When he came near the bishop, the energetic prior letting go the thumb, which he had held as if in a vice, and pointing to the prelate, said to the clerk: ‘Do your duty.’ The bishop hearing these words, ‘was much afraid,’ says Bonivard, ‘and turned pale, thinking I was ordering him to be killed.’ The cowardly prelate turning with alarm towards the supposed assassin cast a look of distress upon those around him. The clerk trembled as much as he; but meeting the terrible eye of the prior and seeing the dagger under his robes, he fell on his knees before the bishop, and kissing the writ, presented it to him, saying: ‘My lord, _inhibitur vobis, prout in copia_.’[136] He then put the document into his hand and ran off: ‘Upon this,’ adds the prior, ‘I retired to my priory of St. Victor. I felt such juvenile and silly arrogance, that I feared neither bishop nor duke.’ Bonivard had his culverins no longer, but he would yet have stood a siege if necessary to bring this matter to a successful issue. The bishop never forgot the fright Bonivard had caused him, and swore to be even with him. This energetic action gave courage to others. Fourscore citizens more or less implicated with Pécolat in the affair of the rotten fish--‘all honest people’--appeared before the princes, and demanded that if they and Pécolat were guilty, they should be punished; but if they were innocent that it should be publicly acknowledged. The princes, whose situation was growing difficult, were by no means eager to have eighty cases in hand instead of one. ‘We are sure,’ they answered, ‘that this poisoning is a thing invented by certain wicked men, and we look upon all of you as honest people. But as for Pécolat, he was always a naughty fellow; for which reason we wish to keep him a short time in prison to correct him.’ Then fearing lest he should be liberated by force during their absence, the princes of Savoy had him transferred to the castle of Peney, which was contrary to the franchises of the city. The transfer took place on the 29th of January, 1518.[137] A division in the Church came to Pécolat’s assistance. Since the struggles between Victor and Polycrat in the second century, between Cyprian and Stephen in the third, dissensions between the catholic bishops have never ceased; and in the middle ages particularly, there were often severe contests between the bishops and their metropolitans. The Archbishop of Vienne did not understand yielding to the Bishop of Geneva, and at the very moment when Luther’s Theses were resounding throughout Christendom--in 1517 and 1518--the Roman Church on the banks of the Rhone was giving a poor illustration of its pretended unity. The metropolitan, finding his citations useless, ordered the bishop to liberate Pécolat, under pain of excommunication;[138] but the episcopal officers who remained in Geneva, only laughed, like their master, at the metropolitan and his threats.