His goods among the poor divide;
Others’ trespasses forgive;
Revenge and anger lay aside.
Be good to those who work you ill;
If any hate you, love them still:--
But, alas! to few ’tis given
Thus to tread the path to heaven!
He must hold death beautiful,
And over it in triumph sing;
Love it with a warmer heart
Than he loveth mortal thing.
In the pain that wrings the flesh
Find a pleasure, and in sadness;
Love death as he loveth life,
With a more than mortal gladness:--
But, alas! to few ’tis given
Thus to tread the path to heaven![539]
Would Margaret succeed? A queen with all the splendours of her station
is not a good reformer; the work needs poor and humble men. There is
always danger when princes turn missionaries; some of the persons
around them easily become hypocrites. Margaret attracted men to the
Gospel; but the greater part of those who were called by her did not
go far; their christianity remained superficial. There were, indeed,
many enlightened understandings in the upper ranks of French society,
but there were few consciences smitten by the Word of God. Many--and
this is a common error in every age--could see nothing but intellectual
truths in the doctrine of Jesus Christ: a fatal error that may
decompose the religious life of a Church and destroy the national life
of a people. No tendency is more opposed to evangelical protestantism,
which depends not upon the intellectual, but upon the moral faculty.
When Luther experienced those terrible struggles in the convent at
Erfurth, it was because his troubled conscience sought for peace; and
we may say of the Reformation, that it always began with the awakening
of the conscience. Conscience is the palladium of protestantism, far
more than the statue of Pallas was the pledge of the preservation of
Troy. If the nobility compromised the Reformation in France, it was
because their consciences had not been powerfully awakened.
Farel would have been the man fitted for this work. He was one of those
whose simple, serious, earnest tones carry away the masses. His voice
of thunder made his hearers tremble. The strength of his convictions
created faith in their souls, the fervour of his prayers raised them
to heaven. When they listened to him, ‘they felt,’ as Calvin says,
‘not merely a few light pricks and stings, but were wounded and
pierced to the heart; and hypocrisy was dragged from those wonderful
and _more than tortuous_ hiding-places which lie deep in the heart
of man.’ He pulled down and built up with equal energy. Even his
life--an apostle-ship full of self-sacrifice, danger, and triumph--was
as effectual as his sermons. He was not only a minister of the Word;
he was a bishop also. He was able to discern the young men fitted to
wield the weapons of the Gospel, and to direct them in the great war
of the age. Farel never attacked a place, however difficult of access,
which he did not take. Such was the man then called into France, and
who seemed destined to be its reformer. The letters of Roussel and
Toussaint inviting Farel were conveyed to Strasburg, and arrived there
in the month of December 1526.
Farel, who had remained alone in that city after the departure of his
friends, kept, as we have already mentioned, his eyes turned towards
France. He waited and waited still, hesitating to go to Switzerland,
whither he was invited; but those gates of France, from which he could
not turn away his eyes, still remained closed. He reflected; he asked
himself what place God had reserved for him. His piercing glance
would have desired to penetrate the future.... Should he not return
into Dauphiny? At Gap and Manosque he had relatives favourable to the
Gospel: his brother Walter, clerk of the episcopal court; his brother
Jean-Jacques, who expounded the Bible with as much boldness as himself;
Antoine Aloat, the notary, who had married one of his nieces; his
brother-in-law, the noble Honorat Riquetti, ‘one of the ancestors of
Mirabeau,’ as the record-keeper of the Hautes Alpes informs us.[540]
There are certainly few names we might be more surprised at seeing
brought together than those of Farel and Mirabeau; and yet between
these two Frenchmen there are at least two points of contact: the power
of their eloquence, and the boldness of their reforms.
Farel did not return to Gap; had he done so, we may suppose how he
would have been received, from the reception given to him some years
later the particulars of which an archæologist has discovered in the
‘Annals of the Capuchins’ of Gap. Farel, already an old man, wishing
to preach the Gospel in his native country before God summoned him
from the world, went and took up his quarters in a corn-mill at the
gates of his native town, where he ‘dogmatised’ the peasants from a
French Bible, which he explained ‘in his fashion’--to use the words
of the Roman-catholic author. Erelong he began to preach in the very
heart of the town, in a chapel dedicated to St. Colomba. The magistrate
forbade his speaking, and the parliament of Grenoble desired ‘to have
him burnt,’ say the Capuchins. Farel replied by a formal refusal of
obedience; upon which the vice-bailiff, Benedict Olier, a zealous
catholic, escorted by several sergeants and police officers, proceeded
to the chapel where Farel was preaching. The door was shut; they
knocked, but nobody answered; they broke in, and found a considerable
throng; no one turned his head, all were listening greedily to the
reformer’s words. The officers of justice went straight to the pulpit;
Farel was seized, and with ‘the crime’ (the Bible) in his hand,
according to the forcible expression of the Capuchins, was led through
the crowd and shut up in prison. But the followers of the new doctrine
were already to be found in every class--in the workman’s garret,
in the tradesman’s shop, in the fortified mansion of the noble, and
sometimes even in the bishop’s palace. During the night the reformers,
either by force or stratagem, took the brave old man out of prison,
carried him to the ramparts, and let him down into the fields in a
basket. ‘Accomplices’ were waiting for him, and the preacher escaped
along with them.[541] Now let us return to the year 1526.
Berthold Haller, the reformer of Berne, invited Farel to Switzerland.
The Bernese possessed certain districts in Roman Switzerland where a
missionary speaking the French language was necessary. The invitations
of the pious Haller were repeated. If France is shut, Switzerland is
opening; Farel can hesitate no longer; God removes him from one of
these countries and calls him to the other; he will obey.
Farel, sadly grieved at the thought that his native country rejected
him, modestly departed from Strasburg, on foot, one day in the month
of December 1526; and, journeying up the Rhine, directed his steps
towards those Alpine districts of which he became one of the greatest
reformers.[542] He was on the road when the messenger of Toussaint and
Roussel arrived at Strasburg.... It was too late. His friends, knowing
that he was going to Berne, sent the letters after him, and it was
at Aigle, where Farel had set up as a schoolmaster, that he received
the invitation of the lords of La Marche. What shall he do? He might
return. Shall he put aside the call of God and of the lords of Berne
to follow that which the princes have sent him? There was a fierce
struggle in his soul. Was not France his birthplace? It was; but ...
it is too late! God has spoken, he said to himself; and though invited
by princes, Farel remained at the humble desk in his little school in
the small town of Aigle, situated between the majestic Dent du Midi
and the rugged glaciers of the Diablerets. Thus the reformer whom many
christians thought of for France was lost to her.
France was not, however, without resources; she still possessed
Berquin, whom some called her _Luther_; but while the exiles and the
prisoners had heard the hour of their deliverance strike, Berquin,
though treated with more consideration, was still deprived of his
liberty. Margaret was unwearied in her petitions to the king. She even
attempted to soften Montmorency; but the Romish theologians made every
attempt to counteract her influence. Friends and enemies were equally
of opinion that if Berquin were free, he would deal many a hard blow
at the hierarchy. At length, after an eight months’ struggle, Margaret
triumphed; Berquin left his prison in November 1526, just at the time
when Farel was leaving France.
The Duchess of Alençon’s gratitude immediately burst forth. Calling
Montmorency by a tenderer name than usual, she said: ‘I thank you, my
son, for the pleasure you have done me in the cause of poor Berquin.
You may say that you have taken me from prison, for I value it as a
favour done to myself.’[543] ... ‘My lord,’ she wrote to the king, ‘my
desire to obey your commands was already very great, but you have
doubled it by the charity you have been pleased to show towards poor
Berquin. He for whom he suffered will take pleasure in the mercy you
have shown his servant and yours for your honour; and the confusion of
those who have forgotten God will not be less than the perpetual glory
which God will give you.’[544]
As soon as Berquin was free he began to meditate on his great work,
which was to destroy the power of error. His liberation was not in his
eyes a simple deliverance from prison--it was a call. He cared little
(as Erasmus entreated him) to indulge in sweet repose on the banks of
the Somme; his earnest desire was to fight. He held that the life of a
christian man should be a continual warfare. No truce with Satan! Now,
to him, Satan was the Sorbonne, and he had no more doubts about the
victory than if the war were ended already. Berquin was universally
known, loved, and respected. To Farel’s decision and zeal he added a
knowledge of the world, which was then most necessary. Margaret clung
to him at least as much as to Roussel. It was generally thought among
christians that God had brought him forth from prison in order to set
him at the head of the Reform in France: Berquin himself thought so.
The friends of the Reformation rejoiced, and an important circumstance
increased their hopes.
Another joy was in store for Margaret. Francis perceived at last that
Henry VIII. preferred Anne Boleyn to his illustrious sister, whose maid
of honour she had formerly been. From that hour he no longer opposed
the wishes of the King of Navarre, and in November consented to his
union with Madame of Alençon.
On the 24th of January, 1527, a brilliant throng filled the chapel of
the palace of St. Germain, where the marriage of the king’s sister
was to be solemnised, and every mouth extolled the genius, grace,
and virtues of the princess. Margaret of France and Henry d’Albret
were united, and for a week there were magnificent tournaments.
Francis made very fine promises to the married pair. ‘Make your mind
easy,’ he said to Henry; ‘I will summon the emperor to restore your
kingdom of Navarre, and if he refuses, I will give you an army to
recover it.’[545] But not long after, this prince, when drawing up a
diplomatic paper by which he bound Charles V. to restore his two sons,
then hostages at Madrid, inserted this clause: ‘_Item_, the said king
promises not to assist or favour the King of Navarre in recovering his
kingdom, although he has married his beloved and only sister.’[546]
At that time Margaret was thinking of other things than earthly
kingdoms. At this solemn moment she turned her eyes towards eternity,
and poured out her heart on the bosom of a friend. ‘A thousand
chances may separate us from this world,’ she said to Madame de la
Rochefoucauld. ‘Whether we be near or far, in peace or in war, on
horseback or in our bed ... God takes and leaves whom he pleases.’[547]
The queen soon found that her lot was not all sunshine, and that Henry
d’Albret’s humour was not always the same. Her husband’s weakness urged
her to seek more earnestly ‘the heavenly lover,’ as she said to Madame
de la Rochefoucauld; and the splendid wedding, which was long talked
of, made her desire the better marriage. It was then she wrote:
Would that the day were come, O Lord,
So much desired by me,
When by the cords of heavenly love
I shall be drawn to thee!
United in eternal life,
The husband thou, and I the wife.
That wedding-day, O Lord,
My heart so longs to see,
That neither wealth, nor fame, nor rank
Can pleasure give to me.
To me the world no more
Can yield delight.
Unless thou, Lord, be with me there ...
Lo! all is dark as night.[548]
Prayer did not constitute the sole happiness of the new queen:
activity, charity, an eagerness to help others, did not bring her less
pleasure. By her marriage she acquired more liberty to protect the
Reform. ‘All eyes are fixed on you,’ Capito wrote to her.[549] She
thought that Roussel her confessor, and Michael of Aranda her bishop,
were about to advance notably the kingdom of God, and rejoiced at
seeing these men of learning and morality pronounce daily more strongly
in favour of the truth.[550]
The world was at one of the great turning-points of its history; and
the friends of letters and of the Gospel said to themselves that
France, which had always been in the van of society during the middle
ages, would not now fall to the rear. Pure faith, they thought, would
penetrate every class, would renew the fountains of moral life, and
teach the people at once obedience and liberty. Placed between the
middle and the modern age, Francis I. would make the new times replace
the old in everything. All, in fact, was changing. Gothic architecture
gave way to the creations of the Renaissance; the study of the classic
authors took the place of the scholasticism of the universities; and
in the halls of the palace, mingled with nobles and priests, was seen
a crowd of new persons--philologers, archæologists, poets, painters,
and doctors of the Roman law. When the light was thus making its way
everywhere, would the Church alone remain closed against it? The
Renaissance had opened the gates to a new era; and the Reformation
would give the new generation the strength necessary to enter them.
But where was the man who could give to the world, and especially
wherever the French language was spoken, that strong and salutary
impulse? It was not Lefèvre, Roussel, Farel, or Berquin.... Who was it
then?
It is time that we should learn to know him.
CHAPTER VII.
CALVIN’S EARLY STUDIES AND EARLY STRUGGLES.
(1523-1527.)
The tendencies of an epoch are generally personified in some man whom
it produces, but who soon overrules these tendencies and leads them to
the goal which they could not otherwise have reached. To the category
of these eminent personages, of these great men, at once the children
and the masters of their age, the reformers have belonged. But whilst
the heroes of the world make the forces of their epoch the pedestal of
their own greatness, the men of God think only how they may be made
to subserve the greatness of their Master. The Reformation existed
in France, but the reformer was still unknown. Farel would have been
a powerful evangelist; but his country had rejected him, and, being
besides a man of battle, he was neither the doctor nor the guide which
the work of the sixteenth century required. A greater than Farel was
about to appear, and we shall proceed to watch his first steps in the
path along which he was afterwards to be the guide of many nations.
In the classes of the college of La Marche in Paris there were, in the
year 1526, a professor of about fifty, and a scholar of seventeen:
they were often seen together. The scholar, instead of playing with
his class-fellows, attached himself to his master during the hours of
recreation, and listened eagerly to his conversation. They were united
as a distinguished teacher and a pupil destined to become a great man
sometimes are. Their names were Mathurin Cordier and John Calvin.[551]
Mathurin was one of those men of ancient mould, who always prefer
the public good to their own interests and glory; and accordingly,
neglecting the brilliant career which lay before him, he devoted his
whole life to the education of children. Prior to Calvin’s arrival
at Paris, he had the head class in the college and taught it with
credit; but he was not satisfied; he would often pause in the middle
of his lessons, finding that his pupils possessed a mere superficial
knowledge of what they should have known thoroughly. Teaching, instead
of yielding him the pleasure for which he thirsted, caused him only
sorrow and disgust. ‘Alas!’ he said, ‘the other masters teach the
children from ambition and vain-glory, and that is why they are not
well grounded in their studies.’ He complained to the director of the
college. ‘The scholars who join the first class,’ he said, ‘bring up
nothing solid: they are puffed out only to make a show, so that I have
to begin teaching them all over again.’[552] Cordier therefore desired
to resign the first class and descend to the fourth, in order to lay
the foundations well.
He had just taken this humble department upon himself, when one day, in
the year 1523, he saw a boy entering his school, thin, pale, diffident
but serious, and with a look of great intelligence. This was John
Calvin, then only fourteen years old. At first he was shy and timid
in the presence of the learned professor; but the latter discovering
in him a scholar of a new kind, immediately became attached to him,
and took delight in developing his young and comprehensive intellect.
Gradually the apprehensions of the Noyon boy were dissipated, and
during the whole time he spent at college he enjoyed the instructions
of the master, ‘as a singular blessing from God.’ Accordingly, when
both of them, in after years, had been driven from France, and had
taken up their abode among the mountains of Switzerland, Calvin, then
one of the great doctors of Europe, loved to turn back with humility
to these days of his boyhood, and publicly displaying his gratitude,
he said to Cordier: ‘O Master Mathurin, O man gifted with learning
and great fear of God! when my father sent me to Paris, while still
a child, and possessing only a few rudiments of the Latin language,
it was God’s will that I should have you for my teacher, in order
that I might be directed in the true path and right mode of learning;
and having first commenced the course of study under your guidance,
I advanced so far that I can now in some degree profit the Church of
God.’[553]
At the time of Calvin’s admission to college, both master and pupil,
equally strangers to evangelical doctrine, devoutly followed the
exercises of the Romish worship. Doubtless Cordier was not satisfied
with teaching his favourite pupil Latin and Greek; he initiated him
also in that more general culture which characterised the Renaissance;
he imparted to him a certain knowledge of antiquity and of ancient
civilisation, and inspired him early with the ardour which animated
the classical school; but when Calvin says he was directed by Cordier
‘in the true path,’ he means the path of science, and not that of the
Gospel.
Some time after the scholar’s arrival, the director of the college,
perceiving him to be more advanced than his class-mates, determined
to remove him to a higher form. When Calvin heard of this, he could
not repress his sorrow, and gave way to one of those fits of anger
and ill-humour of which he never entirely cured himself. Never did
promotion cause such grief to a scholar. ‘Dear Master Mathurin,’ he
said, ‘this man, so thoughtless and void of judgment, who arranges my
studies at his will, or rather according to his silly fancy, will not
permit me to enjoy your instructions any longer; he is putting me too
soon into a higher class.... What a misfortune!’[554]
It was only a question of removing him, however, from one class to
another, and not, as some have supposed, to another college. Calvin,
while pursuing higher studies, still remained under the same roof
as Cordier. He ran to him in the intervals of his lessons; he hung
upon his lips, and during the whole time of his stay at La Marche, he
continued to profit by Cordier’s exquisite taste, pure latinity, vast
erudition, and admirable gifts in forming youth.
Yet the moment came when it was necessary to part. John Calvin had
told his professor that he was intended for a priest, according to the
arrangement of his father, who hoped that, thanks to the protection
of his powerful friends, his son would attain to high dignity in the
Church. The scholar must therefore enter one of the colleges appointed
for the training of learned priests. There were two of these in Paris:
the Sorbonne and the Montaigu,[555] and the last was chosen. One day,
therefore, in 1526, the moment arrived when the young man had to take
leave of the excellent Cordier. He was greatly distressed: he would be
separated from him, not only during the hours of study, but for long
days together. All through life his affectionate nature clung to those
who showed sympathy to him. He left his master with a heart overflowing
with gratitude. ‘The instruction and the training that you gave me,’
he said in after years, ‘have served me so well, that I declare with
truth, that I owe to you all the advancement which has followed. I
wish to render testimony of this to those who come after us, in order
that if they derive any profit from my writings, they may know that it
proceeds in part from you.’[556] God has often great masters in reserve
for great men. Cordier, the teacher, subsequently became the disciple
of his scholar, and in his turn thanked him, but it was for a divine
teaching of inestimable value.
When Calvin entered Montaigu College he was distressed, for he could
not hope to find there the master he had lost; yet he was eager and
happy at having a wider field of studies opening before him.
One of the first professors he noticed was a Spaniard,[557] who, under
a cold exterior, hid a loving heart, and whose grave and silent air
concealed deep affections. Calvin felt attracted towards him. The fame
of the young scholar had preceded him at Montaigu; and accordingly the
doctor from the Iberian peninsula fixed on him an attentive eye. Slow,
calm, and deliberate, as Spaniards generally are, he carefully studied
young Calvin, had several intimate conversations with him, and soon
passed from the greatest coldness to the liveliest affection. ‘What a
wonderful genius!’ he exclaimed.[558]
The professor had brought from Spain the fervent catholicism, the
minute observances, the blind zeal that characterise his nation.
The scholar of Noyon could not, therefore, receive from him any
evangelical knowledge; on the contrary, the Spaniard, delighted
at seeing his pupil ‘obstinately given to the superstitions of
popery,’[559] hoped that the young man would be a shining light in the
Church.
Calvin, full of admiration for the poets, orators, and philosophers
of antiquity, studied them eagerly and enriched his mind with their
treasures; in his writings we often meet with quotations from Seneca,
Virgil, and Cicero. He soon left all his comrades far behind. The
professor, who looked on him with surprise, promoted him to the
class of philosophy, although he had not attained the required
age.[560] Then a new world, the world of thought, opened before
his fine understanding; he traversed it with indefatigable ardour.
Logic, dialectics, and philosophy possessed for him an indescribable
charm.[561]
Calvin made many friends among his fellow-collegians; yet he soared
high above them all by the morality of his character. There was no
pedantry, no affectation about him; but when he was walking in the
courts of the college, or in the halls where the pupils assembled,
he could not witness their quarrels, their follies, their levity
of manner, and not reprove them faithfully. ‘He finds fault with
everything,’ complained a scholar of equivocal conduct. ‘Profit rather
by the advice of so young and conscientious a censor,’ answered the
wiser ones.[562] ‘Roman catholics whose testimony was beyond reproach,’
says Theodore Beza, ‘told me of this many years after, when his name
had become famous.’[563] ‘It is not the act alone,’ said Calvin
subsequently, ‘but the look, and even the secret longing, which make
men guilty.’--‘No man,’ says one of his adversaries, ‘ever felt so
great a hatred of adultery.’[564] In his opinion, chastity was the
crown of youth, and the centre of every virtue.
The heads of Montaigu College were enthusiastic supporters of
popery. Beda, so notorious for his violent declamations against the
Reformation, for his factious intrigues, and for his tyrannical
authority, was principal.[565] He watched with satisfaction young
Calvin, who, a strict observer of the practices of the Church, never
missed a fast, a retreat, a mass, or a procession. ‘It is a long time,’
it was said, ‘since Sorbonne or Montaigu had so pious a seminarist.’
As long as Luther, Calvin, and Farel were in the Papal Church, they
belonged to its strictest sect. The austere exercises of a devotee’s
life were the schoolmaster that brought them to Christ. ‘I was at that
time so obstinately given to the superstitions of popery,’ said Calvin,
‘that it seemed impossible that I should ever be pulled out of the deep
mire.’
He surprised his tutors no less by his application to study. Absorbed
in his books, he often forgot the hours for his meals and even for
sleep. The people who lived in the neighbourhood used to show each
other, as they returned home in the evening, a tiny and solitary gleam,
a window lit up nearly all the night through: they long talked of it
in that quarter. John Calvin outstripped his companions in philosophy,
as he had done in grammar. He then applied to the study of theology,
and, strange to say, was enraptured with Scotus, Bonaventure, and
Thomas Aquinas. The last-mentioned writer had especial charms for him.
If Calvin had not been a reformer, he would have become a Thomist.
Scholastics appeared to him the queen of sciences; but he was the
impassioned lover at first, only that he might be afterwards its
terrible adversary.
His father, secretary to the diocese of Noyon, always entertained the
hope of making his son a dignitary of the Church. With this object he
cultivated the favour of the bishop, and spoke humbly to the canons.
John had been for some years chaplain of La Gesine, but this did not
satisfy the father; and, accordingly, when the living of St. Martin of
Marteville became vacant, Gerard Cauvin solicited and, to his great
delight, obtained that church for the student of Montaigu, who, as
yet, had only received the tonsure. This was in the year 1527. Calvin,
taking advantage probably of vacation time, went to see his family and
his new parish. It has been supposed that he preached there. ‘Although
he had not yet taken orders,’ says Beda, ‘he delivered several sermons
before the people.’ Did he really go into the pulpits of his native
country at the time when his inward struggles were beginning? To have
heard him would have been a great satisfaction to his father, and his
age was no obstacle to his preaching; some great preachers have begun
still earlier. But it seems to us, after examining the passage, that
he did not speak in his own church until later, when the Gospel had
completely triumphed in his heart. But, however that may be, Calvin had
a parish at eighteen: he was not, however, in holy orders.
A new light, which had but little resemblance to the false radiance
of scholasticism, began to shine around him. At that time there was a
breath of the Gospel in the air, and that reviving breeze reached the
scholar within the walls of his college, and the monk in the recesses
of his convent; no one was protected against its influence. Calvin
heard people talking of the Holy Scriptures, of Lefèvre, of Luther, of
Melanchthon, and of what was passing in Germany. When the rays of the
sun rise in the Alps, it is the highest peaks that catch them first; in
like manner, the most eminent minds were enlightened first. But what
some accepted, others rejected. In the colleges there were sharp and
frequent altercations, and Calvin was at first in the number of the
most inflexible adversaries of the Reformation.
A young man of Noyon, his cousin, and a little older than him, often
went to see him at college. Pierre Robert Olivétan, without possessing
the transcendant genius of his young relation, was gifted with a solid
mind, great perseverance in the discharge of his duties, unshaken
fidelity to his convictions, and a holy boldness when it became
necessary to combat error. This he showed at Geneva, where his was
one of the first voices raised in favour of the Gospel. When Calvin
discovered that the friend of his childhood was tainted with heresy,
he felt the keenest sorrow. What a pity! he thought; for Olivétan was
acquainted not only with Latin, but with Greek and even Hebrew. He
read the Old and New Testaments in their original languages, and was
familiar with the Septuagint. The study of the Holy Scriptures, of
which Picardy seems to have been the birthplace in France (Lefèvre,
Olivétan, and Calvin were all three Picardins), had increased
considerably since Lefèvre’s translation was published. It is true that
most of those who engaged in it ‘looked at the Scriptures in a cursory
manner,’ says Calvin; ‘but others dug deep for the treasure that lay
hidden there.’ Of this number was Olivétan, and he it was who one day
gave to the people speaking the French tongue a translation of the
Scriptures that became famous in the history of the Bible.
The chronology of Calvin’s life during the period of his studies is
less easily settled than that of Luther. We have been able to point
out almost the very days when the most striking transformations of his
faith were completed in the reformer of Germany. It is not so with the
reformer of Geneva. The exact moment when this struggle, this defeat,
or that victory took place in Calvin’s soul, cannot be determined.
Must we therefore suppress the history of his spiritual combats? To
pass them over in silence would be to fail in the first duty of an
historian.[566]
Olivétan, who was then in all the fervour of proselytism, felt great
interest in his catholic cousin, while the latter would have wished
at any cost to bring back his friend into the bosom of the Church.
The two youthful Picardins had many long and animated conversations
together, in which each strove to convert the other.[567] ‘There are
many false religions,’ said Olivétan, ‘and only one true.’ Calvin
assented. ‘The false are those which men have invented, according to
which we are saved by our own works; the true is that which comes from
God, according to which salvation is given freely from on high....
Choose the true.’[568] Calvin made a sign of dissent. ‘True religion,’
continued Olivétan, ‘is not that infinite mass of ceremonies and
observances which the Church imposes upon its followers, and which
separate souls from Christ. O my dear friend! leave off shouting out
with the papists: “The fathers! the doctors! the Church!” and listen
instead to the prophets and apostles. Study the Scriptures.’[569] ‘I
will have none of your doctrines,’ answered Calvin; ‘their novelty
offends me. I cannot listen to you. Do you imagine that I have been
trained all my life in error?... No! I will strenuously resist your
attacks.’[570] In after years Calvin said: ‘My heart, hardened by
superstition, remained insensible to all these appeals.’ The two
cousins parted, little satisfied with each other. Calvin, terrified at
his friend’s innovations, fell on his knees in the chapels, and prayed
the saints to intercede for this misguided soul.[571] Olivétan shut
himself up in his chamber and prayed to Christ.
Yet Calvin, whose mind was essentially one of observation, could not
be present in the midst of the great movement going on in the world
without reflecting on truth, on error, and on himself. Oftentimes
when alone, and when the voices of men had ceased to be heard, a more
powerful voice spoke to his soul, and his chamber became the theatre
of struggles as fierce as those in the cell at Erfurth. Through the
same tempests both these great reformers reached the same haven. Calvin
arrived at faith by the same practical way which had led Farel and
Augustine, Luther and St. Paul.
The student of Montaigu, uneasy and troubled after his controversies
with his young relative, shut himself up in his little room and
examined himself; he asked himself what he was, and where he was
going.... ‘O Lord,’ he said, ‘thou knowest that I profess the christian
faith such as I learnt it in my youth.[572] ... And yet there is
something wanting.... I have been taught to worship thee as my only
God; but I am ignorant of the true worship I ought to give.[573] ... I
have been taught that thy Son has ransomed me by his death; ... but I
have never felt in my heart the virtue of this redemption.[574] I have
been taught that some day there will be a resurrection; but I dread it,
as the most terrible of days.[575] ... Where shall I find the light that
I need?... Alas! thy Word, which should enlighten thy people like a
lamp, has been taken from us.[576] ... Men talk in its place of a hidden
knowledge, and of a small number of initiates whose oracles we must
receive.... O God, illumine me with thy light!’
The superiors of Montaigu College began to feel some uneasiness about
their student. The Spanish professor, inclined, like his countrymen,
to the spirit of intolerance, saw with horror the young man, whose
devotion had charmed him at first, discontented with the traditional
religion, and ready perhaps to forsake it. Could the best of their
pupils fall into heresy?... The tutors entered into conversation with
Calvin, and, as yet full of affection for the young man, sought to
strengthen him in the Roman faith. ‘The highest wisdom of christians,’
they said, ‘is to submit blindly to the Church,[577] and their
highest dignity is the righteousness of their works.’[578]--‘Alas!’
replied Calvin, who was conscious of the guilt within him, ‘I am a
miserable sinner!’--‘That is true,’ answered the professors, ‘but
there is a means of obtaining mercy: it is by satisfying the justice
of God.[579] ... Confess your sins to a priest, and ask humbly for
absolution.... Blot out the memory of your offences by your good works,
and, if anything should still be wanting, supply it by the addition of
solemn sacrifices and purifications.’
When he heard these words, Calvin reflected that he who listens to a
priest listens to Christ himself. Being subdued, he went to church,
entered the confessional, fell on his knees, and confessed his sins
to God’s minister, asking for absolution and humbly accepting every
penance imposed upon him. And immediately, with all the energy of
his character, he endeavoured to acquire the merits demanded by his
confessor. ‘O God!’ he said, ‘I desire by my good works to blot out the
remembrance of my trespasses.[580] He performed the ‘satisfactions’
prescribed by the priest; he even went beyond the task imposed upon
him, and hoped that after so much labour he would be saved.... But,
alas! his peace was not of long duration. A few days, a few hours
perhaps, had not passed, when, having given way to a movement of
impatience or anger, his heart was again troubled: he thought he saw
God’s eye piercing to the depths of his soul and discovering its
impurities. ‘O God!’ he exclaimed in alarm, ‘thy glance freezes me
with terror.’[581] ... He hurried again to the confessional.--‘God is a
strict judge,’ the priest told him, ‘who severely punishes iniquity.
Address your prayers to the saints first.’[582] And Calvin, who,
in after years, branded as blasphemers those who invented ‘false
intercessors,’ invoked the saints and prayed them by their intercession
to appease a God who appeared to him so inexorable.
Having thus found a few moments of relief, he applied again to his
studies; he was absorbed in his books; he grew pale over Scotus and
Thomas Aquinas; but in the midst of his labours a sudden trouble took
possession of his mind, and pushing away from him the volumes that
lay before him, he exclaimed: ‘Alas! my conscience is still very far
from true tranquillity.’[583] His heart was troubled, his imagination
excited, he saw nothing but abysses on every side, and with a cry of
alarm he said: ‘Every time that I descend into the depths of my heart;
every time, O God, that I lift up my soul to thy throne, extreme terror
comes over me.[584] ... I see that no purification, no satisfaction can
heal my disease.[585] My conscience is pierced with sharp stings.’[586]
Thus step by step did Calvin descend to the lowest depths of despair;
and quite heartbroken, and looking like one dead, he resolved to
take no further pains about his salvation. He lived more with his
fellow-pupils, he even shared in their amusements; he visited his
friends in the city, sought such conversation as would divert his
thoughts, and desired, with the Athenians of old, either to tell or to
hear some new thing. Will the work of God, begun in his heart, remain
unperfected?
This year an event took place which could not fail to stir the depths
of Calvin’s soul.
CHAPTER VIII.
CALVIN’S CONVERSION AND CHANGE OF CALLING.
(1527.)
‘The kingdom of Christ is strengthened and established more by the
blood of martyrs than by force of arms,’ said the doctor of Noyon one
day.[587] At this period he had occasion to experience the truth of the
statement.
One day in the year 1527, a man thirty-six years old, of good
family--he was related to M. de Lude--of ecclesiastical rank,
prothonotary, and holding several benefices, Nicholas Doullon by name,
having been accused of heresy, stood in front of the cathedral of Notre
Dame, while an immense crowd of citizens, priests, and common people
were looking on. The executioner had gone in the morning to the prison,
stripped the prothonotary of his official robes, and having passed a
rope round his neck and put a taper in his hand, had conducted him in
this guise to the front of the church of the Virgin. The poor fellow
had seen better days: he had often gone to the palaces of the Louvre,
St. Germain, and Fontainebleau, and mingled with the nobles, in the
presence of the king, his mother, and his sister; he had also been
one of the officers of Clement VII. The good folks of Paris, whom this
execution had drawn together, said to one another as they witnessed the
sad spectacle: ‘He frequented the king’s court, and has lived at Rome
in the pope’s service.’[588]
Doullon was accused of having uttered a great blasphemy against the
glorious mother of our Lord and against our Lord himself: he had
denied that the host was very Christ. The clergy had taken advantage
of the king’s absence, and had used unprecedented haste in the trial.
‘He was taken the Thursday before,’ and four days later was standing
bareheaded and barefooted, with the rope about his neck, in front of
the metropolitan church of Paris. Everybody was listening to hear the
apology he would make to the Virgin; but they listened in vain: Doullon
remained firm in his faith to the last. Accordingly, the hangman again
laid hands on him, and the prothonotary, guarded by the sergeants, and
preceded and followed by the crowd, was led to the Grève, where he was
fastened to the stake and burnt alive.[589] The execution of a priest
of some dignity in the Church made a sensation in Paris, especially in
the schools and among the disciples of the Reform. ‘Ah!’ said Calvin
subsequently, ‘the torments of the saints whom the hand of the Lord
makes invincible, should give us boldness; for thus we have beforehand
the pledge of our victory in the persons of our brethren.’
While death was thinning the ranks of the evangelical army, new
soldiers were taking the place of those who had disappeared. Calvin
had been wandering for some time in darkness, despairing of salvation
by the path of the pope, and not knowing that of Jesus Christ. One day
(we cannot say when) he saw light breaking through the obscurity, and a
consoling thought suddenly entered his heart. ‘A new form of doctrine
has risen up,’ he said.[590] ‘If I have been mistaken ... if Olivétan,
if my other friends, if those who give their lives to preserve their
faith are right ... if they have found in that path the peace which
the doctrines of the priests refuse me?’ ... He began to pay attention
to the things that were told him; he began to examine into the state
of his soul. A ray of light shone into it and exposed his sin. His
heart was troubled: it seemed to him that every word of God he found in
Scripture tore off the veil and reproached him with his trespasses. He
shed floods of tears. ‘Of a surety,’ he said, ‘these new preachers know
how to prick the conscience.[591] Now that I am prepared to be really
attentive, I begin to see, thanks to the light that has been brought
me, in what a slough of error I have hitherto been wallowing;[592]
with how many stains I am disfigured ... and above all, what is the
eternal death that threatens me.’[593] A great trembling came over
him; he paced his room as Luther had once paced his cell at Erfurth.
He uttered (he tells us) deep groans and shed floods of tears.[594]
He was crushed beneath the weight of his sin. Terrified at the divine
holiness, like a leaf tossed by the wind, like a man frightened by a
violent thunderstorm, he exclaimed: ‘O God! thou keepest me bowed down,
as if thy bolts were falling on my head.’[595] ... Then he fell at the
feet of the Almighty, exclaiming: ‘I condemn with tears my past manner
of life, and transfer myself to thine. Poor and wretched, I throw
myself on the mercy which thou hast shown us in Jesus Christ: I enter
that only harbour of salvation.[596] ... O God, reckon not up against
me that terrible desertion and disgust of thy Word, from which thy
marvellous bounty has rescued me.’[597]
Following Olivétan’s advice, Calvin applied to the study of Scripture,
and everywhere he found Christ. ‘O Father!’ he said, ‘his sacrifice
has appeased thy wrath; his blood has washed away my impurities; his
cross has borne my curse; his death has atoned for me[598] .... We had
devised for ourselves many useless follies[599] ... but thou hast
placed thy Word before me like a torch, and thou hast touched my heart,
in order that I should hold in abomination all other merits save that
of Jesus.’[600]
Calvin had, however, the final struggle to go through. To him, as to
Luther, the great objection was the question of the Church. He had
always respected the authority of a Church which he believed to have
been founded by the apostles and commissioned to gather mankind round
Jesus Christ; and these thoughts often disturbed him. ‘There is one
thing,’ he told the evangelicals, ‘which prevents my believing you:
that is, the respect due to the Church.[601] The majesty of the Church
must not be diminished.[602] ... I cannot separate from it.’
Calvin’s friends at Paris, and afterwards perhaps Wolmar and others
at Orleans and Bourges, did not hesitate to reply to him.[603] ‘There
is a great difference between separating from the Church and trying
to correct the vices with which it is stained.[604] ... How many
antichrists have held the place in its bosom which belongs to the
pastors only!’
Calvin understood at last that the unity of the Church cannot and
ought not to exist except in the truth. His friends, perceiving this,
spoke openly to him against the Pope of Rome.--‘Men take him for
Christ’s vicar, Peter’s successor, and the head of the Church....
But these titles are empty scarecrows.[605] Far from permitting
themselves to be dazzled by these big words, the faithful ought to
discriminate the matter truly. If the pope has risen to such height
and magnificence, it is because the world was plunged in ignorance
and smitten with blindness.[606] Neither by the voice of God, nor by
a lawful call of the Church, has the pope been constituted its prince
and head; it is by his own authority and by his own will alone.... He
elected himself.[607] In order that the kingdom of Christ may stand,
the tyranny with which the pope oppresses the nations must come to an
end.’[608] Calvin’s friends, as he tells us, ‘demolished by the Word of
God the princedom of the pope and his exceeding elevation.’[609]
Calvin, not content with hearing the arguments of his friends,
‘searched the Scriptures thoroughly,’ and found numerous evidences
corroborating the things that had been told him. He was convinced.
‘I see quite clearly,’ he said, ‘that the true order of the Church
has been lost;[610] that the keys which should preserve discipline
have been counterfeited;[611] that christian liberty has been
overthrown;[612] and that when the princedom of the pope was set up,
the kingdom of Christ was thrown down.’[613] Thus fell the papacy in
the mind of the future reformer; and Christ became to him the only
king and almighty head of the Church.
What did Calvin then? The converted often believed themselves called
to remain in the Church that they might labour at its purification;
did he separate himself from Rome? Theodore Beza, his most intimate
friend, says: ‘Calvin, having been taught the true religion by one
of his relations named Pierre Robert Olivétan, and having carefully
read the holy books, began to hold the teaching of the Roman Church in
horror, and had the intention of renouncing its communion.’[614] This
testimony is positive; and yet Beza only says in this extract that he
‘had the intention.’ The separation was not yet decided and absolute.
Calvin felt the immense importance of the step. However, he resolved to
break with Catholicism, if necessary, in order to possess the truth.
‘I desire concord and unity, O Lord,’ he said; ‘but the unity of the
Church I long for is that which has its beginning and its ending in
thee.[615] If, to have peace with those who boast of being the first in
the Church, I must purchase it by denying the truth ... then I would
rather submit to everything than condescend to such an abominable
compact!’ The reformer’s character, his faith, his decision, his whole
life are found in these words. He will endeavour to remain in the
Church, but ... with the truth.
Calvin’s conversion had been long and slowly ripening; and yet, in one
sense, the change was instantaneous. ‘When I was the obstinate slave
of the superstitions of popery,’ he says, ‘and it seemed impossible to
drag me out of the deep mire, God by a sudden conversion subdued me,
and made my heart obedient to his Word.’[616] When a city is taken,
it is in one day and by a single assault that the conqueror enters
and plants his flag upon the ramparts; and yet for months, for years
perhaps, he has been battering at the walls.
Thus was this memorable conversion accomplished, which by saving one
soul became for the Church, and we may even say for the human race,
the principle of a great transformation. Then, it was only a poor
student converted in a college; now, the light which this scholar set
on a candlestick has spread to the ends of the world, and elect souls,
scattered among every nation, acknowledge in his conversion the origin
of their own.
It was in Paris, as we have seen, that Calvin received a new birth;
it cannot be placed later, as some have wished to do, without
contradicting the most positive testimony. Calvin, according to
Theodore Beza, was instructed in the true religion by Olivétan,
_before_ he went to Orleans;[617] we know, moreover, that Calvin,
either at Bourges or at Orleans, ‘wonderfully advanced the kingdom of
God.’[618] How could he have done so if he had not known that kingdom?
Calvin at the age of nineteen, gifted with a deep and conscientious
soul, surrounded by relations and friends zealous for the Gospel,
living at Paris in the midst of a religious movement of great power,
was himself touched by the Spirit of God. Most certainly everything
was not done then; some of the traits, which we have indicated after
the reformer himself, may, as we have already remarked, belong to his
residence at Orleans or at Bourges; but the essential work was done in
1527. Such is the conclusion at which we have arrived after careful
study.
There are men in our days who look upon conversion as an imaginary act,
and say simply that a man has changed his opinion. They freely grant
that God can create a moral being once, but do not concede him the
liberty of creating it a second time--of transforming it. Conversion is
always the work of God. There are forces working in nature which cause
the earth to bring forth its fruit; and yet some would maintain that
God cannot work in the heart of man to create a new fruit!... Human
will is not sufficient to explain the changes manifested in man; there,
if anywhere, is found something mysterious and divine.
The young man did not immediately make his conversion publicly known;
it was only one or two of his superiors that had any knowledge of his
struggles, and they endeavoured to hide them from the pupils. They
fancied it was a mere passing attack of that _fever_ under which so
many people were suffering, and believed that the son of the episcopal
secretary would once more obediently place himself under the crook
of the Church. The Spanish professor, who came from a country where
fiery passions break out under a burning sky, and where religious
fanaticism demands its victims, had doubtless waged an implacable war
against the student’s new convictions; but information in this respect
is wanting. Calvin carefully hid his treasure; he stole away from his
companions, retired to some corner, and sought for communion with God
alone. ‘Being naturally rather wild and shy,’ he tells us,[619] ‘I have
always loved peace and tranquillity; accordingly I began then to seek
for a hiding-place and the means of withdrawing from notice into some
out-of-the-way spot.’ This reserve on Calvin’s part may have led to the
belief that his conversion did not take place until later.
The news of what was passing in Paris reached the little town in
Picardy where Calvin was born. It would be invaluable to possess the
letters which he wrote to his father during this time of struggle, and
even those of Olivétan; but we have neither. John’s relations with
Olivétan were known at Noyon; there was no longer any doubt about the
heretical opinions of the young curé of St. Martin of Motteville....
What trouble for his family, and especially for the episcopal notary!
To renounce the hope of one day seeing his son vicar-general, bishop,
and perhaps cardinal, was distressing to the ambitious father. Yet
he decided promptly, and as it was all-important for him that Calvin
should be something, he gave another direction to his immoderate thirst
for honours. He said to himself that by making his son study the law,
he would perhaps be helping him to shake off these new ideas; and that,
in any case, the pursuit of the law was quite as sure a road, and
even surer, to wealth and high station.[620] Duprat, at first a plain
lawyer, and afterwards president of the parliament, is now (he thought)
high chancellor of France, and the first personage in the realm after
the king. Gerard, whose mind was fertile in schemes of success for
himself and for others, continued to build his castles in the air in
honour of his son; only he changed his sphere, and instead of placing
them in the domain of the Church, he erected them in the domain of the
State.
Thus, while the son had a new faith and a new life, the father had
a new plan. Theodore Beza has pointed out this coincidence. After
speaking of Calvin’s vocation to the ecclesiastical profession, he
adds that a double change, which took place at that time in the minds
of both father and son, led to the setting aside of this resolution
in favour of another.[621] The coincidence struck Calvin himself, and
it was he no doubt who pointed it out to his friend at Geneva. It was
not therefore the resolution of Gerard Cauvin that decided his son’s
calling, as some have supposed. At the first glance the two decisions
seem independent of each other; but it appears probable to me that it
was the change in the son which led to that of the father, and not
the change in the father which led to that of the son. The young man
submitted with joy to the order he received. Gerard, by taking his son
from his theological studies, wished to withdraw him from heresy; but
he was mistaken. Had not Luther first studied the law at Erfurth? Did
not Calvin by this same study prepare himself better for the career of
a reformer, than by the priesthood?
Conversion is the fundamental act of the Gospel and of the Reformation.
From the transformation effected in the individual the transformation
of the world is destined to result. This act, which in some is of very
short duration and leads readily to faith, is a long operation in
others; the power of sin is continually renewed in them, neither the
new man nor the old man being able, for a time, to obtain a decisive
victory. We have here an image of christianity. It is a struggle of
the new man against the old man--a struggle that has lasted more than
eighteen hundred years. The new man is continually gaining ground;
the old man grows weaker and retires; but the hour of triumph has not
yet come. Yet that hour is certain. The Reformation of the sixteenth
century, like the Gospel of the first (to employ the words of Christ),
‘is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of
meal, _until the whole was leavened_.’[622] The three great nations on
earth have already tasted of this heavenly leaven. It is fermenting,
and soon all the ‘lump’ will be leavened.
CHAPTER IX.
BERQUIN DECLARES WAR AGAINST POPERY.
(1527.)
Will the reformer whom God is now preparing for France find in Francis
I. the support which Luther found in Frederick the Wise? Since his
return from captivity in Spain, the king, as we have seen, appeared
to yield to the influence of his sister and to the movement of the
age. Slightly touched by the new breath, he sometimes listened to the
sermons of the evangelicals, and read fragments of the Holy Scriptures
with Margaret. One day, when the beauty of the Gospel had spoken to his
heart, he exclaimed: ‘It is infamous that the monks should dare to call
that _heresy_ which is the very doctrine of God!’ But the Reformation
could not please him; liberty, which was one of its elements, clashed
with the despotism of the prince; and holiness, another principle,
condemned his irregularities.
Opposition to popery had, however, a certain charm for Francis,
whose supreme rule it was to lower everything that encroached upon
his greatness. He well remembered that the popes had more than once
humbled the kings of France, and that Clement VII. was habitually in
the interest of the emperor. But political motives will never cause a
real Reformation; and hence there are few princes who have contributed
so much as Francis I. to propagate superstition instead of truth,
servility instead of liberty, licentiousness instead of morality. If
the Word of God does not exercise its invisible power on the nations,
they are by that very defect deprived of the conditions necessary
to the maintenance of order and liberty. They may shine forth with
great brilliancy, but they pass easily from disorder to tyranny. They
are like a stately ship, decorated with the most glorious banners,
and armed with the heaviest artillery; but as it wants the necessary
ballast, it drives between two extreme dangers, now dashing against
Scylla, and now tossed upon Charybdis.
While Francis I. was trifling with the Reform, other powers in France
remained its irreconcilable enemies. The members of the parliament,
honourable men for the most part, but lawyers still, unable to
recognise the truth (and few could in those days) that spiritual
matters were not within their jurisdiction, did not confine themselves
to judging temporal offences, but made themselves the champions of the
law of the realm against the law of God. The doctors of the Sorbonne,
on their part, seeing that the twofold authority of Holy Scripture and
of conscience would ruin theirs, opposed with all their strength the
substitution of the religious for the clerical element. ‘They inveighed
against the reformers,’ says Roussel, ‘and endeavoured to stir up
the whole world against them.’[623] The more the king inclined to
peace, the more the Sorbonne called for war, counting its battalions
and preparing for the fight. The general placed at its head was,
Erasmus tells us, ‘a many-headed monster, breathing poison from every
mouth.’[624] Beda--for he was the monster--taking note of the age of
Lefèvre, the weakness of Roussel, the absence of Farel, and not knowing
Calvin’s power, said to himself that Berquin would be the Luther of
France, and against him he directed all his attacks.
Louis de Berquin, who was liberated by the king, in November 1526,
from the prison into which the Bedists had thrown him, had formed the
daring plan of rescuing France from the hands of the pope. He was then
thirty years of age, and possessed a charm in his character, a purity
in his life, which even his enemies admired, unwearied application in
study, indomitable energy, obstinate zeal, and firm perseverance for
the accomplishment of his work. Yet there was one fault in him. Calvin,
like Luther, proceeded by the positive method, putting the truth in
front, and in this way seeking to effect the conversion of souls; but
Berquin inclined too much at times to the negative method. Yet he was
full of love, and having found in God a father, and in Jesus a saviour,
he never contended with theologians, except to impart to souls that
peace and joy which constituted his own happiness.
Berquin did not move forward at hazard; he had calculated everything.
He had said to himself that in a country like France the Reformation
could not be carried through against the king’s will; but he thought
that Francis would allow the work to be done, if he did not do it
himself. When he had been thrust into prison in 1523, had not the king,
then on his way to Italy, sent the captain of the guards to fetch him,
in order to save his life?[625] When in 1526 he had been transferred as
a heretic by the clerical judges to lay judges, had not Francis once
more set him at liberty?[626]
But Berquin’s noble soul did not suffer the triumph of truth to depend
upon the support of princes. A new era was then beginning. God was
reanimating society which had lain torpid during the night of the
middle ages, and Berquin thought that God would not be wanting to the
work. It is a saying of Calvin’s ‘that the brightness of the divine
power alone scatters all silly enchantments and vain imaginations.’
Berquin did not distinguish this truth so clearly, but he was not
ignorant of it. At the same time, knowing that an army never gains a
victory unless it is bought with the deaths of many of its soldiers, he
was ready to lay down his life.
At the moment when he was advancing almost alone to attack the
colossus, he thought it his duty to inform his friends: ‘Under the
cloak of religion,’ he wrote to Erasmus, ‘the priests hide the vilest
passions, the most corrupt manners, the most scandalous unbelief. We
must tear off the veil that conceals this hideous mystery, and boldly
brand the Sorbonne, Rome, and all their hirelings, with impiety.’
At these words his friends were troubled and alarmed; they endeavoured
to check his impetuosity. ‘The greater the success you promise
yourself,’ wrote Erasmus, ‘the more afraid I am.... O my friend! live
in retirement; taste the sweets of study, and let the priests rage at
their leisure. Or, if you think they are plotting your ruin, employ
stratagem. Let your friends at court obtain some embassy for you
from the king, and under that pretext leave France.[627] Think, dear
Berquin, think constantly what a hydra you are attacking, and by how
many mouths it spits its venom. Your enemy is immortal, for a faculty
never dies. You will begin by attacking three monks only; but you will
raise up against you numerous legions, rich, mighty, and perverse. Just
now the princes are for you; but backbiters will contrive to alienate
their affection. As for me, I declare I will have nothing to do with
the Sorbonne and its armies of monks.’
This letter disturbed Berquin. He read it again and again, and each
time his trouble increased. He an ambassador ... he the representative
of the king at foreign courts! Ah! when Satan tempted Christ he offered
him the kingdoms of this world. Better be a martyr on the Grève for
the love of the Saviour! Berquin separated from Erasmus. ‘His spirit,’
said his friends, ‘resembles a palm-tree; the more you desire to bend
it, the straighter it grows.’ A trifling circumstance contributed to
strengthen his decision.
One day Beda, syndic of the Sorbonne, went to court, where he had
some business to transact with the king on behalf of that body. Some
time before, he had published a refutation of the ‘Paraphrases and
Annotations’ of Erasmus, and Francis I., who boasted of being a pupil
of this king of letters, having heard of Beda’s attack, had given way
to a fit of passion. As soon, therefore, as he heard that Beda was
in the palace, he gave orders that he should be arrested and kept
prisoner. Accordingly the syndic was seized, shut up in a chamber, and
closely watched. Beda was exasperated, and the hatred he felt against
the Reformation was turned against the king. Some of his friends, on
hearing of this strange adventure, conjured Francis to set him at
liberty. He consented on the following day, but on condition that the
syndic should appear when called for.[628]
The Sorbonne, said Berquin to himself, represents the papacy. It must
be overthrown in order that Christ may triumph. He began first to
study the writings of Beda, who had so bitterly censured those of his
adversaries, and extracted from them twelve propositions ‘manifestly
impious and blasphemous’ in the opinion of Erasmus. Then, taking
his manuscript, he proceeded to court and presented it to the king,
who said: ‘I will interdict Beda’s polemical writings.’ As Francis
smiled upon him, Berquin resolved to go further, namely, to attack
the Sorbonne and popery, as equally dangerous to the State and to the
Church, and to make public certain doctrines of theirs which struck at
the power of the throne. He approached the king, and said to him in
a lower tone: ‘Sire, I have discovered in the acts and papers of the
Sorbonne certain secrets of importance to the State ... some mysteries
of iniquity.’[629] Nothing was better calculated to exasperate Francis
I. ‘Show me those passages,’ he exclaimed. Meantime he told the
reformer that the twelve propositions of the syndic of the Sorbonne
should be examined. Berquin left the palace full of hope. ‘I will
follow these redoubtable hornets into their holes,’ he said to his
friends. ‘I will fall upon these insensate babblers, and scourge them
on their own dunghill.’ Some people who heard him thought him out of
his mind. ‘This gentleman will certainly get himself put to death,’
they said, ‘and he will richly deserve it.’[630]
Everything seemed to favour Berquin’s design. Francis I. was acting
the part of Frederick the Wise: he seemed even more ardent than that
moderate protector of Luther. On the 12th of July, 1527, the Bishop
of Bazas appeared at court, whither he had been summoned by the king.
Francis gave him the twelve famous propositions he had received
from Berquin, and commanded him to take them to the rector of the
university, with orders to have them examined, not only by doctors of
divinity, of whom he had suspicions in such a matter,[631] but by the
four assembled faculties. Berquin hastened to report this to Erasmus,
still hoping to gain him over by the good news.
Erasmus had never before felt so alarmed; he tried to stop Berquin
in his ‘mad’ undertaking. The eulogies which this faithful christian
lavished upon him particularly filled him with terror; he would a
thousand times rather they had been insults. ‘The love which you show
for me,’ he wrote to Berquin, ‘stirs up unspeakable hatred against me
everywhere. The step you have taken with the king will only serve
to irritate the hornets. You wish for a striking victory rather than
a sure one; your expectations will be disappointed; the Bedists are
contriving some atrocious plot.[632] ... Beware!... Even should your
cause be holier than that of Christ himself, your enemies have resolved
to put you to death. You say that the king protects you ... do not
trust to that; the favour of princes is short-lived. You do not care
for your life, you add; good! but think at least of learning, and of
our friends who, alas! will perish with you.’
Berquin was grieved at this letter. In his opinion the moment was
unparalleled. If Erasmus, Francis I., and Berquin act in harmony, no
one can resist them; France, and perhaps Europe, will be reformed. And
it is just when the King of France is stretching out his hand that
the scholar of Rotterdam draws his back!... What can be done without
Erasmus?... A circumstance occurred, however, which gave some hope to
the evangelist.
The Sorbonne, little heeding the king’s opposition, persevered in their
attacks upon learning. They forbade the professors in the colleges to
read the ‘Colloquies’ of Erasmus with their pupils, and excommunicated
the king of the schools in the schools themselves.... Erasmus, who
was a vain, susceptible, choleric man, will now unite with Berquin:
the latter had no doubt of it. ‘The time is come,’ wrote Berquin to
the illustrious scholar; ‘let us pull off the mask behind which these
theologians hide themselves.’ But the more Berquin urged Erasmus, the
more Erasmus shrank back; he wished for peace at any cost. It was of
no use to point to the blows which the Sorbonne were aiming at him;
it pleased him to be beaten, not from meekness, but from fear of the
world. The wary man, who was now growing old, became impatient, not
against his slanderers, but against his friend. His ‘son’ wanted to
lead him as if he were his master. He replied with sadness, almost
with bitterness: ‘Truly I admire you, my dear Berquin. You imagine,
then, that I have nothing else to do than spend my days in battling
with theologians.... I would rather see all my books condemned to the
flames than go fighting at my age.’ Unhappily, Erasmus did not abandon
his books only, he abandoned truth; and there he was wrong. Berquin did
not despair of victory, and undertook to win it unaided. He thought
to himself: ‘Erasmus admires in the Gospel a certain harmony with the
wisdom of antiquity, but he does not adore in it the foolishness of the
cross; he is a theorist, not a reformer.’ From that hour Berquin wrote
more rarely and more coldly to his illustrious master, and employed
all his strength to carry by main force the place he was attacking. If
Erasmus, like Achilles, had retired to his tent, were not Margaret and
Francis, and Truth especially, fighting by his side?
The catholic party grew alarmed, and resolved to oppose a vigorous
resistance to these attacks. The watchword was given. Many libels
were circulated; men were threatened with the gaol and the stake;
even ghosts were conjured up; all means were lawful. One sister Alice
quitted the fires of purgatory and appeared on the banks of the Rhone
and Saone to confound ‘the damnable sect of heretics.’ Any one might
read of this prodigy in the ‘Marvellous History of the Ghost of Lyons,’
written by one of the king’s almoners. The Sorbonne knew, however, that
phantoms were not sufficient; but they had on their side something more
than phantoms. They could oppose Berquin with adversaries who had flesh
and blood like himself, and whose power seemed irresistible. These
adversaries were a princess and a statesman.
CHAPTER X.
EFFORTS OF DUPRAT TO BRING ABOUT A PERSECUTION: RESISTANCE OF FRANCIS I.
(1527-1528.)
A woman reigned in the councils of the king. Inclined at first to
ridicule the monks, she had after the defeat of Pavia gone over to the
side of the priests. At the moment when the kingly authority received
such a blow, she had seen that their power remained, and had made them
her auxiliaries. This woman was Louisa of Savoy, Duchess of Angoulême,
mother of Francis I., worthy predecessor of Catherine de’ Medici. A
clever woman, ‘an absolute lady in her wishes both good and bad,’
says Pasquier; a freethinker, who could study the new doctrine as a
curiosity, but who despised it; a dissolute woman, of whom Beaucaire,
Brantôme, and others relate many scandalous anecdotes; a fond and
absolute mother, who all her life preserved an almost sovereign
authority over her son,--Louisa held in her hand two armies which she
managed at will. One of these was composed of her maids of honour, by
whose means she introduced into the court of France gallantry, scandal,
and even indecency of language; the other was formed of intelligent,
crafty men, who had no religion, no morality, no scruples; and at their
head was Duprat.
The latter was the patron upon whom the Sorbonne thought they could
rely. Enterprising and systematic, at once supple and firm, slavish
and tyrannical, an intriguer and debauchee, often exasperated, never
discouraged, ‘very clever, knowing, and subtle,’ says the _Bourgeois de
Paris_; ‘one of the most pernicious men that ever lived,’ says another
historian:[633] Duprat sold offices, ground the people down, and if any
of them remonstrated against his disorders, he sent the remonstrants to
the Bastille.[634] This man, who was archbishop of Sens and cardinal,
and who aspired to be made legate _a latere_, having become a prince of
the Roman Church, placed at its service his influence, his iron will,
and even his cruelty.
But nothing could be done without the king. Louisa of Savoy and the
cardinal, knowing his fickleness and his love of pleasure, and knowing
also that in religious matters he cared only for pomp and ceremony,
hoped to induce him easily to oppose the Reformation. Yet Francis
hesitated and even resisted. He pretended to have a great taste for
letters, of which the Gospel, in his eyes, formed part. He yielded
willingly to his sister, who pleaded warmly the cause of the friends of
the Gospel. He detested the arrogance of the priests. The boldness with
which they put forward ultramontane ideas; set another power (the power
of the pope) above his; attacked his ideas in conversations, pamphlets,
and even in the pulpit; their restless character, their presumptuous
confidence in the triumph of their cause,--all this irritated one of
the most susceptible monarchs that ever reigned; and he was pleased at
seeing a man like Berquin take down the boasting of the clergy.
Yet it may well be that the king was influenced by higher motives. He
saw the human mind displaying a fresh activity in every direction.
The literary, the philosophical, the political, the religious world
were all undergoing important transformations in the first half of
the sixteenth century. In the midst of all these different movements,
Francis I. may have sometimes had a confused feeling that there was one
which was the mainspring, the dominant fact, the generating principle,
and, if I may use the words, the _fiat lux_ of the new creation. He saw
that the Reformation was the great force then acting in the world; that
all others were subordinate to it; that to it belonged, according to
an ancient prophecy, _the gathering of the people_;[635] and in these
moments, when his sight was clear, he wished to join himself to that
invisible power which was effecting more than all the other powers.
Unfortunately his passions soon disturbed his sight, and after having
caught a glimpse of the day, he plunged back again into night.
As for Duprat he felt no hesitation; he resolutely put himself on the
side of darkness, impelled by ambition and covetousness: he was always
with the ultramontanists. The struggle was about to begin between the
better aspirations of the king and the plots of the court of Rome.
It was hard to say with which of these two powers the victory would
ultimately remain. The chancellor-cardinal had, however, no doubt about
it; he arranged the attack with skill, and thought he had hit upon a
way, as vile as it was sure, of checking the Reform.
The king had to provide for the heavy charges which the treaty of
Madrid imposed upon him, and he had no money. He applied to the clergy.
‘Good!’ said they; ‘let us take advantage of the opportunity given us.’
They furnished 1,300,000 livres, but demanded in return, according to
Duprat’s suggestion, that his Majesty ‘should extirpate the damnable
and insupportable Lutheran sect which some time since had secretly
crept into the kingdom.’[636] The king, who wanted money, would be
ready to grant everything in order to fill his coffers; it seemed,
then, that all was over not only with Berquin, but with the Reformation.
Margaret, who was then at Fontainebleau with the King of Navarre,
heard of the demand the clergy had made to the king, and trembled
lest Francis should deliver up her friends to the persecutions of the
cardinal. She immediately endeavoured to exercise over her brother that
influence to which in those days he yielded readily. She succeeded:
the king, although putting the contribution of the clergy into his
treasury, did not order ‘the extirpation of the Lutheran heresy.’
Yet Margaret did not feel secure. She experienced the keenest anguish
at the thought of the danger which threatened the Gospel.
True God of heaven, give comfort to my soul!
she said in one of her poems. Her soul was comforted. The aged Lefèvre,
who was at that time translating the Bible and the homilies of
St. Chrysostom on the Acts of the Apostles, and teaching his young
pupil, the Duke of Angoulême, to learn the Psalms of David by heart,
rekindled her fire, and with his failing voice strengthened her in
the faith. ‘Do not be afraid,’ he said; ‘the election of God is very
mighty.’[637]--‘Let us pray in faith,’ said Roussel; ‘the main thing
is that faith should accompany our prayers.’ The friends at Strasburg
entreated Luther to strengthen her by some good letter. As soon as
Erasmus heard of the danger which the Gospel ran, he was moved, and,
with the very pen with which he had discouraged Berquin, he wrote:
‘O queen, still more illustrious by the purity of your life than by the
splendour of your race and of your crown, do not fear! He who works
everything for the good of those whom he loves, knows what is good for
us, and, when he shall judge fit, will suddenly give a happy issue
to our affairs.[638] It is when human reason despairs of everything
that the impenetrable wisdom of God is made manifest in all its glory.
Nothing but what is happy can befall the man who has fixed the anchor
of his hopes on God. Let us place ourselves wholly in his hands. But
what am I doing?... I know, Madame, that it is not necessary to excite
you by powerful incentives, and that we ought rather to thank you for
having protected from the malice of wicked men sound learning and all
those who sincerely love Jesus Christ.’[639]
The queen’s condition tended erelong to give a new direction to her
thoughts. She hoped for a daughter, and often spoke about it in her
letters. This daughter was indeed given her, and she became the most
remarkable woman of her age. Calm and somewhat dejected, Margaret,
who was then living alone in the magnificent palace of Fontainebleau,
sought diversion in the enjoyment of the beauties of nature, during her
daily walks in the park and the forest. ‘My condition,’ she wrote on
the 27th of September, 1527, ‘does not prevent my visiting the gardens
twice a day, where I am wonderfully at my ease.’ She walked slowly,
thinking of the child about to be given her, and rejoicing in the light
of the sun. Then reverting to him who held the chief place in her
heart, she called to mind the true sun (Jesus Christ), and, grieving
that his rays did not enlighten the whole of France, exclaimed:
O truth, unknown save to a few,
No longer hide thyself from view
Behind the cloud, but bursting forth
Show to the nations all thy worth.
Good men thy coming long to see,
And sigh in sad expectancy.
Descend, Lord Jesus, quickly come,
And brighten up this darkling gloom;
Show us how vile and poor we are,
And take us, Saviour, to thy care.[640]
It seems that Margaret’s presence near the king checked the
persecutors; but she was soon compelled to leave the field open. The
time of her confinement drew near. Henry d’Albret had not visited Bearn
since his marriage; perhaps he desired that his child should be born in
the castle of Pau. In October 1527 the King and Queen of Navarre set
out for their possessions in the Pyrenees.[641] On the 7th of January,
two months later, Jeanne d’Albret was born; the statement that she was
born at Fontainebleau or at Blois is a mistake.
The Queen of Navarre had hardly left for Bearn, when Duprat and the
Sorbonne endeavoured to carry their cruel plans into execution. Among
the number of the gentlemen of John Stuart, Duke of Albany, was a
nobleman of Poitou named De la Tour. The Duke of Albany, a member of
the royal family of Scotland, had been regent of that kingdom, and De
la Tour had lived with him in Edinburgh, where he had made the most of
his time. ‘When the lord duke was regent of Scotland,’ people said,
‘the Sieur de la Tour sowed many Lutheran errors there.’[642] This
French gentleman must therefore have been one of the earliest reformers
in Scotland. He showed no less zeal at Paris than at Edinburgh, which
greatly displeased the priests. Moreover, the Duke of Albany, who
was in high favour with the king, was much disliked by the ambitious
chancellor. An indictment was drawn up; Francis I., whose good genius
was no longer by his side, shut his eyes; De la Tour and his servant,
an evangelical like himself, were condemned by the parliament for
heresy. On the 27th of October these two pious christians were bound in
the same cart and led slowly to the pig-market to be burnt alive. When
the cart stopped, the executioners ordered the servant to get down. He
did so and stood at the cart’s tail. They stripped off his clothes,
and flogged him so long and so severely that the poor wretch declared
that he ‘repented.’ Some little mercy was consequently shown him, and
they were content to cut out his tongue. They hoped by this means to
shake De la Tour’s firmness; but though deeply moved, he raised his
eyes to heaven, vowed to God that he would remain true to him, and
immediately an ineffable joy replaced the anguish by which he had been
racked. He was burnt alive.
Margaret must have heard at Pau of the death of the pious De la Tour;
but however that may be, she left for Paris immediately after her
delivery, giving her people orders to make haste. What was it that
recalled her so promptly to the capital? Was it the news of some danger
threatening the Gospel? A council was about to assemble at Paris; did
she desire to be at hand to ward off the blows aimed at her friends?
That is the reason given by one historian.[643] ‘She had determined to
make haste,’ and, her confinement scarcely over, this weak and delicate
princess, urging her courier to press on, crossed the sands and marshes
of the Landes. In a letter from Barbezieux, she complains of the bad
roads by which her carriage was so roughly jolted. ‘I can find nothing
difficult, nor any stage wearisome. I hope to be at Blois in ten
days.’[644]
It was time. De la Tour’s death had satisfied neither the chancellor
nor the Sorbonne. They desired ‘the extirpation of heresy,’ and not
merely the death of a single heretic. Not having succeeded by means
of the clergy tax, they were determined to strive for it in another
manner. Duprat listened to the reports, and took note of what he
observed in the streets. Nothing annoyed him so much as hearing of
laymen, and even women, who turned away their heads as they passed the
churches, slipped into lonely streets, met in cellars or in garrets,
where persons who had not received holy orders prayed aloud and read
the Holy Scriptures. Had he not in 1516 abrogated the pragmatic
sanction and stripped the Gallican Church of its liberties? Would he
not, therefore, succeed with far less trouble in sacrificing this new
and free Church, a poor and contemptible flock? As a provincial council
was to be held at Paris, Duprat resolved to take advantage of it to
strike a decisive blow.
On the 28th of February, 1528, the council was opened. The
cardinal-archbishop having gone thither in great pomp, rose and spoke
amid dead silence: ‘Sirs, a terrible pestilence, stirred up by Martin
Luther, has destroyed the orthodox faith. A tempest has burst upon
the bark of St. Peter, which, tossed by the winds, is threatened with
dreadful shipwreck.[645] ... There is no difference between Luther and
Manichæus.... And yet, reverend fathers, his adherents multiply in our
province; they hold secret conventicles in many places; they unite with
laymen in the most private chambers of the houses;[646] they discuss
the catholic faith with women and fools.’ ...
It will be seen that it was not heresy, properly so called, that the
chancellor condemned in the Reformation, but liberty. A religion which
was not exclusively in the hands of priests was, in his eyes, more
alarming than heresy. If such practices were tolerated, would they not
one day see gentlemen, shopkeepers, and even men sprung from the ranks
of the people, presuming to have something to say in matters of state?
The germ of the constitutional liberties of modern times lay hid in the
bosom of the Reformation. The chancellor was not mistaken. He wished
at one blow to destroy both religious and political liberty. He found
enthusiastic accomplices in the priests assembled at Paris. The council
drew up a decree ordering the bishops and even the inhabitants of the
dioceses to denounce all the Lutherans of their acquaintance.
Would the king sanction this decree? Duprat was uneasy. He collected
his thoughts, arranged his arguments, and proceeded to the palace with
the hope of gaining his master. ‘Sire,’ he said to Francis, ‘God is
able without your help to exterminate all this heretical band;[647]
but, in his great goodness, he condescends to call men to his aid. Who
can tell of the glory and happiness of the many princes who, in past
ages, have treated heretics as the greatest enemies of their crowns,
and have given them over to death? If you wish to obtain salvation;
if you wish to preserve your sovereign rights intact; if you wish to
keep the nations submitted to you in tranquillity: manfully defend the
catholic faith, and subdue all its enemies by your arms.’[648] Thus
spoke Duprat; but the king thought to himself that if his ‘sovereign
rights’ were menaced at all, it might well be by the power of Rome. He
remained deaf as before.
‘Let us go further,’ said the chancellor to his creatures; ‘let the
whole Church call for the extirpation of heresy.’ Councils were held at
Lyons, Rouen, Tours, Rheims, and Bourges, and the priests restrained
themselves less in the provinces than in the capital. ‘These heretics,’
said the fiery orators, ‘worship the devil, whom they raise by means
of certain herbs and sacrilegious forms.’[649] But all was useless;
Francis took pleasure in resisting the priests, and Duprat soon
encountered an obstacle not less formidable.
If it was the duty of the priests to denounce the ‘enchanters,’ it was
the business of the parliament to condemn them; but parliament and
the chancellor were at variance. On the death of his wife, Duprat,
then a layman and first president of parliament, had calculated that
this loss might be a gain, and he entered the Church in order to get
possession of the richest benefices in the kingdom. First, he laid his
hands on the archbishopric of Sens, although at the election there were
twenty-two votes against him and only one for him.[650] Shortly after
that, he seized the rich abbey of St. Benedict. ‘To us alone,’ said
the monks, ‘belongs the choice of our abbot;’ and they boldly refused
to recognise the chancellor. Duprat’s only answer was to lock them all
up. The indignant parliament sent an apparitor to the archbishop’s
officers, and ordered them to appear before it; but the officers fell
upon the messenger, and beat him so cruelly that he died. The king
decided in favour of his first minister, and the difference between the
parliament and the chancellor grew wider.
Duprat, who desired to become reconciled with this court, whose
influence was often necessary to him, fancied he could gain it over
by means of the Lutheran heresy, which they both detested equally. On
their side the parliament desired nothing better than to recover the
first minister’s favour. These intrigues succeeded. ‘The chancellor and
the counsellors mutually gave up the truth, which they looked upon as a
mere nothing, like a crust of bread which one throws to a dog,’ to use
the words of a reformer. Great was the exultation then in sacristy and
in convent.
As chancellor, Sorbonne, and parliament were agreed, it seemed
impossible that the Reformation should not succumb under their combined
attacks. They said to one another: ‘We must pluck up all these _ill
weeds_;’ but they did not require, however, that it should be done
in one day. ‘If the king will only grant us some little isolated
persecution,’ said the enemies of the Reform, ‘we will so work the
matter that all the grist shall come to the mill at last.’
But even that they could not obtain from the king; the terrible
mill remained idle and useless. The agitation of the clergy was, in
the opinion of Francis, mere monkish clamour; he desired to protect
learning against the attacks of the ultramontanists. Besides, he
felt that the greatest danger which threatened his authority was the
theocratic power, and he feared still more these restless and noisy
priests. The Reformation appeared to be saved, when an unexpected
circumstance delivered it over to its enemies.
CHAPTER XI.
REJOICINGS AT FONTAINEBLEAU AND THE VIRGIN OF THE RUE DES ROSIERS.
(1528.)
Everything appeared in France to incline towards peace and joy.
The court was at Fontainebleau, where Francis I. and the Duchess
of Angoulême, the King and Queen of Navarre, and all the most
illustrious of the nobility, had assembled to receive the young
Duke of Ferrara, who had just arrived (20th of May, 1528) to marry
Madame Renée, daughter of Louis XII. and Anne of Brittany. It was
a time of rejoicing. Francis I., whose favourite residence was
Fontainebleau, had erected a splendid palace there, and laid out
‘beautiful gardens, shrubberies, fountains, and all things pleasant
and recreative.’--‘Really,’ said the courtiers, ‘the king has turned
a wilderness into the most beautiful residence in christendom--so
spacious that you might lodge a little world in it.’[651] Foreigners
were struck with the magnificence of the palace and the brilliancy of
the court. The marriage of the daughter of Louis XII. was approaching:
there was nothing but concerts and amusements. There were excursions
in the forest, and sumptuous banquets in the palace, and learned
men (says Brantôme) discoursed at table on ‘the higher and the lower
sciences.’ But nothing attracted the attention of the foreign visitors
so much as the Queen of Navarre. ‘I observed her,’ says a bishop, a
papal legate, ‘while she was speaking to Cardinal d’Este, and I admired
in her features, her expression, and in every movement, an harmonious
union of majesty, modesty, and kindness.’[652] Such was Margaret in the
midst of the court; the goodness of her heart, the purity of her life,
and the abundance of her works spoke eloquently to those about her of
the beauty of the Gospel.
The princess, who was compelled to take part in every court
entertainment, never let an opportunity pass of calling a soul to Jesus
Christ. In the sixteenth century there was no evangelist, among women
at least, more active than her; this is a trait too important in the
French Reformation to be passed by unnoticed. The maids of honour of
the Duchess of Angoulême were no longer the virtuous damsels of Queen
Claude. Margaret, feeling the tenderest compassion for these young
women, called now one and now another to Christ; she conjured her
‘dears’ (as she styled them) not to be ‘caught by pleasure,’ which
would render them hateful to God.
Farewell, my dear!
The court I flee
To seek for life
Beneath the tree.
If that my prayer
Could influence thee,
Thou shouldst not linger
After me.
Stay not, my dear,
But come with me,
And seek for life
Beneath the tree.[653]
Francis I., who loved the chase, would often go into the forest,
attended by his young lords, and hunt the boar and deer for days
together. These youths took great pleasure in talking of their skill
to the ladies of the court, or in challenging one another who could
kill the finest stag.... The Queen of Navarre sometimes joined
good-naturedly in these conversations; she would smilingly call these
gay young lords ‘bad sportsmen,’ and exhort them ‘to go a-hunting after
better game.’
Here is one of these conversations of Fontainebleau, which she herself
relates:
As a youth was riding one day to the wood,
He asked of a lady so wise and good
If the game he sought for could be found
In the forest that spread so thickly round;
For the young man’s heart with desire beat high
To kill the deer. The dame, with a sigh,
Replied: ‘It’s the season for hunters, ’tis true,
But alas! no hunter true are you.
‘In the wood where none but believers go
Is the game you seek, but do not know;
It is in that bitter wood of the cross
Which by the wicked is counted dross;
But to huntsmen good its taste is sweet,
And the pain it costs is the best of meat.
If that your mind were firmly set
Every honour but this to forget,
No other game would be sought by you....
But ... you are not a hunter true.’
As he heard these words, the hunter blushed.
And with anger his countenance flushed:
‘You speak at random, dame,’ he cried;
‘The stag will I have, and nought beside.’
MARGARET.
‘The stag you seek is close in view,
But ... you are not a hunter true.
‘Sit you down by the fountain’s brim,
And in patience wait for him;
There, with soul and body at rest,
Drink of that spring so pure and blest:
All other means but this are nought.
For eager in the toils of your heart to be caught,
The stag will come running up to you;
But ... you are not a hunter true.’
THE YOUNG HUNTER.
‘Dame, ’tis an idle tale you tell;
Wealth and glory, I know full well,
Are not to be won without toil and care.
Of your water so pure not a drop will I share.
MARGARET.
Then the stag will never be caught by you,
For ... you are not a hunter true.’
The young hunter understands at last what is wanted of him, and, after
some further conversation with the lady, he exclaims:
‘With earnest faith my heart is filled;
All my worldly thoughts I yield
At the voice of my Saviour Christ Jesu!’
MARGARET.
‘Yes, now you are a hunter true!’[654]
This narrative, and others of a like nature contained in the
_Marguerites_, were in all probability facts before they became poems.
The little ballads were circulated at court; everybody wished to
read the queen’s ‘tracts,’ and many of the nobility of France, who
afterwards embraced the cause of the Reform, owed their first religious
sentiments to Margaret.
For the moment, the great thought that occupied every mind at
Fontainebleau was the marriage of the ‘very prudent and magnificent
Madame Renée.’ The gentlemen of France and of Ferrara appeared at
court in sumptuous costumes; the princes and princesses glittered with
jewels; the halls and galleries were hung with rich tapestry.
Dance and rejoice, make holiday
For her whose love fills every heart.[655]
All of a sudden, on the morrow of Pentecost, a message fell into the
midst of this brilliant and joyous company which excited the deepest
emotion. A letter was handed to the king, and the effect it produced
was like that occasioned by a clap of thunder in a cloudless sky.
Francis, who held the letter in his hand, was pale, agitated, almost
quivering, as if he had just received a mortal insult. His anger
exploded in an instant, like a mountain pouring out torrents of lava.
He gave way to the most violent passion, and swore to take a cruel
revenge. Margaret, terrified by her brother’s anger, did not say a
word, but withdrew, in alarm, to silence and prayer: she scarcely
ventured an attempt to calm her brother’s emotion. ‘The incensed king,’
says the chronicler, ‘wept hard with vexation and anger.’[656] The
court fêtes were interrupted: the courtiers, joining in unison with
their master, called loudly for violent measures, and Francis departed
suddenly for Paris. What had caused all this commotion?
The festival of Pentecost (Whitsunday) had been celebrated with great
pomp on the 30th of May, 1528; but the devotionists, neglecting the
Father, the Son, and above all the Holy Ghost, had thought of nothing
all the day long but of worshipping the Virgin and her images. In the
quarter of St. Antoine, and at the angle still formed by the streets
Des Rosiers and Des Juifs, at the corner of the house belonging to the
Sire Loys de Harlay, stood an image of the Virgin holding the infant
Jesus in her arms. Numbers of devout persons of both sexes went every
day to kneel before this figure. During the festival the crowd was more
numerous than ever, and, bowing before the image, they lavished on it
the loftiest of titles: ‘O holy Virgin! O mediatress of mankind! O
pardon of sinners! Author of the righteousness which cleanses away our
sins! Refuge of all who return unto God!’[657] These observances had
bitterly grieved those who remembered the old commandment: _Thou shalt
worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve_.
On the Monday morning, the morrow after the festival, some passers-by
fancied they observed something wrong in the place where the image
stood: they could not see either the head of the Virgin or of the
child. The men approached, and found that both the heads had been
cut off; they looked about for them, and discovered them hidden
behind a heap of stones close by; they picked up in the gutter the
Virgin’s robe, which was torn and appeared to have been trampled under
foot. These persons, who were devout catholics, felt alarmed; they
respectfully took up the two heads and carried them to the magistrate.
The news of the strange event quickly spread through the quarter.
Monks and priests mingled with the crowd, and described the injury
done to the image. Men, women, and children surrounded the mutilated
figure--some weeping, others groaning, all cursing the sacrilege. A
‘complaint’ of the times has handed down to us the groans of the people:
Alas! how great the woe,
And crime that cannot pardoned be!...
To have hurt Our Lady so,
Lady full of charity,
And to sinners ever kind![658] ...
Such were the sentiments of the good catholics who, with tearful eyes
and troubled hearts, looked upon the mutilated image.
Who were the authors of this mutilation? It was never known. It has
been said that the priests, alarmed at the progress of the Reformation
and the disposition of the king, had perpetrated the act, in order
to use it as a weapon against the Lutherans. That is possible, for
such things have been done. I am, however, more inclined to believe
that some hot-headed member of the evangelical party, exasperated at
hearing that attributed to the Virgin which belongs only to Christ, had
broken the idol. Be that as it may, the fanatical party resolved to
profit by the sacrilege, and they succeeded.
Francis I., the most susceptible and most irritable of princes,
considered this act of violence as an outrage upon his dignity and
authority. As soon as he reached Paris, he did everything in his power
to discover the guilty party. For two whole days heralds paraded the
streets, and stopping at the crossways summoned the people by sound
of trumpet and proclaimed: ‘If any one knows who has done this, let
him declare it to the magistrates and the king; the provost of Paris
will pay him a thousand gold crowns, and if the informer has committed
any crime, the king will pardon him.’ The crowd listened and then
dispersed; but all was of no use. Nothing could be learnt about it.
‘Very well, then,’ said the king, ‘I will order commissioners to go
and make inquiry at every house.’ The commissioners went and knocked
at every door, examining one after another all the inhabitants of the
quarter; but the result was still the same: ‘No one knew anything about
it.’
The priests were not satisfied with these proclamations. On Tuesday the
2nd of June, and during the rest of the week, the clergy of Paris set
themselves in motion, and constant processions from all the churches in
the city marched to the scene of the outrage. A week after, on Tuesday
the 9th of June, five hundred students, each carrying a lighted taper,
with all the doctors, licentiates, and bachelors of the university,
proceeded from the Sorbonne. In front of them marched the four
mendicant orders.
Beautiful it was to see
Such a goodly company;
Monks grey, black, of every hue,
Walking for an hour or two.
The reaction was complete. Learning and the Gospel were forgotten;
men thought only of honouring the holy Virgin. The king, the Dukes
of Ferrara, Longueville, and Vendôme, and even the King of Navarre,
desired to pay the greatest honour to Mary; and accordingly on Thursday
the 11th of June, being Corpus Christi Day, a long procession left the
palace of the Tournelles.
In the front, with lighted tapers,
There walked a goodly show;
Then followed next the children,
Sweetly singing, in a row.
A crowd of priests came chanting,
And next marched him who bore[659]
The body of our Jesus ...
The canopy was carried
By the good King of Navarre,
And by Vendôme, and by Longueville,
And the proud Duke of Ferrare.
Then last of all there followed
The king with head all bare;
The taper in his hand was wrapped
In velvet rich and rare.
The different guilds, supreme courts, bishops, ambassadors, high
officers of the crown, and princes of the blood, were all present.
They walked to the sound of hautboys, clarions, and trumpets, playing
with great state. When the procession arrived at the ill-omened spot,
the king devoutly went up to it, and fell on his knees and prayed.
On rising, he received from the hands of his grand almoner a small
silver-gilt statue of the Virgin, which he piously set up in the room
of the former one, and placed his taper before the image as a testimony
of his faith. All the members of the procession did the same, as they
marched past to the sound of the trumpets. The people manifested their
joy by acclamations:
Long live the king of fleur-de-lys
And all his noble family!
Erelong the mutilated image, removed to the church of St. Germain,
began to work miracles. Four days afterwards, a child having been
brought into the world still-born,
The mother writhed and wept,
And bitterly groaned she;
And loudly prayed that death
Would take her suddenly.
She tossed and tumbled so,
That all the gossips there
Shed floods of bitter tears
And wildly tore their hair.
Then one who counselled wisely,
Said: ‘Take the child that’s dead,
And bear him to the Queen of Heaven!’ ...
Which they devoutly did.
The infant changed colour, adds the chronicle; it was baptised, and,
after it had returned its soul to God, was buried. The miracle, it is
clear, did not last long.
Notwithstanding all these tapers, miracles, and trumpet sounds, the
king was still excited. Neither he nor the fanatics were satisfied.
The flush which some fancied they saw on the cheeks of the poor little
still-born child, was not sufficient; they wanted a deeper red--red
blood. Duprat, the Sorbonne, and the parliament said that their master
had at last come to his senses, and that they must take advantage of
the change. Francis, who held the reins firmly, had hitherto restrained
the coursers bound to his chariot. But now, irritated and inflamed,
he leant forward, slackened the bit, and even urged them on with his
voice. These fiery wild horses were about to trample under foot all who
came in their way, and the wheels of his chariot, crushing the unhappy
victims, would sprinkle their blood even upon the garments of the
prince.
The persecution began.
CHAPTER XII.
PRISONERS AND MARTYRS AT PARIS AND IN THE PROVINCES.
(1528.)
There lived in Paris one of those poor christians of Meaux known as
_christaudins_, or disciples of Christ. This man, full of admiration
for the Son of God and of horror for images, had been driven from his
native city by persecution, and had become a waterman on the Seine. One
day a stranger entered his boat, and as the Virgin was everywhere the
subject of conversation, since the affair of the Rue des Rosiers, the
passenger began to extol the power of the ‘mother of God,’ and pulling
out a picture of Mary, offered it to his conductor. The boatman, who
was rowing vigorously, stopped; he could not contain himself, and,
taking the picture, said sharply: ‘The Virgin Mary has no more power
than this bit of paper,’ which he tore in pieces and threw into the
river. The exasperated catholic did not say a word; but as soon as he
landed, he ran off to denounce the heretic. This time at least they
knew the author of the sacrilege. Who could tell but it was he who
committed the outrage in the Rue des Rosiers? The poor _christaudin_
was burnt on the Grève at Paris.[660]
All the evangelical christians of Meaux had not, like him, quitted La
Brie. In the fields around that city might often be seen a pious man
named Denis, a native of Rieux. He had heard the divine summons one
day, and, filled with desire to know God, he had come to Jesus. Deeply
impressed with the pangs which the Saviour had endured in order to
save sinners, he had from that hour turned his eyes unceasingly upon
the Crucified One. Denis was filled with astonishment when he saw
christians putting their trust in ceremonies, instead of placing it
wholly in Christ. When, in the course of his many journeys, he passed
near a church at the time they were saying mass, it seemed to him that
he was witnessing a theatrical representation[661] and not a religious
act. His tortured soul uttered a cry of anguish. ‘To desire to be
reconciled with God by means of a mass,’ he said one day, ‘is to deny
my Saviour’s passion.’[662] The parliament gave orders to confine Denis
in the prison at Meaux.
As Briçonnet was still at the head of the diocese, the judges requested
him to do all in his power to bring back Denis to the fold. One day
the doors of the prison opened, and the bishop, at the summit of
honour but a backslider from the faith, stood in the presence of the
christian under the cross, but still faithful. Embarrassed at the part
he had to play, Briçonnet hung his head, hesitated, and blushed; this
visit was a punishment imposed upon his cowardice. ‘If you retract,’
he said to Denis at last, ‘we will set you at liberty, and you shall
receive a yearly pension.’ But Denis had marvellously engraven in his
heart, says the chronicler, that sentence delivered by Jesus Christ:
‘Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my
Father which is in heaven.’ Turning therefore an indignant look upon
Briçonnet, he exclaimed: ‘Would you be so base as to urge me to deny my
God?’ The unhappy prelate, terrified at this address, fancied he heard
his own condemnation, and without saying a word fled hastily from the
dungeon. Denis was condemned to be burnt alive.
On the 3rd of July, the town sergeants came to the prison; they took
Denis from his cell and bound him to the hurdle they had brought with
them. Then, as if to add insult to torture, they pinioned his arms
and placed a wooden cross in his hands. Drawing up on each side of
him, they said: ‘See now how he worships the wood of the cross!’ and
dragged the poor sufferer on his hurdle through the streets. Some of
the spectators, when they saw him holding the piece of wood, exclaimed:
‘Truly, he is converted!’ but the humble believer replied: ‘O my
friends! ... be converted to the true cross!’ The procession advanced
slowly on account of the crowd, and as they were passing near a pond
from which the water, swollen by the rains, was rushing rapidly, Denis
gave a struggle, the cross fell, and ‘went sailing down the stream.’
When the bigots (as the chronicler terms them) saw the cross dancing
and floating upon the water, they rushed forward to pull it out, but
could not reach it. They came back and avenged themselves ‘by insulting
the poor sufferer lying on the hurdle.’ The stake was reached at last.
‘Gently,’ said the priests, ‘kindle only a small fire, a very small
fire, in order that it may last the longer.’ They bound Denis to a
balanced pole and placed him on the fire, and when the heat had almost
killed him, they hoisted him into the air. As soon as he had recovered
his senses, they let him down again. Three times was he thus lifted up
and lowered, the flames each time beginning their work anew. ‘Yet all
the time,’ says the chronicler, ‘he called upon the name of God.’[663]
At last he died.
Not at Paris only did the Roman party show itself without mercy. The
wishes of Duprat, of the Sorbonne, and of the parliament were carried
out in the provinces; and wherever truth raised her head, persecution
appeared. In the principal church of the small town of Annonay, there
hung from the arched roof a precious shrine, which the devout used
to contemplate every day with pious looks. ‘It contains _the holy
virtues_,’ said the priests. ‘The shrine is full of mysterious relics
which no one is allowed to see.’ On Ascension Day, however, the _holy
virtues_ were borne in great ceremony through the city. Men, women, and
children were eager to walk in the procession, with their heads and
feet bare, and in their shirts. Some of them approached the shrine, and
kissed it, passing backwards and forwards beneath it, almost as the
Hindoos do when the idol of Juggernaut is dragged through the midst of
its worshippers. At the moment when the _holy virtues_ passed through
the castle, the gates turned of themselves on their hinges, and all the
prisoners were set at liberty, with the exception of the Lutherans.
These silly superstitions were about to be disturbed. A battle began
around this mysterious shrine, and as soon as one combatant fell,
another sprang up in his place.
The first was a grey friar, a doctor of divinity, whom Crespin calls
Stephen Machopolis: the latter appears to be one of those names which
the reformers sometimes assumed. Stephen, attracted by the rumours
of the Reformation, had gone to Saxony and heard Luther.[664] Having
profited by his teaching, the grey friar determined to go back to
France, and Luther recommended him to the counts of Mansfeld, who
supplied him with the means of returning to his native country.[665]
Stephen had scarcely arrived at Annonay before he began to proclaim
warmly the virtues of the Saviour and of the Holy Ghost, and to inveigh
against the _holy virtues_ hanging in the church. The priests tried to
seize him, but he escaped. In the meanwhile he had talked much about
the Gospel with one of his friends, a cordelier like himself, Stephen
Rénier by name. The latter undertook, with still more courage than his
predecessor, to convert all these ignorant people from their faith in
‘dead men’s bones’ to the living and true God. The priests surprised
the poor man, cast him into prison, and conveyed him to Vienne in
Dauphiny, where the archbishop resided. Rénier preferred being burnt
alive to making any concession.[666]
A pious and learned schoolmaster, named Jonas, had already taken his
place in Annonay, and spoke still more boldly than the two Franciscans.
He was sent to prison in his turn, and made before the magistrates
‘a good and complete’ profession of faith. As the priests and the
archbishop now had Jonas locked up, they hoped to be quiet at last.
But very different was the result: the two friars and the schoolmaster
having disappeared, all those who had received the Word of life rose
up and proclaimed it. The Archbishop of Vienne could contain himself
no longer; it seemed to him as if evangelicals sprang ready-armed
from the soil, like the followers of Cadmus in days of yore.--‘They
are headstrong and furious,’ said the good folks of Vienne.--‘Bring
them all before me,’ cried the archbishop. Twenty-five evangelical
christians were taken from Annonay to the archiepiscopal city, and many
of them, being left indefinitely in prison, died of weakness and bad
treatment.
The death of a few obscure men did not satisfy the ultramontanes:
they desired a more illustrious victim, the most learned among the
nobles. Wherever Berquin or other evangelicals turned their steps,
they encountered fierce glances and heard cries of indignation. ‘What
tyrannical madness! what plutonic rage!’ called out the mob as they
passed. Rascally youths! imps of Satan! brands of hell! _vilenaille_
brimful of Leviathans! venomous serpents! servants of Lucifer!’[667]
This was the usual vocabulary.
Berquin, as he heard this torrent of insult, answered not a word:
he thought it his duty to let the storm blow over, and kept himself
tranquil and solitary before God. Sometimes, however, his zeal caught
fire; there were sudden movements in his heart, as of a wind tossing
up the waves with their foamy heads; but he struggled against these
‘gusts’ of the flesh; he ordered his soul to be still, and erelong
nothing was left but some little ‘fluttering.’
While Berquin was silent before the tempest, Beda and his party did
all in their power to bring down the bolt upon that haughty head which
refused to bend before them. ‘See!’ they said, as they described the
mutilation of Our Lady, ‘see to what our toleration of heresy leads!...
Unless we root it up entirely, it will soon multiply and cover the
whole country.’
The doctors of the Sorbonne and other priests went out of their
houses in crowds; they spread right and left, buzzing in the streets,
buzzing in the houses, buzzing in the palaces. ‘These hornets,’ says a
chronicler, ‘make their tedious noise heard by all they meet, and urge
them on with repeated stings.’ ‘Away with Berquin!’ was their cry.
His friends grew alarmed. ‘Make your escape!’ wrote Erasmus to him.
‘Make your escape!’ repeated the friends of learning and of the Gospel
around him.[668] But Berquin thought that by keeping quiet he did all
that he ought to do. Flight he would have considered a disgrace, a
crime. ‘With God’s help,’ he said, ‘I shall conquer the monks, the
university, and the parliament itself.’[669]
Such confidence exasperated the Sorbonne. Beda and his followers
stirred university and parliament, city, court, and Church, heaven
and earth.... Francis I. was puzzled, staggered, and annoyed. At
last, being beset on every side, and hearing it continually repeated
that Berquin’s doctrines were the cause of the outrage in the Rue des
Rosiers, the king yielded, believing, however, that he yielded but
little: he consented only that an inquiry should be opened against
Berquin. The wild beast leapt with joy. His prey was not yet given to
him; but he already foresaw the hour when he would quench his thirst in
blood.
A strange blindness is that of popery! The lessons of history are
lost upon it. So long as events are in progress, men mistake both
their causes and consequences. The smoke that covers the battle-field,
during the struggle, does not permit us to distinguish and appreciate
the movements of the different armies. But once the battle ended, the
events accomplished, intelligent minds discover the principles of
the movements and order of battle. Now, if there is any truth which
history proclaims, it is that christianity was established in the
world by pouring out the blood of its martyrs. One of the greatest
fathers of the West has enunciated this mysterious law.[670] But the
Rome of the popes--and in this respect she paid her tribute to human
weakness--overlooked this great law. She took no heed of the facts
that ought to have enlightened her. She did not understand that the
blood of these friends of the Gospel, which she was so eager to spill,
would be for modern times, as it had been for ancient times, a seed
of transformation. Imprudently resuming the part played by the Rome of
the emperors, she put to death, one after another, those who professed
the everlasting Truth. But at the very moment when the enemies of the
Reform imagined they had crushed it by getting rid of Berquin; at the
moment when the irritation of the king allowed the servants of Christ
to be dragged on hurdles, and when he authorised torture, imprisonment,
and the stake; at the moment when all seemed destined to remain mute
and trembling--the true Reformer of France issued unnoticed from a
college of priests, and was about to begin, in an important city of the
kingdom, that work which we have undertaken to narrate--a work which
for three centuries has not ceased, and never will cease, to grow.
We shall attempt to describe the small beginnings of this great work in
the next volume.
* * * * *
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
* * * * *
LONDON
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