fine jealousy as to the character and competence whether of masters or
professors, and in his unwearied quest after qualified men. His letters
teem with references to the men in various lands and many universities
whom he was seeking to bring to Geneva. The first rector, Antoine
Saunier, was a notable man; and he never rested till he had secured his
dear old teacher, Mathurin Cordier. Castellio was a schoolmaster;
Theodore Beza was head of college and academy, or school and university,
together; and Calvin himself was a professor of theology. The success of
the college was great; the success of the academy was greater. Men came
from all quarters--English, Italians, Spanish, Germans, Russians,
ministers, jurists, old men, young men, all with the passion to learn in
their blood--to jostle each other among the thousand hearers who met to
listen to the great reformer. But France was the main feeder of the
academy; Frenchmen filled its chairs, occupied its benches, learned in
it the courage to live and the will to die. From Geneva books poured
into France; and the French church was ever appealing for ministers, yet
never appealed in vain.
Within eleven years, 1555-1566--Calvin died in 1564--it is known that
Geneva sent one hundred sixty-one pastors into France; how many more may
have gone unrecorded we cannot tell. And they were learned men,
strenuous, fearless, praised by a French bishop as modest, grave,
saintly, with the name of Jesus Christ ever on their lips. Charles IX
implored the magistrates of Geneva to stop the supply and withdraw the
men already sent; but the magistrates replied that the preachers had
been sent not by them, but by their ministers, who believed that the
sovereign duty of all princes and kings was to do homage to Him who had
given to them their dominion. It was small wonder that the Venetian
Suriano should describe Geneva as "the mine whence came the ore of
heresy"; or that the Protestants should gather courage as they heard the
men from Geneva sing psalms in the face of torture and death.
It was indeed a very different France which the eyes of the dying Calvin
saw from that which the young man had seen thirty years before.
Religious hate was even more bitter and vindictive; war had come and
made persecution more ferocious; but the Huguenots had grown numerous,
potent, respected, feared, and disputed with Catholicism the supremacy
of the kingdom. And Calvin had done it, not by arms nor by threats, nor
by encouragement of sedition or insurrection--to such action he was ever
resolutely opposed--but by the agency of the men whom he formed in
Geneva, and by their persuasive speech. The reformed minister was
essentially a preacher, intellectual, exegetical, argumentative,
seriously concerned with the subjects that most appealed to the
serious-minded.
Modern oratory may be said to begin with him, and indeed to be his
creation. He helped to make the vernacular tongues of Western Europe
literary. He accustomed the people to hear the gravest and most sacred
themes discussed in the language which they knew; and the themes
ennobled the language, the language was never allowed to degrade the
themes. And there was no tongue and no people that he influenced more
than the French. Calvin made Bossuet and Massillon possible; as a
preacher he found his successor in Bourdaloue; and a literary critic who
does not love him has expressed a doubt as to whether Pascal could be
more eloquent or was so profound. And the ideal then realized in Geneva
exercised an influence far beyond France. It extended into Holland,
which in the strength of the reformed faith resisted Charles V and his
son, achieved independence, and created the freest and best educated
state on the continent of Europe.
John Knox breathed for a while the atmosphere of Geneva, was subdued
into the likeness of the man who had made it, and when he went home he
copied its education and tried to repeat its reformation. English
reformers, fleeing from martyrdom, found a refuge within its hospitable
walls, and, returning to England, attempted to establish a Genevan
discipline, and failed, but succeeded in forming the Puritan character.
If the author of the _Ordonnances ecclesiastiques_ accomplished, whether
directly or indirectly, so much, we need not hesitate to term him a
notable friend to civilization.
JEAN M. V. AUDIN
When the sword of the law fell upon one of his followers, the voice of
Luther was magnificent; it exclaimed, in the ears of emperors, kings,
and dukes, "You have shed the blood of the just," and then the Saxon, in
honor of the martyr, extemporized a hymn which was chanted in the very
face of the civil power:
"In the Low Countries, at Brussels,
The Lord his greatness hath displayed,
In the death of two of his loved children
On whom grand gifts he had bestowed."
Calvin had not the courage to imitate Luther. He has told us that he
wanted courage; he again repeats it: he says that he, a plebeian,
trifling as a man, and having but little learning, has nothing in him
which could deserve celebrity. And yet he essayed a timid protest in
favor of certain Huguenots who had been burned on the public square.
"The work," says Prince Masson, "of a double-faced writer, a Catholic in
his writings and a Lutheran in his bedchamber."
This is his first book. It is entitled _de Clementia_ (or _Treatise on
Clemency_), and is a paraphrase of some Latin writer of the decline.
Moreover, this is the first time that a commentator is ignorant of the
life of him whose work he publishes. Calvin has confounded the two
Senecas, the father and the son; the rhetorician and the philosopher, of
both of whom he makes but one literary personage, living the very
patriarchal life of more than one hundred fifteen years.
We must pardon Varillas for having, with sufficient acrimony, brought
into relief this mistake of the biographer of Seneca the philosopher,
and not, like the historians of the Reformation, become vexed at the
proud tone of the French historian. Had the fault been committed by a
Catholic, where is the Protestant who would not have done the same thing
as Varillas?
The literary work which Calvin, in the shape of a commentary, has
interwoven with the treatise of Seneca is a production not unworthy a
literator of the revival; it is an amplification, which one would have
supposed to have been written in the cell of a Benedictine monk, so
numerous are the citations, so great is the display of erudition, so
replete is it with the names, Greek and Latin, of poets, historians,
moralists, rhetoricians, philosophers, and philologists.
Calvin is a coquettish student, who loves to parade his reading and his
memory. His work is a gallery, open to all the modern and ancient
glories of literature, whom the commentator calls to his aid, often for
the elucidation of a doubtful passage. The young rhetorician glorifies
his country, and when upon his march he encounters some historic name,
by which his idea can be illustrated, he hastens to proclaim it, with
all its titles to admiration. He there salutes Bude in magnificent
terms: "Bude, the glory and pillar of human learning, thanks to whom,
at this day, France can claim the palm of erudition." The portrait
which he draws of Seneca is the production of a practised pen: "Seneca,
whose pure and polished phrase savors, in some sort, of his age; his
diction florid and elegant; his style, without labor or restraint, moves
on, free and unembarrassed." It may be seen that the student had the
honor to study under Mathurin Cordier and to attend the lectures of
Alciati; but, after all, his book is but a defective allegory; for what
reader could have divined that the writer designed to represent Francis
I, under the name of Nero, as addressed by the Cordovan? The treatise
could produce no sensation, and, like the work of Seneca, must be
shipwrecked in that sea of the passions which, at the two epochs, raged
around both writers.
Calvin experienced much trouble in having his Latin commentary printed;
he was in need of funds, and the revenues of his benefice of Pont
l'Eveque were insufficient to defray the expense of printing. How could
he apply to the Mommor family? Moreover, he was in dread that his book
should prove a failure and thereby injure his budding reputation. All
these alarms of a maiden author are set forth in various letters which
he addressed on this subject to the dear friends of his bosom.
"Behold my books of Seneca concerning clemency, printed at my own
expense and labor! They must now be sold, in order that I may again
obtain the money which I have expended. I must also watch that my
reputation does not suffer. You will oblige me, then, by informing me
how the work has been received, whether with favor or indifference." The
whole anxiety of the poor author is to lose nothing by the enterprise;
his purse is empty; it needs replenishing; and he urges the professors
to give circulation to the treatise; he solicits one of his friends at
Bourges, a member of the university, to bring it forward in his
lectures; and appeals to the aid of Daniel, to whom he sent a hundred
copies. Papire Masson was mistaken: the commentary on clemency did not
first appear, as he supposes, under the title of _Lucius Calvinus, civis
Romanus_, but under that of _Calvinus_, a name ever after retained by
the reformer.
This treatise introduced Calvin to the notice of the learned world:
Bucer, Capito, Padius, sent congratulations to the writer; Calvin, in
September, 1532, had sent a copy of his work to Bucer, who was then at
Strasburg. The person commissioned to present it was a poor young man,
suspected of Anabaptism, and a refugee from France. Calvin's letter of
recommendation is replete with tender compassion for the miseries of the
sinner. "My dear Bucer," he writes, "you will not be deaf to my
entreaties, you will not disregard my tears; I implore you, to come to
the aid of the proscribed, be a father to the orphan."
This was sending the sick man to a sad physician. Bucer, by turns
Catholic, Lutheran, Anabaptist, Zwinglian! Besides, why this proselytism
of a moral _cure_? The exile was Anabaptist by the same title as Calvin
was predestinarian, in virtue of a text of Scripture: "Go; whoever shall
believe and be baptized will be saved." The Anabaptist believed in the
inefficacy of baptism without faith manifested by an external act; but
is not Calvin, at this very hour, as much to be pitied as the
Anabaptist? He also doubted, searched, and interrogated his Bible, and
imagined that he had caught the meaning of a letter which no
intelligence before him had been able to seize. And what was this truth,
the conquest of which infused such fear into his soul that, before he
could announce it to the world, he sold his charge of Pont l'Eveque and
even his paternal inheritance?
In the year 1531 John Calvin presented himself before Simon Legendre and
Peter le Roy, royal notaries at Paris, to invest his brothers with
powers of attorney to sell what had been left him by his father and
mother.
"To all to whom these present letters shall come; John de la Barre,
Chevalier Count d'Estampes, Governor of Paris and chief of the judicial
tribunal of said city, greeting: We make known that before Simon
Legendre and Peter le Roy, notaries of our lord the King, at Paris, came
in person Master John Calvin, licentiate at law, and Anthony Cauvin, his
brother, clerk, living at Paris, and sons of Gerard Cauvin--while yet
alive, secretary of M. the Bishop of Noyon--and of Jeanne le Franc, his
wife; who jointly and severally make, name, ordain, appoint, and
establish as their general agent and special attorney Master Charles
Cauvin, their brother, to whom bearing these present letters they grant,
and by these presents do give, full power and right to sell, concede,
and alienate, to whatever person or persons the two undivided thirds
belonging to the aforesaid constituents, coming to them in proper right
of succession by the demise of the aforesaid deceased Jeanne le Franc,
their mother; also the fourth undivided part of a piece of meadow,
containing fourteen acres or thereabouts, situated in the territory of
Noyon, and pertaining on one part to the wood of Chastelain; on another,
to the monks and sisters of the Hotel-Dieu of St. John, at Noyon; on
another, to the nuns and abbess of the French convent, the Abbey aux
Bois, and to the chapter of the church of Notre Dame, of the said city,
and running up to the highway passing from Noyon to Genury; to make sale
and alienation of the same, for such price and at such costs as the
aforesaid Master Charles Cauvin, their brother, shall judge for the
better; to collect the money and give security, with lien upon all their
future possessions.
"Done, and passed, on Wednesday, the fifteenth day of February, in the
year 1531."
Some short time after this, Calvin resigned his charge of the Chapel de
la Gesine to Anthony de la Marliere, _Mediante pretio conventionis_, for
the sum agreed on, says the act of transfer, and also surrendered his
benefice of Pont l'Eveque for a similar consideration.
The storm was gathering. Calvin wished to expose to its fury some other
head than his own, and chose that of Nicolas Cop, rector of the
Sorbonne, at Paris. Cop was a German of Basel, who was captivated with
the student because of his ready speech, his airs of virtue, his
scriptural knowledge, his railleries against the monks, and his ridicule
of the university. As to the rest, he was a man of a dull, heavy mind,
understood nothing of theological subjects, and would have been much
better placed in a refectory than in a learned body; at table than in
the professor's chair. Cop had to pronounce his usual discourse on All
Saints' Day, in presence of the Sorbonne and the university. He had
recourse to Calvin, who set to work and "built him up a discourse," says
Beza--"an oration quite different from those which were customary." The
Sorbonne and university did not assist at the discourse, but only some
Franciscans, who appeared to be scandalized at certain propositions of
the orator, and among others at one concerning justification by faith
alone in Christ--an old error, which, for many ages, has been trailed
along in all the writings of heretics; often dead and resuscitated--and
which Calvin, in Cop's discourse, dressed out in tinsel in order to give
it some appearance of novelty. But our Franciscans had sight and hearing
equally as good; they detected the heresy easily, and denounced to the
parliament the evil-sounding propositions, which they had taken pains to
note down in writing. Cop was greatly embarrassed by his new glory; he
had not expected so much fame. He, however, held up well and convoked
the university at the Mathurins. The university assembled in a body in
order to judge the cause. The rector there commenced a discourse, drawn
up by Calvin, in which he formally denied having preached the
propositions denounced, with the exception of one only, precisely the
worst, that concerning justification. Imagine the tumult which the
orator excited! Scarcely could he make himself heard, and ask mercy. The
old Sorbonnists shuddered on their benches. The unfortunate Cop would
have been seized had he not made his escape, to return no more.
The student kept himself concealed at the College du Forbet, which was
already surrounded by a body of archers headed by John Morin. Calvin was
warned of their approach. "He escaped through a window, concealed
himself in the suburb St. Victor, at the house of a vine-dresser,
changed his clothes, assumed the long gown of the vine-dresser, and,
placing a wallet of white linen and a rake on his shoulders, he took the
road to Noyon." A canon of that city, who was on his way to Paris, met
the _cure_ of Pont l'Eveque and recognized him.
"Where are you going, Master John," he demanded, "in this fine
disguise?"
"Where God shall please," answered Calvin, who then began to explain the
motive and reasons of his disguise. "And would you not do better to
return to Noyon and to God?" asked the canon, looking at him sadly.
Calvin was a moment silent, then, taking the priest's hand--"Thank you,"
said he, "but it is too late."
During this colloquy the lieutenant was searching Calvin's papers, and
secured those which might have compromised the friends of the fugitive.
Calvin found a refuge with the Queen of Navarre, who was fortunate
enough to reconcile her _protege_ with the court and the university. The
person whom she employed to effect this was an adroit man who had
succeeded in deceiving the government. Francis I based his glory upon
the patronage and encouragement which he accorded to learning, and
Calvin, as a man of letters, merited consideration. The King needed some
forgiveness for serious political faults, and, with reason, he believed
that the humanists would redeem his character before the people. He was
at once the protector and the slave of the _literati_.
At that period the little court of Nerac was the asylum of writers, who,
like Desperriers, there prepared their _Cymbalum Mundi_; of gallant
ladies, who composed love-tales, of which they were often the heroines
themselves; of poets, who extemporized odes after Beza's model; of
clerics and other gentry of the Church, who entertained packs of
hunting-dogs, and courtesans; of Italian play-actors, who, in the
Queen's theatre, presented comedies taken from the New Testament, in
which Jesus was made to utter horrible things against monks and nuns; or
of princes, who, like the Queen's husband, scarcely knew how to read,
and yet discoursed, like doctors, about doctrine and discipline.
It was against Roussel, the confessor of Margaret, that Calvin, at a
later date, composed his _Adversus Nicodemitas_. At Nerac he found Le
Fevre d'Etaples, who had fled the wrath of the Sorbonne, and who
"regarded the young man with a benignant eye, predicting that he was to
become the author of the restoration of the Church in France." Le Fevre
recalls to our mind that priest about whom Mathesius tells us, who said
to Luther, when sick: "My child, you will not die; God has great designs
in your regard." As to the rest, James le Fevre d'Etaples was a
sufficiently charitable and honest man. He died a Catholic, and very
probably without ever having prophesied in the terms mentioned by Beza.
It does not appear that Margaret enjoined the law of silence upon her
guest of Noyon, for we find him disseminating his errors in Saintonge,
where many laborers flocked to hear him and abandoned Catholicism to
embrace the Reformation. It was while on one of his excursions that the
missionary encountered Louis du Tillet, clerk of the Parliament of
Paris and secretary of Du Tillet, Bishop of Meaux. Louis possessed a
beautiful dwelling at Claix, a sort of Thebais, retired and pleasant,
where Calvin commenced his most serious work, _Institutes of the
Christian Religion_. The time he could spare from this literary
occupation he devoted to preaching in the neighboring cities, and
especially at Angouleme. A vine, beneath which he loved to recline and
muse, may still be seen; it was for a long time called "Calvin's vine."
He was still living on the last bounties of a church which he had
renounced, and which he called "a stepmother and a prostitute"; and on
the presents of a queen gallant, whose morals and piety he lauded,
continuing to assist at the Catholic service, and composing Latin
orations, which were delivered out of the assembly of the synod, at the
temple of St. Peter. He left the court of Margaret and reappeared at
Orleans.
The Reformation in France, as in Germany, wherever it showed itself,
produced, on all sides, disorder and trouble. In place of a uniform
symbol, it brought contradictory confessions, which gave rise to
interminable disputes. In Germany the Lutheran word caused a thousand
sects to spring up--each of which wished to establish a Christian
republic on the ruins of Catholicism. Carlstadt, Schwenkfield,
Oecolampadius, Zwingli, Munzer, Boskold, begotten by Luther, had
denied their father, and taught heterogeneous dogmas, of which every one
passed for the production of the Holy Ghost. Luther, who no longer
concealed himself beneath a monk's robe, but borrowed the ducal sword,
drove before him all these rebel angels, and, at the gate of Wittenberg,
stationed an executioner to prohibit their entrance; driven back into
the provinces, the dissenters appealed to open force. Germany was then
inundated with the blood of her noble intelligences, who had been born
for her glory.
Munzer died on the scaffold, and the Anabaptists marched to punishment,
denying and cursing the Saxon who did violence to their faith.
Everything was perishing--painting, sculpture, poesy, letters. The
Reformation imitated Nero, and sang its triumphs amid ruins and blood.
In France it was destined soon to excite similar tempests. It had
already troubled the Church. It no longer, as before, sheltered itself
beneath the shades of night to propagate its doctrines. It erected, by
the side of the Catholic pulpit, another pulpit, from which its dogmas
were defended by its disciples; it led its partisans at court, among the
clergy, in the universities and in the parliaments. Calvin's book, _de
Clementia_, gained him a large number of proselytes: his disciples had
an austere air, downcast eyes, pale faces, emaciated cheeks--all the
signs of labor and sufferings. They mingled little with the world,
avoided female conversation, the court, and shows; the Bible was their
book of predilection; they spoke, like the Saviour, in apologues. They
were termed Christians of the primitive Church. To resemble these, they
only needed the very essence of Christianity; namely, faith, hope, and
charity.
To be convinced that their symbol was as diversified as their faces, it
was only necessary to hear them speak; some taught the sleep of the
soul, after this life, till the day of the last judgment; others, the
necessity of a second baptism. Among them there were Lutherans, who
believed in the real presence, and Zwinglians, who rejected it; apostles
of free-will, and defenders of fatalism; Melanchthonians, who admitted
an ecclesiastical hierarchy; Carlstadians, who maintained that every
Christian is a priest; realists, chained to the letter; idealists, who
bent the letter to the thought; rationalists, who rejected every
mystery; mystics, who lost themselves in the clouds; and
Antitrinitarians, who, like Servetus, admitted but two persons in God.
These doctors all carried with them the same book--the Bible.
Servetus,[43] a Spanish physician, had left his own country, and
established himself, in 1531, at Hagenau, where he had published
different treatises against the Trinity. He had disputed at Basel with
Oecolampadius, some time before this renegade from the Lutheran faith
"was strangled by the devil," if we are to believe the account given by
Doctor Martin Luther. Servetus boasted that he triumphed over the
theologian. Having left Basel in 1532, and crossed the Rhine, he came
to hurl a solemn defiance at Calvin; the gauntlet was taken up by the
_cure_ of Pont l'Eveque, the place of combat indicated, the day for the
tournament named, but at the appointed hour "the heart of this unhappy
wretch failed," says Beza, "who having agreed to dispute, did not dare
appear." Calvin, on his part--in his refutations of the errors of
Servetus, published in 1554--boasts of having in vain offered the
Spanish physician remedies suitable to cure his malady. Servetus
pretends that his adversary was laying snares for him, which he had the
good-fortune to avoid. At a later period he forgot his part, and came to
throw himself into the ambuscade of his enemy.
The parliaments redoubled their severity: Calvin was narrowly watched,
his liberty might be compromised, and even his life put in peril. He
resolved to abandon France, either from fear or spite--if we are to
credit an ecclesiastical historian--not being able to forgive Francis I
for the preference manifested by this Prince toward a relation of the
Constable, "of moderate circumstances," who was promoted to a benefice,
for which the author of the _Commentary on Seneca_ had condescended to
make solicitation. The testimony of the historian is weighty. Soulier
knows neither hatred, passion, nor anger; he seeks after the truth, and
he believes that he has found it in the recital which we are about to
peruse.