The Fall of Briconnet, 1525

[GHansen]

Briconnet [Bishop of Meaux, Count of Montbrun, friend of Louis XII, ambassador at Rome. He entered the priesthood after his wife died.] had never embarked with his whole heart, like Luther or Farel, in the movement that was then regenerating the Church; there was in him a certain mystical tendency which weakens men’s minds, and deprives them of that firmness and courage which proceed from faith alone based on the Word of God. The cross that he was called to take up that he might follow Christ was too heavy. Shaken, alarmed, stupefied, and distracted,  he stumbled against the stone which had been artfully placed in his path......he fell, and instead of throwing himself into the arms of Jesus, he threw himself into those of Mazurier [Martial Mazurier was a gospel advocate who repudiated the Reformation faith and became a jesuit],  and by a shameful recantation sullied the glory of a noble faithfulness.  Thus fell Briconnet, the friend of Lefevre and of Margaret; thus the earliest supporter of the Gospel in France denied the glad tidings of grace, in the guilty thought that if he remained faithful, he would lose his influence over the Church, the court, and France. But what was represented to him as the salvation of his country, perhaps became its ruin. What would have been the result if Briconnet had possessed the courage of Luther? If one of the first bishops of France, beloved by the king and by the people, had ascended the scaffold, and had, like the little ones of the world, sealed the truth of the Gospel by a bold confession and a Christian death, would not France herself have been moved; and the blood of the bishop becoming, like that of Polycarp and Cyprian, the seed of the Church, might we not have seen that country, so illustrious in many respects, emerging in the  sixteenth century from that spiritual darkness with which it is still clouded?

Briconnet underwent a mere formal examination before James Menager and Andrew Verjus, who declared that he had sufficiently vindicated himself of the crime imputed to him. He was then subjected to penance, and assembled a synod in which he condemned Luther’s books, retracted all that he had taught contrary to the doctrine of the Church, restored the invocation of saints, endeavored to bring back those who had forsaken the Romish worship, and wishing to leave no doubt of his reconciliation with the pope and the Sorbonne, kept a solemn fast on the eve of Corpus Christi, and gave orders for pompous processions, in which he appeared personally, still further testifying his faith by his magnificence and by every kind of devout observance.  In his will he commended his soul to the Virgin Mary and to the heavenly choir of paradise, and desired that after his death (which happened in 1533) twelve hundred masses should be said for the repose of his soul. The fall of Briconnet is perhaps the most memorable in the history of the Reformation. Nowhere else do we find a man so sincerely pious and so deeply engaged in the reform turning round so suddenly against it: yet we must clearly understand his character and his fall.

D'Aubigne, J.H.Merle, History of the Reformation, b. 12, ch. 14