TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have been
placed at the end of the book.
Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.
HISTORY
OF THE
PROTESTANTS OF FRANCE,
FROM
THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE REFORMATION TO
THE PRESENT TIME.
BY G. DE FELICE.
TRANSLATED FROM THE SECOND REVISED AND CORRECTED EDITION,
BY
PHILIP EDW. BARNES, ESQ., B.A., F.L.S.,
OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, BARRISTER-AT-LAW.
LONDON:
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & CO., FARRINGDON STREET.
1853.
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.
The reason of the translation of this book, is the same that
actuated the Author of the original work,—not the glorification of
a particular creed, but the inculcation of a lesson from the pages
of history, whereby the reader may learn the expediency, as well as
wisdom and justness, of the great maxim, that the fullest religious
liberty is the right of all men. The illustration of this principle,
so little truly recognised, yet happens in the present case, to bear
against the members of the Roman Catholic Church: but all creeds and
every sect may usefully perpend the moral of the narrative. To preach
the duty of toleration to the members of the Reformed communions,
whose chief dogma is the right of private judgment, might seem a
supererogatory labour, did we not know how, in time, the best of
causes may become corrupted by the mingling of the passions, until
the fair tree is stifled under the baneful embrace of the insidious
parasite. The necessity, then, of a frequent recurrence to first
principles is obvious; and in no case can this necessity be so
strong as in religious matters. To dissent from a dominant creed,
has been hitherto to draw down persecution; and persecution will
assuredly kindle a retaliative spirit of dogmatical oppression in
the persecuted, unless these last continually bear in mind that the
very ground of their difference was, in the outset, the privilege
of thinking for themselves. Let us, then, guard ourselves against
this error, still more deserving of reprobation in Protestants than
in Romanists; and let these finally convince themselves how futile
it is to struggle against the onward progress of the human mind,
daily absorbing more essentially the Christian spirit, and thereby
strengthening to the task of social improvement under the advancing
banner of mental independence.
If history is philosophy teaching by examples, a work that shall
contribute in any degree to elucidate our views respecting the men
and manners of past ages, will certainly be received as a desirable
contribution to the general stock of knowledge. But at a period
when Europe is yet throbbing with the repressed, not extinguished,
throes of an almost universal convulsion, a narrative of the events
of an often deeply-disturbed period, frequently offering somewhat
similar features, must prove more than ordinarily acceptable. It
is true, that a hasty glance at the passing history of European
politics fills us with only a confused sentiment of conflicting
forces, that seem to attract and repel the special atoms hither and
thither with restless disorder; yet an attentive examination will not
fail to show us that, influencing each vortex, and dominating over
every other power, are the two antagonists that since the time of
Luther have found a more equal battle-field,—the spirit of Reform,
and the spirit of the Papacy. The nature of the struggle, in which
the human race is engaged, is in the main the same now as when
the Augustine monk of Wittenberg first reared the standard of the
Reformation. In the organic revolts of every community of men, the
actual principle contended for is that of freedom of thought, and the
real foes are the partisans of priestly domination. Through all ages
the sacerdotal order have ever been the avowed or hidden opponents
of all authority that does not originate with themselves, and the
inveterate obstinacy the Roman hierarchy has displayed in promoting
and establishing the supremacy of the Papal Church springs, as the
unbroken tale of the Holy See demonstrates, from the determination
to grasp at the most absolute temporal power. Claiming to be “lords
over God’s heritage,” they deny all right of self-action, and only
tolerate kings themselves as the tools of the universal despotism, to
which they aspire. Even the enlightened and excellent men in their
own ranks have been the foremost persecuted, and perhaps the most
striking condemnation of the governmental system of the Papal Church
is, that nearly all the great ecclesiastical reformers have been
originally Romish priests themselves. If the bishop of Rome were only
a spiritual head of a simple church organization, who can doubt that
the great mass of the (Roman) Catholic clergy would gain immensely by
the change, both in outward moral authority and internal discipline?
Nowhere is this arrogant assumption of a right to sole rule better
seen than in this History of Protestantism in France; and nowhere has
the resolution to attain the end been more unrelentingly pursued.
To what extent a bigoted system will lead its followers, the early
persecutions of the old Albigenses will show; but the renewal of the
slaughter upon the inoffensive and industrious Vaudois for their
adhesion to the cause of the Reformation, marks what little progress
the Vatican, at whose instance it was perpetrated, had made in those
Christian principles, of which it assumes to be the only veritable
exponent: while the persecutions inflicted upon the Protestants of
France, in order to force them back into the Romish Church, continued
in one form or another down to this very day, amply prove how vain it
is to expect that the Church of Rome will ever abandon the notion of
universal empire, that has always been its dream and aspiration.
But although the incarnation of ambitious priestcraft is to be
found in the prince-prelates of the Holy See, the ministry of
nearly every religious community is obnoxious to the charge in a
greater or less degree as its constitution liberates it from the
control of the laity. That this was the conviction of the early
leaders of the Reformation is evident from the organization of their
respective churches; and that the leaven has tainted the majority
of the Protestant clergy of France is shown by their preference to
be salaried by the State rather than to be free to recur to the
independence of the admirable scheme of connexional union propounded
by Calvin. The ultimate right and equality of the People, who form
the brotherhood of Christians, is an essential principle of a
Reformed Church, and the contrary practice has more retarded the
spread of Protestantism than any other cause. To use the expression
of M. Félice respecting the Reformed Churches of France, it would
be unjust to lay the whole blame of the disasters of religion upon
the enemies of the Reformation; the Protestants themselves must bear
their due proportion. Like the Established Church of England and like
the Wesleyan Connexion, the Reformed communion of France is most
threatened with loss from this quarter, and if one or the other fail
in that energy and earnestness, which respectively characterized
them in the beginning, it is to be attributable to their departure
from the administrative institutions of the primitive Christians.
The modern French Protestants may well deplore the sincere faith
and fervid zeal of the early Calvinists, which re-acting upon their
whole nature, rendered them as remarkable for their superiority
in secular matters as in religious piety. If one were disposed to
speculate upon the probable destinies of nations, and had certain
events not happened, our imagination might picture a very different
France in the present era; thus, had Henri-Quatre not apostatized,
it is possible that the Huguenot party might have triumphed in the
end; had the last siege of La Rochelle been delayed for two or
three years, until a less doubtful friend of the new faith than our
Charles I. wielded the power of England, the whole history of France
for the last two centuries might have been changed; the principle
of local self-government and strong political action, engendered by
the efforts of the Huguenots to protect their liberties, would most
probably have made France one of the freeëst nations of the world,
have saved it from all its ruinous Revolutions, and possibly have
given a wholly different aspect to the face of southern Europe.
Such was not, however, destined to be the fate of the Reformation
in France, and far from being the arbiters of the fortunes of their
native land, and the regenerators of Italy and Spain, the Reformed
people have been reduced to become humble suitors to the State for an
eleemosynary pittance to support their pastors. We cannot doubt that
their condition will ultimately improve; for to hesitate to believe
this, would be to fear for the progress of the human mind; but the
present aspect of affairs is not promising. The establishment of the
Empire, and the alliance of its chief with the Vatican, have, indeed,
no semblance of fixity; yet the connection between absolutism and
the _parti prêtre_ is so intimate, that it is to be dreaded serious
discouragement will be offered to the Protestants. The law respecting
political assemblies affords a convenient pretext for preventing the
institution of new churches, and even for closing old ones, which
might be made available against the Reformed congregations throughout
the whole breadth of the land.
The principles of the Reformation have, in reality, raised a terror
in the minds of the advocates of irresponsible government that will
not be allayed, and we ought to awaken to the fact, that the causes
of political and religious liberty are identical on the continent
as in this country. Nevertheless, the present anomalous position of
the Vatican cannot endure; but whether the support of popedom by
the soldiery of Louis Napoleon be of short or long continuance, the
effects must still be disastrous to the cause of the Papacy. The
_prestige_ of the Church of Rome daily wanes under such a sinister
influence, and even the most zealous of her followers must question
the propriety of an empire that cannot subsist without the aid of
foreign bayonets, and has so little succeeded, even with all the
authority of a paternal rule, often exercised by those whom she
honours as saints, in gaining the affections of the people, that
were it not for the sovereigns of the worst-governed nations in
Europe,—Austria, the Sicilies, Spain, and France,—they would rise _en
masse_ against it. It is in Italy, therefore, that the great blow
will be struck against the mental enslavement of the human race; and
not until the bishop of Rome shall be reduced to his mere spiritual
office, and himself and his court of cardinals be shorn of that
mundane supremacy, which Jesus expressly denied to the disciples,
saying, “Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion
over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But
it shall not be so among you,”—not until then will the consummation
so devoutly to be wished for arrive.
That the late heroic rebellion of the Romans against the
ecclesiastical tyranny under which they groan failed, although
narrowly, of success, is to be regretted as a just revolt against an
usurpation opposed alike to the injunctions of the Christian religion
and to the dearest liberties of mankind. It is a consolation to
believe that even as the fall of the Papacy was stayed by the hand of
the most unscrupulous of mock believers, whom yet Pius IX. styles the
very dear son of the Church (_carissimus in Christo filius noster_),
it is only the brute power of material force that retains the pontiff
on his tottering throne. The saying of the ancient king, that “Rome
is to be fought in Rome,” has already had its purport illustrated. It
is our blame that, sanctioning for worldly motives the interference
of one people with another, when an open declaration that we will not
suffer to be exercised on other nations that oppression we would
repel, if attempted upon ourselves, would have averted and might
still in other cases prevent the occasion altogether,—yes, it is a
reproach to us that we have shared in the crime of having prolonged
the despotism that darkens the lot of the fairest portion of the
continent and millions of our fellow-beings, for whom may yet be in
store,—and perchance also for ourselves,—the renewal of the worst
crimes of spiritual despotism which this book records, and another
instance of _the great fact_ that Rome, in its intents and purposes,
is, and ever will be, to the hour of its accomplished doom—SEMPER
EADEM!
AUTHOR’S PREFACE.
This work was first sketched out several years ago. Different
circumstances, and latterly, the general pre-occupation of the
country, have prevented the author from completing it sooner. The
same causes will explain why he has comprised in a single volume a
history which, if it were fully developed, would require several.
The book was, at the commencement, framed on a much more extensive
plan. But the present epoch, with its uncertainties and its
apprehensions, is unfavourable to lengthy undertakings. Hence all
that will be found herein, is a simple abridgment of the rich and
varied annals of the French Reformation.
To gain space, the indication of the sources applied to, has been
reduced to the narrowest limit. It would have been easy to fill
entire pages with what the Germans call the _littérature_ of the
subject. But these bibliographical details, while they must have
occupied much room, would have been useful to the learned by
profession alone, who do not require them; therefore, it is only
when we have borrowed his own words from an author, or when we
have related events, subject to controversy, that it has appeared
necessary to cite our authorities.
The general histories of France, which we may suppose to be familiar
to most of our readers, have also afforded an opportunity of
abridging our own. A few words have sufficed for whatever may be
found everywhere, such as the wars of Protestantism in the sixteenth
century, the intrigues of party, and court influences mixed up with
religious struggles. To explain the succession of events, something
of all this had to be told, but the simplest narration was all that
could be required. The essential for us, was precisely that which
other historians neglect to relate—the development, the life, the
internal successes and reverses of the Reformed people. Instead of
taking our point of observation without, we have chosen it from
within. Here, indeed, is the _special_ History of Protestantism, in
which our literature was deficient.
Each one of the periods of the French Reformation has been treated,
it is true, by ancient or recent writers; but there exists in our
language no work that exhibits a condensed and altogether regular
view of this history. There was, then, a void to fill up. We have
undertaken the task, and we hope that this book, defective as it may
be, will at least give some just idea of the affairs and the men of
the Reformed communion of France.
It is sad to think how little the history of the Protestants is known
in their own country, and even, it must be confessed, among the
members of their own churches. Yet it offers chosen intellects and
noble spirits for contemplation, great examples for imitation, and
precious lessons to be gathered.
Protestantism has suffered from national opinion the fate of
minorities, and of vanquished minorities. When it ceased to be
feared, it ceased to be known, and under the favour of this disregard
and indifference, every kind of prejudice against it has been
received and believed. This is a denial of justice, which it ought
not to accept, and a misfortune, from which it ought to relieve
itself. History is the common property of all.
Nevertheless, we treat here of only one of the two branches of
French Protestantism. The Lutherans of Alsatia, or Christians of the
Confession of Augsburg, annexed to our country from the reign of
Louis XIV., and who form about a third of the total number of the
Protestants, will be completely excluded from this book. They have a
separate origin, language, and form of worship, and although all the
disciples of the Reformation of the sixteenth century may be united
by the most intimate ties, the followers of Luther and those of
Calvin have distinct annals. The first have already in Alsatia more
than one historian of note, and it was not for us to take a work in
hand, which they are better able to accomplish. It is, therefore, of
the Reformers, properly speaking, or of those Huguenots, whose name
has so oft resounded in the France of old, that we desire to write.
No spirit of sect or of system must be looked for in this work.
The latter is, perhaps, useful in a theological or a philosophical
history; it allows us to measure all events and all opinions by
one invariable standard, and to subordinate them to a high and
controlling unity; but such has not been our design. Our office is
that of a narrator rather than of a judge, and our purpose is to
tell the history, not to make it speak in favour of a theory. One
conceives that in ecclesiastical history generally, which has been
told and re-told again and again, an author should endeavour to bring
it back to a systematic point of view; that is the only way to give
to his work a character of originality, and, so to speak, the reason
for its existence. But for the history of the French Protestants,
which has never been written as a whole, it was first requisite to
collect and arrange the facts in a simple, clear, and impartial
manner, without adopting a type, which might have distorted their
nature. Other writers will follow who, finding these facts, will
re-construct them by means of philosophy or theology.
It was equally fitting that we should abstain from taking part in the
questions, which divide Protestants among themselves. It was not for
us to decide who was right or who wrong in these matters, and our pen
would have betrayed our will, if, in the following pages, it could be
supposed that any class of opinions would find an apology, or meet
with an attack. Truth and justice are for all, as far as it has been
possible for us to discern the true and the just: we could aspire to
nothing less, and nothing more can be required of us.
This impartiality is not the neutrality of indifference or sloth, or
of what is sometimes called _impersonality_. In the great struggles
of Protestantism, we are on the side of the oppressed against the
oppressor, of the victims against their executioners, of right
against brute force, of equality against privilege, and of liberty
against despotism. The principle of the inviolability of the human
conscience, which the peoples of modern times have gathered from the
Gospel, is ours; and we shall esteem ourselves amply rewarded for our
efforts, if the perusal of this work shall inspire, together with
the sentiment of the happy effects of the Christian life, a deeper
abhorrence of all religious persecution, under whatever name or
pretext it may seek to cloak itself.
Liberty of thought, liberty of faith, liberty of worship, under the
safeguard and within the limits of common right: complete equality
of religious creeds, and even above that equality itself, charity,
fraternal love, which feels for the erring while reprobating their
error—these are our maxims. They have constantly guided us in our
labours, and God grant that our conviction may pass in its entirety
into the spirit and conscience of the reader! The generation of our
day is still in too much need of teaching of this kind.
It was impossible to write this book without relating from period
to period, the last excepted, deeds of frightful injustice and of
terrible cruelty; for that is the history itself of Protestantism
from its origin down to the eve of the Revolution of 1789. No
Christian population has been so long persecuted as the Reformed
people of France. The duty of the historian must be fulfilled;
but wherever the task was painful, we have striven to extenuate,
by insisting upon the piety and perseverance of the proscribed,
much more than upon the crimes of the proscribes. In the midst of
massacres, in the face of the scaffold and the stake, in the bloody
expeditions against the gatherings in the wilderness, we have only
glanced at the oppressors, and our eyes have dwelt upon the victims.
This restraint has been of twofold benefit to us, both as a precept
of charity, and as a rule of literary composition. Every work, which
excites the mind without elevating it, is bad.
The old passions, besides, must be extinguished, not only among those
whose forefathers underwent so many sufferings, but also in the heart
of the men, who at the present time occupy the places of the most
inveterate enemies of Protestantism. However the (Roman) Catholic
clergy may declare itself immutable in its creeds and maxims, it is
to be hoped that this immutability does not apply to the principle
of persecution. The advance of public morals has penetrated more or
less everywhere, and the sword of intolerance, which has, alas! in
disastrous days recoiled upon the priest himself, would, doubtless,
fail to find a hand to wield it again.
The Reformers of France never would become in their country a
Protestant Ireland. If they have too often stood apart from the great
national family, this was their misfortune—not their fault. They
did not separate themselves; they were driven forth; and each time
the door has been opened, though it were but half way, they could,
without betraying their sacred and inviolable obligations to God,
return to the bosom of the nation, and they have done so with joy
and sincerity. Now that the civil law is the same for all, they form
in no sense, either near or afar off, a distinct political party,
and they hold it as a point of honour to be confounded in that vast
unity, which is the strength and the glory of France.
Theodore de Bèze said in his day to King Henry IV.: “My desire is,
that Frenchmen should love one another.” This wish of the venerable
Reformer is that of all Protestants, and truly, the circumstances
which surround us, render it now more than ever an imperative duty.
Not that we partake of the discouragement of many estimable men;
we confide in the love of God, in the power of His Spirit, in the
progress of the human race. Where others discover the seeds of decay,
we behold the beginnings of a new and higher life. But the transition
will be wearisome, the success difficult; and to secure a happier
lot, there must be the full concurrence of all sincere Christians and
all good citizens.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
Importance of the Reformation.—Corruption of the Catholic
doctrine.—Vices of the discipline.—Traffic in indulgences.—Disorders
of the clergy.—Protestations.—Renewal of letters.—The papacy.
—Councils.—Martin Luther.—Glance at his teaching, his life, and his
labours.—Ulrich Zwinglius.—His character and influence.—Progress of
Reformation in Europe.—_Page 1-15._
BOOK THE FIRST.
FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE TO THE OPENING OF THE
CONFERENCE OF POISSY.
(1521-1561.)
I.
Preaching of the Reformation at Meaux.—Lefevre d’Etaples.—Guillaume
Farel.—Bishop Briçonnet.—Zeal and success of the new
preachers.—_Page 17-20._
II.
First persecutions.—The Sorbonne.—The Parliaments.—The court.
—Condemnation of Jean Leclerc.—Execution of Jacques Pavannes.—Louis
Berquin.—His courage, struggles, and death.—_Page 20-27._
III.
Farel in Dauphiny.—Progress of the Reformation in France.—Martyrdom
of Jean Caturce at Toulouse.—The history of the monk François
Lambert.—Marguérite de Valois and Francis I.—_Page 27-33._
IV.
The Reformation at Paris.—Affair of the placards.—Growing
persecutions.—Generalissimo procession.—Frightful executions.
—Marguérite de Valois in Béarn.—_Page 33-38._
V.
Jean Calvin.—His early studies.—Preachings in Poitou and Saintonge.
—The book of the Institution.—Calvin at Geneva.—His character.—The
intolerance with which he is reproached.—Michel Servet.—Great
labours of Calvin.—_Page 38-46._
VI.
Persecutions against the Vaudois in Provence.—Origin and history of
this people.—How they justify themselves.—Massacres at Mérindol,
Cabrières, &c.—Trial in respect of this affair before the Parliament
of Paris.—_Page 46-51._
VII.
Great success of the Reformation.—What were the principal causes of
it.—Gentlemen.—Third estate.—Traders.—Converted monks and
priests.—Bible hawkers.—Martyrdom of one of them.—Assemblies
of the Reformed in small bands.—Precautions.—Piety and exemplary
conduct of the Reformed.—_Page 51-57._
VIII.
King Henry II.—Executions at Paris.—Edict of Châteaubriant.
—Spoliations.—Project of establishing the Inquisition in France.
—Attack upon an assembly of the Reformed in the Rue Saint Jacques
at Paris.—Odious calumnies.—Fresh executions.—Intervention of
the Protestant States.—_Page 57-63._
IX.
Successive developments of the Ecclesiastical organization.—Formation
of regular churches.—First national synod in 1559.—Confession of
faith.—Discipline.—Analysis of its first articles.—_Page 63-67._
X.
Divisions in the Parliament of Paris.—Anne Dubourg in the Bastille.
—His trial and his martyrdom.—Francis II.—Catherine de Medicis.
—The Cardinal de Lorraine.—The Duke François de Guise.—Antoine
de Bourbon.—Louis de Condé.—François d’Andelot.—Coligny.—His
education, his piety, and domestic habits.—The Cardinal Odet de
Châtillon.—_Page 67-79._
XI.
Tyranny of the Guises.—Persecutions.—Fanaticism of the Parisian
populace.—The malcontents and the Huguenots.—The conspiracy of
Amboise.—Terrible executions.—The Baron de Castelnau.—Edict of
Romorantin in 1560.—_Page 79-84._
XII.
Establishment of the public worship of the Reformation.—First armed
contests.—Assembly of the notables at Fontainebleau.—Address
presented by Coligny.—Speech of the Bishop Montluc.—Resistance
of the Guises.—Disquietude of Pope Pius IV.—_Page 84-89._
XIII.
Condé arrested at Orleans.—Conspiracy against Antoine de Bourbon.
—The Huguenot’s snare.—Death of Francis II.—Regency of Catherine.
—States-General of Orleans.—Speech of the Chancellor l’Hospital, and
of the orators of the three orders.—_Page 89-95._
XIV.
The Reformation preached at Fontainebleau.—Great increase in the
number of churches and pastors.—Disturbances in different places.
—Intrigues of the Guises.—The triumvirate.—Edict of July.
—_Page 95-100._
BOOK THE SECOND.
FROM THE OPENING OF THE CONFERENCE OF POISSY TO THE EDICT OF NANTES.
(1561-1598.)
I.
Project of assembling a national council.—Opposition of the clergy.
—Simple conference.—Misapprehensions of both parties.—Theodore de
Bèze.—Biographical details.—Arrival of Bèze at Poissy.—Conversation
with the Cardinal de Lorraine.—Petition of the pastors.—_Page 101-106._
II.
Opening of the colloquy.—The deputies of the churches at the bar of
the Assembly.—Speech of Theodore de Bèze.—Murmurs of the prelates.
—Second sitting.—Answer of Cardinal de Lorraine.—Individual
conferences.—Stratagem of the Cardinal.—The Jesuit Lainez.—Rupture
of the colloquy.—_Page 106-113._
III.
Immense spread of the Reformation.—Viret at Nismes.—Catholic churches
invaded.—Great meetings at Paris.—Approximative number of the
Reformed at this period.—Edict of January.—Resistance of the Guises
and several Parliaments.—_Page 113-119._
IV.
Intrigues with Antoine de Bourbon, lieutenant-general of the kingdom.
—Defection of this prince.—Jeanne d’Albret.—Her piety and constancy.
—Her return to Béarn.—Wise government and courage of the queen of
Navarre.—_Page 119-122._
V.
Plots of the Guises.—The Reformed of Vassy.—Massacre of Vassy.—The
pastor Morel.—The Bible and the Duke de Guise.—Did he order the
massacre?—Great disquietude of the Calvinists.—Complaints of the
Consistory of Paris.—_Page 122-127._
VI.
Absence of all regular authority.—Resort to arms.—Letters of
Catherine de Medicis to Condé.—The foreigner appealed to by both
sides.—Manifestoes of each party.—Association of the Calvinist lords.
—Useless conferences.—Barbarous decrees of the Parliament.—The
English at Hâvre.—_Page 127-132._
VII.
Siege of Rouen.—Cruelties.—The pastor Marlorat.—Death of Antoine
de Bourbon.—Battle of Dreux.—Siege of Orleans.—Assassination of
the Duke de Guise.—Inconstancy of the Prince de Condé.—Peace of
Amboise.—Discontent of Coligny.—_Page 132-137._
VIII.
The religious war in all the provinces.—Severe discipline of the
Huguenots.—Atrocities of this war.—Massacre of Cahors.—Events at
Toulouse in 1562.—Resistance of the Calvinists at the citadel.—Their
surrender.—Great effusion of blood.—Montluc.—_Page 138-143._
IX.
Violation of the treaty of peace.—Journey of Catherine de Medicis
and Charles IX.—Interview with the duke of Alba.—Enterprises of
the Calvinist leaders.—Battle of Saint Denis.—Arrival of auxiliaries
from Germany.—Peace of Longjumeau.—_Page 143-149._
X.
New acts of violence and perfidy.—Retreat of the Calvinist noblemen
to La Rochelle.—Battle of Jarnac.—Provocations of Pope Pius V.
—Battle of Moncontour.—Heroism of Coligny.—Letter to his children.
—Peace of Saint Germain.—_Page 149-155._
XI.
Weakening of the Huguenot party.—Decline of piety and manners.
—National synods.—The national synod of La Rochelle in 1571.
—_Page 155-158._
XII.
The massacre of St. Bartholomew.—Who were the real authors of it?—An
Italian crime.—How it was prepared.—Sudden death of Jeanne d’Albret
at Paris.—Arrival of Coligny at the court.—Marriage of Henry de
Béarn.—Coligny wounded by Maurevel.—Visit of Charles IX.—Murder of
the Admiral.—Henri de Guise.—_Page 158-167._
XIII.
Execrable crimes.—General processions.—The Saint Bartholomew of the
provinces.—Bishop Hennuyer.—Massacres at Meaux, Troyes, Orleans,
Rouen, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lyons, &c.—The number of the victims.
—Rejoicing at Rome and Madrid.—Consternation of the Protestant
countries.—The French ambassador at London, and the Duke d’Anjou in
Germany.—Consequences of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew.
—_Page 167-176._
XIV.
Resistance and rising of the Calvinists.—Confederation at Montauban.
—Siege of Sancerre.—Siege of La Rochelle.—François Lanoue.—Edict
of 1573.—Remonstrances of the Reformed—The party of the politicians
or malcontents.—Death of Charles IX.—_Page 176-182._
XV.
Journey and return of Henry III. to France.—Abject bigotry of this
prince.—The consistorial Reformed and the nobility of the Calvinist
party.—Fresh recourse to arms.—Peace.—States-General of Blois.
—Edict of Poitiers.—_Page 182-187._
XVI.
Intrigues of Catherine de Medicis.—The war of the lovers.—The
League.—Vast Scheme of Philippe II.—Character of the Duke Henri de
Guise.—Weakness of Henry III.—Anarchy of the kingdom.—Edict of
Nemours.—Excommunication of the Bourbons by Sixtus Quintus.
—_Page 187-195._
XVII.
New war of religion.—Henry de Condé.—The king of Navarre.—Battle
of Coutras.—Popularity of the Duke de Guise.—Second States-General
of Blois.—Murder of the Duke de Guise.—Rising of the League.
—Manifesto of the king of Navarre.—Alliance between the two princes.
—Assassination of Henry III.—Manners of the court of the Valois.
—_Page 195-202._
XVIII.
Henry IV.—Difficulties of his position.—Desertion of the Catholic
nobles.—Fidelity of the Calvinists.—Duplessis-Mornay.—His
convictions, his talents, and activity.—The Baron de Rosny.—The
battle of Ivry.—Edict of Nantes.—_Page 202-207._
XIX.
The League.—How Henry IV. changed his religion.—The Abbé Duperron.
—Gabrielle d’Estrées.—Character of the king.—Arguments of Sully.
—Unshaken opposition of Mornay.—_Ruses_ of Henry IV.—Mock
instruction.—Abjuration.—_Page 208-212._
XX.
Capitulation of the Catholic lords.—The Calvinists sacrificed and
irritated.—Absolution of Henry IV. by Clement VIII.—Complaints of
the Reformed.—Their political assemblies.—Organization and object
of these assemblies.—The massacre of La Châtaigneraie.—Renewed
complaints.—Edict of Nantes.—Conclusion.—_Page 213-220._
BOOK THE THIRD.
FROM THE PROMULGATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES TO ITS REVOCATION.
(1598-1685.)
I.
Abjuration of Henri de Condé.—Catherine de Navarre, sister of Henry IV.
—Moderation of the political assemblies of the Reformed.—National
synods.—The question of the Antichrist conference between Mornay and
Duperron, at Fontainebleau.—Fraudulent proceedings.—The Reformed
Church of Charenton.—Assassination of Henry IV.—_Page 221-230._
II.
Fears of the Calvinists.—Declaration of the court.—Intrigues of the
Duke de Bouillon and De Lesdiguières.—The Duke Henri de Rohan.—Wise
conduct of Duplessis-Mornay.—Political assembly of Saumur.—Speech
of the Duke de Rohan.—Divisions among the Reformed.—National synod
of Privas.—Affair of Jérémie Ferrier.—_Page 230-236._
III.
Vexatious treatment of the Reformed.—Pretensions of the Catholic
clergy.—Manifesto of the Prince de Condé.—Oppression of the
Calvinists of Béarn.—Indignation of their co-religionaries.—Political
assembly of La Rochelle.—Project of the Reformed.—Regulations for
the discipline of the troops.—_Page 236-241._
IV.
Renewed contest.—Louis XIII. begins hostilities.—Taking of the
Castle of Saumur.—Death of Duplessis-Mornay.—Siege of Montauban.
—Re-commencement of the war in 1622.—Sanguinary executions at
Nègrepelisse, &c.—Treaty of peace.—_Page 241-247._
V.
False position of both sides.—Why the French Reformation had
become a political party.—Hidden policy of the court.—War of
partisans.—National synod of Charenton.—Expulsion of Cameron
and Primrose.—National synod of Castres.—Municipal liberties of
La Rochelle.—Plans of Cardinal Richelieu.—_Page 247-253._
VI.
Siege of La Rochelle.—Intervention of the English.—Courage and
distress of the besieged.—Indifference of the majority of the
Calvinists.—Surrender of La Rochelle.—Declaration of the king.
—Destruction of the town of Privas.—Edict of Grace.—Richelieu at
Montauban.—Last years of the Duke de Rohan.—_Page 253-260._
VII.
Fidelity and political services of the Calvinists.—Testimony of Mazarin
and Louis XIV.—Causes of the new persecutions.—The Jesuits.—The
clergy.—Prejudices of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV.—The statesmen and
the parliament men.—Good understanding among the middle classes.
—Fanaticism of the populace.—_Page 260-265._
VIII.
Plan of union.—Richelieu.—La Milletière.—Opposition of the synods
and the consistories—The Catholic converters.—Character, behaviour,
and arguments of these propagators of the faith.—The converter
Véron.—National synods of Charenton and Alençon.—New national synod
of Charenton.—_Page 265-271._
IX.
Peaceful state of affairs, from 1652-1656.—Complaints of the general
assemblies of the clergy.—Renewal of the persecutions.—Discussions
concerning the _annexed districts_.—Unfavourable reception of
the deputies at the court.—Last national synod of Loudun.—Arrogance
of the king’s commissioner.—Humble petitions of the Reformed.
—Frivolous pretexts for preventing the meeting of the national synods.
—_Page 271-277._
X.
Cultivation of theological learning.—Academy of Montauban.—Chamier.
—Bérault.—Garissoles.—This academy is broken up by the Jesuits.
—Academy of Saumur.—Cameron.—Amyrault.—Cappel.—La Place.—Academy
of Sédan.—Pierre Dumoulin.—Leblanc de Beaulieu.—Academy of Nismes.
—Samuel Petit.—_Page 277-284._
XI.
Pastors celebrated for their piety and learning.—André Rivet.—Edme
Aubertin.—Benjamin Basnage.—David Blondel.—Bochart.—Le Faucheur.
—Mestrezat.—Drelincourt.—Daillé.—Dubosc.—Larroque.—Ancillon.
—Claude.—_Page 284-292._
XII.
Catholic and Reformed commissioners sent into the provinces.—Vexatious
measures.—Captious writings of the Jesuits.—Declaration of 1663
against relapsed converts.—Other ordinances.—Exclusion of the Reformed
from public offices.—Probity of the Reformed in the departments
of finance.—Puerile annoyances.—General declaration.—First
emigration.—Prohibition against emigration.—Turenne’s abjuration.
—_Page 292-300._
XIII.
New projects of union.—Uselessness of these attempts.—The Jansenists
and the Jesuits.—Difference in their plans.—Numerous and iniquitous
ordinances.—Controversies.—Writings of Arnault and Nicole, and
replies of the Reformed.—The book of the Exposition.—Controversy
between Bossuet and Claude.—_Page 300-305._
XIV.
The jubilee of 1676.—Growing devotion of Louis XIV.—Bad education
of this monarch, and his ignorance on matters of religion.—Purchase
of consciences with money by Pelisson.—Frauds.—New law against
relapsed converts.—Madame de Maintenon.—Systematic project for the
extirpation of heresy.—Excesses of the populace.—_Page 305-310._
XV.
Increased severity of the ordinances against the Reformed.—Public
offices.—Civil rights.—Marriage and parental authority.—Contracts
and imposts.—Attacks upon property, and against liberty of conscience
and worship.—Prohibition against the admission of the new Catholics
to the temples.—Louvois.—Marillac.—First _dragonnades_ in
Poitou.—Emigration.—_Page 311-318._
XVI.
Intolerable position of the Reformed.—Useless complaints.—Project of
re-opening the interdicted temples.—Irritation of the court.—Cruelties
practised against the religionaries of Vivarais and Dauphiny.—Affair
of the church of Marennes.—Constancy of the Reformed.—Compliments
of the clergy to the king.—_Page 318-323._
XVII.
_Dragonnades_ in Béarn.—Atrocious excesses.—The _dragonnades_
in other provinces.—Barbarous treatment of all classes of the Reformed.
—Forced abjurations and communions.—Illusions of the court.—Revocation
of the Edict of Nantes.—Principal articles.—General considerations
respecting the Revocation.—_Page 323-332._
BOOK THE FOURTH.
FROM THE REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES TO THE EDICT OF TOLERANCE.
(1685-1787.)
I.
Two opposite influences in this period.—Severities against the pastors.
—Their arrival in foreign countries.—Extensive emigration of the
faithful.—Impotence of the laws and the government.—Different means
of evasion.—Generosity of the Protestant countries.—Approximative
number of the refugees.—_Page 333-340._
II.
State of the Protestants in the kingdom.—How those of Paris were
treated.—Additional ordinances.—Resistance in the south.—Secret
assemblies.—Preachers.—Military expeditions.—Punishments inflicted
upon the relapsed converts.—Louis XIV. makes a retrograde step.—The
Protestant convicts.—Elie Neau.—Execution of Fulcran Rey.—Zeal and
martyrdom of Claude Brousson.—_Page 340-349._
III.
Protests of the Jansenists and certain bishops.—Prudent advice of the
archbishop of Noailles and other enlightened individuals.—Persistance
of the Jesuits and the majority of the clergy.—Edict of 1698.—The
intendant Lamoignon de Bâville.—Murder of the arch-priest Chayla.
—_Page 349-354._
IV.
The war of the Camisards.—Religious frenzy.—The inspired obedience
to the spirit.—The leaders Roland and Cavalier.—Character and
manners of the Camisards.—Ill-success of the Count de Broglie.
—Cruelties of Marshal de Montrevel, and of Bâville.—Arrival of
Marshal du Villars.—Conference with Cavalier.—End of the war.
—_Page 354-363._
V.
Last years of the reign of Louis XIV.—Cautious treatment of the
Reformed of Paris.—Influence of the Jesuit Letellier.—Declaration
of 1715.—Monstrous legal fiction.—Death of Louis XIV.—Conduct of
the Regent towards the Reformed.—_Page 363-367._
VI.
Internal condition of Protestantism.—Antoine Court.—His early years,
his piety and devotion.—Re-organization of the churches.—Resolutions
of the synods of the desert.—Consecration of Antoine Court.
—Religious assemblies.—_Page 367-372._
VII.
Edict of 1714.—Its contents.—Opinions of historians and statesmen
upon this Edict.—Exactions of the priests with regard to proofs of
Catholicity.—Opposition between the magistracy and the clergy.—The
ministry of Cardinal Fleury.—Martyrdom of Roussel and Durand.
—Tournée de Court.—The French seminary of Lausanne.—_Page 372-381._
VIII.
Biographical details respecting the refugee pastors.—Pierre Jurieu.
—Pierre Allix.—Jean la Placette.—David Martin.—Jacques Basnage.
—Abbadie.—Elie Benoît.—Saurin.—Lenfant and Beausobre.
—_Page 381-390._
IX.
Numerous churches reorganized in the south.—National synod of 1744.
—Resolutions of this assembly.—Apprehensions of the court.—Popular
rumours and calumnies.—Barbarous ordinances.—Abduction of children.
—Judicial condemnations.—Assemblies surprised.—Protestant convicts.
—_Page 390-396._
X.
Increased persecutions of the pastors.—Martyrdoms of Louis Ranc
and Roger.—Arrest of the pastor Matthieu Désubas.—Grief of the
Protestants.—Affair of Vernoux.—Martyrdom of Désubas.—Petitions
of the Reformed.—Intolerance of the clergy.—Writings of the bishops
of Castres, Agen, and Alais.—Answer of Rippert de Monclar.
—_Page 396-404._
XI.
Fresh petitions.—Aggravation of the persecutions from 1750 to 1755.
—The intendant Guignard de Saint Priest.—Project for a general
re-baptizement.—Excesses of the troops.—Armed resistance in the
Cevennes.—Fears of the Government.—Martyrdom of François Benezet.
—Abjuration and repentance of the pastor Jean Molines.—_Page 404-409._
XII.
Pursuits ordered by the Duke de Richelieu.—Assemblies taken by
surprise.—The convict Jean Fabre.—Martyrdom of the pastor Etienne
Lafage.—Severity exercised in Saintonge, Montauban, Béarn, and
Guienne.—Reclamations of the Protestants of Bordeaux.—_Page 409-416._
XIII.
Paul Rabaut.—His life belongs to two epochs.—Commencement of his
ministry.—Studies at Lausanne.—He is appointed pastor at Nismes.
—Devotion, moderation, and great influence of this pastor.—His
petition to the Marquis de Paulmy.—Caution of the intendants with
respect to him.—His works.—His correspondence with the Prince
de Conti.—Portrait of Paul Rabaut.—His preaching.—_Page 416-422._
XIV.
Reaction of public opinion against intolerance.—Complaints of the
clergy.—Last pursuits of the assemblies.—Synods of Lower Languedoc.
—Arrest of the pastor François Rochette.—Disturbances at Caussade.
—The three brothers Grenier.—Decree of the Parliament of Toulouse.
—Firmness of Rochette and the three glass-manufacturers.—Their
martyrdom.—Affair of Calas.—His death.—Reversal of his sentence.
—_Page 422-430._
XV.
Progress of toleration.—Synod of 1763.—Some local vexations.
—Liberation of the religious convicts and prisoners.—Re-organization
of many churches.—Normandy.—Bolbec.—Court de Gébelin at Paris.
—Doubtful position of the Protestants.—Indifference of the
philosophical school.—Necessity of a new legislation.—_Page 430-436._
XVI.
Opinions of the lawyers.—Joly de Fleury.—Rippert de Monclar.
—Servan.—Gilbert de Voisins.—Remonstrances of the clergy.—Projects
of Turgot.—Scruples of Louis XVI.—Memorials of the Baron de Breteuil
and of Rulhières.—Malesherbes.—Lafayette.—Assembly of the Notables.
—Edict of Toleration.—Social position of the Reformed.—_Page 436-445._
BOOK THE FIFTH.
FROM THE EDICT OF TOLERATION TO THE PRESENT TIME.
(1787-1851.)
I.
General considerations.—Revolution of 1789.—Laws of the Constituent
Assembly concerning religious liberty.—Rabaut.—Saint Etienne.
—Analysis of one of his speeches.—His character and his death.
—Proposition of Dom Gerle.—New decrees respecting the Protestants.
—_Page 446-453._
II.
Religious divisions in the south.—Origin and cause of these troubles.
—François Froment.—Measures of the conspirators.—Popular rising
at Montauban.—Nismes.—Report to the Constituent Assembly.—Rigour
against the clergy.—The Decade.—Abjurations.—Persecutions.
—Re-establishment of freedom of worship.—Death of Paul Rabaut.
—_Page 453-462._
III.
The Concordat.—First measures of the Consular Government with
reference to the Protestants.—Law of the 18th Germinal, year X.
—Comparison of the old and new organization of the churches.—Speech
of Napoleon to the presidents of the consistories.—State of the
Protestants under the empire.—Creation of the faculty of
theology of Montauban.—Projects of union.—_Page 462-473._
IV.
Return of the Bourbons.—Charter of 1814.—Provocations against the
Protestants in the south.—The hundred days.—The reaction.—Massacres
at Nismes and the department of Gard.—M. Voyer-d’Argenson.
—Assassination of General Lagarde.—Re-establishment of worship at
Nismes.—The pastors of Gard.—_Page 473-481._
V.
Double influence under the restoration.—Augmentation of the budget
of the creeds, and other measures favourable to the Protestants.
—Intrigues of the clerical party.—Trial of M. Paul Roman.—Pretension
of parcelling out the Protestants within certain limits.—Resistance
of the consistories.—Catholic missionaries.—Controversies.
—Non-execution of the Charter.—_Page 482-489._
VI.
Internal condition of Protestantism.—Religious life.—M. Daniel
Encontre.—His education, talents, and labours.—Foundation of the
Bible Society and other religious associations.—The Baron de Staël.
—Evangelization.—Félix Neff.—The Protestants of the Upper Alps.
—Protestant literature under the restoration.—_Page 489-497._
VII.
Revolution of 1830.—Agitation at Nismes.—The Charter revised.—M.
Dupin’s opinion on religious liberty.—Hopes of the Protestants.—Plan
of ecclesiastical organization.—Different ameliorations.—Attempts
to proselytize among the Catholics.—Opposition of the government.
—Fetters imposed upon legal Protestantism.—Debates in the Chambers.
—Instances of intolerance.—_Page 497-506._
VIII.
Internal situation.—The question of the confessions of faith.—M.
Stapfer.—M. Samuel Vincent.—The question of the separation of Church
and State.—M. Alexandre Vinet.—The Protestant press under the reign
of Louis Philippe.—Charitable institutions.—Religious societies.
—Admiral Ver-Huell.—Dissenters.—_Page 506-514._
IX.
Revolution of 1848.—Debates upon the separation of the two powers.
—Gathering of the Protestant delegates at Paris.—Synodal assembly
of September, 1848.—Schism.—Project of ecclesiastical organization.
—Articles of the Constitution respecting the freedom of creeds.
—Conclusion.—_Page 515-519._
INTRODUCTION.
The Reformation of the sixteenth century is the greatest event
of modern times. It has remodelled everything in Protestant
countries; and has modified almost everything in Roman Catholic
countries—religious and moral doctrines, ecclesiastical and civil
institutions, the arts and sciences, in such sort that it is
impossible to advance a step in the investigation of an idea, or a
fact whatsoever, without meeting this immense work face to face. The
Reformation marks the starting-point of a new world: God alone knows
its development and its end.
It is important to examine how, in the first years of the sixteenth
century, it arose out of the intellectual wants and the general
conscience, of mankind. It was at the same time the expression of a
profound state of uneasiness, the means of a mighty improvement, and
the pledge of a progress towards a better future.
The Papacy, without doubt, had rendered more than one service to
Christianity in the barbarous ages. It would be unjust to refuse
it the honour of having served as a centre of European unity, and
of having often made right prevail over brute force. But gradually
as the peoples advanced, Rome became less capable of leading them,
and when she dared to erect herself as an impassable barrier before
the double action of the spirit of God and the spirit of man, she
received a wound which, notwithstanding vain appearances, widens from
generation to generation.
In matters of belief and of worship, Roman Catholicism had admitted,
by ignorance or by design, many of the Pagan elements. Without
denying the fundamental dogmas of Christianity, it had disfigured
and mutilated them to the extent of rendering them difficult of
recognition. It was the world, to say sooth, which, forcing _en
masse_ the doors of the Christian church, had borne in with it
its demigods under the name of saints, its rites, its feasts,
its consecrated spots, its lustral water, its sacerdotal system;
everything, in fine, to the very insignia of its priests; so much so
that polytheism survived itself, in great measure, under the garb of
the religion of Christ.
This mass of errors and of superstitions had naturally extended
itself during the long darkness of the Middle Age. Peoples and
priests had each lent their hand. Out of the false traditions of
Catholicism some new falsehood was seen to rise from time to time,
and it is easy to mark in the history of the Church the date of all
the great changes that Christianity has undergone. The most devoted
defenders of the papal throne confess that the corruption was extreme
at the outset of the sixteenth century. “Some years before the
appearance of the Calvinist and Lutheran heresy,” says Bellarmine,
“there existed scarcely any severity in the ecclesiastical laws,
purity in manners, learning in sacred literature, respect for holy
things, or religion.”[1]
Preaching, although very rare, contributed to thicken the darkness,
it would seem, rather than to dispel it. Bossuet acknowledges this
with precautions which but half conceal his thoughts: “Many preachers
preached only indulgences, pilgrimages, alms to the religious orders,
and made the essence of piety to consist in these practices, which
were but its accessories. They did not speak so much as they should
have done of the grace of Jesus Christ.”[2]
The Bible was silent beneath the dust of old libraries. It was
kept in some places fastened with an iron chain; sad image of the
interdiction with which it was stricken in the Catholic world.
After having forbidden it to the faithful, the clergy, by a very
simple consequence, had closed the Bible in their own schools. A
short while before the Reformation, the professors of Germany had
been prohibited from explaining the Holy Word in their public and
private lectures. The original tongues of the Old and New Testament
were, so to say, suspected of heresy; and when Luther raised his
voice, it would have been difficult to find in the church of
Rome any doctors capable of discussing with him the text of the
Scriptures.
In this deep silence of the sacred authors, ignorance, prejudice,
ambition, avarice, had free speech. The priest frequently used this
liberty not for the glory of God, but of himself; and religion,
destined to transform man into the image of his Creator, ended by
transforming the Creator himself into the image of cupidinous and
intolerant man.
Theology, after having shone with a splendid light in the brilliant
days of scholasticism, had by degrees lost its ardour as well as
its authority, and had become an enormous collection of curious and
frivolous questions. Incessantly occupied with sharpening in puerile
disputes the point of its logic, it no longer answered the wants of
the human mind any more than those of the human heart.
The masses of the people appeared to follow, in general, their
accustomed way; but from habit and tradition, rather than from
devotion. The enthusiasm of the Middle Age had evaporated, and
it would have been vain to seek in the Church for those mighty
inspirations, which caused all Europe to rise at the time of the
crusades.
Some pious men dwelt in the presbyteries, in the cloisters, among the
laity, striving to seize the truth through the veil with which it had
been covered; but they were scattered, suspected, and cast down with
grief.
Discipline had shared the alterations of doctrine. The pontiff of
Rome having, under favour of the false Decretals, usurped the title
and the functions of universal bishop, pretended to the exercise of
most of the rights which belonged, in the first ages, to the heads
of dioceses; and as he was not ubiquitous, as he was obedient to his
passions or to his interests more than to his duties, he aggravated
the abuses which he ought to have extirpated.
What the sovereign pontiff was to the bishops, the mendicant
monks, the venders of indulgences, and the other vagabond agents
of the Papacy, were to the simple curates and the parish priests.
Regular and legitimate authority was compelled to give way to these
intruders, who, while they promised to reinstate the flocks, did
nothing but pervert them.
All was disorder and anarchy. A despotic power was at the summit of
the Church; midway and below, were growing usurpations, scandalous
and never-ceasing contests; Christianity had much less reason to
complain of being too much governed, than of being badly governed.
Illusory in the ranks of the clergy, discipline had actually become
a source of demoralization for the laity. To the long and severe
penances of ancient times had succeeded the redemption of sins at
a money price. If, at least, it had been necessary to pay for each
transgression separately, it would yet have been necessary to number
one’s vices. The extreme evil was, that they might be redeemed
all at once, they might be redeemed beforehand, for all one’s
lifetime, for all one’s family, for all one’s posterity, for a whole
parish altogether. Thenceforward, there was no more authority. The
absolution of the priest was derided, because absolution had already
been paid for out of the purse; and the clerical power that Rome
maintained on one side, she overthrew on the other.
The traffic of indulgences was carried on by the same means as
ordinary barter; it had its contractors on a large scale, its
directors and sub-directors, its offices, its tariffs, its travelling
factors. Indulgences were vended by auction, at the beat of the drum,
in the public places. They were sold by wholesale and by retail, and
those agents were employed, who best knew the art of deceiving and
plundering mankind.
It was, above all, this sacrilegious industry which gave the fatal
blow to the Romish church. Nothing irritates a people so much as to
find in religion less morality than in themselves; and this instinct
is just. Every religion should ameliorate those who believe in it.
When it depraves them, when it makes them descend beneath that
condition in which they would be without it, its fall is certain; for
it possesses no longer its essential and supreme reason of existence.
How, moreover, could the members of the clergy enforce a respect
for moral duties, which they were the first to transgress? We will
not here recount the disgraceful and universal licentiousness so
numerously attested by authentic declarations, among others by the
_hundred grievances_ which were presented to the diet of Nuremberg,
in 1523, with the signature of a legate even of Pope Adrian. Many
priests paid a public tax for the privilege of living in an unlawful
commerce, and in many localities in Germany this disorder had been
rendered obligatory, so that still greater offences might be avoided.
Besides indulgences, Rome had invented all kinds of methods for
increasing its revenues: appellations, reservations, exemptions,
provisions, dispensations, expectatives, annates. The gold of Europe
would have been completely absorbed if the governments had not
placed some barrier; and even the poorest nations were compelled
to impoverish themselves yet more to gorge pontiffs, who, like the
grave, never exclaimed—“It is enough.”
The bishops and the heads of monastic orders did the same in the
different provinces of Catholicity. Everything helped them to swell
the possessions of the Church; peace and war, public triumphs and
misfortunes, private successes and reverses, the faith of these,
and the heresy of those. What they could not obtain from the
liberality of the faithful, they sought in the spoliation of those
who disbelieved. And so, as the grievances of Nuremberg state,
the regular and secular clergy possessed in Germany one-half the
territory; in France it held the third; elsewhere, still more. And
the ecclesiastical domains being exempt from all taxation, priests
and monks, without bearing the burdens of the state, monopolized all
its benefits.
Not only did they enjoy enormous privileges for their property; they
had others for their persons. Every clerk was an anointed of the
Lord, a sacred thing for the civil judge. No one had a right to place
his hand upon him, until he had been tried, condemned, and degraded
by the members of his own order. The clergy thus formed a society
wholly distinct from the general society. It was a caste placed
without and above the common law; its immunities prevailed over the
sovereignty of justice, and authors entitled to our credence relate
that wretches entered the sacerdotal order or the cloister, solely to
commit crimes with impunity.
If the priests did not suffer the magistrates to attach them, they
arrogated to themselves the right of interposing without end in
the suits of the laity. Testaments and wills, marriages, the civil
condition of children, and a host of other matters which were called
mixed, were carried before their tribunal; so that a considerable
part of justice depended upon the clergy, who themselves depended
upon their peers and chief alone; an organization, useful perhaps in
the times of ignorance, when none but ecclesiastics possessed any
knowledge, but which, by perpetuating itself down to the sixteenth
century, after the revival of letters, became the most iniquitous of
prerogatives, the most intolerable of usurpations.
There are in the present day writers who draw a magnificent ideal of
the state of Catholicism before Luther. But have they ever studied
that epoch? And those who declaim with the greatest violence against
the Reformation, would they suffer for one day the abuses it has
destroyed?
And it must be said, for the honour of mankind, that from period to
period, fresh and courageous adversaries have arisen against each
error, and each encroachment of the priestly power. In an early
age, Vigilantius, and Claude of Turin; then, the Vaudois and the
Albigenses; then, the Wickliffites, the Hussites, and the Brethren
of Moravia and Bohemia—small and feeble communities—were crushed by
the popes leagued with the princes, but who from their scaffolds and
their stakes, transmitted to each other the sacred flame of primitive
faith, until, reared aloft by the powerful hand of Luther, it spread
afar its rays over the Christian world.
Another protestation, parallel to the preceding, and which has been
styled Catholic Protestantism, had constantly manifested itself in
the bosom of the Church itself, particularly after the appearance
of the mystics of the Middle Age. Among the theologians, Bernard de
Clairvaux, Gerson d’Ailly, Nicholas de Clémangis; among the poets,
Dante and Petrarch; even councils held at Pisa, Constance, and Basle;
men the most renowned for their piety and their character, for their
genius and their learning, had raised the same cry: “A reform, a
reform in the Church! A reform in the head and the members, in the
faith and the manners!” But this Catholic movement always failed;
because it never attacked the root of the evil. The secret of
obtaining all—is it not that of desiring and daring all?
Whilst the Papacy persecuted the former of these protestations, and
tried to seduce the other, a new enemy presented itself: the most
redoubtable of all, because it could assume the most diverse forms;
because it displayed itself everywhere at the same moment; because
neither artifices nor tortures could subdue it. And what was this
antagonist?—The human mind itself awakening from its long sleep.
The fifteenth century had restored to it the books of antiquity. It
suddenly felt itself animated with an intense want of investigation
and renewal; and resuming, at the same time, philosophy, history,
poetry, the sciences, the arts, all the wonders of the most
flourishing ages of Greece and ancient Rome, it was aware that it
could and would march onward in its independence.
The discovery of printing came to help the revival of learning.
The old world reappeared in its entirety at the same time that
Christopher Columbus discovered a new one. More than three thousand
writings were published from the year 1450 to the year 1520. There
was a prodigious activity, which knew neither fatigue nor fear; and
what could the Church oppose to this first expansion of the human
mind, so happy and so proud of entering again upon the possession of
itself? The martyrdom of Savonarola did not intimidate it; at the
most it took a by-turn in the treatises of Pomponatius, to arrive at
the same end. The Vatican, which had sometimes been so skilful, was
not so in the face of this vast movement. Several popes succeeded
each other, feeble, or covetous of money, or stained with the foulest
crimes: Paul II., Sixtus IV., Innocent VIII., Alexander VI., Julius
II. The last, Leo X., having the voluptuous tastes of the race of the
Medici, to which he belonged, without sharing their grandeur or their
courage,—a priest without theological learning, a pontiff without
gravity, setting his buffoons to dispute about the immortality of
the soul, and amusing himself with the frivolous diversions of the
theatre, when Germany was on fire,—seems to have been chosen from on
high to level the path of the Reformation.
Thus everything was ready. Scarcely do we place our foot upon the
threshold of the sixteenth century, before we hear those hollow
sounds which, in the moral world, as in the physical, announce the
approach of the storm. The heart is oppressed, the mind is disturbed:
something extraordinary, we know not what, is about to happen.
Kings upon their thrones, the learned in their closets, professors
in their chairs, pious men in their oratories, even warriors upon
the field of battle, tremble and reveal, by brief words or acts of
violence, the presentiments which pursue them.
In 1511, the emperor Maximilian and the king Louis XII. convoke a
council at Pisa, in order to recall Julius II. to his duty, and
to remedy the evils of the Church. Several cardinals attend, in
spite of the prohibitions of the Vatican; and on the 21st of April,
1512, the pope Julius is suspended, as notoriously incorrigible and
contumacious. “Arise, Cæsar,” write with one accord the members
of this assembly to the emperor Maximilian: “Arise, be firm and
watchful; the Church falls; the good are oppressed; and the wicked
triumph.”
Julius II. opposed council with council, and assembled in the basilic
of the Lateran the prelates who remained faithful to him. But even
there, before this pontiff, who possessed no other knowledge than
that of arms, Œgidius de Viterbo, general of the order of the
Augustines, accuses the priests of having abandoned prayer for the
sword, and of haunting, after battle, houses of prostitution. “Can
we contemplate,” he asks, “without shedding tears of blood, the
ignorance, the ambition, the immodesty, the impiety reigning in the
holy places, whence they ought to be for ever banished?”
As they hearkened to these cries of distress descending from such
high places, the troubled nations appealed to a new general council,
as if experience had not taught them that these great assemblies,
so prodigal of words, were barren for a work of reformation! But
the multitude knew not whence deliverance might come, and, in its
anxiety, it clung to the illusions of its old recollections.
In the midst of this universal and restless expectation, the enemy
grew bold. Reuchlin maintained the rights of knowledge against
the barbarous teaching of the universities. The noble Ulrich of
Hutten, the representative of chivalry in this grand struggle,
announced by appeals from the sword to public reason, the advent
of a new civilization. Erasmus, the Voltaire of the epoch, excited
the laughter of kings, lords, cardinals, and even the pope, at the
expense of the monks and doctors, and opened the door by which the
modern world must pass. Then Martin Luther appeared.
It is not part of my task to write the history of the Reformer. Sent
to Rome respecting the affairs of the order of the Augustines, he
found there a vast and profound incredulity, a revolting immorality.
Luther returned to Germany heartbroken, his conscience agitated with
bitter doubts. An old Bible, which he discovered in the convent of
Erfurt, revealed to him a religion wholly different from that which
he had been taught. Still the thought was not yet born within him
to undertake the reformation of the Church. Pastor and professor
at Wittenberg, he confined himself to spreading around him healthy
doctrines and good examples.
But John Tetzel, a vender of indulgences, audacious to effrontery,
covetous to cynicism, whilom condemned to prison for notorious
crimes, and menaced with drowning in the Inn by the inhabitants of
the Tyrol, dared to interpose his vile traffic between the word of
Luther and the souls confided to him. Luther became indignant: he
re-perused his Bible; and in 1517 he affixed to the door of the
cathedral of Wittenberg those ninety-five theses destined soon to
raise throughout all Europe such a formidable echo.
It was the revolt of his conscience, which made him seek in the
Bible fresh weapons against the church of Rome. It is the same moral
revolt, which will gather around him thousands, and soon millions of
disciples. Luther has placed himself at the head of all the irritated
people of worth.
To the dogma of justification by works, which has produced so many
extravagant practices and shameful excesses, he opposes justification
through faith in the redemption of Jesus Christ. All his doctrine
is summed up in these words of the apostle Paul: “For by grace
are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the
gift of God.”[3] This doctrine had the double advantage of resting
for support upon Biblical texts, and of overthrowing by the same
blow indulgences, supererogatory works of saints, pilgrimages,
flagellations, penances, artificial merits. It thus accorded with the
highest ideas, with the best religions, the intellectual and moral
aspirations of the era.
Luther had taken a first step. He again appealed, nevertheless, from
the pope ill-informed, to the pope better advised. But instead of
an ordinance of reformation, Rome sent a bull of excommunication.
The doctor of Wittenberg solemnly burnt it, with the Decretals of
the Holy See, on the 10th of December, 1520, in the presence of
innumerable spectators. The issuing flame lighted up all Europe, and
cast a sinister glare upon the walls of the Vatican.
On the 17th of April, 1521, Luther appeared before the diet of Worms.
He had against him the emperor and the pope, the two greatest powers
of the universe; but he had for him the living forces of his age.
When he was summoned to retract, he invoked the testimony of the
Bible. If he were convicted of error by that, he would recant; if
not, no! The envoy of Rome refused to open the book which condemned
the papacy, and Charles V. began to perceive that there is here below
something superior to the power of the sword.
The work advanced. It is interesting to observe that Luther did
not arrive with a system complete and defined. He came with a
first grievance against the abuses of the Romish church, then with
a second; with one hand upsetting by degrees the old edifice of
Catholicism, whilst with the other he constructed the new edifice;
he did not himself apprehend the extent of his mission but as he
gradually fulfilled it.
After the upraising of his conscience, came the reordering of
doctrine; after doctrine, the reform of worship; after worship,
the establishment of new ecclesiastical institutions. Luther never
went beyond his convictions, or outstepped the movement of public
opinion. It was thus that he retained under his standard those who
had gathered around it, and that he was aided in his labour by the
public thought. Luther gave much to the contemporaneous generation,
and perhaps received yet more than he gave.
One of his most laborious and useful works was the translation of the
Bible into German. It fixed the language of his country, and made
stable its faith.
Eight years after the publication of the ninety-five theses, in
1525, Luther espoused Catherine de Bora, being persuaded, with Æneas
Sylvius, who became pope under the name of Pius II., that if there
are many strong reasons for interdicting priests from marrying, there
are some much stronger for permitting it. In the performance of this
solemn act, the Reformer equally avoided a precipitation which
might have compromised his character, and a delay which might have
degenerated or weakened his maxims. He was then forty-two years of
age, and on the avowal of his opponents themselves, “he had spent all
his youth without reproach, in continence.”[4]
In 1530, Melancthon, the fellow-labourer of Luther, presented to
the diet of Augsburg, with his accord, the Confession of Faith,
which, during ages, has served as a rallying-point to the Lutheran
reformation. The Protestants showed in this way, that they had
shaken off the yoke of Rome only to accept, without reservation,
the injunctions of the Bible, such at least as they understood them
according to the measure of the intelligence of their time.
There were manifest and sore trials in the life of Luther: the
excesses of the Anabaptists, the insurrection of the peasants,
the passions of the princes, who mingled with religious questions
political calculations; the over-zeal of some of his followers, the
weakness and timidity of many others. He was often grieved, never
cast down; for the same spirit of faith which had opened to him the
road, led him along it with unswerving constancy.
Luther died in 1546. Some hours before his end, he said: “Jonas,
Cælius, and you who are present, pray for the cause of God and of his
Gospel; for the council of Trent and the pope rage furiously.” And
when the cold sweat seized him, he began to pray in these terms: “O
my beloved Father in heaven, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
God of all comfort, I thank thee that thou hast revealed to me thy
dear Son Jesus Christ, in whom I believe, whom I have preached and
confessed, whom I have loved and glorified. I pray thee, Lord Jesus
Christ, have mercy on my poor soul.” Then he repeated thrice in
Latin: “Father, I return my spirit into thy hands. Thou hast redeemed
me, O Eternal God of truth.” Then, without agony, without effort, he
breathed his last.
While the Reformation changed the face of Germany, it penetrated
also into the mountains and the valleys of Switzerland. It had even
appeared there before. Ulrich Zwinglius was encouraged and fortified
by the words of Luther, but he had not waited for them. “I began to
preach the Gospel in the year of grace 1516,” he wrote; “that is
to say, when the name of Luther had not yet been pronounced in our
country. It is not from Luther I have learned the doctrine of Christ;
it is from the Word of God.”
Another seller of indulgences, Bernardine Samson, drove Zwinglius,
in 1518, to declare himself openly. Ever, we see, the rebellion
of conscience against the disorders of Catholic authority. The
Reformation was a protestation of outraged morality, before it was a
religious revival.
This unfrocked Carmelite had brought from Italy an impudence which
provoked the indignation of vice itself. “I can pardon every sin,”
he cried; “heaven and hell are submitted to my power, and I sell the
favours of Jesus Christ to whomsoever will buy them for ready money.”
He boasted of having carried off enormous sums from a poor country.
When there was a lack of coin, he took in exchange for his papal
bulls, plate of silver and gold. He made his acolytes shout to the
multitude that pressed around his stalls: “Hinder not each other. Let
those come first who have money; we will try afterwards to content
those who have none.”
Ulrich Zwinglius, from that time, attacked the power of the pope, the
penitential sacrament, the merit of ceremonial works, the sacrifice
of the Mass, abstinence from flesh, the celibacy of priests;
gradually growing more firm and more decided as the public voice
answered his with increasing energy.
The Swiss Reformer was modest, affable, popular, and of
irreproachable life. He had a profound knowledge of the Scriptures,
a living faith, a solid erudition, clear ideas, a simple and precise
language, an activity without limit. Stored with the Greek and Roman
literature, and full of admiration for the great men of antiquity,
he had some opinions which appeared novel and over-bold in his time.
Zwinglius admitted, like many of the old fathers of the Church, the
permanent and universal action of the divine spirit on humanity.
“Plato,” said he, “also drank of the divine fountain: and if the two
Catos, if Camillus and Scipio, had not been truly religious, would
they have been so magnanimous?”[5]
Called to Zurich, he taught there, not what he had received from the
Romish tradition, but what he had gathered from the Bible. “This is
the preacher of truth,” said he to the magistrates; “it announces
to you things as they are.” And from the year 1520, the council of
Zurich published an ordinance, enjoining upon their ecclesiastics not
to preach anything which was not found in the Holy Scriptures.
Three years after, Pope Adrian, seeing the growing authority of
Zwinglius, endeavoured to gain him over. He sent him a letter, in
which he complimented him upon his excellent virtues, and directed
his legate to offer him _everything short of the pontifical throne_.
Adrian knew the worth of the man, not his character. At the very
moment when such high dignities were offered to him, Zwinglius was
victoriously disputing at Zurich against the delegates of the bishop
of Constance.
Other debates were commenced in the presence of the magistrates and
of the people. At last, on the 12th of April, 1525, an ordinance for
abolishing the Mass and celebrating the communion according to the
simplicity of the Gospel appeared.
The difference of the age and manners should be noticed here. In
the sixteenth century, the civil power decided upon the change
of religion; in the nineteenth century this would be thought an
intolerable usurpation. As civilization advances, it gradually
diminishes, in spiritual matters, the authority of the state, and
increases that of the individual.
The Helvetic cantons having taken different sides, some that of Rome,
others that of the Reformation, a war of religion, the worst of all
wars, broke out among them. It was an ancient custom for the chief
pastor of Zurich to accompany the army. Zwinglius conformed to the
practice. The historian Ruchat relates that he marched as if he were
conducted to death, and that those who watched his demeanour observed
that he ceased not to pray to God to guard in safe-keeping his soul
and the church.
On the 11th of October, 1531, he was struck down on the battle-field
of Cappel. He regained his feet, but, pressed by the crowd of
fugitives, he thrice fell. “Alas, what misfortune is this?” he cried.
“Well! they may kill the body, but they cannot slay the soul.” These
were the last words he could articulate. Stretched upon his back,
with joined hands, and eyes bent on heaven, the motion of his lips
alone showed that he prayed. Some soldiers having lifted him up
without knowing who he was, asked if he wished to confess, and invoke
the Virgin and the saints. He indicated his dissent by a sign of the
head, and upraising his eyes, continued his silent prayers. “_It is
an obstinate heretic!_” shouted the soldiers, and an officer stabbing
him in the throat with a pike, put an end to his existence. According
to some, Ulrich Zwinglius was forty-four years of age; according to
others, forty-seven.
Many different judgments have been passed upon this tragic end, and
we may still see in them the change of opinions. Our times would, at
least, deplore the death of a minister of the Gospel in the midst
of a scene of carnage: such was not the manner of thinking three
centuries ago. “Discharging the duties of his ministry in the army,
Zwinglius,” says Theodore de Bèze, “was slain in battle, and his
body was burnt by the enemy: God thus honouring his servant with a
double crown, seeing that a man could not die after a more honourable
and more holy fashion, than by losing this corruptible life for the
safety of his country, and for the glory of God.”[6]
In spite of checks of more than one kind, the Reformation spread
rapidly throughout a great part of Europe, and took root.
In Germany, Saxony, Hesse, Brandenburg, the Palatinate, Pomerania,
many secondary states, and nearly all the free towns; in the east,
the majority of the population of Hungary; in the north, Denmark,
Norway, Sweden, and a part of Poland, burst asunder the chains of
Roman Catholicism.
In England and Scotland, two distinct movements led the people to
the Protestant faith: one guided by King Henry VIII., the other
by the pastor John Knox. Hence, the diversity of principles and
organization subsisting at the present day.
The Reformation penetrated into the heart of Europe, but could not
establish itself. In Spain, the long struggle with the Moors had
identified Catholicism with the national mind, and the Inquisition
stood firm, supported by popular fanaticism. In Italy, the scepticism
of the learned, the countless ramifications of the clergy, the
interests of a multitude of families engaged in the maintenance of
the old ecclesiastical order, the passion of the masses for the fine
arts, and the pomp of the Romish worship, hindered the progress of
Protestantism.
At the gates of France, Switzerland, on one side, with a few small
bordering states, Alsace, Lorraine, the country of Montbéliard,
which have since become French provinces; and on the other side,
Flanders and Holland, listened with sympathy to the preaching of the
new ideas. Thus the Reformation spread around all the frontiers of
France, while it strove to penetrate and overrun it within.
We reach at length the history, which forms the subject of this
book. It will place before our eyes great triumphs followed by great
catastrophes, and fearful persecutions, only to be surpassed by
the constancy of the victims. It is, altogether, one of the most
important chapters in the annals of the French nation, and one of the
most interesting pages of the Reformation.
HISTORY
OF THE
PROTESTANTS OF FRANCE.
BOOK I.
FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE TO THE OPENING OF THE
CONFERENCE OF POISSY.
(1521-1561.)
I.
Meaux was the first town in France that heard the doctrines of the
Reformation publicly expounded. This was in 1521, four years after
Luther had affixed his theses against indulgences upon the doors of
his cathedral, and the very year in which he appeared before the diet
of Worms.
Two preachers attracted, beyond all others, the attention of the
inhabitants of Meaux: Jacques Lefevre and Guillaume Farel; the one
aged nearly seventy, but still full of activity in a green old age;
the other, young, decided, ardent, and, according to the testimony of
his contemporaries, making the public places and the temples resound
with a voice of thunder.
Jacques Lefevre was born at Etaples, a small town of Picardy. Endowed
with an expansive and inquiring mind, he had embraced all things
in his studies,—the ancient tongues, _belles lettres_, history,
mathematics, philosophy, theology; and in the course of his long
travels, he had acquired everything that could be learned at the end
of the fifteenth century. On his return to France, he was nominated
to a professorship in the university of Paris, and gathered round
his chair a numerous body of scholars. The doctors of the Sorbonne,
distrustful of his learning, and jealous of his reputation, watched
him with a hostile eye. Yet he displayed great devotion, being one of
the most assiduous at mass, and at processions, passing whole hours
at the foot of the images of Mary, and delighting in adorning them
with flowers.
Lefevre had even undertaken to rewrite the Legend of the Saints, but
he did not reach the end; for having attentively read the Bible to
complete his work, he discovered that the holiness of most of the
heroes of the Roman calendar bears but very little resemblance to the
ideal of Christian virtue. Once on this new ground, he never quitted
it; and always as sincere with his students as with his conscience,
he openly attacked some of the errors of the (Roman) Catholic Church.
To the justification of outward works he opposed justification by
faith, and announced the advent of a new birth in the religion of the
people. This happened in 1512.
It is important to notice these dates, because they prove that the
notions of reform, not only in worship, or in discipline, but in the
very fundamental principles, manifested themselves at the same time
in several places, without its being possible that the men, who put
themselves at the head of the movement, could have acted in concert.
When a political or religious revolution is ripe, it appears on all
sides, and no one can say who was the first to move in it.
Among those who heard the new opinions of Jacques Lefevre with
avidity, was Guillaume Farel, whom we have already named. Born near
Gap in 1489, and instructed in the faithful observance of devout
practices, he had sought in them, like his master, peace of heart.
Night and day, as he has himself related it in a confession addressed
_to all lords and peoples_, he invoked the Virgin and the saints; he
scrupulously conformed to the fasts prescribed by the Church, held
the pontiff of Rome to be a god upon earth, saw in the priests the
sole channel of all celestial blessings, and treated as infidels
whoever did not exhibit an ardour similar to his own.
When he heard his venerated master teach that these practices were
of small avail, and that salvation comes from faith in Jesus Christ,
he experienced a deep agitation. The combat was long and terrible.
On one side were the lessons and the habits of his home, so many
recollections, so many prayers, so many hopes! On the other, the
declarations of the Bible, the duty of subjecting everything to
the search after truth, the promise of everlasting redemption. He
studied the original tongues, in order to seize more correctly the
sense of the Scriptures, and after the pains of the struggle, he
became fixed in new and firmer convictions.
Farel and Lefevre conceived for each other a close friendship,
because there was at the same time between them a similarity of
principles, and a contrast of character. The old man moderated
the impetuosity of the youth, and the latter strengthened the
somewhat timid heart of his senior. The one inclined toward mystic
speculation, the other to action, and they mutually bestowed upon one
another that of which each was deficient.
There was at Meaux a third person, of higher rank, who encouraged
them by his countenance and his words. This was the bishop himself,
Guillaume Briçonnet, count of Montbrun, formerly ambassador of
Francis I. to the Holy See. Like Luther, he had brought back with
him from Rome little esteem for the papacy, and without desiring a
complete secession (as we shall see), he sought to correct its abuses.
When he returned to his diocese, he was disgusted with the disorders
which reigned there. Most of the curates appropriated the revenues of
their benefices, without discharging the duties. They generally dwelt
in Paris, spending their money in licentious living, and sending
in their place wretched vicars without instruction or authority.
Then, on the occurrence of the high feasts, came the mendicant
monks, who, preaching from parish to parish, disgraced the pulpit by
low buffooneries, and troubled themselves less about edifying the
faithful than about filling their scrip.
Briçonnet attempted to put an end to these scandals, and to compel
the curates to reside. As their only answer, they commenced actions
against him before the metropolitan. Then the bishop, turning
towards men, who did not belong to his clergy, called around him,
not only Lefevre d’Etaples and Farel, but also Michel d’Arande,
Gérard Roussel, François Vatable, professors or priests of exemplary
conduct, who agreed in teaching a purified religion.
At first their preaching began in private assemblies; then, their
courage increasing with the number of their auditors, they ascended
the public pulpits. The bishop preached in his turn; and as if he had
a presentiment that he would deny himself in the day of persecution,
“he had, in preaching, begged the people, that if he ever changed
his opinion, they would take heed not to change theirs like him.”[7]
On hearing these discourses, which invited them to give, not their
purse to the Church, but their heart to God, the surprise of
the inhabitants of Meaux became extreme. They were, in general,
mechanics, wool-carders, fullers, cloth-workers, and other artisans.
The people flocked to the churches from the town and surrounding
country, and there was no talk but of the new doctors.
Desirous of basing their teaching upon the only authority recognised
by the Reformation, Lefevre d’Etaples and Briçonnet published
the four Gospels in French. The bishop commanded his receiver to
distribute them gratuitously to the poor, and to do so, _spared_,
says Crespin, _neither gold nor silver_. Every one began to read
them. Sundays and feast-days were devoted to this study. The
Testament was even carried into the fields and workshops, to be at
hand at meal-times; and these poor people asked each other: “How can
they help us, these saints, when they have so much to do to help
themselves? Our only mediator is Jesus Christ.”
As they became serious in their religious views, a reformation of
manners followed. Blasphemy, drunkenness, quarrels, disorders of
all kinds, gave way to a pure and more decent habit of living. The
movement spread far and near. The day-labourers of Picardy and other
places, who came at harvest-time to work in the neighbourhood of
Meaux, returned home with the seeds of the doctrines they had heard
preached. Hence the beginnings of several churches. This influence
was so great, that it became a proverbial way of speaking in France,
in the first half of the sixteenth century, to designate all the
opponents of Rome by the name of heretics of Meaux.
At the same period, Briçonnet sent the translation of the Bible
to the sister of Francis I., Marguérite de Valois, who read and
caused it to be read by those around her. Everything thus augured
a very rapid success for the French Reformation, when the hand of
persecution interfered to arrest it.
II.
The priests and monks of the diocese of Meaux, seeing their credit
daily weakened, and their revenues diminishing, carried their
complaints before the Sorbonne. They met with a favourable reception.
The Sorbonne, railed at by men of letters, and attacked by the
innovators, was in the difficult position of an ancient institution
outstripped by public opinion. It felt that if it did not hasten to
strike a great blow, it would be lost.
At the head of this faculty of theology was one Noël Beda, or
Bedier, a doctor with no great learning, but active, bold, sharp
in disputation, capable of upsetting everything for a theological
point, and ready to look to the populace for support, in the absence
of more creditable allies. His acolytes were the Masters Duchène and
Lecouturier, who wholly swayed their brethren by the violence of
their passions and their language.
Luther was invited to the Sorbonne, in 1521, for an examination of
his book upon the _Captivity of Babylon_. This company declared
that his doctrine was blasphemous, insolent, impious, shameful, and
that it ought to be opposed with no other arguments than fire and
sword. They compared Luther to the great heresiarchs, and to Mahomet
himself, and demanded that he should be compelled by every possible
means to make a public retractation. The mild Melancthon forgot his
accustomed moderation in answering this sentence, which he termed
_the mad decree of the theologasters of Paris_. “How unfortunate is
France,” he said, “to have such doctors as these!”
The theologians of the Sorbonne received the complainants of Meaux
with open arms, and as a bishop was implicated in the cause, they
demanded that the Parliament of Paris should interpose with a strong
hand.
The Parliament had no affection for the monks, and distrusted
the priests. It had maintained and defended against them, with
persevering energy, the rights of lay jurisdiction. But it held for
a fundamental maxim of the state this motto of the olden times: _Une
foi, une loi, un roi_;—one faith, one law, one king,—and did not
believe that there ought to be tolerated in the same country two
religions, any more than two governments.
The chancellor, Antoine Duprat, used all his authority to urge the
magistrature to violent measures—a man without religion, without
morals, bishop and archbishop; without having ever put foot in his
dioceses, inventor of the venality of incumbencies, a subscriber
to the Concordat which excited the indignation of the Parliaments
and even of the clergy, elected cardinal for having humiliated the
kingdom before the Holy See—he accused himself on his death-bed of
having followed no other law than his own interest, and the interest
of his king only next to his own. Antoine Duprat had amassed enormous
riches; and when he built, at the Hôtel Dieu of Paris, the new hall
for the sick, Francis I. said, “He must enlarge it indeed, if it is
to hold all the poor he has made.”
The court, which desired the support of the pope in the Italian
wars, also favoured the spirit of persecution. Louise de Savoie, who
governed the kingdom in the absence of her son, then a prisoner at
Madrid, proposed, in 1523, the following question to the Sorbonne:
_By what means the damnable doctrine of Luther might be crushed and
extirpated from this very-Christian kingdom, and utterly purged
therefrom_. Beda and his coadjutors replied, that the heresy must
be persecuted with the extremest rigour; if not, there would result
a great injury to the honour of the king and of Madame Louise de
Savoie; and that it was the opinion of many, it had already been
borne with too long. These theologians took care, we see, to mix up
the cause of the throne with their own.
Pope Clement VII. had recourse, two years after, to the same tactics:
“It behoves,” he wrote to the Parliament of Paris, “in this great
and marvellous disorder, which flows from the rage of Satan and
from the rage and wickedness of his imps, that all the world should
strive their utmost to guard the common safety, seeing that this
abomination would not only embroil and destroy religion, but moreover
all principality, nobility, laws, orders, and degrees.”
The clergy held councils at Paris, under the presidency of the
cardinal Duprat, and at Bourges under that of the archbishop François
de Tournon, at which the Reformers were accused of having plotted an
_execrable conjuration_, and the very-Christian king was exhorted
to smother in his dominions these _viperous dogmas_. The obstinate
heretics were to be exterminated, and the less guilty to undergo in
prison a perpetual penitence, with _the bread of grief and the water
of affliction_.
We have somewhat anticipated our recital, in order to show who were
the first authors of persecution in France. It will be seen that
Italy played the chief part therein, by means of the regent, Louise
de Savoie, with the cardinals, who are above all Roman princes, and
with the monks and the priests, who profess to be the subjects of
the Holy See, before any tie to their own country. This observation
will reappear in different parts of this history, and we shall prove
in its place, that the massacre of St. Bartholomew was, to use the
expression of a modern writer, an _Italian crime_. Let us return now
to the church of Meaux.
The bishop of Briçonnet at first made head against the storm: he had
even the hardihood to call the Sorbonnists Pharisees and hypocrites;
but this firmness was of short duration; and when he found that
he would have to answer for his acts before the Parliament, he
retreated. It is unknown to what extent he abjured the faith he
had preached. Everything was conducted with closed doors before a
commission composed of two clerical counsellors, and of two lay
counsellors of the Parliament. After having been condemned to pay a
fine of two hundred livres, Briçonnet returned to his diocese, and
tried so to live that there should be no more question about him
(1523-1525).
The new converts of Meaux were more resolute. One of them, Jean
Leclerc, having affixed a placard to the cathedral door, in which he
accused the pope of being Antichrist, was condemned, in 1523, to be
whipped during three days in the crossways of the town, and branded
on the forehead. When the executioner imprinted on him the stamp of
infamy, a voice resounded from the crowd, saying, “Long live Jesus
Christ and his tokens!” The astonished people looked around: it was
the voice of his mother.
The following year Jean Leclerc suffered martyrdom at Metz, which had
not yet become a town of France.
The first of those who were burned for heresy within the old limits
of the kingdom, was a native of Boulogne, Jacques Pauvent, or
Pavannes. A disciple of Lefevre, whom he had accompanied to Meaux,
he was accused of having written theses against purgatory, the
invocation of the Virgin and of the saints, and holy water. Crespin
says: “He was a man of great earnestness and integrity.”[8]
He was condemned, in 1524, to be burned alive in the Place de Grève.
Pavannes, yet a young man, had, in a moment of weakness, uttered a
kind of recantation. But he soon regained his courage, and walked to
execution with a calm front, happier to die confessing his faith,
than to live by denying it. At the stake, he discoursed on the
sacrament of the supper with so much power, that a doctor said: “I
would that Pavannes had not spoken, even had it cost the Church a
million of gold.”
The executions multiplied. One of the most illustrious victims of
those times was Louis de Berquin, of whom Theodore de Bèze has said,
doubtless with some exaggeration, that he would have been another
Luther for France, if he had found in Francis I. another Elector of
Saxony. The history of his life and death throws a great light upon
the early days of the Reformation in France.
Louis de Berquin came of a noble family of Artois. Unlike the knights
of old, acquainted only with the helm and the sword, he applied
himself without intermission to exercises of the mind: frank, loyal,
openhearted, generous to the poor, he arrived at the age of forty,
without having been married, or incurred the slightest suspicion of
incontinence: _a wonderfully rare thing among courtiers_, says an old
chronicle.
Like Lefevre and Farel, he was very devout. “Before the Lord had
given him to know His Gospel, he was,” according to Crespin’s
recital, “a great partisan of the papistical constitutions, a
constant auditor of masses and sermons, and an observer of fasts and
feast-days.... The doctrine of Luther, then quite new in France, he
held in utter abomination.” (p. 96.)
But two things detached him from (Roman) Catholicism. His enlightened
mind despised the gross ignorance of the doctors of the Sorbonne; his
guileless heart revolted against their dark manœuvres; and as he had
free speech at the court, he descanted unconstrainedly before Francis
I., who entertained a great affection for him and for his character,
and also on account of his contempt for the monks.
A controversy which he held on scholastic subtleties with Doctor
Duchène, or Master of Quercû, as he was called, led him to open the
Bible. Berquin was altogether astonished not to find therein what
he sought, and to discover what he did not seek,—nothing about the
invocation of the Virgin Mary; nothing about many of the dogmas
considered fundamental in the Romish church; yet, on the other
side, important articles of which Rome scarce makes mention in her
formularies. What he thought thereupon, the knight declared by word
of mouth and by writing. The Sorbonnists, eager to catch him at
fault, denounced him before the Parliament in 1523, and annexed to
their complaints some extracts from his books, of which they had
made _venom, after the manner of spiders_, says again our chronicle.
But how, upon such complaints, could they condemn a councillor
and a favourite of the king? He was acquitted. The doctors of the
Sorbonne pretended that this was a favour, which should excite him
to repentance; Berquin answered, it was simply justice that had been
done.
The quarrel increased in bitterness. The knight having applied
himself to translate some treatises of Luther and Melancthon, Noël
Beda and his underlings made a seizure of his library. New complaint
arose before the Parliament, and citation before the bishop of Paris.
Fortunately Francis removed the matter before his council, and
restored Berquin to freedom, with an exhortation to be more prudent
for the future.
But to this he paid no heed; strong convictions never keep silence.
Then followed the third imprisonment of Berquin. This time, the
Sorbonnists hoped he would not escape them. Francis I. was at Madrid.
Louise de Savoie supported the persecutors. The Parliament was
resolved to proceed to extremities. The days of Berquin were already
numbered, when a royal order, dated the 1st of April, 1526, commanded
the suspension of the matter until the king’s return.
When again at liberty, the lukewarm and the timid beset him with
their counsel. Erasmus, in particular, who, according to the
historians of his time, wished _to remain neutral between the Gospel
and Popery, and to swim between two waters_, having learned that he
was about to publish a translation of one of his Latin works, with
the addition of notes, wrote to him letter upon letter, to persuade
him to desist. “Leave these hornets alone,” he said; “above all, do
not mix me up in these things. My burden is already heavy enough.
If it is your pleasure to dispute, be it so; as for me, I have no
desire of the kind.” And elsewhere: “Ask for an embassy to some
foreign country: travel in Germany. You know Beda and his familiars;
a thousand-headed hydra is shooting out its venom on all sides. The
name of your enemies is legion. Were your cause better than that of
Jesus Christ, they will not let you go until they have brought you to
a cruel end. Do not trust in the protection of the king. But in any
case, do not commit me with The Faculty of Theology.”[9]
Erasmus had exhausted his common-place rhetoric to dissuade the brave
knight. “And do you know how much I effected?” he naively asked one
of his friends; “I have redoubled his courage.” In effect, Berquin
resolved to adopt the offensive, and like the ancient king, to attack
Rome in Rome itself. He drew out from the books of Beda and his
brethren, twelve propositions, which he accused before Francis of
being false, contrary to the Bible, and heretical.
The outcry was tremendous. What! even the defenders of the faith,
the pillars of the Church, taxed with heresy by a Lutheran, who had
deserved death a thousand times! and after having prosecuted others,
reduced to justify themselves!
The king, who was not sorry to humiliate these turbulent doctors,
wrote to the Sorbonne, commanding them to censure the twelve
propositions denounced by Berquin, or to establish them upon texts
of the Bible. The matter was assuming a grave turn, and no one knows
what might have happened, if an image of the Virgin had not been
mutilated at that time in one of the quarters of Paris.
The Sorbonnists immediately laid hold of the accident. “It is a vast
plot; it is,” they cried, “a great conspiracy against religion,
against the prince, against the order and tranquillity of the
country! All laws will be overthrown, all dignities abolished! This
is the fruit of the doctrines preached by Berquin!” At the cries of
the Sorbonne and of the priests, the Parliament, the people, the king
himself, are greatly excited. Death to the image-breakers! No quarter
to the heretics! And Berquin is in prison a fourth time!
Twelve commissioners, delegated by the Parliament, condemn him to
make a public abjuration, then to remain incarcerated for the rest
of his life, after having had his tongue pierced with a hot iron. “I
appeal to the king,” exclaimed Berquin. “If you do not submit to our
sentence,” replied one of the judges, “we will find means to stop
your appeals for ever.” “I would rather die,” said Berquin, “than
only approve by my silence that the truth is thus condemned.” “Let
him then be strangled and burned upon the Place de Grève!” said the
judges with one voice.
The execution was delayed until Francis was absent; for it was feared
lest a last remnant of affection should be awakened in the heart of
the monarch for his loyal servant. On the 10th of November, 1539,
six hundred soldiers escorted Berquin to the place of execution. He
showed no sign of depression. “You would have said” (it is Erasmus,
who recounts it on the testimony of an eyewitness), “that he was in a
library pursuing his studies, or in a temple meditating upon things
divine. When the executioner, with husky voice, read to him his
sentence, he never changed countenance. He alighted from the tumbril
with a firm step. His was not the brutal indifference of the hardened
criminal; it was the serenity, the peace of a good conscience.”
Berquin tried to speak to the people. He was not heard; the monks had
posted bands of wretches to drown his voice with their clamour. Thus
the Sorbonne of 1529 gave the populace of Paris of 1793 the dastard
example of smothering upon the scaffold the sacred words of the dying.
After the execution, Doctor Merlin, the grand penitentiary, said
aloud before the people, that no one in France for perchance a
hundred years had died so good a Christian.
III.
In spite of the persecutions, a great number of Lutherans had
remained in the town of Meaux.[10]
These faithful, deserted by their preachers, and disavowed by the
bishop, assembled in secret. An isolated hut, the garret of a
woolcarder, the cover of a wood, anything sufficed, so that they
might read the Scriptures and pray together. From time to time, one
of them, torn from his humble asylum, went to seal his faith with his
blood.
The preachers were dispersed. Jacques Lefevre, after long
journeyings, terminated his career at Nérac, under the protection of
Marguérite de Valois. Too old to play an active part in the French
Reformation, he followed its progress from afar. On his death-bed, he
said: “I leave my body to the earth, my soul to God, and my goods to
the poor.” These words were carved, it is said, upon his gravestone.
Guillaume Farel was neither of an age nor character to be stopped
by persecution. On quitting Meaux, he went to preach the Gospel in
the mountains of Dauphiny. Three of his brothers shared his faith.
Encouraged by this success, he went preaching from town to town and
place to place.
His appeals agitating the whole country, the priests sought to excite
it against him; but his ardour increased with the peril. Wherever
there was a place to plant his foot,—on the border of the rivers, on
the points of the rocks, in the bed of the torrents,—he found one
to announce the new doctrine. If he was threatened, he stood firm;
if surrounded, he escaped; if thrust from one spot, he reappeared
in another. At last, when he saw himself environed on all sides, he
retreated by mountain-paths into Switzerland, and arrived at Basle in
the commencement of the year 1524. Here, to supply the deficiency of
the living word, he multiplied the written word, and caused thousands
of New Testaments to be printed and disseminated through France by
the hands of pedlars. The Bible is a preacher which may be also
burned, no doubt, but it is a preacher which rises again from its
ashes.
Here and there other missionaries of the Reformation arose. History
must preserve their names: at Grenoble, Pierre de Sebville; at Lyon,
Amédée Maigret; at Mâçon, Michel d’Arande; at Annonay, Etienne
Machopolis and Etienne Renier; at Bourges and Orleans, Melchior
Wolmar, a learned Hellenist from Germany; at Toulouse, Jean de
Caturce, a licentiate and professor of law.
The last suffered martyrdom, and its circumstances are memorable.
Three capital charges had led to his seizure in the month of January,
1532. He had proposed on the eve of the feast of the Kings, to
replace the usual dances, by reading the Bible. Instead of saying:
_The king drinks_; he had cried: _Let Jesus Christ reign in our
hearts_. At length, he had held a religious meeting at Lemoux, his
native town.
Brought before the judges, he said to them: “I am ready to justify
myself upon every point. Send hither learned men with books: we will
discuss the cause article by article.” But such a trial was dreaded.
Jean de Caturce was a man of great power of mind: he had a clear wit
and ready speech, and quoted the Scriptures with marvellous aptitude.
A pardon was offered to him, on condition that he would retract
in a public lecture. He refused, and was condemned to death as an
obstinate heretic.
Led soon after to the square of St. Stephen, he was degraded from
the tonsure, and next of his title of licentiate. During this
ceremony, which occupied three hours, he explained the Bible to
the assistants. A monk interrupted him to pronounce the _sermon of
the Catholic faith_, after the manner of the inquisitors. He had
taken for his text these words of the apostle Paul: “Now the Spirit
speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from
the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils
...,” and he stopped there. “Go on, pursue the text,” said Caturce.
But the other not opening his mouth, the martyr pronounced with a
loud voice the rest of the passage: “Speaking lies in hypocrisy,
having their conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry,
and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to
be received with thanksgiving of them, which believe and know the
truth.”[11] The monk was silent with shame, and the people admired
the singular readiness and presence of mind of Caturce.
He was made to don the dress of a buffoon, according to the custom
introduced by the old persecutors of the Albigenses; and brought
back to his judges, who read to him his sentence of death, when he
shouted: “O palace of iniquity! O seat of injustice!” Two hundred
and thirty years after, Jean Calas might have pronounced the same
words, as he descended the steps of the same palace of Toulouse.
However, the violence of persecution did not impede the
multiplication of proselytes. They were of all ranks, and they were
already so numerous in one canton of Normandy, that it was called
_Little Germany_, as we read in a letter of Bucer, addressed to
Luther in 1530. More than one of the religious orders threw off the
gown to embrace the reformed faith. I will cite one example, which
will be, to a certain extent, a type of a crowd of others.
François Lambert, born at Avignon in 1487, had conceived from his
childhood, a profound veneration for the Franciscans, who daily
passed before his door. “I admired,” says he, “their severe costume,
their sedate countenance, their downcast eyes, their devoutly-crossed
arms, their grave demeanour; but I knew not that under these
sheepskins, foxes and wolves were hidden.”
The monks had also remarked the naïve exaltation of the young
man. “Come among us,” they said to him; “the convent has an ample
income: you will live in peace in your cell, and may there pursue
your studies at your ease.” He was received as a novice when he
was fifteen years and three months old. His period of trial soon
passed. The monks took care to conceal from him their quarrels and
licentiousness. “The following year I pronounced my vows,” adds
Lambert, “not having the slightest idea of what I was doing.”
In effect, as soon as it was no longer feared that he would go away,
what sad discoveries! what cruel misconceptions were there! He hoped
to live among saints, and found only abandoned and impious men. When
he expressed his regret, he was ridiculed.
That he might leave the convent without breaking his vows, he got
himself nominated _apostolic preacher_; but his position was not
thereby improved. He was accused of neglecting the interests of the
order. “When I returned wearied with my rounds,” he says, “reproaches
and maledictions generally seasoned my repast.” His brethren blamed
him above everything else for censuring too severely those who
harboured them, although many of these were vile usurers, or haunters
of evil resorts. “What are you doing!” they would say to him; “those
people will get angry; they will give us no longer either board or
lodging.” “That is to say,” continues Lambert, “that these slaves of
their bellies are less afraid of destroying the souls of their hosts,
than of losing their dinners.”
In despair, he conceived the thought of becoming a Chartreux, that
he might write, if he could no longer preach. But a new storm, and
the most terrible of all, burst upon him. The monks discovered in
his cell some treatises of Luther—“Luther in a religious house!”
they vociferated with one voice: “Heresy! heresy!” and burned these
writings without reading a line. “As for me,” says Lambert, “I
believe that Luther’s books contain more true theology than could be
found in all the books of the monks ever since monks came into the
world.”
He was ordered, in 1523, to carry letters to the general of the
order; but suspecting some perfidy, he profited by his freedom to
pass the frontiers of Germany, and went to seat himself at the foot
of Luther’s pulpit. “I renounce,” says he, in concluding his recital,
“all the rules of the Brethren, persuaded that the Holy Gospel should
be my only rule, and that of all Christians. I retract everything I
may have taught contrary to the revealed faith, and I entreat those
who have heard me, to reject it as I do. I release myself from all
the ordinances of the pope, and I consent to be excommunicated by
him, knowing that he is himself excommunicated by the Lord.”[12]
He married in the same year (1523), and was the first of the
religious orders of France who broke the vow of celibacy. He returned
to the frontiers, at Metz and at Strasbourg, and wished also to go to
Besançon. But, having met great obstacles everywhere, he returned to
Germany, was appointed professor at Marbourg, and helped to spread
the reformed faith in the country of Hesse. He died there in 1530,
with the reputation of a true Christian and a learned theologian.
While the new religion made proselytes in the towns, in the country,
and even in the convents of the provinces, it began to penetrate into
Paris. It found there a powerful protector in Marguérite de Valois.
“Her name,” says Theodore de Bèze, “is deserving of perpetual
honour, because of her piety, and of the holy affection she has
shown for the advancement and preservation of the church of God; so
much so, that we are indebted to her for the lives of many worthy
persons.”[13]
Having heard of a reform which was shaking off the yoke of human
traditions, she wished to know it, and conversed thereupon with
Lefevre d’Etaples, Farel, and Briçonnet. Their ideas pleased her: she
read the Bible, and adopted the new doctrines, at the same time with
that tincture of mysticism, which characterized some of those, whose
lessons she heard.[14]
The volume of poems which she published under the title of
_Marguérite de la Marguérite des Princesses_, contains many touching
revelations upon the state of her mind. She protected the preachers
of the Reformation, gave them money for their voyages, sheltered them
in secure retreats, and obtained the liberation of many from prison.
Therefore, in their correspondence, they called her the good lady,
the very excellent, and very dear Christian.
Intelligent and devoted, she had rendered her brother Francis I.,
during his captivity at Madrid, services not to be forgotten, and had
acquired over him an influence which she turned to the profit of the
new ideas.
Francis I. never well knew what he was, or what he wished, on the
subject of religion. Endowed with qualities more brilliant than
solid, he often mistook the variations of his humour for profound
calculations. Proud, beyond all things, of being thought a knightly
king, he had a passion for arms and adventures of gallantry, which
distinguished the older chivalry, but without its stern loyalty and
nice sense of honour. The Italy of the Borgias and the Machiavels had
corrupted him, and if he had not protected the men of letters, who
have acquitted themselves before posterity most generously of their
debt to him, one might ask if he had anything but the appearance of
the virtues, which have gained for him the appellation of a great
king.
The Reformation pleased him as an engine for attacking the monks,
whom he contemned; but it repulsed, by its austere maxims, a prince
who had filled his court with female favourites. The priests, beside,
never ceased to represent to him the followers of the new religion
as the enemies of all social order. The historian Seckendorf cites a
letter, dated from the French court in 1530, where they are accused
of seeking the fall of princes, perfect equality of rights, and even
the rupture of marriages and the community of goods. Francis I.
was much alarmed at these calumnies, and Brantôme reports that he
said: “These novelties have no other aim than the destruction of all
monarchy, human and divine.”
This enables us to understand why, in certain moments of his reign,
although he was not naturally cruel, he showed such pitiless
hostility against the Reformers. He was impressed with the notion
that he was acting as a statesman, and he sought to smother in a
sea of blood, the sinister phantoms with which the (Roman) Catholic
clergy had peopled his imagination.
Otherwise, it was a strange and interesting scene to witness the
struggle between Marguérite de Valois and her brother, upon the
conduct to be pursued towards the Reformers. At one time the
Christian woman had the sway. Francis resisted the Sorbonne. He
promised to take from the Lutherans all he could, and to the utmost.
He would give them, what has been called, _the mass of seven points_,
or the suppression of seven abuses in the worship of the Romish
church. At another time it was the Catholic or politic prince, who
seemed to triumph. Marguérite de Valois bent before the stormy temper
of her brother, shrouded herself in docility and silence, resumed
even certain practices of Catholicism, and finally veiled her faith
in such a manner that it is still a matter of dispute whether she
died in the old or the new communion.
IV.
It appeared, in 1533, as if better days were about to dawn upon the
French Reformation. The queen-mother, Louise de Savoie, who hoped to
redeem by fanatic bigotry the libertinism of her youth, had just
died. Francis I. had made an alliance with the Protestants of the
League of Smalcald, and the credit of Marguérite de Valois had thence
increased. She took advantage of the occasion to open the pulpits
of Paris to Gérard Roussel, Courault, and Bertault, who leaned
towards the Reformed doctrines. The bishop, Jean du Bellay, offered
no opposition. He was a man of great reading, and in his letters to
Melancthon signed himself: _yours cordially_.
The churches were crowded. Noël Beda, and other doctors of the
Sorbonne, tried to raise the people; but they were banished by the
Parliament. At this, the rage of the monks grew boundless. They
performed, at their college of Navarre, a representation in which
Marguérite de Valois, reading the Bible while spinning, was suddenly
changed into an infernal fury. The Sorbonnists condemned at the same
time one of her books, entitled _The Mirror of the Sinful Soul_,
where no mention was made either of saints, or of purgatory, or of
any other redemption than that of Jesus Christ. A Cordelier declared
in a public sermon, that Marguérite deserved to be inclosed in a sack
and thrown into the river.
Such insolence was too great for the king’s endurance. He had the
regents of the college of Navarre punished, and the censure of the
Sorbonne disavowed by the university in a body. He even threatened
to inflict upon the Cordelier the penalty with which the monk had
menaced Marguérite de Valois; but she interceded for him, and the
punishment was commuted.
This disposition of Francis did not last long. Having had an
interview with Clement VII. at Marseilles, in the month of October,
1533, for the marriage of his son Henry with Catherine de Medici, the
pope’s niece, and being desirous of an alliance with this pontiff
for the conquest of the Milanese, the dream of his life, he returned
to Paris with a mind bent against the heretics. Many Lutherans, or
Sacramentarians, as they were then called, were cast into prison, and
the three suspected preachers interdicted from preaching.
All the new converts, already very numerous, did not bear the stroke
of persecution patiently, and were sorely grieved to be deprived
of their pastors. At this juncture one Féret arrived, bringing
from Switzerland placards against the mass, which he proposed to
disseminate throughout the kingdom. The most prudent opposed the
design, affirming that too much precipitation would ruin everything.
But the enthusiasts, as always happens in moments of crisis,
prevailed.
On the 18th of October, 1534, the inhabitants of Paris found on the
public places, in the crossways, on the palace-walls, on the doors
of the churches, a placard with this title: “Truthful articles
concerning the horrible, great, and unbearable abuses of the Popish
Mass, invented directly against the Holy Supper of our Lord, the only
Mediator, and only Saviour, Jesus Christ.”
This document was written in a bitter and violent style. Popes,
cardinals, bishops, and monks were attacked with the sharpest
invectives. It thus concluded: “In fine, truth has deserted them,
truth threatens them, truth chases them, truth fills them with fear;
by all which shall their reign be shortly destroyed for ever.”
The people gathered in groups around the placards. Horrible rumours
circulated, such as the masses invent in their days of rage. The
Lutherans, it was said, had laid a frightful plot for burning
the churches, firing the town, and massacring every one. And the
multitude shouted: _Death! death to the heretics!_ The priests and
monks, who were perhaps the first deceived, kindled the rage. The
magistrates, although more calm, were irritated by so daring an
attack upon the ecclesiastical order of the kingdom.
The tempest burst with equal violence at the Château de Blois,
where Francis I. was at the time. A placard had been posted (many
suspected, by the hand of an enemy) on the very door of the king’s
apartment. The prince saw therein an insult, not only against his
authority, but against his person, and the Cardinal de Tournon
imbedded this notion so deep in his heart, that he deliberated, says
an historian, upon destroying all, had it been in his power.
Orders were immediately issued to seize the Sacramentarians, dead or
alive. The criminal-lieutenant, Jean-Morin, obtained the assistance
of a certain sheath or scabbard-maker, who had been a summoner
for the secret meetings, and whose life had been promised him on
condition that he should lead the serjeants to the houses of the
heretics. Some, warned in time, took flight; the others, men and
women, those who had condemned the placards, as well as those who had
approved them, were thrust alike pell-mell into the prisons.
It is reported that the civil-lieutenant, having entered the house of
one of them, Barthélemy Milon, a cripple, wholly helpless of body,
said to him: “Come, get thee up.” “Alas, sir,” replied the paralytic,
“it must be a greater master than you to raise me up.” The serjeants
carried him off, and the courage of his companions in captivity grew
firm through his exhortations.
Their trial was soon over. But for the Sorbonne and the clergy, the
blood of the heretics was not enough. Their object was to strike
the imagination of the people by a _generalissimo_ procession, and,
by persuading the king to be present, to bind him decisively to the
system of persecution. This _fête_ marks an important date in our
recital; for it was from this moment that the Parisian populace took
part in the contest against the heretics; and, once mounted on the
stage, they never quitted it until the end of the League. In the
chain of events, this procession, intermingled with executions, was
the first of the bloody days of the sixteenth century; the massacre
of St. Bartholomew, the Barricades, the murder of Henry III., and the
assassination of Henry IV., could but follow.
A chronicler of the time, Simon Fontaine, a doctor of the Sorbonne,
has left us a long description of this event. It took place on the
29th of January, 1535. An innumerable concourse had come from all the
surrounding country. “There was not the smallest piece of wood or
stone jutting from the walls which was not occupied, provided there
was room on it for anybody. The house-tops were covered with men,
great and small, and one might have supposed the streets to have been
paved with heads.”
Never had so many relics been paraded through the streets of Paris.
The reliquary of the Sainte-Chapelle was then first brought out.
Priests bore the head of St. Louis, a piece of the holy cross, the
true crown of thorns, a real nail, and also the spear-head which
had pierced the side of our Lord. The shrine of St. Geneviéve, the
patron saint of Paris, was carried by the corporation or company of
butchers, who had fitted themselves for the holy office by a fast of
several days, and each one was bent upon touching the precious relic
with the tip of his finger, or with his handkerchief, or cap.
Cardinals, archbishops, and bishops, coped and mitred, figured in
their places. Then came the king, bareheaded, holding a burning
torch of wax in his hand; after him walked all the princes, knights,
counsellors of the Parliaments, companies of the trades, and
fraternities. In front of their houses stood the burgesses with
lighted tapers, who sank on their knees as the holy sacrament went by.
After mass, the king dined at the palace of the bishop, with
his sons, the queen, and the princes of the blood royal. At the
conclusion of the repast, he called together the clergy, ambassadors,
lords, presidents of the courts of justice, all the notables; and
having seated himself on a throne, he protested that he would not
pardon, even in his children, the crime of heresy; and that if he
knew that one of the members of his body were infected with it, he
would cut it off with his own hands.
The same day, six Lutherans were burned. The most courageous had
had their tongues cut out beforehand, lest a word of faith or a
prayer, issuing from the flames, might move the conscience of the
executioners. They were suspended on a moveable gibbet, which, rising
and falling by turns, plunged them into the fire or drew them out,
until they were entirely consumed. This was the punishment of the
_estrapade_. The ferocious emperor of Rome, who wished that his
victims might feel themselves die, had not invented that cruelty, and
the Inquisition of Spain accorded to the Saracens and the Jews the
favour of being more quickly burned.
On his return to the Louvre, Francis saw these executions. The
hangmen waited for his passing, that he might witness the show.
An ordinance was soon published, decreeing the extermination of
heretics, with pain of death against those who should conceal them,
and a reward of a fourth of the goods of the victims to informers.
Francis I. had soon occasion to repent of having yielded to this
excess of frenzy. The Protestants of Germany were indignant, and
threatened to ally themselves against him, with the House of Austria.
He sent them explanations through his ambassador, Guillaume de
Langey, to say that those whom he had put to death were rebels,
Sacramentarians, and not Lutherans. He even resumed, in order to
effect a reconciliation with the League of Smalcald, the overtures
which had been made to Melancthon, to attract him to Paris; and he
published a milder edict, directing the release of persons suspected
of heresy, on condition that they should abjure within six months.
This edict of Coucy, drawn for diplomatic reasons, was never carried
into execution.
Marguérite de Valois retired to Béarn, where her little court became
the asylum of the celebrated men who escaped from persecution. Many
refugee families brought thither their industry and their fortunes.
Everything assumed a new face. The laws were corrected, the arts
cultivated, agriculture was improved, schools were established, and
the people were prepared to receive the teaching of the Reformation.
The queen of Navarre died in 1549, wept for by the Béarnese, who
loved to repeat her generous saying: “Kings and princes are not the
lords and masters of their inferiors, but only ministers whom God has
set up to serve and to keep them.”
Marguérite de Valois was the mother of Jeanne d’Albret, and
grandmother of Henry IV.
V.
The prey of calumnies that descended from the throne, and from
thence spread throughout all Europe; accused of sedition, blasphemy,
enmity to God and to man; judged and condemned with closed doors;
their tongues mutilated before undergoing their final sentence, the
Reformers of France had no means of justification, and their very
martyrdom was dishonoured.
It was then that the most energetic of apologies appeared in the
_Institutes of the Christian Religion_. “This,” says Calvin, in the
preface to his commentary on the Psalms, “is what led me to publish
the _Institutes_: first, to relieve my brethren from an unjust
accusation, whose death was precious before the Lord; and moreover,
that, as the same sufferings were suspended over the heads of many
poor faithful, foreign nations might be touched with commiseration
for their woes, and might afford them a shelter.”
This book announced the true leader of the French Reformation. Luther
was too distant, and his German genius could not wholly sympathize
with that of France. Guillaume Farel was too ardent; he had not that
firm and solid character which was necessary for great undertakings.
The others were obscure. The growing churches awaited a man able to
place himself at their head, and Calvin was this man.
His life is everywhere; I will only recount that which enters into
the plan of this history.
Jean Calvin was born in 1509 at Noyon, in Picardy. Destined from his
infancy to the priesthood, he was presented with an ecclesiastical
benefice at the age of twelve. But his own will and that of his
father led him from theology to the law, which he went to study
at Bourges and at Orleans. He distinguished himself there by his
precocious intelligence and the severity of his manners.
The Reformation agitated at that time all the schools of learning.
Masters and students occupied themselves with nothing else, either
through a spirit of curiosity, or through the yearning of conscience
and faith. Calvin was among these last, and the Bible which he
received from the hands of one of his relations, Pierre Robert
Olivétan, detached him from Catholicism, as it had already rescued
Zwinglius and Luther. The three great Reformers arrived at the same
end by the same road.
He was not of those who are silent on what they believe. Listeners
flocked round him, and the solitude he loved became impossible for
him. “As for me,” he says again, in the preface to his commentary on
the Psalms, “inasmuch as being naturally diffident and retiring I
have always preferred repose and tranquillity; I began to seek for
some hiding-place, and means of withdrawing myself from the world;
but so far from obtaining my wish, every retreat and every secluded
spot were to me so many public schools.”
Calvin comprehended that his time and his powers were no longer his
own. He preached in the secret meetings at Bourges and at Paris.
Theodore de Bèze says: “He advanced wonderfully the cause of God in
many families, teaching the truth not with an affected language, to
which he was always opposed, but with a depth of knowledge and so
much gravity of speech, that no man heard him without being filled
with admiration.”[15] He was at that time twenty-four years of age.
A discourse which he composed, in 1533, for the rector of the
university of Paris, and which was condemned for heresy by the
Sorbonne, compelled him to fly. It is said that he escaped by a
window, a few moments before the serjeants broke into his chamber.
He withdrew, under the name of Charles d’Espeville, to Angoulême, and
was received into the house of the canon Louis du Tillet, where he
had a rich library at his service.
He was already occupied with his great work on the Christian
religion, and laboured upon it with such ardour that he frequently
passed nights without sleeping, and days without eating. When he had
finished a chapter, he read it to his friends; and on opening the
manuscript, he was wont to say: “Let us find the truth.”
He sowed the doctrines of the Reformation in Poitou and Saintonge,
publicly when he could, secretly when persecution was too violent.
There is still shown near Poitiers an excavation to which popular
tradition gives the name of _Calvin’s cave_. When there one day with
several of his disciples, one of them represented that there must be
truth in the sacrifice of the Mass, since it was celebrated in every
place in Christendom. “My mass is there,” replied Calvin, pointing to
the Bible. Then throwing down upon the table his cap, and raising his
eyes to heaven, he exclaimed: “O Lord, if on the day of judgment Thou
reprehendest me for that I have been to Mass and that I have deserted
it, I will say to Thee with reason: Lord, Thou hast not bidden me to
it. There is Thy law; there is the Scripture Thou hast given me, in
the which I have found no other sacrifice than Thy immolation on the
altar of the cross.”
The supper was celebrated in the depth of the cavern by Calvin
and his friends. So, fourteen centuries before, the Christians
communicated in the catacombs of Rome; so, two centuries after, the
Reformers of France have held communion in the wilderness; and still
later, in the days of the Revolution, (Roman) Catholic priests have
erected their altars amidst the woods.
Constantly in peril of his life, Calvin went to fix himself at Bâle,
the city of refuge for the French, when the Geneva of the Reformation
did not yet exist. There the last touch was put to his _Institutes
of the Christian Religion_, and it appeared in the month of August,
1535.
This was the first theological and literary monument of the French
Reformation. There may be disputes about Calvin’s notions (he
belonged to his time, as we do to ours), but his genius cannot be
contested. His premises, which corresponded to the intellectual and
moral level of his times, once laid down, he pursued them with an
incomparable vigour of logic. His system was completed.
Spreading abroad in the schools, the castles of the gentry, the
houses of the burghers, even the workshops of the people, the
_Institutes_ became the most powerful of preachers. Round this book
the Reformers arrayed themselves as round a standard. They found in
it everything—doctrine, discipline, ecclesiastical organization; and
the apologist of the martyrs became the legislator of their children.
We will not dwell upon the lofty style of the _Institutes_; Calvin
cared little for literary fame, whatever Bossuet may have said. He
went straight to the point, and the expression came clear, energetic,
full of life, from the very circumstance of his only troubling
himself about the correctness of his thoughts.
In his dedicatory epistle to Francis I., he refuted the following
objections addressed to the disciples of the Reformation: “Your
doctrine is new and untried; you confirm it by no miracle; you are in
contradiction with the Fathers; you overthrow tradition and custom;
you make war upon the Church; you engender sedition.” In concluding,
Calvin supplicated the king to examine the confession of faith of
the Reformers, so that, beholding them to be in accordance with the
Bible, he might treat them no longer as heretics. “It is your duty,
sire,” he says to the king, “to close neither your understanding nor
your heart against so just a defence, especially when the question
is of such high import, namely, how the glory of God shall be
maintained on earth.... A matter worthy of your ears, worthy of your
jurisdiction, worthy of your royal throne!”
We are assured that the king did not deign even to read this epistle.
Some court intrigue, or a caprice of the Duchess d’Etampes, absorbed,
it would appear, his leisure. If one considered, not the hand of God,
that orders all things, but the visible causes of events, upon what
would depend the religious and political destiny of nations?
His _Institutes_ were scarcely finished before Calvin went to Italy
to see Rénée de France, daughter of Louis XII. and duchess of
Ferrara, who had, like Marguérite de Valois, opened her heart to
the Reformed faith. This visit established a correspondence which
was never interrupted, and Calvin still wrote to her when on his
death-bed.
In 1536 he was appointed pastor and professor at Geneva. The
religious, moral, intellectual, and even political revolution he
brought into that town with him, is beside our work. Let us only
add, that from his new country he never ceased to act upon France
by his books, his letters, and by the numerous students, who, after
having received his lessons, carried back to their churches what he
had taught them. Calvin was the guide of the French Reformers, their
counsellor, the soul of their first synods; and the immense authority
he exercised over them was so well recognised, that the name of
_Calvinists_ was given to them about the middle of the sixteenth
century.
“He was most restless for the advance of his sect,” says Etienne
Pasquier. “When our prisons were gorged with victims, he incessantly
exhorted, consoled, confirmed them by his letters, and never wanted
messengers, to whom the doors were open, despite whatever trouble the
gaolers might take.”[16]
Considering the irreparable loss the Romish church has suffered
through this Reformer, we are little astonished at the anathemas
she poured upon him, and with which she still pursues him. She has
measured the strength of her blows according to the magnitude of
her wounds. We are not penning Calvin’s apology, but some short
explanations may not be out of place here. Calvin has been accused
of ambition. He had only that which is common to men of genius, who
are thrust into the foremost rank by the instinct of ordinary minds,
and by the force of circumstances. Did they refuse to ascend, they
would not be humble; they would be unfaithful to their mission, and
prevaricators. The vulgar herd, which sees their lofty position,
raises the cry of pride: it judges the vocation of great souls by its
own.
It is also said that Calvin was absolute and inflexible in his ideas.
Yes, because he had strong convictions, with the consciousness of his
own superiority. And if we consider the wants of his time, it will
be acknowledged, perhaps, that this was the only way of preventing
the new doctrines from failure in every sense, and being lost.
That he should appear to us, at the distance we are from him, with
our opinions and our manners, to have fallen into grave errors, may
be conceived. But to judge him properly, it is from his own point of
view, and from that of his age, that we must observe him—not from our
own.
We are constantly reminded of the execution of Michel Servet. If it
be said that this was an act to be deeply deplored, the remark is
just; but if Calvin is accused of contradicting his own maxims, it
will only be proved that those who make the accusation have never
studied them. The Protestants claimed the right of citizenship
in Germany, in Switzerland, in France, in the name, in the sole
name of the Divine truth of which they judged themselves to be the
faithful interpreters, and never in the name of liberty of belief
and of worship. To convince oneself of this, it is only necessary
to read the detail of their trials. Not a single word could be
found in the whole volume of _Crespin’s Martyrs_, expressive of
toleration understood in the sense of Bayle, Locke, and modern ideas.
They justify themselves by texts from the Bible, and summon their
adversaries to prove that their faith is not conformable to it, or
able to absolve them. Their defence is here, and here only. If it had
been proposed to them to accord similar rights to those whom they
themselves regarded as impious or heretics, they would have beheld
herein a rebellion against the will of God. It is not, therefore,
Calvin who set up the stake of Michel Servet: it is the whole
sixteenth century.[17]
If Rome beholds in this act an excuse for her own intolerance, we
do not deny it. But it is no excuse for her refinements of cruelty;
it is none for her slaughters _en masse_, nor for her perpetual
violations of plighted faith. Either no treaty of peace, no contract
between the two worships ought to have been accepted, or, when they
were accepted, they ought to have been kept.
We will further observe, that if the two communions were intolerant
in the sixteenth century, the one was so by virtue of its principles,
the other was so in spite of itself. The Reformation, by granting
the right of private judgment, had indirectly established religious
liberty. It did not perceive at once all the consequences of this
principle, because the Reformers had carried over with them a part
of the prejudices of their first education; but these consequences
were to become apparent sooner or later, and it is therefore justly
regarded as the mother of all modern liberty.
Calvin had a share in only one execution. His heart was not cruel,
and he was horrified at all the sanguinary acts unauthorized by a
regular judicial sentence. He more than once restrained the hands
of those who would have shed the blood of François de Guise, the
cut-throat of Vassy. “I can protest,” he wrote to the duchess of
Ferrara, “that it alone depended upon me that men of resolve and
action, before the war, who were only restrained by my exhortation,
did not devote themselves to exterminate him from the world.”
Calvin was sometimes impatient and irascible, and he has accused
himself of being so. But the soft and affectionate sentiments
that one would scarcely expect to find in the austere soul of the
Reformer, were not strangers to him. Read his correspondence with his
intimate friends Farel and Viret: how one hears the voice of the man,
who reposed in the bosom of friendship from the grievous duties of
his charge! and with what emotion the minister Des Gallards, who had
spent sixteen years near him, speaks of his goodness!
He died poor. His disinterestedness was so great that the sceptic
Bayle, on relating that he had left only three hundred crowns,
inclusive of his library, could not repress a cry of admiration. “It
is one of the rarest victories,” says he, “that virtue and grandeur
of soul can obtain over nature in those who exercise the apostolic
mission.”
The prodigious labours of Calvin oppress our imagination. “I do not
believe,” Theodore de Bèze states, “that his equal can be found.
Beside preaching every day from week to week, most frequently and
whenever he could, he preached twice every Sunday. He lectured
three times a week on theology. He made the remonstrances at the
consistory, and gave an entire lecture every Friday in the conference
of the Scripture, which we call Congregation; and he so persisted
in this course to his death, that he never missed once, except
when extremely ill. For the rest, who can recount his other works,
ordinary and extraordinary? I do not think any man of our time
has had more to hear, to answer, to write, or things of greater
importance to deal with. The multiplicity and quality of his writings
are alone sufficient to astound every man who looks at them, and
still more those who read them. And what makes his labours more
astonishing is, that his frame was naturally so weak, so attenuated
by watching and too great abstinence, and what is more, subject to
so many disorders, that any man who saw him could not have thought
but that he had a very short while to live; and yet, notwithstanding
all this, he never ceased to labour night and day in the Lord’s
work. Many a time we urged him to take more care of himself; but his
constant answer was that he did next to nothing, and that we ought to
let him be, so that God might find him watching and working his best,
until his last breath.”[18]
Calvin died on the 27th of May, 1564, aged fifty-five years all but
one month. He was of the middle height, and had a pale face, brown
complexion, and serene, brilliant eyes. He was neat and plain in his
dress; and he ate so little, that for many years he took but one meal
a day.
A few weeks before his death he dictated his will, in which he takes
God to witness as to the sincerity of his faith, and offers his
thanksgivings that he should have been employed in the service of
Jesus Christ and the truth.
VI.
The persecutions we have seen until now, appear moderate beside those
of which the Vaudois of Provence were the victims. To find a parallel
for so fearful a butchery, we must go back to the extermination of
the Albigeois.
On the 18th of November, 1540, the parliament of Aix passed a decree
to the following effect: Seventeen inhabitants of Mérindol shall be
burned alive. Their wives, children, parents, and servants, shall
be arrested and brought to trial, and if they cannot be taken, they
shall be banished the kingdom for ever. The houses of Mérindol
shall be burned and razed to the ground, the woods cut down, the
fruit-trees uprooted, and the place rendered uninhabitable, and no
one shall be allowed to build there. “As exorbitant, cruel, and
inhuman a decree,” says a contemporary, “as any parliament ever made,
and like in every respect to the edict of the king Ahasuerus against
the people of God.”
A cry of horror arose throughout Provence. It is sad to relate that
the priests were the most unrelenting in urging the execution of the
sentence. And when the chief president Chassanée represented to them
that the king might be displeased at so great a destruction of his
subjects, a bishop said to him: “If the king should think ill of it
at first, we will soon cause him to approve it: we have the cardinals
with us, and particularly Cardinal Tournon, to whom nothing could be
more pleasing.”
The Vaudois presented a petition to Francis I., who being then
desirous of keeping on good terms with the Protestant princes of the
empire, commissioned Guillaume de Langey, the same who had been his
ambassador to Germany, to cause an inquiry to be made respecting this
devastation.
These Vaudois formed a population of about eighteen thousand souls.
They had come from Piedmont and Dauphiny into Provence, and had
dwelt there for three hundred years. When they first settled in the
country, it was uncultivated, and overrun with brigands; but, under
the tillage of their hands, it was covered with plentiful harvests.
A domain which before their establishment would not have let for four
crowns, fetched from three to four hundred. They had built Mérindol,
Cabrières, and twenty other towns or villages.
They were a peaceable, well-ordered people, loved by their
neighbours, faithful to their promise, just in the payment of their
debts, careful of their poor, and charitable to strangers. Never
could they be drawn into any kind of swearing or blasphemy: they
never used an oath, but when required to do so in the administration
of the law. They were also distinguished for this, that if they
chanced to be in any company where improper conversation was heard,
they immediately withdrew, in order to signify their displeasure.
There was nothing to reproach them with, unless it was that when
they frequented the towns and the markets, they seldom visited the
conventual churches, and if they did, they offered their prayers
without reference to the saints. They passed by the crosses and
images on the roadside without showing any reverence. They said no
Mass, nor _Libera me_, nor _De profundis_; they took no holy water,
and if it were offered them in any house, they set no store by
it. They undertook no pilgrimage for the sake of pardons. When it
thundered, they never made the sign of the cross, and they presented
no offerings either for the living or the dead.
For a long time unknown, the Vaudois excited neither the cupidity
of the priests nor the hatred of the great, and the gentry, whose
incomes they augmented, gave them their protection. They chose among
themselves their pastors, or _Barbes_, as they termed them, to
instruct them in the knowledge and the practice of the Scriptures.
As he was passing through Dauphiny in 1501, these heretics were
denounced to King Louis XII., who caused an inquiry to be instituted;
but after having read it, he ordered that the processes already begun
should be thrown into the Rhone, saying: “These people are much
better Christians than myself.”
When they heard, about the year 1530, of the preaching of Luther
and Zwinglius, they sent some of their pastors to Switzerland and
Germany, who recognised in the Reformation a sister of their own
communion. Encouraged by these new friends, they caused the first
edition of the Bible, translated into French by Robert Olivétan, to
be printed at Neufchâtel, in 1535. It is said that they expended upon
it many hundred gold crowns.
The ire of the Romish clergy was excited against this heresy, and the
more so as many of the gentry, advocates, counsellors of justice,
and even theologians, showed a leaning towards it. A decree was
pronounced, in 1535, against the Vaudois. A second decree—that which
we have cited—was delivered in 1540. Francis I., adopting the advice
of Guillaume de Langey, granted them letters of pardon, but upon
condition that they should return to the church of Rome before the
expiration of three months. This was to withdraw with one hand, what
he had given with the other.
This courageous people, however, did not lose courage. They sent to
the parliament of Aix, and to Francis, their confession of faith, in
which they took care to establish all their doctrines, article by
article, on texts from the Scriptures. When this confession was read
to him by his order, the king, _quite amazed_, says Crespin, asked
where fault could be found; and no one had the hardihood to offer a
contradiction.
The bishops of Provence, finding themselves unsupported in their
system of persecution, commissioned three doctors of theology
to convert the Vaudois; but, marvel of marvels! all three were
themselves converted to the proscribed religion: “I am compelled to
confess,” said one of these doctors, after his interrogatories to
some catechumens, “that I have often been to the Sorbonne to hearken
to the disputations of the theologians, and that I have not learned
there so much as I have done from listening to these little children.”
The rage of the priests was now at its height; and the chief
president Chassanée being dead, they persuaded his successor, Jean
Meynier, baron d’Oppède, to prosecute the heretics without mercy.
Memorials were sent at the same time to the king, in which the
Vaudois were accused of an intention to seize upon Marseilles,
to form a sort of republican canton, in imitation of the Swiss.
Francis did not become a dupe to this ridiculous fable; he knew very
well that a few thousand poor peasants could not convert Provence
into a republic. But he had just concluded a treaty with Charles
V., through the mediation of Paul III., by which the two monarchs
engaged themselves to exterminate heresy. This prince lay, moreover,
dangerously ill, and the Cardinal de Tournon, seconded by several
bishops, beseeched him, in the name of his eternal salvation, to
revoke his letters of pardon. He thereupon wrote to the Parliament of
Aix, on the 1st of January, 1545, to execute the decree pronounced
against the Vaudois.
The Baron d’Oppède, who appears to have imported into this horrible
enterprise motives of jealousy and personal vengeance, collected
bands of mercenaries, who had been accustomed in the Italian wars
to the most frightful brigandage. He placed over them some officers
of Provence, and took the field on the 2nd of April. Then began a
horrible carnage. “They were no longer,” says an historian, “either
gentlemen or soldiers: they were butchers.”
The Vaudois were surprised and massacred, like the deer in a hunt;
their houses were burned, their cornfields laid waste, trees
uprooted, wells choked, bridges destroyed. All were put to the fire
and the sword; and the peasants of the surrounding country, joining
the executioners, completed the pillage of the miserable remnants of
the devastation.
Those of the Vaudois who could fly, wandered about the woods and
mountains; but the weaker, the old men and children and women,
were forced to stay, and were slain by the soldiery, after having
satiated their brutal passions. At Mérindol there only remained one
poor idiot, who had promised two crowns to a soldier for his ransom.
D’Oppède purchased from his purse the fate of the unhappy wretch, and
causing him to be tied to a tree, had him shot. Scarce a gentleman
present could restrain his tears.
On the 19th of April, in obedience to the summons of the vice-legate,
this army of executioners entered the county of Venasque, belonging
to the pope, and fresh bodies of banditti hastened thither under the
guidance of priests. The town of Cabrières was besieged. Sixty men,
who alone had remained there, held out for twenty-four hours. On the
promise of their lives, they came forth unarmed, and were immediately
hacked to pieces. Their women, shut up in a barn, were burned alive.
A soldier, moved to pity, tried to open them a passage, but they
were driven back into the flames with the halbert. The church of
Cabrières was profaned with infamous debauches; and the steps of the
altar were inundated with blood. The clergy of Avignon blessed the
murderers: they had pronounced a sentence decreeing no quarter. The
day was to come when the _glacière_ of Avignon should count other
victims. There is justice upon earth for the privileged classes, who
abuse their power: it is sometimes tardy, but it is sure.
The Vaudois perished in numbers in their wild retreats. The
vice-legate and the Parliament of Aix had forbidden, under pain of
death, that any shelter or food should be given them, “which,” says
Bouche, the historian of Provence, “was the means of killing a very
great many.” Numbers of the unhappy people supplicated D’Oppède to
accord them permission to depart, even with nothing but their shirts.
“I know what I have to do with this people of Mérindol and their
like,” answered he: “I will send them to dwell in hell, them and
their children.”
Two hundred and fifty prisoners were put to death, after a mock
trial; a more atrocious act than the massacre, since it was committed
in cold blood. Others, the youngest and more robust, were sent to the
galleys. A few succeeded in gaining the frontiers of Switzerland.
The name of the Vaudois disappeared almost entirely from Provence,
and their country relapsed into as desolate a wilderness as it was
three centuries before.
History has preserved the pious words uttered by the Vaudois, who
had taken refuge with their pastors in the mountain gorges. Prepared
for death, and beholding in the distance the blazing ruins of their
dwellings, the old and young thus exhorted each other: “The least of
our cares should be for our property and our lives; the greatest and
chiefest fear that ought to fill us with emotion, is lest we fail in
the confession of our Lord Jesus Christ and his holy Gospel. Let us
call on God, and he will have pity upon us.”
The massacre of the Vaudois raised the indignation of all France;
the souls of the people were not yet merciless, as they became
during the religious wars. The king complained that his orders
had been exceeded; but, sick and almost dying, he gave way to the
representations of the Cardinal de Tournon, and had not the courage
to punish the assassins. But, in his last moments, he adjured his son
to take vengeance upon them, adding that if he failed therein, his
memory would be execrated throughout the world.
In effect, the matter was brought before the Parliament of Paris
in 1550, where it occupied fifty audiences. The advocate of the
Vaudois, or rather of the Lady du Cental, who complained that she
had been ruined, spoke for seven days consecutively, with a force
which was said to have shown the things, instead of relating them.
The Baron d’Oppède defended himself, and had the audacity to commence
his pleading with these words of the Psalmist: “Judge me, O God,
and plead my cause against an ungodly nation.” He was acquitted.
The advocate-general Guérin only was condemned to death, and care
was taken to specify in the sentence that he had been guilty of
misappropriating the king’s money; as if a whole people murdered was
not a sufficient crime in the eyes of these judges.
VII.
Towards the end of the reign of Francis I., and under that of his son
Henry II., the Reformation made such rapid progress, that it becomes
impossible to follow it in all its details. Men of letters, of the
law, of the sword, of the Church itself, hastened to its banner.
Several great provinces,—Languedoc, Dauphiny, the Lyonnese, Guienne,
Saintonge, Poitou, the Orleanese, Normandy, Picardy, Flanders; the
most considerable towns of the kingdom,—Bourges, Orleans, Rouen,
Lyons, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Montpellier, La Rochelle, were peopled
with Reformers. It is calculated that they comprised in a few years
nearly a sixth of the population, of whom they were the _élite_. They
might have repeated the saying of Tertullian: “We date only from
yesterday, and are, yet, everywhere.”
If the persecution kept some aloof, it brought the accession of
a greater number, through that instinct, which impels the human
conscience to rise against injustice, and incline to the side of the
victim. Moreover, the faith, the constancy, and the serenity of the
martyrs soared above the ferocity of the executioner.
The impulse once given to the movement, everything was shaken. There
was in the understanding, in the heart, and, so to say, in the air
one breathed, an immense want of religious reforms. People began to
reflect that religion is not to be transmitted, like a name or an
estate which one inherits, but that, before accepting it, one is
bound to examine it by and for oneself. People also began to consider
more minutely the enormous abuses of the Romish church, and crowds
separated themselves from that degenerated communion.
The ecclesiastical benefices were distributed, particularly after
the Concordat, which had abolished the electoral forms, among court
favourites, soldiers, intriguers, and even children; all incapable
of fulfilling the duties of their offices. There were supernumerary
prelates, who were derisively called flying, or portative bishops.
The cardinals set the example of disorder. The prelates lived a
scandalous life at Paris. The members of the lower clergy were, in
general, immoral and greedy, the monks ignorant and shameless. This
conduct was compared with that of the preachers of the Reformation,
men of simple habits, for the most part poor and grave; and the
contrast was so striking, that honest hearts could not resist it.
Without some great lords on one side, and the lowest of the people on
the other, the church of Rome was lost in France.
The provincial nobility, which had not been depraved in the
atmosphere of the royal household, were all inclined to the new
ideas. They entertained against the privileges of the priests, and
against their territorial encroachments, an old, though suppressed
hostility, that only waited an occasion to burst forth. They had,
beside, considerable leisure in their castles, since the severe
interdiction of wars of lord against lord; and reading at eve, around
the feudal hearth, the Holy Scriptures, they were drawn, almost
without being aware of it, to the teachings of Luther and Calvin.
The people of the third estate, who had received a lettered
education,—advocates, legists, professors, notable burghers,—were
already won beforehand, by their very studies, to these opinions.
“Above all,” says with great simplicity an historian devoted
to Catholicism, “painters, watchmakers, sculptors, goldsmiths,
booksellers, printers, and others, who, from their callings, have
some nobility of mind, were among the first easily surprised.”[19]
Traders, who voyaged in foreign countries, brought back impressions
favourable to the Reformation. They recognised that this religion, by
correcting the manners of the people, developed at the same moment
their commerce, and contributed to the advance of their industry.
Many secular and regular ecclesiastics in the provinces were also
shaken. Having taken orders without having learned any other thing
than the barbarous theology of the schools, they had taught their
dogmas in good faith. But placed face to face with the new dogma,
they saw the stamp of truth upon it. They then betook themselves to
some business for a livelihood, and, working at their handicraft,
preached in secret the doctrines of the Reformation. They were
encouraged by the thought that Rome would sooner or later come to an
understanding with the Reformers in a general council. Hence those
contradictions among some of them, which have not been sufficiently
comprehended by our older historians.
The hawkers of Bibles and religious tracts aided powerfully in these
conquests of the new faith. They were called bale-bearers, basket or
library-carriers. They belonged to different classes of society: many
were students in theology, or even ministers of the Gospel.
The printing-presses of Geneva, Lausanne, Neufchâtel, specially
established to inundate France with religious writings, furnished
them with books. And then, staff in hand, basket on back, through
heat and cold, by lonely ways, through mountain-ravines and dreary
morasses, they went from door to door, often ill received, always at
the hazard of their lives, and knowing not in the morning where to
lay their head at night. It was chiefly through them that the Bible
penetrated into the manor of the noble, and beneath the hut of the
villager.
Exposed, like the old Vaudois of Piedmont, to cruel pursuit, the new
pedlars imitated their ingenuity, by placing at the top of their
packs pieces of stuff or other unsuspicious objects, while they
concealed beneath, the prohibited wares. “To gain easier access in
the towns, in the country, in the houses of the nobility,” says again
Florimond de Rémond, “some of them went as hawkers of little trinkets
for the ladies, hiding in the depth of their bales the little books,
which they presented to girls; but this was done furtively, as if
they were things of great rarity, to make them better relished.”[20]
From the many victims they furnished to the scaffold and the stake,
we must suppose these humble packmen to have been very numerous. We
cannot dwell upon this subject; but history owes it to their heroic
devotedness, that we should recount the martyrdom of one among them
at least.
A Dauphinese, named Pierre Chapot, after a short sojourn at Geneva,
found employment as a compositor at Paris, and in his hours of
leisure sold religious books. A spy of the Sorbonne surprised him
in 1546, and Chapot was cited before the _Chambre ardente_ of the
Parliament. His mild air, modest behaviour, his appeals to the
justice of the counsellors, the Bible that he invoked with such
assurance, softened the judges, and he obtained permission to enter
upon a disputation with three doctors of theology. These last acceded
with reluctance, saying that to discuss with heretics was a thing of
evil consequence.
Chapot relied upon scriptural texts, and the others answered him
with councils and traditions. Then, turning to the counsellors, the
prisoner begged them not to allow a reference to anything but the
declarations of the Gospel. Cut to the quick, the Sorbonnists said
to the judges: “Why do you permit yourselves to be dictated to by a
wicked and wily heretic? Why have you brought us hither to discuss
articles already censured and condemned by the theological faculty?
We will carry our complaint before those whom it concerns.” And they
all departed deeply angered.
After they had left, the hawker said, with a calm voice: “You see,
gentlemen, that these people proffer no other reasons than shouts
and menaces; I want nothing more than to persuade you of the justice
of my cause.” And falling upon his knees, with clasped hands, he
implored God to inspire all the company with a right judgment, for
the honour and glory of His name. Some of the judges, touched with
compassion, would have acquitted him. But the contrary opinion
prevailed, and the only favour he obtained, was not to have his
tongue cut out before being burned alive.
He was taken to the Place Maubert, supported in a cart by two men,
for the torture had broken his limbs. From the height of this new
pulpit, he cried: “Christian people, although you see me here carried
to die like a malefactor, and although I feel guilty of all my sins,
I pray each of you to understand, that I am now about to depart from
life like a true Christian, and not for any heresy, or because I
am without God. I believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus
Christ, who, by His death, has delivered us from everlasting death. I
believe that he was conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin
Mary....”
He was interrupted by the doctor Maillard, one of those with whom
he had disputed before the Parliament: “Master Pierre,” he said to
him, “it is here that you ought to implore pardon of the Virgin Mary,
whom you have so grievously offended.” “Sir, I pray you,” replied the
sufferer, “let me speak; I will say nothing that is unfitting a good
Christian. As for the Virgin Mary, I have offended her in nothing,
nor would I wish to have done it.” “Then say but one _Ave Maria_.”
“No, I will not say it.” And he repeated without ceasing: “Jesus, son
of David, have mercy upon me.” At this moment the doctor ordered the
executioner to tighten the cord, and the martyr gave up his soul to
God.
After the execution, the theologians of the Sorbonne complained
loudly to the _Chambre ardente_, and declared that if heretics
were permitted to speak, everything would be lost. The Parliament
therefore resolved that all the condemned should have, without
exception, their tongues cut out.
The disciples of the new religion had among them signs of
recognition; and when they were too numerous to form one assembly,
they divided themselves into _small bands_. The most resolute, or the
best informed, undertook to explain the Bible. They were sometimes
poor artisans, who made their exhortations by turn. The meetings took
place in the evening, or at night, or in the morning, in order to
escape the eye of the enemy. Anything served for these assemblies: a
barn, a cellar, a garret, the bosom of a wood, an opening of a rock
in the mountain-side.
The object of assembling was in some places concealed by means, which
reveal at the same time the simplicity and the rigour of the period.
“For the purpose of these meetings,” says Florimond de Rémond,
speaking of those of Paris, “they chose some house with secret doors,
so as to be able on necessity to fly, and also to enter by different
ways. And he who was to preach, brought with him dice and cards, that
he might throw them upon the carpet instead of the Bible, and conceal
their deed by gaming.... The minister of Mantes was better advised,
when secretly preaching in Paris, at the Croix-Verte, near the
Louvre, he had counters and tale-books put upon the table, in order
to deceive those who might suddenly come upon them, if they did not
belong to his flock.”[21]
When a pastor visited, in passing, these meetings, the rejoicing
was very great. He was listened to for hours; the symbols of the
Holy Supper were received from his hands; the persecutions they
had mutually suffered told of those which yet awaited them; and in
separating, the adieus spoken were for the scaffold and for heaven.
So long as a regular form of church government was not established,
and in the absence of a minister of the Gospel, the administration
of the sacrament was abstained from. Calvin and the pastors of the
Reformation would not authorize each little assembly to receive the
communion at the hands of a man without a recognised call. “We by
no means approve that you should begin in this way, or even that
you should be hasty to have the Holy Supper, until you have an
established order among you,” wrote Calvin, in 1553, to the faithful
dispersed in Saintonge.
But if the sacraments were wanting at the beginning, they preserved
a great rigidity of manners and discipline. Sinners were reproved,
the erring admonished, and the authors of scandals excluded from the
communion. “They declared themselves,” says the historian, whom I am
never weary of citing, because he seems to have well understood the
disciples of the Reformation,—“they declared themselves enemies of
luxury, of public debauches, and of the frivolities of the world, too
much in vogue among the Catholics. In their feasts and assemblies,
instead of dancing and hautboys, they had readings from the Bibles,
that were placed upon the table, and spiritual songs, especially the
Psalms put into verse. The women, by their decent carriage and modest
dress, appeared in public like mourning Eves or repentant Magdalens,
as says Tertullian of those of his time. The men, all subdued, seemed
stricken with the Holy Ghost.”[22]
The popular opinion was not ill-founded, and Catherine de Medicis
affirmed it one day in her trifling way: “I shall turn to the new
religion, that I may pass for a pious prude.”
This was the most flourishing and purest period of the French
Reformation. There were, no doubt, among the faithful, some
unquiet, restless minds, who only joined it out of an empty passion
for novelty; there were among them also many differences, which
compromised the general cause, and many lukewarm, that were called
temporisers, middle-course men, or Nicodemites. But the rivalries of
the great houses of the kingdom, and political quarrels, had not yet
mixed themselves up with religion. The Reformers suffered, and took
no vengeance; they received death without a desire to retaliate, and
displayed more severity against themselves than their enemies.
VIII.
In a more enlightened age, the great progress of the Reformation
would soon have brought about a crisis. Unfortunately, the minds of
the people were not yet ripe, and no one comprehended that there
might be two religions at once in the same state.
Francis I., besieged by women and priests, had died in 1547, little
regretted by the Catholics, who reproached him for not having done
enough for the Church, and still less regretted by the Protestants,
who accused him of having cruelly persecuted them. His son, Henry
II., who succeeded him, was nineteen years of age. His nature was
mild, his countenance open, his speech easy and ready, his manners
graceful; but he was deficient in all the high qualities of a king.
Ill instructed in business, and incapable of constant application to
it, he chiefly passed his time in diversion with his courtiers. The
government fell into the hands of favourites of both sexes,—Anne de
Montmorency, the duke François de Guise, the Marshal de Saint André,
Diane de Poitiers, duchess of Valentinois; and it is under his reign
that the great factions, which covered France with ruins and blood,
commenced.
Henry II., in concert with his Italian wife, Catherine de Medicis,
opened the court to the arts of magic and sorcery, whence arose acts
of the most shameful credulity amongst some, and of cold impiety
among others. “Two great sins,” says an old historian, “crept into
France in the reign of this prince; namely, atheism and magic.”[23]
At the _fêtes_ of the coronation of the queen, in 1549, Henry II.
displayed great magnificence; and as voluptuousness and cruelty have
much natural affinity, he determined upon combining with the pomp of
the tournaments the spectacle of the execution of four Lutherans.