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CHAPTER XI · Effect produced at Rome.

Catharine was not, however, satisfied with this general apology; she even undertook to express to the pontifical court her idea of some of the reforms which were dictated by the times. On the fourth of August—nearly three weeks before Beza's arrival—she wrote a letter to Pius the Fourth of so radical a character that its authenticity has been called into question, although without sufficient reason. After acquainting the Pope with the extraordinary increase in the number of those who had forsaken the Roman Church, and with the impossibility of restoring unity by means of coercion, she declared it a special mark of divine favor that there were among the dissidents neither Anabaptists nor Libertines, for all held the creed as explained by the early councils of the Church. It was, consequently, the conviction of many pious persons that, by the concession of some points of practice, the present divisions might be healed. But more frequent and peaceful conferences must be held, the ministers of religion must preach concord and charity to their flocks, and the scruples of those who still remained in the pale of the Church must be removed by the abolition of all unnecessary and objectionable practices. Images, forbidden by God and disapproved of by the Fathers, ought at once to be banished from public worship, baptism to be stripped of its exorcisms, communion in both forms to be restored, the vernacular tongue to be employed in the services of the church, private masses to be discountenanced. Such were the abuses which it seemed proper to correct, while leaving the papal authority undiminished, and the doctrines of the Church unaffected by innovations. To such a length was a woman—herself devoid of strong convictions, and possessing otherwise little sympathy with the belief or the practice of the reformers—carried by the force of the current by which she was surrounded. But, whether the letter was dictated by L'Hospital, or inspired by Bishop Montluc—at this time suspected of being more than half a Huguenot at heart—the fact that a production openly condemning the Roman Catholic traditional usages on more than one point should have emanated from the pen of Catharine de' Medici, is certainly somewhat remarkable. At Rome the letter produced a deep impression. If the Pope did not at once give utterance to his serious apprehensions, he was at least confirmed in his resolution to redeem his pledge in respect to a universal council, and he must have congratulated himself on having already despatched an able negotiator to the French court, in the person of the Cardinal of Ferrara, a legate whose intrigues will occupy us again presently.