our people, fleeing from prison or the pyre, found safety, honor,
and friendship. Our gratitude to you, lovable Mother of our
Renaissance! Your hearth was that of our saints, your heart was the
nest of our freedom." `062232
IV. THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS
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No one questioned the need of religious reform. The same
ecclesiastical good and evil appeared here as elsewhere: faithful
priests, devout monks, saintly nuns, here and there a bishop dedicated
to religion rather than politics; and ignorant or lackadaisical
priests, idle and lecherous monks, money-grubbing friars pretending
poverty, weak sisters in the convents, bishops who took the earthly
cash and let the celestial credit go. As education rose, faith fell;
and as the clergy had most of the education, they showed in their
conduct that they no longer took to heart the once terrifying
eschatology of their official creed. Some bishops appropriated to
themselves a luxurious multiplicity of benefices and sees; so Jean
of Lorraine held- and enjoyed revenues from- the bishoprics of Metz,
Toul, and Verdun, the archbishoprics of Reims, Lyons, Narbonne,
Albi, Macon, Agen, and Nantes, and the abbeys of Gorze, Fecamp, Cluny,
Marmoutiers, Saint-Ouen, Saint-de-Laon, Saint-Germer, Saint-Medard
of Soissons, and Saint-Mansuy of Toul. `062233 It was not enough for
his needs; he complained of poverty. `062234 Monks denounced the
worldliness of the bishops; priests denounced the monks; Brantome
quotes a phrase then popular in France: "Avaricious or lecherous as
a priest or a monk." `062235 The first sentence of the Heptameron
describes the Bishop of Sees as itching to seduce a married woman; and
a dozen stories in the book retail the similar enterprises of
various monks. "I have such a horror of the very sight of a monk,"
says one character, "that I could not even confess to them,
believing them to be worse than all other men." `062236 "There are
some good men among them," admits Oisille- which is Margaret's name,
in the Heptameron, for her mother- but this same Louise of Savoy
wrote in her journal: "In the year 1522... my son and I, by the
grace of the Holy Spirit, began to know the hypocrites, white,
black, gray, smoky, and of all colors, from whom God in His infinite