§ 109. THE LEADERS OF THE LIBERTINES. 503
were ridiculed, Christ Ijlaspliemed, and the immortality of the soul called a dream and a fable.
Gruet was tortured every day for a month, after the inhuman fashion of that age.^ He confessed that he liad aflixed the libel, and that the papers found in his house belonged to him ; but he refused to name any accomplices. He was condemned for religious, moral, and political offences ; being found guilty of expressing contempt for religion ; of declaring that laws, both human and divine, were but the work of man's caprice ; and that fornication was not criminal when both parties were consenting ; and of threatening the clergy and the Council itself.^
He was beheaded on the 26th of July, 1547. The execution instead of terrifying the Libertines made them more furious than ever. Three days afterwards the Council was informed that more than twenty young men had entered into a conspiracy ' to throw Calvin and his colleagues into the Rhone. He could not walk the streets without being insulted and threatened.
Two or three years after the death of Gruet, a treatise of his was discovered full of horrible blasphemies against CInist, the Virgin ]Mary, the Prophets and Apostles, against the Scriptures, and all religion. He aimed to show that the founders of Judaism and Christianity were criminals, and that Christ Avas justly crucilied. Some have confounded this treatise with the book " Be trihus Inipostoribus" which dates from the age of Emperor Frederick II., and puts
1 In the case of Gcntilis and Scrvet, however, no mention is made of tlie torture.
2 The sentence of condemnation (Opera, XII. 567) reads: " Par jceste nostre diffinitive sentence, laquelle donnons icy par escript, toy Jaque Gruet condampnons a debvoyr estre mene au lieu de Champel et illect debcoyer aooyer tranche la teste de dessus les espaules, et ton corps attache aut gibet et la teste cloye en jcelluy et ainsy ^finii-as tes jours pour donner exeniple aux aultres qui tel cas vouldroyent commestre." The charge's assigned are blasphemy against God, offence against the civil magistracy, tlireats to the ministers of God, and " crime de leze majeste meritant pwjnition corporclle."
504 THE llEFOEMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
Moses, Christ, and Mohammed on a level as religious impostors.
Gruet's book was, at Calvin's advice, publicly burnt by the hangman before Gruet's house. May 22, 1550.^
2. Ami Pekrin (Amy Pierre), the military chief (captaingeneral) of the Republic, was the most popular and influential leader of the Patriotic party. He had been one of the earliest promoters of the Reformation, though from political rather than religious motives ; lie had protected Farel against the violence of the priests, and had been appointed deputy to Strassburg to bring Calvin back to Geneva.^ He was one of the six lay-members who, with the ministers, drew up the Ecclesiastical Ordinances of 1542, and for some time he supported Calvin in his reforms. He could wield the sword, but not the pen. He was vain, ambitious, pretentious, and theatrical. Calvin called him, in derision, the stage-emperor, who played now the " Ccesar comicus,^' and now the " Ccesar tragicusy ^
1 The sources for tlie case of Gruet are the acts of the criminal process and sentence, printed in Opera, XII. 563-568 (in French) ; letters of Calvin to Viret, July 2, 24, 1547 (in Opera, XII. 545, 550, in Bonnet II. 108 and 114); Calvin's report on the blasphemous book of Gruet, in Opera, XIII. 568-572 (in French, also printed in Henry, II. 120, and in Letters by Jules Bonnet, French ed., I. 311 ; English cd., II. 254) ; Reg. du Consell, July 25, 1547, and May 22, 1550, noticed in Annal. 409, 465. — Of modern writers, see Henry (II. 410,4.30, 441 sqq. ; abridged in Stebbing's transhition, 11.64 sqq., witliout tlie Beilage) ; Audin, ch. XXXVI. (pp. 396 sqq. of the English translation) ; Dyer, 213 sqq. ; and Stiilielin, I. 399 sqq.
2 Oct. 21, 1540. A day afterwards, Dufour was appointed by the Council, and went in his place. Annal. 267. See above, p. 430.
^ Beza calls him " vanissimns, sed audax et ambitiosus" (XXI. 138). Audin, the patron of all the enemies of Calvin, describes Perrin as "a man of noble nature, who wore the sword with great grace, dressed in good taste, and conversed witli much facility ; but a boaster at table and at the Council, where he deafened every one with his boastful loquacity, his fits of self-love, and his theatrical airs. . . . As to the rest, like all men of this stamp, he had ain excellent heart, was devoted as a friend, with cool blood, and patriotic even to extremes. At table it was his delight to imitate the Reformer, elongating his visage, winking his eyes, and assuming the air of an anchorite of the Thebaid" (p. 390). Perrin's chief defender is the younger Galiffe.