ituted in the chief
city of the Pays de Vaud, under the protection of the Bernese, the
instructions of Theodore Beza and other prominent reformed theologians.
Their names were: Martial Alba, a native of Montauban; Pierre Ecrivain,
of Boulogne, in Gascony; Bernard Seguin, of La Reolle, in Bazadois;
Charles Favre, of Blanzac; and Pierre Naviheres, of Limoges. A short
time before Easter, 1552, these young men, who had reached different
stages in their course of study,[581] conceived it to be their duty to
return to their native land, whence the most pressing calls for
additional laborers qualified to instruct others were daily coming to
Switzerland. Their plan was cordially endorsed by Beza, before whom it
was first laid by one of their number who had been an inmate of his
home, and then by the Church of Lausanne; for it evidenced the purity
and sincerity of their zeal. Provided with cordial letters from
Lausanne, as well as from Geneva, through which they passed, they
started each for his native city, intending to labor first of all for
the conversion of their own kindred and neighbors. But a different
field, and a shorter term of service than they had anticipated, were in
store for them. At Lyons, having accepted the invitation of a
fellow-traveller to visit him at his country-seat, they were surprised
on the first of May, 1552, by the provost and his guards, and, although
they had committed no violation of the king's edicts by proclaiming the
doctrines they believed, were hurried to the archiepiscopal prison, and
confined in separate dungeons. From their prayers for divine assistance
they were soon summoned to appear singly before the "official"--the
ecclesiastical judge to whom the archbishop deputed his judicial
functions.[582] The answers to the interrogatories, of which they
transmitted to their friends a record, it has been truly said, put to
shame the lukewarmness of our days by their courage, and amaze us by the
presence of mind and the wonderful acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures
they display.[583] He who will peruse them in the worm-eaten pages of
the "Actiones Martyrum," in which their letters were collected by the
pious zeal of a contemporary, cannot doubt the proficiency these
youthful prisoners had attained, both in sacred and in human letters, at
the feet of the renowned Beza. Their unanswerable defence, however, only
secured their more speedy condemnation as heretics. On the thirteenth of
May they were