THE GREAT PUBLIC DEBATE ON THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE
EVANGELICAL FAITH.
(JUNE 1535.)
Sunday, the 30th of May and the feast of Pentecost, the day on which the
discussion was to begin, came at last. A year had passed away since the
Reformation had made its public entrance into Geneva; it was now about
to take another step—one that would secure its triumph. The day of
Pentecost, so important for the establishment of Christianity, was to be
important also for the Reformation. The same Spirit which had begun the
Church, is also that which will renew it when it has fallen. Friends and
enemies crowded that day to the convent of Rive, animated with the
liveliest and most opposite emotions. Nothing had been spared so that
the debate should take place with solemnity. 'A theatre,' that is to
say, a platform, had been erected in the great hall. The eight
commissioners took their seats, and an immense concourse of Genevans and
foreigners filled the vast auditory. A table had been placed in the
_arena_ for the combatants. Jacques Bernard appeared first: he was
followed by Farel, Viret, and Froment; but the places set apart for the
champions of the Roman Church remained unoccupied, and people began to
ask if Rome would fail to appear. At last two ecclesiastics came
forward: one was Chapuis, prior of the Dominican convent, the most
learned man at that time in Geneva; the other was Caroli, the Sorbonne
doctor.
[Sidenote: BERNARD AND CHAPUIS.]
Bernard spoke first. He undertook to prove that, in the Romish Church,
men did not look to Christ for justification from their sins, and for
that purpose put in the rules of his order, and showed how the monks
claimed to be saved by their vain practices, and gave themselves up to
pride, avarice, and even to great impurity. He spoke from personal
knowledge. A man of upright heart, quick, a little violent even, he
repelled with energy the disorders in which he had once taken part.
Standing in the great hall of his own convent, the guardian pulled down
what he had worshipped and worshipped what he had pulled down. This made
the father-confessor of Ste. Claire exclaim: 'How that accursed Jacques
Bernard despises the frock he once wore.' Chapuis, the Dominican, came
forward resolutely in defence of the monastic orders, and reproved the
guardian severely. Farel rose in support of Bernard, but Chapuis, who
feared such an adversary, maintained that nobody but Bernard ought to
answer him.[531] The next day Bernard and Chapuis, the heads of the two
great convents of Geneva, met again; but Chapuis received orders from
his Provincial to leave the city immediately.
This vexed the magistrates exceedingly: they remembered Furbity, and the
excessive zeal which had caused his imprisonment: they had no doubt that
he would joyfully seize the opportunity of defending the faith of Rome.
Having sent for the jailer's wife, they ordered her to place the
articles under dispute in the reverend father's hands. As she was a
zealous Roman-catholic, and on good terms with Furbity, they thought
that he would receive them more willingly from her than from her
husband, who was ardent for the reform. The woman, a timid soul, was
afraid of everybody: of her husband, whom she did not wish to displease
by neglecting the commission, and of the reverend father, whom she
feared to offend by giving him the heretical propositions; so she sent
them by one of the turnkeys. 'Alas!' exclaimed Furbity, 'even my poor
hostess is trying to seduce me.' He tossed the paper out of his cell.
The jaileress sent it back to him by her little girl; but the latter,
who was harshly received, brought it back to her mother, who, frightened
at the probability of displeasing their worships, slipped the theses
into the cell by the window. The reverend father, seeing the paper which
he had cursed falling at his feet, picked it up, tore it to pieces, and
trampled it under foot.[532] All hope of seeing him defend popery had to
be given up.
The disputation began again without him. Bernard and Farel, having
Caroli for respondent, showed by Scripture that Jesus Christ alone saves
men from sin. Caroli was very weak, but hinted to his partisans that he
reserved his hardest blows till the last, and would then pound his
adversaries to powder. He did not speak up for either side. The honest
Viret, indignant at such trickery, attacked him so skilfully, that he
was constrained to pronounce for or against the truth. The Sorbonnist
took the side of the reformers. 'All the efforts of man are in vain,' he
said. 'Without the grace of Christ, he can neither begin what is good,
nor pursue it, nor persevere.'[533] 'Very good,' exclaimed Farel; 'thank
you, doctor. The glory of God and the edification of the people, is all
we desire.' Caroli was quite proud of having spoken so well.
[Sidenote: FURBITY INVITED TO DEBATE.]
The reformers were again without antagonists, Caroli appearing to agree
with them. The magistrates returned to their notion about Furbity, and
as Caroli had been his theological tutor in Paris, the Council asked him
to invite his old pupil to come and defend his doctrine, or to disavow
his errors as he himself had done. 'Willingly,' said the vainglorious
doctor. After dinner, the four syndics, the great Parisian doctor, that
_Satan_ William Farel (as Sister Jeanne calls him), Pierre Viret, and
several of their friends, went to the prison. The Dominican appeared: he
was thin, weak, debilitated, and his feet tottered, so that when he saw
the Sorbonne doctor in the company of all those heretics, he fell
fainting to the ground.'[534] They lifted him up, and when he had
recovered his senses, Caroli, addressing him in a doctoral tone, said:
'How is this, brother Guy; will you die in your obstinacy—in your
errors, now that we have arrived at the truth? Acknowledge that you have
been deceived, and return to God.' Furbity, divided between respect for
his old teacher and fidelity to the pope, exclaimed: 'God forbid that I
should quarrel with my master.... I desire to die in the truth as I
learnt it of you.'—'Come, then, and defend it,' they said. But Furbity
imposed a singular condition: he required Farel's beard to be cut off.
We know that the bigots believed in the existence of a devil in each
hair of the reformer's beard. 'If I must dispute with that idiot,' he
exclaimed, 'let the dwelling of his master the devil be first cleared
away, and all his skin shaved.'[535] They urged the doctor to no
purpose: nothing could shake him. No beard or no discussion.
The debate began again, and that day Caroli was Roman-catholic from head
to foot. Bernard maintained that Christ was the only mediator; Caroli
affirmed that it was Mary. 'The Virgin having remained upon earth, after
the death of the Saviour,' he said, 'the mother naturally succeeded the
Son.'[536]—'Mary, the successor to her Son!' exclaimed Farel. 'Let us
have done with these foolish questions: let us get out of this labyrinth
of quibbling which men call _Roman theology_.' It was agreed that the
discussion next day should turn upon the Mass.
Caroli, determining to arm himself completely to defend this palladium
of popery, spent a portion of the night in hunting over huge
folios,[537] and in taking notes of the reasons that might be adduced in
favor of that sacrifice. The _Mysteria Missæ_ of Innocent III., the
_Summa Theologiæ_ of Thomas Aquinas, the _Sentences of Bonaventure_,
were in turn examined by him. The next day he began to pour out the
arguments he had hastily collected. 'Firstly,' he said; 'secondly'....
But he lost the thread and stopped short, continuing to repeat the same
words. The scholar forgot his lesson. To complete the comedy, it only
wanted Farel to prompt the arguments which he had forgotten. 'You mean
to say this or to say that,' suggested the reformer.—'Yes, yes,' said
the poor doctor, 'it is exactly what I meant to say.'[538]
Caroli, piqued at this triumph of Farel's, made an effort, and getting
once more into the saddle, began to prance about valiantly. 'Really,'
said Froment, who heard him, he now argues with subtlety and great
earnestness.' The catholics, without waiting for the reformer's answer,
ran off to the canons: 'The Parisian doctor is speaking admirably,' they
said. The canons ordered some of their best wine to be taken to him.
Caroli was at this moment the happiest man in the world; the papacy and
the Reformation both lavished their favors on him at once.
The next day the audience was more numerous than usual: the doctor's
eloquence had been much talked about, and the catholics came in crowds.
Sworn enemies of Reform[539] said to one another, 'Let us go and witness
the triumph of the divine mysteries of popery.' That day the points to
be defended were transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the mass, the
adoration of the bread, the taking away of the cup, the invocation of
saints, the use of a foreign tongue, and other rites and customs.
Caroli, puffed up by the good position he had acquired, tossed his head
and challenged his adversaries in a loud tone: 'Give me a man who shows
himself a man,' he said, 'and we will fight together.' Then stood
forward to answer him a mere boy. When the veteran doctor saw this
novice, so puny in body,[540] he despised him as Goliath despised David.
'Surely,' he said, 'you do not mean to pass him off for one of your
pastors!' This young man was Pierre Viret, then twenty-four years old,
whose health was still weakened by the poison, and who had such a pale
face and weak look that he seemed ready to faint. 'Alas!' he said of
himself, 'I am but a mere bag of bones.' His language showed little
color or elegance: but he had a logical style, perfectly clear, the
skill of an orator, and all accompanied by an indescribable sweetness
and charm.
[Sidenote: TRIUMPH OF REFORM.]
The two champions joined in combat; and Viret refuted Caroli's
assertions so clearly and so completely, that all the spectators took
his side.[541] Caroli, not knowing what to say, began to vociferate a
long 'Bah! bah! bah!'[542] It was useless for Viret to adduce the most
solid reasons, the Sorbonne doctor could find no other argument than
that foolish interjection. 'What do I hear?' exclaimed Farel; 'we should
blush to answer in such a manner.' Caroli held his tongue, and some
catholics began to ask themselves whether the doctrines they had held
for sacred might not be merely the opinions of men.[543]
Quitting this part of the subject, the doctor proceeded to defend the
forms of popery. 'How much more august is the service,' he said, 'if it
is celebrated in Latin! What majesty there is in the Roman ceremonies!
The tonsure of the priests is a crown to them.'—'It is Christ's wish,'
said Farel, 'that leaving shadows, we should worship the Father in
spirit and in truth. If we load the Church with ceremonies, signs, and
ornaments, we rob it of the presence of Jesus Christ. If King Hezekiah
broke the brazen serpent, what must be done with all these
superstitions, which surpass the idolatry of the Jews in scandal?'
It was too much. The bishop, informed of the progress of the discussion,
issued from Arbois on the 13th of June, in the very midst of the
debates, an order, 'forbidding people of every condition to be from that
day forward so bold and daring as to speak or trade with the syndics,
preachers, and citizens of Geneva, under pain of excommunication and a
fine of twenty-five livres.'[544]
Thus the bishop set up a quarantine to separate Geneva from Christendom;
but it was precisely at this epoch that the obscure city of the
Allobroges came into communication with the world, and spread abroad the
light which it had received. While the papacy ceased to utter its
oracles there, and had in its service none but the dumb, the Word of God
made its loud and mighty voice heard through the mouths of the
Reformers. Such was the result of the discussion. 'In that controversy,'
says a modern historian who does not belong to the Reform, 'the
catholics were defeated by the reformers.'[545]
[531] 'Nollet alium respondere quam Bernardum.'—Farel to Calvin,
p. 77.—Jeanne de Jussie, _Commencement de l'Hérésie dans Genève_,
p. 125.—Froment, _Gestes de Genève_, pp. 139, 140.
[532] Jeanne de Jussie, _Commencement de l'Hérésie dans Genève_, p. 80.
[533] 'Frustra hominem conari sine gratia, nec ordiri, nec prosequi, nec
perseverare posse.'—Farel to Calvin, _Epist. Calv._, p. 77.
[534] Jeanne de Jussie, _Commencement de l'Hérésie dans Genève_, p. 80.
[535] _Ibid._ pp. 80, 81.
[536] 'Succedere matrem Filio.'—Farel to Calvin.
[537] 'Partem noctis impendit in annotandis rationibus quibus posset
missa ferri.'—_Ibid._
[538] Hominem, memoria labantem, adjuvabamus, ut sua formaret
argumenta.'—Farel to Calvin, _Epist. Calv._
[539] 'Juratissimi hostes.'—Farel to Calvin, _Epist. Calv._
[540] 'Cum juvenem quem ut tironem Carolus reputat.'—_Ibid._
[541] 'Cum Viretus tam aperte dissolveret omnia.'—_Ibid._
[542] 'Cœpit, insani more, vociferari longum ba, ba, ba.'—Farel to
Calvin, _Epist. Calv._
[543] 'Humana et impia esse quæ divina sanctissimaque arbitrabantur.'—
_Ibid._
[544] Archives de Genève.—Pièces historiques, No. 1125.
[545] Mignet, _Réforme à Genève_, p. 66.