accessory to the cruelties, he was not even an abettor of certain acts of violence which other bishops regarded as necessary.*

We shall presently see whether this language is borne out by official documents still preserved. Meanwhile let us notice that the terms in which Bossuet eulogizes the revocation in his funeral oration in honor of Chancellor Le Tellier are strangely inconsistent with this view. He calls upon the annalist of the Church to place Louis with Constantine and Theodosius. He exalts an act which had brought back heretics, until the churches were too strait to receive them, while their false teachers had abandoned them, and sought safety in flight. He styles it "the most beautiful exercise of authority." He apostrophizes "this new Constantine, this new Theodosius, this new Marcian, this new Charlemagne" in these words: "You have confirmed the faith, you have exterminated the heretics; this is the worthy labor of your reign, it is its proper character!" And the Jesuit De La Rue, addressing Bossuet, attributes the honor of the act to the bishop himself: "In God's name, who gave you, my lord, the strength to commence this holy revolution, employ all the light, the ardor, and the credit you possess, to see with your own eyes the end and perfection. of your work."

Even during the lifetime of the bishop of Meaux, there were not wanting those who accused him of being an active participant in the persecution of the Huguenots. In particular, one Pierre Frotté, a former canon of the abbey of St. Geneviève, and curate of the parish of Souilly, in the diocese of Meaux, became a Protestant, and flying for safety to Holland, published a narrative of his conversion, which gave a very different view of Bossuet's course from that which the prelate himself sought to circulate, and which his friends have insisted upon as correct, and have apparently endeavored to perpetuate by the suppression or destruction of papers in conflict with it. We shall have a few words more to say respecting the testimony of this priest, who seems to have enjoyed the best means of information, in consequence of his intimate association with his bishop; and who asserts that, with the exception of a single woman of bad character, who perhaps abjured voluntarily, all the rest of * "Il ne fut jamais partisan non-seulement des cruautés, mais de certaines violences que d'autres évêques regardaient comme nécessaires."

the Protestants of the diocese of Meaux that joined the Roman Catholic Church, did it only through fear of the soldiery whom Bossuet caused to pass and repass through their midst, during the time of his missions, and in consequence of threats which he uttered even in his sermons against the contumacious.

The French Protestant Historical Society, among the many important documents which it has published within the fourteen years of its existence, has inserted in its bulletin a number of ministerial dispatches and other papers relating to Bossuet, hitherto buried in the archives of the French empire. Although much that would have thrown additional light upon the subject, and especially Bossuet's own letters, appears to have been carefully eliminated, the following facts appear.

First. Bossuet is seen in the light of an informer against Protestants suspected of being engaged in making preparations to leave the kingdom. It is well known that the greatest precautions were adopted to prevent the emigration of members of the Reformed Church, or of the "New Catholics" (Nouveax Catholiques,) as, by a legal fiction, they were styled. The frontiers were guarded with vigilance, and those who were detected in the act of escaping from the kingdom were punished with hard labor in the galleys, if men, and with confiscation and imprisonment, if women.* It was only by the employment of practiced guides at exorbitant prices, and in disguise, that most of the refugees succeeded in reaching a country where freedom of conscience was guaranteed. Not only were the goods of the emigrants declared to be confiscated to the crown, but all conveyances of property made by them within a year previous to their departure were null and void. The part of a Christian bishop, under such circumstances, would seem to be to alleviate, rather than aggravate, the hardships to which enactments like these exposed the Huguenots. But in the year 1688 we find Bossuet engaged in denouncing to the government the intentions of some of the

*Mrs. Maury, in her translation of the Edict of Revocation, given in the appendix to her interesting "Memoirs of a Huguenot Family, translated and compiled from the original autobiography of Rev. James Fontaine," (New York, 1853,page 510,) has accidentally omitted from the tenth article its most essential clause, the prohibition to leave the kingdom. In the original this article reads: "Faisons très expresses et itératives défenses à tous nos sujets de ladite R. P. R. de sortir: eux, leurs femmes et enfans de notredit Royaume, Païs et Terres de notre obéissance," etc.

Reformed. Sir," writes the minister on the 14th of April, to M. de Mesnars, Intendant of the Generality of Paris, under whose government the city of Meaux was placed, "the Bishop of Meaux having written to me that there is some movement among the New Catholics of his diocese, who are selling their furniture and seem to be preparing to leave the kingdom, letting it even be understood that they are taking away their children with them, I reported it to the king, who commanded me to notify you of it, in order that you may examine whether this rumor has any foundation, and may give such orders as you deem necessary, according to the circumstances."*

Secondly. Perhaps the most oppressive article in the edict of revocation, was that which prescribed that the children of Protestants should be baptized by the curates of the parish in which they resided, and be brought up in the "Apostolic and Roman Catholic religion." In the recently discovered documents, Bossuet figures in the unenviable light of an informer against the parents who refused or neglected to send their children to be instructed in what they considered abominable error. "After having given an account to the king," writes the minister to Bossuet, April 30th, 1686, "of what you wrote to me on the subject of the children of the newly-converted of your diocese, whom the parents neglect to send to the schools and to the instructions that are given in the parishes, his majesty has resolved to write on this subject to the intendants, to direct them to oblige the parents to send them thither, and you may act in concert with M. de Mesnars in reference to everything which there may be to be done in this respect in your diocese."

Thirdly. We find Bossuet still more frequently either the advocate of the summary arrest of Protestants, with a view to compelling them to abjure their faith, or accessory to it. On the 2d of April, 1686, a ministerial command is sent to M. de Mesnars revoking an order for the arrest of a father and his son who had been converted; and the reason assigned for the revocation is "because the order was issued only on account of their religion, at the prayer of the Bishop of Meaux."§ Thir

*Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire du Protestantisme Français, IV, 118. + Article VIII.

Bulletin de la Soc. de l'Hist. du Prot. Français, IV, 117. § Ib. ubi supra; "à la prière de M. l'évesque de Meaux."

teen years later, (July 5th, 1699,) Friar Leonard, of St. Catharine of Sienna, jots down the following incident:

Two heads of families of the city of Meaux, in very moderate circumstances, wrote to their bishop a few days ago that they still had many doubts on some doctrinal points, and principally on that of purgatory. That prelate sent for them, and tried to prove the doctrine to them by the best reasons he could allege. But as they did not appear satisfied by them, and would not promise their bishop to change their sentiments, he sent and had them arrested two days after by an order from the king, and they were taken to the prison of the Conciergerie of this city, where they are being instructed. This has obliged the prelate to compose a book to prove that there is a purgatory, and, as he is very learned, no doubt is entertained that this book, on which he is laboring at the present moment, will be well written.*

Again, on the 7th of July, 1703, about nine months before his death, Bossuet received this note from the government :

I have sent the order which you ask for, to have the man named Baudouin and his wife, bad Catholics of Fublaines, imprisoned in the hospital. M. Phelypeaux writes to me that this order had been granted to you a month since by the king, but I had heard nothing of it. Apparently you had given no memorandum of it to his majesty.t

These instances, selected from a number, will sufficiently exhibit Bossuet's participation in the arrests of those who either refused to abjure, or, after their conversion to the Roman Catholic Church, betrayed by their remissness in attending upon its ordinances, the insincerity of their profession.

Fourthly. We find Bossuet, within one week after the promulgation of the edict of revocation, begging and obtaining (October 29th, 1685) the demolition of the Protestant churches of Nanteuil and Morcerf, for the erection of hospitals at Meaux. A few days later the adjoining houses are also granted him at his request. Encouraged by these largesses of the crown, in 1699 he asks that the property of a Protestant absentee be given him to be applied to the expenses incurred for the instruction of the New Catholics; but the request is refused, on the ground that no civil judgment had been pronounced in the

case.

Fifthly. Bossuet is now discovered to have been privy to, and undoubtedly the instigator of the persecution of two young * MS. in the Imperial Archives. vol. M., 1802, reprinted in Bulletin IV, 221. + Ib. IV, 222. Ib. IV, 116, 220, 221

Protestant orphans born within the limits of his diocese, of which we already possessed accounts in Benoît's History of the Edict of Nantes, and, in greater detail, in a rare printed volume of contemporary date.* The three letters which establish this point are accompanied by the official procès-verbal of the examination of the girls, a document fully corroborating all the incidents of this atrocious proceeding, and affixing new marks of infamy to all that were directly or remotely connected with it. The story is briefly this. In the village of La-Ferté-sousJouarre there lived an honest man, in comfortable circumstances, named Pierre Mirat, who, some twenty years before the publication of the edict of revocation, had been converted from the Roman Catholic to the Reformed Church. At his death his children were confided to the care of their mother, who, although a well-meaning woman, through her absorption in worldly cares allowed them to remain in such ignorance, that when she died her two youngest daughters could neither read nor write. Both their Romanist and their Protestant relatives were desirous of securing to the young girls a guardian of their own creed. Happily the choice fell on a Protestant uncle, under whose roof they remained for three months. undisturbed. Meanwhile the Roman Catholic relatives determined, if possible, to break up this arrangement, and finally induced the king's attorney at Meaux, who hoped to make some money by the affair, as we are told, to give an order that the children should be delivered to him, to be placed in the Ursuline convent a few leagues distant from Meaux. When it was found that there was no resource to avoid compliance, the guardian and his Protestant friends employed the brief interval allowed them in endeavoring to instruct the girls and fortify their courage for the rough trial that awaited them. But although they gave the strongest assurances of their constancy, yet, from their ignorance and child-like timidity, little hope resulted. The project of the Romanist relatives was, however, delayed by the jealousy of the bailiff of the village of La-Ferté, who, disputing the jurisdiction of the attorney of Meaux, removed the children from their guardian's hands, and placed them in other custody. After the archers * Réflexions sur la cruelle persécution que souffre l'Eglise Reformée le France, etc., 1686. In Bulletin, tome X, pp. 50-66.