THE REFORMATION IN PARIS.
D’Étaples, the Pioneer of the Reformation--Nicolas Cop and
Calvin--Progress of the Reformation--Persecutions--Catharine de
Médicis--St. Bartholomew’s--The Edict of Nantes.
Permanent head-quarters of science and study, the left bank of the Seine
was also in the fifteenth century the home of a great religious
movement, by which, for some time, the right bank was scarcely touched.
[Illustration: ON THE SAINT-MARTIN CANAL.]
“Few persons,” says M. Athanase Coquerel _Fils_, “know that the
Reformation of the sixteenth century, before it flamed forth in Germany
and elsewhere, had already been kindled in the capital of France. It had
for its cradle that left bank of the Seine which was then separated from
the town and its suburbs, and divided into two quarters subjected to
special jurisdictions: the University and the vast territory of the
Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Was it not natural, despite the jealous
vigilance of the Sorbonne, that the Paris schools where Abailard had
boldly attacked school-divinity should be the first to awake to the new
spiritual life?”
A professor of the college of Cardinal Lemoine Lefèvre, d’Étaples by
name, produced in 1512, within the precincts of the Abbey, his
“Commentary on St. Paul,” in whose epistles he indicated, five years
before Luther, the essential doctrines of the Reformation. This book was
dedicated to the powerful abbot of Saint-Germain, Briçonnet, and, under
his auspices, assembled in Paris a first group of ardent propagators of
the new ideas. During forty-three years the Reformation spread gradually
to the University, to the town and to the court, though it maintained
its head-quarters in the suburb of Saint-Germain, which people became
accustomed to call “the little Geneva,” and which is to-day the most
Catholic quarter of Paris. The first Protestant put to death for his
religion was one of the pupils of Lefèvre, by name Pauvent, burned on
the Place de Grève in 1524. His martyrdom was followed ere long by that
of many a Huguenot.
Calvin at this period was studying at Paris, but he could not stay
there. The rector of the University, Nicolas Cop, a secret propagator of
the Reformation, had commissioned young Calvin to write a discourse
which, on a formal occasion, he had to deliver in the church of the
Mathurins. Several monks denounced in Parliament the heresies contained
in this discourse. The rector fled to Bâle, where he became a pastor.
Calvin, it is said, had to escape by a window of one of the colleges.
[Illustration: THE SOLFERINO BRIDGE, FROM THE QUAI D’ORSAY.]
It was in the Louvre that the Reformation was first publicly preached at
Paris. Queen Marguerite of Navarre, sister of Francis I. and the
friend of Briçonnet, caused her chaplain and other disciples of Lefèvre
to preach before her in that palace. Thereupon the Franciscan friar,
Lemaud, declared from his pulpit that she ought to be thrown into the
Seine in a sack. The priestly rage which had now been excited soon
spread to the people, and the streets began to resound with cries of
“Death to the Heretics.” “To be thrown into the river,” says Bèze,
writing of this period, “it was only necessary to be called a Huguenot
in public, no matter what one’s religion might be.” A series of
religious murders were now perpetrated; and Francis I., a bigot like his
people, headed one day in 1535 a procession in which he was followed by
his three sons, the court, the parliaments, the trade corporations, and
the brotherhoods, and of which the object was to burn at the stake six
Protestants at six different halting-places. Henri II. took after his
father. On one occasion he assisted, from a window of the Hôtel de la
Rochepot, Rue Saint-Antoine, at the execution of a Protestant tailor who
was burned alive. It is said, however, that the martyr’s eyes, fixed as
they were upon him, inspired him with terror, and that this was the last
heretic whose dying pangs he ever witnessed.
As yet the Protestants of Paris had neither temple nor pastor. But
already they had schools, “hedge schools,” as they were termed, because,
prohibited within the city walls, the teachers took refuge in the
country.
The secret meetings of the Protestants of Paris were often surprised. In
1557 services were held and the Communion was administered in one of the
houses of the Rue Saint-Jacques, beside the building where is now
established the Lyceum of Louis the Great. Excited by the seminarists of
the Collège Duplessis, the populace besieged the assembly for six hours,
stoning many persons as they came out. Several were killed, and 135
prisoners were taken to the Châtelet. Among those who were executed may
be mentioned the young and beautiful widow of a member of the
Consistory, “who,” says a chronicler of the times, “seated on the
tumbril, showed a face of rosy complexion and of excellent beauty.” The
poor woman’s tongue had been cut out, which was often done at that time
in order to prevent the martyrs from addressing the crowds. As a special
mark of favour, the beautiful widow was only scorched in the face and on
the feet; and she was then strangled before the body was finally
consigned to the flames.
The Protestant poet, Clement Marot, to whom Francis I. had given a
house, called the “House of the Bronze Horse,” translated at this epoch
some of the Psalms into French verse, and his work obtained
extraordinary vogue even at the court. The students, who used to amuse
themselves in the evening in the Pré aux Clercs, opposite the Louvre,
replaced their customary songs by the Psalms of Marot; and it became the
fashion for a time among the lords and ladies of the court to cross the
Seine in order to hear the chants of the students. Often they joined in;
and the Huguenot king of Navarre, Antoine de Bourbon, was seen walking
round the Louvre and singing a psalm at the head of a long procession of
courtiers and scholars.
The persecution, which for a time had slackened, was soon revived in all
its fury. Marot took flight. Paris had grown too hot for him; “Paris,”
he says, in an epigram dated 1537, “Paris, thou hast given me many a
fright, even to the point of chasing me to death”:--
“Paris, tu m’as fait maints d’allarmes
Jusqu’à me poursuyvre à la mort.”
In spite of everything the deputies of the reformed church continued to
meet at Paris in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where they held secretly
their first national synod in 1559. This assembly, of which not one
member would have escaped the block had they been discovered, bound into
one corporation the reformed churches of France, until then without
cohesion.
Francis II., husband of Mary Queen of Scots, and through her nephew of
the Guises, allowed this persecuting family to carry on the cruel work
of his father. The illustrious chancellor, Du Bourg, was hanged and
burned in the Place de Grève, as to which Voltaire wrote: “This murder
was of more service to Protestantism than all the most eloquent works
written by its defenders.” Cardinal de Lorraine captured many other
victims by surrounding a Protestant hotel in the Rue des Marais
Saint-Germain. This street was the head-quarters of the reformed church,
and many of its houses communicated with one another by means of
mysterious apertures through which the inhabitants passed when
threatened with arrest. The street in question, one of the most historic
in all Paris, was lately rechristened by the name of Visconti in place
of the one which it had borne for more than three centuries, and by
which it was known, not only to the first Protestants of Paris, the
d’Aubignés and the Du Moulins, but later on to the Duke de la
Rochefoucauld and Mme. de Sévigné, to Racine and Voltaire, to Mlle.
Clairon and Adrienne Lecouvreur, who all for a considerable time
inhabited it, or were accustomed to visit its inhabitants. Meanwhile the
reform continued to spread. Coligny and his two brothers, one of whom
was a cardinal, joined it openly. These three Châtillons were now
violently attacked in the Paris churches, and Jean de Han, a monk, took
one day for his text, “Ite in Castellum quod contrà vos est,” which he
thus translated; “March upon Châtillon, who is against you.”
On assuming the regency, Catherine de Médicis, indifferent to both
religions, hesitated between the Châtillons and the Guises. She summoned
a conference at Poissy in the hope of bringing about a reconciliation.
Theodore de Bèze represented Calvin on the occasion, and for several
months he was allowed to fulfil all the duties of pastor at Paris. The
reformed religion was now celebrated openly, but in general beyond the
walls. Four pastors, without counting Bèze, preached regularly in the
different places of worship. One of them, Malot, had been vicar at
Saint-André-des-Arcs, and the chronicles of the times speak of
assemblies of from two to three thousand Protestants. Catherine de
Médicis placed herself one day at a window in the Rue Saint-Antoine to
see the Huguenots go by to their place of worship, and many of them,
knowing the intention of the queen, wore on that occasion the insignia
of their rank or profession. In 1562 the Consistory of Paris adopted,
for the relief of the indigent, a regulation which was read from all the
Protestant pulpits, with the names of those who were to distribute the
alms, notwithstanding the danger thus brought upon them. Soon
afterwards, indeed, a riot provoked by the clergy of Saint-Médard
disturbed the service that was being celebrated by Malot in the
adjoining temple of the Patriarch. Temple and church were invaded and
sacked, and the officer of the watch, Gabaston by name, was afterwards
hanged for having arrested indiscriminately the rioters of both
religions. The temple was now shut up, while Saint-Médard was restored
and inaugurated anew with great pomp, numbers of Protestants being
sacrificed on the occasion. The constable of Montmorency gained the
sobriquet of Captain Burn-bench (Brûle-banc) from having set fire to the
interior of the reformed church of Popincourt. Subsequently he burned
this same building from roof to basement and sacked another Protestant
temple in the Rue aux Fossés Saint-Jacques.
The edict of January having granted to the Protestants a certain
tolerance, Guise, who boasted that he would cut this edict in half with
his sword, proved his word by the massacre of Vassy. The Protestants of
Paris were terrified at this tragedy, but would not be discouraged. The
very day the duke returned to Paris, his sword reeking with innocent
blood, Bèze went to preach at the temple of Jerusalem, whither he was
escorted by the Prince de Condé, a faithful Huguenot, and by a large
company of mounted arquebusiers.
During the second civil war, in January, 1568, the citizens of Paris
were, by an official proclamation, called upon to warn the Protestants
of the capital to absent themselves from it, “until those who had taken
arms against His Majesty should have laid them low.” In December, after
the “lame” peace, as it was called, Parliament ordered the Protestants
to shut themselves up in their houses “to avoid the murders which might
follow.” It is asserted that ten thousand of them were assassinated
during the six months which succeeded the peace, though this figure is
doubtless exaggerated.
The extermination of the heretics had for a considerable time past been
recommended to Catherine de Médicis by Philippe II., by the Duke of
Alva, and by Pope Pius V. The queen, long irresolute, decided suddenly,
just when the Guises had aggravated the situation by causing Coligny to
be assassinated. Catherine, as we have seen in a previous chapter,
obtained, at the last moment, the consent of the king; but it was
Charles’s brother and successor, Henry III., who took the direction of
the massacre and posted himself in the middle of the bridge of Notre
Dame in order to have both banks beneath his eye. We know how the signal
for the tragedy was given by the bell of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, and
how Coligny was the first to feel the Catholic steel. The assassins who
now plunged into their ghastly work carried a white cross in their hat
and a kerchief tied in a knot on their arm.
At the court of the Louvre the officer of the guard, with a list in his
hand, called out the Huguenot gentlemen who were staying in the palace,
and the king, from one of the windows, saw the throats of his guests
cut, to the number of two hundred. It is an error, all the same, to
suppose that the massacre scarcely touched any but the aristocratic
classes; a large portion of the Parisian population, merchants,
workmen, belonged to the Reformation and perished.
[Illustration: THE NATIONAL BRIDGE.]
Towards seven in the morning Charles IX., armed with a blunderbuss,
fired upon some of the fugitives, whom he failed to hit because his
fowling-piece did not carry far enough. This incident has been denied;
but it has been gravely recorded by Brantôme, D’Aubigny, and Goulard. It
was attested moreover to Voltaire by Marshal de Jessé. The Marshal had
known the page, then almost a centenarian, who loaded and re-loaded the
royal blunderbuss.
After the massacre the king went to the Parliament and declared that he
assumed the whole responsibility for what had happened. The audience of
senators loudly applauded the murderer, and the chief president
overwhelmed him with the vilest eulogies. On the 27th August the chapter
of Notre Dame formed a special procession to thank the Almighty for the
“extirpation of the heretics now happily commenced”; and at the same
juncture Panigarole, bishop of Asti, preaching before the queen-mother,
Charles IX., and Henry, King of Poland, praised the king for having “in
one morning purged France of heresy.” Nor did the municipality of Paris
omit to have medals struck “in memory of Saint Bartholomew’s Day.”
More than one professor of the reformed faith now turned renegade. Condé
abjured at Saint-Germain-des-Prés and Henry of Navarre and his sister at
the Louvre. But the infant church was fondly nursed by such devotees as
Bérenger and Portal, who endowed it with a sum sufficient to maintain
its pastors in their functions and to educate candidates for the future
ministry.
The edict of July authorised the exercise of the reformed religion at
two leagues from Paris. Noisy-le-Sec was chosen as the place of worship.
But in September, 1576, the congregation found itself assailed by the
populace, and the faithful had to abandon all public service.
The League, prepared long beforehand by the Cardinal of Lorraine, was
organised in 1576 by two curés of Paris, a number of citizens, and
several fanatical magistrates. From this moment Protestantism was more
completely crushed in the capital than it had been even by the Saint
Bartholomew butchery. The Spanish ambassador reigned at Paris. Hatred of
the Reformation stifled in the breasts of the leaguers all love of their
country; and they went to the almost incredible length of offering, on
the 20th September, 1591, by a formal resolution passed in the municipal
council, the city of Paris and the crown of France to Philip II., King
of Spain.
After the accession of Henry IV., in the interval which elapsed before
the issuing of the Edict of Nantes, which permitted Protestant worship
except within five leagues of Paris, the sister of the new king,
Catherine de Bourbon, made use of the privilege which belonged to the
nobility of performing religious worship in their own houses, with the
doors open. The reformed church found an asylum within her walls; there
the faithful adored their Maker in peace. On all occasions Catherine
protected her co-religionists, and her brother, le Béarnais, when they
came to him with some petition, used to send them on to her,
saying:--“You must apply to my sister; your kingdom is now under
feminine rule.” By the marriage and departure of Catherine in 1599 the
Protestants lost a large part of their advantages; but, become Duchess
of Bar, she returned every year to Paris and gathered the faithful
around her. This continued, despite the frequent complaints of the
clergy, until the Duchess’s death in 1604.
[Illustration: THE RIGHT ARM OF THE SEINE FROM BOULEVARD HENRI IV.]
The Edict of Nantes formally countenanced the reformed religion even
whilst forbidding its adherents to assemble for worship within five
leagues of Paris. The meeting-place chosen in 1599 by the Protestants
was the Château de Grigny, residence of the seigneur Josias Mercier des
Bordes, a distinguished scholar as well as a councillor of state.
Several times, on returning from Grigny, the Protestants were assailed
by the populace, acting at the instigation of such fanatics as the
aristocratic capuchin, Ange de Joyeuse. It was found necessary to erect
extra gibbets for those who attacked worshippers returning from Grigny.
This place of assembly, however, was too remote, and at the end of six
months the king transferred it to Ablon-sur-Seine. Even Ablon proved
inconveniently distant, although it was nearer the capital than the
edict permitted. The difficulties and dangers of the journey to this
spot were great. The Protestants often went by water, and several were
accidentally drowned. A petition presented to the king set forth that
forty infants had died through having been carried in winter to baptism
at Ablon. At length the king found that his own Protestant ministers
could not render their duties to God and to himself on the same day; and
Henry IV., yielding to the influence of Sully and of Calignon, assigned
to the Protestants of the capital, as their place of meeting, Charenton,
two leagues distant.
From that time the street and the faubourg of Saint-Antoine were
traversed on Sunday by crowds of Huguenots, in carriages, on horseback,
or on foot; and for their protection two fresh gibbets had to be
erected, one in the name of the Lieutenant of the Town, the other in
that of the Chief of the Watch. Many of the Huguenots now went to
Charenton by water. On Sundays and holidays the river was covered with
boats of all kinds, conveying, in the words of a Catholic poet of the
time,
“La flotte des brebis galeuses
Qui vont au presche à Charenton.”
The lord of the manor, notwithstanding the increased value given to his
property by the arrival of the Huguenots, many of whom established
themselves in the neighbourhood of their one recognised place of
worship, protested constantly against the toleration accorded to them.
Often the Huguenots returning from Charenton, where on Sunday they would
pass the entire day, were attacked; on which an appeal was made to the
king, who took the part of his former co-religionists. The death of
Henry IV. was a terrible blow to the French Protestants, who were now at
the mercy of the Jesuits, of Catherine de Médicis, and of her Florentine
advisers, such as the Concinis. The principal Protestant pastors
deplored aloud from the Charenton pulpit the death of the king, who had
endeavoured to bring about an understanding, if not perfect harmony,
between his subjects of both religions, and whose wise tolerance had
been the cause of his death. Ravaillac was a fanatic who, in striking
his murderous blow, had been prompted only by his hatred of
Protestantism and of the king’s concessions to the Protestants. The
temple constructed at Charenton was pillaged and burnt in 1621. In 1624
it was rebuilt on a larger scale; and the Protestant historians note
that it was approached through an avenue of shops, where books of all
kinds were sold, without any objection on the part of the consistory,
which, although very strict in its rules for the conduct of the
Protestants, did not enforce the Judaic observance of the Sabbath, “as
practised,” says a writer of the time, by the Protestants of Scotland
and England.
Many illustrious persons still belonged to the reformed religion. But
gradually the aristocratic families were bought over to the other side;
and the Jesuit Garasse declared that the church of the Protestants would
soon be a church of beggars. The unhappy Protestants did not in any case
neglect their poor; and as it was found impossible to keep priests and
monks out of the hospitals, which were constantly invaded by them, the
chiefs of the reformed religion established hospitals in secret places,
which, however, were closed as soon as Catholic clergy or the public
discovered them. In 1600 the Parliament of Paris interdicted these
charitable establishments by a formal decree.
The first decisive step towards the revocation of the Edict of Nantes
was the suppression of all representation of the Protestants in the
Parliaments of Paris and of Normandy. In connection with this step Louis
XIV. received, though only as a matter of form, Ruvigny, deputy general
of the reformed church, and the eloquent pastor du Bosc, of whom, after
listening to the exposition of his claims, the king said to the queen:
“He is the best speaker in my kingdom.” He suppressed, all the same, the
only guarantee of justice remaining to the French Protestants.
The Protestant consistories were now required to admit into their
assemblies representatives of the Catholic clergy, whose mission it was
to read to them a so-called pastoral warning. Already the minister
Louvois had attempted to enforce conversion to the Roman Catholic
religion by quartering upon the unfortunate Protestants dragoons, whom,
if they remained faithful to their religion, they had for an indefinite
time to support. The so-called “dragonnades” were for the most part
confined to the provinces. Paris was exempted from them, lest the king
himself should be scandalised by the scenes they well might lead to.
Louvois had sworn to extirpate the “dangerous heresy,” and he assured
the king that he was doing so by peaceful means.
Four days after the signing of the edict, and on the very day of its
formal registration, the Protestant temples were demolished by the mob,
who could not wait for official measures to be taken against the
buildings already condemned. The cemetery adjoining the temple of
Charenton was profaned, and the tombs of the Protestants violated, as, a
century later, were to be violated the tombs of the Catholic kings.
Notices were served on the chiefs of the Protestant families, commanding
them, in the name of the king, to change their religion. Of the
recalcitrants large numbers were sent to the Bastille, while the members
of the consistory were exiled by “lettres de cachet.” Protestants who
had been domiciled in Paris for less than a year were ordered to quit
the capital, and the pastors in general had a fortnight given to them in
which to leave France; while Claude, the most renowned amongst them, was
ordered to quit French territory within twenty-four hours, being
meantime watched by one of the king’s servants. In the months of
October, November, and December, 1685, no less than 1,087 members of the
reformed church emigrated from Paris, 1,098 abjured their religion,
while 3,823, after refusing to abjure, still remained in the city. The
emigration had been arranged beforehand by Claude and his colleagues. A
constant service of guides was kept up between Paris and the frontiers,
though it was death for those who had once quitted Paris to return. The
exiles took flight at midnight on market days, when it was easier to
pass the barriers. Notwithstanding the menace of capital punishment,
some half-dozen Protestant ministers returned to Paris a year after the
revocation in order to do secret duty among their co-religionaries
remaining in the capital. Some were sentenced to imprisonment for life
in the isles of Sainte-Marguerite, others were shut up in the Bastille,
and one of them, the celebrated Claude (Claude Brousson, by his full
name), was hanged. Meanwhile some of the Protestants who still ventured
to stay at Paris continued services at the English Embassy, or at the
legation of the United Provinces. Instead of one chaplain the legation
of the Dutch Republic maintained two. But an edict was soon passed
forbidding French Protestants to attend worship in the chapels of any of
the foreign ministers.
Protestantism was not again to be tolerated in France until 1787, two
years before the Revolution, many of whose reforms (including the
abolition of torture) had been anticipated by the Monarchy, already
condemned.
It must be added that under the Reign of Terror Protestantism was
persecuted from a new point of view. Under the ancient régime, the
complaint against it had been that it rejected much which ought to be
believed. The Terrorists, when public worship had been abolished in
France, hated it for its persistent adherence to doctrines which the
enemies of religion had proscribed.
Paris at present possesses numerous Protestant churches representing
various Protestant sects. The Independents have six different places of
worship, and the Wesleyans two, at one of which the service is performed
in French, English, and German. There is a Baptist chapel, established
some thirty years ago by Americans resident in Paris, a Scotch
Presbyterian church, an American Episcopal church, an English Wesleyan
church, and three Anglican churches.
[Illustration: THE COLLEGE OF FRANCE.]