_Francis I.--The Renaissance at Paris_
The advent of the printing-press and the opening of a Greek
lectureship by Gregory Tyhernas and Hermonymus of Sparta at the
Sorbonne warns us that we are at the end of an epoch. With the
accession of Charles VIII. and the beginning of the Italian wars a new
era is inaugurated. Gothic architecture had reached its final
development and structural perfection, in the flowing lines of the
flamboyant style;[99] painting and sculpture, both in subject and
expression, assume a new aspect. The diffusion of ancient literature
and the discovery of a new world, open wider horizons to men's minds,
and human thought and human activity are directed towards other, and
not always nobler, ideals. Mediaevalism passes away and Paris begins to
clothe herself in a new vesture of stone.
[Footnote 99: Flamboyant windows were a natural, technical development
of Gothic. The aim of the later builders was to facilitate the
draining away of the water which the old mullioned windows used to
retain.]
The Paris of the fifteenth century was a triple city of overhanging
timbered houses, "thick as ears of corn in a wheatfield," of narrow,
crooked streets,[100] unsavoury enough, yet purified by the vast open
spaces and gardens of the monasteries, from which emerged the
innumerable spires and towers of her churches and palaces and
colleges. In the centre was the legal and ecclesiastical Cite, with
its magnificent Palais de Justice; its cathedral and a score of fair
churches enclosed in the island, which resembled a great ship moored
to the banks of the Seine by five bridges all crowded with houses. One
of the most curious characteristics of Old Paris was the absence of
any view of the river, for a man might traverse its streets and
bridges without catching a glimpse of the Seine.
[Footnote 100: The drainage of an old city was offensive to the smell
rather than essentially insanitary. "Mediaeval sewers," says Dr.
Charles Creighton in his _History of Epidemics in Britain_, pp. 323-4,
"were banked-up water-courses ... freely open to the greatest of all
purifying agents, the oxygen of the air."]
The portal of the Petit Chatelet at the end of the Petit Pont opened
on the university and learned district on the south bank of the Seine,
with its fifty colleges and many churches clustering about the slopes
of the mount of St. Genevieve, which was crowned by the great
Augustine abbey and church founded by Clovis. Near by, stood the two
great religious houses and churches of the Dominicans and Franciscans,
the Carthusian monastery and its scores of little gardens, the lesser
monastic buildings and, outside the walls, the vast Benedictine
abbatial buildings and suburb of St. Germain des Pres, with its
stately church of three spires, its fortified walls, its pillory and
its permanent lists, where judicial duels were fought. On the north
bank lay the busy, crowded industrial and commercial district known as
the Ville, with its forty-four churches, the hotels of the rich
merchants and bankers, the fortified palaces of the nobles, all
enclosed by the high walls and square towers of Charles the Fifth's
fortifications, and defended at east and west by the Bastille of St.
Antoine and the Louvre. To the east stood the agglomeration of
buildings known as Hotel St. Paul, a royal city within a city, with
its manifold princely dwellings and fair gardens and pleasaunces
sloping down to the Seine; hard by to the north was the Duke of
Bedford's Hotel des Tournelles, with its memories of the English
domination. At the west, against the old Louvre, were among others,
the hotels of the Constable of Bourbon and the Duke of Alencon, and
out in the fields beyond, the smoking kilns of the Tuileries (tile
factories).
[Illustration: TOWER OF ST. JACQUES.]
North and east and west of the municipal centre, the Maison aux
Piliers, on the Place de Greve, was a maze of streets filled with the
various crafts of Paris. The tower of the great church of St. Jacques
de la Boucherie, as yet unfinished, emerged from the butchers' and
skinners' shops and slaughter-houses, which at the Rue des Lombards
met the clothiers and furriers; the cutlers and the basket-makers were
busy in streets now swept away to give place to the Avenue Victoria.
Painters, glass-workers and colour merchants, grocers and druggists,
made bright and fragrant the Rue de la Verrerie, weavers' shuttles
rattled in the Rue de la Tixanderie (now swallowed up in the Rue de
Rivoli); curriers and tanners plied their evil-smelling crafts in the
Rue (now Quai) de la Megisserie, and bakers crowded along the Rue St.
Honore. The Rue des Juifs sheltered the ancestral traffic of the
children of Abraham. At the foot of the Pont au Change, on which were
the shops of the goldsmiths and money-lenders stood the grim
thirteenth-century fortress of the Chatelet, the municipal guard-house
and prison; to the north in the Rue de Heaumarie (Armourers) lay the
Four aux Dames or prison of the abbesses of Montmartre; further on
westward stood the episcopal prison, or Four de l'Eveque. North-west
of the Chatelet was the Hotel du Chevalier du Guet or watch-house and
round about it a congeries of narrow, crooked lanes, haunts of
ill-fame, where robbers lurked and vice festered. A little to the
north were the noisy market-place of the Halles and the cemetery of
the Innocents with its piles of skulls, and its vaulted arcade
painted (1424) with the Dance of Death. Further north stood the
immense abbey of St. Martin in the Fields, with its cloister and
gardens and, a little to the west, the grisly crenelated and turreted
fortress of the Knights-Templars, huge in extent and one of the most
solid edifices in the whole kingdom. This is the Paris conjured from
the past with such magic art by Victor Hugo in "Notre Dame," and
gradually to be swept away in the next centuries by the Renaissance,
pseudo-classic and Napoleonic builders and destroyers, until to-day
scarcely a wrack is left behind.
With the Italian campaigns of Charles VIII., _notre petit roi_, as
Brantome calls him, and of the early Valois-Orleans kings, France
enters the arena of European politics, wrestles with the mighty
Emperor Charles V. and embarks on a career of transalpine conquest.
But in Italy, conquering France was herself conquered by the charm of
Italian art, Italian climate and Italian landscape. When Charles VIII.
returned to Paris from his expedition to Naples he brought with him a
collection of pictures, tapestry, and sculptures in marble and
porphyry, that weighed thirty-five tons; by him and his successors
Italian builders, Domenico da Cortona and Fra Giocondo, were employed.
The latter supervised the rebuilding of the Petit Pont and after the
destruction of the last wooden Pont Notre Dame in 1499--when the whole
structure, with its houses and shops, fell with a fearful crash into
the river--he was made head of the Commission of Parisian artists who
replaced it by a noble stone bridge, completed in 1507. This, too, was
lined with tall gabled houses of stone, and adorned with the arms of
Paris and statues of Notre Dame and St. Denis. On its restoration in
1659 the facades of the houses were decorated with medallions of the
kings of France held by caryatides bearing baskets of fruit and
flowers on their heads. These houses were the first in Paris to be
numbered, odd numbers on one side, even on the other, and were the
first to be demolished when, on the eve of the Revolution, Louis XVI.
ordered the bridges to be cleared.
The French Renaissance is indissolubly associated with Francis I., who
in 1515 inherited a France welded into a compact, absolute monarchy,
and inhabited by a prosperous and loyal people; for the twelfth Louis
had been a good and wise ruler, who to the amazement of his people
returned to them the balance of a tax levied to meet the cost of the
Genoese Expedition, which had been over estimated, saying, "It will be
more fruitful in their hands than in mine." Commerce had so expanded
that it was said that for every merchant seen in Paris in former times
there were, in his reign, fifty. Scarce a house was built along an
important street that was not a merchant's shop or for the practice of
some art. Louis introduced the cultivation of maize and the mulberry
into France, and so rigid was his justice that poultry ran about the
open fields without risk of pillage from his soldiers. It was the
accrued wealth of his reign, and the love inspired by "Louis, father
of his people,"[101] that supported the magnificence, the luxury and
the extravagance of Francis I. The architectural creations of the new
style were first seen in Touraine, in the royal palaces of Blois and
Chambord, and other princely and noble chateaux along the luscious and
sunny valleys of the Loire. Italian architecture was late in making
itself felt in Paris, where the native art made stubborn resistance.
[Footnote 101: The good king's portrait by an Italian sculptor may be
seen in the Louvre, Room VII., and on his monument in St. Denis he
kneels beside his beloved and _chere Bretonne_, Anne of Brittany whose
loss he wept for eight days and nights.]
[Illustration: PONT NOTRE DAME.]
The story of the state entry of Francis I. into Paris after the death
of Louis XII., as told by Galtimara, Margaret of Austria's envoy, who
witnessed the scene from a window, is characteristic. After the solemn
procession which was _belle et gorgiaise_ he saw the king, clothed in
a glittering suit of armour and mounted on a barbed charger, accoutred
in white and cloth of silver, prick his steed, making it prance and
rear, _faisant rage_, that he might display his horsemanship, his fine
figure and dazzling costume before the queen and her ladies. It was
all _bien gorriere a voir_. "Born between two adoring women," says
Michelet, "Francis was all his life a spoilt child." Money flowed
through his hands like water[102] to gratify his ambition, his
passions and his pleasures. Doubtless his interviews with Da Vinci at
Amboise, where he spent much of his time in the early years of his
reign, fired that enthusiasm for art, especially for painting, which
never wholly left him; for the veteran artist, although old and
paralysed in the right hand, was otherwise in possession of all his
incomparable faculties.
[Footnote 102: "He was well named after St. Francis, because of the
holes in his hands," said a Sorbonne doctor.]
[Illustration: CHAPEL, HOTEL DE CLUNY.]
The question as to the existence of an indigenous school of painting
before the Italian artistic invasion is still a subject of
acrimonious discussion among critics; there is none, however, as to
its existence in the plastic arts. The old French tradition died hard,
and not before it had stamped upon Italian Renaissance architecture
the impress of its native genius and adapted it to the requirements of
French life and climate. The Hotel de Cluny, finished in 1490, still
remains to exemplify the beauty of the native French domestic
architecture modified by the new style. The old Hotel de Ville,[103]
designed by Dom. da Cortona and submitted to Francis in 1532, was
dominated by the French style, and not until nearly a century after
the first Italian Expedition were the last Gothic builders superseded.
The fine Gothic church of St. Merri was begun as late as 1520 and not
finished till 1612, and the transitional churches of St. Etienne and
St. Eustache remind one, by the mingling of Gothic and Renaissance
features, of the famous metamorphosis of Agnel and Cianfa in Dante's
Inferno, and one is tempted to exclaim, _Ome, come ti muti! Vedi, che
gia non sei ne duo ne uno!_[104]
[Footnote 103: The authorship of this famous building is much
canvassed by authorities. M.E. Mareuse, secretary of the Committee of
Inscriptions, affirms that Domenico must be considered the _unique
architecte_ of our old Municipal Palace: other writers claim with
equal confidence Pierre Chambiges as the architect. Charles Normand
after an exhaustive examination of documents, declares that the
Italian master's design was followed in the south court, but that
after his death in 1549 the design was ordered to be revised and the
great facade was erected in a style wholly different from the original
plan. This eminent authority inclines to the belief that the new
design was due to Du Cerceau. Certain it is that French masters were
associated with Domenico, for we know that on the 19th June 1534, a
rescript came from the city fathers to the masters Pierre Chambiges,
Jacques Arasse, Jehan Aesselin, Loys Caquelin and Dominique de
Cortona, reminding them that it would be more seemly to push the works
forward and keep an eye on the workmen instead of going away to dine
together.]
[Footnote 104: "Ah! me, how thou art changed! See, thou art neither
two nor one."]
[Illustration: TOWER OF ST. ETIENNE DU MONT.]
After the death of Da Vinci Francis never succeeded in retaining a
first-rate painter in his service. Andrea del Sarto and Paris Bordone
did little more than pay passing visits, and the famous school of
Fontainebleau was founded by Rosso and Primaticcio, two decadent
followers of Michel Angelo. The adventures of that second-rate artist
and first-rate bully, Benvenuto Cellini, at Paris, form one of the
most piquant episodes in artistic autobiography. After a gracious
welcome from the king he was offered an annual retaining fee of three
hundred crowns. He at once dismissed his two apprentices and left in a
towering rage, only returning on being offered the same appointments
that had been enjoyed by Leonardo da Vinci--seven hundred crowns a
year, and payment for every finished work. The Petit Nesle[105] was
assigned to Cellini and his pupils as a workshop, the king assuring
him that force would be needed to evict the possessor--it had been
assigned to the provost--adding, "Take great care you are not
assassinated." On complaining to the king of the difficulties he met
with and the insults offered to him on attempting to gain possession,
he was answered: "If you are the Benvenuto I have heard of, live up to
your reputation; I give you full leave." Benvenuto took the hint,
armed himself, his servants and two apprentices, and bullied the
occupants and rival claimants out of their wits. It was at this Tour
de Nesle that Francis paid Cellini a surprise visit with his mistress
Madame d'Estampes, his sister Margaret of Valois, the Dauphin and his
wife Catherine de' Medici, the Cardinal of Lorraine, Henry II. of
Navarre, and a numerous train of courtiers. The artist and his merry
men were at work on the famous silver statue of Jupiter for
Fontainebleau, and amid the noise of the hammering the king entered
unperceived. Cellini had the torso of the statue in his hand, and at
that moment a French lad who had caused him some little displeasure
had felt the weight of the master's foot, which sent him flying
against the king. But the artist had done a bad day's work by evicting
a servant of Madame d'Estampes from the tower, and the injured lady
and Primaticcio, her _protege_, decided to work his ruin. When Cellini
arrived at Fontainebleau with the statue, Francis ordered it to be
placed in the grand gallery decorated by Rosso. Primaticcio had just
arranged there the casts which he had been commissioned to bring from
Rome, and Benvenuto saw what was meant--his own work was to be
eclipsed by the splendour of the masterpieces of ancient art. "Heaven
help me!" cried he, "this is indeed to fall against the pikes!" Now
the god held the globe of the earth in the left hand, the thunderbolt
in the right. The artist contrived to thrust a portion of a large wax
candle as a torch between the flames of the bolt, and set the statue
up on its gilded pedestal. Madame entertained the king late at table,
hoping that he would either forget the work or see it in a bad light;
but when Francis entered the gallery late at night, followed by his
courtiers, "which by God's grace was my salvation," says Cellini, the
statue was illuminated by a flood of light from the torch which so
enhanced its beauty that the king was ravished with delight, and
expressed himself in ecstatic praise, declaring the statue to be more
beautiful and more marvellous than any of the antique casts around.
His enemies were thus discomfited, and on Madame d'Estampes
endeavouring to depreciate the work, she was grossly mocked by the
artist in a very characteristic and quite untranscribable way.
Benvenuto was more than ever patronised by the king, who did him the
great honour of accosting him as _mon ami_, and approving his scheme
for the fortification of Paris. Cellini often recalled with pleasure
the four years he spent with the _gran re Francesco_ at Paris.
[Footnote 105: The Petit Nesle comprised the south-west gate and
tower: the Grand Nesle, the Hotel de Nesle within the wall. See p.
68.]
"The French are remembered in Italy only by the graves they left
there," said De Comines, and once again the Italian campaigns ended in
disaster. At the defeat of Pavia, in 1525--the Armageddon of the
French in Italy--the efforts and sacrifices of three reigns were lost
and the _gran re_, whose favourite oath is said to have been _foi de
gentilhomme_, went captive to the king of Spain in Madrid, whence he
issued, stained by perjury, and three years later, signed "the moral
annihilation of France in Europe," at Cambray.
During the tranquil intervals that ensued on this rude awakening from
dreams of an Italian Empire, and between the third and fourth wars
with the emperor, the king was able to initiate a project that had
long been dear to him. "Come," says Michelet, "in the still, dark
night, climb the Rue St. Jacques, in the early winter's morning. See
you yon lights? Men, yea, old men, mingled with children, are
hurrying, a folio under one arm, in the hand an iron candlestick. Do
they turn to the right? No, the old Sorbonne is yet sleeping snug in
her warm sheets. The crowd is going to the Greek schools. Athens is at
Paris. That man with the fine beard in majestic ermine is a descendant
of emperors--Jean Lascaris: that other doctor is Alexander, who
teaches Hebrew."
The schools they were pressing to were those of the Royal College of
France. Already in 1517 Erasmus had been offered a salary of a
thousand francs a year, with promise of further increment, to
undertake the direction of the college, but declined to leave his
patron the emperor. The prime movers in the great scheme were the
king's confessor, Guillaume Parvi, and the famous Grecian, Guillaume
Bude, who in 1530 was himself induced to undertake the task which
Erasmus had declined. Twelve professors were appointed in Greek,
Hebrew, mathematics, philosophy, rhetoric and medicine, each of the
twelve with a salary of two hundred gold crowns (about L80), and the
dignity of royal councillors. The king's vast scheme of a great
college and magnificent chapel, with a revenue of 50,000 crowns for
the maintenance (_nourriture_) of six hundred scholars, where the most
famous doctors in Christendom should offer gratuitous teaching in all
the sciences and learned languages, was never executed. Too much
treasure had been wasted in Italy, and it was not till the reign of
Louis XIII. that it was partially carried out. The first stone was
laid in 1610, the works were slowly continued under succeeding reigns,
and the project had only been partially carried out when the monarchy
fell. The college as we now see it was not completed till 1842. Chairs
were founded for Arabic by Henry III., for surgery, anatomy and botany
by Henry IV., and for Syrian by Louis XIV. Little is changed to-day;
the placards, so familiar to students in Paris, announcing the
lectures are indited in French instead of in Latin as of old; the
lectures are still free to all, and the most famous scholars of the
day teach there, but in French and not in Latin.[106]
[Footnote 106: Students in Paris in the days of King Francis had cause
to remember gratefully that monarch's solicitude, for a maximum of
charges was fixed, and an order made that every hotel-keeper should
affix his prices outside the door, that extortion might be avoided.
Among other maxima, the price of a pair of sheets, to "sleep not more
than five persons," was to be five deniers (a penny).]
How dramatic are the contrasts of history! While the new learning was
organising itself amid the pomp of royal patronage; while the young
Calvin was sitting at the feet of its professors and the Lutheran
heresy germinating at Paris, Ignatius Loyola, an obscure Spanish
soldier and gentleman, thirty-seven years of age, was sitting--a
strange mature figure--among the boisterous young students at the
College of St. Barbara, patiently preparing himself for dedication to
the service of the menaced Church of Rome; and in 1534, on the
festival of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, a little group of
six companions met around the fervent student, in the crypt of the old
church at Montmartre, and decided to found on the holy hill of St.
Denis' martyrdom the first house of the Society of Jesus.
In 1528, says the writer of the so-called _Journal d'un Bourgeois de
Paris_, the king began to pull down the great tower of the Louvre, in
order to transform the chateau into a _logis de plaisance_, "yet was
it great pity for the castle was very fair and high and strong, and a
most proper prison to hold great men."
The tall, massive keep, which darkened the royal apartments in the
south wing, was the tower here meant, and after some four months'
work, and an expenditure of 2,500 livres, the grim pile, with its
centuries of history, was cleared away. Small progress, however, had
been made with the restoration of the old chateau up to the year 1539,
when the heavy cost of preparing the west wing for the reception of
the Emperor Charles V., induced Francis to consider a plan which
involved the replacement of the whole fabric by a palace in the new
Renaissance style, and the picturesque palace with its high crenelated
walls, its strong towers, high-pitched roofs, dormer windows, and tall
chimneys, its gilded emblazonry, its vanes, splendid with azure and
gold glittering in the sun, as painted in the Duke of Berry's _Book of
Hours_, was doomed. In 1546 Pierre Lescot, Seigneur de Clagny, was
appointed architect without salary, but given the office of almoner to
the king, and made lay abbot of Clermont. Pierre Lescot was an
admirable artist, who has left us some of the finest examples of early
French Renaissance architecture in Paris. But Francis lived only to
see the great scheme begun, most of Lescot's work being done under
Henry II.
From the same anonymous writer we learn something of Parisian life in
the reign of Francis I. One day a certain Monsieur Cruche, a popular
poet and playwright, was performing moralities and novelties on a
platform in the Place Maubert, and among them a farce "funny enough to
make half a score men die of laughter, in which the said Cruche,
holding a lantern, feigned to perceive the doings of a hen and a
salamander."[107] The amours of the king with the daughter of a
councillor of the Parlement, named Lecoq, were only too plainly
satirised. But it is ill jesting with kings. A few nights later,
Monsieur Cruche was visited by eight disguised courtiers, who treated
him to a supper in a tavern at the sign of the Castle in the Rue de la
Juiverie, and induced him to play the farce before them. When the
unhappy player came to the first scene, he was set upon by the king's
friends, stripped and beaten almost to death with thongs. They were
about to put him in a sack and throw him into the Seine, when poor
Cruche, crying piteously, discovered his priestly tonsure, and thus
escaped.
[Footnote 107: The salamander was figured on the royal arms of
Francis.]
After the defeat at Pavia, the king became morbidly pious. By trumpet
cry at the crossways of Paris, we learn from the _Journal_,
games--quoits, tennis, contreboulle--were prohibited on Sundays;
children were forbidden to sing along the streets, going to and from
school; blasphemers[108] were to be severely punished. In 1527 a
notary was burned alive in the Place de Greve for a great blasphemy of
our Lord and His holy Mother. In June of the next year some Lutherans
struck down and mutilated an image of the Virgin and Child at a street
corner near St. Gervais; the king was so grieved and angry that he
wept violently, and offered a reward of one hundred gold crowns, but
the offenders could not be found. Daily processions came from the
churches to the spot, and all the religious orders, clothed in their
habits, followed "singing with such great fervour and reverence that
it was fair to see." The rector, doctors, masters, bachelors and
scholars of the university, and children with lighted tapers, went
there in great reverence. On Corpus Christi day the street was draped
and a fair canopy stretched over the statue. The king himself walked
in procession, bearing a white taper, his head uncovered in _moult
gran reverence_; hautboys, clarions and trumpets played melodiously;
cardinals, prelates, great seigneurs and nobles, each with his taper
of white wax, followed, with the royal archers of the guard in their
train. On the morrow a procession from all the parishes of Paris, with
banners, relics and crucifixes, accompanied by the king and nobles,
brought a new and fair image of silver, two feet in height, which the
king had caused to be made. Francis himself ascended a ladder and
placed it where the other image had stood, then kissed it and
descended with tears in his eyes. Thrice he kneeled and prayed, the
bishop of Lisieux, his almoner, reciting fair orisons and lauds to the
honour of the glorious Virgin and her image. Again the trumpets,
clarions and hautboys played the _Ave Regina caelorum_, and the king,
the cardinal of Louvain, and all the nobles presented their tapers to
the Virgin. Next day the Parlement, the provost and sheriffs, came and
put an iron trellis round the silver image for fear of robbers.[109]
[Footnote 108: For the first offence a fine; for the second, the lips
to be cloven; for the third, the tongue pierced; for the fourth,
death.]
[Footnote 109: The image was stolen in 1545 and replaced by one of
wood. This was struck down in 1551, and the bishop of Paris
substituted for it one of marble.]
Never were judicial and ecclesiastical punishments so cruel and
recurrent as during the period of the Renaissance. It is a common
error to suppose that judicial cruelty reached its culmination in the
Middle Ages.[110] Punishments are described with appalling iteration
in the pages we are following. The Place de Greve was the scene of
mutilations, tortures, hangings, and quarterings of criminals and
traitors, the king and his court sometimes looking on. Coiners of
false money were boiled alive at the pig-market; robbers and assassins
were broken on the wheel and left to linger in slow agony (_tant
qu'ils pourraient languir_). The Lutherans were treated like vermin,
and to harbour them, to possess or print or translate one of their
books, meant a fiery death. In 1525 a young Lutheran student was put
in a tumbril and brought before the churches of Notre Dame and St.
Genevieve, crying mercy from God and Mary and St. Genevieve; he was
then taken to the Place Maubert, where, after his tongue had been
pierced, he was strangled and burnt. A _gendarme_ of the Duke of
Albany was burnt at the pig-market for having sown Lutheran errors in
Scotland.
[Footnote 110: "The moral brutality of the Renaissance is clearly shown
in its punishments. In this matter it reached with perfection its
prototype, the times of the cruel Roman Emperors.... Never has
'justice' been more barbarous; not even in the darkest Middle Ages has
torture been more refined, more devilish, than in the days of
Humanism.... Truly it is no accident that immediately after, indeed,
even before, the end of the Renaissance, everywhere in Western Europe
the fires began to glow wherein thousands of unhappy wretches expired
in torments for the sake of their faith; men's minds were only too
well prepared for such horrors." GUSTAV KORTING (_Anfaenge der
Renaissancelitteratur_, pp. 161, 162.)]
On Corpus Christi day, 1532, a great procession was formed, the king
and provost walking bare-headed to witness the burning of six
Lutherans--a scene often repeated. The Fountain of the Innocents, the
Halles, the Temple, the end of the Pont St. Michel, the Place Maubert,
and the Rue St. Honore were indifferently chosen for these ghastly
scenes. Almost daily the fires burnt. A woman was roasted to death for
eating flesh on Fridays. In 1535, so savage were the persecutions,
that Pope Paul III., with that gentleness which almost invariably has
characterised the popes of Rome in dealing with heresy, wrote to
Francis protesting against the horrible and execrable punishments
inflicted on the Lutherans, and warned him that although he acted from
good motives, yet he must remember that God the Creator, when in this
world, used mercy rather than rigorous justice, and that it was a
cruel death to burn a man alive; he therefore prayed and required the
king to appease the fury and rigour of his justice and adopt a policy
of mercy and pardon. This noble protest was effective, and some
clemency was afterwards shown. But in 1547 the fanatical king, a mass
of physical and moral corruption, soured and gloomy, went to his end
amid the barbarities wreaked on the unhappy Vaudois Protestants. The
cries of three thousand of his butchered subjects and the smoke from
the ruins of twenty-five towns and hamlets were the incense of his
spirit's flight.
One important innovation at court, fraught with evil, is due to
Francis. "In the matter of ladies," says Du Bellay, "I must confess
that before his time they frequented the court but rarely and in
small numbers, but Francis on coming to his kingdom and considering
that the whole decoration of a court consisted in the presence of
ladies, willed to people it with them more than was the custom in
ancient times." Then was begun that unhappy intervention of women in
the government of the state, the results of which will be only too
evident in the further course of this story.
[Illustration: LA FONTAINE DES INNOCENTS.]