Henry M. Baird · 119 of 379

CHAPTER VIII · His Protestant proclivities.

Paul, who was in the constant habit of saying that the inquisition was the sole weapon suited to the Holy See, the only battering-ram by means of which heresy could be demolished, did not decline the royal invitation. On the twenty-sixth of April he published a bull appointing a commission consisting of the Cardinals of Lorraine, Bourbon, and Châtillon, with power to delegate their authority to others. Of the three prelates, the first was the real instigator of the cruelties practised during this and the subsequent reigns. The Cardinal of Bourbon was known to be as ignorant as he was inimical to the Reformation, and could be depended upon to support his colleague. The Cardinal of Châtillon, brother of Admiral Coligny and of D'Andelot, was added, it is not improbable, from motives of policy. He was already suspected of favoring the reformed doctrines, which subsequently he openly espoused. Indeed, nearly six years before, the English ambassador, Pickering, after alluding to new measures of persecution devised against the Protestants, wrote: "Cardinal Châtillon, as I hear, is a great aider of Lutherans, and hath been a great stay in this matter, which otherwise had been before now concluded, to the destruction of any man that had almost spoken of God's Word. Nevertheless, the Protestants here fear that it cannot come to a much better end, where such a number of bishops and cardinals bear the swing." Châtillon's enemies hoped, by placing him on this inquisitorial commission, where his vote would be powerless in opposition to that of the other two cardinals, to compel him either to enter the rank of persecutors, or declare himself openly for the Reformation, and thus destroy his own credit and that of his powerful family.