Gérard Roussel

Gérard Roussel (1500–50) was a French cleric, a student of Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and later a member, with his former teacher, of the Circle of Meaux around Guillaume Briçonnet, bishop of Meaux. This group was characterized by evangelical sensibilities, but all the while remaining catholics, at a time when religious identities were unclear and a matter of dispute, due to the very recent Protestant Reformation. Gérard Roussel, along with Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples, was studied by the historian Thierry Wanegffelen as being "between two pulpits", that of Rome and that of Geneva where Jean Calvin would settle permanently in 1541, and, more generally, between catholicism and Protestantism.

When the Circle of Meaux was broken up in 1525, Roussel, like most of its members and unlike Guillaume Farel, stayed within the Catholic Church. He then became the personal preacher of Marguerite of Navarre, queen consort of Navarre ; under her patronage, he became bishop of the diocese of Oloron, within the kingdom of Navarre, in 1536.Jean Calvin addressed on this occasion a letter to Roussel, mostly condemnatory, in which he said :

Calling to mind the "former piety" of Roussel, "which I [Calvin] formerly admired, and which was for me an example of extreme worth", he called Roussel

Calvin ended his letter with a condemnation of Roussel's new position :

Gérard Roussel did not cease to be bishop of Oloron ; however, he served as advisor to Marguerite of Navarre and then to her husband, king Henry II of Navarre. On his advice, measures quite similar to some aspects of the Protestant Reformation were introduced, such as preaching in vernacular rather than Latin, but without formally breaking away from catholicism.

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