Opposition to ecclesiastical principalities began, then, three centuries ago at Geneva. 'The bishop grants us the civil jurisdiction,' said Bonivard; 'an act very damaging to himself, and very profitable to us.... But ... this is an opening to deprive him entirely of his authority. Neither La Baume nor the other bishops were lawfully elected, that is to say by the clergy at the postulation of the people. They were thrust into the see by the pope.... They are but tyrants set over us by other tyrants. We can therefore reject them without danger to our souls; and since they came in by the caprice of arbitrary power, it is lawful for us to expel them by the free authority of the city. Geneva has never acknowledged other princes than those whom the people themselves elected.' Some were astonished at Bonivard's language; but the larger number listened to him with enthusiasm. The catholics, growing more and more uneasy, anticipated great disasters. The edifice of popery, continually undermined in Geneva, was tottering; its pillars and buttresses were giving way; and the keystone of the arch, the episcopal power itself, was on the point of crumbling to dust. Alas! catholic Geneva was a dismantled fortress.[740] [Sidenote: THE DUKE'S IRRITATION.] When the duke heard of the bishop's concessions, he was seized with one of his fits of anger. And not without cause: by transferring the civil authority to a lay tribunal, La Baume had been guilty of a new offence against the duke; for it was in reality the jurisdiction of the vidame (that is to say, of the duke) which the bishop had thus ceded; and hence it was that he had been induced to do it so readily.