Note 1153 — Chapter XII

Letter of Beza to Calvin, Sept. 27th, ubi supra. Besides permitting the communication of this information, the break in the conferences (caused by the discovery, on Catharine's part, that the majority of the prelates had resolved to submit a proposition respecting the mass, drawn up in a strictly Romish sense—a refusal to sign which they intended to take as the signal for declining to hold any further intercourse with the Protestants) furnished an opportunity for Montluc, Bishop of Valence—a prelate suspected of Protestant proclivities—and Claude d'Espense, one of the most moderate of the theologians of the Sorbonne, to meet privately, by request of Catharine de' Medici, with Beza and Des Gallars. The result of their interview was the provisional adoption of a declaration on the subject of the eucharist, which, though undoubtedly Protestant in its natural import, was rejected by the rest of the ministers as not sufficiently explicit. Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., ubi supra. See a full account in Baum, Theodor Beza, ii. 342-344. They rightly judged that where there is essential discrepancy of belief, little or nothing can be gained by cloaking it in ambiguous expressions.