Note 613 — Chapter VIII

The execution of the "Five from Geneva" at Chambéry, in Savoy—then, as now again, a part of France—and the violent persecution in the neighborhood of Angers, are well known (Crespin, fols. 283-321; Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., i. 68, 69). The inclination to resist force by force, manifested by some Protestants in Anjou, was promptly discouraged by Calvin; letter of April 19, 1556 (Lettres franç., ii. 90). The number and names of the martyrs will probably never be ascertained. "N'estoit quasi moys de l'an qu'on n'en bruslast à Paris, à Meaux et à Troie en Champagne deux ou trois, en aulcun moy plus de douze. Et si pour cela les aultres ne cessoient de poursuivre leur entreprinse de mettre en avant leur faulce religion." Mém. de Cl. Haton, 48. The Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., vii. (1858) 14, extracts from the registers of the Parliament of Toulouse, June 11, 1556, the sentence of a victim hitherto unknown—one Blondel. He had dared to protest against the impiety of the procession of the "Fête-Dieu," or "Corpus Christi," by singing "a profane hymn of Clément Marot." Parliament turned aside from the procession, and in the sacristy of the church of St. Stephen rapidly tried him, and ordered him to be burned the same day at the stake in a public square, as a "reparation of the injury done to the holy faith." Certainly a church dedicated to the Christian protomartyr was not the most appropriate place for drawing up such a decree!