[27] Letter without date of the month. Written, doubtless, in
_October_ 1533. On the testimony of Th. Beza, we know that Calvin
dwelt at this period in the College of Forteret at Paris. _Histoire
Ecclésiastique_, edit. de 1580, tom. i. p. 14; the same author, in
_Vita Calvini_. Already he preached the Reformed doctrine with much
skill and success. Implicated in the month of November following,
along with his friend Nicolas Cop, the Rector of the University of
Paris, he had to leave the capital in order to escape the pursuit of
which he was the object, and secretly repaired to Angoulême.
The Reformation in Paris--rage of the Sorbonne--satirical Comedy
directed against the Queen of Navarre--intervention of Francis
I.--deliberation of the Four Faculties--revocation of the
censure pronounced against the book entitled "The Mirror of the
Sinful Soul."
PARIS, [_October_] 1533.
Although I have beside me a forest of materials which furnish most
satisfactory evidence of what is written, yet I will restrain my
pen, that you may have rather the leading features than a long
narrative; to which were I to give way, it would grow almost into
a goodly volume. On the first of October, at which time of the
year the boys who pass out of the grammar class into that of the
dialectics, are wont, for the sake of practice, to act a play, they
performed one in the Navarre Gymnasium, which was unusually pungent
with the sprinkling of gall and vinegar. The persons brought upon
the stage are--a Queen,[28] who, in womanly fashion, was taken up
with spinning, and wholly occupied with the distaff and the needle;
then the fury Megæra[29] appeared, bringing lighted torches near
to her, that she might throw away the rock and the needle. For a
little while she opposed and struggled; but when she had yielded,
she received the gospel into her hand, and straightway forgets all
she had formerly grown into the habit of, and almost even herself.
Last of all, she becomes tyrannical, and persecutes the innocent
and unfortunate by every method of cruelty. Many other devices
were introduced in the same style, most unworthily indeed against
that excellent woman, whom, neither indirectly nor obscurely, they
tauntingly revile with their reproaches. For a few days the affair
was suppressed. Afterwards, however, as Truth is the daughter of
Time, the whole matter being reported to the Queen, it seemed to
her that it would set a very bad example and encouragement to their
wantonness, who are always gaping after something new, if this
impertinence were allowed to pass unpunished. The prefect of police,
with a hundred officers, proceeded to the Gymnasium, and by his
orders, surrounded the building, that no one might slip out. He then
entered with some few of his men, but did not succeed in finding the
author of the drama. They say, that he had little expected such a
proceeding, and had made no provision in the event of it; but that,
being by accident in a friend's room, he heard the noise before they
could get sight of him, and so hid himself away until an opportunity
of escape presented. The prefect in command of the police captured
the boyish performers; the master of the Gymnasium, meanwhile,
resisted this proceeding; in the midst of their wranglings, stones
were thrown by some of the boys. The prefect, nevertheless, keeps
hold of his prisoners, and forced them to explain what parts they
had acted in the scene. When the author of the mischief could not
be apprehended, the next thing was to inquire after those who,
when they could have hindered, had permitted the performance, and
had so long concealed the whole affair. One who is distinguished
above the rest in authority and name, (for he is the great master
Lauret,[30]) sought that he might be imprisoned more respectably in
the house of one of the Commissaries, (as they call them.) Another
of them, Morinus, the second after him, was ordered to keep at home.
Meanwhile, the inquiry goes forward. What has been discovered I know
not: he is now summoned to appear on a citation of three short days,
as they now phrase it. So much for the Comedies. Certain factious
theologues have perpetrated another exploit equally malignant, and
perhaps almost as audacious. When they searched the shops of the
booksellers, among the books which they brought away, they seized
the book which is called _Le Miroir de l'Ame Pécheresse_,[31]
the reading of which they wish to prohibit. When the Queen was
informed of it, she called on the King her brother, and told him
she had written the book. By letters addressed to the masters of
the Paris Academy he required them to certify to himself whether
they had examined the book, and whether they had classed it among
those of unsound religion; that if they considered it such that
they would give him the reason of their opinion. Referring to the
whole procedure, Nicolas Cop, the physician, at present the rector,
stated the affair to the four colleges of arts, of medicine, of
philosophy, of theology, and of the canon law. Among the masters
of arts whom he first addressed, he inveighed in a long and bitter
oration against the doctors, because of their rash and arrogant
behaviour towards her majesty the queen. He advised them not to
interfere in any way in a matter of so much danger, if they did not
wish to incur the displeasure of the king, nor to array themselves
against the queen, that mother of all the virtues and of all good
learning. Lastly, that they ought not to take the blame of this
offence upon themselves, lest they should encourage the presumption
of those who were always ready to enter upon anything under cover
of the pretext that it was the deed of the academy to which they
had committed them, without the academy being at all aware of it.
It was the opinion of them all that the act ought to be disavowed.
The theologians, canonists, and physicians, were of the same mind.
The rector reported the decree of his order; next, the dean of the
faculty of medicine; third, the doctor of canon law; fourth, the
faculty of theology. Le Clerc, the parish priest of St. Andrew,
had the last word, on whom the whole mischief was laid, others
retiring from him out of sight. First of all he praised, in lofty
expression, the uprightness of the king, the undaunted firmness
with which hitherto he has conducted himself as a protector of the
faith. That there were some busy-bodies who endeavoured to pervert
this excellent person, who also were in league together for the
destruction of the sacred faculty; that he, however, entertained
the confident expectation that they would not succeed in their
wishes, and that, in opposition to such firmness as he knew the
king to possess. That as regarded the matter in hand, he was indeed
appointed by the decree of the academy to that office; that nothing,
however, was less intended by him than to attempt anything against
the queen, a woman so adorned by godly conversation as well as by
pure religion, in proof of which he adduced the reverence with
which she had observed the funeral rites in memory of her deceased
mother;[32] that he held as forbidden books, both those obscene
productions,--_Pantagruel_ and the _Forest of Loves_, and others of
the same mint; that, in the meantime, he had put aside the book in
question as liable to suspicion, because it was published without
the approval of the faculty, in fraud and contravention of the
arrêt, whereby it was prohibited to put forth anything concerning
the faith without the advice and approbation of the faculty; that,
in a word, this was his defence, that what was called in question
had been done under warrant and commission of the faculty; that
all were partakers in the offence, if there was any, although they
might point blank deny it. And all this was spoken in French, that
all might understand whether he spake the truth; they all cried
out, however, that he pleaded this pretended ignorance by way of
excuse. There were present also the Bishop of Senlis, L'Etoile, and
one of the prefects of the palace. When Le Clerc had made an end
of speaking, Parvi[33] said, that he had read the book,--that he
had found nothing requiring expurgation unless he had forgot his
theology. Finally, he required that they would give out a decree by
which they might satisfy the king. Cop, the rector, announced that
the academy did not acknowledge that censure as it stood; that they
did not approve nor homologate the censure by which the book in
question was classed among the prohibited or suspected books; that
those who had done so must look to it, on what ground they were to
defend the proceeding; that letters would be prepared in due time,
whereby the academy might excuse itself to the king, and also return
thanks for that he had so kindly addressed them in a fatherly way.
The royal diploma was produced, by which permission is granted to
the Bishop of Paris to appoint what preachers he pleases to the
different parishes, where formerly they were chosen at the will of
the parishioners; the chief influence being enjoyed by those who
were most obstreperous and possessed by a senseless furor, which
they consider zeal, such as never fired Elias, with which, however,
he was zealous over the house of God.--Farewell.
[_Lat. orig. autogr._--_Library of Berne_. Vol. 141.]
[28] Margaret of Valois, sister of Francis I., Queen of Navarre, one
of the most distinguished women of her age, both by the generosity
of her character and the graces of her understanding. Inclined by
the bent of her mind towards reform, by the devout breathings of
her soul, of which we find the expression in her poetry and in her
letters, she made use of her influence with her brother, the French
monarch, to abate the persecution directed against the disciples
of the Evangel, and her generous conduct more than once aroused
the fury of the Sorbonne against her. Calvin, exiled from France,
had recourse on more than one occasion to the influence of this
Princess, and addressed very free exhortations to her. See, in this
collection, the letter of Calvin to the Queen of Navarre, of the
28th April, 1545.
[29] Megæra. This Megère was an allusion to Gerard Roussel, preacher
to the Queen of Navarre, one of the most zealous missionaries of the
Reformation at Paris. (_Megæra_--_Mag. Gerardus._) This information
we have from the celebrated John Sturm, in a letter to Bucer, which
shews that the introduction of Megæra was a play upon the name:
"Nuper in Gymnasio Navarrico novus quidam ... ποιήτης Reginam
introduxit, quæ se in disciplinam diaboli traderet, una cum
sacrifico quem Megeram appellant, alludens ad nomen Magistri
Gerardi."--Letter of Nov. 1533, printed in Strobel, _Histoire du
Gymnase de Strasbourg_, p. 109.
[30] This Lauret is designated, in the letter of Sturm above cited,
as a man of great erudition and of much influence, "_homo potens et
rex sapientum_."
[31] _The Mirror of a Sinful Soul_: a mystical poem, wherein the
Queen of Navarre acknowledges no other Mediator than Jesus Christ,
and no other righteousness than his expiatory death. This book,
which first appeared in print at Alençon in 1531, reprinted in 1533
at Paris, forms part of the poetical collection published under the
title, "Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses, très illustre
Reyne de Navarre." Lyon. 1547. 2 vols. in 8vo.
[32] Louise of Savoy, regent of France during the captivity of
Francis I. at Madrid. She died in 1531. After having favoured for a
time the doctrines of the Reformers, this cunning and cruel princess
gave the signal for the most ruthless persecution of the preachers
of the Gospel.
[33] William Parvi, Bishop of Senlis and confessor of the king. He
had translated into French the _Livre d' Heures_ of Margaret of
Valois, suppressing at the same time from the book a great number of
pieces addressed to the Virgin and to the saints.