[Footnote 153: Nisard, Histoire de la littérature française, i. 275. The only printed work in favor of which the claim of Lefèvre's translation to be the oldest in the French language could be disputed is the "Bible" of Guyars des Moulins, finished in 1297, and printed by order of Charles VIII. in 1487; but the greater part of this is a free translation, not of the Scriptures themselves, but of a summary--the "Historia scholastica" of Pierre le Mengeur (latinized "Comestor")--and is consequently no bible at all. See M. Charles Read, in Bulletin, i. 76, who remarks that, "everything considered, it may therefore be asserted that the translations of Lefèvre d'Étaples and of Olivetanus are the first versions without embellishment or gloss (non historiées et non glossées), and that thus the first two versions of the Bible into the language of the people are Protestant."] [Footnote 154: The inventory of the library of the Count of Angoulême, father of Margaret and Francis I., consisting of nearly two hundred volumes, contains the title "Les Paraboles de Salomon, les Espistres Saint Jehan, les Espistres Saint Pol et l'Apocalipse, le tout en ung volume, escript en parchemin et _à la main_, et en _françoys_, couvert de velous changeant et a deux fermoeres, l'un aux armes de mon diet Seigneur, et l'autre aux armes de ma dicte dame." Aristotle, Boethius, Boccaccio, and Dante figure in the list, the latter both in Italian and in French. The inventory is printed in an appendix to the edition of the Heptameron of Margaret of Angoulême published by the Soc. dea bibliophiles français (Paris, 1853), a work enriched with many original documents of considerable value.] [Footnote 155: This important letter of Lefèvre to Farel, July 6, 1524, first published in part from the MS. in the Geneva Library, in the Bulletin de l'hist. du prot. franç., xi. (1862), 212, is given in full by Herminjard, i. 220, etc.] [Footnote 156: "O bone Deus, quanto exulto gaudio, cum percipio hanc pure agnoscendi Christum gratiam, jam bonam partem pervasisse Europæ! Et spero Christum tandem nostras Gallias hac benedictione invisurum."] [Footnote 157: "Provinciam interpretandi populo promiscui sexus, quotidie una hora mane, epistolas Pauli lingua vernacula editas, non concionando, sed per modum lecturæ interpretando." Lefèvre to Farel, _ubi supra_, i. 222. He gives the names of four such "lectores puriores"--Gadon, Mangin, Neufchasteau, and Mesnil--of whom we know little.] [Footnote 158: Parliament, however, as late as June 1, 1525, sustained his episcopal authority by prohibiting the monks from preaching in Meaux, whether in the morning or in the evening, when the bishop either himself preached or had preaching before him in that part of the day. Reg. of Parliament, Preuves des Libertez de l'Eglise Gallicane, iv. 102.] [Footnote 159: Gaillard, vi. 409.]