Note 43 — Chapter I

The origin of this word has been much discussed. In the early period of the Reformation in France, all religious schismatics save the Vaudois, whose historical identity was different and familiar, were called “Lutherans.” The Venetian ambassador so characterized the French Protestants in a dispatch to the signory in 1558 (Relazione de Giovanni Sorano, ed. Alberi, I, 2, 409). Boyvin du Villars (Book XII, 204) employs this same term in 1560.