Note 62 — XVII.—To Louis du Tillet.[62]

Louis du Tillet, curé of Claix in Poitou, canon and archdeacon of Angoulême. He was the brother of John du Tillet, the celebrated registrar of the Parliament of Paris, and of that other Du Tillet who became Bishop of Sainte-Brieuc and of Meaux. Having devoted himself to an ecclesiastical career, his first leanings inclined him towards the Reformed. With Calvin he became acquainted at the University of Paris, formed a friendship with him, shared his perils, and received him in 1534 at Angoulême in his own house. United thenceforth to the young Reformer by a like faith, he resigned his curacy of Claix to follow him, under the name of Hautmont, to Strasbourg, to Basle, and into Italy. In August 1536 he was at Geneva, when Calvin was there retained by the earnest entreaties of Farel. But the struggles to which the Reformer was thenceforward condemned, were little suited to the mild and contemplative disposition of Louis du Tillet. A prey to indecision, he secretly left Geneva and went to Strasbourg, where his anxieties were only put an end to by his return to the Roman Catholic faith. He wrote to Calvin to inform him of this change, and to submit to him his scruples regarding the lawfulness of the ministry in the Reformed Churches. Calvin replied; and that controversy, free, sincere, but tempered by respect, marked the later relations between these two men, at first united and too soon separated by the religious revolution of the sixteenth century.