Note 487 — CXXX.—To the Queen of Navarre.[485]

Gerard Roussel, preacher to the Queen of Navarre, one of the earliest missionaries of the Reformation at Paris. Appointed Abbot of Clerac and Bishop of Oleron, he continued to preach the new doctrines without breaking with the Roman Catholic Church, and thus he drew upon himself the most severe censure of both Farel and Calvin. This latter addressed a letter to him in 1536, concerning the duty of a Christian man in the administration or the rejection of the benefices of the Papal Church, and urged him in vain to separate from the Romish Church, to which he remained attached until his death in 1550. "His life," says a Roman Catholic writer, "was without reproach; his kennel of dogs and of greyhounds was a great crowd of poor people; his horses and his train a flock of young children instructed in letters. He had much credit among the people, upon whom he stamped by degrees a hatred and contempt for the religion of their fathers."—Florimond de Rémond, Hist. de l' Héresie, lib. vii. pp. 850, 851. See especially the ingenious and learned Biography of Gerard Roussel, by M. Charles Schmidt, Strasbourg, 1845, in 8vo.