GENEVA AND THE SWISS ALLIED. THE BISHOP, THE DUCALS, AND THE CANONS
ESCAPE. JOY OF THE PEOPLE.
(FEBRUARY TO AUGUST 1526.)
Then a step was taken without which the Reformation would never have
been established in Geneva. In the morning of the 20th of February the
representatives of Berne, Friburg, and Geneva resolved to conclude
solemnly the alliance between the three cities, for which the people
had sighed during so many years. They met, they gave their hands,
affection and confidence were in every feature. ‘In the name of the
most holy and most high Trinity,’ said the three free states, ‘in the
name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, we reciprocally promise
mutual friendship and intercourse in order that we may be able to
preserve the good that God has given us in justice, repose, and true
peace.... And if hereafter one or many should wish to molest the
syndics, councils, or freemen of the city of Geneva in their persons,
honour, goods, or estate, we, the avoyers, councils, and freemen of the
cities of Berne and Friburg--by virtue of our oath made and sworn--are
bound to give the said city favour, aid, and succour, and to march
out our armies ... at their charge, however.’[402] The required
formalities having been fulfilled: ‘Gentlemen,’ said Jean Philippe, ‘we
will depart and carry this good news ourselves to our country.’ The
councils of Berne and Friburg ordered that a number of deputies from
each canton equal to that of the fugitives should accompany them, with
power to seal the alliance at Geneva. All the exiles left on the same
day; but how different was the return from that breathless flight which
had not long ago brought them to Friburg! ‘They went, not in fear and
dread as they had come, but taking the high road through the Pays de
Vaud, where all strove to do them honour; for,’ says Bonivard, ‘they
still smelt the reek of the roast meat of Morat.’
On the 23rd of February the news of the speedy arrival of the exiles
and delegates of the cantons spread through Geneva; citizen told it
to citizen, great was the joy, and arrangements were made for their
reception. The syndics on horseback, carrying their batons, followed
by all who had horses, went out to meet them, and the people collected
near the Swiss gate to receive them. A salute of guns announced their
approach. They walked three abreast: in the middle was a Genevan
fugitive, on his right and left a deputy of Berne and of Friburg: this
order, continued through the whole line, announced more clearly than
all the rest the close union of the three cities. Geneva, allied to the
Swiss, might be able to preserve its independence; Geneva was saved. A
conversion had been wrought in its people. Hitherto they had turned to
the south; now they turned towards the north: they began to cast off
Rome and to catch a glimpse of Wittemberg. There are certain movements
in nations that transform their destinies. The citizens could not
take their eyes off those unhappy men who had had such difficulty in
escaping the archers of Savoy, and who, strange to say, were returning
holding Berne and Friburg by the hand. They had gone away, still
disposed to appeal to Rome; but having heard much talk in Switzerland
of the Reformation, they were to be the first to welcome Farel and the
Gospel to Geneva.... Relations and friends pressed in their arms these
fugitives, whom they had thought they should never see again. ‘They
were sumptuously entertained at the hôtel-de-ville. A _morality on the
said alliance_ was performed, and a bonfire was lighted on the Place
Molard.’[403] The Council of Two Hundred was convened.
This important council assembled, but instead of two hundred citizens,
three hundred and twenty met together. This sitting was to be a
festival; everybody desired to be present. It was known that Hugues
would speak: the respect they felt for the great citizen and his
companions in misfortune, the adventures he had to relate, mixed up
(it was reported) with strange facts, excited interest and curiosity.
Hugues rose to speak: there was deep silence: ‘You know, sirs,’ he
began, ‘that five or six months ago, on the morrow of Holy Cross
(September 15, 1525), we left here in great haste by different roads;
without communicating with one another, not knowing where to go to
escape the rage of the most illustrious duke, Monseigneur of Savoy. We
were warned by friends that, on the demand of certain persons in this
city, the prince was resolved to take us and put us ignominiously to
death, because we had resisted innovations opposed to our liberties.
Ah! sirs, that was no child’s play, believe me. The archers and agents
of my lord of Savoy pursued us as far as St. Claude, from St. Claude to
Besançon, and beyond.... We had to travel day and night in the woods,
through wind and rain, not knowing where to go in quest of safety....
At last we considered that we had friends at Friburg, and thither we
went.’
The citizens, riveting their eyes on Hugues, did not lose a word of
his narrative and of the details which he added. They seemed to bear
him company through those woods and mountains, among the ravines and
snow; they fancied they heard behind them the tramp of the armed men in
pursuit of them.... What struck them was not only the epic element in
the flight and return of these free men, of which ancient Greece would
doubtless have made one of the finest myths in her history; it was in
an especial manner the sovereign importance which these acts had for
them. During those sacred days, Geneva and her destinies had turned on
their axis; her gates were opened on the side of light and liberty; the
flight, the residence at Berne and Friburg, and the return of Hugues
and his companions, are one of the most important pages in the annals
of the city.
Hugues continued: he told them how Friburg and Berne had seen no other
means of securing their liberties than by receiving them into their
alliance.... ‘Here are the letters duly sealed with their great seals,’
said the noble orator, presenting a parchment. ‘They are written in
German; but I will tell you their substance, article by article,
without deceiving you in any--on my life.’ He read the act of alliance,
and added: ‘Sirs, my comrades and I here present promise you, on our
lives and goods, that the said citizenship is such. Consider, sirs, if
you will ratify and accept it.’ The assembly testified its approbation
with thanks to God, and resolved to convoke a general council for the
next day.[404]
The catholic party and the ducal party were aroused. The Swiss
alliance, an immense innovation, threatened all the conquests they had
made with so much trouble in Geneva during so many generations. The
bishop, full of uneasiness, consulted with the canons and some others
on whom he thought he could rely. All told him that if Berne had its
way in Geneva, there would be no more bishop, no more prince. To work
then! All the powers of feudalism and the papacy conspired against an
alliance which first gave Geneva liberty and afterwards the Gospel. At
first they wished to prevent the general council from meeting. It was
customary to summon it by tolling the great bell; now Canon Lutry had
the key of the tower where this bell hung. In the evening the reverend
father, followed by some armed men, climbed step by step up the narrow
stairs which led to the bell-loft, and placed the men in garrison
there. ‘You are here,’ he said, ‘to defend the bell and not to give it
up;’ he then went down, double-locked the door, and carried away the
key. In the morning the door was found to be locked, and Lutry refused
to open it. ‘The canons,’ it was said in the city, ‘are opposed to
the assembling of the people.’ The irritated citizens ran together.
‘Whereupon there was a great uproar and alarm in the church of St.
Pierre, so that De Lutry was constrained to open the door and give up
the bell.’[405]
It was all over; they resolved still to fight a last battle, even
with the certainty of being defeated. The general council met; the
bishop went thither in person, attended by his episcopal followers,
in the hope that his presence might intimidate the huguenots. ‘I am
head, pastor, and prince of the community,’ he said. ‘It concerns my
affairs, and I wish to know what will be laid before you.’--‘It is
not the custom for my lord to be present,’ said Hugues; ‘the citizens
transact none but political matters here[406] which concern them
wholly. His presence, however, is always pleasing to us, provided
nothing be deduced from it prejudicial to our liberties.’ Thereupon
Hugues proposed the alliance. Then Stephen de la Mare got up. In 1519
he had shone in the foremost rank of the patriots; but, an ardent
Roman Catholic, he had since then placed liberty in the second rank
and the Church in the first. It was he who had undertaken to oppose
the proposition. ‘It is sufficient for us to live under the protection
of God, St. Peter, and the bishop.... I oppose the alliance.’ De la
Mare could not proceed, so great was the confusion that broke out
in the assembly; the indignation was general, yet order and quiet
were restored at last, and the treaty was read. ‘Will you ratify this
alliance?’ said first syndic G. Bergeron. ‘Yes, yes!’ they shouted on
every side. The syndic continued: ‘Let those who approve of it hold up
their hands!’ There was a forest of hands, every man holding up both at
once. ‘We desire it, we approve of it,’ they shouted again. ‘Those of
the contrary opinion?’ added the syndic. Six hands only were raised in
opposition. Pierre de la Baume from his episcopal throne looked down
upon this spectacle with anxiety. Even to the last he had reckoned upon
success. By selecting De la Mare, the old leader of the patriots, and
placing him at the head of the movement against the alliance with the
Swiss, he fancied he had hit upon an admirable combination; but his
hopes were disappointed. Alarmed and irritated, seeing what this vote
would lead to, and determined to keep his principality at any cost,
the bishop-prince exclaimed: ‘I do not consent to this alliance; I
appeal to our holy father the pope and to his majesty the emperor.’
But to no purpose did the Bishop of Geneva, on the eve of losing his
states, appeal to powers the most dreaded--no one paid any attention to
his protest. Joy beamed on every face, and the words ‘pope, emperor,’
were drowned by enthusiastic shouts of ‘The Swiss ... the Swiss and
liberty!’ Besançon Hugues, who, although on the side of independence,
was attached to the bishop, exerted all his influence with him. ‘Very
well, then,’ said the versatile prelate, ‘if your franchises permit
you to contract an alliance without your prince, do so.’--‘I take note
of this declaration,’ said Hugues; and then he added: ‘More than once
the citizens have concluded such alliances without their prince--with
Venice, Cologne, and other cities.’ The Register mentions that after
this the prince went away satisfied. We rather doubt it; but however
that may be, the bishop by his presence had helped to sanction the
measure which he had so much at heart to prevent.[407]
What comforted Pierre de la Baume was the sight of Besançon Hugues at
the head of the movement. That great citizen assured the bishop that
the alliance with Switzerland was not opposed to his authority; and he
did so with perfect honesty.[408] Hugues was simply a conservative.
He desired an alliance with Switzerland in order to preserve Geneva
in her present position. He desired to maintain the prelate not only
as bishop, but also as prince: all his opposition was aimed at the
usurpations of Savoy. But there were minds in Geneva already wishing
for more. Certain citizens, in whom the new aspirations of modern times
were beginning to show themselves, said that the municipal liberties
of the city were continually fettered, and often crushed, by the
princely authority of the bishop. Had he not been seen to favour the
cruel murders which the Savoyard power had committed in Geneva? ‘The
liberties of the people and the temporal lordship of the bishop cannot
exist together; one or other of the two powers must succumb,’ they
said. The history of succeeding ages has shown but too plainly the
reasonableness of these fears. Wherever the bishop has remained king,
he has trampled the liberties of the people under foot. There we find
no representative government, no liberty of the press, no religious
liberty. In the eyes of the bishop-prince these great blessings of
modern society are monsters to be promptly stifled. Some Genevans
comprehended the danger that threatened them, and, wishing to preserve
the liberties they had received from their ancestors, saw no other
means than by withdrawing from the ministers of religion a worldly
power which Jesus Christ had refused them beforehand. Some--but their
number was very small then--went further, and began to ask whether the
authority of a bishop in religious matters was not still more contrary
to the precepts of the Gospel, which acknowledged no other authority
than that of the word of God; and whether liberty could ever exist in
the State so long as there was a despot in the Church. Such were the
great questions beginning to be discussed in Geneva more than three
hundred years ago: the present time seems destined to solve them.
In spite of the loyal assurances of Besançon Hugues, the bishop was
disturbed. Sitting with liberty at his side, he felt ill at ease;
and the terror spreading through the ranks of the clergy could not
fail to reach him. If the Bishop of Geneva should be deprived of his
principality, who can tell if men will not one day deprive the pope
of his kingship? The alarm of the canons, priests, and friends of the
papacy continued to increase. Did they not know that the Reformation
was daily gaining ground in many of the confederated states? Friburg,
indeed, was still catholic; but Zurich was no longer so, and everything
announced that Berne would soon secede. The great light was to come
from another country, from a country that spoke the language of Geneva;
but Geneva was then receiving from Switzerland the first gleams that
precede the day. Some Genevans were already beginning to profess,
rather undisguisedly, their new religious tendencies; Robert Vandel,
the bishop’s friend, openly defended the Reformation. ‘Sire Robert is
not very good for Friburg,’ said some; ‘but he is good for Berne, _very
good_!’ which meant that he preferred Holy Scripture to the pope. The
priests said that if Geneva was united to Switzerland, there was an end
of the privileges of the clergy; that simple christians would begin
to occupy themselves with religion; and that in Geneva, as in Basle,
Schaffhausen, and Berne, laymen would talk about the faith of the
Church. Now there was nothing of which the clergy were more afraid. The
ministers of the Romish religion, instead of examining the Scriptures,
of finding in them doctrines capable of satisfying the wants of man,
and of propagating them by mild persuasion, were occupied with very
different matters, and would not suffer any one but themselves to think
even of the Bible and its contents. Never was a calling made a more
thorough fiction. It was said of them: _They have taken away the key of
knowledge; they enter not in themselves, and them that were entering in
they hindered_.
These ideas became stronger every day, and the attachment of the
priests to their old customs was more stubborn than ever. It was
difficult to avoid an outbreak; but it should be observed that it
was provoked by the canons. These rich and powerful clerics, who
were determined to oppose the alliance with all their power, and,
if necessary, to defend their clerical privileges with swords and
arquebuses, got together a quantity of arms in the house of De
Lutry, the most fanatical of their number, in order to make use of
them ‘against the city.’ On the night of the 26th of February, these
reverend seigniors, as well as the principal mamelukes, crept one after
another into this house, and held a consultation. A rumour spread
through the city, and the citizens told one another ‘that M. de Lutry
and M. de Vausier had brought together a number of people secretly to
get up a riot.’ The patriots, prompt and resolute in character, were
determined not to give the mamelukes the least chance of recovering
their power. ‘The people rose in arms,’ the house was surrounded; it
would appear that some of the chiefs of the ducal party came out, and
that swords were crossed. ‘A few were wounded,’ says the chronicler.
However, ‘proclamation was made to the sound of the trumpet through the
city,’ and order was restored.[409]
The conspiracy of the canons having thus failed, the members of the
feudal and papal party thought everything lost. They fancied they saw
an irrevocable fatality dragging them violently to their destruction.
The principal supporters of the old order of things, engrossed by
the care of their compromised security, thought only of escaping,
like birds of night, before the first beams of day. They disguised
themselves and slipped out unobserved, some by one gate, some by
another. It was almost a universal panic. The impetuous Lutry escaped
first, with one of his colleagues; the bishop-prince’s turn came next.
Bitterly upbraided by the Count of Genevois for not having prevented
the alliance, Pierre de la Baume took alarm both at the huguenots and
the duke, and escaped to St. Claude. The agents of his Highness of
Savoy trembled in their castles; the vidame hastened to depart on the
one side, and the gaoler of the Château de l’Ile, who was nick-named
the _sultan_, did the same on the other.
The most terrified were the clerics and the mamelukes who had been
present at the meeting at Canon de Lutry’s. They had taken good care
not to stop after the alarm that had been given them, and when the
order was made by sound of trumpet for every man to retire to his own
house, they had hastened to escape in disguise, trembling and hopeless.
The next morning the city watch, followed by the sergeants, forcibly
entered De Lutry’s house, and seized the arms, which had been carefully
hidden; but they found the nest empty, for all the birds had flown. ‘If
they had not escaped,’ said Syndic Balard, ‘they would have been in
danger of death.’ The canons who had not taken flight sent two of their
number to the hôtel-de-ville to say to the syndics: ‘Will you keep us
safe and sure in the city? if not, will you give us a safe-conduct,
that we may leave it?’ They thought only of following their colleagues.
The flight of the 26th of February was the counterpart of that of
the 15th of September. In September the new times had disappeared in
Geneva for a few weeks only; in February the old times were departing
for ever. The Genevese rejoiced as they saw these leeches disappear,
who had bled them so long, even to the very marrow. ‘The priests and
the Savoyards,’ they said, ‘are like wolves driven from the woods by
hunger: there is nothing left for them to take, and they are compelled
to go elsewhere for their prey.’ Nothing could be more favourable
to the Swiss alliance and to liberty than this general flight. The
partisans of the duke and of the bishop having evacuated the city, the
senate and the people remained masters. The grateful citizens ascribed
all the glory to God, and exclaimed: ‘The sovereignty is now in the
hands of the council, without the interference of either magistrates or
people. _Everything was done by the grace of God._’[410]
At the very time when the men of feudalism were quitting Geneva, those
of liberty were arriving, and the great transition was effected. On the
11th of March eight Swiss ambassadors entered the city in the midst of
a numerous crowd and under a salute of artillery: they were the envoys
from the cantons who had come to receive the oaths of Geneva and give
theirs in return. The next day these freemen, sons of the conquerors
of Charles the Bold, all glowing with desire to protect Geneva from
the attacks of Charles the Good, appeared before the general council.
At their head was Sebastian de Diesbach, an energetic man, devout
catholic, great captain, and skilful diplomatist. ‘Magnificent lords
and very dear fellow-freemen,’ he said, ‘Friburg and Berne acquaint
you that they are willing to live and die with you.... Will you swear
to observe the alliance that has been drawn up?’--‘Yes,’ exclaimed all
the Genevans, without one dissentient voice. Then the Swiss ambassadors
stood up and raised their hands towards heaven to make the oath. Every
one looked with emotion on those eight Helvetians of lofty stature and
martial bearing, the representatives of the energetic populations whose
military glory at this time surpassed that of all other nations. The
noble Sebastian having pronounced the oath of alliance, his companions
raised their hands also, and repeated his words aloud. The citizens
exclaimed with transport: ‘We desire it, we desire it!’ Then with deep
emotion said some: ‘Those men were born in a happy hour, who have
brought about so good a business.’ Eight deputies of Geneva, among
whom were Francis Favre and G. Hugues, brother of Besançon, proceeded
to Berne and Friburg to make the same oath on the part of their
fellow-citizens.[411]
The men of the old times were not discouraged: if they had been beaten
at Geneva, might they not conquer at Friburg and Berne? Indefatigable
in their exertions, they resolved to set every engine to work in order
to succeed. Stephen de la Mare, three other deputies of the duke,
Michael Nergaz, and forty-two mamelukes went into Switzerland to
break off the alliance. But Friburg and Berne replied: ‘For nothing
in the world will we depart from what we have sworn.’ The hand of God
was manifest, and accordingly when Hugues heard of this answer, he
exclaimed: ‘God himself is conducting our affairs.’
Then was Geneva intoxicated with joy. On the morrow after the taking of
the oath in the general council, the delight of the people broke out
all over the city. Bonfires were lighted in the public places; there
was much dancing, masquerading, and shouting; patriotic and satirical
songs reechoed through the streets; there was an outburst of happiness
and liberty. ‘When a people have been kept so long in the leash,’ said
Bonivard, ‘as soon as they are let loose, they are apt to indulge in
dangerous gambols.’[412]
While the people were rejoicing after their fashion, the wise men of
the council resolved to show their gratitude to God in another manner.
The councils issued a general pardon. Then an indulgence and concord
were proclaimed, and all bound themselves to live in harmony. They
went further: they desired to repair the injustice of the old régime.
‘Bonivard,’ said some, ‘has been unjustly deprived of his priory of
St. Victor because of his patriotism.’--‘What would you have us do?’
they answered; ‘the pope has given the benefice to another.’--‘I should
not make it a serious matter of conscience to disobey the pope,’ said
Bonivard slily.--‘And as for us,’ said the syndics, ‘we do not care
much about him.’ In later years the magistrates of Geneva gave the most
palpable proofs of this declaration; for the moment, they confined
themselves to resettling the ex-prior in the house of which the pope
had robbed him. Another more important reparation had still to be
effected.
In this solemn hour, when the cause of liberty was triumphing, amid
the joyful shouts of a whole people, two names were pronounced with
sighs and even with tears: ‘Berthelier! Lévrier!’ said the noblest
of the citizens. ‘We have reached the goal, but it was they who
traced out the road with their blood.’ An enfranchised people ought
not to be ungrateful to their liberators. By a singular coincidence
the anniversary of Berthelier’s death revived more keenly the memory
of that disastrous event. On the 23rd of August a hundred citizens
appeared before the council: ‘Seven years ago this very day,’ they
said, ‘Philibert Berthelier was beheaded in the cause of the republic;
we pray that his memory be honoured, and that, for such end, a solemn
procession shall march to the ringing of bells from the church of
St. Pierre to that of Our Lady of Grace, where the hero’s head was
buried.’ That was not without danger: Our Lady’s was on the Savoy
frontier, and his Highness’s soldiers might easily have disturbed
the ceremony. The council preferred ordering a solemn service in
memory of Berthelier, Lévrier, and others who died for the republic.
The Genevans, acknowledging the great blessings with which the hand
of God had enriched them, wished to repair all wrongs, honour all
self-sacrifice, and walk with a firm step in the paths of justice and
of liberty. It was by such sacrifices that they meant to celebrate
their deliverance.[413]
Geneva did not stand alone in feeling these aspirations towards modern
times. It was doubtless in the sixteenth century a great example of
liberty; but the movement tending towards new things was felt among all
those nations whom the Bible compares to a troubled sea: the tide was
rising over the whole surface. During the first half of the sixteenth
century Europe was awaking; the love of ancient learning enlightened
the mind, and the brilliant rays of christian truth, so long
intercepted, were beginning to pierce the clouds. A world till then
unknown was opening before man’s astonished eyes, and everything seemed
to announce a civilisation, independence, and life as yet unknown to
the human race. The mind of Europe awoke, and moving forward took its
station in the light, insatiable of life, of knowledge, and of liberty.
The great question was to know whether the new world, which seemed to
be issuing from the abyss, would repose on a solid foundation. More
than once already awakened society had appeared to break its bonds, to
throw off its shroud, and uplift the stone from the sepulchre. It had
happened thus in the ninth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, when the
most eminent minds began to ask the reason of things;[414] but each
time humanity had wanted the necessary strength, the new birth was not
completed, the tomb closed over it again, and it fell once more into a
heavy slumber.
Would it be the same now? Would this awakening of the sixteenth century
be also like a watch in the night?
Certain men, elect of God, were to give this new movement the strength
it needed. Let us turn towards that country whence Geneva would receive
those heroes baptised with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
The scene of our history is about to change. ‘A man of mark’ whom we
have already quoted, said, when speaking of Geneva: ‘On this platform
appear actors who do not speak so loud as great kings and emperors on
the spacious theatre of their states; but what matters how the speaker
is dressed, if he says what he ought?’[415] We are leaving for a time
this modest platform. We shall no longer have to speak of a little
nation whose greatest heroes are obscure citizens. We are entering a
mighty empire where we shall be in the company of kings and queens, of
great personages and famous courtiers. Yet the dissimilarity between
the two theatres is not so wide as one might expect. In that vast
country of France, where historians usually describe nothing but the
great stream formed by the numerous combinations of policy, a few
springs are seen welling forth, at first unnoticed, but they swell
by degrees, and their waters will one day have more influence on the
destiny of the world than the floods of that mighty river. One of these
springs appeared at Etaples, close upon the shores of the Channel;
another at Gap in Dauphiny; and others in other places. But the most
important, that which was to unite them all and spread a new life even
to the most distant countries, welled up at Noyon, an ancient and
once illustrious town of Picardy. It was France who gave Lefèvre and
Farel--France, too, gave Calvin. That French people, who (as some say)
cared for nothing but war and diplomacy; that home of a philosophy
often sceptical and sometimes incredulous and mocking; that nation
which proclaimed and still proclaims itself the eldest daughter of
Rome, gave to the world the Reformation of Calvin and of Geneva--the
great Reformation, that which is the strength of the most influential
nations, and which reaches even to the ends of the world. France has
no nobler title of renown: we do not forget it. Perhaps she will not
always disdain it, and after having enriched others she will enrich
herself. It will be a great epoch for her future development, when her
dearest children drink at those living fountains that burst from her
bosom in the sixteenth century, or rather at that eternal fountain of
the Word of God, whose waters are for the healing of nations.
BOOK II.
FRANCE. FAVOURABLE TIMES.
CHAPTER I.
A MAN OF THE PEOPLE AND A QUEEN.
(1525-1526.)
The Reformation was concerned both with God and man: its aim was to
restore the paths by which God and man unite, by which the Creator
enters again into the creature. This path, opened by Jesus Christ with
power, had been blocked up in ages of superstition. The Reformation
cleared the road, and reopened the door.
We willingly acknowledge that the middle ages had not ignored the
wonderful work of redemption: truth was then covered with a veil
rather than destroyed, and if the noxious weeds be plucked up with
which the field had gradually been filled, the primitive soil is laid
bare. Take away the worship paid to the Virgin, the saints, and the
host; take away meritorious, magical, and supererogatory works, and
other errors besides, and we arrive at simple faith in the Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost. It is not the same when we come to the manner in
which God enters again into man. Roman catholicism had gone astray in
this respect; there were a few mystics in her fold who pretended to
tread this mysterious way; but their heated imaginations misled them,
while in the place of this inward worship the Roman doctors substituted
certain ecclesiastical formalities mechanically executed. The only
means of recovering this royal road was to return to the apostolical
times and seek for it in the Gospel. Three acts are necessary to unite
man again with God. Religion penetrates into man by the depths of his
conscience; thence it rises to the height of his knowledge, and finally
pervades the activity of his whole life.
The conscience of man had been seared not only by the sin which clings
to our nature, but also by the indulgences and mortifications imposed
by the Church. It required to be vivified by faith in the atoning blood
of Christ.
Tradition, scholasticism, papal infallibility, mingling their confused
questions and numerous superstitions with the natural darkness of the
heart, man’s understanding had been completely obscured. It needed to
be enlightened by the torch of God’s word.
A society of priests, exercising absolute dominion, had enslaved
christendom. For this theocratic and clerical society it was necessary
to substitute a living society of the children of God.
With Luther began the awakening of the human conscience. Terrified at
the sin he discovered in himself, he found no other means of peace but
faith in the grace of Christ Jesus. This starting-point of the German
reformer was also that of every Reformation.
To Zwingle belongs in an especial manner the work of the understanding.
The first want of the Swiss reformer was to know God. He inquired into
_the false and the true, the reason of faith_. Formed by the study of
the Greek classics, he had the gift of understanding and interpreting
Scripture, and as soon as he reached Zurich he began his career as a
reformer by explaining the New Testament.
Calvin perfected the third work necessary for the Reformation. His
characteristic is not, as the world imagines, the teaching of the
doctrines to which he has given his name; his great idea was to unite
all believers into one body, having the same life, and acting under the
same Chief. The Reform was essentially, in his eyes, the renovation of
the individual, of the human mind, of christendom. To the Church of
Rome, powerful as a government, but otherwise enslaved and dead, he
wished to oppose a regenerated Church whose members had found through
faith the liberty of the children of God, and which should be not only
a pillar of truth, but a principle of moral purification for all the
human race. He conceived the bold design of forming for these modern
times a society in which the individual liberty and equality of its
members should be combined with adhesion to an immutable truth, because
it came from God, and to a holy and strict, but freely accepted law.
An energetic effort towards moral perfection was one of the devices
written on his standard. Not only did he conceive the grand idea we
have pointed out; he realised it. He gave movement and life to that
enlightened and sanctified society which was the object of his noble
desires. And now wherever churches are founded on the twofold basis of
truth and morality--even should they be at the antipodes--we may affirm
that Calvin’s sublime idea is extended and carried out.
It resulted from the very nature of this society that the democratic
element would be introduced into the nations where it was established.
By the very act of giving truth and morality to the members of this
body, he gave them liberty. All were called to search for light in the
Bible; all were to be taught immediately of God, and not by priests
only; all were called to give to others the truth they had found. ‘Each
one of you,’ said Calvin, ‘is consecrated to Christ, in order that you
may be associated with him in his kingdom, and be partakers of his
priesthood.’[416] How could the citizens of this spiritual republic
be thought otherwise than worthy to have a share in its government?
The fifteenth chapter of the Acts shows us the _brethren_ united with
the apostles and elders in the proceedings of the Church, and such is
the order that Calvin desired to reestablish. We have already pointed
out some of the reasons by virtue of which constitutional liberty was
introduced into the bosom of the nations who received the Reform of
Geneva. To these must be added the reason just mentioned.
Disunited from each other, the three great principles of Luther,
Zwingle, and Calvin would have been insufficient. Faith, if it had not
possessed for its foundation the knowledge of the Word of God, would
have easily degenerated into a mystical enthusiasm. The abstract
authority of Scripture, separated from a living faith, would have
ended in a dead orthodoxy; and the social principle, deprived of these
two foundations, would have succeeded only in raising one of those
artificial edifices in the air which fall down as soon as built.
God, by giving in the sixteenth century a man who to the lively faith
of Luther and the scriptural understanding of Zwingle joined an
organising faculty and a creative mind, gave the complete reformer. If
Luther laid the foundations, if Zwingle and others built the walls,
Calvin completed the temple of God.
We shall have to see how this doctor arrived at a knowledge of the
truth; we shall have to study his labours and his struggles until the
moment when, quitting for ever a country whose soil trembled under
his feet and threatened to swallow him up, he went to plant upon a
lowly Alpine hill that standard around which he meditated rallying the
scattered members of Jesus Christ. But we must first see what was the
state of France at the time when the reformer was brought to the Gospel.
The history of the Reformation in France, prior to the establishment
of Calvin at Geneva, is divided into two parts: the first includes
the favourable times, the second the unfavourable. We confess that
the favourable times were occasionally the reverse, and that the
unfavourable times were often favourable; and yet we believe that,
generally speaking, this distinction may be justified. This subject has
been frequently treated of; we shall, however, have to describe some
phases of the French Reformation which have not always been set forth
by those who have written its history.
Two persons, a man and a woman, whose social position and character
present the most striking contrasts, laboured with particular zeal to
propagate the Gospel in France at the epoch of the Reformation.
The woman appears first. She is the most beautiful and intelligent,
the wittiest, most amiable and influential, and, with the exception
of her daughter, the greatest of her age. Sister, mother of kings,
herself a queen, grandmother of the monarch whom France (right or
wrong) has extolled the most, namely, Henry IV., she lived much in the
great world, in great ceremonials, with great personages, among the
magnificence of the Louvre, St. Germain, and Fontainebleau. This woman
is Margaret of Angoulême, Duchess of Alençon, Queen of Navarre, and
sister of Francis I.
The man who appears next (he was younger than her by seventeen years)
contrasts with all these grandeurs by the lowness of his origin. He
is a man of the people, a Picardin; his grandfather was a cooper at
Pont l’Evêque; his father was secretary to the bishop, and, in the
day of his greatest influence in the world, he apprenticed his own
brother Anthony to a bookbinder. Simple, frugal, poor, of a disposition
‘rather morose and bashful’[417]--such is the humble veil that hides
the greatness of his genius and the strength of his will. This man is
Calvin.
This man and this woman, so opposite as regards their condition in
the world, resemble each other in their principal features. They both
possess faith in the great truths of the Gospel; they love Jesus
Christ; they have the same zeal for spreading with unwearied activity
the truths so dear to them; they have the same compassion for the
miserable, and especially for the victims of religious persecution.
But while the man sometimes presumes upon his manly strength, the
woman truly belongs to the weaker sex. She possesses indeed a moral
virtue which resists the seductions of the age; she keeps herself
pure in the midst of a depraved court; but she has also that weakness
which disposes one to be too indulgent, and permits herself to be led
away by certain peculiarities of contemporary society. We see her
writing tales whose origin may be explained and even justified, since
their object was to unveil the immorality of priests and monks, but
they are nevertheless a lamentable tribute paid to the spirit of her
age. While Calvin sets up against the papacy _a forehead harder than
adamant_, Margaret, even in the days of her greatest zeal, is careful
not to break with Rome. At last she yields, outwardly at least, to
the sovereign commands of her brother, the persevering hostility of
the court, clergy, and parliament, and though cherishing in her heart
faith in the Saviour who has redeemed her, conceals that faith under
the cloak of Romish devotion; while Calvin propagates the Gospel, in
opposition to the powers of the world, saying: ‘Such as the warfare
is, such are the arms. If our warfare is spiritual, we ought to be
furnished with spiritual armour.’[418] Margaret doubtless says the
same thing; but she is the king’s sister, summoned to his council,
accustomed to diplomacy, respected by foreign princes; she hopes that
a union with the evangelical rulers of Germany may hasten on the
Reformation of France. Finally, while Calvin desires _truth_ in the
Church above all things, Margaret clings to the preservation of its
_unity_, and thus becomes the noble representative of a system still
lauded by some protestants--_to reform the Church without breaking
it up_: a specious system, impossible to be realised. And yet this
illustrious lady, in spite of her errors, plays a great part in the
history of the Reformation: she was respected by the most pious
reformers. An impartial historian should brave hostile prejudices, and
assign her the place which is her due.
Let us enter upon the French Reformation at the moment when, after
great but isolated preparations, it is beginning to occupy a place in
the affairs of the nation.[419]
* * * * *
The defeat at Pavia had plunged France into mourning. There was not a
house where they did not weep for a son, a husband, or a father; and
the whole kingdom was plunged in sorrow at seeing its king a prisoner.
The recoil of this great disaster had not long to be waited for. ‘The
gods chastise us: let us fall upon the christians,’ said the Romans of
the first centuries; the persecuting spirit of Rome woke up in France.
‘It is our tenderness towards the Lutherans that has drawn upon us the
vengeance of heaven,’ said the zealous catholics, who conceived the
idea of appeasing heaven by hecatombs.
The great news of Pavia which saddened all France was received in Spain
with transports of joy. At the time when the battle was fought, the
young emperor was in Castile, anxiously expecting news from Italy.
On the 10th of March, 1525, he was discussing, in one of the halls of
the palace at Madrid, the advantages of Francis I. and the critical
situation of the imperial army.[420] ‘We shall conquer,’ Pescara had
written to him, ‘or else we shall die.’ At this moment a courier
from Lombardy appeared at the gate of the palace: he was introduced
immediately. ‘Sire,’ said he, bending the knee before the emperor
in the midst of his court, ‘the French army is annihilated, and the
King of France in your Majesty’s hands.’ Charles, startled by the
unexpected news, stood pale and motionless; it seemed as if the blood
had stagnated in his veins. For some moments he did not utter a word,
and all around him, affected like himself, looked at him in silence. At
last the ambitious prince said slowly, as if speaking to himself: ‘The
king of France is my prisoner.... I have won the battle.’ Then, without
a word to any one, he entered his bed-room and fell on his knees
before an image of the Virgin, to whom he gave thanks for the victory.
He meditated before this image on the great exploits to which he now
thought himself called. To become the master of Europe, to reestablish
everywhere the tottering catholicism, to take Constantinople, and even
to recover Jerusalem--such was the task which Charles prayed the Virgin
to put him in a condition to carry through. If these ambitious projects
had been realised, the revival of learning would have been compromised,
the Reformation ruined, the new ideas rooted out, and the whole world
would have bowed helplessly beneath two swords--that of the emperor
first, and then that of the pope. At length Charles rose from his
knees; he read the humble letters of the King of France, gave orders
for processions to be made, and attended mass next day with every mark
of the greatest devotion.[421]
All christendom thought as this potentate did: a shudder ran through
Europe, and every man said to himself as he bent his head: ‘Behold the
master whom the fates assign us!’ At Naples a devout voice was heard to
exclaim: ‘Thou hast laid the world at his feet!’
It has been said that if in our day a king should be made prisoner, the
heir to the throne or a regent would succeed to all his rights; but in
the sixteenth century, omnipotence dwelt in the monarch’s person, and
from the depths of his dungeon he could bind his country by the most
disastrous treaties.[422] Charles V. determined to profit by this state
of things. He assembled his council. The cruel Duke of Alva eloquently
conjured him not to release his rival until he had deprived him of all
power to injure him. ‘In whom is insolence more natural,’ he said, ‘in
whom is fickleness more instinctive than in the French? What can we
expect from a king of France?... Invincible emperor, do not miss the
opportunity of increasing the authority of the empire, not for your own
glory, but for the service of God.’[423] Charles V. appeared to yield
to the duke’s advice, but it was advice according to his own heart;
and while repeating that a christian prince ought not to triumph in his
victory over another, he resolved to crush his rival. M. de Beaurain,
viceroy of Naples, Lannoy, and the Constable of Bourbon, so detested by
Francis I., waited all three upon the royal captive.
Francis had overplayed the part of a suppliant, a character so new for
him. ‘Instead of a useless prisoner,’ he had written to Charles, ‘set
at liberty a king who will be your slave for ever.’ Charles proposed
to him a dismemberment of France on three sides. The Constable of
Bourbon was to have Provence and Dauphiny, and these provinces, united
with the Bourbonnais which he possessed already, were to be raised
into an independent kingdom. The King of England was to have Normandy
and Guienne; and the emperor would be satisfied with French Flanders,
Picardy, and Burgundy.... When he heard these monstrous propositions,
Francis uttered a cry and caught up his sword, which his attendants
took from his hands. Turning towards the envoys he said: ‘I would
rather die in prison than consent to such demands.’ Thinking that he
could make better terms with the emperor, he soon after embarked at
Genoa and sailed to Spain. The delighted Charles gave up to him the
palace of Madrid, and employed every means to constrain him to accept
his disastrous conditions.[424] Who will succeed in baffling the
emperor’s pernicious designs? A woman, Margaret of Valois, undertook
the task.[425] The statesmen of her age considered her the best head
in Europe; the friends of the Reformation respected her as their
mother. Her dearest wish was to substitute a living christianity for
the dead forms of popery, and she hoped to prevail upon her brother,
‘the father of letters,’ to labour with her in this admirable work. It
was not in France only that she desired the triumph of the Gospel, but
in Germany, England, Italy, and even Spain. As Charles’s projects would
ruin all that she loved--the king, France, and the Gospel--she feared
not to go and beard the lion even in his den.
The duchess as she entered Spain felt her heart deeply agitated. The
very day she had heard of the battle of Pavia, she had courageously
taken this heavy cross upon her shoulders; but at times she fainted
under the burden. Impatient to reach her brother, burning with desire
to save him, fearing lest she should find him dying, trembling lest the
persecutors should take advantage of her absence to crush the Gospel
and religious liberty in France, she found no rest but at the feet of
the Saviour. Many evangelical men wept and prayed with her; they sought
to raise her drooping courage under the great trial which threatened
to weigh her down, and bore a noble testimony to her piety. ‘There are
various _stations_ in the christian life,’ said one of these reformers,
Capito. ‘You have now entered upon that commonly called _the Way of the
Cross_.[426] ... Despising the theology of men, you desire to know only
Jesus Christ and Him crucified.’[427]
Margaret crossing in her litter (September 1525) the plains of
Catalonia, Arragon, and Castile, exclaimed:
I cast my eyes around,
I look and look in vain ...
The loved one cometh not;
And on my knees again
I pray unceasing to my God
To heal the king--to spare the rod.
The loved one cometh not ...
Tears on my eyelids sit:
Then to this virgin page
My sorrows I commit:--
Such is to wretched me
Each day of misery.[428]
She sometimes fancied that she could see in the distance a messenger
riding hastily from Madrid and bringing her news of her brother.... But
alas! her imagination had deceived her, no one appeared. She then wrote:
O Lord, awake, arise!
And let thine eyes in mercy fall
Upon the king--upon us all.
Once or twice a day she halted at some inn on the road to Madrid, but
it was not to eat. ‘I have supped only once since my departure from
Aigues-Mortes,’ she said.[429] As soon as she entered the wretched
chamber, she began to write to her brother at the table or on her
knees. ‘Nothing to do you service,’ she wrote: ‘nothing, even to
casting the ashes of my bones to the wind, will be strange or painful
to me; but rather consolation, repose, and honour.’[430]
The defeat of Pavia and the excessive demands of Charles V. had given
the king such shocks that he had fallen seriously ill; the emperor had
therefore gone to Madrid to be near him. On Wednesday, September 19,
1525, Margaret arrived in that capital. Charles received her surrounded
by a numerous court, and respectfully approaching her, this politic
and phlegmatic prince kissed her on the forehead and offered her his
hand. Margaret, followed by the noble dames and lords of France who had
accompanied her, and wearing a plain dress of black velvet without any
ornament, passed between two lines of admiring courtiers. The emperor
conducted her as far as the door of her brother’s apartments, and then
withdrew.
Margaret rushed in; but alas! what did she find? a dying man, pale,
worn, helpless. Francis was on the brink of the grave, and his
attendants seemed to be waiting for his last breath. The duchess
approached the bed softly, so as not to be heard by the sick man;
unobserved she fixed on him a look of the tenderest solicitude, and
her soul, strengthened by an unwavering faith, did not hesitate; she
believed in her brother’s cure, she had prayed so fervently. She seemed
to hear in the depths of her heart an answer from God to her prayers;
and while all around the prince, who was almost a corpse, bowed their
heads in dark despair, Margaret raised hers with hope towards heaven.
Prudent, skilful, decided, active, a Martha as well as a Mary, she
established herself at once in the king’s chamber, and took the
supreme direction. ‘If she had not come he would have died,’ said
Brantôme.[431] ‘I know my brother’s temperament,’ she said, ‘better
than the doctors.’ In spite of their resistance, she had the treatment
changed; then she sat down at the patient’s bedside, and left him no
more. While the king slept, she prayed; when he awoke, she spoke to him
in encouraging language. The faith of the sister gradually dispelled
the brother’s dejection. She spoke to him of the love of Christ; she
proposed to him to commemorate his atoning death by celebrating the
holy eucharist. Francis consented. He had hardly communicated when he
appeared to wake up as if from a deep sleep; he sat up in his bed,
fixed his eyes on his sister, and said: ‘God will heal me body and
soul.’ Margaret in great emotion answered: ‘Yes, God will raise you up
again and make you free.’ From that hour the king gradually recovered
his strength, and he would often say: ‘But for her, I was a dead
man.’[432]
Margaret, seeing her brother restored to life, thought only of
restoring him to liberty. She departed for Toledo, where Charles V.
was staying; the seneschal and seneschaless of Poitou, the Bishop of
Senlis, the Archbishop of Embrun, the president De Selves, and several
other nobles, accompanied her. What a journey! Will she succeed in
touching her brother’s gaoler, or will she fail? This question was
continually before her mind. Hope, fear, indignation moved her by
turns; at every step her agitation increased. The emperor went out
courteously to meet her; he helped her to descend from her litter,
and had his first conversation with her in the Alcazar, that old and
magnificent palace of the Moorish kings. Charles V. was determined to
take advantage of his victory. Notwithstanding the outward marks of
politeness, exacted by the etiquette of courts, he wrapped himself up
in imperturbable dignity, and was cold, nay, almost harsh. Margaret,
seeing that her brother’s conqueror kept the foot upon his neck, and
was determined not to remove it, could no longer contain herself. ‘She
broke out into great anger:’[433] like a lioness robbed of her cubs,
full of majesty and fury, she startled the cold and formal Charles,
says Brantôme. Yet he restrained himself, preserved his icy mien,
made no answer to the duchess, and busying himself with showing her
the honours due to her rank, he conducted her, accompanied by the
Archbishop of Toledo and several Spanish noblemen, to the palace of Don
Diego de Mendoza, which had been prepared for her.
Alone in her chamber the princess gave free vent to her tears; she
wrote to Francis: ‘I found him very cold.’[434] She reminded him that
the King of heaven ‘has placed on his throne _an ensign of grace_;
that we have no reason to fear the majesty of heaven will reject us;
and that he stretches out his hand to us, even before we seek for it.’
And being thus strengthened, she prepared for the solemn sitting at
which she was to plead her brother’s cause. She quitted the palace
with emotion to appear before the council extraordinary, at which
the emperor and his ministers sat with all the grandeur and pride
of Castile. Margaret was not intimidated, and though she could not
perceive the least mark of interest on the severe and motionless faces
of her judges, ‘she was triumphant in speaking and pleading.’ But she
returned bowed down with sorrow: the immovable severity of the emperor
and of his councillors dismayed her. ‘The thing is worsened,’ she said,
‘far more than I had imagined.’[435]
The Duchess of Alençon, firmer than her brother, would not agree to the
cession of Burgundy. The emperor replied with irritation: ‘It is my
patrimonial estate--I still bear the name and the arms.’ The duchess,
confounded by Charles’s harshness, threw herself into the arms of God.
‘When men fail, God does not forget,’ she said. She clung to the rock;
‘she leant,’ says Erasmus, ‘upon the unchangeable rock which is called
Christ.’[436]
She soon regained her courage, asked for another audience, returned
to the attack, and her agitated soul spoke with new eloquence to the
emperor and his ministers. Never had the Escurial or the Alcazar seen a
petitioner so ardent and so persevering. She returned to her apartments
in alternations of sorrow and joy. ‘Sometimes I get a kind word,’ she
wrote, ‘and then suddenly all is changed. I have to deal with the
greatest of dissemblers.’[437] This beautiful and eloquent ambassadress
filled the Spaniards with admiration. They talked at court of nothing
but the sister of Francis I. Letters received in France and Germany
from Madrid and Toledo extolled her sweetness, energy, and virtues.
The scholars of Europe felt their love and respect for her increase,
and were proud of a princess whom they looked upon as their Mæcenas.
What charmed them was something more than that inquiring spirit which
had led Margaret in her earliest years towards literature and divinity,
and had made her learn Latin and Hebrew;[438] Erasmus enthusiastically
exclaimed when he heard of the wonders she was doing in Spain: ‘How
can we help loving, in God, such a heroine, such an amazon?’[439] The
courage with which the Duchess of Alençon had gone to Spain to save her
brother led some christians to imagine that she would display the same
heroism in delivering the Church from her long captivity.
CHAPTER II.
MARGARET SAVES THE EVANGELICALS AND THE KING.
(1525-1526.)
The captive Francis was not Margaret’s only sorrow. If her brother was
a prisoner to the emperor, her brethren in the faith were prisoners
to her mother. The parliament of Paris having issued a decree against
the Lutherans, and the pope having on the 17th of March invested with
apostolical authority the councillors authorised to proceed against
them,[440] the persecutors set vigorously to work. The regent Louisa
of Savoy, mother of Francis I. and of Margaret, inquired of the
Sorbonne: ‘By what means the _damnable doctrine_ of Luther could be
extirpated?’ The fanatic Beda, syndic of that corporation, enchanted
with such a demand, replied without hesitation on the part of the
Faculties: ‘It must be punished with the utmost severity.’ Accordingly
Louisa published letters-patent, ‘_to extinguish the damnable heresy of
Luther_.’[441]
France began to seek in persecution an atonement for the faults which
had led to the defeat of Pavia. Many evangelical christians were
either seized or banished. Marot, valet-de-chambre to the Duchess of
Alençon, the best poet of his age, who never spared the priests, and
translated the Psalms of David into verse, was arrested; Lefèvre,
Roussel, and others had to flee; Caroli and Mazurier recanted the faith
they had professed.[442] ‘Alas!’ said Roussel, ‘no one can confess
Jesus any longer except at the risk of his life.’[443]--‘It is the hour
of triumph,’[444] proudly said Beda and the men of the Roman party. A
blow more grievous still was about to reach Margaret.
A gentleman, a friend of Erasmus, of letters, and especially of
Scripture, who had free access to the court of the duchess, and with
whom that princess loved to converse about the Gospel and the new
times--Berquin had been arrested on a charge of heresy; then set at
liberty in 1523 by the intercession of Margaret and the king’s orders.
Leaving Paris, he had gone to his native province of Artois. A man of
upright heart, generous soul, and intrepid zeal, ‘in whom you could
see depicted the marks of a great mind,’ says the chronicler, he
worthily represented by his character that nobility of France, and
especially of Artois, so distinguished at all times by its devotedness
and valour. Happy in the liberty which God had given him, Berquin
had sworn to consecrate it to him, and was zealously propagating
in the cottages on his estate the doctrine of salvation by _Christ
alone_.[445] The ancient country of the Atrebates, wonderfully fertile
as regards the fruits of the earth, was equally fertile as regards
the seed from heaven. Berquin attacked the priesthood such as Rome
had made it. He said: ‘You will often meet with these words in Holy
Scripture: _honourable marriage_, _undefiled bed_, but of _celibacy_
you will not find a syllable.’ Another time he said: ‘I have not yet
known a monastery which was not infected with hatred and dissension.’
Such language, repeated in the refectories and long galleries of
the convents, filled the monks with anger against this noble friend
of learning. But he did not stop there: ‘We must teach the Lord’s
flock,’ he said, ‘to pray with understanding, that they may no longer
be content to gabble with their lips like ducks with their bills,
without comprehending what they say.’--‘He is attacking us,’ said the
chaplains. Berquin did not, however, always indulge in this caustic
humour; he was a pious christian, and desired to see a holy and living
unity succeed the parties that divided the Roman Church. He said: ‘We
ought not to hear these words among christians; I am of the Sorbonne,
I am of Luther; or, I am a Grey-friar, or Dominican, or Bernardite....
Would it be too much then to say: _I am a christian_?... Jesus who came
for us all ought not to be divided by us.’[446]
But this language aroused still greater hatred. The priests and nobles,
who were firmly attached to ancient usages, rose up against him; they
attacked him in the parishes and châteaux, and even went to him and
strove to detach him from the new ideas which alarmed them. ‘Stop!’
they said with a sincerity which we cannot doubt, ‘stop, or it is all
over with the Roman hierarchy.’ Berquin smiled, but moderated his
language; he sought to make men understand that God loves those whom he
calls to believe in Jesus Christ, and applied himself ‘to scattering
the divine seed’ with unwearied courage. With the Testament in his
hand, he perambulated the neighbourhood of Abbeville, the banks of the
Somme, the towns, manors, and fields of Artois and Picardy, filling
them with the Word of God.
These districts were in the see of Amiens, and every day some noble,
priest, or peasant went to the palace and reported some evangelical
speech or act of this christian gentleman. The bishop, his vicars and
canons met and consulted together. On a sudden the bishop started
for Paris, eager to get rid of the evangelist who was creating a
disturbance throughout the north of France. He waited upon the
archbishop and the doctors of the Sorbonne; he described to them
the heretical exertions of the gentleman, the irritation of the
priests, and the scandal of the faithful. The Sorbonne assembled
and went to work: unable to seize Berquin, they seized his books,
examined them, and ‘after the _manner of spiders_ sucked from them
certain articles,’ says Crespin, ‘to make poison and bring about the
death of a person who, with integrity and simplicity of mind, was
endeavouring to advance the doctrine of God.’[447] Beda especially took
a violent part against the evangelist. This suspicious and arbitrary
doctor, a thorough inquisitor, who possessed a remarkable talent
for discovering in a book everything that could ruin a man by the
help of forced interpretations, was seen poring night and day over
Berquin’s volumes. He read in them: ‘The Virgin Mary is improperly
invoked instead of the Holy Ghost.’--‘Point against the accused,’ said
Beda.--He continued: ‘There are no grounds for calling her a treasury
of grace, our hope, our life: qualities which belong essentially to
our Saviour alone.’--Confirmation!--‘Faith alone justifies.’--Deadly
heresy!--‘Neither the gates of hell, nor Satan, nor sin can do anything
against him who has faith in God.’--What insolence![448] Beda made his
report: ‘Of a truth,’ said his colleagues, ‘that is enough to bring any
man to the stake.’
Berquin’s death being decided upon, the Sorbonne applied to the
parliament, who raised no objections in the matter. A man was put to
death in those times for an offensive passage in his writings; it was
the censorship of a period just emerging from the barbarism of the
middle ages. Demailly, an officer of the court, started for Abbeville,
proceeded to the gentleman’s estate, and arrested him in the name of
the law. His vassals, who were devoted to him, murmured and would have
risen to defend him; but Berquin thought himself strong in his right;
he remembered besides these words of the Son of God: ‘_Whosoever shall
compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain_;’ he entreated his friends
to let him depart, and was taken to the prison of the Conciergerie,
which he entered with a firm countenance and unbending head.[449]
This sad news which reached the Duchess of Alençon in Spain moved her
deeply, and while she was hurrying from Madrid to Toledo, Alcala,
and Guadalaxara, soliciting everybody, ‘plotting’ her brother’s
marriage with the sister of Charles V., and thus paving the way to
the reconciliation of the two potentates, she resolved to save her
brethren exiled or imprisoned for the Gospel. She applied to the king,
attacking him on his better side. Francis I., Brantôme tells us, was
called the father of letters. He had sought for learned men all over
Europe and collected a fine library at Fontainebleau.[450] ‘What!’
said his sister to him, ‘you are founding a college at Paris intended
to receive the enlightened men of foreign countries; and at this very
time illustrious French scholars, Lefèvre of Etaples and others, are
compelled to seek an asylum out of the kingdom.... You wish to be a
propagator of learning, while musty hypocrites, black, white, and grey,
are endeavouring to stifle it at home.’[451] Margaret was not content
to love with word and tongue; she showed her love by her works. The
thought of the poor starving exiles, who knew not where to lay their
heads, haunted her in the magnificent palaces of Spain; she distributed
four thousand gold pieces among them, says one of the enemies of the
Reformation.[452]
She did more: she undertook to win over her brother to the Gospel,
and endeavoured, she tells us, to rekindle _the true fire_ in his
heart; but alas! that fire had never burnt there. Touched, however,
by an affection so lively and so pure, by a devotedness so complete,
which would have gone, if necessary, even to the sacrifice of her
life, Francis, desirous of giving Margaret a token of his gratitude,
commanded the parliament to adjourn until his return all proceedings
against the evangelicals. ‘I intend,’ he added, ‘to give the men of
letters special marks of my favour.’ These words greatly astonished
the Sorbonne and the parliament, the city and the court. They looked
at each other with an uneasy air; grief, they said, had affected the
king’s judgment. ‘Accordingly they paid no great attention to his
letter, and on the 24th of November, 1525, twelve days after its
receipt, orders were given to the bishop to supply the money necessary
for the prosecution of the heretics.’[453]
Margaret had no time to sympathise any longer with the fate of her
friends. Charles V., who spoke with admiration of this princess,
thought, not without reason, that she encouraged the king to resist
him; he proposed, therefore, to make her a prisoner, as soon as her
safe-conduct had expired. It appears that it was Montmorency who,
being warned of the emperor’s intention by the secret agents of the
regent, gave information to the duchess. Her task in Spain seemed
finished; it was from France now that the emperor must be worked upon.
Indeed, Francis, disgusted with the claims of that prince, had signed
his abdication and given it to his sister. The French government with
this document in their hands might give a new force to their demands.
Margaret quitted Madrid, and on the 19th of November she was at
Alcala.[454] But as she fled, she looked behind and asked herself
continually how she could save Francis from the ‘purgatory of Spain.’
Yet the safe-conduct was about to expire, the fatal moment had arrived;
the alguazils of Charles were close at hand. Getting on horseback at
six in the morning, the duchess made a four days’ journey in one, and
reentered France just one hour before the termination of the truce.
Everything changed at Madrid. Charles, alarmed at the abdication of
Francis, softened by the approaching marriage of this monarch with his
sister, obtaining in fine the main part of his demands, consented to
restore the King of France to liberty. It was Burgundy that had delayed
the arrangement. The king was not more inclined than the duchess to
detach this important province from France; the only difference between
the brother and the sister was, that the religion of the one looked
upon oaths as sacred, while the religion of the other made no account
of breaking them; and this Francis soon showed. On the 14th of January,
1526, some of his courtiers, officers, and domestics gathered round
their master for an act which in their simplicity they called sacred.
The king swore in their presence that he would not keep one of the
articles which Charles wished to force upon him. When that was done
Francis bound himself an hour after by an oath, with his hand upon the
Scriptures, to do what Charles demanded. According to the tenor of the
treaty, he renounced all claim to Italy; surrendered Burgundy to the
emperor, to whom it was stated to belong; restored Provence, which
Charles ceded to the Constable of Bourbon; and thus France was laid
prostrate.[455] The treaty was communicated to the pope: ‘Excellent,’
he said, after reading it; ‘provided the king does not observe
it.’ That was a point on which Clement and Francis were in perfect
accord.[456]
Margaret had had no hand in this disgraceful trick; her only thought
had been to save the king and the evangelicals.
CHAPTER III.
WILL THE REFORMATION CROSS THE RHINE?
(1525-1526.)
Margaret, who returned from Spain full of hope in her brother’s
deliverance, was determined to do all in her power for the triumph
of the Gospel. While the men of the ultramontane party, calling to
mind the defeat of Pavia, demanded that heaven should be appeased by
persecutions, Margaret thought, on the contrary, that humiliated France
ought to turn towards Jesus Christ, in order to obtain from him a
glorious deliverance.
But would Francis tread in his sister’s steps? History presents few
characters more inconsistent than the character of this prince. He
yielded at one time to Margaret, at another to the Sorbonne. He
imprisoned and set free, he riveted the chains and broke them. All his
actions were contradictory; all his projects seemed to exclude each
other: on his bright side, he was the father of letters; on his dark
side, the enemy of all liberty, especially of that which the Gospel
gives; and he passed with ease from one of these characters to the
other. Yet the influence which Margaret exercised over him in favour
of the reformed seemed strongest during the eight or nine years that
followed his captivity; Francis showed himself not unfavourable to
the evangelicals during this period, except at times when irritated
by certain excesses. Like a capricious and fiery steed, he sometimes
felt a fly stinging him, when he would rear and throw his rider; but
he soon grew calm and resumed his quiet pace. Accordingly many persons
thought during the years 1525-1534 that the country of St. Bernard and
Waldo would not remain behind Germany, Switzerland, and England. If
the Reform had been completed, France would have been saved from the
abominations of the Valois, the despotism of the Bourbons, and the
enslaving superstitions of the popes.
Nine years before, the Reformation had begun in Germany: would it not
cross the Rhine?... Strasburg is the main bridge by which German ideas
enter France, and French ideas make their way into Germany. Many have
already passed, both good and bad, from the right bank to the left, and
from the left to the right; and will still pass as long as the Rhine
continues to flow. In 1521 the movement had been very active. There had
been an invasion at Strasburg of the doctrines and writings of Luther:
his name was in every mouth. His noble conduct at the diet of Worms
had enraptured Germany, and the news spread in every direction. Men
repeated his words, they devoured his writings. Zell, priest of St.
Lawrence and episcopal penitentiary, was one of the first awakened. He
began to seek truth in the Scriptures, to preach that man is saved by
grace; and his sermons made an immense impression.
A nobleman of this city, Count Sigismond of Haute-Flamme (in German
Hohenlohe), a friend and ally of the duchess, who called him her
_good cousin_, was touched with Luther’s heroism and the preaching of
Zell. His conscience was aroused; he endeavoured to live according to
the will of God; and feeling within him the sin that prevented it,
he experienced the need of a Saviour, and found one in Jesus Christ.
Sigismond was not one of those nobles, rather numerous then, who
spoke in secret of the Saviour, but, before the world, seemed not
to know him; Lambert of Avignon[457] admired his frankness and his
courage.[458] Although a dignitary of the Church and dean of the great
chapter, the count laboured to spread evangelical truth around him,
and conceived at the same time a great idea. Finding himself placed
between the two countries and speaking both languages, he resolved
to set himself the task of bringing into France the great principles
of the Reformation. As soon as he received any new work of Luther’s,
he had it translated into French and printed, and forwarded it to
the king’s sister.[459] He did more than that; he wrote to Luther,
begging him to send a letter to the duchess, or even compose some work
calculated to encourage her in her holy undertakings.[460] The count,
who knew Margaret’s spirit and piety, and her influence over the king,
doubted not that she was the door by which the new ideas which were
to renovate the world, would penetrate into France. He composed and
published himself a work entitled the _Book of the Cross_, in which he
set forth the death of Christ as the essence of the Gospel.
Sigismond’s labours with the priests and nobles around him were
not crowned with success. The monks especially looked at him with
astonishment, and replied that they would take good care not to change
the easy life they were leading. Lambert, who had a keen eye, perceived
this, and said to the count with a smile: ‘You will not succeed; these
folks are afraid of damaging their wallets, their kitchens, their
stables, and their bellies.’[461]
But he succeeded better with Margaret. He had no sooner heard of the
defeat at Pavia than he wrote her a letter full of sympathy. ‘May
God reward you,’ she answered, ‘for the kindness you have done us in
visiting with such tender love the mother and the daughter, both poor
afflicted widows! You show that you are not only a cousin according to
flesh and blood, but also according to the spirit. We have resolved to
follow your advice, so far as the Father of all men is propitious to
us.’[462] Sigismond wrote again to the duchess while she was in Spain;
and when he heard of her return to France, manifested a desire to go
to Paris to advance the work of the Reformation. He was at the same
time full of confidence in Margaret’s zeal. ‘You think me more advanced
than I am,’ she replied; ‘but I hope that He who, in despite of my
unworthiness, inspires you with this opinion of me, will deign also to
perfect his work in me.’[463]
The Duchess of Alençon did not however desire, as we have said, a
reformation like that of Luther or Calvin. She wished to see in the
Church a sincere and living piety, preserving at the same time the
bishops and the hierarchy. To change the inside, but to leave the
outside standing--such was her system. If they left the Church, two
evils would in her opinion result which she wished to avoid: first, it
would excite an insurmountable opposition; and second, it would create
divisions and lead to the rupture of unity. She hoped to attain her
ends by a union between France and Germany. If Germany excited France,
if France moderated Germany, would they not attain to a universal
Reformation of the Church? She had not drawn up her plan beforehand,
but circumstances gradually led her to this idea, which was not her own
only, but that of her brother’s most influential advisers, and which
was sometimes that of her brother himself. Would she succeed?... Truth
is proud and will not walk in concert with error. Besides, Rome is
proud also, and, if this system had prevailed, she would no doubt have
profited by the moderation of the reformers to maintain all her abuses.
The great event which Margaret was waiting for magnified her hopes.
Whenever Francis I. passed the Pyrenees, it would be in her eyes like
the sun rising in the gates of the east to inundate our hemisphere with
its light. Margaret doubted not that her brother would immediately
gather round him all the friends of the Gospel, like planets round the
orb of day. ‘Come in the middle of April,’ she wrote to Hohenlohe, who
was in her eyes a star of the first magnitude; ‘you will find all your
friends assembled.... The spirit, which by a living faith unites you to
your only Chief (Jesus Christ), will make you diligently communicate
your assistance to all who need it, especially to those who are united
to you in spirit and in faith. As soon as the king returns to France,
he will send to them and seek them in his turn.’ Margaret imagined
herself already at the court of France, with the count at her side,
and around her the exiles, the prisoners, the doctors.... What an
effect this mass of light would have upon the French! All the ice of
scholastic catholicism would melt before the rays of the sun. ‘There
will indeed be some trouble at first,’ she said; ‘but the Word of truth
will be heard.... _God is God_. He is what he is, not less invisible
than incomprehensible. His glory and his victory are spiritual. He is
conqueror when the world thinks him conquered.’[464]
The king was still a prisoner; the regent and Duprat, who were opposed
to the Reformation, wielded supreme power; the priests, seeing the
importance of the moment, united all their efforts to combat the
evangelical influences, and obtained a brilliant triumph. On Monday,
the 5th of February, 1526, a month before the return of Francis I.,
the sound of the trumpet was heard in all the public places of Paris,
and a little later in those of Sens, Orleans, Auxerre, Meaux, Tours,
Bourges, Angers, Poitiers, Troyes, Lyons, and Macon, and ‘in all the
bailiwicks, seneschallies, provostries, viscounties, and estates of
the realm.’ When the trumpet ceased, the herald cried by order of
parliament:--‘All persons are forbidden to put up to sale or translate
from Latin into French the epistles of St. Paul, the Apocalypse, and
_other books_. Henceforward no printer shall print any of the books
of Luther. No one shall speak of the ordinances of the Church or of
images, otherwise than Holy Church ordains. All books of the Holy
Bible, translated into French, shall be given up by those who possess
them, and carried within a week to the clerks of the court. All
prelates, priests, and their curates shall forbid their parishioners
to have _the least doubt_ of the catholic faith.’[465] Translations,
books, explanations, and even doubts were prohibited.
This proclamation afflicted Margaret very seriously. Will her brother
ratify these fierce monastic prohibitions, or will he cooperate in the
victory of truth? Will he permit the Reformation to pass from Germany
into France? One circumstance filled the Duchess of Alençon with hope:
the king declared in favour of Berquin. It will be recollected that
this gentleman had been imprisoned in the Conciergerie. Three monks,
his judges, entered his prison, and reproached him with having said
that ‘the gates of hell can do nothing against him who has faith.’
This notion of a salvation entirely independent of priests exasperated
the clergy.--‘Yes,’ answered Berquin, ‘when the eternal Son of God
receives the sinner who believes in his death and makes him a child
of God, this divine adoption cannot be forfeited.’ The monks, however,
could see nothing but a culpable enthusiasm in this joyful confidence.
Berquin sent Erasmus the propositions censured by his judges. ‘I find
nothing impious in them,’ replied the prince of the schools.
The Sorbonne did not think the same. The prior of the Carthusians, the
prior of the Celestines, monks of all colours, ‘imps of antichrist,’
says the chronicler, ‘gave help to the band of the Sorbonne in order
to destroy by numbers the firmness of Berquin.’--‘Your books will be
burnt,’ said the pope’s delegates to the accused, ‘you will make an
apology, and then only will you escape. But if you refuse what is
demanded of you, you will be led to the stake.’--‘I will not yield a
single point,’ he answered. Whereupon the Sorbonnists, the Carthusians,
and the Celestines exclaimed: ‘Then it is all over with you!’ Berquin
waited calmly for the fulfilment of these threats.
When the Duchess of Alençon heard of all this, she immediately wrote to
her brother, and fell at her mother’s knees. Louisa of Savoy was not
inaccessible to compassion, in the solemn hour that was to decide her
son’s liberty. That princess was one of those profane characters who
think little of God in ordinary times, but cry to him when the sea in
its rage is about to swallow them up. Shut in her closet with Margaret,
she prayed with her that God would restore the king to France. The
duchess, full of charity and a woman of great tact, took advantage
of one of these moments to attempt to soften her mother in favour of
Berquin. She succeeded: the regent was seized with a sudden zeal, and
ordered the pope’s delegates to suspend matters until after the king’s
return.[466]
The delegates, in great surprise, read the letter over and over again:
it seemed very strange to them. They deliberated upon it, and, thinking
themselves of more consequence than this woman, quietly pursued their
work. The haughty and resolute Louisa of Savoy, having heard of their
insolence, was exasperated beyond measure, and ordered a second letter
to be written to the pontiff’s agents,[467] who contented themselves
with saying ‘_Non possumus_,’ and made the more haste, for fear their
victim should escape them. The king’s mother, still more irritated,
applied to the parliament, who held Berquin in respect, and who said
boldly that the whole thing was nothing but a monkish conspiracy. At
this the members of the Roman party made a still greater disturbance.
Many of them (we must acknowledge) thought they were doing the
public a service. ‘Erasmus is an apostate,’ they said, ‘and Berquin
is his follower.[468] ... Their opinions are heretical, schismatic,
scandalous.... We must burn Erasmus’s books ... and Berquin with
them.’[469]
But Margaret did not lose courage. She recollected that the widow in
the Gospel had obtained her request by her importunity. She entreated
her mother, she wrote to her brother: ‘If you do not interfere,
Berquin is a dead man.’[470] Francis I. yielded to her prayer,
and wrote to the first president that he, the king, would make him
answerable for Berquin’s life if he dared to condemn him. The president
stopped all proceedings; the monks hung their heads, and Beda and his
friends, says the chronicler, ‘were nigh bursting with vexation.’[471]
Yet Margaret did not hide from herself that she had still a hard
struggle before her, which would require strength and perseverance.
She felt the need of support to bring to a successful end in France a
transformation similar to that which was then renewing Germany. The
Count of Hohenlohe, at Strasburg, was not enough: she wanted at her
side a staff that would enable her to bear with her brother’s rebukes.
God appeared willing to give her what she wished.
There was at court a prince, young, lively, witty, handsome, brave
and gay, though somewhat harsh at times: he had already gone through
surprising adventures, and, what was no small recommendation in
Margaret’s eyes, had been the companion of Francis in the field and
in prison. He was Henry d’Albret, King of Navarre--king by right, if
not in fact--and at that time twenty-four years old. Community of
misfortune had united Francis and Henry in close friendship, and young
d’Albret soon conceived a deep affection for his friend’s sister.
Henry loved learning, possessed great vivacity of temper, and spoke
with facility and even with eloquence. It was a pleasant thing to hear
him gracefully narrating to the court circles the manner in which he
had escaped from the fort of Pizzighitone, where he had been confined
after the battle of Pavia. ‘In vain,’ he said, ‘did I offer the emperor
a large ransom; he was deaf. Determined to escape from my gaolers,
I bribed two of my guards; I procured a rope-ladder, and Vivis and
I--(Vivis was his page)--let ourselves down from the window during the
night. My room was at a great height, situated in the main tower above
the moat. But, resolved to sacrifice my life rather than the states of
my fathers, I put on the clothes of one of my attendants, who took my
place in my bed. I opened the window; it was a dark night; I glided
slowly down the high walls; I reached the ground, crossed the ditches,
quitted the castle of Pavia, and, by God’s help, managed so well that I
got to St. Just on Christmas Eve’ (1525).[472]
Henry d’Albret, having thus escaped from his enemies, hastened to
Lyons, where he found Madame, and where Margaret arrived soon after,
on her return from Spain. Smitten with her beauty, wit, and grace, the
King of Navarre courted her hand. Everything about him charmed all who
saw him; but Margaret’s hand was not easy to be obtained. She had been
first asked in marriage for the youthful Charles, King of Spain; and
such a union, if it had been carried out, might not perhaps have been
without influence upon the destinies of Europe. But the age of the
monarch (he was then but eight years old) had caused the negotiation to
fail, and the sister of the King of France married the Duke of Alençon,
a prince of the blood, but a man without understanding, amiability, or
courage. Chief cause of the disasters of Pavia, he had fled from the
field of battle and died of shame.
Margaret did not at first accept the homage of the young King of
Navarre. She was not to find in him all the support she needed; but
that was not the only motive of her refusal; she could not think
of marriage so long as her brother was a prisoner. Henry was not
discouraged; he did all he could to please the duchess, and, knowing
her attachment for the Gospel, he never failed, when present in the
council, to take up the defence of the pious men whom Cardinal Duprat
wished to put to death. This intervention was not a mere idle task. The
persecution became such, that Margaret, withdrawing from the attentions
of the prince, thought only of the dangers to which the humble
christians were exposed whose faith she shared.
We shall see that the pope and the Sorbonne had more influence in
France than the regent and the king.
CHAPTER IV.
DEATH OF THE MARTYRS: RETURN OF THE KING.
(1526.)
At the very moment when the duchess, the Count of Hohenlohe, and
others were indulging in the sweetest hopes, the darkest future opened
before their eyes. Margaret had dreamt of a new day, illumined by the
brightest sunshine, but all of a sudden the clouds gathered, the light
was obscured, the winds rose, and the tempest burst forth.
There was a young man, about twenty-eight years of age, a licentiate
of laws, William Joubert by name, whom his father, king’s advocate at
La Rochelle, had sent to Paris to study the practice of the courts.
Notwithstanding the prohibition of the parliament, William, who was of
a serious disposition, ventured to inquire into the catholic faith.
Conceiving doubts about it, he said in the presence of some friends,
that ‘neither Genevieve nor even Mary could save him, but the Son
of God alone.’ Shortly after the issuing of the proclamation, the
licentiate was thrown into prison. The alarmed father immediately
hurried to Paris: his son, his hope ... a heretic! and on the point
of being burnt! He gave himself no rest: he went from one judge to
another: ‘Ask what you please,’ said the unhappy father; ‘I am ready
to give any money to save his life.’[473] Vainly did he repeat
his entreaties day after day; on Saturday, February 17, 1526, the
executioner came to fetch William; he helped him to get into the
tumbrel, and led him to the front of Notre Dame: ‘Beg Our Lady’s
pardon,’ he said. He next took him to the front of St. Genevieve’s
church: ‘Ask pardon of St. Genevieve.’ The Rocheller was firm in his
faith, and would ask pardon of none but God. He was then taken to
the Place Maubert, where the people, seeing his youth and handsome
appearance, deeply commiserated his fate; but the tender souls received
but rough treatment from the guards. ‘Do not pity him,’ they said;
‘he has spoken evil of Our Lady and the saints in paradise, and holds
to the doctrine of Luther.’ The hangman then took up his instruments,
approached William, made him open his mouth, and pierced his tongue.
He then strangled him and afterwards burnt his body. The poor father
returned alone to Rochelle. But the parliament was not satisfied with
one victim; erelong it made an assault upon the inhabitants of a city
which the enemies of the Gospel detested in an especial manner.
A well-educated young man of Meaux had come to Paris; he had translated
‘certain books’ from Latin into French: he took Luther’s part and spoke
out boldly: ‘We need not take holy water to wash away our sins,’ he
said; ‘the blood of Christ alone can cleanse us from them. We need not
pray for the dead, for immediately after death their souls are either
in paradise or in hell; there is no purgatory; I do not believe in
it.’[474] ‘Ah!’ said the angry monks, ‘we see how it is; Meaux is
thoroughly infected with false doctrine; one _Falry_,[475] a priest,
with some others, is the cause of these perversions.’ The young man
was denounced to the parliament. ‘If you do not recant, you will be
burned,’ they said. The poor youth was terrified; he was afraid of
death. They led him to the front of the cathedral of Notre Dame; there
he mounted a ladder, bareheaded, with lighted taper in his hand, and
cried out for: ‘Pardon of God and of Our Lady!’ Then the priests put
in his hands the books he had translated; he read them ‘every word’
(the titles doubtless), and afterwards pronounced them to be false and
damnable. The books were burnt before his face; and as for him, ‘he was
taken to the Celestines’ prison and put upon bread and water.’
He was not the only man of his native city who had to make expiation
for the zeal with which he had received the Reform. A fuller, also a
native of Meaux, who followed like him the ‘sect of Luther,’ suffered a
similar punishment about the same time.[476] ‘This Lutheran,’ said the
burghers of Paris, ‘has the presumption to say that the Virgin and the
saints have no power, and such like nonsense.’
Picardy next furnished its tribute. Picardy in the north and Dauphiny
in the south were the two provinces of France best prepared to receive
the Gospel. During the fifteenth century many Picardins, as the
story ran, went to _Vaudery_. Seated round the fire during the long
nights, simple catholics used to tell one another how these _Vaudois_
(Waldenses) met in horrible assembly in solitary places, where they
found tables spread with numerous and dainty viands. These poor
christians loved indeed to meet together from districts often very
remote. They went to the rendezvous by night and along by-roads. The
most learned of them used to recite some passages of Scripture, after
which they conversed together and prayed. But such humble conventicles
were ridiculously travestied. ‘Do you know what they do to get there,’
said the people, ‘so that the officers may not stop them? The devil has
given them a certain ointment, and when they want to go to _Vaudery_,
they smear a little stick with it. As soon as they get astride it, they
are carried up through the air, and arrive at their _sabbath_ without
meeting anybody. In the midst of them sits a goat with a monkey’s tail:
this is Satan, who receives their adoration!’ ... These stupid stories
were not peculiar to the people: they were circulated particularly by
the monks. It was thus that the inquisitor Jean de Broussart spoke in
1460 from a pulpit erected in the great square at Arras. An immense
multitude surrounded him; a scaffold was erected in front of the
pulpit, and a number of men and women, kneeling and wearing caps with
the figure of the devil painted on them, awaited their punishment.
Perhaps the faith of these poor people was mingled with error. But be
that as it may, they were all burnt alive after the sermon.[477]
A young student, who already held a living, though not yet in priest’s
orders, had believed in the Gospel, and had boldly declared that there
was no other saviour but Jesus Christ, and that the Virgin Mary
had no more power than other saints.[478] This youthful cleric of
Thérouanne in Picardy had been imprisoned in 1525, and terrified by
the punishment. On Christmas-eve, with a lighted torch in his hand
and stripped to his shirt, he had ‘asked pardon of God and of Mary
before the church of Notre Dame.’ In consideration of his ‘very great
penitence,’ it was thought sufficient to confine him for seven years on
bread and water in the prison of St. Martin des Champs. Alone in his
dungeon, the scholar heard the voice of God in the depths of his heart;
he began to weep hot tears, and ‘forthwith,’ says the chronicler, ‘he
returned to his folly.’ Whenever a monk entered his prison, the young
cleric proclaimed the Gospel to him; the monks were astonished at such
raving; all the convent was in a ferment and confusion. Dr. Merlin,
the grand penitentiary, went to the prisoner in person, preached to
him, advised and entreated him, but all to no effect. By order of the
court, the young evangelist ‘was burnt at the Grève in Paris,’ and
others underwent the same punishment. Such was the method employed in
that cruel age to force the doctrine of the Church back into the hearts
of those who rejected it: they made use of scourges to beat them, and
cords to strangle them.
It was not only in Paris that severity was used against the Lutherans:
the same was done in the provinces. Young Pierre Toussaint, prebendary
of Metz, who had taken refuge at Basle after the death of Leclerc,[479]
having regained his courage, returned to France and proclaimed the
Gospel. His enemies seized him, and gave him up to the Abbot of St.
Antoine. This abbot, a well-known character, was a violent, cruel,
and merciless man.[480] Neither Toussaint’s youth, nor his candour,
nor his weak health could touch him; he threw his victim into a
horrible dungeon full of stagnant water and other filth,[481] where
the young evangelist could hardly stand. With his back against the
wall, and his feet on the only spot in the dungeon which the water
did not reach, stifled by the poisonous vapours emitted around him,
the young man remembered the cheerful house of his uncle the Dean of
Metz and the magnificent palace of the Cardinal of Lorraine, where he
had been received so kindly while he still believed in the pope. What
a contrast now! Toussaint’s health declined, his cheeks grew pale,
and his trembling legs could hardly support him. Alas! where were
those days when still a child he ran joyously round the room riding
on a stick,[482] and when his mother seriously uttered this prophecy:
‘Antichrist will soon come and destroy all who are converted.’ The
wretched Toussaint thought the moment had arrived.... His imagination
became excited, he fancied he saw the terrible antichrist foretold by
his mother, seizing him and dragging him to punishment; he screamed
aloud, and was near dying of fright.[483] He interested every one who
saw him; he was so mild; harmless as a new-born child, they said, so
that the cruel abbot knew not how to justify his death. He thought
that if he had Toussaint’s books and papers, he could find an excuse
for burning him. One day the monks came to the wretched young man,
took him out of the unwholesome pit, and led him into the abbot’s
room. ‘Write to your host at Basle,’ said the latter; ‘tell him that
you want your books to amuse your leisure, and beg him to send them to
you.’ Toussaint, who understood the meaning of this order, hesitated.
The abbot gave utterance to terrible threats. The affrighted Toussaint
wrote the letter, and was sent back to his pestilential den.
Thus the very moment when the evangelical christians were hoping
to have some relief was marked by an increase of severity. The
Reform--Margaret was its representative at that time in the eyes of
many--the afflicted Reform saw her children around her, some put to
death, others in chains, all threatened with the fatal blow. The sister
of Francis I., heartbroken and despairing, would have shielded with her
body those whom the sword appeared ready to strike; but her exertions
seemed useless.
Suddenly a cry of joy was heard, which, uttered in the Pyrenees, was
reechoed even to Calais. The _Sun_ (for thus, it will be remembered,
Margaret called her brother) appeared in the south to reanimate the
kingdom of France. On the 21st of March Francis quitted Spain, crossed
the Bidassoa, and once more set his foot on French ground. He had
recovered his spirits; an overflowing current of life had returned to
every part of his existence. It seemed that, delivered from a prison,
he was the master of the world. He mounted an Arab horse, and, waving
his cap and plume in the air, exclaimed as he galloped along the road
to St. Jean de Luz: ‘Once more I am a king!’ Thence he proceeded to
Bayonne, where his court awaited him, with a great number of his
subjects who had not been permitted to approach nearer to the frontier.
Nowhere was the joy so great as with Margaret and the friends of the
Gospel. Some of them determined to go and meet the king and petition
him on behalf of the exiles and the prisoners, feeling persuaded that
he would put himself at the head of the party which the detested
Charles V. was persecuting. These _most pious Gauls_, as Zwingle calls
them,[484] petitioned the monarch; Margaret uttered a cry in favour of
the miserable;[485] but Francis, though full of regard for his sister,
could not hide a secret irritation against Luther and the Lutherans.
His profane character, his sensual temperament, made him hate the
evangelicals, and policy demanded great reserve.
Margaret had never ceased to entertain in her heart a hope of seeing
the Count of Hohenlohe come to Paris and labour at spreading the Gospel
in France. Sigismond, a man of the world and at the same time a man
of God, an evangelical christian and yet a church dignitary, knowing
Germany well, and considered at the court of France as belonging to
it, appeared to the Duchess of Alençon the fittest instrument to work
among the French that transformation equally demanded by the wants of
the age and the Word of God. One day she took courage and presented
her request to her brother: Francis did not receive her petition
favourably. He knew Hohenlohe well, and thought his evangelical
principles exaggerated; besides, if any change were to be made in
France, the king meant to carry it out alone. He did not, however, open
his heart entirely to his sister: he simply gave her to understand that
the time was not yet come. If the count came to Paris; if he gathered
round him all the friends of the Gospel; if he preached at court, in
the churches, in the open air perhaps, what would the emperor say, and
what the pope?--‘Not yet,’ said the king.
The Duchess of Alençon, bitterly disappointed, could hardly make up
her mind to communicate this sad news to the count. Yet it must be
done. ‘The desire I have to see you is increased by what I hear of your
virtue and of the perseverance of the divine grace in you. But ... my
dear cousin, all your friends have arrived at the conclusion that, _for
certain reasons_, it is not yet time for you to come here. As soon as
we have _done something_, with God’s grace, I will let you know.’
Hohenlohe was distressed at this delay, and Margaret endeavoured to
comfort him. ‘Erelong,’ she said, ‘the Almighty will do us the grace
to perfect what he has done us the grace to _begin_. You will then be
consoled in this company, where you are _present_ though _absent_ in
body. May the peace of our Lord, which passeth all understanding, and
which the world knoweth not, be given to your heart so abundantly that
no cross can afflict it!’[486]
At the same time she increased her importunity with her brother; she
conjured the king to inaugurate a new era; she once more urged the
propriety of inviting the count. ‘I do not care for that man,’ answered
Francis sharply. He cared for him, however, when he wanted him. There
is a letter from the king ‘to his very dear and beloved cousin of
Hohenlohe,’ in which he tells him that, desiring to raise a large army,
and knowing ‘his loyalty and valour, his nearness of lineage, love,
and charity,’ he begs him most affectionately to raise three thousand
foot-soldiers.[487] But where the Gospel was concerned, it was quite
another matter. To put an end to his sister’s solicitation, Francis
replied to her one day: ‘Do you wish, then, for my sons to remain in
Spain?’ He had given them as hostages to the emperor. Margaret was
silent: she had not a word to say where the fate of her nephews was
concerned. She wrote to the count: ‘I cannot tell you, my friend,
all the vexation I suffer: _the king would not see you willingly_;
the reason is the liberation of his children, which he cares for
quite as much as for his own.’ She added: ‘I am of good courage
towards you, rather on account of our fraternal affection than by the
perishable ties of flesh and blood. For the _other_ birth, the _second_
delivery--there lies true and perfect union.’ The Count of Hohenlohe,
Luther’s disciple, did not come to France.
This refusal was not the only grief which Francis caused his sister.
The love of the King of Navarre had grown stronger, and she began to
return it. But the king opposed her following the inclination of her
heart. Margaret, thwarted in all her wishes, drinking of the bitter
cup, revolting sometimes against the despotic will to which she was
forced to bend, and feeling the wounds of sin in her heart, retired to
her closet and laid bare her sorrows to Christ.
O thou, my priest, my advocate, my king,
On whom depends my life--my everything;
O Lord, who first didst drain the bitter cup of woe
And know’st its poison (if man e’er did know),
These thorns how sharp, these wounds of sin how deep--
Saviour, friend, king, oh! plead my cause, I pray:
Speak, help, and save me, lest I fall away.[488]
The religious poems of Margaret, which are deficient neither in grace,
sensibility, nor affection, belong (it must not be forgotten) to the
early productions of the French muse; and what particularly leads us
to quote them is that they express the christian sentiments of this
princess. This is the period at which it seems to us that Margaret’s
christianity was purest. At an earlier date, at the time of her
connection with Briçonnet, her faith was clouded with the vapours of
mysticism. At a later date, when the fierce will of Francis I. alarmed
her tender and shrinking soul, a veil of catholicism appeared to cover
the purity of her faith. But from 1526 to 1532 Margaret was herself.
The evidences of the piety of the evangelical christians of this period
are so few, that we could not permit ourselves to suppress those we
find in the writings of the king’s sister.
The Duchess of Alençon resorted to poetry to divert her thoughts; and
it was now, I think, that she wrote her poem of the _Prisoner_. She
loved to recall the time when the King of Navarre had been captured
along with Francis I.; she transported herself to the days immediately
following the battle of Pavia; she imagined she could hear young Henry
d’Albret expressing his confidence in God, and exclaiming from the
lofty tower of Pizzighitone:
Vainly the winds o’er the ocean blow,
Scattering the ships as they proudly go;
But not a leaf of the wood can they shake,
Until at the sound of thy voice they awake.
The captive, after describing in a mournful strain the sorrows of his
prison, laid before Christ the sorrow which sprang from a feeling of
his sins:
Not _one_ hell but many million
I’ve deserved for my rebellion.
* * * * *
But my sin in thee was scourged,
And my guilt in thee was purged.[489]
The noble prisoner does not seek the salvation of God for himself
alone; he earnestly desires that the Gospel may be brought to that
Italy where he is a captive--one of the earliest aspirations for
Italian reformation.
Can you tell why from your home--
Home so peaceful--you were torn?
’Twas that over stream and mountain
The precious treasure should be borne
By thee, in thy vessel frail,
To God’s elect[490] ....
On a sudden the prisoner remembers his friend; he believes in his
tender commiseration and thus invokes him:
O Francis, my king, of my soul the best part,
Thou model of friendship, so dear to my heart,
A Jonathan, Orestes, and Pollux in one,
As thou seest me in sorrow and anguish cast down,
My Achates, my brother, oh! what sayest thou?[491]
But Henry d’Albret called Francis I. his Jonathan to no purpose;
Jonathan would not give him his sister. The king had other thoughts.
During his captivity the emperor had demanded Margaret’s hand of the
regent.[492] But Francis, whom they were going to unite, contrary to
his wishes, to Charles’s sister, thought that one marriage with the
house of Austria was enough, and hoping that Henry VIII. might aid him
in taking vengeance on Charles, was seized with a strong liking for
him. ‘If my body is the emperor’s prisoner,’ he said, ‘my heart is a
prisoner to the King of England!’[493] He gained over Cardinal Wolsey,
who told his master that there was not in all Europe a woman worthier
of the crown of England than Margaret of France.[494] But the christian
heart of the Duchess of Alençon revolted at the idea of taking the
place of Catherine of Arragon, whose virtues she honoured;[495]
and Henry VIII. himself soon entered on a different course. It was
necessary to give up the design of placing Margaret on the throne
of England by the side of Henry Tudor ... a fortunate thing for the
princess, but a misfortune perhaps for the kingdom over which she would
have reigned.
Yet the Duchess of Alençon did not see all her prayers refused. On
leaving his prison, the sight of Francis I. was confused. By degrees
he saw more clearly into the state of things in Europe, and took a few
steps towards that religious liberty which Margaret had so ardently
desired of him. It would even seem that, guided by his sister, he rose
to considerations of a loftier range.
CHAPTER V.
DELIVERY OF THE CAPTIVES AND RETURN OF THE EXILES.
(1526.)
There was an instinctive feeling in christendom that up to this time
its society had been but fragmentary, a great disorder, an immense
chaos.[496] It felt an earnest want of that social unity, of that
supreme order, and of that all-ruling idea which the papacy had not
been able to give. By proclaiming a new creation, the Reformation was
about to accomplish this task. The isolation of nations was to cease;
all would touch each other; reciprocal influences would multiply from
generation to generation.... The Reformation prepared the way for the
great unity in the midst of the world.
Evangelical christians felt a consciousness, indistinct perhaps,
though deep, of this new movement in human affairs, and many would
have wished that France should not yield to Germany or England the
privilege of marching in the van of the new order of things. They said
that since the emperor had put himself at the head of the enemies of
the Reformation, the king ought to place himself in the front rank of
its defenders. The Duchess of Alençon in particular was constantly
soliciting the king, and praying him to recall to France the men who
would bring into it the true light. But Francis received her proposals
coldly, sometimes rudely, and cut short every attempt to answer; still
the duchess was indefatigable, and when the king shut the door against
her, ‘she got in through the keyhole.’ At last Francis, who loved his
sister, esteemed learning, and despised the monks, yielded to her
pressing entreaties, and above all to the new ideas and the exigencies
of his political plans. The gates of the prisons were opened.
Berquin was still a prisoner, sorrowful but comforted by his faith,
unable to see clearly into the future, but immovable in his loyalty to
the Gospel. The king determined to save him from ‘the claws of Beda’s
faction.’ ‘I will not suffer the person or the goods of this gentleman
to be injured,’ he said to the parliament on the 1st of April; ‘I will
inquire into the matter myself.’ The officers sent by the king took the
christian captive from his prison, and, though still keeping watch over
him, placed him in a commodious chamber. Berquin immediately set about
forming plans for the triumph of truth.
Clement Marot had paid dearly for the privilege of being Margaret’s
secretary; he was in prison, and consoled himself by composing his
little poems. Margaret obtained his full release, and Marot hastened to
his friends, exclaiming in a transport of joy:
In narrow cell without a cause,
Shut up in foul despite of laws
By wicked men, the king’s decree
In this New Year has set me free.[497]
Michael of Aranda, who, in 1524, had preached the Gospel with such
power at Lyons, had been removed from Margaret, whose almoner he
was. She sent for him and imparted to him her plan for introducing
the Gospel into the Catholic Church of France, by renewing without
destroying it. ‘I have procured your nomination to the bishopric of
Trois-Châteaux in Dauphiny,’[498] she said. ‘Go, and evangelise your
diocese.’ He accepted; the truth had already been scattered in Dauphiny
by Farel and others. Did Aranda share Margaret’s views, or had ambition
anything to do with his acceptance? It is hard to say.
A fourth victim of the persecution was soon saved. The young prebendary
of Metz, the amiable Pierre Toussaint, was still in the frightful den
into which the abbot of St. Antoine had thrust him. His host at Basle
had not sent the books which the treacherous priest had constrained
him to write for; no doubt the worthy citizen, knowing in whose
hands his friend was lying, had foreseen the danger to which their
receipt would expose him. Several evangelical christians of France,
Switzerland, and Lorraine, particularly the merchant Vaugris, had
successively interceded in his favour, but to no purpose. Finding all
their exertions useless, they applied at last to Margaret, who warmly
pleaded the cause of the young evangelist before the king. In July
1526, the order for his release arrived. The officers charged with
this pleasing task descended to the gloomy dungeon selected by the
abbot of St. Antoine, and rescued the lamb from the fangs of that wild
beast. Toussaint, thin, weak, pale as a faded flower, came out slowly
from his fearful den. His weakened eyes could hardly support the light
of day, and he knew not where to go. At first he went to some old
acquaintances; but they were all afraid of harbouring a heretic escaped
from the scaffold. The young prebendary did not possess Berquin’s
energy; he was one of those sensitive and delicate natures that need a
support, and he found himself in the world, in the free air, almost as
much alone as in his dungeon. ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘God our heavenly Father,
who has fixed bounds to the wrath of man which it cannot pass, has
delivered me in a wonderful manner from the hands of the tyrants; but,
alas! what will become of me? The world is mad and spurns the rising
Gospel of Jesus Christ.’[499] A few timid but well-meaning friends
said to him: ‘The Duchess of Alençon alone can protect you; there is
no asylum for you but at her court. Make application to a princess who
welcomes with so much generosity all the friends of learning and of the
Gospel, and profit by your residence to investigate closely the wind
that blows in those elevated regions.’ Toussaint did what they told
him; he began his journey, and, despite his natural timidity, arrived
at Paris, where we shall meet with him again.
More important deliverances still were in preparation. Strasburg was to
rejoice. There was no city out of France where the king’s return had
been hailed with so much enthusiasm. Many evangelical christians had
sought refuge there from the cruelties of Duprat, and were sighing for
the moment that would restore them to their country. Among the number
of the refugees was the famous Cornelius Agrippa. His reputation was
not unblemished; a book on the ‘Vanity of Science’ does him little
credit; but he seems at this time to have been occupied with the
Gospel. Having received a letter from the excellent Papillon, who
told him how favourable the king appeared to the new light, Agrippa,
who, surrounded by pious men, took their tone and tuned his voice in
harmony with theirs, exclaimed: ‘All the Church of the saints with us,
hearing of the triumphs of the Word at the court and in the most part
of France, rejoiced with exceeding great joy.[500] I bless the Lord
for the glory with which the Word is crowned among you. Would to God
that we were permitted, as well as you, to return to France!’ Another
country was equally attractive to this scholar: ‘Write to me what they
are doing at Geneva ... tell me if the Word is loved there, and if they
care for learning.’[501]
Men more decided than Cornelius Agrippa were to be found at Strasburg.
During all the winter the hospitable house of Capito had often
witnessed the meetings of those christians who had raised highest the
standard of the Gospel in France. There assembled the aged Lefèvre,
the first translator of the Bible, who had escaped the stake only by
flight; the pious Roussel, Vedastes, Simon, and Farel who had arrived
from Montbéliard. These friends of the Reformation concealed themselves
under assumed names: Lefèvre passed as Anthony Peregrin; Roussel as
Tolnin; but they were known by everybody, even by the children in the
streets.[502] They often met Bucer, Zell, and the Count of Hohenlohe,
and edified one another. Margaret undertook to bring them all back
to France. The court was then in the south; the king was at Cognac,
his birthplace, where he often resided; the duchesses (his mother
and sister) at Angoulême. One day when they met, Margaret entreated
her brother to put an end to the cruel exile of her friends: Francis
granted everything.
What joy! the aged Lefèvre, the fervent Roussel, are recalled _with
honour_, says Erasmus.[503] The Strasburgers embraced them with tears;
the old man felt happy that he was going to die in the country where
he was born. He immediately took the road to France in company with
Roussel; others followed them; all believed that the new times were
come. In their meetings the evangelicals called to mind these words of
the prophet: _The ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion
with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy
and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away_.[504] Lefèvre
and Roussel hastened to their protectress. Margaret received them
kindly, lodged them in the castle of Angoulême, where she was born, on
that smiling hill which she loved so much, near that ‘softly-flowing’
Charente, as she describes it. Lefèvre and Roussel had many precious
conversations with her. They loved to speak of their life at Strasburg,
of the new views they had found there, and of the brotherly communion
they had enjoyed. ‘We were there,’ they said, ‘with William Farel,
Michael of Aranda, Francis Lambert, John Vedastes, the Chevalier
d’Esch, and many other evangelicals ... scattered members of a torn
body, but one in Christ Jesus. We carefully put out of sight all that
might interrupt the harmony between brethren; the peace that we tasted,
far from being without savour, like that of the world, was perfumed
with the sweet odour of God’s service.’
This meeting at Strasburg had borne fruit. The energetic Farel, the
learned Lefèvre, the spiritual Roussel, gifted with such opposite
natures, had reacted upon each other. Farel had become more gentle,
Roussel more strong; contact with iron had given an unusual hardness
to a metal by nature inclined to be soft. The sermons they heard,
their frequent conversations, the trials of exile, and the consolation
of the Spirit of God, had tempered the souls which had been not a
little discouraged by persecution. Roussel had taken advantage of his
leisure to study Hebrew, and the Word of God had acquired a sovereign
importance in his eyes. Struck by the virtues of which the early
christians had given an example, he had found that we must seek for
the secret of their lives in the history of the primitive Church, in
the inspired Scripture of God. ‘The purity of religion will never be
restored,’ he used to say, ‘unless we drink at the springs which the
Holy Ghost has given us.’[505]
It was not enough for the refugees to have returned; their christian
activity must be employed to the advantage of France. At the beginning
of June, Roussel went to Blois. Margaret wished to make this city--the
favourite residence of the Valois, and notorious for the crimes
perpetrated there in after years--a refuge for the persecuted, a
caravanserai for the saints, a stronghold of the Gospel. On the 29th
of June Lefèvre also went there.[506] The king intrusted him with
the education of his third son and the care of the castle library.
Chapelain, physician to the Duchess of Angoulême, and Cop, another
doctor, of whom we shall see more hereafter, were also in that city;
and all of them, filled with gratitude towards Francis I., were
contriving the means of imparting ‘something of Christianity to the
Most Christian King’[507]--which was, in truth, very necessary.
Thus things were advancing. It seemed as if learning and the Gospel
had returned with the king from banishment. Macrin, whose name Zwingle
placed side by side with that of Berquin, was set at liberty.[508]
Cornelius Agrippa returned to Lyons. Sprung from an ancient family of
Cologne, he had served seven years in the imperial army; he then became
a great _savant_ (and not a great magician, as was supposed), doctor
of theology, law, and medicine. He published a book on Marriage and
against celibacy, which excited much clamour. Agrippa was astonished
at this, and not without reason. ‘What!’ he exclaimed, ‘the tales
of Boccaccio, the jests of Poggio, the adulteries of Euryalus and
Lucretia, the loves of Tristan and of Lancelot, are read greedily,
even by young girls[509] ... and yet they cry out against my book on
Marriage!’--This explains an incident in history: the youthful readers
of Boccaccio became the famous ‘squadron’ of Catherine de’ Medici, by
whose means that impure woman obtained so many victories over the lords
of the court.
When men heard of these deliverances, they thought that Francis I.,
seeing Charles V. at the head of the Roman party, would certainly
put himself at the head of the evangelical cause, and that the two
champions would decide on the battle-field the great controversy of the
age. ‘The king,’ wrote the excellent Capito to the energetic Zwingle,
‘is favourable to the Word of God.’[510] Margaret already saw the Holy
Ghost reviving in France the _one_, _holy_, and _universal Church_. She
resolved to hasten on these happy times, and, leaving Angoulême and
Blois in the month of July, arrived in Paris.
Toussaint was waiting for her. Having reached the capital under
an assumed name, the young evangelist at first kept himself in
concealment. On hearing of the arrival of the sister of Francis, he
asked permission to see her in private; and the princess, as was her
custom, received him with great kindness. What a contrast for this
poor man, just rescued from the cruel talons of the abbot of St.
Antoine, to find himself in the palace of St. Germain, where Margaret’s
person, her urbanity, wit, lively piety, indefatigable zeal, love of
letters, and elegance, charmed all who came near her! Toussaint, like
the poet, was never tired of admiring
A sweetness living in her beauteous face
Which does the fairest of her sex eclipse,
A lively wit, of learning ample store,
And over all a captivating grace,
Whether she speaks, or silent are her lips.[511]
One thing, however, charmed Toussaint still more: it was the true piety
which he found in Margaret. She treated him with the kindness of a
christian woman, and soon put him at his ease. ‘The most illustrious
Duchess of Alençon,’ he wrote, ‘has received me with as much kindness
as if I had been a prince or the person who was dearest to her.[512]
I hope,’ he added, ‘that the Gospel of Christ will soon reign in
France.’[513] The duchess, on her part, touched with the faith of the
young evangelist, invited him to come again and see her the next day.
He went and he went again; he had long and frequent conversations with
Margaret on the means of propagating the Gospel everywhere.[514] ‘God,
by the light of his Word,’ he said, ‘must illumine the world, and by
the breath of his Spirit must transform all hearts. The Gospel alone,
Madame, will bring into regular order all that is confused.’--‘It is
the only thing that I desire,’ replied Margaret.[515] She believed in
the victory of truth; it seemed to her that the men of light could not
be conquered by the men of darkness. The new life was about to rise
like the tide, and erelong cover with its wide waves the arid _landes_
of France. Margaret espied tongues of fire, she heard eloquent voices,
she felt swelling hearts throbbing around her. Everything was stirring
in that new and mysterious world which enraptured her imagination. It
was to inaugurate this new era, so full of light, of faith, of liberty,
that her brother had been delivered from the prisons of Charles V.
‘Ah!’ she said to Toussaint in their evangelical conversations, ‘it is
not only myself that desires the triumph of the Gospel; even the king
wishes for it.[516] And, believe me, our mother (Louisa of Savoy!) will
not oppose our efforts.[517] The king,’ she protested to the young man,
‘is coming to Paris to secure the progress of the Gospel--if, at least,
the war does not prevent him.’[518] Noble illusions! Certain ideas on
this subject, in accord with his policy, were running, no doubt, in
the king’s mind; but at that time Francis was thinking of nothing but
compensating himself for the privations of captivity by indulging in
gallantry.
The young prebendary of Metz was under the spell; he indulged in
the greatest hopes, and joyfully hailed the new firmament in which
Margaret would shine as one of the brightest stars. He wrote to
Œcolampadius: ‘This illustrious princess is so taught of God, and
so familiar with Holy Scripture, that no one can ever separate her
from Jesus Christ.’[519] Some have asked whether this prediction was
verified. Margaret of Navarre, terrified by her brother’s threats,
certainly made a lamentable concession in after years, and this is
proved by a letter Calvin addressed to her; but she was, nevertheless,
a tree planted by the rivers of water. The storm broke off a few
branches; still the roots were deep, and the tree did not perish.
Toussaint often found the halls of the palace of St. Germain filled
with the most distinguished personages of the kingdom, eager to present
their homage to the sister of Francis I. Side by side with ambassadors
and nobles dressed in the most costly garments, and soldiers with their
glittering arms, were cardinals robed in scarlet and ermine, bishops
with their satin copes, ecclesiastics of every order, with long gowns
and tonsured heads.[520] These clerics, all desirous of attaining to
the highest offices of the Church, approached the illustrious princess,
spoke to her of the Gospel, of Christ, of _inextinguishable love_; and
Toussaint listened with astonishment to such strange court language.
His former patron, the Cardinal of Lorraine, archbishop of Rheims and
of Lyons, whom we must not confound with his infamous nephew, one of
the butchers of the St. Bartholomew massacre, gave the young prebendary
a most affable reception, never ceasing to repeat that he loved the
Gospel extremely.... Margaret, who permitted herself to be easily
persuaded, took the religious prattle of this troop of flatterers
for sound piety, and inspired the young christian with her own blind
confidence.
Yet the latter sometimes asked himself whether all these fine speeches
were not mere court compliments. One day he heard Briçonnet, Bishop
of Meaux, in whom the most credulous still placed some hope, rank the
Roman Church very high and the Word of God very low: ‘Hypocritical
priest!’ said Toussaint aside, ‘you desire more to please men than to
please God!’ If these sycophant priests chanced to meet with any noble
scoffers or atheists, in some apartment far from that of the princess
or on the terrace of St. Germain, they fearlessly threw aside the
mask, and turned into ridicule the evangelical faith they had cried up
before the sister of Francis I. When they had obtained the benefices
they coveted, they changed sides; they were the foremost in attacking
the Lutherans;[521] and if they observed any evangelicals coming, they
turned their backs upon them. Then would Toussaint exclaim: ‘Alas! they
speak well of Jesus Christ with those who speak well of him; but with
those who blaspheme, they blaspheme also.’[522]
Lefèvre and Roussel having come to Paris from Blois, about the end
of July 1526, the young and impetuous Toussaint, full of respect for
them, hastened to tell them of his vexations, and demanded that they
should unmask these hypocrites and boldly preach the Gospel in the
midst of that perverse court. ‘Patience,’ said the two scholars, both
rather temporising in disposition, and whom the air of the court had
perhaps already weakened, ‘patience! do not let us spoil anything; the
time is not yet come.’[523] Then Toussaint, upright, generous, and
full of affection, burst into tears. ‘I cannot restrain my tears,’ he
said.[524] ‘Yes; be wise after your fashion; wait, put off, dissemble
as much as you please; you will acknowledge, however, at last, that it
is impossible to preach the Gospel without bearing the cross.[525] The
banner of divine mercy is now raised, the gate of the kingdom of heaven
is open. God does not mean us to receive his summons with supineness.
We must make haste, for fear the opportunity should escape us and the
door be shut.’
Toussaint, grieved and oppressed by the tone of the court, told all his
sorrows to the reformer of Basle: ‘Dear Œcolampadius,’ he said, ‘when
I think that the king and the duchess are as well disposed as possible
to promote the Gospel of Christ, and when I see at the same time those
who are called to labour the foremost at this excellent work having
continual recourse to delay, I cannot restrain my grief. What would
not you do in Germany, if the emperor and his brother Ferdinand looked
favourably on your efforts?’ Toussaint did not hide from Margaret
herself how his hopes had been disappointed. ‘Lefèvre,’ he said, ‘is
wanting in courage; may God strengthen and support him!’ The duchess
did all she could to keep the young evangelist at her court; she sought
for men who, while having a christian heart and a christian life,
would not, however, break with the Church; she accordingly offered the
ex-prebendary great advantages, but begging him at the same time to be
moderate. Toussaint, a man of susceptible and somewhat hard character,
haughtily repelled these advances. He was stifled at the court; the air
he breathed there made him sick; admiration had yielded to disgust. ‘I
despise these magnificent offers,’ he said, ‘I detest the court more
than any one has done.[526] Farewell to the court ... it is the most
dangerous of harlots.’[527] Margaret conjured him at least not to quit
France, and sent him to one of her friends, Madame de Contraigues,
who, abounding in charity for the persecuted evangelists, received
them in her chateau of Malesherbes in the Orléanais. Before leaving,
the young Metzer, foreseeing that a terrible struggle was approaching,
recommended the friends he left behind him to pray to God that France
would show herself worthy of the Word.[528] He then departed, praying
the Lord to send to this people the teacher, the apostle, who, being
himself a model of truth and devotedness, would lead it in the new
paths of life.
CHAPTER VI.
WHO WILL BE THE REFORMER OF FRANCE?
(1526.)
Many evangelical christians thought as Toussaint did. They felt that
France had need of a reformer, but could see no one who answered to
their ideal. A man of God was wanted, who, possessing the fundamental
truths of the Gospel, could set them forth in their living harmony;
who, while exalting the divine essence of Christianity, could present
it in its relations to human nature; who was fitted not only to
establish sound doctrine, but also by God’s grace to shed abroad a
new life in the Church; a servant of God, full of courage, full of
activity, as skilful in governing as in leading. A Paul was wanted, but
where could he be found?
Would it be Lefèvre? He had taught plainly the doctrine of
justification by faith, even before Luther; this we have stated
elsewhere,[529] and many have repeated it since. It is a truth gained
to history. But Lefèvre was old and courted repose; pious but timid, a
scholar of the closet rather than the reformer of a people.
Would it be Roussel? Possessing an impressionable and wavering heart,
he longed for the good, but did not always dare to do it. He preached
frequently at the duchess’s court before the most distinguished men of
the kingdom; but he did not proclaim the whole counsel of God. He knew
it, he was angry with himself, and yet he was continually falling into
the same error. ‘Alas!’ he wrote to Farel, ‘there are many evangelical
truths one half of which I am obliged to conceal. If the Lord does not
rekindle my zeal by his presence, I shall be very inferior to what I
ought to be.’[530] The pious but weak Roussel was just the man the
duchess required--fitted to advance christian life without touching
the institutions of the Church. Sometimes, however, dissatisfied with
his position, and longing to preach the Gospel without any respect
to persons, he wished to go to Italy ... and then he fell again into
temporising.[531]
The most decided christians saw his incompetence. In their eyes the
men round the Duchess of Alençon who stopped halfway were incapable
of reforming France. It needed, they thought, a man of simple soul,
intrepid heart, and powerful eloquence, who, walking with a firm
foot, would give a new impulse to the work too feebly commenced by
Lefèvre and his friends; and then these christians, going to the other
extreme, thought of Farel. At that time this reformer was the greatest
light of France. What love he had for Jesus Christ! What eloquence in
preaching! What boldness in pressing onwards and surmounting obstacles!
What perseverance in the midst of dangers! But neither Francis nor
Margaret would have anything to do with him: they were afraid of him.
When the king recalled the other exiles, Farel was left behind. He was
then at Strasburg with one foot on the frontier, waiting the order for
his return, but the order did not come. The court had no taste for
his aggressive preaching and his heroic firmness; they wished for a
softened and a perfumed Gospel in France. The noble Dauphinese, when he
saw all his friends returning to their country while he remained alone
in exile, was overwhelmed with sorrow and cried to God in his distress.
Roussel understood Margaret’s fears; Farel, he knew, was not a
courtier, and would never agree with the duchess. Yet, knowing the
value of such a servant of God, the noble and pious Roussel tried
whether they could not profit in some other way by his great activity,
and if there was not some province that could be opened to his mighty
labours. ‘I will obtain the means of providing for all your wants,’ he
wrote to him on the 27th of August from the castle of Amboise, ‘until
the Lord gives you at last an entrance and brings you to us.’[532]
That was also Farel’s earnest desire; he was not then thinking of
Switzerland; his country possessed all his love; his eyes were turned
night and day towards those gates of France so obstinately closed
against him; he went up to them and knocked. They still remained shut,
and returning disheartened he exclaimed: ‘Oh! if the Lord would but
open a way for me to return and labour in France!’ On a sudden the
dearest of his wishes seemed about to be realised.
One day, when there was a grand reception at court, the two sons of
Prince Robert de la Marche came to pay their respects to the king’s
sister. Since the eighth century La Marche had formed a principality,
which afterwards became an appanage of the Armagnacs and Bourbons.[533]
The Gospel had found its way there. Margaret, who possessed in a
high degree the spirit of proselytism, said to Roussel, indicating
with her eyes those whose conversion she desired: ‘Speak to those
two young princes; seize, I pray, this opportunity of advancing the
cause of Jesus Christ.’--‘I will do so,’ replied the chaplain eagerly.
Approaching the young noblemen, Roussel began to converse about the
Gospel. De Saucy and De Giminetz (for such were their names) showed no
signs of astonishment, but listened with the liveliest interest. The
evangelist grew bolder, and explained his wishes to them freely.[534]
‘It is not for yourselves alone,’ he said, ‘that God has given you
life, but for the good of the members of Jesus Christ. It is not
enough for you to embrace Christ as your Saviour; you must communicate
the same grace to your subjects.’[535] Roussel warmed at the idea of
seeing the Gospel preached among the green pastures which the Vienne,
the Creuse, and the Cher bathe with their waters; through Guéret,
Bellac, and the ancient territory of the Lemovices and Bituriges. The
two young princes on their part listened attentively to the reformer,
and gave the fullest assent to his words.[536] Margaret’s chaplain
made another step; he thought he had found what he was seeking for
the zealous Farel; and when the sons of Robert de la Marche told him
they felt too weak for the task set before them, he said: ‘I know but
one man fitted for such a great work; it is William Farel; Christ has
given him an extraordinary talent for making known the riches of his
glory. Invite him.’ The proposition delighted the young princes. ‘We
desire it still more than you,’ they said; ‘our father and we will
open our arms to him. He shall be to us as a son, a brother, and a
father.[537] Let him fear nothing: he shall live with us. Yes, in our
own palace. All whom he will meet there are friends of Jesus Christ.
Our physician, Master Henry, a truly christian man; the son of the
late Count Francis; the lord of Château-Rouge, and his children, and
many others, will rejoice at his arrival. We ourselves,’ they added,
‘will be there to receive him. Only bid him make haste; let him come
before next Lent.’--‘I promise you he shall,’ replied Roussel. The two
princes undertook to set up a printing establishment in order that
Farel might by means of the press circulate evangelical truth, not only
in La Marche, but throughout the kingdom. Roussel wrote immediately to
his friend; Toussaint added his entreaties to those of the chaplain.
‘Never has any news caused me more joy,’ he said; ‘hasten thither as
fast as you can.’[538]
The young princes of La Marche were not the only nobles of the court
whom the Duchess of Alençon’s influence attracted into the paths of the
Gospel. Margaret was not one of ‘those who cry aloud,’ says a christian
of her time, ‘but of those whose every word is accompanied with
teaching and imbued with gentleness.’ Her eye was always on the watch
to discover souls whom she could attract to her Master. Lords, ladies,
and damsels of distinction, men of letters, of the robe, of the sword,
and even of the Church, heard, either from her lips, or from those of
Roussel or of some other of her friends, the Word of life. The nobility
entertained a secret but very old dislike to the priests, who had so
often infringed their privileges; and they would have liked nothing
better than to be emancipated from their yoke. Margaret feared that
the young nobles would be only half converted--that there would be no
renewal of the heart and life in them; and the history of the wars of
religion shows but too plainly how well her fears were founded. Knowing
how difficult it is ‘to tread the path to heaven,’ she insisted on the
necessity of a real and moral christianity, and said to the gay youths
attracted by the charms of her person and the splendour of her rank:
Who would be a christian true
Must his Lord’s example follow;
Every worldly good resign
And earthly glory count but hollow;
Honour, wealth, and friends so sweet
He must trample under feet:--
But, alas! to few ’tis given
Thus to tread the path to heaven!