THE REFORMATION AT MEAUX.
[Sidenote: Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples.]
The reformatory movement, whose almost simultaneous rise at so many
different points constitutes one of the most noticeable features of the
history of Europe in the sixteenth century, originated, so far as France
was concerned, within the bosom of that famous nursery of mediaeval
learning, the University of Paris. Among the teachers who, during the
later years of the reign of Louis the Twelfth, attracted the studious
from the most distant parts of Christendom, Jacques Lefevre, a native of
Etaples in Picardy, held a high rank for natural ability and extensive
acquirements. It is true that neither his personal appearance nor his
extraction commanded respect: he was diminutive in stature, and he could
boast of no noble blood running in his veins.[128] A more formidable
hinderance in the path to distinction had been the barbarous instruction
he had received from incompetent masters, both in the inferior schools
and in the university itself. But all obstacles, physical, social, and
intellectual, melted away before the ardor of an extraordinarily active
mind. Rising steadily above the contracted views, the blind respect for
authority, and the self-satisfied ignorance of the instructors of his
youth and the colleagues of his manhood and old age, he greeted with
delight the advent of those liberal ideas which had wrought so wonderful
a change in Germany and Italy. A thirst for knowledge even led him, in
imitation of the sages of the early world, to travel to distant parts of
Europe, and, if we may credit the statements of his admiring disciples,
to pursue his investigations into portions of Asia and Africa.
[Sidenote: Restores letters to France.]
[Sidenote: His wide range of study.]
To Jacques Lefevre, of Etaples--better known to foreigners under the
Latin designation of Faber Stapulensis--belongs the honor of restoring
letters to France. His eulogist, Scaevola de Sainte-Marthe, has not
exaggerated his merit, when, placing him in the front rank of the
learned men whom he celebrates, he likens the Picard doctor to a new sun
rising from the Belgian coast to dissipate the fogs and darkness
investing his native land and pour upon its youth the full beams of a
purer teaching.[129] Lefevre confined his attention to no single branch
of learning. He was equally proficient in mathematics, in astronomy, and
in Biblical literature and criticism.[130] Brilliant attainments in so
many departments were commended yet more to the admiration of beholders
by a modest and unassuming deportment, by morals above reproach, and by
a disinterested nature in which there was no taint of avarice. The
sincerity of his unselfish love of knowledge was said to be attested by
the liberality with which he renounced the entire income of his small
patrimony in favor of his needy relations.[131]
[Sidenote: His pupil, Guillaume Farel.]
Enjoying a reputation for profound and exact learning which had spread
to foreign countries, and admired even by the great humanist Erasmus,
Lefevre had drawn to him a small band of the most promising of the
scholars in attendance upon the university. Prominent among these for
brilliancy and fiery zeal was a student more than thirty years younger
than his teacher, Guillaume Farel, destined to fill an important place
in the annals of the French reformation, and to play a leading role in
the history of Geneva and Neufchatel. Farel was born in 1489, near Gap,
in Dauphiny, and his childhood was spent at the foot of the Alps.
Unlike Lefevre, he belonged to a family of considerable importance in
the provincial nobility. The contrast was still more marked between the
mild and timid professor and the pupil in whose nature courage was so
prominent an element that it often assumed the appearance of imprudent
contempt of danger.
[Sidenote: Devotion of scholar and pupil.]
But, in spite of dissimilarity of character, Lefevre and Farel lived
together in close friendship. Together they frequented the churches, and
united in the pious work, as they regarded it, of decking out with
flowers the pictures of the saints, to whose shrines they made frequent
pilgrimages. Lefevre was scrupulously exact in the performance of his
religious duties, and was especially punctual in attendance on the mass.
In his zeal for the church, he had even undertaken as a meritorious task
to compile the lives of the saints whose names appear on the Roman
calendar, and had actually committed to the press an account of those
whose feast-days fell within the months of January and February.[132] On
the other hand, Farel was so sincere an adherent of the current faith,
that, to employ his own forcible description, he had become "a very
Pantheon, full of intercessors, saviors and gods, of whom his heart
might have passed for a complete register." The papacy had so entrenched
itself in his heart, that even the Pope and papal church _were not so
papal as he_. The man who came to him with the Pope's endorsement
appeared to him like a god, while he would gladly have overwhelmed in
ruin the sacrilegious wretch that dared to say a word against the Roman
pontiff and his authority.[133]
[Sidenote: Lefevre's commentary on the Pauline Epistles.]
But the enthusiastic devotion of Lefevre and his more impetuous disciple
to the tenets of the Roman church was to be shaken by a closer study of
the Scriptures. In 1508 Lefevre completed a Latin commentary upon the
Psalms.[134] In 1512 he published a commentary in the same language on
the Pauline Epistles--a work which may indeed fall short of the standard
of criticism established by a subsequent age, but yet contains a clear
enunciation of the doctrine of justification by faith, the cardinal
doctrine of the Reformation.[135]
[Sidenote: Foresees the coming reformation.]
Thus, five years before Luther posted his theses on the doors of the
church at Wittemberg, Jacques Lefevre had proclaimed, in no equivocal
terms, his belief in the same great principles. But Lefevre's lectures
in the college and his written commentary were addressed to the learned.
Consequently they produced no such immediate and startling effect as the
ninety-five propositions of the Saxon monk. Lefevre was not himself to
be an active instrument in the French reformation. His office was rather
to prepare the way for others--not, perhaps, more sincere, but certainly
more courageous--to enter upon the hazardous undertaking of attempting
to renovate the church. His faithful disciple, indeed, has preserved for
us a remarkable prophecy, uttered by Lefevre at the very time when he
was still assiduous in his devotion to the Virgin Mary and the saints.
Grasping Farel by the hand, the venerable doctor more than once
addressed to him the significant words, which made a deep impression on
the hearer's mind: "Guillaume, the world is going to be renewed, and you
will behold it!"[136]
[Sidenote: Controversy with Beda.]
[Sidenote: The Sorbonne's declaration.]
Lefevre did not intermit his biblical studies. In 1518 he published a
short treatise on "the three Marys," to prove that Mary the sister of
Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, and "the woman which was a sinner," were not
one and the same person, according to the common belief of the time.
Unfortunately, the Roman church, by the lessons set down for the
feast-days, had given its sanction to the prevalent error. Now, the
fears and suspicions of the theologians of the Sorbonne had, during the
past year, been aroused by the fame of Martin Luther's "heresy," and
they were ready to resent any attempt at innovation, however slight,
either in doctrine or in practice, as evidence of heretical
proclivities. Natalis Beda, the ignorant but pedantic syndic of the
theological faculty, entered the lists as Lefevre's opponent, and an
animated dispute was waged between the friends of the two combatants. Of
so great moment was the decision regarded by Poncher, Bishop of Paris,
that he induced Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, to write an essay in
refutation of the views of Lefevre.[137] But the Sorbonne, not content
with this, on the ninth of November, 1521, declared that he was a
heretic who should presume to maintain the truth of Lefevre's
proposition. Lefevre himself would probably have experienced even
greater indignities at the hands of parliament--whose members were
accustomed to show excessive respect to the fanatical demands of the
faculty--had not Guillaume Petit, the king's confessor, induced Francis
to interfere in behalf of the Picard professor.[138]
[Sidenote: Briconnet, Bishop of Meauz.]
To these two actors in the drama of the French reformation a third must
now be added. Guillanme Briconnet, Bishop of Meaux, stood in the front
rank of aspiring and fortunate churchmen. His father, commonly known as
the Cardinal of St. Malo, had passed from the civil administration into
the hierarchy of the Gallican Church. Rewarded for services rendered to
Louis the Eleventh and Charles the Eighth by the gift of the rich abbey
of St. Germain-des-Pres and the archbishopric of Rheims, he had, in
virtue of his possession of the latter dignity, anointed Louis the
Twelfth at his coronation. As cardinal, he had headed the French party
in the papal consistory, and, more obedient to his sovereign than to the
pontiff, when Louis demanded the convocation of a council at Pisa to
resist the encroachments of Julius the Second, the elder Briconnet left
Rome to join in its deliberations, and to face the dangers attending an
open rupture with the Pope. The cardinal was now dead, having left to
Guillaume, born previously to his father's entrance into orders, a good
measure of the royal favor he had himself enjoyed. The younger Briconnet
had been successively created Archdeacon of Rheims and Avignon, Abbot of
St. Germain-des-Pres, and Bishop of Lodeve and Meaux. His title of Count
of Montbrun gave him, moreover, a place in the nobility.[139] Meantime a
reformatory tendency had early revealed itself in the efforts made by
the young ecclesiastic to enforce the observance of canonical discipline
by the luxurious friars of the monastery of St. Germain. Here, too, he
had tasted the first fruits of the opposition which was before long to
test his firmness and constancy.
Briconnet had been appointed Bishop of Meaux (March 19, 1516) about the
same time that Francis the First despatched him as special envoy to
treat with the Pope. It would seem that the intimate acquaintance with
the papal court gained on this occasion, confirming the impressions made
by a previous diplomatic mission in the time of Louis the Twelfth,
convinced Briconnet that the church stood in urgent need of reform; and
he resolved to begin the work in his own diocese.
[Sidenote: Lefevre and Farel invited to Meaux.]
Weary of the annoyance and peril arising from the ignorance and malice
of his enemies, the theologians of the Sorbonne, Lefevre d'Etaples
longed for a more quiet home, where he might reasonably hope to
contribute his share to the great renovation descried long since by his
prophetic glance. He was now invited by Briconnet, to whom his learning
and zeal were well known, to accompany him to Meaux, where, at the
distance of a little more than a score of miles from the capital, he
would at least be rid of the perpetual clamor against Luther and his
doctrines that assailed his ears in Paris.[140] He was accompanied, or
followed, to Meaux by his pupil, Farel. Over the views of the latter a
signal change had come since he entered the university, full of
veneration for the saints, and an enthusiastic supporter of the mass, of
the papal hierarchy, and of every institution authorized by
ecclesiastical tradition. After a painful mental struggle, of which he
has himself given us a graphic account,[141] Farel had been reluctantly
brought to the startling conviction that the system of which he had been
an enthusiastic advocate was a tissue of falsehoods and an abomination
in God's sight. It required no more than this to bring a man of so
resolute a character to a decision. Partly by his own assiduous
application to study, especially of the Greek and Hebrew languages and
of the Church Fathers, partly through the influence of Lefevre, he had
become professor of philosophy in the college of the Cardinal Le Moine.
This advantageous position he resigned, in order that he might be able
to second the labors of Lefevre in the new field which Bishop Briconnet
had thrown open to him. Other pupils or friends of the Picard doctor
followed--Michel d'Arande, Gerard Roussel, and others, all more or less
thoroughly imbued with the same sentiments.
[Sidenote: The king's mother and sister encourage the preaching of the
reformers.]
A new era had now dawned upon the neglected diocese of Meaux. Bishop
Briconnet was fully possessed by his new-born zeal. The king's mother
and his only sister had honored him with a visit not long after
Lefevre's arrival,[142] and had left him confident that in his projected
reforms, and especially in the introduction of the preaching of the Word
of God, he might count upon their powerful support. "I assure you,"
Margaret of Angouleme wrote him a month later, "that the king and madame
are entirely decided to let it be understood that the truth of God is
not heresy."[143] And a few weeks later the same princely correspondent
declared that her mother and brother were "more intent than ever upon
the reformation of the church."[144] With such flattering prospects the
reformation opened at Meaux.
[Sidenote: Immediate results.]
From the year 1521, when the ardent friends of religious progress made
their appearance in the city, the pulpits, rarely entered by the curates
or by the mendicant monks unless to demand a fresh contribution of
money, were filled with zealous preachers. The latter expounded the
Gospel, in place of rehearsing the stories of the "Golden Legend;" and
the people, at first attracted by the novelty of the sound, were soon
enamored of the doctrines proclaimed. These doctrines stood, indeed, in
signal opposition to those of the Roman church. By slow but sure steps
the advocates of the Reformation had come to assume a position scarcely
less unequivocal than that of Luther in Germany. In 1514, two years
after the publication of the commentary in which he had clearly
enunciated the Protestant doctrine on one cardinal point, Lefevre would
seem still to have been unsurpassed in his devotion to pictures and
images.[145] Two years later he was regarded by Luther as strangely
deficient in a clear apprehension of spiritual truths which,
nevertheless, he fully exemplified in a life of singular spirituality
and sincerity.[146] And it was not until 1519 that, by the arguments of
his own pupil, Farel, he was convinced of the impropriety of
saint-worship and of prayers for the dead.[147] But now there could be
no doubt respecting Lefevre's attitude. Placed by Bishop Briconnet in
charge of the "Leproserie," and subsequently entrusted with the powers
of vicar-general over the entire diocese,[148] he exerted an influence
not hard to trace. A contemporary, when chronicling, a few years later,
that "the greater part of Meaux was infected with the false doctrines of
Luther," made the cause of all the trouble to be one Fabry (Lefevre), a
priest and scholar, who rejected pictures from the churches, forbade the
use of holy water for the dead, and denied the existence of
purgatory.[149]
[Sidenote: Gerard Roussel and Mazurier.]
The mystic Gerard Roussel, an eloquent speaker, whom the bishop
appointed curate of St. Saintin, and subsequently treasurer and canon of
the cathedral, was prominent among the new preachers, but was surpassed
in exuberant display of zeal by Martial Mazurier, Principal of the
College de St. Michel in Paris, who now fulfilled the functions of
curate of the church of St. Martin at Meaux.
[Sidenote: Apprehension of the monks aroused.]
[Sidenote: De Roma's threat.]
It was not long before the apprehension of the monastic orders was
aroused by the great popularity of the new teachers. The wool-carders,
weavers, and fullers accepted the novel doctrine with delight as meeting
a want which they had discovered in spite of poverty and ignorance. The
day-laborers frequenting the neighborhood of Meaux, to aid the farmers
in harvest-time, carried back to their more secluded districts the
convictions they had obtained, and themselves became efficient agents in
the promulgation of the faith elsewhere. If the anticipations of a
speedy spread of the reformation throughout France were brilliant in the
minds of its early apostles, the determination of its opponents was
equally fixed. An incident occurred about this time which might almost
be regarded as of prophetic import. Farel, who was present, is our sole
informant. On one occasion Lefevre and a few friends were engaged in
conversation with some warm partisans of the old abuses, when the old
doctor, warming at the prospect he seemed to behold, exclaimed, "Already
the Gospel is winning the hearts of the nobles and of the common people
alike! Soon it will spread over all France, and cast down the inventions
which the hand of man has set up." "Then," angrily retorted one De Roma,
a Dominican monk, "Then I, and others like me, will join in preaching a
crusade; and should the king tolerate the proclamation of the Gospel, we
shall drive him from his kingdom by means of his own subjects!"[150]
The Dominican friar stood forth at that moment the embodiment of the
monastic spirit speaking defiance to the nascent reform. The church of
the state, with its rich abbeys and priories, its glorious old
cathedrals, and boundless possessions of lands and houses, was not to be
resigned without a struggle so terrific as to shake the foundations of
the throne itself. The germ of the Guises and the League, with Jacques
Clement and Ravaillac, was already formed, and possessed a prodigious
latent vitality.
[Sidenote: Briconnet's activity.]
Bishop Briconnet was himself active in promoting the evangelical work,
preaching against the most flagrant abuses, and commending to the
confidence of his flock the more eloquent preachers whom he had
introduced. The incredible rumor even gained currency that the
hot-headed prelate went through his diocese casting down the images and
sparing no object of idolatrous worship in the churches.[151] But,
however improbable it may be that Briconnet ever engaged in any such
iconoclastic demonstrations, it is a strong Roman Catholic partisan who
has preserved the record of this significant warning given by the
prelate to his flock, and elicited either by the consciousness of his
own moral feebleness, or by a certain vague premonition of danger: "Even
should I, your bishop, change my speech and teaching, beware that you
change not with me!"[152]
[Sidenote: Lefevre translates the New Testament.]
Under Briconnet's protection Jacques Lefevre assumed a task less
restricted in its influence than preaching, in which he probably took a
less active part than his coadjutors. The Bible was a closed book to the
common people in France. The learned might familiarize themselves with
its contents by a perusal of the Latin Vulgate; but readers acquainted
with their mother tongue alone were reduced to the necessity of using a
rude version wherein text and gloss were mingled in inextricable
confusion, and the Scriptures were made to countenance the most absurd
abuses.[153] The best furnished libraries rarely contained more than a
few detached books of the Bible, and these intended for ornament rather
than use.[154] Lefevre resolved, therefore, to apply himself to the
translation of the Sacred Scriptures from the Latin Vulgate into the
French language. In June, 1523, he published a version of the four
gospels, and in the autumn of the same year he gave to the world the
rest of the New Testament. Five years later he added a translation of
the Old Testament. It was a magnificent undertaking, prompted by a
fervent desire to promote the spiritual interests of his countrymen. In
its execution, the inaccuracies incident to so novel an enterprise, and
the comparative harshness of the style, can readily be forgiven. For,
aside from its own merits, the version of Lefevre d'Etaples formed the
basis for the subsequent version of Robert Olivetanus, itself the
groundwork of many later translations.
[Sidenote: The translation eagerly bought.]
[Sidenote: Delight of Lefevre.]
Lefevre and his associates had not erred in anticipating remarkable
results from the publication of the Scriptures in the language of the
people. The copies of the New Testament no sooner left the press than
they were eagerly bought. They penetrated into obscure hamlets to which
no missionary of the "new doctrines" could find access. By the
wool-carders of Meaux the prize thus unexpectedly placed within reach
was particularly valued. The liberality of Bishop Briconnet is said to
have freely supplied copies to those who were too poor to afford the
purchase-money. The prelate introduced the French Scriptures into the
churches of Meaux, where the unparalleled innovation of reading the
lessons in an intelligible tongue struck the people with amazement. "You
can scarcely imagine," wrote the delighted Lefevre to a distant
friend,[155] "with what ardor God is moving the minds of the simple, in
some places, to embrace His word since the books of the New Testament
have been published in French, though you will justly lament that they
have not been scattered more widely among the people. The attempt has
been made to hinder the work, under cover of the authority of
parliament; but our most generous king has become in this matter the
defender of Christ's cause, declaring it to be his pleasure that his
kingdom shall hear the word of God freely and without hinderance in the
language which it understands. At present, throughout our entire
diocese, on feast-days, and especially on Sunday, both the epistle and
gospel are read to the people in the vernacular tongue, and the parish
priest adds a word of exhortation to the epistle or gospel, or both, at
his discretion."
There did, indeed, seem to be amply sufficient ground for the
"exultation" expressed by the worthy Picard at the rapid progress of the
Reformation throughout Europe and the flattering prospects offered in
France itself.[156] Everything seemed for a time to promise success at
Meaux. Bishop Briconnet received with delight the advice of the Swiss
and German reformers. The letters of Oecolampadius, from Basle, in
particular so deeply impressed him, that he commissioned Gerard Roussel
to read in the French language and explain the meaning of the Pauline
Epistles every morning to a promiscuous gathering of persons of both
sexes, and chose out the most evangelical preachers to perform similar
duty in all the more important places in his diocese.[157]
[Sidenote: Enmity of the Franciscans.]
[Sidenote: Weakness of Bishop Briconnet.]
But the bishop had excited the active enmity of a resolute and
suspicious foe. In forbidding the Franciscan monks entrance to any
pulpit within his jurisdiction, he had, even before the advent of
Lefevre and the reformed teachers, incurred their violent
animosity.[158] The new movement, while arousing their indignation, gave
them the opportunity they coveted for invoking the power of the
university and of parliament. At first the bishop was bold enough to
denounce the doctors of the Sorbonne as Pharisees and false
prophets,[159] while in his private correspondence he stigmatized the
clergy as "the estate _by the coldness of which all the others are
frozen_,"[160] or even as "_that which is the ruin of all the
rest_."[161] But, frightened by the incessant clamor and attacks of his
enemies, he began gradually to waver, and presently lost all courage. In
the end he yielded so far as to suffer to be published in his name
official documents which were intended to overturn from the foundation
the very fabric he had been striving to rear. In one of these, a
"Synodal Decree" addressed to the faithful of his diocese, the bishop
was made to condemn the books of Martin Luther, and to denounce Luther
himself as one who was plotting the overthrow of "the estate which
_keeps all the rest in the path of duty_."[162] Quite another
description of the clergy this from either of the descriptions which he
gave to Margaret of Angouleme! The other document was a letter to the
clergy of his diocese, warning them against certain preachers "brought
in by himself to share his pastoral cares," who, under cover of
proclaiming the Gospel, had "dared, in defiance of the evangelical
truth, to preach that purgatory does not exist, and that, consequently,
we must not pray for the dead, nor invoke the very holy Virgin Mary and
the saints."[163]
The precise time of Briconnet's pusillanimous defection, as marked by
the publication of these pastoral letters, is involved in some
obscurity; for assuredly the date affixed to the transcripts that have
come down to us conflicts too seriously with the well-known facts of
history to be accepted as correct.[164]
Later Roman Catholic historians have asserted that the act was a
voluntary one; that Briconnet had never in reality sympathized with the
religious views of reformers whom he had invited to Meaux simply because
of his admiration for learning; that no sooner did he discover the
heretical nature of their teachings than he removed them from the posts
to which they had been assigned; and that he spent the residue of his
life in the vain endeavor to retrieve the fatal consequences of his
mistake.[165] But this view is confirmed by nothing in the prelate's
extant correspondence. Everywhere there is evidence that until his
courage broke down, Briconnet was in full accord with the reformers.
His first step may possibly have been justified at the bar of conscience
by the plausible suggestion that, since the anger of the Sorbonne had
been directed specially against Meaux, the evangelical preachers could
be more serviceable elsewhere. But, from the mere withdrawal of support
to positive measures of repression, the transition was both natural and
speedy.
[Sidenote: He is cited to appear before the Parliament.]
Unsatisfied by Bishop Briconnet's merely negative course, the Parliament
of Paris at length cited him to appear and answer before a commission
consisting of two of its own counsellors. The information thus obtained
was next to be submitted to the judges delegated by the Pope, a tribunal
of the institution of which an account will be given in another
chapter.[166] To this secret investigation Briconnet objected, and
begged to be tried in open court by the entire body of parliament;[167]
but his petition was rejected, and his examination proceeded before the
inquisitorial commission. What measures were there taken to influence
him is not known. To Martial Mazurier, lately an enthusiastic preacher
of the "Lutheran" doctrines, who had himself, through fear, receded from
his advanced position, the doubtful honor is ascribed of having been
prominent in exertions to overcome the prelate's lingering scruples.
However this may be, when Briconnet had given sufficient guarantees to
satisfy the Sorbonne that no apprehension need be entertained of a
repetition in Meaux of the dangerous experiment of the public
instruction of the people in the Holy Scriptures, there was nothing to
be gained by his condemnation. He was accordingly acquitted of all
charge of heresy, although condemned to pay the sum of two hundred
livres as the expense of bringing to trial the "heretics" whom he had
himself helped to make such.[168] Hereupon he is said to have returned
to his diocese, and, having convened a synod, to have prohibited, as we
have seen, the circulation of Luther's writings, reintroduced the
ecclesiastical practices that had been condemned or discarded, and given
to the persecution now set on foot his unequivocal sanction.[169]
[Sidenote: Dispersion of the reformed teachers.]
The teachers whom Briconnet had so cordially invited to assist him were
compelled one by one to abandon Meaux. Among the earliest to leave was
Farel.[170] His was no faint heart. If he gave up his activity in Brie,
it was only to return to his native Dauphiny, where a young nobleman,
Anemond de Coct, and a preacher, Pierre de Sebeville, were among the
leading men whose conversion was the fruit of his indefatigable
exertions. After a visit to Guyenne, of which little is known, he passed
into German Switzerland, and labored successively in Basle, Strasbourg,
and Montbeliard.[171]
[Sidenote: Annoyances of those who remain.]
Lefevre and Roussel were among the last to withdraw; but, beset with
watchful enemies, they found their position neither safe nor
comfortable. It was as difficult to maintain a semblance of friendship
with an ecclesiastical system which they detested in their hearts, as to
refuse their sympathy and support to the persecuted whose opinions they
shared without possessing the courage necessary to suffer in attestation
of the common faith. Busy informers at one time found evidence, more
than warranting the suspicion that Roussel's manuscripts had furnished
the material of which scandalous placards defamatory of the Pope were
framed.[172] A little later the proctor of the cathedral drew attention
to the irregular conventicles held in the church itself, every Sunday
and feast-day, after Roussel had preached. These "combers, carders, and
other persons of the same stamp, unlettered folk,"[173] brought with
them books containing the Epistles of St. Paul, the Gospels, and the
Psalms, in flagrant disregard of the prohibitions they had heard
respecting the discussion of such topics as faith, the sacraments, the
privileges of Rome, and the use of pictures in the churches. It was made
the occasion of "charitable rebuke" and then of formal complaint against
Roussel by his fellow canons, that he failed to repeat the angelic
salutation, according to the orthodox practice, after the exordium of
his sermon. To the combined exhortations and threats of his accusers
Roussel replied in the chapter that, if he had done wrong, it belonged
to the bishop to reprove him, but that as to himself he esteemed the
repetition of the Lord's Prayer quite as efficacious as the recital of
the Ave Maria.[174]
[Sidenote: Lefevre and Roussel take refuge in Strasbourg.]
[Sidenote: Excessive caution of Roussel.]
At last danger thickened, and Lefevre and Roussel found themselves
forced to leave Meaux (October, 1525), and sought refuge within the
hospitable walls of Strasbourg; for the persecuting measures adopted by
the regent, Louise de Savoie, and the Parliament of Paris, during the
king's captivity, as we shall shortly see, had placed the lives of even
such prudent reformers in peril.[175] In the free city on the banks of
the Rhine, Lefevre met his pupil Farel, and in the midst of cordial
greetings was reminded by him that the day of "renovation" which he had
long since predicted and desired had really come.[176] But the contrast
between the two men had become sharply drawn. The fearless athlete, soon
to measure his strength with no puny antagonists at Neufchatel,
Lausanne, Geneva, and so many other places in French Switzerland, whose
course was to be a succession of rough encounters, discovered that the
master from whom he had received the impulse that shaped his entire
life, shrank from sundering the last link binding him to the Roman
church. And Gerard Roussel was even more timid. The elegant preacher,
with fair prospects of preferment, could not bring himself openly to
espouse the quarrel of oppressed truth. A mysticism investing his entire
belief, and perverting his moral perceptions, led him to imagine that
the heart might be kept pure in the midst of many external corruptions,
and that the enlightened could worship the Almighty acceptably in spite
of superstitious observances, which, while countenancing by apparent
acquiescence, they rejected in their hearts. The excellence of the
reformation already inaugurated at Strasbourg made a deep and very
favorable impression upon Roussel. He wrote to Bishop Briconnet that the
daily preaching of a pure doctrine, "without dross or leaven of the
Pharisees,"[177] the crowds of attentive hearers, the schools presided
over by men as illustrious for piety as for letters, and the careful
provision for the poor, would delight his correspondent were he to see
them. He did not dissemble his own great satisfaction that the
monasteries had been changed into educational establishments, the
pictures taken away from the churches, and every altar removed except
one, on which the communion was celebrated, as nearly as possible,
according to the plan of its institution.[178] At the same time he
renounced none of his excessive caution. His words were still those he
had uttered when urged, a twelvemonth earlier, by Farel,
Oecolampadius, and Zwingle, to strike out boldly and by an open
dispute on religion compel the attention of the thoughtless world. "The
flesh is weak! As my friends, Lefevre and others, urge, the convenient
season has not yet come, the Gospel has not yet been scattered
sufficiently far and wide. We must not assume the Lord's prerogative for
sending laborers into the harvest, but leave the work to Him whose it
is, and who can easily raise up a far richer harvest than that for whose
safety we are solicitous!"[179]
Such were the paltry evasions of cowardly souls, to excuse themselves
for the neglect of admitted duty. We cannot wonder at the burning words
of condemnation which this pusillanimity called forth from the pen of
brave Pierre Toussain. "I have spoken to Lefevre and Roussel," he wrote
some months later, "but certainly Lefevre has not a particle of courage.
May God confirm and strengthen him! Let them be as wise as they please,
let them wait, procrastinate, and dissemble; the Gospel will never be
preached without the _cross_! When I see these things, when I see the
mind of the king, the mind of the duchess [Margaret of Angouleme] as
favorable as possible to the advancement of the Gospel of Christ, and
those who ought to forward this matter, according to the grace given
them, obstructing their design, I cannot refrain from tears. They say,
indeed: 'It is not yet time, the hour has not come!' And yet we have
here no day or hour. _What would not you do had you the Emperor and
Ferdinand favoring your attempts?_ Entreat God, therefore, in behalf of
France, that she may at length be worthy of His word."[180]
The remainder of the task imposed on the weak Bishop of Meaux and his
new allies, the monks of St. Francis, proved a more difficult
undertaking. The shepherds had been dispersed, but the flock refused to
forsake the fold. From the nourishing food they had discovered in the
Word of God, they could not be induced to return to the husks offered to
them in meaningless ceremonies, celebrated in an unknown tongue by men
of impure lives. The Gospels in French remained more attractive than
the legendary, even after the bishop had abandoned the championship of
the incipient reformation. Briconnet's own expressed wish was granted:
if he had "changed his speech and teaching," the common people, at
least, had not changed with him.
[Sidenote: The wool-carder, Jean Leclerc, tears down a papal bull.]
[Sidenote: His barbarous sentence.]
Among the first fruits of the Reformation in Meaux was a wool-carder,
Jean Leclerc, into whose hands had fallen one of Lefevre's French
Testaments. He was a man of strong convictions and invincible
resolution. A bull, issued by Clement the Seventh in connection with the
approaching jubilee, had been posted on the doors of the cathedral
(December, 1524). It offered indulgence, and enjoined prayers, fasting,
and partaking of the Communion, in order to obtain from heaven the
restoration of peace between princes of Christendom. Leclerc secretly
tore the bull down, substituting for it a placard in which the Roman
pontiff figured as veritable Antichrist. Diligent search was at once
instituted for the perpetrator of this offence, and for the author of
the subsequent mutilation of the prayers to the Virgin hung up in
various parts of the same edifice. A truculent order was also issued in
the bishop's name, threatening all persons that might conceal their
knowledge of the culprits with public excommunication, every Sunday and
feast-day, "with ringing of bells and with candles lighted and then
extinguished and thrown upon the earth, _in token of eternal
malediction_."[181] Leclerc was discovered, and taken to Paris for
trial. The barbarous sentence of parliament was, that he be whipped in
Paris by the common executioner on three successive days, then
transferred to Meaux to receive the like punishment, and finally branded
on the forehead with a red-hot iron, before being banished forever from
the kingdom.[182]
The cruel prescription was followed out to the letter (March, 1525). A
superstitious multitude flocked together to see and gloat over the
condign punishment of a heretic, and gave no word of encouragement and
support. But, as the iron was leaving on Leclerc's brow the ignominious
imprint of the _fleur-de-lis_,[183] a single voice suddenly broke in
upon the silence. It was that of his aged mother, who, after an
involuntary cry of anguish, quickly recovered herself and shouted, "Hail
Jesus Christ and his standard-bearers!"[184] Although many heard her
words, so deep was the impression, that no attempt was made to lay hands
upon her.[185]
[Sidenote: He is burned alive at Metz.]
From Meaux, Leclerc, forced to leave his home, retired first to Rosoy,
and thence to Metz.[186] Here, while supporting himself by working at
his humble trade, he lost none of his missionary spirit. Not content
with communicating a knowledge of the doctrines of the Reformation to
all with whom he conversed, his impatient zeal led him to a new and
startling protest against the prevalent, and, in his view, idolatrous
worship of images. Learning that on a certain day a solemn procession
was to be made to a shrine situated a few miles out of the city gates,
he went to the spot under cover of night, and hurled the sacred images
from their places. On the morrow the horrified worshippers found the
objects of their devotion prostrated and mutilated, and their rage knew
no bounds. It was not long before the wool-carder was apprehended. His
religious sentiments were no secret, and he had been seen returning from
the scene of his nocturnal exploit. He promptly acknowledged his guilt,
and was rescued from the infuriated populace only to undergo a more
terrible doom at the hands of the public executioner (July 22, 1525).
His right hand was cut off at the wrist, his arms, his nose, his breast
were cruelly torn with pincers; but no cry of anguish escaped the lips
of Leclerc. The sentence provided still further that, before his body
should be consigned to the flames, his head be encircled with a red-hot
band of iron. As the fervent metal slowly ate its way toward his very
brain, the bystanders with amazement heard the dying man calmly repeat
the words of Holy Writ: "Their idols are silver and gold, the work of
men's hands." He had not completed the Psalmist's terrific denunciation
of the crime and folly of image-worship when his voice was stifled by
the fire and smoke of the pyre into which his impatient tormentors had
hastily thrown him. If not actually the first martyr of the French
Reformation, as has commonly been supposed, Jean Leclerc deserves, at
least, to rank among the most constant and unswerving of its early
apostles.[187]
[Sidenote: Jacques Pauvan.]
The poor wool-carder of Meaux was succeeded by more illustrious victims.
One was of the number of the teachers who had been attracted to Bishop
Briconnet's diocese by the prospect of contributing to the progress of a
purer doctrine. Jacques Pauvan[188] was a studious youth who had come
from Boulogne, in Picardy, to perfect his education in the university,
and had subsequently abandoned a career in which he bade fair to obtain
distinction, in order to assist his admired teacher, Lefevre, at Meaux.
He was an outspoken man, and disguised his opinions on no point of the
prevailing controversy. He asserted that purgatory had no existence, and
that God had no vicar. He repudiated excessive reliance on the doctors
of the church. He indignantly rejected the customary salutation to the
Virgin Mary, "Hail Queen, Mother of mercy!" He denied the propriety of
offering candles to the saints. He maintained that baptism was only a
sign, that holy water was _nothing_, that papal bulls and indulgences
were an imposture of the devil, and that the mass was not only of no
avail for the remission of sins, but utterly unprofitable to the hearer,
while the Word of God was all-sufficient.[189]
Pauvan was put under arrest, and his theses, together with the defence
of their contents which one Matthieu Saunier was so bold as to write,
were submitted to the Sorbonne. Its condemnation was not long withheld.
"A work," said the Paris theologians, "containing propositions extracted
and compiled from the pernicious errors of the Waldenses, Wickliffites,
Bohemians, and Lutherans, being impious, scandalous, schismatic, and
wholly alien from the Christian doctrine, ought publicly to be consigned
to the flames in the diocese of Meaux, whence it emanated. And Jacques
Pauvan and Matthieu Saunier should, by all judicial means, be compelled
to make a public recantation."[190]
Even strong men have their moments of weakness. Pauvan was no exception
to the rule. Besides the terrors of the stake, the persuasions of
Martial Mazurier came in to shake his constancy. This latter, a doctor
of theology, had at one time been so carried away with the desire of
innovation as to hurl down a statue of their patron saint standing at
the door of the monastery of the Franciscans. He had now, as we have
already seen, become the favorite instrument in effecting abjurations
similar to his own. His suggestions prevailed over Pauvan's
convictions.[191] The young scholar consented to obey the Sorbonne's
demand. The faculty's judgment had been pronounced on the ninth of
December, 1525; a fortnight later, on the morrow of Christmas day--a
favorite time for striking displays of this kind--Pauvan publicly
retracted his "errors," and made the usual "amende honorable," clad only
in a shirt, and holding a lighted taper in his hand.[192]
[Sidenote: He is burned on the Place de Greve.]
If Pauvan's submission secured him any peace, it was a short-lived
peace. Tortured by conscience, he soon betrayed his mental anguish by
sighs and groans. Again he was drawn from the prison, where he had been
confined since his abjuration,[193] and subjected to new
interrogatories. With the opportunity to vindicate his convictions, his
courage and cheerfulness returned. As a relapsed heretic, no fate could
be in store for him but death at the stake, and this he courageously met
on the _Place de Greve_.[194] But the holocaust was inauspicious for
those who with this victim hoped to annihilate the "new doctrines."
Before mounting the huge pyre heaped up to receive him, Pauvan was
thoughtlessly permitted to speak; and so persuasive were his words that
it was an enemy's exclamation that "it had been better to have cost the
church a million of gold, than that Pauvan had been suffered to speak to
the people."[195]
[Sidenote: The hermit of Livry.]
Scarcely more encouraging to the advocates of persecution was the scene
in the area in front of Notre-Dame de Paris, when, at the sound of the
great cathedral bell, an immense crowd was gathered to witness the
execution of an obscure person, known to us only as "the hermit of
Livry"--a hamlet on the road to Meaux. With such unshaken fortitude did
he encounter the flames, that the astonished spectators were confidently
assured by their spiritual advisers that he was one of the damned who
was being led to the fires of hell.[196]
[Sidenote: Bishop Briconnet becomes the jailer of the "Lutherans."]
Where less rigor was deemed necessary, the penalty for having embraced
the reformed tenets was reduced to imprisonment for a term of years,
often with bread and water for the only food and drink. The place of
confinement was sometimes a monastery, at other times the "_prisons of
Monseigneur the Bishop of Meaux_."[197] Thus Briconnet enjoyed the rare
and exquisite privilege of acting as jailer of unfortunates instructed
by himself in the doctrines for the profession of which they now
suffered! Meantime their companions having escaped detection, although
deprived of the advantage of public worship, continued for years to
assemble for mutual encouragement and edification, as they had
opportunity, in private houses, in retired valleys or caverns, or in
thickets and woods. Their minister was that person of their own number
who was seen to be the best versed in the Holy Scriptures. After he had
discharged his functions in the humble service, by a simple address of
instruction or exhortation, the entire company with one voice
supplicated the Almighty for His blessing, and returned to their homes
with fervent hopes for the speedy conversion of France to the
Gospel.[198] Thus matters stood for about a score of years, until a
fresh attempt was made to constitute a reformed church at Meaux, the
signal, as will appear in the sequel, for a fresh storm of persecution.
[Sidenote: Lefevre's subsequent history.]
A few words here seem necessary respecting the subsequent fortunes of
the venerable teacher whose name at this point fades from the history of
the French Reformation. The action of parliament (August 28, 1525), in
condemning, at the instigation of the syndic of the theological faculty,
nine propositions extracted from his commentary on the Gospels, and in
forbidding the circulation of his translation of the Holy Scriptures,
had given Lefevre d'Etaples due warning of danger. We have already seen
that a few weeks later (October, 1525) he had taken refuge in Strasbourg
under the pseudonym of Antonius Peregrinus. But the _incognito_ of so
distinguished a stranger could not be long maintained, and before many
days the very boys in the streets knew him by his true name.[199]
Meantime the Sorbonne, in his absence, proceeded to censure a large
number of propositions drawn from another of Lefevre's works. Shortly
after a letter was received from Francis the First, written in his
captivity at Madrid, and enjoining the court to suspend its vexatious
persecution of a man "of such great and good renown, and of so holy a
life," until the king's return. The refractory judges, however,
neglected to obey the order, and continued the proceedings instituted
against Lefevre.[200]
[Sidenote: Lefevre and the Nuncio Aleander.]
When, however, Francis succeeded in regaining his liberty, a year later,
he not only recalled Lefevre and his companion, Roussel, from exile, but
conferred upon the former the honorable appointment of tutor to his two
daughters and his third and favorite son, subsequently known as Charles,
Duke of Orleans.[201] This post, while it enabled him to continue the
prosecution of his biblical studies, also gave him the opportunity of
instilling into the minds of his pupils some views favorable to the
Reformation.[202] A little later Margaret of Angouleme secured for
Lefevre the position of librarian of the royal collection of books at
Blois; but, as even here he was subjected to much annoyance from his
enemies, Margaret, now Queen of Navarre, sought and obtained from her
brother permission to take the old scholar with her to Nerac, in
Gascony.[203] Here, in the ordinary residence of his patron, and treated
by the King of Navarre with marked consideration, Lefevre d'Etaples was
at last safe from molestation. The papal party did not, indeed, despair
of gaining him over. The Nuncio Aleander, in a singular letter exhumed
not long since from the Vatican records, expressed himself strongly in
favor of putting forth the effort. Lefevre's "few errors" had at first
appeared to be of great moment, because published at a time when to
correct or change the most insignificant syllable, or a faulty
rendering, in the ancient translations of the Holy Scriptures approved
by the church, was an unheard-of innovation. But, now that more
important questions had come up to arrest attention, the mere matter of
retranslation, without introducing unsound doctrine, seemed to be a
thing of little or no consequence.[204] Let Lefevre but leave the
heretical company which he kept, and let him make _the least bit of a
retraction_ respecting some few passages in his works, and the whole
affair would at once be arranged.[205]
[Sidenote: Lefevre's mental suffering.]
The reconciliation of Lefevre with the church did not take place. The
"bit of a retraction" was never written. But none the less are Lefevre's
last days reported to have been disturbed by harassing thoughts. The
noble old man, who had consecrated to the translation of the Bible and
to exegetical comment upon its books the energy of many years, and who
had suffered no little obloquy in consequence, could not forgive himself
that he had not come forward more manfully in defence of the truth. One
day, not long before his death, it is said, while seated at the table of
the King and Queen of Navarre, he was observed to be overcome with
emotion. When Margaret expressed her surprise at the gloomy deportment
of one whose society she had sought for her own diversion, Lefevre
mournfully exclaimed, "How can I contribute to the pleasure of others,
who am myself the greatest sinner upon earth?" In reply to the questions
called forth by so unexpected a confession, Lefevre, while admitting
that throughout his long life his morals had been exemplary, and that he
was conscious of no flagrant crime against society, proceeded, in words
frequently interrupted by sobs, to explain his deep penitence: "How
shall I, who have taught others the purity of the Gospel, be able to
stand at God's tribunal? Thousands have suffered and died for the
defence of the truth in which I instructed them; and I, unfaithful
shepherd that I am, after attaining so advanced an age, when I ought to
love nothing less than I do life--nay, rather, when I ought to desire
death--I have basely avoided the martyr's crown, and have betrayed the
cause of my God!" It was with difficulty that the queen and others who
were present succeeded in allaying the aged scholar's grief.[206]
The "anguish of spirit and terror of God's judgment experienced by so
pious an old man as Lefevre," because he had concealed the truth which
he ought openly to have espoused, supplied an instructive warning for
his even more timid disciples. Farel, who never lacked courage, was not
slow to avail himself of it. Taking advantage of the freedom of an old
associate, he addressed a letter containing an account of Lefevre's
death, with some serious admonitions, to Michel d'Arande, who never
venturing to separate from a church whose corruptions he acknowledged,
had reached the position of Bishop of Saint Paul-Trois-Chateaux, in
Dauphiny. The letter has perished, but the reply in which the prelate's
dejection and internal conflicts but too plainly appear, has seen the
light after a burial of three centuries. Admitting the guilt of his
course, the bishop begs the intrepid reformer to pray for him
continually, and meanwhile not to withhold his friendly exhortations,
that at length the writer may be able to extricate himself from the deep
mire in which he finds no firm foundation to stand upon.[207]
Such was the unhappy state of mind to which many good, but irresolute
men were reduced, who, in view of the persecution certain to follow an
open avowal of their reformatory sentiments, endeavored to persuade
themselves that it was permissible to conceal them under a thin veil of
external conformity to the rites of the Roman church.
[Sidenote: Fortunes of Gerard Roussel.]
Gerard Roussel, the most distinguished representative of this class of
mystics, was appointed by the Queen of Navarre to be her preacher and
confessor, and promoted successively to be Abbot of Clairac and Bishop
of Oleron. Yet he remained, to his death, a sincere friend of the
Reformation. Occasionally, at least, he preached its doctrines with
tolerable distinctness; as, for instance, in the Lenten discourses
delivered by him, in conjunction with Courault and Bertault, before the
French court in the Louvre (1532). In his writings he was still more
outspoken. Some of them might have been written not only by a reformer,
but by a disciple of Calvin, so sharply drawn were the doctrinal
expositions.[208] Meanwhile, in his own diocese he set forth the example
of a faithful pastor. Even so bitter an enemy of Protestantism as
Florimond de Raemond, contrasting Roussel's piety with the worldliness
of the sporting French bishops of the period, is forced to admit that
his pack of hounds was the crowd of poor men and women whom he daily
fed, his horses and attendants a host of children whom he caused to be
instructed in letters.[209]
And yet, Gerard Roussel's half measures, while failing to conciliate the
adherents of the Roman church, alienated from him the sympathies of the
reformers; for they saw in his conduct a weakness little short of entire
apostasy. More modern Roman Catholic writers, for similar reasons, deny
that Roussel was ever at heart a friend of the Reformation.[210] Not so,
however, thought the fanatics of his own time. While the Bishop of
Oleron was one day declaiming, in a church of his diocese, against the
excessive multiplication of feasts, the pulpit in which he stood was
suddenly overturned, and the preacher hurled with violence to the
ground. The catastrophe was the premeditated act of a religious zealot,
who had brought with him into the sacred place an axe concealed under
his cloak. The fall proved fatal to Gerard Roussel, who is said to have
expressed on his death-bed similar regrets to those which had disturbed
the last hours of Lefevre d'Etaples. As for the murderer, although
arrested and tried by the Parliament of Bordeaux, he was in the end
acquitted, on the ground that he had performed a meritorious act, or, at
most, committed a venial offence, in ridding the world of so dangerous a
heretic as the Bishop of Oleron.[211]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 128: Scaevolae Sammarthani Elog. lib. i., i. 3. "Statura fuit
supra modum humili," etc.]
[Footnote 129: Sc. Sammarthani Elog., _ubi supra_.]
[Footnote 130: Lefevre's scientific works were numerous, and some of
them passed through many editions during the early years of the
sixteenth century. See Haag, La France protestante, art. Lefevre. I have
before me his edition of the Arithmetic of Boetius, with introduction
and commentary, of the year 1510, and copies of his Astronomical
Treatises of 1510 and 1516, the last of these published at Cologne.]
[Footnote 131: Sc. Sammarth. Elog., _ubi supra_.]
[Footnote 132: Epistre a tons Seigneurs et Peuples (Edit. J. G. Fick),
172.]
[Footnote 133: The passage in which Farel describes his former
superstition is so characteristic, that I quote a few sentences: "Pour
vray la papaute n'estoit et n'est tant papale que mon coeur l'a
este.... Car tellement il avoit aveugle mes yeux et perverti tout en
moy, que s'il y avoit personnage qui fut approuve selon le pape, il
m'estoit comme Dieu; si quelqu'un faisoit ou disoit quelque chose, d'ou
le pape et son estat en fut en quelque mespris, j'eusse voulu qu'un tel
... fut du tout abbatu, ruine et destruit.... Ainsy Satan avoit loge le
pape, sa papaute, tout ce qui est de luy en mon coeur, de sorte que
_le pape mesme_, comme je croy, _n'en avoit point tant en soy ne [ni]
les siens aussy, comme il y en avoit en moy_.... Et ainsy je persevere,
ayant mon panteon en mon coeur, et tant d'advocats, tant de sauveurs,
tant de dieux que rien plus ... tellement que je pouvoye bien estre tenu
pour un registre papal, pour martyrologe," etc. Epistre a tous Seigneurs
et Peuples, 164, 167, 169.]
[Footnote 134: Herminjard, Correspondance des Reformateurs, i. 4, 481.]
[Footnote 135: See the dedication, dated Dec. 15, 1512, Herminjard,
Correspondance des Reformateurs, i. 2-9.]
[Footnote 136: Letter of Farel to Pellican (1556), Herminjard,
Correspondance des Reformateurs, i. 481: "Pius senex, Jacobus Faber,
quem tu novisti, ante annos plus minus quadraginta, me manu apprehensum,
ita alloquebatur: 'Gulielme, oportet orbem mutari, et tu videbis'
dicebat." So in the "Epistre a tous Seigneurs et Peuples" (Ed. Fick),
170: "Souventefois me disoit que Dieu renouvelleroit le monde, et que je
le verroye." A few years later, at Strasbourg, the reformer reminded his
former master of his prediction: "Voicy par la grace de Dieu, le
commencement de ce qu'autrefois m'avez dit du renouvellement du monde,"
and Lefevre, then in exile, blessed God, and begged Him to perfect what
he had then seen begun at Strasbourg. Ibid., 171. These statements are
confirmed by a passage in the Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles, in
which, after deploring the corruption of the church, Lefevre observes:
"Yet the signs of the times announce that a renewal is near, and while
God is opening new ways for the preaching of the Gospel, by the
discoveries and conquests of the Portuguese and Spaniards in all parts
of the world, we must hope that He will visit His church and raise it
from the degradation into which it is fallen." Herminjard, i. 5.]
[Footnote 137: Scaevolae Sammarthani, Elogia doctorum in Gallia virorum,
lib. i. (Jenae, 1696); Bayle, s. v. Fevre and Farel; Tabaraud, Biographie
univ., art. Lefevre; C. Schmidt, Wilhelm Farel, in Leben und ausgew.
Schriften d. Vaeter d. ref. Kirche; C. Cheneviere, Farel, Froment, Viret
(Geneve, 1835).]
[Footnote 138: Gaillard, Histoire de Francois premier (Paris, 1769), vi.
397. It was the unpardonable offence of Lefevre in the eyes of his
critic that he, a simple master of arts, had dared to investigate
matters that fell to the province of doctors of theology alone. Letter
of H. C. Agrippa (1519), in Herminjard, Correspondance des Reformateurs,
i. 51: "Tantum virum semel atque iterum ... vocarunt hominem stultum,
insanum fidei, Sacrarum Literarum indoctum et ignarum, et qui, _duntaxat
humanarum artium Magister, praesumptuose se ingerat iis quae spectant ad
Theologos_." As it clearly appears that Lefevre was not a doctor of the
Sorbonne, Professor Soldan is mistaken in saying: "Seit 1493 lebte er
als Doctor der Theologie zu Paris, u. s. w." The error is of long
standing.]
[Footnote 139: See Alphonse de Beauchamp's sketches of the lives of the
two Briconnets, in the Biographie universelle.]
[Footnote 140: According to a contemporary letter, this was the sole
cause of Lefevre's departure. "Faber Stapulensis ab urbe longe abest ad
XX. lapidem, neque ullam ob causam quam quod convitia in Lutherum audire
non potest." Glareanus to Zwingle, Paris, July 4, 1521, Herminjard, i.
71.]
[Footnote 141: Epistre a tous Seigneurs et Peuples, 168-175.]
[Footnote 142: In October, 1521. Herminjard, i. 76.]
[Footnote 143: "Vous asseurant que le Roy et Madame ont bien delibere de
donner a congnoistre que la verite de Dieu n'est point heresie."
Margaret of Angouleme to Briconnet, Nov., 1521, MSS. National Lib.,
Herminjard, i. 78; Genin, ii. 273.]
[Footnote 144: "Vos piteulx desirs de la reformacion de l'Eglise, ou
plus que jamais le Roy et Madame sont affectionnes." Same to same, Dec,
1521, Ibid., Herminjard, i. 84; Genin, ii. 274. Compare Louise de
Savoie's own entry in her journal, in December, 1522, a year later, to
which reference has already been made.]
[Footnote 145: See the valuable remarks of M. Herminjard (i. 289, note)
respecting the date of the "manifestation of the Gospel" in France.]
[Footnote 146: Luther to Spalatin, Oct. 19, 1516, Herminjard, i. 26.]
[Footnote 147: Herminjard, i. 41, 205, 206.]
[Footnote 148: Lefevre was placed in charge of the _Leproserie_, Aug.
11, 1521, and was appointed vicar-general _au spirituel_, May 1, 1523.
Herminjard, i. 71 and 157.]
[Footnote 149: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, 277, under date of
1526.]
[Footnote 150: "Moy et autres comme moy, leverons une cruciade de gens,
et ferons chasser le Roy de son Royaume par ses subjectz propres, s'il
permet que l'Evangile soit presche." Farel au Duc de Lorraine,
Herminjard, i. 483.]
[Footnote 151: Pierre de Sebeville au Chevalier Coct, Grenoble, Dec. 28,
1524: "Je te notifie que l'evesque de Meaulx en Brie, pres Paris, cum
Jacobo Fabro Stapulensi, depuis trois moys en visitant l'evesche, ont
brusle _actu_ tous les imaiges, reserve le crucifix, et sont
personellement ajournes a Paris, a ce moys de Mars venant, coram suprema
curia, et universitate erucarum parrhissiensium, quare id factum est."
Herminjard, i. 315.]
[Footnote 152: Fontaine, Histoire catholique, _apud_ Merle d'Aubigne,
Hist. de la Reform., liv. xii. The earliest Protestant chronicle, by
Antoine Froment, of which there is a MS. fragment in the Library of
Geneva, gives a slightly different form to Briconnet's caution:
"Autrefois, en leur preschant l'Evangile, il leur avoit dit, comme
Sainct Paul escript au Gallates, que sy luy-mesme ou un Ange du ciel
leur preschoit autre doctrine que celle qu'il leur preschoit, qu'ils ne
[le] receussent pas." Herminjard, i. 158.]
[Footnote 153: Nisard, Histoire de la litterature francaise, i. 275. The
only printed work in favor of which the claim of Lefevre's translation
to be the oldest in the French language could be disputed is the "Bible"
of Guyars des Moulins, finished in 1297, and printed by order of Charles
VIII. in 1487; but the greater part of this is a free translation, not
of the Scriptures themselves, but of a summary--the "Historia
scholastica" of Pierre le Mengeur (latinized "Comestor")--and is
consequently no bible at all. See M. Charles Read, in Bulletin, i. 76,
who remarks that, "everything considered, it may therefore be asserted
that the translations of Lefevre d'Etaples and of Olivetanus are the
first versions without embellishment or gloss (non historiees et non
glossees), and that thus the first two versions of the Bible into the
language of the people are Protestant."]
[Footnote 154: The inventory of the library of the Count of Angouleme,
father of Margaret and Francis I., consisting of nearly two hundred
volumes, contains the title "Les Paraboles de Salomon, les Espistres
Saint Jehan, les Espistres Saint Pol et l'Apocalipse, le tout en ung
volume, escript en parchemin et _a la main_, et en _francoys_, couvert
de velous changeant et a deux fermoeres, l'un aux armes de mon diet
Seigneur, et l'autre aux armes de ma dicte dame." Aristotle, Boethius,
Boccaccio, and Dante figure in the list, the latter both in Italian and
in French. The inventory is printed in an appendix to the edition of the
Heptameron of Margaret of Angouleme published by the Soc. dea
bibliophiles francais (Paris, 1853), a work enriched with many original
documents of considerable value.]
[Footnote 155: This important letter of Lefevre to Farel, July 6, 1524,
first published in part from the MS. in the Geneva Library, in the
Bulletin de l'hist. du prot. franc., xi. (1862), 212, is given in full
by Herminjard, i. 220, etc.]
[Footnote 156: "O bone Deus, quanto exulto gaudio, cum percipio hanc
pure agnoscendi Christum gratiam, jam bonam partem pervasisse Europae! Et
spero Christum tandem nostras Gallias hac benedictione invisurum."]
[Footnote 157: "Provinciam interpretandi populo promiscui sexus,
quotidie una hora mane, epistolas Pauli lingua vernacula editas, non
concionando, sed per modum lecturae interpretando." Lefevre to Farel,
_ubi supra_, i. 222. He gives the names of four such "lectores
puriores"--Gadon, Mangin, Neufchasteau, and Mesnil--of whom we know
little.]
[Footnote 158: Parliament, however, as late as June 1, 1525, sustained
his episcopal authority by prohibiting the monks from preaching in
Meaux, whether in the morning or in the evening, when the bishop either
himself preached or had preaching before him in that part of the day.
Reg. of Parliament, Preuves des Libertez de l'Eglise Gallicane, iv.
102.]
[Footnote 159: Gaillard, vi. 409.]
[Footnote 160: "L'estat par la froideur duquel tous les aultres sont
gellez." Briconnet to Margaret of Angouleme, Dec. 22, 1521, Herminjard,
i. 86.]
[Footnote 161: "Celluy qui tous ruyne." Same to same, Jan. 31, 1524,
ibid., i. 186.]
[Footnote 162: "L'etat qui contient tous les autres dans le devoir," as
translated by Herminjard, i. 154.]
[Footnote 163: See both documents in Herminjard, i. 153 and 156.]
[Footnote 164: Instead of October 15, 1523, it is probable that these
documents ought to be placed nearly, if not quite, two years later. See
M. Herminjard's remarks on this difficult point, Correspondance des
reformateurs, i. 158, note. The same uncertainty affects Briconnet's
subsequent pastoral, revoking the powers accorded to "Lutheran
preachers," attributed to December 13, 1523, ibid., i. 171.]
[Footnote 165: Maimbourg, Histoire du Calvinisme (Paris, 1682), liv. i.
11-14; Daniel, Histoire de France (Paris, 1755), x. 23.]
[Footnote 166: Registres du parlement, Oct. 3, 1525, Preuves des
Libertez de l'Eglise gallicane, iv. 102.]
[Footnote 167: "Et supplie la Cour qu'il soit interroge en pleine cour,
et non par Commissaires." Registres du parlement, Oct. 20, 1525, ibid.,
iv. 103.]
[Footnote 168: Registres du parlement, Nov. 29, 1525, where the Bishop
of Meaux is ordered to pay 200 _livres parisis_ for the trial of the
heretics, prisoners from Meaux (Preuves des Libertez, iii. 166), and the
receipt for the same (Ibid., _ubi supra_). This was, however, merely an
application of the general prescription of Nov. 24, 1525, requiring all
prelates to defray the expenses of the trial of any heretics discovered
in their dioceses, with the right to indemnify themselves from the
property of the convicted heretics (Ibid., iii. 165). So the Archbishop
of Tours contributed to the expenses incurred in the trial of Jean
Papillon, Feb. 5, 1526 (Ibid., iii. 167).]
[Footnote 169: Daniel, x. 23, 24; Gaillard, vi. 409-411.]
[Footnote 170: Neither the reason nor the precise time of his departure
is known. It was apparently as early as 1523.]
[Footnote 171: See Haag, La France protestante, art. Farel; Dr. E.
Schmidt, Wilhelm Farel, in Hagenbach, Leben d. Vaeter und Begruender der
Reformirten Kirche, vii. 3, etc. A brief but very accurate sketch in
Herminjard, i. 178, etc.]
[Footnote 172: MS. Seminary of Meaux, January 11, 1524/5, Bulletin, x.
220.]
[Footnote 173: "Plusieurs peigneurs, cardeurs et autres gens de meme
trempe, non lettres."]
[Footnote 174: MS. Seminary of Meaux, February 6, 1524/5, Bulletin, x.
220.]
[Footnote 175: Compare for the date, Herminjard, i. 378, 389, 401.
Gerard Roussel was ordered by parliament to be seized wherever found,
_etiam in loco sacro_. So, too, were Caroli and Prevost. Jacques Lefevre
was cited to appear. Registres du parlement, Oct. 3, 1525, Preuves des
Libertez de l'Egl. gall., iii. 102, 103.]
[Footnote 176: Farel to Pellican, 1556, Herminjard, i. 481.]
[Footnote 177: "Ita invigilent Verbo ecclesiarum ministri, ut, nulla
pene hora diei, suum desit pabulum et quidem _syncerum, ut nulla subsit
palea aut fermenti pharisaici commissura_."]
[Footnote 178: Roussel to Briconnet, Strasbourg, Dec, 1525, Herminjard,
i. 406, 407.]
[Footnote 179: Roussel to Farel, Meaux, Aug. 24, 1524, Herminjard, i.
271--a document that throws a flood of light upon the motives of the
conduct of both Roussel and Lefevre. A letter of the same date to
Oecolampadius is, in some respects, even more instructive. Notice the
pitiful weakness revealed in these sentences: "Reclamabunt episcopi,
reclamabunt doctores, reclamabunt scholae, assentiente populo, occurret
Senatus (parliament). _Quid faciet homuncio adversus tot leones?_"
Herminjard, i. 278. A reference to the book of Daniel might have enabled
the Canon of Meaux to answer his own question.]
[Footnote 180: Pierre Toussain to Oecolampadius, Malesherbes, July 26,
1526, Herminjard, i. 447.]
[Footnote 181: Mandement de Guillaume Briconnet an clerge de son
diocese, le 21 janvier, 1525, Herminjard, i. 320, etc.]
[Footnote 182: It may seem surprising that Jean Leclerc escaped the
stake in punishment of his temerity. But the reason is found in the
circumstance that he was tried, not for _heresy_, but for _irreverence_.
This appears from the Registres du parlement for March 20, 1524/5. The
interesting discussions of that session, printed in the Bulletin de la
Soc. de l'hist. du prot. francais, iii. (1854) 23, etc., establish the
fact that the reformed doctrines were already making formidable headway
in Paris and the adjoining towns. A brother of Bishop Briconnet took a
prominent part in the debate, and gave a deplorable view of the
prevalence of impiety and heresy in the higher circles of society.]
[Footnote 183: For a description of the punishment, see Bastard
d'Estang, Les parlements de France.]
[Footnote 184: "Vive Jesus Christ et ses enseignes!"]
[Footnote 185: Histoire ecclesiastique des eglises reformees, attributed
to Theodore Beza (Ed. of Lille, 1841), i. 4; Crespin, Actiones et
Monimenta Martyrum (Geneva, 1560), fol. 46; Haag, La France protestante,
art. Leclerc; Daniel, x. 23, who finds no more suitable epithet for
Leclerc than "_ce scelerat_."]
[Footnote 186: At this time a city of the Empire, and not conquered by
France until the reign of Henry II. (1552).]
[Footnote 187: The story of Leclerc's fortunes is told both by Crespin,
_ubi supra_, fol. 46, and by the Histoire ecclesiastique, i. 4; but,
strange to say, both these early authorities fall into the same error:
they place the first arrest of Leclerc in 1523, and his death a year
later. Almost all subsequent writers have implicitly followed their
authority. The Registres du parlement de Paris, already referred to,
March 20, 1524/5, fix the former event as having occurred only three
days before--"depuis trois jours" (p. 27); while Francois Lambert's
letter to the Senate of Besancon, dated August 15, 1525, expressly
states that Leclerc was burned Saturday, July 22, 1525. Herminjard, i.
372. Jean Chatellain had been executed at Vic, in Lorraine, six months
earlier (January 12, 1525). See P. Lambert to the Elector of Saxony,
Herminjard, i. 346.]
[Footnote 188: In accordance with the uncertain orthography of the age,
the name is variously written--Pauvan, Pauvant, Pavanne, or Pouvent.]
[Footnote 189: Pauvan's propositions, with the vindication by Saunier
(or Saulnier) are recapitulated in the censure of the theological
faculty, dated Dec. 9, 1525, and published _in extenso_ among the
documents appended to Gerdesius, Hist. Evang. Renov., iv. 36, etc.
Professor Soldan (i. 107) and others are incorrect in placing the
propositions and their condemnation by the Sorbonne subsequent to the
abjuration, which in this very document the Sorbonne demands.]
[Footnote 190: Ibid., iv. 47.]
[Footnote 191: "You err, Master Jacques," Crespin tells us that Mazurier
used to say, "You err, Master Jacques; for you have not looked into the
depth of the sea, but merely upon the surface of the waters and waves."
"_You err, Master Jacques_" became a proverbial expression in the mouths
of the inhabitants of Meaux for a generation or more. Actiones et
Monimenta (Geneva, 1560), fol. 52 _verso_.]
[Footnote 192: "Tout nud, en sa chemise, criant mercy a Dieu et a la
vierge Marie." Journal d'un bourgeois, _ubi infra_.]
[Footnote 193: His sentence seems to have been seven years' imprisonment
in the priory of St. Martin des Champs, and it was the prior that
denounced him to parliament. Ibid., _ubi infra_.]
[Footnote 194: Crespin, _ubi supra_, fol. 53; Hist. eccles., i. 4; Haag,
France prot., s. v. On the 26th of August, 1526, if, as is likely, he is
the "jeune filz, escolier beneficie, non aiant encore ses ordres de
prestrise, nomme maistre ... natif de Therouanne, en Picardie," whom the
Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris refers to--page 291--as having abjured
on Christmas eve, 1525, and been burned "le mardi 28^e aoust, 1526." At
any rate, as M. Herminjard has remarked, Beza and Crespin are certainly
wrong in placing Pauvan's recantation and execution respectively a year
too early (in 1524 and 1525, instead of 1525 and 1526). The date of the
Sorbonne's judgment is decisive on this point.]
[Footnote 195: Our authority for the remark of the Parisian doctor,
Pierre Cornu, is Farel, in a MS. note to a hitherto inedited letter of
Pauvan, and in his speech at the discussion at Lausanne. Herminjard, i.
293, 294. Farel's application was not without pungency: "Votre foi
est-elle si bien fondee qu'un jeune fils, qui encore n'avoit point de
barbe, vous ait fait tant de dommage, sans avoir tant etudie ne veu,
sans avoir aucun degre, et vous etiez tant?" The admirer of heroic
fortitude will scarcely subscribe to the words of the Jesuit Daniel,
Hist. de France, x. 24: "On ne donne place dans l'histoire _a ces
meprisables noms_, que pour ne laisser ignorer la premiere origine de la
funeste contagion," etc.]
[Footnote 196: Histoire eccles., i. 4.]
[Footnote 197: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris sous le regne de Francois
I^er, April 14, 1526, p. 284.]
[Footnote 198: Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fol. 118.]
[Footnote 199: Haag, La France protestante, art. Lefevre; Schmidt,
Wilhelm Farel. Bayle (Diet. s. v. Fevre) maintains, on the authority of
Melchior Adam's Life of Capito, that Lefevre and Roussel were sent by
Margaret of Angouleme on a secret mission to Strasbourg. Erasmus, in a
letter of March, 1526, and Sleidan (lib. v. ad fin.) know nothing of
this, and speak of the trip as merely a flight.]
[Footnote 200: Haag, _ubi supra_, vi. 507, note.]
[Footnote 201: Haag, La France protestante, art. Lefevre; Gaillard,
Hist. de Francois premier, vi. 411. The boy, at this time Duke of
Angouleme, did not assume the name of _Charles_ until after his eldest
brother's death. The Swiss cantons, acting as his sponsors, had given
him the somewhat uncommon Christian name _Abednego_ (Abdenago)!
Herminjard, ii. 17, 195.]
[Footnote 202: The Duke of Orleans may have had sincere predilections
for Protestantism. At least, it is barely possible that the very
remarkable instructions given to his secretary, Antoine Mallet, when on
the 8th of September, 1543, Charles sent him to the Elector of Saxony
and the Landgrave of Hesse, were something besides mere diplomatic
intrigue to secure for his father's projects the support of these
Protestant princes. See, however, a fuller discussion of this incident
farther on, Chapter VI.]
[Footnote 203: Margaret to Anne de Montmorency, Genin, Lettres de
Marguerite d'Angouleme, i. 279, and Herminjard, ii. 250.]
[Footnote 204: "Come un cavallo ch' ha un apostema stringendoli il naso
non sente il cauterio."]
[Footnote 205: "Una retrattationcella." The letter of the Nuncio to
Sanga, secretary of Clement VII., Brussels, December 30, 1531, appeared
in H. Laemmer, Monumenta Vaticana (ex Tabulariis Sanctae Sedis Apostolicae
Secretis), Friburgi Brisgoviae, 1861. I have called attention to its
importance in the Bulletin de la Societe de l'hist. du prot. franc.,
xiv. (1865), 345. M. Herminjard has given a French translation, ii.
386.]
[Footnote 206: This incident has been rejected as apocryphal by Bayle,
and, after him, by Tabaraud (in the Biographie universelle), as well as
more recently by Haag (France protestante). It has rested until now on
the unsupported testimony of Hubert Thomas, secretary of the Elector
Palatine, Frederick II., whom he accompanied on a visit to Charles V. in
Spain. On his return the Elector fell sick at Paris, where he received
frequent visits from the King and Queen of Navarre. It was on one of
these occasions that Margaret related to him this story, in the hearing
of the secretary. (It is reproduced in Jurieu, Histoire du Calvinisme,
etc., Rotterdam, 1683, pt. i. 70.) Bayle objected that it was incredible
that the reformers should have failed to allude to so striking and
suggestive an occurrence. The objection has been scattered to the winds.
With singular good fortune, M. Jules Bonnet has discovered among the
hidden treasures of the Geneva Library an original memorandum in Farel's
own handwriting, prefixed to a letter he had received from Michel
d'Arande, fully confirming the discredited statements. "Jacobus Faber
Stapulensis noster laborans morbo quo decessit, per aliquot dies ita
perterritus fuit judicio Dei, ut actum de se vociferaret, dicens se
aeternum periisse, quod veritatem Dei non aperte professus fuerit, idque
dies noctesque vociferando querebatur. Et cum a Gerardo Rufo admoneretur
ut bono esset animo, Christo quoque fideret, is respondit: 'Nos damnati
sumus, veritatem celavimus quam profiteri et testari debebamus.'
Horrendum erat tam pium senem ita angi animo et tanto horrore judicii
Dei concuti; licet tandem liberatus bene sperare coeperit ac
perrexerit de Christo." Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr.,
etc., xi. 215; Herminjard, iii. 400.]
[Footnote 207: "Quo tandem ex hoc profundo limo, in quo non est
substantia, eripi queam." Michel d'Arande to Farel (1536 or 1537),
Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. franc., _ubi supra_; Herminjard,
iii. 399, etc.]
[Footnote 208: Speaking of Roussel's as yet inedited MS., "Familiere
exposition du symbole et de l'oraison dominicale," Professor C. Schmidt,
than whom no one has better studied the mysticism of the sixteenth
century, remarks that the basis of the work is the doctrine of
justification by faith, the sole authority invoked is that of the
Scriptures, the only head of the church is Jesus Christ, the perfect
church is the invisible church, the visible church is recognized by the
preaching of the Gospel in its purity, and by the administration of the
_two_ sacraments as originally instituted. He adds that the doctrines of
the Lord's Supper and of predestination are expounded in a thoroughly
Calvinistic manner. See Professor S.'s excellent monograph, "Le
mysticisme quietiste en France au debut de la reformation sous Francois
premier," read before the Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., Bulletin, vi.
449, etc.]
[Footnote 209: Historia de ortu, progressu et ruina haereseon hujus
saeculi (Col. 1614), lib. vii. c. 3, p. 392.]
[Footnote 210: _E. g._, Tabaraud, Biographie univ., art. Roussel.]
[Footnote 211: Haag, France protestante, art. Gerard Roussel; Gaillard,
Hist. de Francois premier, vi. 418; Flor. de Raemond, _ubi supra_.]