THE TRIUMPH OF THE THEOCRACY
Such was the constitution in theory; and, if we want to see it at work,
we have only to turn to the Register of the Consistory, in which we
may read how the citizens were punished for peccadilloes. One woman,
we find, got into trouble for saying her prayers in Latin, and another
for wearing her hair hanging down her back. One man was punished for
wearing baggy knickerbockers in the street; a second for offering his
snuff-box to a friend during the sermon; a third for talking business
to a neighbour as he was coming out of church; a fourth for calling his
cow by the Scriptural name Rebecca; a fifth for likening the braying
of his donkey to the chanting of a psalm. There was also the case of
a workman whose property was confiscated because he did not relieve
the indigence of his aged parents; of a child stood in the pillory
and publicly whipped for throwing a stone at its mother; of a mother
imprisoned for carelessly dropping her baby on the floor; and of a
young lady solemnly arraigned on the charge of casting amorous glances
at a minister of the Word.
Not everybody, of course, approved of such elaborate interference with
liberty. The Friends of Liberty resisted it as long as they could,
and their methods of resistance were not passive. They set their dogs
at Calvin; they openly ridiculed him; they came drunk to church and
brawled. But Calvin was a match for them. Pierre Amaulx, who said of
him that he ‘thought as much of himself as if he were a Bishop,’ was
compelled to apologize, bareheaded, in public; and all those who tried,
as Calvin put it, to ‘throw off the yoke of the Gospel’ came to a bad
end. One of them, Raoul Monnet, was beheaded for inviting young men
to look at indecorous pictures; and the party was ultimately broken
up as the result of a row in the streets. They were very drunk, and
were threatening certain of the Reformers with violence, when Syndic
Aubert, hearing their noise, came out and faced them in his nightgown,
carrying his staff of office in one hand and a lighted candle in the
other. Thus attired and equipped, he placed himself at the head of the
watch, summoned the soldiers to his aid, and put the rioters to rout.
Some of them were killed in the scuffle; others were captured, tried,
and executed; while the remnant escaped into the country, where, for
a period, they eked out a precarious existence by means of highway
robbery.
From that time forward Calvin’s supremacy was undisputed. The principal
use which he made of it was to burn Servetus; but that is a thorny
branch of the subject into which it is better not to enter. Our modern
Calvinists do not, indeed, hold that Servetus deserved to be burnt, but
they do sometimes maintain that Calvin did no great harm in burning
him. There might be some risk of putting them to confusion if the
topic were pursued; and this is not a controversial work. We shall be
on safer ground if we turn aside to consider Calvin’s services to the
State as an educationist.