§ 61. FAEEL AT GENEVA. 245
the right of the Church to impose ordinances which were not authorized by the Scriptures, and defended the position that Christ was the only head of the Church. He used the occasion to expLain the Protestant doctrines, and to attack the Koman hierarcliy. Christ and the Holy Spirit, he said, are not with the pope, but with those whom he persecutes. The disputation lasted several days, and ended in a partial victory for Farel. Unable to argue from the Scriptures, Furbity confessed : '' What I preached I cannot prove from the Bible ; I have learned it from the Summa of St. Thomas"; but he repeated in the pulpit of St. Peter's his charges against the heretics, Feb. 15, and was put in prison for several years.
Farel continued to preach in private houses. On March 1, when a monk, Francis Coutelier, attacked the Reformation, he ascended the pulpit to refute him. This was his first public sermon in Geneva. The Freiburgers protested against these proceedings, and withdrew from the coburghery (Aj)ril 12). The bishop pronounced the ban over the city (April 30) ; the Duke of Savoy threatened war. But Bern stood by Geneva, and under her poAverful protection, Farel, Viret, and Froment vigorously pushed the Reformation, though not without much violence.
The priests, monks, and nuns gradually left the city, and the bishop transferred his see to Annecy, an asylum prepared by the Duke of Savoy. Sister Jeanne de Jussie, one of the nuns of St. Claire, has left us a lively and naive account of their departure to Annecy. "It was a piteous thing," she says, " to see this holy company in such a plight, so overcome with fatigue and grief that several swooned by the way. It was rainy weather, and all were obliged to walk through muddy roads, except four poor invalids who were in a carriage. There were six poor old women who had taken their vows more than sixteen years before. Two of these, who were past sixty-six, and had never seen anything of the world, fainted away repeatedly. They could not bear the
246 THE EEFOEMATION IN FRENCH SWITZEKLAND.
wind ; and when they saw the cattle in the fields, they took the cows for bears, and the long-wooled sheep for ravaging wolves. They who met them were so overcome with compassion that they could not speak a word. And though our mother, the vicaress, had supplied them all with good shoes to save their feet, the greater number could not walk in them, but hung them at their waists. And so they walked from five o'clock in the morning, when they left Geneva, till near midnight, when they got to St. Julien, which is only a little league off." It took the nuns fifteen hours to go a short league. The next day (Aug. 29) they reached Annecy under the ringing of all the bells of the city, and found rest in the monastery of the Holy Cross. The good sister Jussie saw in the Reformation a just punishment of the unfaithful clergy. " Ah," she said, " the prelates and churchmen did not observe their vows at this time, but squandered dissolutely the ecclesiastical property, keeping women in adultery and lubricity, and awakening the anger of God, which brought divine judgment on them." ^
In Aug. 27, 1535, the Great Council of Two Hundred issued an edict of the Reformation, which was followed by another. May 21, 1536. The mass was abolished and forbidden, images and relics were removed from the churches. The citizens pledged themselves by an oath to live according to the precepts of the Gospel. A school was established for the elementary religious education of the young at the Convent de Rive, under the direction of Saunier. Out of it grew, afterwards, the college and academy of Calvin. A
^ he commencement de I'here'sie en Geneve. Grenus, Fragments historiques, pp. 199-208; Le Chroniqueur, 147-150. Ruchat (III. 383, ed. VuUiemin) doubts the simplicity of these good sisters, and suspects them of occasional communication with the Franciscans through subterranean passages : " II y a pourtant quelque lieu de douter si ces religieuses etaient aussi simples que la soeur de Jussi voudrait nousle faire accroire. Les chemins souterrains qu'on de'couvrit api-es leur depart sous leur convent (et qui conduissaient a celui des Cordeliers qui e'tait a quelques pas de la), donnent tout lieu de soup^onner qu'elles recevaient de temps en temps des visites de ces bans freres, et qu'ainsi dies n'^taient pas tant novices dans les affaires du monde."