THE INQUISITION IN FRANCE.
Martyrs in France--Francis I., a persecutor--His mother, Louisa,
establishes the Inquisition--Early victims--Francis pursues her
policy--His processions and victims--His horrid death--Increase of
Protestants--Charles IX.--Massacre--Edict of Nantes--Its
revocation--Barbarities of dragoons.
France supplied a large number of victims to the cruel bigotry of the
Inquisition, at the period of the reformation, especially in the reign
of Francis I. This great monarch was nephew to Louis XII., whom he
succeeded on the throne at his death, January 21, 1515. Francis was then
twenty-one years of age; and no sooner was he seated on the throne than
he resolved on an expedition into Italy, in which he was successful.
After the battle of Marignan, in which he was victorious, Francis
entered Milan, October 23, 1515; and shortly after concluded a peace
with Pope Leo X., by which he was confirmed in many privileges, he and
the Pope making various concessions. Leo and Francis met at Bologna,
where they drew up a treaty, known as the “_The Concordat_,” in virtue
of which they agreed to sacrifice what were understood as the rights of
the church, mutually sharing the spoils. The king conceded to the Pope
his supremacy, independent of all councils of the church, while Leo
despoiled the ecclesiastical corporations of France of the power to
nominate to the bishoprics, bestowing this patronage upon the monarch.
This treaty was ratified by the Pope making a public procession to the
cathedral at Bologna, the king bearing the train of His Holiness!
Francis felt conscious of the iniquitous character of the _Concordat_;
and, turning to Duprat, his chancellor, whispered, “there is enough in
it to damn us both!”
Francis and Leo having thus linked their interests together, separated,
each to pursue his own course: but the king having afterwards been
irritated by some delays of the Pope, complained to the papal legate of
the conduct of Leo; adding, that if he were not speedily satisfied, he
would countenance the Lutherans in his kingdom. The priestly ambassador
replied in a manner that silenced the high-spirited monarch. “Sire,”
said he, “you would be the first and greatest loser by such a step--a
new religion demands a new prince!” By this means Francis was prepared,
under the influence of superstition and fear for his crown, to show the
most ardent zeal for the cause of the Pope and his Inquisition.
Two ladies, at this period, exercised extraordinary influence in
religion in France. Margaret, the duchess of Alençon, sister of Francis,
entertained opinions far different from those of the king; and she
afforded her powerful protection to the reformers, who increased in
several parts of France, especially at Meaux and Lyons. Louisa of Savoy,
mother of Francis, professedly a Roman Catholic, but in reality a woman
of no religious principle, was made regent of the kingdom, while he
carried his arms into Italy, in 1524. He was, at first, successful; but,
being eager to take Pavia, he was defeated near that city by the
imperial forces, and taken prisoner by Lannoy, vice-king of Naples.
Francis I. became a captive in the power of the Emperor Charles V., and
was carried a prisoner into Spain. During his absence the terrors of the
Inquisition were felt in France. For, no sooner had Louisa obtained
possession of the reins of government, by the captivity of the king, her
son, than she wrote to the Pope, as the means of conciliating his
favour, asking his advice as to the best mode of dealing with the
heretics that infested France. Clement VII., exasperated by the failure
of every attempt to arrest the progress of the reformation in Germany
and Switzerland, was delighted with the message which laid the heretics
throughout the “Most Christian kingdom of France” at the mercy of the
sovereign pontiff. He responded with practical effect; and, by a papal
bull, established the Inquisition in France.
For the purpose of carrying out his policy, the Pope appointed
Chancellor Duprat to be archbishop of Sens, and created him a cardinal.
Thus the Inquisition was, at once, constituted in France, as all the
influential powers,--the regent, the chancellor, and the
parliament,--were leagued with the Pope and the Sorbonne, to exterminate
heresy with fire and sword. A commission was appointed, consisting of
four priests, to whom was entrusted absolute power to proceed against
all persons suspected of being tainted with Lutheran doctrines. The
highest dignitaries were held responsible to this dread tribunal; and
the first victim of the inquisitors was Briconnet, count of Montbrun,
bishop of Meaux. He was compelled to answer, like the humblest priest,
before two of the inquisitors, and every appeal that he attempted to
make to the parliament, or to the regent, was rejected. He recanted the
evangelical doctrines that he had preached; and Lefevre, an aged
professor in the university, “the forerunner of the reformation,” fled
to Strasburgh. But neither the fall of the bishop, nor the flight of the
doctor, could satisfy the inquisitors of Paris. Jean Pavanne was burned
at the stake in the Place de Grève, rejoicing that he was counted worthy
to suffer death for Christ. Their next victim was “the good hermit of
Livry.” As he had evangelised the villagers around his dwelling, about
nine miles from Paris, it was resolved to make him a public example. A
vast pile was raised in the open area in front of the cathedral of Notre
Dame, in which this servant of Christ was sacrificed, in the presence of
the whole of the clergy, and a multitude of the people, who had been
called together by the great bell of the cathedral. To such humble
victims others were added of higher rank, and by other means than the
prison and the stake. Michael D’Arande, chaplain to the Princess
Margaret, was threatened with death, and Anthony Papillon, chief master
of requests to the Dauphin, was carried off by poison. The inquisitors,
in a few months, had committed to the flames, or driven from France,
nearly every individual who had been the object of their envy or
suspicion. At length, after a year’s captivity in Spain, Francis
obtained his freedom, on most humiliating conditions, to the performance
of which he was bound by a solemn oath. From this oath to the emperor
the Pope gave him absolution, and thereby bound him more closely to
himself by such faithless bonds of perjury and deceit. But this favour
rendered it the more difficult for him to change the policy which, under
the regency of his mother, had delivered up the heretics of France to
the inquisitors of Rome.
Francis returned to Paris in the character of a doubly perjured vassal
of the Pope, bound to assume the office of the persecutor, and take the
lead in devoting to tortures and to death the most virtuous, enlightened
and faithful of his subjects. The great change which had taken place in
the temper of Francis on his return from Spain, became remarkably
manifest on his delivering up Louis Berquin, called “the most learned of
the nobility,” to the vengeance of the inquisitors. His books were
seized, and, in order to strike at the root of the heresy, Luther’s
writings were publicly burnt before the cathedral of Notre Dame. Berquin
remained faithful; he refused to purchase life by the sacrifice of his
faith; and Francis ceased to be protector and king. When the parliament
interfered with his early schemes of policy, his haughty reply had been,
“There is a king in France;” and when the court, responding to the proud
spirit of the sovereign, interfered on the former arrest of Berquin, the
king exclaimed, “Of what is he accused? Of challenging the custom of
invoking the Virgin in place of the Holy Ghost! _Is it for such trifles
that they imprison a king’s officer?_ It is an attack, aimed at
literature, true religion, the nobility, nay, the crown itself.” But
Francis had descended from this kingly standing to become the wretched
tool of a bigoted priesthood. Berquin, the “king’s officer,” was
abandoned to his enemies. He was condemned to have his tongue pierced
and _to be burnt alive_; and the sentence was executed with the most
merciless severity. Berquin held fast his faith; and his execution was
followed by that of fourteen other reformers, who were burnt at the
stake, maintaining, to their latest breath, the true faith of Christ.
Francis not only allowed a free course to the inquisitors, and abandoned
the nobles of France to their fury, he was drawn to be their humble
agent among the executioners of their cruelties. At the beginning of
1535, Jean Morin, the _surintendant-criminel_, flung into prison immense
numbers of men, women, and children, who attended the religious meetings
of the evangelicals. They were betrayed by a man named Guainier, who had
been employed to keep watch at their secret religious assemblies. These
furnished victims for a solemn procession, which the king ordered at
Paris, January 21, 1535, in expiation of the offence pretended to have
been committed in certain placards, which denied the Romish doctrine of
transubstantiation.
Laval, in his “History of the Protestant Reformation in France,”
describes this procession, thus expressed by a modern writer:--“Between
the hours of eight and nine in the morning the procession began to issue
from the church of Saint Geneviéve. There was a long line of priests,
dressed in their gorgeous garments; the streets were strewed with
flowers, and the windows were crowded with spectators. First were borne
the bodies and relics of all the martyrs preserved in the different
churches of Paris,--St. Germain, St. Merry, St. Marceau, St. Geneviéve,
St. Opportune, St. Landré, St. Honoré; and all those relics of the Holy
Chapel which had never been exposed to the public gaze since the grand
and mournful day of the funeral of Saint Louis. Then followed a great
number of cardinals in their scarlet robes; of bishops, abbés, and other
prelates, and all the members of the University of Paris, marching in
regular order. Then came Du Bellay, bishop of Paris, carrying in his
hands the holy sacrament. Then the king, with his head bare, and bearing
a large waxen taper in his hand; then the queen; the princes of the
blood; two hundred gentlemen; the king’s guard; the court of parliament;
the master of requests, and all the officers of justice. The ambassadors
of the emperor, of England, of Venice, &c., were present. The
procession, in grave order, proceeded through all the larger streets of
Paris; and at _six_ principal places there were erected at each a
_reposoir_, or temporary altar, adorned with flowers, crucifixes,
candlesticks, &c., &c. Little children, dressed as angels, or holding
the lamb of peace, are usually to be seen at these reposoirs; but here
was now a terrible spectacle prepared. At each altar a scaffold and a
pile had been arranged, where were very cruelly burned _six people_,
amid the marvellous shouts and rejoicings of the populace, so highly
excited, that it was with difficulty they were prevented from snatching
the victims out of the hands of the executioners and tearing them in
pieces. But if the fury of these was great, the constancy of the martyrs
was greater still. The cruelty of the people, in tearing these sufferers
to atoms, would have been mercy, compared to the barbarity of the king.
He had commanded that these victims should be fastened to a very lofty
machine, the beam of which projecting, was, by means of pulleys, raised
and lowered alternately; and as it rose and fell it plunged the martyr
into a blazing pile below, and raised him up again in order to prolong
his sufferings. This continued till the flames had destroyed the cords
which bound him, and the body sank into the fire. This horrible machine
was not set in motion till the king, queen, and all present might enjoy
the satisfaction of seeing the heretic tormented with the flames; during
which time the king, handing his torch to the Cardinal de Loraine,
joined his hands, and prostrating himself humbly, called down the
blessing of heaven upon his people; and in this attitude remained until
the agonies of the victim had terminated.
“The procession ended where it began, at the church of St. Geneviéve.
The holy sacrament was replaced in the tabernacle, and the mass was sung
by the archbishop of Paris. After this there was a splendid dinner, at
which the archbishop received the king, the peers, the ambassadors, the
courts of parliament, &c., &c. At the conclusion of which entertainment,
the king, addressing the numerous guests, after expressing his grief at
the execrable opinions that were disseminated in his dominions, said
‘that he had determined and commanded that the most rigorous punishment
should be inflicted upon the delinquents; and he required all his
subjects to denounce every one whom they should know to be adherents
unto, or accomplices in such blasphemies, without regard to alliance,
lineage, or friendship. As for himself, _if his very arm were thus
corrupted, he would tear it from his body; and if his own children were
found guilty of falling into such enormities, he would at once yield
them up as a first sacrifice to God_!’ To give force to his words, the
king ordered the executions of the _sacramentaries_ to continue; and
from that time the numbers who perished by the _balançoire_ (or swing)
is appalling.”
Europe was filled with the reports of these cruelties on the French
reformers, and the Protestant princes remonstrated with the king. But
Francis had become the slave of superstition and priestly intolerance,
and governed by the inquisitors of Rome. He continued his cruel and
impolitic course, under the counsel of the inquisitors; and issued a
terrible edict, in 1540, against the Vaudois, requiring “that the
villages of Mirandol, Cabrieres, Les Aignes, and other places shall all
be destroyed, the houses razed to the ground; their caverns and other
subterranean retreats demolished; their forests cut down; their fruit
trees torn up by the roots; the principal chiefs executed; and the women
and children exiled for perpetuity.”
These people were reported as exemplary in their industry; that “they
never say mass for the dead; they have prayer in the vulgar tongue; they
have no bishops, nor priests, but men whom they elect as simple
ministers.” The Papists, therefore, hated their religion, and envied
their prosperity, resulting from industry; so that they prevailed on the
king to abandon his deserving subjects to the exterminating sword and
fire of the inquisitors. Men, women, and children were massacred with
fiendish cruelty. Towns, villages, and hamlets were devoted to the
flames. Death was threatened to all who should offer food or shelter to
the fugitives, so that those who escaped the sword of the persecutors,
perished in the mountains.
Francis is said to have been stung with remorse on reflecting upon this
infamous massacre, especially on his death-bed. He died in 1547, as the
persecutor dies,--despairing, dishonoured, and undeplored. His eldest
son, the dauphin, died of poison, administered by his cup-bearer; and
his own death is believed to have been caused by the same instrument of
revenge, administered by the husband of a lady whom he had dishonoured.
His character, therefore, was worthy of “the mystery of iniquity,” the
Romish Antichrist.
France exhibited a long series of the most bloody scenes, after the
decease of Francis I., the horrid fruit of the Inquisition, the detail
of which would require a volume. Notwithstanding persecution, the
Protestants increased greatly; so that, in 1570, it is recorded, there
were _two thousand one hundred and fifty_ congregations of Protestants
in France, some of them containing _two thousand_ members! Papal
intrigues were long employed, under the direction of the inquisitors,
for their extirpation; and the pages of history do not contain such
another record of monstrous treachery and malignant barbarity, as that
of St. Bartholomew, in 1572. It is to be remembered that the deed was
perpetrated in the name of the religion of Jesus Christ, the Prince of
Peace!
Charles IX., king of France, guided by his wicked mother, the infamous
Catherine de Medicis, was induced, by the agents of the Pope, to resolve
upon exterminating, by one decisive effort, all the dissenters from the
Romish church. For this purpose, many of the principal Protestants were
invited to Paris, under a solemn oath of safety, to celebrate the
marriage of the king of Navarre with the French king’s sister. The queen
dowager of Navarre, a zealous Protestant, was destroyed before the
marriage was solemnised, by means of poison, concealed in a pair of
gloves. The inhuman butchery commenced at the tolling of the bell of the
Palais de Justice, at two o’clock in the morning of the 24th of August
(the Sabbath), by the murder of the Admiral Coligny, who had been shot
at and wounded two days previously. The hypocritical king of France
visited him, and declared the admiral’s wound was his own. But the
shocking work was conducted by the Duke of Guise, urged on by the king
himself in person!
Most dreadful was the scene. The shrieks of women and children rent the
air, mingled with the shouts and blasphemous execrations of their
murderers. “Imagine,” says a French author, “sixty thousand assassins,
armed with pistols, stakes, cutlasses, poniards, knives, and other
deadly weapons, rushing along the streets, blaspheming and abusing the
sacred name of God, and murdering and mutilating the innocent and
defenceless, amid a horrible tempest of yells and savage cries, and the
piteous shrieks of those whom they dragged through the mire, or flung
headlong into the bloody Seine!” _Five hundred_ gentlemen, and _ten
thousand_ of the common people are believed to have been sacrificed in
this horrid massacre, in three days, within the walls of Paris alone.
But the bloody work extended to all places where these evangelical
dissenters were known; and it is calculated that not less than _a
hundred thousand_ Protestants were at this time destroyed in France!
On the third day of the massacre, the priests led the king in royal
state to the cathedral of Notre Dame, when high mass was performed; and
then solemn thanksgivings to God were rendered, as for the victory which
he had thus granted over the enemies of the church! This melancholy
tragedy was known to have been contrived by the Romish inquisitors. The
announcement of it was received by the clergy, at Rome and in Spain,
with expressions of unbounded exultation. The messenger who brought the
news to Rome was rewarded with a thousand crowns; and when the letters
from the papal legate residing at the French court were read in the
assembly of cardinals, it was decreed, that the Pope should march with
his cardinals to the church of St. Mark, to offer solemn thanks to God
for so signal a blessing conferred upon the see of Rome! Medals to
commemorate this horrid deed were struck in Paris and in Rome, by order
of the Governments; and that of Pope Gregory XIII., though proclaiming
the everlasting dishonour of the papacy and the Inquisition, may still
be obtained at the mint of Rome!
Charles IX. raged in savage cruelty against the Protestants. Even the
king of Navarre and the prince of Condé were devoted to the same
destruction; but their lives were spared on their professing to be
reconciled to the Romish church; the king of France, with a terrible
oath, proposing to them, “mass, death, or the Bastile for life!” This
royal bigot, however, fell a victim to guilt and remorse; for he died,
May 30th, 1574, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, after suffering
dreadful bodily and mental anguish, poisoned, as many believed, by the
hand of his own mother!
As to the sacrifices of the Protestants in France, it is collected from
authentic records that during _forty_ years, in the middle of this
century, not less than _a million_ were the victims of the unrelenting
bigotry of the Romish inquisitors!
Protestantism still survived in France; and many again took up arms in
their own defence, until 1598, when Henry IV., of Navarre, succeeded to
the throne. He granted the famous “Edict of Nantes,” which was called
“Irrevocable!” and by which the Protestants were allowed liberty of
conscience, the free exercise of their religion, and access to all
places of public trust and dignity. But the Papists continued by all
kinds of intrigues to annoy them. One shameful invasion of their rights
succeeded another, by the enactment of inhuman laws, until the reign of
Louis XIV., who was prevailed on, in 1685, by the Popish bishops and the
Jesuits, contrary to the most solemn obligations which human or divine
laws can frame, to revoke the “Irrevocable Edict of Nantes.”
By this means it was intended, in one grand effort, to extirpate the
very remembrance of the Protestant profession in France. Reconciliation
with Rome was required, or banishment from the kingdom. Fifteen days
were allowed to the preachers and professors, and many of them fled.
About eight hundred thousand, chiefly artisans, escaped from the
dragoons, who were commissioned to destroy those who would not conform.
Many of the exiles, being weavers, were well received in England, where
they contributed greatly to the wealth and prosperity of the nation, by
their woollen factories in Yorkshire and the west, and by their silk
works in Spitalfields, London.
Those who could not escape were treated with every species of brutality.
“The troopers, soldiers and dragoons,” says a French Protestant author,
in 1686, “went into the Protestants’ houses, where they marred and
defaced their household stuff, broke their looking-glasses, and other
utensils and ornaments. Those things which they could not destroy in
this manner--such as furniture of beds, linens, wearing apparel, plate,
&c.,--they carried to the market-place, and sold them to the Jesuits and
other Roman Catholics. They turned the dining-rooms of gentlemen into
stables for their horses; and treated the owners of the houses where
they were quartered with the highest indignity and cruelty, lashing them
about from one to another, day and night, without intermission, not
suffering them to eat or drink. In several places the soldiers applied
ret-hot irons to the hands and feet of men and breasts of women. At
Nantes they hung up several women and maids by their feet, and others by
their arm-pits, and thus exposed them to public view, stark naked. They
bound to posts mothers that gave suck, and let their sucking infants lie
languishing in their sight for several days and nights, crying,
mourning, and gasping for life. Some they bound before a great fire,
and, being half-roasted, let them go--a punishment worse than death.
Amidst a thousand hideous cries and blasphemies, they hung up men and
women by the hair, and some by their feet, on hooks in chimneys, and
smoked them with wisps of wet hay till they were suffocated. They tied
some under the arms with ropes, and plunged them again and again into
wells; they bound others like criminals, put them to the tortures, and,
with a funnel, filled them with wine, till the fumes of it took away
their reason, when they made them say they consented to be Catholics.
They stripped them naked, and, after a thousand indignities, stuck them
with pins and needles from head to foot. They cut and slashed them with
knives; and sometimes with red-hot pincers took hold of them by the nose
and other parts of the body, and dragged them about the rooms till they
promised to be Catholics. They beat them with staves, and thus bruised,
and with broken bones, dragged them to the church, where their forced
presence was taken for abjuration. In some places they tied fathers and
husbands to their bed-posts, and, before their eyes, ravished their
wives and daughters with impunity. With these scenes of desolation and
horror the popish clergy feasted their eyes, and made them only a matter
of laughter and sport. Though my heart aches, I beg the reader’s
patience to lay before him two other instances, which, if he hath a
heart like mine, he will not be able to read without watering these
sheets with tears. The _first_ is of a young woman, who being brought
before the council, upon refusing to abjure her religion, was ordered to
prison. There they shaved her head, singed off the hair from other parts
of her body; and having stripped her stark naked, led her through the
streets of the city, where many a blow was given her, and stones flung
at her; then they set her up to the neck in a tub of water for awhile;
they took her out, and put on her a shift dipped in wine, which, as it
dried and stuck to her sore and bruised body, they snatched off again,
and then had another ready dipped in wine to clap on her. This they
repeated six times, thereby making her body exceeding raw and sore. When
all these cruelties could not shake her constancy, they fastened her by
the feet in a kind of gibbet, and let her hang in that posture, with her
head downward, till she expired!
“The other is of a man in whose house were quartered some of these
missionary dragoons. One day, having drunk plentifully of his wine, and
broken their glasses at every health, they filled the floor with
fragments, and by often walking over them reduced them to very small
pieces. This done, in the insolence of their mirth they resolved on a
dance, and told their Protestant host that he must be one of their
company; but as he would not be of their religion, he must dance quite
bare-foot; and thus bare-foot they drove him about the room, treading on
the sharp points of the broken glasses. When he was no longer able to
stand, they laid him on a bed, and, in a short time, stripped him stark
naked, and rolled him from one end of the room to the other, till every
part of his body was full of the fragments of glass. After this they
dragged him to his bed; and, having sent for a surgeon, obliged him to
cut out the pieces of glass with his instruments, thereby putting him to
the most exquisite and horrible pains that can be possibly conceived!
“These, fellow Protestants, were the methods used by the ‘Most Christian
King’s’ apostolic dragoons to convert his heretical subjects to the
Roman Catholic faith! These, and many other of the like nature, were the
torments to which Louis XIV. delivered them over to bring them to his
own church; and as popery is unchangeably the same, these are the
tortures prepared for you, if ever that religion should be permitted to
become settled amongst you; the consideration of which made Luther say
of it, what every man that knows anything of Christianity must agree
with him in:--‘If you have no other reason to go out of the Roman
church, this alone would suffice, that you see and hear how, contrary to
the law of God, THEY SHED INNOCENT BLOOD. This single circumstance
shall, God willing, ever separate me from the papacy. And if I was now
subject to it, and could blame nothing in any of their doctrines; yet,
for this crime of cruelty, I would fly from her communion, as from a den
of thieves and murderers!’”