CALVIN AND GENEVA.--MORE SYSTEMATIC PERSECUTION BY THE KING.
[Sidenote: The placards of 1534 mark an epoch in the history of the
Huguenots.]
In the initial stage of great enterprises a point may sometimes be
distinguished at which circumstances, in themselves trivial, have shaped
the entire future. Such a point in the history of the Huguenots is
marked by the appearance of the "Placards" of 1534. The pusillanimous
retreat of Bishop Briconnet from the advanced post he had at first
assumed, robbed Protestantism of an important advantage which might have
been retained had the prelate proved true to his convictions. But the
"Placards," with their stern and uncompromising logic, their biting
sarcasm, their unbridled invective, directed equally against the
absurdities of the mass and the inconsistencies of its advocates,
exerted a far more lasting and powerful influence than even the
lamentable defection of the Bishop of Meaux. Until now the attitude of
Francis with respect to the "new doctrines" had been uncertain and
wavering. It was by no means impossible that, imitating the example of
the Elector of Saxony, the French monarch should even yet put himself at
the head of the movement. Severe persecution had, indeed, dogged the
steps of the Reformation. Fire and gibbet had been mercilessly employed
to destroy it. The squares of Paris had already had the baptism of
blood. But the cruelties complained of by the "Lutherans," if tolerated
by Francis, had their origin in the bigotry of others. The Sorbonne and
the Parisian Parliament, Chancellor Duprat and the queen mother, Louise
of Savoie, are entitled to the unenviable distinction of having
instigated the sanguinary measures of repression directed against the
professors of the Protestant faith, of which we have already met with
many fruits. The monarch, greedy of glory, ambitious of association with
cultivated minds, and aspiring to the honor of ushering in the new
Augustan age, more than once seemed half-inclined to embrace those
religious views which commended themselves to his taste by association
with the fresh and glowing ideas of the great masters in science and
art. More than once had the champions of the Church trembled for their
hold upon the sceptre-bearing arm; while as often their opponents, with
Francis's own sister, had cherished illusory hopes that the eloquent
addresses of Roussel and other court-preachers had left a deep impress
on the king's heart.
[Sidenote: The orthodoxy of Francis no longer questioned.]
But the "Placards" effectually dissipated alike these hopes and these
fears. There was no longer any question as to the orthodoxy of Francis.
Apologists for the Reformation might seek to undeceive his mind and
remove his prejudices. His own emissaries might endeavor to persuade the
Germans, of whose alliance he stood in need, that his views differed
little from theirs. But there can be no doubt that, whatever his
previous intentions had been, from this time forth his resolution was
taken, to use his own expression already brought to the reader's notice,
to live and die in Mother Holy Church, and demonstrate the justice of
his claim to the title of "very Christian." The audacity of the
Protestant enthusiast who penetrated even into the innermost recesses of
the royal castle, and affixed the placards to the very chamber door of
the king, was turned to good account by Cardinal Tournon and other
courtiers of like sentiments, and was adduced as a proof of the
assertion so often reiterated, that a change of religion necessarily
involved also a revolution in the State. The free tone of the placards
seemed to reveal a contemptuous disregard of dignities. The ridicule
cast upon the doctrine of transubstantiation was an assault on one of
the few dogmas respecting which Francis had implicit confidence in the
teachings of the Church. Henceforth the king figures on the page of
history as a determined opponent and persecutor of the Reformation, less
hostile, indeed, to the "Lutherans," than to the "Sacramentarians," or
"Zwinglians," but nevertheless an avowed enemy of innovation. The
change was recognized and deplored by the Reformers themselves; who,
seeing Francis in the last years of his reign give the rein to shameful
debauchery, and meantime suffer the public prisons to overflow with
hundreds of innocent men and women, awaiting punishment for no other
offence than their religious faith, pointedly compared him to the
effeminate Sardanapalus surrounded by his courtezans.[387]
[Sidenote: Change in the courtiers.]
While so marked a change came over the disposition of the king, it is
not strange that a similar revolution was noticed in the sentiments of
the courtiers--a class ever on the alert to detect the slightest
variation in the breeze to which they trim their sails. The greater part
of the high dignitaries, the early historian of the reformed churches
informs us, adapting themselves to the king's humor, abandoned the study
of the Bible, and in time became violent opponents of practices which
they had sanctioned by their own example. Even Margaret of Navarre is
accused by the same authority--and he honestly represents the belief of
the contemporary reformers--of having yielded to these seductive
influences. She plunged, like the rest, he tells us, into conformity
with the most reprehensible superstitions; not that she approved them,
but because Gerard Roussel and similar teachers persuaded her that they
were things indifferent. Thus, allowing herself to trifle with truth,
she was so blinded by the spirit of error as to offer an asylum in her
court of Nerac to Quintin and Pocques, blasphemous "Libertines" whose
doctrines called forth a refutation from the pen of Calvin.[388]
[Sidenote: The French Reformation becomes a popular movement.]
[Sidenote: Geneva the centre of activity.]
The French Reformation was thus constrained to become a _popular_
movement. The king had refused to lead it. The nobles turned their backs
upon it. Its adherents, threatened with the gallows and stake, or driven
into banishment, could no longer look for encouragement or direction
toward Paris and the vicinage of the court. The timid counsels of the
high-born were to be exchanged for the bold and fiery words of reformers
sprung from the _people_. Excluded from the luxurious capital, the
Huguenots were, during a long series of years, to draw their inspiration
from a city at the foot of the Alps--a city whose invigorating climate
was no less adapted to harden the intellectual and moral constitution
than the bodily frame, and where rugged Nature, if she bestowed wealth
with no lavish hand, manifested her impartiality by more liberal
endowments conferred upon man himself. Geneva henceforth becomes the
centre of reformatory activity, of which fact we need no stronger
evidence than the severe legislation of France to destroy its influence;
and the same causes that gave the direction of the movement to the
people shaped its theological tendencies. Under the guidance of Francis
and Margaret, it must have assumed much of the German or Lutheran type;
or, to speak more correctly, the direct influence of Germany upon
France, attested by the name of "Lutherans," up to this time the
ordinary appellation of the French Protestants, would have been rendered
permanent. But now the persecution they had experienced, in consequence
of their opposition to the papal mass, confirmed the French reformers in
their previous views, and disinclined them to admit even such a
"consubstantiation" as Luther's followers insisted upon.
[Sidenote: Geneva secures its independence.]
The same complicated political motives that led Francis to relax his
excessive rigor against the Protestants of his realm, in order to avoid
provoking the anger of the German princes, prompted him to assist in
securing the independence of Geneva, which, at the time, he little
dreamed would so soon become the citadel of French Protestantism. After
a prolonged contest, the city on the banks of the Rhone had shaken off
the yoke of its bishop, and had bravely repelled successive assaults
made by the Duke of Savoy. The first preachers of the Reformation, Farel
and Froment, after a series of attempts and rebuffs for romantic
interest inferior to no other episode in an age of stirring adventure,
had seen the new worship accepted by the majority of the people, and by
the very advocates of the old system, Caroli and Chapuis. If the grand
council had thus far hesitated to give a formal sanction to the
religious change, it was only through fear that the taking of so decided
a step might provoke more powerful enemies than the neighboring duke.
The latter, being fully resolved to humble the insubordinate burgesses,
had for two years been striving to cut off their supplies by garrisons
maintained in adjoining castles and strongholds; nor would his plans,
perhaps, have failed, but for the intervention of two powerful
opponents--Francis and the Swiss Canton of Berne.
[Sidenote: with the assistance of Francis I.]
Louise de Savoie was the sister of Duke Charles. Her son had a double
cause of resentment against his uncle: Charles had refused him free
passage through his dominions, when marching against the Milanese; and,
contrary to all justice, he persistently refused to give up the marriage
portion of his sister, the king's mother. Francis avenged himself, both
for the insult and for the robbery, by permitting a gentleman of his
bedchamber, by the name of De Verez, a native of Savoy, to throw himself
into the beleaguered city with a body of French soldiers.
[Sidenote: and the Bernese.]
While Geneva was thus strengthened from within, the Bernese, on receipt
of an unsatisfactory reply to an appeal in behalf of their allies, came
to their assistance with an army of ten or twelve thousand men.
Discouraged by the threatening aspect his affairs had assumed, Charles
relaxed his grasp on the throat of his revolted subjects, and withdrew
to a safe distance. His obstinacy, however, cost him the permanent loss
not only of Geneva, but of a considerable part of his most valuable
territories, including the Pays de Vaud--a district which, after
remaining for more than two hundred and fifty years a dependency of
Berne, has within the present century (in 1803), become an independent
canton of the Swiss confederacy.[389]
[Sidenote: Calvin the apologist of the Protestants.]
The horrible slanders put in circulation abroad, in justification of the
atrocities with which the unoffending Protestants of France were
visited, furnished the motive for the composition and publication of an
apology that instantly achieved unprecedented celebrity, and has long
outlived the occasion that gave it birth. The apology was the
"Institutes;" the author, John Calvin. With the appearance of his
masterpiece, a great writer and theologian, destined to exercise a wide
and lasting influence not only upon France, but over the entire
intellectual world, enters upon the stage of French history to take a
leading part in the unfolding religious and political drama.
[Sidenote: His birth and training.]
[Sidenote: Studies at Paris;]
[Sidenote: also at Orleans and Bourges.]
John Calvin was born on the tenth of July, 1509, at Noyon, a small but
ancient city of Picardy. His family was of limited means, but of
honorable extraction. Gerard Cauvin, his father, had successively held
important offices in connection with the episcopal see. As a man of
clear and sound judgment, he was sought for his counsel by the gentry
and nobility of the province--a circumstance that rendered it easy for
him to give to his son a more liberal course of instruction than
generally fell to the lot of commoners. It is not denied by Calvin's
most bitter enemies that he early manifested striking ability. In
selecting for him one of the learned professions, his father naturally
preferred the church, as that in which he could most readily secure for
his son speedy promotion. It may serve to illustrate the degree of
respect at this time paid to the prescriptions of canon law, to note
that Charles de Hangest, Bishop of Noyon, conferred on John Calvin the
_Chapelle de la Gesine_, with revenues sufficient for his maintenance,
when the boy was but just twelve years of age! Such abuses as the gift
of ecclesiastical benefices to beardless youths, however, were of too
frequent occurrence to attract special notice or call forth unfriendly
criticism. With the same easy disregard of churchly order the chapter of
the cathedral of Noyon permitted Calvin, two years later, to go to
Paris, for the purpose of continuing his studies, without loss of
income; although, to save appearances, a pretext was found in the
prevalence of some contagious disease in Picardy. Not long after, his
father perceiving the singular proficiency he manifested, determined to
alter his plans, and devoted his son to the more promising department of
the law, a decision in which Calvin himself, already conscious of secret
aversion for the superstitions of the papal system, seems dutifully to
have acquiesced. To a friend and near relation, Pierre Robert
Olivetanus, the future translator of the Bible, he probably owed both
the first impulse toward legal studies and the enkindling of his
interest in the Sacred Scriptures. Proceeding next to Orleans, in the
university of which the celebrated Pierre de l'Etoile, afterward
President of the Parliament of Paris, was lecturing on law with great
applause, Calvin in a short time achieved distinction. Marvellous
stories were told of his rapid mastery of his subject. Not only did he
occasionally fill the chair of an absent professor, and himself lecture,
to the great admiration of the classes, but he was offered the formal
rank of the doctorate without payment of the customary fees. Declining
an honorable distinction which would have interfered with his plan of
perfecting himself elsewhere, he subsequently visited the University of
Bourges, in order to enjoy the rare advantage of listening to Andrea
Alciati, of Milan, reputed the most learned and eloquent legal
instructor of the age.
[Sidenote: His studies under Wolmar.]
Meanwhile, however, Calvin's interest in biblical study had been
steadily growing, and at Bourges that great intellectual and religious
change appears to have been effected which was essential to his future
success as a reformer. He attached himself to Melchior Wolmar, a
distinguished professor of Greek, who had brought with him from Germany
a fervent zeal for the Protestant doctrines. Wolmar, reading in the
young law student the brilliant abilities that were one day to make his
name illustrious, prevailed upon him to devote himself to the study of
the New Testament in the original. Day and night were spent in the
engrossing pursuit, and here were laid the foundations of that profound
biblical erudition which, at a later date, amazed the world, as well,
unfortunately, as of that feeble bodily health that embittered all
Calvin's subsequent life with the most severe and painful maladies, and
abridged in years an existence crowded with great deeds.
[Sidenote: Translates Seneca "De Clementia."]
The illness and death of his father called Calvin back to Noyon,[390]
but in 1529 we find him again in Paris, where three years later he
published his first literary effort. This was a commentary on the two
books of Seneca, "De Clementia," originally addressed to the Emperor
Nero. The opinion has long prevailed that it was no casual selection of
a theme, but that Calvin had conceived the hope of mitigating hereby the
severity of the persecution then raging. The author's own
correspondence, however, betrays less anxiety for the attainment of that
lofty aim, than nervous uneasiness respecting the literary success of
his first venture. Indeed, this is not the only indication that, while
Calvin was already, in 1532, an accomplished scholar, he was scarcely as
yet a _reformer_, and that the stories of his activity before this time
as a leader and religious teacher, at Paris and even at Bourges, deserve
only to be classed with the questionable myths obscuring much of his
history up to the time of his appearance at Geneva.[391]
[Sidenote: Calvin's escape from Paris to Angouleme.]
The incident that occasioned Calvin's flight from Paris was narrated in
a previous chapter. Escaping from the officers sent to apprehend him as
the real author of the inaugural address of the rector, Nicholas Cop,
Calvin found safety and scholastic leisure in the house of his friend
Louis du Tillet, at Angouleme. If we could believe the accounts of later
writers, we should imagine the young scholar dividing his time in this
retreat between the preparation of his "Institutes" and systematic
labors for the conversion of the inhabitants of the south-west of
France. Tradition still points out the grottos in the vicinity of
Poitiers, where, during a residence in that city, Calvin is said to have
exclaimed, pointing to the Bible lying open before him: "Here is my
mass;" and then, with uncovered head and eyes turned toward heaven,
"Lord, if at the judgment-day thou shalt reprove me because I have
abandoned the mass, I shall reply with justice, 'Lord, thou hast not
commanded it. Here is thy law. Here are the Scriptures, the rule thou
hast given me, wherein I have been unable to find any other sacrifice
than that which was offered upon the altar of the cross!'"[392]
[Sidenote: He resigns his benefices.]
[Sidenote: He reaches Basle.]
The caverns bearing Calvin's name may never have witnessed his
preaching, and the address ascribed to him rests on insufficient
authority;[393] but it is certain that the future reformer about this
time took his first decided step in renouncing connection with the Roman
Church, by resigning his benefices, the revenues of which he had
enjoyed, although precluded by his youth from receiving ordination.[394]
Not many months later, finding himself solicited on all sides to take an
active part as a teacher of the little companies of Protestants arising
in different cities of France, he resolved to leave France and court
elsewhere obscurity and leisure to prosecute undisturbed his favorite
studies.[395] Accordingly, we find him, after a brief visit to Paris and
Orleans, reaching the city of Basle, apparently toward the close of the
year 1534.[396]
[Sidenote: Apologetic character given to his great work.]
It was here that Calvin appears to have conceived for the first time the
purpose of giving a practical aim to the great work upon the composition
of which he had been some time busy. In spite of his professions of
unsullied honor, Francis the First had not hesitated to disseminate, by
means of his agents beyond the Rhine, the most unfounded and injurious
reports respecting his Protestant subjects. It was time that these
aspersions should be cleared away, and an attempt be made to touch the
heart of the persecuting monarch with compassion for the unoffending
objects of his blind fury. Such was the object Calvin set before himself
in a preface to the first edition of the "Institutes," addressed "To the
Very Christian King of France."[397] It was a document of rare
importance.
[Sidenote: The preface to the "Christian Institutes."]
[Sidenote: Eloquent peroration.]
He briefly explained the original design of his work to be the
instruction of his countrymen, whom he knew to be hungering and
thirsting for the truth. But the persecutions that had arisen and that
left no place for sound doctrine in France induced him to make the
attempt at the same time to acquaint the king with the real character of
the Protestants and their belief. He assured Francis that the book
contained nothing more nor less than the creed for the profession of
which so many Frenchmen were being visited with imprisonment,
banishment, outlawry, and even fire, and which it was sought to
exterminate from the earth. He drew a fearful picture of the calumnies
laid to the charge of this devoted people, and of the wretched church of
France, already half destroyed, yet still a butt for the rage of its
enemies. It was the part of a true king, as the vicegerent of God, to
administer justice in a cause so worthy of his consideration. Nor ought
the humble condition of the oppressed to indispose him to grant them a
hearing; for the doctrine they professed was not their own, but that of
the Almighty himself. He boldly contrasted the evangelical with the
papal church, and refuted the objections urged against the former. He
defended its doctrine from the charge of novelty, denied that
miracles--especially such lying wonders as those of Rome--were necessary
in confirmation of its truth, and showed that the ancient Fathers, far
from countenancing, on the contrary, condemned the superstitions of the
day. He refuted the charge that Protestants forsook old customs when
good, or abandoned the only visible church; and in a masterly manner
vindicated the Reformation from the oft-repeated charge of being the
cause of sedition, conflict, and confusion. He begged for a fair and
impartial hearing. "But," he exclaimed in concluding, "if the
suggestions of the malevolent so fill your ears as to leave no room for
the reply of the accused, and those importunate furies continue, with
your consent, to rage with bonds and stripes, with torture,
confiscation, and fire, then shall we yield ourselves up as sheep
appointed for slaughter, yet so as to possess our souls in patience, and
await the mighty hand of God, which will assuredly be revealed in good
time, and be stretched forth armed for the deliverance of the poor from
their affliction, and for the punishment of the blasphemers now exulting
in confidence of safety. May the Lord of Hosts, illustrious king,
establish your seat in righteousness and your throne with equity."[398]
[Sidenote: Has no effect in allaying persecution.]
[Sidenote: Calvin achieves distinction.]
The learned theologian's eloquent appeal failed to accomplish its end.
If Francis ever received, he probably disdained to read even the
dedication, classed by competent critics among the best specimens of
writing in the French language,[399] and must have regarded the volume
to which it was prefixed as a bold vindication of heresy, and scarcely
less insulting to his majesty than the placards themselves. Others,
better capable of forming a competent judgment, or more willing to give
it a dispassionate examination, applauded the success of a hazardous
undertaking that might have appalled even a more experienced writer than
the French exile of Noyon. The Institutes gave to a young man, who had
scarcely attained the age at which men of mark usually begin to occupy
themselves with important enterprises, the reputation of being the
foremost theologian of the age.
[Sidenote: He revises the Bible of Olivetanus.]
Other studies invited Calvin's attention. Not content with perfecting
himself in the original languages of the Holy Scriptures, he revised
with care the French Protestant Bible, translated by his relation
Olivetanus, of which we shall have occasion to speak in another chapter.
Meanwhile, in an age of intense mental and moral awakening, no
scholastic repose, such as he had pictured to himself, awaited one who
had made good his right to a foremost rank among the athletes in the
intellectual arena.
[Sidenote: Visits Italy.]
Before his unexpected call to a life of unremitting conflict, Calvin
visited Italy. In the entire absence of any trustworthy statement of the
occasion of this journey, it is almost idle to speculate on the objects
he had in view.[400] Certain, however, it is that the court of the
Duchess Renee, at Ferrara, offered to a patriotic Frenchman attractions
hard to be resisted.
[Sidenote: The court of Renee de France.]
[Sidenote: Brantome's eulogy of Renee.]
The younger daughter of Louis the Twelfth resembled her father not less
in character than in appearance and speech.[401] Cut off by the
pretended Salic law from the prospect of ascending the throne, she had
in her childhood been thrown as a straw upon the variable tide of
fortune. After having been promised in marriage to Charles of Spain,
heir to the most extensive and opulent dominions the sun shone upon, and
future Emperor of Germany, she had (1528) been given in marriage to the
ruler of a petty Italian duchy, himself as inferior to her in mind as in
moral character.[402] As for Renee, if her face was homely and
unprepossessing, her intellect was vigorous. She had turned to good
account the opportunities for self-improvement afforded by her high
rank. Admiring courtiers made her classical and philosophical
attainments the subject of lavish panegyric, perhaps with a better basis
of fact than in the case of many other princes of the time; while with
the French, her countrymen, the generous hospitality she dispensed won
for her unfading laurels. "Never was there a Frenchman," writes the Abbe
de Brantome, "who passing through Ferrara applied to her in his distress
and was suffered to depart without receiving ample assistance to reach
his native land and home. If he were unable to travel through illness,
she had him cared for and treated with the utmost solicitude, and then
gave him money to continue his journey."[403] Ten thousand poor
Frenchmen are said to have been saved by her munificent charity, on the
occasion of the recall of the Duke of Guise, after Constable
Montmorency's disastrous defeat at St. Quentin. Her answer to the
remonstrance of her servants against this excessive drain upon her
slender resources bore witness at once to the sincerity of her
patriotism and to a virile spirit which no Salic law could
extinguish.[404]
The brief stay of Calvin at Ferrara is involved in the same obscurity
that attends his motives in visiting Italy. But it is known that he
exerted at this time a marked influence not only on others,[405] but on
Renee de France herself, who, from this period forward, appears in the
character of an avowed friend of the reformatory movement. Calvin had
from prudence assumed the title of _Charles d'Espeville_, and this name
was retained as a signature in his subsequent correspondence with the
duchess.
[Sidenote: Calvin leaves Ferrara.]
A point so close to the centre of the Roman Catholic world as Ferrara
could scarcely afford safety to an ardent reformer, even if the fame of
his "Institutes" had not yet reached Rome; and Ercole the Second was too
dependent upon the Holy See to shrink from sacrificing the guest his
wife had invited to the palace. Returning, therefore, from Ferrara,
without apparently pursuing his journey to Rome or even to Florence,
Calvin retraced his steps and took refuge beyond the Alps. Possibly he
may have stopped on the way in the valley of Aosta, and displayed a
missionary activity, which has been denied by several modern critics,
but is attested by local monuments and tradition, and has some support
in contemporary documents.[406]
[Sidenote: Revisits France.]
[Sidenote: Is recognized while passing through Geneva.]
[Sidenote: Farel compels him to remain.]
Once more in Basle, Calvin resolved, after a final visit to the home of
his childhood, to seek out some quiet spot in Germany, there to give
himself up to those scholarly labors which he fancied would be more
profitable to France than the most active enterprises he might engage in
as a preacher of the Gospel. He had accomplished the first part of his
design, had disposed of his property in Noyon, and was returning with
his brother and sister, when the prevalence of war in the Duchy of
Lorraine led him to diverge from his most direct route, so as to
traverse the dominions of the Duke of Savoy and the territories of the
confederate cantons of Switzerland. Under these circumstances, for the
first time, he entered the city of Geneva, then but recently delivered
from the yoke of its bishop and of the Roman Church. He had intended to
spend there only a single night.[407] He was accidentally recognized by
an old friend, a Frenchman, who at the time professed the reformed
faith, but subsequently returned to the communion of the Church of
Rome.[408] Du Tillet was the only person in Geneva that detected in the
traveller, Charles d'Espeville, the John Calvin who had written the
"Institutes." He confided the secret to Farel, and the intrepid reformer
whose office it had hitherto been to demolish, by unsparing and
persistent blows, the popular structure of superstition, at once
concluded that, in answer to his prayers, a man had been sent him by God
capable of laying, amid the ruins, the foundations of a new and more
perfect fabric. Farel sought Calvin out, and laid before him the urgent
necessities of a church founded in a city where, under priestly rule,
disorder and corruption had long been rampant. At first his words made
no impression. Calvin had traced out for himself a very different
course, and was little inclined to exchange a life of study for the
perpetual struggles to which he was so unexpectedly summoned. But when
he met Farel's request with a positive refusal, pleading inexperience,
fondness for literary pursuits, and aversion to scenes of tumult and
confusion, the Genevese reformer assumed a more decided tone. Acting
under an impulse for which he could scarcely account himself, Farel
solemnly prayed that the curse of God might descend on Calvin's leisure
and studies, if purchased at the price of neglecting the duty to which
the voice of the Almighty Himself, by His providence, distinctly called
him.[409]
The amazed and terrified student felt--to use his own expression--that
God had stretched forth His arm from heaven and laid violent hold upon
him, rendering all further resistance impossible. He yielded to the
unwelcome call, and became the first theological professor of Geneva.
Somewhat later he was prevailed upon to add to his functions the duties
of one of the pastors of the city.
[Sidenote: Farel's own recollections.]
If the scene impressed itself ineffaceably on the memory or one of the
principal actors, its effect, we may be sure, was no less lasting in the
case of the other. More than a quarter of a century after, Farel, on
receiving the announcement that his worst apprehensions had been
realized, in the death of his "so dear and necessary brother Calvin,"
wrote to a friend a touching letter, in which he referred in a few
sentences to the same striking interview. "Oh, why am not I taken away
in his stead, and why is not he, so useful, so serviceable, here in
health, to minister long to the churches of our Lord! To Whom be
blessing and praise, that, of His grace, He made me fall in with him
where I had never expected to meet him, and, contrary to his own plans,
compelled him to stop at Geneva, and made use of him there and
elsewhere! For he was urged on one side and another more than could be
told, and _specially by me_, who, in God's name, urged him to undertake
matters that were harder than death. And albeit _he begged me several
times, in the name of God, to have mercy on him and suffer him to serve
God in other ways_, as he has always thus occupied himself,
nevertheless, seeing that what I asked was in accordance with God's
will, in doing himself violence he has done more and more promptly than
any one else has done, surpassing not only others, but himself. Oh, how
happily has he run an excellent race!"[410]
[Sidenote: Calvin becomes the head of the commonwealth.]
[Sidenote: His view respecting church and state,]
[Sidenote: and the punishment of heresy.]
For twenty-eight years the name of Calvin was inseparably associated
with that of the city which owes its chief renown to his connection with
it. Excepting the three years of exile, from 1538 to 1541, occasioned by
a powerful reaction against his rigid system of public morality, he was,
during the whole of this period, the recognized head of the Genevese
commonwealth. A complete mastery of the principles of law, acquired by
indefatigable study at Orleans and Bourges, before the loftier teachings
of theology engrossed his time and faculties, qualified him to draw up a
code to regulate the affairs of his adopted country. If its detailed
prohibitions and almost Draconian severity are repugnant to the spirit
of the present age, the general wisdom of the legislator is vindicated
by the circumstance that he transformed a city noted for the prevalence
of every form of turbulence and immorality into the most orderly
republic of Christendom. Few, it is true, will be found to defend the
theory respecting the duty of the state toward the church in which
Calvin acquiesced. But the cruel deaths of Gruet and Servetus were only
the legitimate fruits of the doctrine that the civil authority is both
empowered and bound to exercise vigilant supervision over the purity of
the church. In this doctrine the reformers of the sixteenth century were
firm believers. They held, as John Huss had held a hundred years
before, that _Truth_ could appropriately appeal for support to physical
force, under circumstances that would by no means have justified a
similar resort on the part of _Error_. The consistent language of their
lives was, "If we speak not the truth, we refuse not to die." "If the
Pope condemns the pious for heresy, and furious judges unjustly execute
on the innocent the penalty due to heretics, what madness is it thence
to infer that heretics ought not to be destroyed for the purpose of
aiding the pious! As for myself, since I read that Paul said that he did
not refuse death if he had done anything to deserve it, I openly offered
myself frequently prepared to undergo sentence of death, if I had taught
anything contrary to the doctrine of piety. And I added, that I was most
worthy of any punishment imaginable, if I seduced any one from the faith
and doctrine of Christ. _Assuredly I cannot have a different view with
regard to others from that which I entertain respecting myself._"[411]
So wrote Farel, and almost all his contemporaries agreed with him. And
thus it happened that the conscientious Calvin and the polished Beza
were at the pains of writing long treatises, to prove that "heretics are
justly to be constrained by the sword,"[412] almost at the very moment
when they were begging the Bernese to intercede with their ally, King
Henry the Second, of France, in behalf of the poor Protestants
languishing in the dungeons of Lyons, or writing consolatory letters to
Peloquin and De Marsac, destined to suffer death in the flames not many
days before the execution of the Spanish physician at Geneva.[413]
[Sidenote: His fault the fault of the age.]
In truth, however, it was less Calvin than the age in which he lived
that must be held responsible for the crime against humanity with which
his name has come to be popularly associated. He did, indeed, desire and
urge that Servetus should be punished capitally, although he made an
earnest but unsuccessful effort to induce the magistrates to mitigate
the severity of the sentence, by the substitution of some more merciful
mode of execution.[414] But the other principal reformers of Germany and
Switzerland--Melanchthon, Haller, Peter Martyr, and Bullinger gave their
hearty endorsement to the cruel act;[415] while if any further proof
were needed to attest the sincerity and universality of approval
accorded to it, it is afforded by the last letters of the brave men who
were themselves awaiting at Chambery, a few mouths later, death by the
same excruciating fate as that which befell Servetus at Geneva.[416]
[Sidenote: Calvin shuns notoriety.]
The prominence obtained by Calvin as chief theologian and pastor of the
church of Geneva, however, was foreign to his tastes. He was by
preference a scholar, averse to notoriety, fond of retirement, and, if
we are to believe his own judgment, timid and even pusillanimous by
nature.[417] He had in vain sought seclusion in France. From Basle and
Strasbourg he made a hasty retreat in order to preserve his incognito,
and avoid the fame the Institutes were likely to earn for him.[418] Only
Farel's adjuration detained him in Geneva, and he subsequently confessed
that his fortitude was not so great but that he rejoiced even more than
was meet when the turbulent Genevese expelled him from their city.[419]
But not even then was he able to secure the coveted quiet, for Martin
Bucer was not slow in imitating the urgency of Farel, and employed the
warning example of the prophet Jonah seeking to flee from the will of
the Almighty, to induce him to employ himself in the organization and
administration of the French church at Strasbourg.[420] Not less decided
was Calvin's reluctance to accede to the repeated invitations of the
council and people of Geneva, that he should return and resume his
former position.
[Sidenote: His character and natural endowments.]
[Sidenote: He is consulted by Protestants in every quarter of Europe.]
Such was the man who was called to take the reins of the spiritual
direction, not only of a single small city, but of a large body of
earnest thinkers throughout France, and even to distant parts of
Christendom--a man of stern and uncompromising devotion to that system
which he believed to be truth; of slender imagination, but of a memory
prodigious in its grasp, of an understanding wonderfully acute, and of
a power of exposition and expression unsurpassed by that possessed by
any writer among his contemporaries. His constitution, naturally weak,
had been still further enfeebled by excessive application to study. In
his letters there are frequent references to the interruptions
occasioned by violent pains in his head, often compelling him to stop
many times in the writing of a single letter.[421] His strength was
taxed to the utmost by the unremitting toil incident to his multifarious
occupations. The very recital of his labors fills us with amazement. He
preached twice every Sunday, besides frequent sermons on other days. He
lectured three times a week on theology. He made addresses in the
consistory, and delivered a lecture every Friday in the conference on
the Scriptures known as the "Congregation." To these public burdens must
be added others imposed upon him by his wide reputation. From all parts
of the Protestant world, but especially from every spot in France where
the Reformation had gained a foothold, the opinion of Calvin was eagerly
sought on various points of doctrine and ecclesiastical practice. To
Geneva, and especially to Calvin, the obscure and persecuted adherents
of the same faith, not less than the most illustrious of the Protestant
nobility, looked for counsel and direction. Under his guidance that
system was adopted for supplying France with ministers of the Gospel
which led the Venetian ambassador, near the end of the great reformer's
life, to describe Geneva as the mine from which the ore of heresy was
extracted.[422] How faithfully he discharged the trust committed to him
is sufficiently attested by a voluminous correspondence, some portions
of which have escaped the wreck of time; while the steady advance of the
doctrines he advocated is an enduring monument to the zeal and sagacity
of his exertions.
[Sidenote: Meets with bitter opposition,]
[Sidenote: but obtains the support of the people.]
In his arduous undertaking, however, Calvin had to encounter no little
opposition in the very city of Geneva. It was this, even more than
bodily infirmity, that bore severely upon his spirits, and robbed him of
the rest demanded alike by his overtaxed body and mind. His advocacy of
strenuous discipline procured him relentless enemies among the Genevese
of the "Libertine" party. Those were stormy times for Calvin, when, in
derision of the student, legislator, and theologian, deafening salutes
were fired by night before his doors, and when the dogs were set upon
him in the streets.[423] But, when we read of the violent antagonism
elicited by the publication of the severe provisions of the
"Ordinances," regulating even the minor details of the life of a
Genevese citizen, it must not be forgotten that the unpopular system,
although devised by Calvin, was not imposed by him upon unwilling
subjects, but established by a free and decisive vote of the people, in
the exercise of its sovereignty, and influenced to its adoption by the
same considerations that had determined Calvin himself in devising
it.[424]
[Sidenote: An estimate of Calvin by Etienne Pasquier.]
Such a man could not fail to secure the respect of his opponents, and
the undisguised admiration of all who could regard his character and
work with some degree of impartiality. Among the most virtuous of his
contemporaries was the excellent Etienne Pasquier, who described him as
he appeared in the eyes of men of culture--men who, without forsaking
the Roman Catholic Church, were stanch friends of reform and of
progress. "He was a man," says Pasquier, "that wrote equally well in
Latin and in French, and to whom our French tongue is greatly indebted
for having enriched it with an infinite number of fine touches. It were
my wish that it had been for a better subject. He was a man, moreover,
marvellously versed and nurtured in the books of the Holy Scriptures,
and such that, had he directed his mind in the right way, he might have
ranked with the most illustrious doctors of the church. And, in the
midst of his books and his studies, he was possessed of the most active
zeal for the progress of his sect. We sometimes saw our prisons
overflowing with poor, misled people, whom he unceasingly exhorted,
consoled, and comforted by his letters; and there were never lacking
messengers to whom the doors were open, in spite of any exertions of the
jailers to the contrary. Such were the methods by which he gained over
step by step a part of our France."[425]
[Sidenote: Continued persecution.]
[Sidenote: The tongues of the victims cut out, and records burned.]
The flames of the persecution kindled by the publication of the placards
continued to burn. From Paris, where Laurent de la Croix fell a victim
to the rage of the priests, the conflagration spread to Essarts, in
Poitou, where a simple girl was consigned to the fire for reproving a
Franciscan monk; and to Macon, where an unlearned peasant underwent a
like punishment, amazing his judges by the familiarity he displayed with
the Bible. Agen, in Guyenne, and Beaune, in Burgundy, witnessed similar
scenes of atrocious cruelty; while at Nonnay, Andre Berthelin was burned
alive, because, when wending his way to the great fair of Lyons, he
refused to kneel down before one of the many pictures or images set up
by the roadside for popular adoration. At Rouen, four brave reformers
were thrown into a tumbril, reeking with filth, to be drawn to the place
of execution, one of them exclaiming with radiant countenance: "Truly,
as says the apostle, we are the offscouring of the earth, and we now
stink in the nostrils of the men of the world. But let us rejoice, for
the savor of our death will be a sweet savor unto God, and will profit
our brethren."[426] But the details of these executions are too horrible
and too similar to find a place here. Nor, indeed, would it be possible
to frame a complete statement of the case of each of the constant
sufferers; for, from this time forward, it became a favorite practice
with those who presided over these bloody assizes to cut out the tongues
of their victims, lest their eloquent appeals should shake the
confidence of the spectators in the established faith, and afterward to
throw the official record of the trial of Protestants into the fire that
consumed their bodies, in order to prevent its furnishing edifying
material for the martyrology.[427]
[Sidenote: Failure of persecution.]
But, as usual, persecution failed utterly of accomplishing what had been
expected of it. For a brief moment, indeed, Francis flattered himself
that exemplary punishments had purged his kingdom of the professors of
the hated doctrines.[428] But, in the course of a few years, he
discovered that, in spite of continued severities, the "new faith" had
so spread--partly by means of persons suffered to return, in virtue of
the royal declaration of Coucy (on the sixteenth of July, 1535), and
partly through the teachings of others who lay concealed during the
first violence of the storm--that he had good reason to fear that the
last errors were worse than the first.[429] What rendered the matter
still more serious was the favor shown to the heretics by persons of
high rank and influence.[430]
[Sidenote: Edict of Fontainebleau cuts off appeal, June 1, 1540.]
With the view of employing still more rigid means for the detection and
punishment of the offenders, a fresh edict was published from
Fontainebleau, on the first of June, 1540. In this long and sanguinary
document the monarch--or the Cardinal of Tournon, who enjoyed the credit
of a principal part in its preparation--enjoined upon the officers of
all the royal courts, whether judges of parliament, seneschals, or
bailiffs, to institute proceedings concurrently against all persons
tainted with heresy. No appeal was to be permitted to delay their
action. The examination of the suspected took precedence of all other
cases. Tribunals of inferior jurisdiction were instructed to send
prisoners for heresy, together with the record of their examination, to
the sovereign courts of parliament, there to be tried in the "Chambre
criminelle." The appeal to the "Grand' chambre," customarily allowed to
persons claiming immunity on account of order or station, was expressly
cut off, so as to render the course of justice more expeditious.
Negligent judges were threatened with suspension and removal from
office. The high vassals of the crown were ordered to lend to the royal
courts their counsel and assistance, and to surrender to them all
offenders as guilty of sedition and disturbance of the public
peace--crimes of which the king claimed exclusive cognizance.
Ecclesiastics were exhorted to show equal diligence in the prosecution
of culprits that were in orders. In short, every servant of the king was
bidden to abstain from harboring or favoring the "Lutherans," since the
errors and false doctrines the latter disseminated, it was said,
contained within them the crime of treason against God and the king, as
well as of sedition and riot.[431] Every loyal subject must, therefore,
denounce the heretics and employ all means to extirpate them, just as
all men are bound to run to help in extinguishing a public
conflagration.[432]
[Sidenote: Exceptional fairness of President Caillaud.]
The last injunction was not altogether unnecessary. Even among the
judges of parliament there were fair-minded persons not inclined to
condemn accused men or books on mere report. The ambassador of Henry the
Eighth having, in 1538, denounced an English translation of the Holy
Scriptures that was in press at Paris, the chancellor commissioned
President Caillaud to investigate the case. The latter, finding that the
printer's excuse was the scarcity of paper in England, quietly set about
a comparison of the suspected version with accessible French
translations. He said nothing to doctors of theology or royal
prosecuting officers. "It seemed to me," he reported, "quite unnecessary
to give the matter such notoriety. Moreover, I mistrusted that, without
further investigation, without even looking into it, they would have
condemned the English translation for the sole reason that it is in that
tongue. For I have seen them sustain that the Holy Scriptures ought not
to be translated into the French language or any other vernacular
tongue. Nevertheless, the Bible in French was printed in this city so
long ago as in 1529, and again this present year, and is for sale by the
most wealthy printers. For my part I have seen no prohibition either by
the church or by the secular authority, although I once heard some
decretal alleged in condemnation." Unfortunately such judges as Louis
Caillaud were rare--men that would take the pains to obtain the services
of a person acquainted with the English language to translate aloud a
Bible suspected of heretical teachings, while themselves testing its
accuracy by scanning versions made from the Vulgate and the Hebrew
original![433]
[Sidenote: Royal letters from Lyons, Aug. 30, 1542.]
Two years more had scarcely passed before fresh legislation against the
Protestants demonstrated the impotence of all measures thus far resorted
to. The interval had certainly been improved by their enemies, for the
stake had its victims to boast of.[434] And yet the new religious body
had its ministers and its secret conventicles, with an ever increasing
number of adherents. Accordingly, on the thirtieth of August, 1542,
Francis, then at Lyons, addressed new letters patent to the various
parliaments, enjoining new vigilance and activity. Previous edicts had
not borne all the fruit expected from them; for there was still a bad
seed of error and damnable doctrines--so wrote the king--growing and
multiplying from day to day. So exemplary a punishment must, therefore,
be inflicted, as might forever terrify offenders.[435] The king even
threatened delinquent prelates with seizure of their temporalities, in
case they failed to exercise due diligence in so important a
matter.[436]
[Sidenote: Audacity of the "Lutherans" of Bordeaux.]
[Sidenote: Francis I. and the Sacramentarians.]
King, bishops and parliaments were terribly in earnest. All were agreed
that Protestantism must and should be crushed, however little they
harmonized as to the reasons of its increase or the method of
suppressing it. The Archbishop of Bordeaux denounced to the parliament
of that city the growing audacity of the "Lutherans" of his diocese, who
had even dared to preach their doctrines publicly. He accounted for this
disorder by the fact that the prosecution and exemplary punishment of
heretics had ceased to be the uniform rule; as if the experience of the
past score of years had not demonstrated the futility of attempting to
compel religious uniformity by the fear of human tribunals and
ignominious death. He therefore begged the parliament to spare neither
him nor his brother prelates in the matter of defraying the expense of
bringing "Lutherans" to trial and death. The secular judges were of the
same mind with the prelates, and both took new courage from a
declaration of Francis himself, which the archbishop had recently heard
with his own ears at Angouleme. In the presence of Cardinal Tournon and
others, the king had assured him that "_he desired that no
sacramentarian should be permitted to abjure, but that all such heretics
should be remorselessly put to death_!"[437] By such pitiless measures
did Francis still think to establish his unimpeachable loyalty to the
doctrine of transubstantiation.
[Sidenote: Royal ordinance of Paris, July 23, 1543.]
But, as ill success continued to attend every attempt to crush the
Reformation in France, it was necessary to find some plausible
explanation of the failure. The ecclesiastical counsellors of the king
alleged that they discovered it in the recent edicts themselves, which
they represented as derogating from the efficiency of both prelates and
inquisitors of the faith. To meet this new objection, Francis
complaisantly published another ordinance (on the twenty-third of July,
1543), carefully defining the respective provinces of the lay and
clerical judges. Prelates and inquisitors were authorized to proceed, in
accordance with canon law, to obtain information alike against clergymen
and laymen, in case of suspected heresy, and the secular judges were
strictly enjoined to afford them all needed assistance in execution of
their writs of summons and arrest. But all persons guilty of open
heresy, and not actually in holy orders, must be given over, together
with the documents relating to their offences, to the royal judges and
to the courts of parliament, and by them tried as seditious disturbers
of the peace and tranquillity of the commonwealth and of the king's
subjects, secret conspirators against the prosperity of his estate, and
rebels against his authority and laws.[438] In order, however, to secure
to the ecclesiastical tribunals their full control over clergymen, it
was provided that any churchman condemned to banishment, or any other
punishment short of death, should immediately after the "amende
honorable," and before execution of sentence, be remitted to his
spiritual superiors to undergo deprivation of office, and such other
penalties as canon law might prescribe.[439]
[Sidenote: Heresy to be punished as sedition.]
[Sidenote: Repression proves a failure.]
But the succession of edicts, each surpassing the last in severity, had
not rendered the path of the judges, whether lay or ghostly, altogether
easy. There were found prisoners, accused of holding and teaching
heretical doctrines, well skilled in holy lore, however ignorant of the
casuistry of the schools, who made good their assertion that they could
give a warrant for all their distinctive tenets from the Sacred
Scriptures. Their arguments were so cogent, their citations were so
apposite, that the auditors who had come with the expectation of
witnessing the confusion of a heretic, often departed absorbed in
serious consideration of a system that had so much the appearance of
truth when defended by a simple man in jeopardy of his life, and when
fortified by the authority of the Bible. More learned reformers had
appealed successfully to the Fathers to whose teachings the church
avowed its implicit obedience. It was clear that some standard of
orthodoxy must be established. For, if St. Augustine or St. Cyprian
might be brought up to prove the errors of the priests, what was it but
allowing the reformers to place the Roman Church at the bar, even in the
very courts of justice? Might not the most damaging losses be expected
to flow from such trials?
The public courts, indeed, were not the only places where the
inconsistencies of the established church with its own ancient standards
and representative theologians were brought out into bold relief. The
pulpits of the very capital resounded, it was alleged, with
contradictory teachings, scandalizing the faithful not a little at the
holy season of Advent.[440]
[Sidenote: The Sorbonne's Twenty-five Articles.]
To put an end to so anomalous a state of affairs, the Parisian
theologians, with the consent of the king, resolved to enunciate the
true Catholic faith, in the form of twenty-five articles meeting all
questions now in dispute (on the tenth of March, 1543). Of the general
contents of this new formulary, it is sufficient to observe that it more
concisely expressed the doctrines developed in the decisions of the
Council of Trent; that it insisted upon baptism as essential to the
salvation even of infants; that it magnified the freedom of the human
will, and maintained the justification of the sinner by works as well as
by faith; and that, dwelling upon the bodily presence of Christ in the
consecrated wafer, it affirmed the propriety of denying the cup to the
laity, the utility of masses for the dead, the lawfulness of the
invocation of the blessed Virgin and the saints, the existence of
purgatory, the infallibility of the church, the authority of tradition,
and the divine right of the Pope.[441]
[Sidenote: Francis gives them the force of law.]
On the twenty-third of July, 1543, the very day of the publication of
the edict of persecution previously mentioned, Francis by letters-patent
gave the force of law to the exposition of the faith drawn up by the
theological faculty of "his blessed and eldest daughter, the University
of Paris." Henceforth no other doctrines could be professed in France.
Dissent was to be treated as "rebellion" against the royal
authority.[442]
[Sidenote: Persecution more systematic.]
[Sidenote: The inquisitor Matthieu Ory.]
The sanguinary legislation at which we have glanced bore its most
atrocious fruits in the last years of Francis, and in the reign of his
immediate successor. The consideration of this topic must, however, be
reserved for succeeding chapters. Until now the persecution had been
carried on with little system, and its intensity had varied according to
the natural temperament and disposition of the Roman Catholic prelates,
not less than the zeal of the civil judges. Many clergymen, as well as
lay magistrates, had exhibited a singular supineness in the detection
and punishment of the reformed. Some bishops, supposed to be at heart
friendly to the restoration of the church to its pristine purity of
doctrine and practice, had scarcely instituted a serious search. The
royal edicts themselves bear witness to their reluctance, in spite of
threatened suspension and deprivation. It is true that an attempt had
been made to secure greater thoroughness and uniformity, by augmenting
the number of inquisitors of the faith, and this, notwithstanding the
fact that their authority infringed upon that of the bishops, whose
right was scarcely questioned to exclusive cognizance of heresy within
their respective dioceses. Not only had Matthieu Ory[443] and others
been appointed with jurisdiction over the entire kingdom, but a special
inquisitor was created for the province of Normandy. Even these persons,
however, were not always equally zealous in the performance of their
allotted task. It was notorious that the good cheer with which Ory was
regaled by the astute Protestants of Sancerre led him to report them to
be excellent people. A deputy, who next visited the reputed heretics,
brought back an equally flattering statement. And so the persecuting
"lieutenant particulier" of Bourges seems to have had some ground for
his complaint, "that good wine and a right new coat caused all these
inquisitors to return well satisfied, without bringing him any
prey."[444]
[Sidenote: The Nicodemites and Libertins.]
It could not be otherwise, however, than that these severe measures and
the employment of new agents in the pitiless work of persecution should
induce many feeble souls to suppress their true sentiments, and to make
the attempt, under an external conformity with the Roman Church, to
maintain opinions and a private devotion quite inconsistent with their
professions. And, while the progress of the Reformation was seriously
impeded by the timidity of this class of irresolute
persons--appropriately styled by their contemporaries "the
_Nicodemites_"--scarcely less danger threatened the same doctrines from
the insidious assaults of the _Libertines_, a party which, ostensibly
aiming at reform and religious liberty, really asked only for freedom in
the indulgence of vicious propensities. Against both of these pernicious
tendencies the eloquent reformer of Geneva employed his pen in forcible
treatises, which were not without effect in checking their
inroads.[445]
[Sidenote: Margaret of Navarre at Bordeaux.]
It must be confessed that the Queen of Navarre herself gave no little
aid and comfort to the advocates of timid and irresolute counsels, by a
course singularly wanting in ingenuousness. This amiable princess knew
how to express herself with such ambiguity as to perplex both religious
parties and heartily satisfy neither the one side nor the other. She was
the avowed friend and correspondent of Melanchthon and Calvin. She was
believed to be in substantial agreement with the Protestants. Her views
of the fundamental doctrine of justification by faith and the paramount
authority of the Holy Scriptures were those for which many a Protestant
martyr had laid down his life. Even on the question of the Lord's
Supper, her opinions, if mystical and somewhat vague, were certainly far
removed from the dogmas of the Roman Church. She condemned, it is true,
the extreme to which the "Sacramentarians" went, but it was difficult to
see precisely wherein the modified mass she countenanced differed from
the reformed service. Certainly not a line in her correspondence with
Calvin points to any important difference of sentiment known by either
party to exist between them. What shall we say, then, on reading of such
language as she used in 1543, when addressing the Parliament of
Bordeaux? She had been deputed by her brother to represent him, and was,
consequently, received by the court, (on the twenty-fourth of May) with
honors scarcely, if at all, inferior to those that would have been
accorded to Francis had he presented himself in person. Her special
commission was to notify parliament of an expected attack by the
English, and to request that due preparation should be made to ward it
off. From this topic she passed to that of heresy, in respect to which
she expressed herself to this effect: "She exhorted and prayed the court
_to punish and burn the true heretics_, but to spare the innocent, and
have compassion upon the prisoners and captives."[446] If, as the
interesting minute of the queen's visit informs us, she next proceeded
to claim the immemorial right, as a daughter of France, to open the
prisons and liberate the inmates according to her good pleasure,[447] it
can scarcely be imagined that the assertion of the right at this time
had any other object in view than the release of those imprisoned for
conscience' sake. It is true that she took pains to protest that she
would avoid meddling with prisoners incarcerated for other crimes than
such as her brother was accustomed to pardon; but as the interference of
Francis in behalf of Berquin, Marot, and others accused of heresy, was
sufficiently notorious, her guarantee could scarcely be considered very
broad. Certainly she was not likely to find a "true heretic" worthy of
the stake among all those imprisoned as "Lutherans" in the city of
Bordeaux.
[Sidenote: Negotiations in Germany.]
[Sidenote: Hypocritical representations made by Charles of Orleans.]
While Francis, as we have seen, was from year to year aggravating the
severity of his enactments against the adherents of the Reformation in
his own kingdom, he did not forget his old role of ally of the
Protestant princes of the empire. It would be too wide a digression from
the true scope of this work, should we turn aside to chronicle the
successive attempts of the French monarch to secure these powerful
auxiliaries in his struggle with his great rival of the house of
Hapsburg. One incident must suffice. The hypocrisy of Francis could,
perhaps, go no farther than it carried him when, in 1543, his son
Charles, Duke of Orleans, at the head of a royal army took possession of
the Duchy of Luxemburg. The duke, who can hardly be imagined to have
allowed himself to take any important step, certainly no step fraught
with such momentous consequences as might be expected to follow this,
without explicit instructions from his father, at once despatched an
envoy to the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse. The
subordinate agent in this game of duplicity was instructed to assure the
great Protestant leaders that it was the earnest desire of the Duke of
Orleans to see the Gospel preached throughout the whole of France. It
was true that filial reverence had hitherto restrained him from
gratifying his desires in this direction in his Duchy of Orleans; but in
the government of Luxemburg and of all other territories acquired by
right of arms, he hoped to be permitted by his royal father to follow
his own preferences, and there he solemnly promised to introduce the
proclamation of God's holy word. In return for these liberal
engagements, the duke desired the German princes, then on the point of
meeting for conference at Frankfort, to admit him to an alliance
offensive and defensive, especially in matters concerning religion. He
assured them of the support not only of his own forces, but of his
father's troops, committed to him to use at his discretion, adding, as a
further motive, the prospect that the Gospel would find more ready
welcome in the rest of France, when the king saw its German advocates
close allies of his youngest son.[448]
[Sidenote: Commendable scepticism of the Germans.]
But the princes were much too familiar with the wiles of Francis to
repose any confidence in the lavish professions of his son. And the
historian who discovers that the more intimately the king strove to
associate himself with the German Protestants, the more fiercely did he
commit the Protestants of France to the flames, in order to demonstrate
to the Pope the immaculate orthodoxy of his religious belief, will not
fail to applaud their discernment. Not until toward the very close of
Francis's reign, when the Lutherans descried portents of a storm that
threatened them with utter extermination, raised by the bigotry or craft
of Charles the Fifth, did they manifest any anxiety to enter into near
connection with the French monarch.
Francis was reaping the natural rewards of a crooked policy, dictated by
no strong convictions of truth or duty, but shaped according to the
narrow suggestions of an unworthy ambition. If he punished heretics at
home, it was partly to secure on his side the common sentiment of the
Roman Catholic world, partly because the enemies of the Reformation had
persuaded him that the change of religion necessarily involved the
subversion of established order and of royal authority. If he made
overtures to the Protestant princes of Germany, the flimsy veil of
devotion to their interests was too transparent to conceal the total
want of concern for anything beyond his own personal aggrandizement.
Two mournful exemplifications of the fruits of his persecuting measures
must, however, be presented to the reader's notice, before the curtain
can be permitted to fall over the scene on which this monarch played his
part. The massacre of Merindol and Cabrieres and the execution of the
"Fourteen of Meaux" are the melancholy events that mark the close of a
reign opening, a generation earlier, so auspiciously.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 387: The Protestants might be pardoned, under the
circumstances, if their language was somewhat bitter respecting both
emperor and king. "Combien que j'espere que nostre _Antioche_ (Charles
V.), qui nous presse maintenant, sera serre de si pres, _qu'il ne luy
souviendra des gouttes_ de ses mains, ne de ses pieds; _car il en aura
par tout le corps_. De son compagnon _Sardanapalus_ (Francis I.), _Dieu
luy garde la pareille_. Car ils sont bien dignes de passer tous deux par
une mesme mesure." Calvin to M. de Falaise, Feb. 25, 1547, Lettres
francaises, i. 191.--The expression "Sardanapalus inter scorta" occurs
in a letter of Calvin to Farel, Feb. 20, 1546 (Bonnet, Letters of John
Calvin, ii., 35, 36). It will, therefore, be seen from the date that
Merle d'Aubigne is mistaken in referring the description to Henry II.
Hist. de la Ref., liv. xii. c. 1.]
[Footnote 388: Histoire ecclesiastique, i. 14.]
[Footnote 389: Memoires de Martin du Bellay (Edition Petitot), xviii.
271-273. See also Mignet, Etablissement de la reforme religieuse a
Geneve, Mem. historiques, ii. 308, etc. Also, Merle d'Aubigne, Hist. of
the Reformation in the Time of Calvin, v. 395, etc.]
[Footnote 390: In dedicating to Wolmar his commentary on II.
Corinthians, Calvin deplored the loss sustained in the interruption of
his Greek studies under his old teacher, "manum enim, quae tua est
humanitas, porrigere non recusasses ad totum stadii decursum, nisi me,
_ab ipsis prope carceribus_, mors patris revocasset." Upon the basis of
the words here italicized, Merle d'Aubigne builds up a story of outcries
and intrigues of priests (against Calvin) who "did all in their power
_to get him put into prison_"! Ref. in Time of Calvin, ii. 28. M.
Herminjard observes hereupon that one need not be very thoroughly versed
in Latin or in Roman antiquities to understand Calvin's allusion; and
every classical scholar will sympathize with M. Herminjard when he
expresses, in view of the historian's blunder, "un etonnement
proportionne a la celebrite de l'auteur." Corresp. des reformateurs, ii.
333.]
[Footnote 391: See the very sensible remarks of Herminjard, _ubi supra_,
iii. 202.]
[Footnote 392: A. Crottet, Histoire des eglises ref. de Pons, Gemozac,
et Mortagne en Saintonge (Bordeaux, 1841), 10-11, and Merle d'Aubigne,
Hist. of the Ref. in the Time of Calvin (Am. ed.), iii. 53, tell the
story without any misgivings, and the latter with characteristic
embellishment. But it rests on the unsupported and slender authority of
Florimond de Raemond, lib. vii. c. 14, from whose account I cannot even
find that the scene was laid in the caverns.]
[Footnote 393: Staehelin (Johannes Calvin, Leben und ausgewaehlte
Schriften, i. 33) well remarks that what makes this address very
suspicious is the circumstance that a quite similar passage occurs in
Calvin's letter to Sadolet, leading us to the conclusion that we have
here only a "reminiscence" of this much later document.]
[Footnote 394: He resigned his chapel of La Gesine and his curacy of
Pont l'Eveque, May 4, 1534. Herminjard, iii. 201.]
[Footnote 395: This, and not the persecution at that time raging in
France, is the reason assigned by Calvin himself in the preface to his
commentary on the Psalms, where he tells us that, the very year of his
conversion, seeing "que tous ceux qui avoyent quelque desir de la pure
doctrine se rangeoyent a lui pour apprendre," he began to seek some
hiding-place and means of withdrawing from men. "Et de faict," he adds,
"je veins en Allemagne, de propos delibere, afin que la je peusse vivre
a requoy en quelque coin incognu." Corresp. des reformateurs, iii. 242,
243. See the same in the Latin ed., Calvini opera (Amsterdam, 1667),
iii. c. 2. This preface is dated Geneva, July 23, 1557.]
[Footnote 396: Whether before or after the appearance of the "Placards,"
is uncertain. On Calvin's early life, see Beza's Life, already referred
to; the Histoire ecclesiastique; various letters in J. Bonnet's Letters
of Calvin, and Herminjard, Corresp. des reformateurs; Haag, France
protestante; the reformer's life by Paul Henry, D.D., and especially the
scholarly work of Dr. E. Staehelin (2 vols., Elberfeld, 1860-1863).]
[Footnote 397: The mooted question whether Calvin wrote the Institutes
originally in Latin or in French--in other words, whether there was a
French edition before the first Latin edition of 1536--has been set at
rest by M. Jules Bonnet, who, in a contribution to the Bulletin de
l'histoire du protestantisme francais, vi. (1858) 137-142, establishes
the priority of the Latin. The chief points in the proof are: 1st, the
absence of even a single copy of the supposed French edition of 1535;
2d, Calvin's statement to Francis Daniel, Oct. 13, 1536, "I am kept
continually occupied upon the French version of my little book;" 3d, his
decisive words in the preface to the edition of 1551: "_Et premierement
l'ay mis en latin_ a ce qu'il pust servir a toutes gens d'estude, de
quelque nation qu'ils fussent; puis apres desirant de communiquer ce qui
en pouvoit venir de fruict a nostre nation francoise, _l'ay aussy
translate en nostre langue_." See also chap. iii. of Professors Baum,
Cunitz, and Reuss, Introd. to Institution de la religion chretienne
(Calv. Opera, t. iii.).]
[Footnote 398: Opera Calvini (Amst., 1667), t. ix.]
[Footnote 399: "La dedicace a Francois I^er, qui est peut-etre une des
plus belles choses que possede notre langue." Paul L. Jacob, bibliophile
(Lacroix), "Avertissement" prefixed to Oeuvres francaises de Calvin.
The Institutes he designates "ce chef-d'oeuvre de science theologique,
de philosophie religieuse et de style." "Here," says Henri van Laun,
"was a force and concision of language never before heard in France....
The influence of Calvin's writings upon the style of his successors, and
upon the literary development of his country, cannot easily be
over-estimated. With him French prose may be said to have attained its
manhood; the best of his contemporaries, and of those who had preceded
him, did but use as a staff or as a toy that which he employed as a
burning sword." History of French Literature (New York, 1876), i. 338,
339.]
[Footnote 400: Yet it is more probable, as Staehelin suggests (Joh.
Calvin, ii. 93), that the classical associations of Italy drew him to
the peninsula, which was at that time the home of art, than that his
fame, having already penetrated to Ferrara, procured him a direct
invitation from Renee to visit her.]
[Footnote 401: Showing, according to Brantome, "en son visage et en sa
parole qu'elle estoit bien _fille du Roy et de France_." Dames
illustres, Renee de France.]
[Footnote 402: See the pompous ceremonial on this occasion and the
epithalamium of Clement Marot, in Cronique du Roy Francois I^er (G.
Guiffrey, 1860), 68-73.]
[Footnote 403: Dames illustres, _ubi supra_.]
[Footnote 404: "Que voulez-vous? Ce sont des pauvres Francois de ma
maison; et _lesquels si Dieu m'eust donne barbe au menton_ et que je
fusse homme, _seroient maintenant tous mes sujets_. Voire me
seroient-ils tels, _si cette meschante Loy Salicque ne me tenoit trop de
rigueur_." Ibid., _ubi supra_. A readable account of the life of this
remarkable woman is given in "Some Memorials of Renee of France, Duchess
of Ferrara" (2d edit., London, 1859), a volume enriched, to some extent,
with letters drawn from the Paris National Library, and from less
accessible collections in Great Britain.]
[Footnote 405: Possibly including the wonderfully precocious child,
Olympia Morata. See M. Jules Bonnet's monograph, Vie d'Olympia Morata,
episode de la Renaissance et de la Reforme en Italie. Staehelin has well
traced Calvin's religious influence upon Renee and the important family
of Soubise. Joh. Calvin, i. 94-110. The extant letters of Calvin to
Renee are full of manly and Christian frankness, and affectionate
loyalty. Lettres francaises, i. 428, etc.]
[Footnote 406: Staehelin is skeptical about, and Prof. Billiet and M.
Douen reject altogether the story of Calvin's labors at Aosta. Thus much
M. Bonnet believes to be established by concurrent MS. and traditional
authority: That, early in the year 1536, Calvin had succeeded in gaining
over to the reformed doctrines a number of influential men in this
Alpine valley, of the families of La Creste, La Visiere, Vaudan,
Borgnion, etc.; that he and his converts were accused of plotting to
induce the district to embrace Protestantism, and imitate the example of
its Swiss neighbors, by constituting itself a canton, free of the Duke
of Savoy; that the estates, on the 28th of February, 1536, declared
their intention (with a unanimity procured, perhaps, by the expulsion of
the opposite party) to live and die in the obedience of the Duke of
Savoy and of mother Holy Church; that Calvin and his principal adherents
escaped with difficultly into Switzerland; and that expiatory
processions were instituted at Aosta, in token of gratitude for
deliverance from heresy, in which the bishop and the most prominent
noblemen, as well as the common people, "walked with bare feet and in
sackcloth and ashes, notwithstanding the rigor of the season." Tradition
still points out the "_farm-house_ of Calvin," his "_bridge_," and the
_window_ by which he is said to have escaped. The event is commemorated
by a monument of the market-place, bearing an inscription that testifies
to its having been erected in 1541, and renewed in 1741 and 1841. See
the interesting Aostan documents contributed by M. Bonnet to the
Bulletin de l'hist. du protest. francais, ix. (1860) 160-168, and his
letter to Prof. Rilliet, ibid., xiii. (1864) 183-192.]
[Footnote 407: This is Calvin's distinct statement: "quum rectum iter
Argentoratum tendenti bella clausissent, hac (Geneva) celeriter transire
statueram, ut _non longior quam unius noctis morae_ in urbe mihi foret."
Calvin, Preface to Psalms.]
[Footnote 408: "Unus homo, qui nunc turpi defectione iterum ad Papistas
rediit, statim fecit ut innotescerem." Ibid., _ubi supra_. Consequently
Beza, in his Latin Life of Calvin, is mistaken when he asserts: "eos
[sc. Farel and Viret] igitur quum, ut inter bonos fieri solet, Calvinus
transiens invisisset," etc.; for it was Farel that sought _him_ out, on
Du Tillet's information.]
[Footnote 409: Calvin, in the preface to the Psalms already quoted,
says: "Genevae non tam _consilio_, vel _hortatu_, quam _formidabili_
Gulielmi Farelli _obtestatione_ retentus sum, _ac si Deus violentam mihi
e coelo manum injiceret_. Et quum privatis et occultis studiis me
intelligeret esse deditum, ubi se vidit _rogando_ nihil proficere,
_usque ad maledictionem descendit, ut Deus otio meo malediceret, si me a
ferendis subsidiis in tanta necessitate subducerem. Quo terrore
perculsus_ susceptum iter ita omisi," etc.--Beza throws these words into
Farel's mouth: "At ego tibi, inquit, studia tua praetextenti denuntio
Omnipotentis Dei nomine, futurum ut nisi in opus istud Domini nobiscum
incumbas, tibi non tam Christum quam teipsum quaerenti Dominus
maledicat." Vita Calvini (Op. Calv., Amst. 1661, tom. i).]
[Footnote 410: This interesting letter, dated Neufchatel, June 6, 1564,
was communicated by M. Herminjard to the editor of the fine edition of
Farel's _Du Vray Usage de la Croix_, printed by J. G. Fick, Geneva,
1865, who gives it entire, pp. 314, etc.]
[Footnote 411: "Sane non possum de aliis aliud sentire quam quod de me
statuo." Farel to Calvin, Sept. 8, 1553, Calv. Opera, ix. (Epistolae),
71.]
[Footnote 412: Declaration pour maintenir la vraye foy que tiennent tous
chrestiens de la Trinite des personnes en un seul Dieu. Par Jean Calvin.
Contre les erreurs detestables de Michel Servet Espaignol. Ou il est
aussi monstre, qu'il est licite de punir les heretiques: et qu'a bon
droict ce meschant a este execute par justice en la ville de Geneve.
1554.--In this famous little book the author classifies doctrinal errors
according to their gravity. Slight superstitions and the ignorance into
which simple folk have fallen, are to be borne with till God reveal the
truth to them. Offences of greater magnitude, because injurious to the
church, should be visited with mild penalties. "But when malicious
spirits attempt to overthrow the foundations of religion, utter
execrable blasphemies against God, and disseminate damnable speeches,
like deadly poison, to drag souls to perdition--in short, engage in
schemes to cause the people to revolt from the pure doctrine of
God--then it is necessary to have recourse to the extreme remedy, so
that the evil may not spread farther" (pp. 48, 49).]
[Footnote 413: See Calvin to C. and T. Zollicoffre, March 28, and the
same to Peloquin and De Marsac, Aug. 22, 1553. Servetus was burned Oct.
27.]
[Footnote 414: Two months before the execution Calvin wrote to Farel,
Aug. 20, 1553: "Spero capitale saltem fore judicium _poenae vero
atrocitatem remitti cupio_;" and on the 26th of October, he again wrote,
"_Genus mortis conati sumus mutare_, sed _frustra_. Cur non
profecerimus, coram narrandum differo." Calv. Opera, ix. 70, 71. As it
is thus in evidence not only that Calvin _did not burn_ Servetus, but
_desired him not to be burned_, and made an ineffectual attempt _to
rescue him from the flames_, we might anticipate for the stale calumny a
speedy end, were not the tenacity of life characterizing such inventions
so notorious as to have passed into a proverb.]
[Footnote 415: Melanchthon, for example, after expressing his entire
satisfaction with Calvin's treatise, and his conviction that the church
both now and hereafter owes and will owe him gratitude for it, adds:
"Affirmo etiam, vestros magistratus _juste fecisse, quod hominem
blasphemum_, re ordine judicata, _interfecerunt_." Mel. to Calvin, Oct.
14, 1554, Opera (Bretschneider), viii. 362.]
[Footnote 416: Laborie, one of the heroic "five," sending from prison an
account of his examination, states that, when one of his judges asked
him whether he did not know that God had by Moses sanctioned the
punishment of heretics, he freely admitted it: "Haereticos certe
puniendos _facile concessi_, et in exemplum proposui _impurum illum
canem Servetum_, qui Genevae ultimo supplicio affectus fuit: verum sedulo
caverent, _ne in Christianos et Dei filios_ velut haereticos
animadvertant," etc. Letter in Crespin, Actiones et Monimenta Martyrum
(Genevae, 1560), fol. 291.]
[Footnote 417: "Ego qui natura timido, molli et pusillo animo esse
fateor." Preface to the Psalms.]
[Footnote 418: "Porro, an propositum esset mihi famam aucupari, patuit
ex brevi discessu, praesertim quum nemo illic sciverit me authorem esse."
Ibid.]
[Footnote 419: "Me tamen non tanta sustinnit magnanimitas, quin
turbulenta ejectione plus quam deceret laetatus sim." Ibid.]
[Footnote 420: "Praestantissimus Christi minister, M. Bucerus me iterum
simili qua usus fuerat Farellus, obsecratione, ad novam stationem
retraxit. Jonae itaque exemplo, quod proposuerat, territus," etc. Ibid.]
[Footnote 421: "La difficulte est," he writes to M. de Falaise, April,
1546, "des fascheries et rompemens de teste qui interviennent, pour
_interrompre vingt fois une lettre_, ou encore d'advantaige." He adds
(and the details are interesting) that, although his general health is
good, "je suis tormente sans cesse d'une doleur qui _ne me souffre quasi
rien faire_. Car oultre les _sermons et lectures_, il y a desja un mois
que _je n'ay gueres faict_, tellement que j'ay presque honte _de vivre
arnsi inutile_." Lettres francaises, i. 141, 142. Many a scholar of his
day, or of ours, would consider a week of _health_ well occupied with
the preparation and delivery of two sermons and three theological
lectures.]
[Footnote 422: "Ginevra ... che e la minera di questa sorte di metallo."
Relazione di M. Suriano, 1561. Relations des Amb. Venitiens, i. 528.]
[Footnote 423: This period of his life was referred to by him in his
last address to the body of his colleagues: "J'ay vescu icy en combats
merveilleux; j'ay este salue par mocquerie le soir devant ma porte de 50
ou 60 coups d'arquebute. Que pensez-vous que cela pouvoit estonner un
pauvre escholier, timide comme je suis, et comme je l'ay toujours este,
je le confesse?... On m'a mis les chiens a ma queue, criant _here,
here_, et m'ont prins par la robbe et par les jambes." Adieux de Calvin,
_apud_ Bonnet, Lettres francaises, ii. 575.]
[Footnote 424: "This sacrifice," M. Gaberel forcibly observes, "has
scarcely a parallel in history. Men willingly consent to make the
greatest efforts, to perform the most painful acts of self-denial, with
the aim of saving their country. Formerly the Genevese suffered unto
death to preserve their independence. Now the same unselfish spirit is
demanded of them in ordinary times that they exhibited in evil days.
And, if the people accepts the 'Ordinances,' it is because it has
narrowly scanned the slavery to which that moral license was leading it,
which Rome authorizes in order to confiscate all other liberties. It
accepts the 'Ordinances' because it has just escaped the treacherous
machinations, the servitude prepared for it by men whose principle is to
go just as their own heart leads them.... Strengthened by this vote,
Calvin can henceforth hope to succeed in his project, and make of Geneva
the Protestant metropolis, bearing as its motto, 'Holiness to the
Lord.'" Histoire de l'eglise de Geneve, i. 346, 347.]
[Footnote 425: Recherches de la France (ed. of 1621), p. 769. Giovanni
Michiel, in 1561, told the Doge of Venice: "Ne potria vostra Serenita
creder l'intelligenza e le pratiche grandi che ha nel regno il principal
ministro di Genevra che chiamano il Calvino, Francese e Picardo di
nazione, uomo di estraordinaria autorita, per la vita, per la dottrina,
e per i scritti appresso tutti quelli di questa sette." Rel. des Amb.
Ven., i. 415.]
[Footnote 426: Histoire ecclesiastique, i. 13-17; Crespin, Actiones et
Monimenta (Geneva, 1560), fol. 65, etc.]
[Footnote 427: Histoire ecclesiastique, i. 15.]
[Footnote 428: "En maneire que pensions nostredit royaume en estre purge
du tout et nettoye," Francis is made to say in the Edict of
Fontainebleau. Isambert, Recueil des anciennes lois francaises, xii.
677, etc.]
[Footnote 429: "Tellement qu'il est fort a douter que les nouveaux
erreurs soient pires que les premiers." Ibid., xii. 677.]
[Footnote 430: "Plusieurs gros personnages, qui secrettement les
recelent, supportent et favorisent en leurs fausses doctrines, leur
aydans et subvenans de leurs biens, de lieux, et de places secrettes et
occultes, esquelles ils retirent leurs sectateurs, pour les instruire
esdites erreurs et infections." Ibid., xii. 677.]
[Footnote 431: "Attendu que tels erreurs et fausses doctrines
contiennent en soy crime de leze majeste divine et humaine, sedition du
peuple, et perturbation de nostre estat et repos public." Ibid., xii.
680.]
[Footnote 432: "Mais tantost et incontinent qu'ils en seront advertis,
les reveler a justice, et de tout leur pouvoir aider a les extirper,
_comme un chacun doit courir a esteindre le feu public_." Ibid., xii.
680.]
[Footnote 433: President Louis Caillaud to the chancellor (Antoine Du
Bourg), Oct. 22, 1538. Musee des archives nationales; Documents orig.
exposes dans l'Hotel Soubise (Paris, 1872), 347.]
[Footnote 434: Among others, two "Lutherans," otherwise unknown to us,
whose execution a young German student, Eustathius de Knobelsdorf,
witnessed on the Place Maubert, and described in a letter to George
Cassander, professor at Bruges, like himself a Roman Catholic. One of
the "Lutherans," a beardless youth of scarcely twenty years, the son of
a shoemaker, after having his tongue cut out and his head smeared with
sulphur, far from showing marks of terror, signified, by a motion to the
executioner, his perfect willingness to meet death. "I doubt, my dear
Cassander," writes De Knobelsdorf, "whether those celebrated
philosophers, who have written so many books on the contempt of death,
would have endured so cruel tortures with such constancy. So far did
this youth seem to be raised above what is of man." Letter of July 10,
1542. Translated in Bulletin, vi. (1858), 420-423; and Baum, Theodor
Beza, i. 52-55.]
[Footnote 435: "En sorte que la justice, punition, correction, et
demonstration en soit faite telle et si griefve, que ce puisse estre
perpetuel exemple a tous autres."]
[Footnote 436: Isambert, Recueil des anciennes lois francaises, xii.
785-787.]
[Footnote 437: "Lui a dit qu'il voulait qu'aucun sacramentaire ne fut
admis a abjurer, ains fut puni de mort." Reg. secr. du Parl. de
Bordeaux, July 7, 1543, Boscheron des Portes, i. 47, 48.]
[Footnote 438: "Conspirateurs occultes contre la prosperite de nostre
estat, dependant principalement et en bonne partie de la conservation de
l'integrite de la foy catholique en nostredit royaume, rebelles et
desobeyssans a nous et a nostre justice." Recueil des anc. lois
francaises, xii. 819.]
[Footnote 439: Ibid., xii. 820.]
[Footnote 440: The preamble of the royal letters giving execution to the
Twenty-five Articles of the Sorbonne mentions as a moving cause
"plusieurs scandales et schismes par cy devant intervenus, et mesmement
en cest advent de Noel dernier passe, par le moyen et a l'occasion de
contentions, contradictions et altercations de certain predicateurs
preschans et publians divers et contraires doctrines." Recueil des anc.
lois francaises, xii. 820.]
[Footnote 441: Recueil des anc. lois franc., xii. 821-825. Among other
recommendations appended to the articles, was the following somewhat
interesting one, designed to correct the irreverence of the age: "Quand
il vient a propos d'alleguer le nom des saincts apostres et evangelistes
ou saincts docteurs, qu'ils _n'ayent a les nommer par leurs norm
simplement_, sans aucune preface d'honneur, _comme ont accoustume dire,
'Paul,' 'Jacques,' 'Mathieu,' 'Pierre,' 'Hierosme,' 'Augustin_,' etc. Et
ne leur doit estre grief adjouster et preposer le nom de 'sainct,' en
disant, 'sainct Pierre,' 'sainct Paul,' etc.!"]
[Footnote 442: Ibid., xii. 820. In answer to these Articles, Calvin
wrote his "Antidote aux articles de la faculte Sorbonique de Paris."]
[Footnote 443: Ory, Oriz, or Oritz, as his name was indifferently
written, was a prominent character in subsequent scenes of blood, and
was, as we may hereafter see, the agent employed by Henry II. to cajole,
or frighten his aunt, Renee, and bring her back into the bosom of the
Roman Church. The letters-patent giving this personage, who is styled
"doctor of theology and prior of the preaching friars (Dominicans) of
Paris," authority to exercise the functions of inquisitor of the faith
throughout the kingdom, in place of Valentin Lievin, deceased, are of
May 30, 1536, Recueil des anc. lois fr., xii. 503. Similar letters were
issued April 10, 1540. His confirmation by Henry II., June 22, 1550,
ibid., xiii. 173.]
[Footnote 444: Histoire ecclesiastique, i. 13. It is, in fact, an
interesting circumstance that Rocheli, or Rochetti, the deputy
inquisitor referred to in the text, not long after became a convert to
Protestantism, and applied himself to preaching the doctrines he had
once labored to overturn.]
[Footnote 445: The first, entitled "Epistolae duae; prima de fugiendis
impiorum illicitis sacris et puritate Christianae religionis; secunda de
Christiani hominis officio in sacerdotiis papalis ecclesiae vel
administrandis vel abjiciendis," 1537. The second, "Contre la secte
fantastique et furieuse des Libertins qui se disent spirituels," 1544.
The latter, from its pointed reference to Quintin and Pocquet, two
notorious leaders, seems to have given offence to Margaret of Navarre,
by whom they had been harbored in ignorance of their true character. A
letter written to the queen by Calvin immediately upon learning this,
April 28, 1545 (Bonnet, Lettres francaises, i. 111-117), is at once one
of the best examples of his nervous French style, and a fine
illustration of manly courage tempered with respect for a princess who
had deserved well of Protestantism. A single sentence admirably portrays
his attitude toward the formidable sect which had so devastated the Low
Countries and had now entered France in the persons of two of its worst
apostles--a sect regarded by him as more pernicious and execrable than
any previously existing: "Un chien abaye, s'il voit qu'on assaille son
maistre; je seroys bien lasche, si en voyant la verite de Dieu ainsi
assaillie, je faisoys du muet sans sonner mot."]
[Footnote 446: "A exhorte et prie la cour de vouloir faire punir et
bruler les vrais heretiques," etc. Reg. du Parl., May 24, 1543,
Boscheron des Portes, Hist. du parlement de Bordeaux, i. 63.]
[Footnote 447: "Reclame son privilege de fille de France ecrit dans un
livre qui est a Saint Denis, de faire ouvrir les prisons," etc. Ibid.,
_ubi supra_.]
[Footnote 448: The text of this singular document, dated Rheims, Sept.
8, 1543, is in Gerdes., Hist. Reform., iv. (Monumenta) 107-109. When the
"Instructions" fell into the hands of Charles V., he naturally tried to
make capital of a paper so little calculated to please Roman Catholics,
emanating from a son of the "Most Christian king." And Francis thought
himself compelled to clear himself from the charge of lukewarmness in
the faith, if not of actual heretical bias, by exercising fresh
severities upon the devoted Protestants of his own dominions.]