expressing fear that war alone seemed the outcome of the problems of
France. Jewel now echoes Martyr’s assessment of the situation, and
accompanied this by an express desire that Zurich would take an open
stand with the French Protestants: for after all, were not all the matters
of the current religious contention ultimately connected? After
meandering to some thoughts on the Council of Trent, Jewel returns to
the concerns of the French Church, in which context he makes the above
statement about Calvin.
The critic of Calvin and Martyr, François Baudouin (Baldwin in
Jewel’s Works), one time professor of Civil Law at Bourges, secretary to
the Palatine Elector, and in 1561 the envoy of Anthony of Navarre at the
Colloquy, had been the object of Calvin’s invective Responsio ad
versipellem quendam mediatorem qui pacificandi specie rectum evangelii
cursum in Galllia abrupere molitus est.^98 Baudouin had left France in
1545, having been condemned in Arras for heresy, and had made his way
to Geneva. But now in 1562 Calvin saw Baudouin as a consummate
temporizer, someone overly imbued with an Erasmian spirit of
conciliation. In truth, the tract Calvin attributed to Baudouin, the real
object of his screed, was written by Georg Cassander, though it was
Baudouin who had seen to its distribution at Poissy. Baudouin had
stated, in correspondence with Cecil, that since the English moderation
in the change of their religion had very much pleased him, he hoped to
use whatever means at his disposal to effect the same in France. Nicholas
Throckmorton, the English ambassador in France, related to Cecil that
Baudouin wished to write a work defending the said English moderation.
It is in the context of Baudouin’s encomium of English restraint that
Jewel related the above-quoted sentiment, and Jewel then dropped the
matter, leaving his readers to wonder exactly what is the nature of
Calvin’s preciseness that Jewel thought defensible? He does not defend
Martyr, his former mentor, but only Calvin, even though the libel of
religious fastidiousness had equally impugned both. Perhaps Jewel
believed his exoneration of Calvin would also cover Martyr, and that
Baudouin, prejudiced by his grievance with Calvin, had merely painted
both Reformers with the same brush. After all, since Martyr had
attended the Colloquy, had been, along with Beza, the intransigent voice
of Protestantism, and not Calvin, this makes Jewel’s words a bit less
enigmatic with respect to the two Reformers.
But the more telling and more interesting point is not Jewel’s lack of
overt apology for Martyr, but his defense of Calvin: that Baudouin is
182 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
Poissy(Cambridge, MA, 1974), especially Chs. V and VI.
(^98) Bernard Cottret, Calvin. A Biography(Grand Rapids and Edinburgh, 2000). trans.
M. Wallace MacDonald. (Paris: Éditions Jean-Claude Lattés, 1995), p. 249.
http://www.ebook3000.com