74. The Open Rupture. An Academic Oration. 1533. (Chapter 9. From France to Switzerland. 1509-1536.) (History of the Christian Church) (Schaff, Philip)

Calv. Opera, X. P. I. 30; XXI. 123, 129, 192. A very graphic account by Merle D'Aubigne, bk. II. ch. xxx. (vol. II. 264-284).

For a little while matters seemed to take a favorable turn at the court for reform. The reactionary conduct of the Sorbonne and the insult offered to Queen Marguerite by the condemnation of her Mirror of a Sinful Soul, a tender and monotonous mystic reverie, offended her brother and the liberal members of the University. Several preachers who sympathized with a moderate reformation, Gerard Roussel, and the Augustinians, Bertault and Courault, were permitted to ascend the pulpit in Paris. The king himself, by his opposition to the German emperor, and his friendship with Henry VIII., incurred the suspicion of aiding the cause of heresy and schism. He tried, from political motives and regard for his sister, to conciliate between the conservative and progressive parties. He even authorized the invitation of Melanchthon to Paris as counsellor, but Melanchthon wisely declined.

Nicolas Cop, the son of a distinguished royal physician (William Cop of Basel), and a friend of Calvin, was elected Rector of the University, Oct. 10, 1533, and delivered the usual inaugural oration on All Saint's Day, Nov. 1, before a large assembly in the Church of the Mathurins.

This oration, at the request of the new Rector, had been prepared by Calvin. It was a plea for a reformation on the basis of the New Testament, and a bold attack on the scholastic theologians of the day, who were represented as a set of sophists, ignorant of the Gospel. They teach nothing, says Calvin, of faith, nothing of the love of God, nothing of the remission of sins, nothing of grace, nothing of justification; or if they do so, they pervert and undermine it all by their laws and sophistries. I beg you, who are here present, not to tolerate any longer these heresies and abuses.

The Sorbonne and the Parliament regarded this academic oration as a manifesto of war upon the Catholic Church, and condemned it to the flames. Cop was warned and fled to his relatives in Basel. Calvin, the real author of the mischief, is said to have descended from a window by means of sheets, and escaped from Paris in the garb of a vine-dresser with a hoe upon his shoulder. His rooms were searched and his books and papers were seized by the police.