Note 49 — XIV.—To Viret.[49]

Such is the address: To my very dear brother, Viret, Minister of the Church of Lausanne.—The minister, Peter Viret, one of the three great Reformers of French Switzerland. Born at Orbe in 1511, he completed his education at the University of Paris, and from the time of his return to his own country, devoted himself to the preaching of the reformed doctrine, which he spread at Orbe, at Payerne, and at Granson. Gifted naturally with persuasive genius and eloquence, he was sent by Farel to Geneva in 1534, and there held a public disputation against the Dominican Furbiti. He contributed powerfully to the establishment of the Reformation in that city. Named two years after (1537) Pastor of the Church of Lausanne, he served that charge until 1538, the period of his destitution by the Senate of Berne, and of his retirement to Geneva with the more illustrious members of the Vaudois clergy. Compelled by his weak state of health to leave Switzerland, he removed in 1561 to the South of France, wrought in the work of the ministry in the churches of Nîmes, of Lyons, of Orange, and died in 1571, either at Orthes or Pau. The numerous writings of Viret mentioned by Senebier, Hist. Litt. de Genève, tom. i. pp. 156-159, prove him to have been an original writer, though rather diffuse, and ingenious and eloquent as a moralist.