to whom his learning
and zeal were well known, to accompany him to Meaux, where, at the
distance of a little more than a score of miles from the capital, he
would at least be rid of the perpetual clamor against Luther and his
doctrines that assailed his ears in Paris.[140] He was accompanied, or
followed, to Meaux by his pupil, Farel. Over the views of the latter a
signal change had come since he entered the university, full of
veneration for the saints, and an enthusiastic supporter of the mass, of
the papal hierarchy, and of every institution authorized by
ecclesiastical tradition. After a painful mental struggle, of which he
has himself given us a graphic account,[141] Farel had been reluctantly
brought to the startling conviction that the system of which he had been
an enthusiastic advocate was a tissue of falsehoods and an abomination
in God's sight. It required no more than this to bring a man of so
resolute a character to a decision. Partly by his own assiduous
application to study, especially of the Greek and Hebrew languages and
of the Church Fathers, partly through the influence of Lefevre, he had
become professo