HENRY THE SECOND, AND THE ORGANIZATION OF THE FRENCH PROTESTANT
CHURCHES.
[Sidenote: Death of Francis I.]
[Sidenote: Impartial estimates of his character.]
On the thirty-first of March, 1547, Francis the First died, leaving the
throne to his only surviving son. With whatever assiduity the poets and
scholars of whom the late king had been a munificent patron, and the
courtiers who had basked in the sunshine of his favor, might apply
themselves to the celebration of his resplendent merits, posterity, less
blind to his faults, has declined to confirm the title of "great"
affixed to his name by contemporaries. The candid historian, undazzled
by the glitter of his chivalric enterprises, may condemn the animus, but
can scarcely deny the substantial truth of the bitter reproaches in
which the Emperor Charles the Fifth indulged, respecting the uniform
faithlessness of his ancient rival.[516] Much less can he pardon the
cruel persecution which Francis allowed to be exercised against an
unoffending part of his subjects, less from zeal for the tenets of the
church whose cause he espoused than from a selfish fear lest his
prerogative might be impaired.
[Sidenote: His three sons.]
[Sidenote: Henry, Duke of Orleans.]
[Sidenote: Character of the new king.]
Of the three sons of Francis, the dauphin and his youngest brother, the
Duke of Angouleme, had been snatched away by death during the lifetime
of their father.[517] The Duke of Orleans, who now ascended the throne
as Henry the Second, was not a favorite son.[518] More than once he had
incurred his father's grave displeasure by insubordination. A mad
frolic, in which the young prince undertook in sport to distribute the
high offices of state, as if his father were already dead, and disclosed
his intention to recall to power the monarch's disgraced courtiers,
occasioned a serious breach. More important consequences might have
flowed from the unfortunate incident, had not the youth and the giddy
companions of his revel sought safety in temporary exile from
court.[519] From his father Henry inherited great bodily vigor, and
remarkable skill in all games of strength and agility. His frame,
naturally well proportioned, was finely developed by exercise.[520] He
was accounted the fleetest runner, and the most graceful rider in
France. He rarely suffered a day to pass without playing ball, not
unfrequently after having hunted down a stag or two. In the more
dangerous pastimes of mock combat and jousting he delighted to engage,
to the no small alarm of all spectators.[521] Unfortunately, however,
the intellectual and moral development of the young prince had by no
means kept pace with the growth of his physical powers. The sluggishness
of his dull and unready comprehension had, at an earlier date, been
noticed by the Venetian Marino Cavalli, while, with a courtier's
flattery, he likened him to those autumnal fruits that are more tardy in
ripening, but are of better quality and last longer than the fruits of
summer.[522] Although he had reached the age of twenty-eight years on
the very day of his accession, he was still a child in all that
respected the serious concerns of life and the duties of his elevated
position. Averse to that careful deliberation which the public affairs
demanded, and willing to be led by those who would _think_ for him, it
immediately became evident that he was destined to be the mere image of
a king, while the powers of royalty were to be enjoyed by his trusted
advisers and by those who could minister to his immoderate love of
pleasure. The issue abundantly proved the truth of the assertion that
his reign ought rather to be called the reign of Diana of Poitiers, of
Montmorency, and of the Cardinal of Lorraine; of whom the last, it was
said, had the king's conscience in his sleeve, and the first his body,
as by some species of sorcery.[523]
[Sidenote: Wotton's view of the French court.]
Scarcely had Francis breathed his last when shrewd observers of the
current of political influence were able to make up their minds pretty
fully upon the favorites that were to rule under Henry's name. "The
French king, straight after his father's death," wrote Dr. Wotton, "hath
revoked the _Constable_ to the court again; who is now in as great
triumph (as men say) as ever he was, if it be not more.... Of the
younger sort of those that are at the court already, these seem to be
the chief favorites: _Andelot_, younger brother to Chatillon, and his
brother, the _Cardinal of Chatillon_; the Duke of Guise's sons, in a
manner all, but especially these: _Monsieur d'Aumale_ [Francis, later
Duke of Guise], the _Bishop of Rheims_ [Cardinal Charles of Lorraine],
and the _Bishop of Troyes_, who, as I hear say, are all three of the
council. Monsieur d'Aumale is in very great favour ... but in greatest
estimation and favour of all, as it appeareth hitherto, either of them
of the older sort or of the younger sort, seemeth to be the said Bishop
of Rheims, who had the chief ordering of the king's house, he being
Dolphin; whom I could wish to be of as good judgment in matters of
religion as I take the Cardinal du Bellay to be, but I hear he is not
so, but _very earnest in upholding the Romish blindness_.... Of the
dames, Madame la Grande Senechale seemeth to be highly esteemed."[524]
To gain a clear view of the various influences--at one time neutralizing
each other, and thus tending to the protection of the reformed
doctrines and their professors, but much more frequently acting in
concert, and tending to the suppression of those doctrines--it is
necessary that we examine in some detail the position of Diana, of the
Constable, and of the Guises.
[Sidenote: Diana of Poitiers.]
[Sidenote: The king's infatuation.]
Diana of Poitiers, daughter of Monsieur de St. Vallier, and widow of De
Breze, Grand Seneschal of Normandy, had in her youth been celebrated for
her beauty, by which she had first captivated Francis the First, and
afterward made Henry forget the claims of his Florentine bride upon his
affections. But she was now a matron of forty-seven years of age, and
the public wondered as they saw the undiminished devotion of the new
monarch to a woman nearly a score of years older than himself. It is
true that the courtier's pen of Brantome ascribes to her all the
freshness of youth even at the close of the reign of Henry the Second.
His eulogium, however, is scarcely more worthy of credit than Homer's
praise of the undiminished personal beauty of Helen, when, twenty years
subsequently to the departure of the expedition to Troy, the Ithacan
prince found her reigning again at Sparta. But of the influence which
Diana possessed over Henry there could be no doubt. By the vulgar it was
attributed to the use of charms and love-potions. The infatuation of the
monarch knew no bounds. He loaded her with gifts; he entrusted her with
the crown jewels;[525] he conferred upon her the dignity of a duchess of
Valentinois. In her apartments he spent hours daily, in company with his
most intimate courtiers. Through love for her he adopted her favorite
colors, and took for his device the crescent, with the words, "Totum
donec compleat orbem." The public edifices of his time, it is said,
still bear testimony to this dishonorable attachment, in the initials or
emblems of Henry and Diana sculptured together upon their facades; and
the Venetian Soranzo, at a later period in Henry's reign, magnifying her
influence upon every department of the administration, affirms, in
particular, that the dispensation of ecclesiastical offices was in her
hands.[526] It is not surprising that, being of an avaricious
character, she soon accumulated great wealth.
[Sidenote: Constable Anne de Montmorency.]
[Sidenote: His cruelty.]
Anne de Montmorency, one of the four marshals of France, grand-master of
the palace, and constable, was among the most notable personages of the
sixteenth century. Sprung from a family claiming descent from the first
Frank that followed the example of Clovis in renouncing paganism, and
bearing on its escutcheon the motto, "God defend the first Christian,"
he likewise arrogated the foremost rank in the nobility as the first
baron of the kingdom. From his youth he was accustomed to association
with royalty. Margaret of Navarre was his early friend, and at a later
period had occasion to complain of his ingratitude. He was at this time
fifty-five years of age, severe, stern, fond of arms, complaisant to
royalty, but harsh and overbearing in his relations with inferiors. Of
his personal valor there can be no doubt, and he was generally regarded
as the ablest general in France--an opinion, it is true, which his
subsequent ill-success contributed much to shake.[527] But his martial
glory was dimmed by his well-known avarice, his ignorance,[528] and a
cruelty that often approached ferocity. Of this last trait a signal
instance was afforded when Montmorency was sent, in the year after
Henry's accession, to suppress a formidable revolt which had broken out
in Guyenne, in consequence of a considerable increase of the already
burdensome impost upon salt. He haughtily refused to accept the keys of
the city of Bordeaux tendered to him by the citizens on his approach.
His artillery, he said, would serve him as well in gaining admission.
The severity of the retribution meted out under his superintendence to
those who had ventured to resist the royal authority was unparalleled in
French history.[529] If the constable's ferocity did not diminish with
age, it acquired a tinge of the ludicrous from his growing superstition.
Never would he omit his devotions at the appointed hour, whether at home
or in the field--"so conscientious was he." But he would interrupt the
recital of his _pater-nosters_ with such orders as the emergency might
demand, or his inclination prompt: "Seize such a man! Hang that one to a
tree! Run that fellow through at once with your pikes, or shoot him down
before my eyes! Cut the knaves to pieces that have undertaken to hold
that belfry against the king! Burn that village! Fire everything to the
distance of a quarter of a league!" So terrible a reputation did his
devotions consequently acquire, that it was a current saying: "Beware of
the constable's pater-nosters!"[530]
[Sidenote: His unpopularity.]
In fact, Anne de Montmorency was ill-fitted to win popularity. A
despatch of Sir John Mason, three years later, gives a glimpse of his
relations with his fellow-courtiers. "There is a little _square_," he
writes, "between the Duchess of Valentinois, who ruleth the roast, and
the constable. A great many of the court _wisheth the increase thereof.
He is very ill-beloved_, for that he is a hinderer of all men saving his
own kinsfolks, whom he doth so advance as no man may have anything by
his will but they, and for that also he feedeth every man with fair
words, and performeth nothing."[531]
[Sidenote: Recalled from disgrace by Henry II.]
For six years before the death of Francis the First the constable had
been living in retirement upon his estates. The occasion of his
banishment from court is stated, by one who enjoyed the best
opportunities for learning the truth, to have been the advice which he
had given the monarch to permit the Emperor Charles the Fifth to pass
through his dominions when going to Netherlands to suppress the revolt
of the burghers of Ghent.[532] Francis, indeed, is said on his deathbed
to have warned his son against the dangers with which the ambition of
the constable and of the family of Guise threatened his kingdom. But, as
we have seen, Henry had no sooner received tidings of his father's
death, than he at once summoned Montmorency to court, and resigned to
him undisputed control of the affairs of state. The Venetian Dandolo,
sent to congratulate the monarch upon his advent to the throne,
felicitated the favorite on his merited resumption of his former rank
and the honor of the "_universal charge_" which he held.[533] He was now
all-powerful. The Duchess d'Etampes, mistress of the late king, to whose
influence his disgrace was in part owing, for this and other offences
was exiled from court and sent to the castle of her husband.[534]
Admiral Annebaut and the Cardinal of Tournon were removed from the head
of the administration. The former, of whose sterling worth Francis
entertained so high an appreciation that he had bequeathed to him the
sum of 100,000 livres, was compelled to resign his place as Marshal of
France in favor of a new favorite--Jacques d'Albon de St. Andre, of whom
more particular mention must be made presently.[535]
[Sidenote: The family of Guise.]
[Sidenote: Duke Claude.]
[Sidenote: The first Cardinal of Lorraine.]
Francis is reported to have included the family of Guise with Constable
Montmorency in the warning addressed to his son, and the story, received
by the people as an undoubted truth, circulated in a poetical form for
many years.[536] The Guises were of foreign extraction, and had but
recently become residents of France. Claude, the fifth son of the Duke
of Lorraine, at that time an independent state, came to the French
court, in the early part of the sixteenth century, in quest of
opportunities to advance his fortunes greater than were open to a
younger member of the reigning family in his father's contracted
dominions. Partly through the influence of Montmorency, partly in
consequence of his marriage with Antoinette of Bourbon, a princess of
royal blood, in some degree also by his own abilities, the young
foreigner was rapidly advanced, from the comparatively insignificant
position at first assigned him, to more important trusts. At length he
became royal lieutenant of the provinces of Champagne and Burgundy, and
his small domain of Guise was erected into a duchy.[537] His younger
brother John, who had entered the church as offering the most promising
road to the attainment of his ambitious designs, had also come westward;
and, proving to be a jovial companion whose presence imposed no
restraint upon the license of a profligate court, he fared even better
in securing ecclesiastical preferment than his brother in obtaining
secular advantages.[538] In his favor Francis made use, in a manner
lavish beyond precedent, of the right of nomination to benefices secured
to the crown by the concordat. Even an age well accustomed to the abuse
of the plurality of offices was amazed to see John of Lorraine at one
and the same time Archbishop of Lyons, Rheims, and Narbonne, Bishop of
Metz, Toul, Verdun, Therouenne, Lucon, Alby, and Valence, and Abbot of
Gorze, Fecamp, Clugny, and Marmoutier.[539] To gratify the French
monarch, Pope Leo the Tenth added to the dignity of the young
ecclesiastic, by conferring upon him the Cardinal's hat a year or two
before he had attained his majority.[540] Shrewd and plausible, the
Cardinal of Lorraine, as he was henceforth called, contributed not a
little to his brother's rapid advancement; and, as it was well
understood that the rich benefices he held and the accumulation of his
wealth would go, at his death, to enrich his nephews, he was treated
with great deference by all the members of his brother's family.
[Sidenote: Marriage of James V. of Scotland to Mary of Lorraine.]
An important era in the history of the Guises is marked by the marriage
effected, in 1538, between James the Fifth of Scotland and Mary of
Lorraine, the eldest daughter of Claude. This royal alliance secured for
the Guises a predominant influence in North British affairs after the
death of James. It brought them into close connection with the crown of
France, when Mary, Queen of Scots, the fruit of this union, was
affianced to the son of Henry the Second, the dauphin, afterward Francis
the Second. It encouraged the adherents of this house to attribute to it
an almost regal dignity, and to intimate more and more plainly its claim
upon the throne of France, as descended through the Dukes of Lorraine
from Charlemagne--a title superior to that of the Valois, who could
trace their origin to no higher source than the usurper Hugh Capet.
[Sidenote: The duke's sons.]
[Sidenote: Francis of Guise.]
[Sidenote: Charles, Cardinal of Guise, and afterward of Lorraine.]
But the second generation of the Guises was destined to exert, during
the reign of Henry the Second, an influence more controlling than the
brothers Claude and John had exerted during his father's reign. The six
sons of Claude--all displaying the grasping disposition of the house
from which they sprang, all aiming at the acquisition of position and
wealth, each of them insatiable, yet never exhibiting a rivalry that
might prove detrimental to their common expectations--throw into
obscurity the surprising success of their father and uncle, by their own
marvellous prosperity. Scarcely had a third part of Henry's reign gone
by, before foreign ambassadors wrote home glowing accounts of the
influence of the younger favorites. "The credit of the house of Guise in
this court," said one, "passeth all others. For albeit the constable
hath the outward administration of all things, being for that service
such a man as hard it were to find the like, yet have they so much
credit _as he with whom he is constrained to sail_, and many times to
take that course that he liketh never a whit."[541] Francis, the eldest
son, known until his father's death as the Count of Aumale, and
afterward succeeding him as Duke of Guise, entered the inviting
profession of arms. The second son, Charles, chose the life of an
ecclesiastic, and soon assumed with respect to his brothers a commanding
position similar to that which John had occupied. At an early age he had
been elevated to the Archbishopric of Rheims, voluntarily ceded to him
by his uncle. Henry, soon after his accession, obtained from the pontiff
a place in the consistory for the young ecclesiastic, who then became
known as the Cardinal of Guise, and, after his uncle's death, in 1550,
as Cardinal of Lorraine. The four younger brothers respectively figured
in subsequent years as the Duke of Aumale, the Cardinal of Guise, the
Marquis of Elbeuf, and the Grand Prior of France.[542]
[Sidenote: Character of Francis.]
Francis of Guise, although but twenty-eight years of age, was already
regarded as a brilliant general and an accomplished courtier. Vain and
ostentatious, yet possessed of more real military ability than his
unfortunate Italian campaign of 1556 would seem to indicate, he won
laurels at Metz, at Calais, and at Thionville.[543] Outside of the
pursuits of war he was grossly ignorant, and in all civil and religious
matters he allowed himself to be governed by the advice of his brother
Charles. Even the Protestants, whom he so deeply injured, would for the
most part have acquiesced in the opinion of the cabinet minister, De
l'Aubespine, that the Duke of Guise was a captain capable of rendering
good service to his native land, had he not been hindered and infected
by his brother's ambition. It is the same trustworthy authority who
states that the duke was more than once induced to exclaim of his
brother Charles: "That man in the end will ruin us."[544]
[Sidenote: Various estimates of the second Cardinal of Lorraine.]
The portraits of men who, for weal or woe, have exercised a powerful
influence upon their times, are frequently painted so differently by
their advocates and by their opponents, that for him who would obtain an
impartial view of their merits or defects it will prove a difficult task
to discover any means of removing the discrepancies in the
representations and attaining the truth. Fortunate must he esteem
himself if he chance to find some contemporary, less directly interested
in the events and persons described, to furnish him with the results of
unbiassed observation. In the conflict of the Protestant and Roman
Catholic writers of France respecting Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine, the
"relations" of the Venetian ambassadors, devoted adherents of the Holy
See, made to the doge and senate of their native state, and given under
the seal of secrecy, must be esteemed a rich historical legacy. The
cardinal's intellect, these envoys tell us, was wonderfully acute. He
understood the point at which those who conversed with him were aiming
when they had scarcely opened their mouth. His memory was more than
usually retentive. He was well educated, and learned not only in Greek,
Latin, and Italian, but in the sciences, and especially in theology. He
had a rare gift of talking. In the fulfilment of his promises he was
less famous. According to one ambassador, he had the reputation of
rarely speaking the truth. Another styles him little truthful, and of a
deceitful and avaricious disposition.[545] Both agree in representing
him as covetous "beyond the avarice natural to the French, even
employing dishonorable means to increase his wealth."[546] Both unite in
extolling his administrative abilities. In observance of the precepts
of the church he was exemplary. Yearly did he retire from court to spend
the season of Lent on some one of his numerous possessions. In life, "so
far as the outside is concerned," he observed the decorum appropriate to
his rank, thus presenting a striking contrast to the other cardinals and
prelates of the kingdom, who were "of a most licentious character." But
he was vindictive, slow in rewarding services, and so violent that it
was probable that no other event was so much desired in France as his
death.[547] The scandalous stories related by Brantome, which have
generally been understood to apply to Cardinal _Charles_ of Lorraine,
really refer, as Ranke has observed,[548] to his uncle, the Cardinal
_John_; but the abbe, who was certainly not unfriendly to the Guises,
mingles praise and censure as equal ingredients in sketching the
character of the former. If he was "very religious," after Brantome's
idea of religion, he was also esteemed a "great hypocrite," with whom
religion served as a stepping-stone to greatness. If he was a "holy"
man, he was "not too conscientious." If gracious and affable at times,
it was only when something had gone wrong with him; for in prosperity no
one was more overbearing.[549]
Such, according to writers of his own religion, was the churchman of
whom, with Diana of Poitiers, the cabinet minister who knew both well
wrote: "It were to be desired that this woman and the cardinal had
never been born; for they two alone have been the spark that kindled our
misfortunes."[550] Pasquin well reflected the sentiments of the people
when he altered the motto that accompanied the device of the
cardinal--an ivy-clad pyramid--from "Te stante, virebo" to "Te virente,
peribo."[551]
[Sidenote: Rapacity of the new favorites.]
[Sidenote: Marshal Saint-Andre.]
[Sidenote: Servility toward Diana of Poitiers.]
With a weak-minded prince, averse to anything except the gratification
of his passions, and under the influence of such counsellors, France
became almost of necessity a scene of rapacity beyond all precedent. The
princes of the blood continued in their exclusion from official
positions. Each of the new favorites was not only eager to obtain wealth
for himself, but had a number of relations for whom provision must also
be made. To the more prominent courtiers above enumerated was added
Jacques d'Albon de Saint-Andre, son of Henry's tutor, who, from
accidental intimacy with the king in childhood, was led to aspire to
high dignities in the state, and was not long in obtaining a marshal's
baton.[552] Herself securing not only the rank of Duchess of
Valentinois, with the authority of a queen,[553] but the enormous
revenues derived from the customary confirmation of offices at the
beginning of a new reign, Diana permitted the constable, the Guises, and
Saint-Andre to partake to a less degree in the spoils of the kingdom. A
contemporary writer likens the brood of courtiers she gathered about her
to swallows in pursuit of flies on a summer's evening. Nothing escaped
them--rank, dignity, bishopric, abbey, office, or other dainty
morsel--all alike were eagerly devoured. Spies and salaried agents were
posted in all parts of the kingdom to convey the earliest intelligence
of the death of those who possessed any valuable benefices. Physicians
in their employ at Paris sent in frequent bulletins of the health of
sick men who enjoyed offices in church or state; nor were instances
wanting in which, for the present of a thousand crowns, they were said
to have hastened a wealthy patient's death. Even the king was unable to
give as he wished, and sought to escape the importunity of his favorites
by falsely assuring them that he had already made promises to others.
Thus only could they be kept at bay.[554] The Guises and Montmorency, to
render their power more secure, courted the favor of the king's
mistress. The Cardinal of Lorraine, in particular, distinguished himself
by the servility which he displayed. For two years he put himself to
infinite trouble to be at the table of Diana.[555] After her elevation
to the peerage, he addressed to her a letter, still extant, in which he
assured her that henceforth his interest and hers were inseparable.[556]
To give yet greater firmness to the bond uniting them, the Guises
brought about a marriage between their third brother, the Duke of
Aumale, and one of the daughters of the Duchess of Valentinois; while
the Constable of Montmorency, at a later time, undertook to gain a
similar advantage for his own family by causing his son to wed Diana, a
natural daughter of the king.
[Sidenote: Persecution to atone for moral blemishes.]
It may at first sight appear somewhat incongruous that a king and court
thus given up, the former to flagrant immorality, the latter to the
unbridled pursuit of riches and honors, should early have exhibited a
disposition to carry forward in an aggravated form the system of
persecution initiated in the previous reign. The secret of the apparent
inconsistency may be found in the fact that the courtiers were not slow
in perceiving, on the one hand, the almost incalculable gains which the
confiscation of the goods of condemned heretics might be made to yield,
and, on the other, the facility with which a monarch of a disposition
naturally gentle and humane[557] could be persuaded to countenance the
most barbarous cruelties, as the supposed means of atoning for the
dissoluteness of his own life. The observance of the strict precepts of
the moral law, they argued, was of less importance than the purity of
the faith. The title of "Very Christian" had been borne by some of his
predecessors whose private lives had been full of gallantries. His claim
to it would be forfeited by the adoption of the stern principles of the
reformers; while the Pontiff who conferred it would never venture to
remove the honorable distinction, or refuse to unlock the gates of
paradise to him who should prove himself an obedient son of the church
and a persecutor of its enemies. To fulfil these conditions was the
easier, as the persons upon whom were to be exercised the severities
dictated by heaven, plotted revolutions and aspired to convert France
into a republic, on the pattern of the cantons of Switzerland. Lending a
willing ear to these suggestions, Henry the Second no sooner began to
reign than he began to persecute.[558]
[Sidenote: The "Chambre ardente."]
[Sidenote: Edict of Fontainebleau against books from Geneva.]
[Sidenote: Deceptive title-pages.]
Toward the close of the reign of Francis, the prisons of Normandy had
become so full of persons incarcerated for religion's sake, that a
separate and special chamber had been instituted in the Parliament of
Rouen, to give exclusive attention to the trial of such cases.[559] One
of Henry's first acts was to establish a similar chamber in the
Parliament of Paris.[560] Judges selected with such a commission were
not likely to incline to the side of mercy; and the chamber speedily
earned for itself, by the numbers of victims it sent to the flames, the
significant popular name of "_la Chambre ardente_."[561] The rapid
propagation of the reformed doctrines by the press gave occasion to the
publication of a new edict. The printing of any book containing matters
pertaining to the Holy Scriptures was strictly forbidden. Equally
prohibited was the sale of books brought from Geneva, Germany, or other
foreign parts, without the approval of the Theological Faculty of Paris.
All annotated copies of the Bible must contain the name of the author,
and the publisher's name and address. Persons of all ranks were warned
against retaining in their possession any condemned work.[562] But these
restrictions had little effect in repressing the spread of the
Reformation. If a severe blow was struck at the publishing trade in
France, the dissemination of books printed abroad, and, frequently, with
spurious title-pages,[563] was largely increased. It now assumed,
however, a more stealthy and cautious character.
[Sidenote: Execution of Brugiere.]
[Sidenote: The tailor of the Rue St. Antoine.]
Blood flowed in every part of the kingdom. Not only the capital, but
also the provinces furnished their constant witnesses to the truth of
the "Lutheran" doctrines. The noted trial and execution of John Brugiere
revealed to the First President of Parliament the humiliating fact that
the Reformation had gained a strong foothold in his native
Auvergne.[564] At Paris, one Florence Venot was confined seven weeks in
a cell upon the construction of which so much perverted ingenuity had
been expended that the prisoner could neither lie down nor stand erect,
and the hour of release from weary torture was waited for with ardent
longing, even if it led to the stake.[565] But the death of a nameless
tailor has, by the singularity of its incidents, acquired a celebrity
surpassing that of any other martyrdom in the early part of this reign.
In the midst of the tourneys and other festivities provided to signalize
the occasion of the queen's coronation and his own solemn entry into
Paris, the desire seized Henry to see with his own eyes and to
interrogate one of the members of the sect to whose account such serious
charges were laid. A poor tailor, arrested in his shop in the Rue St.
Antoine, a few paces from the royal palace, for the crime of working on
a day which the church had declared holy, was brought before him. So
contemptible a dialectician could do little, it was presumed, to shake
the faith of the Very Christian King. But the result disappointed the
expectations of the courtiers and ecclesiastics that were present. The
tailor answered with respectful boldness to the questions propounded by
Chatellain, Bishop of Macon, a prelate once favorable to the
Reformation. Hereupon Diana of Poitiers, an interested opponent, whose
coffers were being filled with the goods of condemned heretics,
undertook to silence him with the tongue of a witty woman. The tailor,
who had patiently borne the ridicule and scorn with which he had
hitherto been treated, turned upon the mistress of the king a look of
solemn warning as he said: "Madam, let it suffice you to have infected
France, without desiring to mingle your poison and filth with so holy
and sacred a thing as the true religion of our Lord Jesus Christ." The
courtiers were thunderstruck at the turn taken by a discussion to which
they had flocked as to a scene of diversion, and the enraged king
ordered the tailor's instant trial and punishment. He even desired with
his own eyes to see him undergo the extreme penalty of the law. A solemn
procession had been ordered to proceed from St. Paul's to Notre Dame.
The prayers there offered for the destruction of heresy were followed by
an "exemplary demonstration" of the king's pious disposition, in the
execution of four "Lutherans" in as many different squares of the
city.[566] In order the better to see the punishment inflicted upon the
tailor of the Rue St. Antoine, Henry posted himself at a window that
commanded the entire spectacle. But it was no coward's death that he
beheld. Soon perceiving and recognizing the monarch before whom he had
witnessed so good a profession, the tailor fixed his gaze upon him, nor
would he avert his face, however much the king ordered that his position
should be changed. Even in the midst of the flames he still continued to
direct his dying glance toward the king, until the latter, abashed, was
compelled to withdraw from the window. For days Henry declared that the
spectre haunted his waking hours and drove sleep from his eyes at night;
and he affirmed with an oath that never again would he witness so
horrible a scene.[567] Happy would it have been for his memory had he
adhered, in the case of Anne du Bourg, to so wise a resolution!
[Sidenote: Other victims of intolerance.]
The ashes of one martyr were scarcely cold before new fires were
kindled--now before the cathedral, now before some parish church, again
in the crowded market or in the distant provincial town. At one time it
was a widow that welcomed the rope that bound her, as the zone given her
by a heavenly bridegroom in token of her approaching nuptials. A few
years later, it was a nobleman who, when in view of his rank the
sentence of the judges would have spared him the indignity of the halter
which was placed around the neck of his companions, begged the
executioner to make no exception in his case, saying: "Deny me not the
collar of so excellent an order."[568]
[Sidenote: Severe edicts and quarrels with Rome.]
[Sidenote: Edict of Chateaubriand, June 27, 1551.]
[Sidenote: War upon the books from Geneva.]
The failure, however, of these fearful exhibitions to strike terror into
the minds of the persecuted, or accomplish the end for which they were
undertaken, is proved by their frequent recurrence, and not less by the
new series of sanguinary laws running through the reign of Henry. An
edict from Paris, on the nineteenth of November, 1549, endeavored to
remove all excuse for remissness on the part of the prelates, by
conferring on the ecclesiastical judges the unheard-of privilege of
arresting for the crime of heresy, the exclusive right of passing
judgment upon simple heresy, and conjoint jurisdiction with the civil
courts in cases in which public scandal, riot, or sedition might be
involved.[569] Less than two years later, when Henry, uniting with
Maurice of Saxony and Albert of Brandenburg, received the title of
Defender of the Empire against Charles the Fifth, and was on the point
of making war on Pope Julius the Third, he issued an edict forbidding
his subjects, under severe penalties, from carrying gold or silver to
Rome.[570] But, to convince the world of his orthodoxy, he chose the
same time for the publication of a new and more truculent measure, known
as the _Edict of Chateaubriand_ (on the twenty-seventh of June, 1551),
directed against the reformed.[571] This notable law reiterated the old
complaint of the ill-success of previous efforts, and the statement of
the impossibility of attaining the desired end save by diligent care and
rigorous procedure. Its most striking peculiarity was that it committed
the trial of heretics to the newly appointed "presidial" judges, whose
sentence, when ten counsellors had been associated with them, was to be
final.[572] Thus was it contemplated to put an end to the vexatious
delays by means of which the trial of many a reputed "Lutheran" had been
protracted and not a few of the hated sect had in the end escaped. But
the large number of additional articles exhibit in a singular manner the
extent to which the doctrines of the Reformation had spread, the means
of their diffusion, and the method by which it was hoped that they might
be eradicated. Prominent among the provisions appear those that relate
to the products of the press. Evidently the Cardinal of Lorraine and the
other advisers of the king were of the same mind with the great advocate
of unlicensed printing, when he said: "Books are not absolutely dead
things, but do contain a progeny of life in them to be as active as that
soul was whose progeny they are.... I know they are as lively and as
vigorously productive as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and being sown
up and down, may chance to spring up armed men."[573] The edict utterly
prohibited the introduction of any books from Geneva and other places
notoriously rebellious to the Holy See, the retention of condemned books
by booksellers, and all clandestine printing. It instituted a
semi-annual visitation of every typographical establishment, a clerical
examination of all packages from abroad, a special inspection thrice a
year at the great fairs of Lyons, through which many suspected books
found their way into the kingdom. The "porte-panier," or pedler, was
forbidden to sell books at all, because many pedlers brought in books
from Geneva under pretext of selling other merchandise. The bearers of
letters from Geneva were to be arrested and punished. The goods and
chattels of those who had fled to Geneva were to be confiscated.
Informers were promised one-third of the property of the condemned. And
lest the tongue should contaminate those whom the printed volume might
not reach, all unlettered persons were warned not even to _discuss_
matters of faith, the sacraments, and the polity of the church, whether
at the table, in the field, or in secret conventicle.[574]
[Sidenote: The book-pedlers of Switzerland, etc.]
It is clear that the "dragon's teeth" were beginning to spring up
warriors full armed; but the sowing still went on. From Geneva, from
Neufchatel, from Strasbourg, and from other points, devoted men of
ardent piety, and often of no little cultivation, entered France and
cautiously sold or distributed the contents of the packs they carried.
Often they penetrated far into the country. To such as were detected the
penalty of the law was inexorably meted out. A pedler, after every bone
of his body had been dislocated in the vain attempt to compel him to
betray the names of those to whom he had sold his books, was burned at
Paris in the midst of the applauding shouts of a great crowd of persons,
who would have torn him to pieces had they been allowed.[575] The
printers of French Switzerland willingly entrusted their publications to
these faithful men, not without danger of the loss of their goods; and
it was almost incredible how many men offered themselves to the extreme
perils which threatened them.[576] The Edict of Chateaubriand, intended
to destroy the rising intellectual and moral influence of Geneva, it
must be noticed, had the opposite effect; for nothing had up to this
time so tended to collect the scattered Protestants of France in a city
where, free from the temptation to conformity with the dominant
religion, they received a training adapted to qualify them for
usefulness in their native land.[577]
[Sidenote: Marshal Vieilleville refuses to profit by confiscation.]
Yet the publication of the Edict of Chateaubriand was the signal for the
renewal of the severity of the persecution. Every day, says the
historian De Thou, persons were burned at Paris on account of religion.
Cardinal Tournon and Diana of Poitiers, he tells us, shared in the
opprobrium of being the instigators of these atrocities. With the latter
it was less fanaticism than a desire to augment the proceeds of the
confiscation of the property of condemned heretics which she had lately
secured for herself, and was employing to make up the ransom of her two
sons-in-law, now prisoners of war.[578] Very few of the courtiers of
Henry's court had a spark of the magnanimity that fired the breast of
the Marshal de Vieilleville. The name of this nobleman had, unknown to
him, been inserted in a royal patent giving to him and others, who
desired to shield themselves behind his honorable name, the confiscated
goods of all condemned usurers and Lutherans in Guyenne and five other
provinces of Southern France. When the document was placed in his hands,
and he was assured that it would yield to each of the six patentees
twenty thousand crowns within four months, the marshal exclaimed: "And
here we stand registered in the courts of parliament as devourers of the
people!... Besides that, for twenty thousand crowns to incur
individually the curses of a countless number of women and children that
will die in the poor-house in consequence of the forfeiture of the lives
and property of their husbands and fathers, by fair means or foul--this
would be to plunge ourselves into perdition at too cheap a rate!" So
saying, Vieilleville drove his dagger through his own name in the
patent, and others, through shame, following his example, the document
was torn to pieces.[579]
[Sidenote: The "Five Scholars of Lausanne."]
Of the considerable number of those upon whom the "very rigorous
procedures" laid down by the Edict of Chateaubriand were executed in
almost all parts of France, according to the historian of the reformed
churches,[580] the "_Five Scholars of Lausanne_" deserve particular
mention. Natives of different points in France, these young men, with
others, had enjoyed in the distinguished school instituted in the chief
city of the Pays de Vaud, under the protection of the Bernese, the
instructions of Theodore Beza and other prominent reformed theologians.
Their names were: Martial Alba, a native of Montauban; Pierre Ecrivain,
of Boulogne, in Gascony; Bernard Seguin, of La Reolle, in Bazadois;
Charles Favre, of Blanzac; and Pierre Naviheres, of Limoges. A short
time before Easter, 1552, these young men, who had reached different
stages in their course of study,[581] conceived it to be their duty to
return to their native land, whence the most pressing calls for
additional laborers qualified to instruct others were daily coming to
Switzerland. Their plan was cordially endorsed by Beza, before whom it
was first laid by one of their number who had been an inmate of his
home, and then by the Church of Lausanne; for it evidenced the purity
and sincerity of their zeal. Provided with cordial letters from
Lausanne, as well as from Geneva, through which they passed, they
started each for his native city, intending to labor first of all for
the conversion of their own kindred and neighbors. But a different
field, and a shorter term of service than they had anticipated, were in
store for them. At Lyons, having accepted the invitation of a
fellow-traveller to visit him at his country-seat, they were surprised
on the first of May, 1552, by the provost and his guards, and, although
they had committed no violation of the king's edicts by proclaiming the
doctrines they believed, were hurried to the archiepiscopal prison, and
confined in separate dungeons. From their prayers for divine assistance
they were soon summoned to appear singly before the "official"--the
ecclesiastical judge to whom the archbishop deputed his judicial
functions.[582] The answers to the interrogatories, of which they
transmitted to their friends a record, it has been truly said, put to
shame the lukewarmness of our days by their courage, and amaze us by the
presence of mind and the wonderful acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures
they display.[583] He who will peruse them in the worm-eaten pages of
the "Actiones Martyrum," in which their letters were collected by the
pious zeal of a contemporary, cannot doubt the proficiency these
youthful prisoners had attained, both in sacred and in human letters, at
the feet of the renowned Beza. Their unanswerable defence, however, only
secured their more speedy condemnation as heretics. On the thirteenth of
May they were sentenced to the flames; but an appeal which they made
from the sentence of the ecclesiastical judge, on the plea that it
contravened the laws of France, secured delay until their case could be
laid before parliament. Months elapsed. Tidings of the danger that
overhung the young students of Lausanne reached Beza and Calvin, and
called forth their warm sympathy.[584]
[Sidenote: Unavailing intercessions.]
The best efforts of Beza and Viret were put forth in their behalf. A
long succession of attempts to secure their release on the part of the
canton of Berne individually, and of the four Protestant cantons of
Switzerland collectively, was the result. One letter to Henry received a
highly encouraging reply. An embassy from Zurich, sent when the king's
word had not been kept, was haughtily informed that Henry expected the
cantons to trouble him no further with the matter, and to avoid
interfering with the domestic affairs of his country, as he himself
abstained from intermeddling with theirs.[585] Subsequent letters and
embassies to the monarch, intercessions with Cardinal de Tournon,
Archbishop of Lyons, who would appear to have given assurances which he
never intended to fulfil, and all the other steps dictated by Christian
affection, were similarly fruitless. In fact, nothing protracted the
term of the imprisonment of the "Five Scholars" but the need in which
Henry felt himself to be of retaining the alliance and support of Berne.
Yet when, as a final appeal, that powerful canton begged the life of its
"stipendiaries" as a "purely royal and liberal gift, which it would
esteem as great and precious as if his Majesty had presented it an
inestimable sum of silver or gold," other political motives prevented
him from yielding to its entreaties. The fear lest his compliance might
furnish the emperor and Pope, against whom he was contending, with a
handle for impugning his devotion to the church, was more powerful than
his desire to conciliate the Bernese. The Parliament of Paris decreed
that the death of the "Five" by fire should take place on the sixteenth
of May, 1553, and the king refused to interpose his pardon.[586]
Their mission to France had not, however, been in vain. It is no
hyperbole of the historian of the reformed churches, when he likens
their cells to five _pulpits_, from which the Word of God resounded
through the entire city and much farther.[587] The results of their
heroic fortitude, and of the wide dissemination of copies of the
confession of their Christian faith, were easily traced in the
conversion of many within and without the prison; while the memory of
their joyful constancy on their way to the place of execution--which
rather resembled a triumphal than an ignominious procession--and in the
flames, was embalmed in the heart of many a spectator.[588]
[Sidenote: Activity of the canton of Berne.]
The Bernese were not discouraged by the ill-success of their
intercessions. Three times in the early part of the succeeding year
(1554) they begged, but with no better results, for the release of Paris
Panier, a man learned in the civil law.[589] With equal earnestness they
took the part of the persecuted reformers against the violence of their
enemies on many successive occasions. It was all in vain. The libertine
king, who saw no merit in the purity of life of the professors of the
"new doctrines," and no mark of Antichrist in the profligacy of Paul the
Third or of Julius the Third, but viewed with horror the permission
granted by the latter to the faithful of Paris to eat eggs, butter and
cheese during Lent,[590] maintained his more than papal orthodoxy, and
stifled the promptings of a heart by nature not averse to pity.
[Sidenote: Progress in Normandy.]
More than three years had passed away since the publication of the
Edict of Chateaubriand, but none of the fruits which its authors had
predicted were visible. The number of the reformed brought to trial, and
especially of those condemned to the flames, gradually diminished,
whilst it was notorious that the opponents of the dominant church were
rapidly multiplying. In some provinces--in Normandy, for example--their
placards were mysteriously posted on the walls, and their songs deriding
the Franciscan monks were sung in the dark lanes of the cities. Once
they had ventured to interrupt the discourse of a preacher on the topic
of purgatory, by loud expressions of dissent; but when on the next day
the subject was resumed, numbers of hearers left the church with cries
of "_au fol, au fol_," and forced those who would have arrested them in
the name of the Cardinal Archbishop of Rouen, to seek refuge from a
shower of stones in an adjoining monastery.[591]
[Sidenote: Proposal to establish the Spanish Inquisition.]
The zealous friends of the church, as well as those who were enriched by
confiscations, represented to the king that this state of things arose
from the fact that the higher magistrates, themselves tainted with
heresy, connived at its spread, and that the "presidial" judges
abstained from employing the powers conferred by the edict, through fear
of compromising themselves with the sovereign courts. Nor could
ecclesiastical courts accomplish much, since the secular judges, to whom
an appeal was open, found means to clear the guilty. They insisted that
the only remedy was the introduction of the _Inquisition_ in the form in
which it had proved so efficacious in Spain and Italy. This, it was
said, could be attained by taking away the appeal that had hitherto been
allowed from the decisions of the church courts, and compelling the
nearest secular court to enforce their sentences. It was, furthermore,
proposed to confiscate, for the king's benefit, all the property of
fugitives, disregarding the claims even of those who had purchased from
them without collusion.[592]
[Sidenote: Opposition of parliament.]
In secret sessions held at the house of Bertrand, keeper of the seals,
at which were present several of the presidents of parliament known to
be least friendly to the Reformation, the necessary legislation was
matured at the instance of the Cardinal of Lorraine.[593] But, when the
edicts establishing the Spanish inquisition were submitted, by order of
the king, to the Parliament of Paris, it soon became evident that not
even the intrigues of the presidents who were favorable to them could
secure their registration. In the hope of better success, the edicts
were for the time withdrawn, and submitted, a few months later, to the
part of parliament that held its sessions in summer,[594] accompanied by
royal letters strictly enjoining their reception (lettres de jussion).
Twice the _gens du roi_ were heard in favor of the new system, pleading
its necessity, the utility of enlarging the jurisdiction of the church
courts, especially in the case of apostatizing monks and fanatical
preachers, and the fact that parliament itself had testified that it was
not averse to an inquisition--not only by recording the edicts of St.
Louis and Philip the Fair, but also by two recent registrations of the
powers of the Inquisitor of the Faith, Matthieu Ory.[595] After many
delays and a prolonged discussion, parliament decided by a large
majority that it could not comply with the king's commands, and would
indicate to his Majesty other means of eradicating heresy more
consistent with the spirit of Christianity.[596]
The president, Seguier, and a counsellor (Adrien du Drac) were deputed
to justify before the monarch the course taken by parliament. The royal
court was at this time at Villers-Cotterets, not far from Soissons, and
the commissioners were informed on their arrival that Henry, displeased
and scandalized at the delays of parliament, had begun to suspect it of
being badly advised respecting religion and the obedience due to the
church. He had said "that, if twelve judges were necessary to try
Lutherans, they could not be found among the members of that body." The
deputies were warned that they must expect to hear harsh words from the
king's lips. Admitted, on the twenty-second of October, into Henry's
presence, President Seguier delivered before the Duke of Guise,
Constable Montmorency, Marshal St. Andre, and other dignitaries civil
and ecclesiastical, an address full of noble sentiments.[597]
[Sidenote: Speech of President Seguier in opposition.]
"Parliament," said Seguier, "consists of one hundred and sixty members,
who, for ability and conscientious discharge of duty, cannot be matched.
I know not any of the number to be alienated from the true faith.
Indeed, no greater misfortune could befall the judicature, than that
the supreme court should forfeit the confidence of the monarch by whom
its members were appointed. It is not from personal fear that we oppose
the introduction of the Inquisition. An inquisition, when well
administered, may not, perhaps, always be injurious. Yet Trajan, an
excellent emperor, abolished it as against the early Christians,
persecuted as the 'Lutherans' now are; and he preferred to depend upon
the declarations of those who revealed themselves, rather than to foster
the spread of the curse of informers and sow fear and distrust in
families. But it is as _magistrates_ that we dread, or rather abhor, the
establishment of a bloody tribunal, before which denunciation takes the
place of proof, where the accused is deprived of the natural means of
defence, and where no judicial forms are observed. We allege nothing of
which we cannot furnish recent examples. Many of those whom the agents
of the Inquisition had condemned have appealed to parliament. In
revising these procedures, we found them so full of absurdities and
follies, that, if charity forbids our suspecting those who already
discharge this function among us of dishonesty and malice, it permits
and even bids us deplore their ignorance and presumption. Yet it is to
such judges that you are asked, Sire, to deliver over your faithful
subjects, bound hand and foot, by removing the resource of appeal."
Is it politic, the orator proceeded to ask, for the king to introduce an
edict standing in direct contradiction to that by which he has given to
his own courts exclusive jurisdiction in the trial of the laity and
simple clerks, and thus initiate a conflict of laws? Or has the
monarch--by whose authority, as supreme head of justice, the decisions
of parliament are rendered, whose name stands at the beginning, and
whose seal is affixed to the termination of every writ--the right to cut
off an appeal to himself, which his subjects, by reason of their paying
tribute, can justly claim in return? Rather let the sovereign remedy be
applied. In order to put an end to heresy, let the pattern of the
primitive church be observed, which was established not by sword or by
fire, but which, on the contrary, resisted both sword and fire through
long years of persecution. Yet it endured, and even grew, by the
doctrine and exemplary life of good prelates and pastors, residing in
their charges. At present the prelates are non-residents, and the people
hunger for the Word of God. Now, it is every man's duty to believe the
Holy Scriptures, and to bear testimony to his belief by good works.
Whoever refuses to believe them, and accuses others of being
"Lutherans," is more of a heretic than the "Lutherans" themselves.[598]
The remonstrance of parliament, said Seguier, in fine, is in the
interest of the poor people and of the courtiers themselves, whom others
more needy will seek to strip of their possessions by means of the
Inquisition and a brace of false witnesses.[599]
The speech was listened to with attention by Henry, and its close was
applauded by his courtiers, who appreciated the truth of the warning
conveyed. Two days later the king informed the deputies that he had
determined to take the matter into further consideration; and, after
their return, not only Henry, but also Guise and Montmorency, sent
letters to parliament in which the mission of Seguier and Du Drac was
referred to in complimentary terms.[600]
[Sidenote: Villegagnon sent with Protestant emigrants to Brazil.]
While the influence of the royal court was exerted, in the manner just
indicated, to obtain entrance for the Spanish Inquisition, two events
occurred equally deserving our attention--an attempt at the colonization
of the New World with emigrants of the reformed faith, and the
organization of the first Protestant church in France. Through the
countenance and under the patronage of an illustrious personage whose
name will, from this time forward, frequently figure on these
pages--Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France--a knight of Malta named
Villegagnon, Vice-admiral of Brittany, obtained from Henry "two large
ships of two hundred tons burthen," fully equipped and provided with the
requisite armament, as well as a third vessel carrying provisions.[601]
Having embarked with a large number of gentlemen, artisans, and sailors,
and having lost some time by being driven back into port to refit after
a storm, he at length set sail for America, and anchored in the bay of
Rio de Janeiro on the thirteenth of November, 1555. Most of the
colonists were adherents of the religion at this time violently
persecuted in France; and it is said that Coligny's support had been
gained for the enterprise by the promise, on the part of Villegagnon,
that in America the reformed should find a safe asylum.[602]
[Sidenote: Fort Coligny founded.]
No sooner, therefore, had the small company effected a lodgment on a
small and rocky islet, opposite the present city of Rio de Janeiro, than
Villegagnon conferred on the fort he had erected the name of Coligny,
and wrote to the admiral, as he did subsequently to Calvin, requesting
that pastors should be sent from Geneva.[603] The petition being
granted, Pierre Richier and Guillaume Chartier were despatched--the
first Protestant ministers to cross the Atlantic. They were received by
the vice-admiral with extravagant demonstrations of joy. A church was
instituted on the model of that of Geneva; and Villegagnon recognized
the validity of its rites by partaking of the holy communion when for
the first time administered, on the shores of the Western Continent,
according to the reformed practice.
[Sidenote: Villegagnon becomes an enemy to the Protestants,]
[Sidenote: and brings ruin to the expedition.]
Before long, however, a complete revolution of sentiment and plan was
disclosed. The pretext was an animated discussion touching the
eucharist, between the Protestant pastors, on the one hand, and
Villegagnon, supported by Jean Cointas, a former doctor of the Sorbonne,
on the other.[604] The solicitations of the Cardinal of Lorraine,
together with a keener appreciation of the danger of harboring the "new
doctrines," may have been the cause.[605] Chartier was put out of the
way by being sent back to Europe, ostensibly to consult Calvin. Richier
and others were so roughly handled that they were glad to leave the
island for the continent, and subsequently to return in a leaky vessel
to their native land.[606] But the infant enterprise had received a
fatal blow. Nearly all the deceived Protestants carried home the tidings
of their misfortunes, and deterred others from following their
disastrous example. Three, remaining in Brazil, were thrown into the sea
by Villegagnon's command. A few suffered martyrdom after the fall of the
intended capital of "Antarctic France" into the hands of the Portuguese.
As to Villegagnon himself, he returned to Europe the virulent enemy of
Coligny, and turned his feeble pen to the refutation of
Protestantism.[607]
[Sidenote: The first Protestant church organized in Paris.]
But if ruin overtook an enterprise from which French statesmen had
looked for new power and wealth for their country, and the reformers had
anticipated the rapid advance of their religion in the New World, the
founding of the first Protestant church in Paris proved a more
auspicious event. More than thirty years had Protestantism been
gradually gaining ground; but, up to the year 1555, it had been wanting
in organization. The tide of persecution had surged too violently over
the evangelical Christians of the capital to permit them to think of
instituting a church, with pastors and consistory, after the model
furnished by the free city of Geneva, or of holding public worship at
stated times and places, or of regularly administering the sacraments.
"The martyrs," says a contemporary writer, "were, properly speaking, the
only preachers."[608] But now, the courage of the Parisian Protestants
rising with the increased severity of the cruel measures devised
against them, they were prepared to accept the idea of organizing
themselves as an ecclesiastical community. To this a simple incident led
the way. In the house of a nobleman named La Ferriere, a small body of
Protestants met secretly for the reading of the Scriptures and for
prayer. Their host had left his home in the province of Maine to enjoy,
in the crowded capital, greater immunity from observation than he could
enjoy in his native city, and to avoid the necessity of submitting his
expected offspring to the rite of baptism as superstitiously observed in
the Roman Catholic Church. On the birth of his child, he set before the
little band of his fellow-believers his reluctance to countenance the
corruptions of that church, and his inability to go elsewhere in search
of a purer sacrament. He adjured them to meet his exigency and that of
other parents, by the consecration of one of their own number as a
minister. He denounced the anger of the Almighty if they suffered his
child to die without a participation in the ordinance instituted by the
Master whom they professed to serve. So earnest an appeal could not be
resisted. After fasting and earnest prayer the choice was made
(September, 1555). John le Macon, surnamed La Riviere, was a youth of
Angers, twenty-two years of age, who for religion's sake had forsaken
home, wealth, and brilliant prospects of advancement. He had narrowly
escaped the clutches of the magistrates, to whom his own father, in his
anger, would have given him up. This person was now set apart as the
first reformed minister of Paris. A brief constitution for the nascent
church was adopted. A consistory of elders and deacons was established.
In this simple manner were laid the foundations of a church destined to
serve as the prototype of a multitude of others soon to arise in all
parts of France.[609] It was not the least remarkable circumstance
attending its origin, that it arose in the midst of the most hostile
populace in France, and at a time when the introduction of a new and
more odious form of inquisition was under serious consideration. Nor can
the thoughtful student of history regard it in any other light than that
of a Providential interposition in its behalf, that for two years the
infant church was protected from the fate of extermination that
threatened it, by the rise of a fresh war between France and Spain--a
war originating in the perfidy of the Pope and of Henry the Second, the
two great enemies of the reformed doctrines in France--and terminating
in a peace ignominious to the royal persecutor.
[Sidenote: The example followed in the provinces.]
[Sidenote: The fagot still reigns.]
The signal given by Paris was welcomed in the provinces. In rapid
succession organized churches arose in Meaux, Angers, Poitiers, Bourges,
Issoudun, Aubigny, Blois, Tours, Pau, and Troyes--all within the compass
of two years.[610] The Protestants, thirsting for the preaching of the
Word of God, turned their eyes toward Geneva, Neufchatel, and Lausanne,
and implored the gift of ministers qualified for the office of
instruction. Hitherto the awakening of the intellect and heart long
stupefied by superstition had been partial. Now it seemed to be general.
Three months had scarcely elapsed since the foundation of the church at
Paris, before it was asking of the Swiss reformers a second
minister.[611] A month later, Angers already had a corps of three
pastors. "Entreat the Lord," writes the eminent theologian who has left
us these details, "to advance His kingdom, and to confirm with the
spirit of faith and patience our brethren that are in the very jaws of
the lion. _Assuredly the tyrant will at length be compelled either to
annihilate entire cities, or to concede someplace for the truth._[612]"
Meanwhile the fires of persecution blazed high in various parts of
France, but produced no sensible impression on the growth of the
Reformation.[613]
[Sidenote: Henry II. breaks the truce of Vaucelles.]
[Sidenote: Cardinal Caraffa.]
On the fifth of February, 1556, Henry concluded with Charles the Fifth,
who had lately abdicated the imperial crown, and with Philip the Second,
his son, the truce of Vaucelles, which either side swore to observe for
the space of five years.[614] In the month of July of the same year
Henry broke the truce and openly renewed hostilities. Paul the Fourth,
the reigning pontiff, was the agent in bringing about this sudden
change. The inducement held out to Henry was the prospect of the
investiture of the duchy of Milan and the kingdom of Naples; and Paul
readily agreed to absolve the French monarch from the oath which he had
so solemnly taken only five months before. Constable Montmorency and his
nephew, Admiral Coligny, opposed the act of perfidy; but it was
advocated by the Duke of Guise, by the Cardinal of Lorraine, and by one
whose seductive entreaties were more implicitly obeyed than those of all
others--the dissolute Diana of Poitiers.[615] And the negotiation had
been intrusted to skilful hands.[616] Cardinal Caraffa, the pontiff's
nephew, was surpassed in intrigue by no other member of the Sacred
College. No conscientious scruples interfered with the discharge of his
commission. For Caraffa was at heart an unbeliever. As his hand was
reverently raised to pronounce upon the crowds gathered to witness his
entry into Paris the customary benediction in the name of the triune
God, and his lips were seen to move, there were those near his person,
it is said, that caught the ribald words which were really uttered
instead: "Let us deceive this people, since it wishes to be
deceived."[617]
[Sidenote: Fresh projects to introduce the Spanish Inquisition.]
[Sidenote: Henry's letter to the Pope.]
It was fitting that to such a legate should be committed the task of
making a fresh effort to introduce the Spanish Inquisition into France.
The Cardinal of Lorraine had been absent in Italy the year before, when
the first attempt failed through the resolute resistance of parliament.
He was now present to lend his active co-operation. Yet with all his
exertions the king could not silence the opposition of the judges,[618]
and was finally induced to defer a third attempt until the year 1557,
and to give a different form to the undertaking. In the month of
February of this year, Henry applied to the Pontiff, begging him to
appoint, by Apostolic brief, a commission of cardinals or other
prelates, who "_might proceed to the introduction of the said
inquisition_ in the lawful and accustomed form and manner, under the
authority of the Apostolic See, and with the invocation of the secular
arm and temporal jurisdiction." He promised, on his part, to give the
matter his most lively attention, "_since he desired nothing in this
world so much as to see his people delivered from so dangerous a
pestilence as this accursed heresy_."[619] And he solicited the greatest
expedition on the part of the Pope, for it was an affair that demanded
diligence.
[Sidenote: The papal bull.]
[Sidenote: The three inquisitors-general.]
[Sidenote: Odet, Cardinal of Chatillon.]
[Sidenote: His Protestant proclivities.]
Paul, who was in the constant habit of saying that the inquisition was
the sole weapon suited to the Holy See, the only battering-ram by means
of which heresy could be demolished,[620] did not decline the royal
invitation. On the twenty-sixth of April he published a bull appointing
a commission consisting of the Cardinals of Lorraine, Bourbon, and
Chatillon, with power to delegate their authority to others. Of the
three prelates, the first was the real instigator of the cruelties
practised during this and the subsequent reigns. The Cardinal of Bourbon
was known to be as ignorant as he was inimical to the Reformation, and
could be depended upon to support his colleague. The Cardinal of
Chatillon, brother of Admiral Coligny and of D'Andelot, was added, it is
not improbable, from motives of policy. He was already suspected of
favoring the reformed doctrines, which subsequently he openly espoused.
Indeed, nearly six years before, the English ambassador, Pickering,
after alluding to new measures of persecution devised against the
Protestants, wrote: "Cardinal Chatillon, as I hear, is a great aider of
Lutherans, and hath been a great stay in this matter, which otherwise
had been before now concluded, to the destruction of any man that had
almost spoken of God's Word. Nevertheless, the Protestants here fear
that it cannot come to a much better end, where such a number of bishops
and cardinals bear the swing."[621] Chatillon's enemies hoped, by
placing him on this inquisitorial commission, where his vote would be
powerless in opposition to that of the other two cardinals, to compel
him either to enter the rank of persecutors, or declare himself openly
for the Reformation, and thus destroy his own credit and that of his
powerful family.[622]
[Sidenote: The bull confirmed by Henry II.]
The papal bull was promptly confirmed by the king, who, in a declaration
given at Compiegne, on the twenty-fourth of July, 1557, permitted "his
very dear cousins," the three cardinals, to exercise the office of
inquisitors-general throughout the monarchy. From sentences given by
their subalterns, this document permitted an appeal to be taken, but it
was to a body appointed for the purpose by the inquisitors
themselves.[623] Parliament, however, again interposed the prerogative
it had assumed, of remonstrance and delay, and the king's declaration,
as well as the papal bull, remained inoperative.[624]
[Sidenote: Judicial sympathy with the victims.]
[Sidenote: Edict of Compiegne, July 24, 1557.]
It is not surprising, perhaps, that the institution of the sacred
office, with its bloody code and relentless tribunal, was pressed so
repeatedly upon the French monarch and parliament for their acceptance.
The number of the Protestants was not only increasing in a most alarming
manner,[625] but the very judges before whom, when discovered, the
Protestants were brought, began to show signs of compassion, if not of
sympathy. So it happened that, in one provincial town, two persons
caught with the packages of "Lutheran" books they had brought into
France, after they had made an explicit confession of their faith, were
condemned, not to the flames, but to the trifling punishment of public
whipping; and scarcely had the blows begun to fall upon the backs of the
pedlers, when some of the magistrates themselves threw their cloaks
around the culprits, whose confiscated books were afterward secretly
returned to them, or bought and paid for.[626] To such a formidable
height had this irregularity grown, that, on the very day upon which the
confirmation of the three proposed inquisitors-general was made, Henry
published a new edict (at Compiegne, on the twenty-fourth of July, 1557)
intended to secure an adherence to the penalties prescribed by previous
laws. The reader of this edict, remembering the frequency with which the
_estrapade_ had done its bloody work for the last quarter of a century,
will not be astonished to read that the punishment of death is affixed
to the secret or public profession of any other religion than the Roman
Catholic. But he will rejoice, for the sake of our common humanity, to
learn that "it very frequently happens that our said judges are moved
with pity by _the holy and malicious words_ of those found guilty of the
said crimes;" and that, to secure the uniform infliction of the extreme
penalty upon the professors of the reformed faith, it was now necessary
for the king to remove from the judges the slightest pretext or
authority for mitigating the sentence that condemned a Protestant to the
flames or gallows.[627]
[Sidenote: Defeat of St. Quentin, Aug. 10, 1557.]
Under cover of the war during three years, Protestantism made rapid
strides in France. But the contest itself was disastrous to its
originators. The constable, having, when hostilities had once been
undertaken contrary to his advice, been unwilling to resign the chief
command to which his office entitled him, assumed the defence of Paris
from the north, while to his younger rival in arms, the Duke of Guise,
was assigned the more brilliant part in the enterprise--the conquest of
the kingdom of Naples. Montmorency's success, however, fell far short of
the reputation he enjoyed for consummate generalship. Not only did he
fail to relieve his nephews Coligny and D'Andelot, who had shut
themselves up with a handful of men in the fortress of St. Quentin; but
he himself (on the tenth of August, 1557) met with a signal defeat in
which the flower of the French army was routed, and many of its leaders,
including the constable himself, were taken prisoners.[628]
[Sidenote: Rage against the "Lutherans."]
The French capital was thrown into a paroxysm of fear on receipt of the
intelligence. The road to Paris lay open to the victorious army. The
king, not less than the people, expected to hear the Spaniards within a
few brief days thundering at the very gates of the city. Charles the
Fifth, from his retirement at Yuste, is said to have asked the courier
with impatience, whether his son was already in Paris.[629] In the minds
of the populace, disappointment and fear were mingled with rage against
"the accursed sect of the Lutherans"--the reputed authors of all the
public calamities. Every prediction which the priests had for a
generation been ringing in the ears of the people seemed now to be in
course of fulfilment. In the startling defeat of a large and
well-appointed army of France, led by an experienced general, all eyes
read tokens of the evident displeasure of the Almighty, not because of
the ignorance and immorality of the people, or the bad doctrine and
worse lives of its spiritual leaders, or the barbarous cruelty, the
shameless impurity, and unexampled bad faith of the court; but because
of the existence of heretics who denied the authority of the Pope, and
refused to bow down and worship the transubstantiated wafer. The popular
anger was the more ready to kindle because the harsh measures of the
government had confessedly failed of accomplishing their object, and
because--to use the expressive language of the royal edict--the fire
still burned beneath the ashes.[630] An incident which happened little
more than a fortnight after the battle of St. Quentin disclosed the
bitter fruits of the slanderous reports and violent teachings
disseminated among the excitable inhabitants of Paris.
[Sidenote: The affair of the Rue St. Jacques, Sept. 4, 1557.]
[Sidenote: Assault upon the worshippers.]
The Protestants of the capital, far from rejoicing over the misfortunes
of the kingdom, as their adversaries falsely asserted, met even more
frequently than before to offer their united prayers in its behalf. On
the evening of the fourth of September, 1557,[631] three or four hundred
persons, of every rank of society, quietly repaired to a house in the
Rue St. Jacques, almost under the very shadow of the Sorbonne, where the
sacrament of the Lord's Supper was to be administered according to
previous appointment. Their coming together had not been so noiseless,
however, as to escape the attention of some priests, residing in the
College du Plessis, on the other side of the way, whose suspicions had
for some time been fixed upon the spot.[632] The reformed were not
disturbed during the exercise of their worship. But when, toward
midnight, they prepared to return to their homes, the fury of their
enemies discharged upon them the full force of its pent-up energies. A
fanatical crowd blocked the street or filled the opposite windows, ready
to overwhelm with a shower of stones and missiles of all descriptions
any that might leave the protection of the house. Continual accessions
were made of those whom the cries of "Thieves!" "Robbers!" "Conspirators
against the realm!" attracted to the place. The discovery of the fact
that it was a company not of robbers, but of "Lutherans," only inflamed
the rage of the new-comers. The cry was now for blood. Every avenue of
escape was guarded, and bonfires lighted here and there dispelled the
friendly darkness. Carts and wagons were drawn across the streets, and
armed men occupied the street-corners, or, if too cowardly to expose
themselves to any danger, stood ready at doors and windows to thrust the
fugitives through with their pikes.
The assembled Protestants, awakened to their danger, at first expected a
general massacre. But the exhortations of their pastors and elders gave
them new courage. In the midst of the storm raging without, they betook
themselves to prayer. At length the necessity was recognized of coming
to a prompt decision. To await the coming of the civil authorities, for
whom their enemies had sent, was to give themselves up to certain death.
Nothing remained but to force their way out--a course recommended, we
are told, by those who knew the cowardice of a Parisian mob. The men who
were provided with swords were placed in the front rank, the unarmed
followed in their wake. Again and again small companies issued into the
street and faced the angry storm. Each successive company reached a safe
refuge. In fact, of all that adopted the bolder course of action, only
one person was knocked down and left upon the ground to be brutally
murdered and suffer the most shameful indignities. There were, however,
many--one hundred and twenty or more women and children, with a few
men--whom fear prevented from following the example of their companions.
Around them the rabble, balked of the greater part of its expected
victims, raged with increased fury. At one moment they presented
themselves at the windows to the view of their enemies, in the vain hope
that the sight of so much innocence and helplessness would secure
compassion. When only blind hatred and malice were exhibited in return,
they withdrew and quietly awaited the fate which they believed to be in
store for them at the hands of the mob. From this they were delivered by
the sudden arrival of Martine, the king's "procureur" belonging to the
Chatelet, with a strong detachment of commissaries and sergeants.
With great difficulty restraining the impetuosity of the mob, the
magistrate made on the very spot an examination into the services that
had been held. The whole story was told him in simple terms. He found
that, while the Protestants had been assembling, the Scriptures had for
a long time been read in the French language. The minister had next
offered prayer, the whole company kneeling upon the floor. He had
afterward set forth the institution of the holy supper as given by St.
Paul, had exhibited its true utility and how it ought to be approached,
and had debarred from the communion all seditious, disobedient, impure,
and other unworthy participants, forbidding them to come near to the
sacred table. Then those who had been deemed to be in a fit frame to
receive the sacrament had presented themselves, and received the bread
and the wine from the hands of the ministers, with the words: "This is
the communion of the body and blood of the Lord." Prayers had followed
for the king and the prosperity of his kingdom, for all the poor in
their affliction, and for the church in general. The services had closed
with the singing of several psalms.
[Sidenote: Treatment of the prisoners.]
So clear a confession was amply sufficient to justify the arrest of the
entire company. Men, women, and children were dragged at early dawn to
the prison. But their escort was too small, or too indifferent, to
afford protection from the insults and violence of the immense throng
through the midst of which they passed.[633] Not content with applying
alike to men and to women the most opprobrious epithets, the rabble tore
their clothing, covered them with mud and filth, and dealt many a
blow--especially to those who from their long robes or age were
suspected of being preachers.[634] Into these outrages no judicial
investigation was ever instituted, so prevalent was the persuasion that
the zeal of the people in defence of the established faith must not be
too narrowly watched.
[Sidenote: Malicious rumors.]
The blame for these excesses must not, however, be laid exclusively to
the account of the populace. There were rumors afloat that owed their
origin to the deliberate and malicious invention of the better
instructed, and that were firmly believed by the ignorant masses. The
nocturnal meetings, to which the Protestants were driven by persecution,
were represented as devoted to the most abominable orgies. The
Protestants were accused of eating little children. It was boldly stated
that a luxurious banquet was spread, and that at its conclusion the
candles were extinguished, and a scene of the most indiscriminate
lewdness ensued.[635] One of the judges of the tribunal of the Chatelet
was found sufficiently pliant to declare, in contradiction to the
unanimous testimony of the accused, that preparations for the repetition
of similar crimes had been discovered in the rooms of the house in the
rue St. Jacques, where the Protestants had been surprised. These
infamous accusations even found their way into print, and were
disseminated far and wide by the priestly party.
[Sidenote: Trials and executions.]
While the poor prisoners were confined in the most loathsome
cells--highwaymen and murderers being removed to better quarters to make
room for Christians[636]--a judicial investigation was set on foot. The
king himself expedited the trials.[637] Within little more than three
weeks from the time of their apprehension, three Protestants were put to
death (on the twenty-seventh of September). Both sexes and the extremes
of youth and old age were represented in these victims. To one, a
beautiful young lady of wealth and rank, barely twenty-three years old,
the favor was granted of being strangled before her body was consigned
to the flames. Yet even in her case the cruel executioner had not
abstained from first applying a firebrand wantonly and indecently to
different parts of her person.[638] Her companions were burned alive.
One of them was an advocate in parliament; both were elders of the
reformed church. Five days later a physician and a solicitor met the
same fate, but endured greater sufferings, as the wind blew the flames
from beneath them, prolonging their torture; and these were quickly
followed by two students at Paris, both of them from the southern part
of the realm (on the twenty-third of October).[639]
[Sidenote: Intercession of the Swiss cantons and others.]
[Sidenote: Calvin's interest.]
Meanwhile the wretched prisoners were not deserted by their brethren.
Their innocence of the dreadful crimes laid to their charge was
maintained in pamphlets, which showed that these accusations were but
repetitions of slanders invented by the heathen to overwhelm the early
Christians. Their doctrinal orthodoxy was proved by citations from the
early church fathers.[640] The Protestants of Paris found means to
introduce a long remonstrance into the very chamber of the king.
Unfortunately, it had as little influence upon him as similar
productions had had with his predecessor. In Switzerland and in a
portion of Germany the tidings made a deep impression. Less than two
weeks after the blow had been struck at the small community of Parisian
Protestants, Calvin wrote the first of a series of letters calculated to
sustain their drooping courage, and suggested some of the wise ends
Providence might have in view in permitting so severe a discipline.[641]
Meantime he applied himself vigorously to arouse in their behalf an
effective intervention. "My good brethren," he wrote to the people of
Lausanne, "though all the rest should not suffice to move the hearts of
those brethren to whom an appeal is made, yet this emergency admits of
no delay. It can scarcely be but that, amid so many tortures, first one
and then another be involved in them, until the number of sufferers
become an infinite one. In short, the whole kingdom will be in flames.
The question no longer is how to satisfy the desire of the poor
brethren, but, if we have a single spark of humanity within us, to
succor them in such extremity.... Though money be not promptly obtained
elsewhere, yet shall I make such efforts, should I be obliged to pledge
my head and my feet, that it be forthcoming here."[642]
Beza, with his associates, Carmel, Farel, and Bude, at the same time, by
Calvin's request, took active steps to induce the Protestant cantons and
princes to intercede with Henry, and their exertions were not in
vain.[643] It was the object of the reformers to enlist the intervention
of those Protestant powers, in particular, whose alliance and assistance
might be deemed indispensable by the French king in his present
straits.[644] The four "evangelical" Swiss cantons, encouraged by the
success of a recent mission in behalf of the Waldenses of Piedmont, sent
to Paris a deputation, whose appearance was greeted by the Protestants
with the utmost joy. The ambassadors, however, allowed themselves to be
cajoled and deceived by the Cardinal of Lorraine, to whom they had the
imprudence to intrust their petition. In reply to their address to the
king, they were told (on the fifth of November), in the name of his
Majesty, that he invited the confederates in future to trouble
themselves no further with the internal affairs of his kingdom,
especially in matters of religion, since he was resolved to follow in
the steps of his predecessors.[645] Discouraged by this rebuff, they
did not even attempt to press the matter upon the king's notice, or by a
personal interview endeavor to mitigate his anger against their
brethren. It had been better never to have engaged in the intercession
than support it so weakly.[646] The German princes could not be induced
to give to the affair the consideration it merited; but a letter of the
Count Palatine seems to have somewhat diminished the violence of the
persecution.[647]
[Sidenote: Constancy of most of the prisoners.]
The constancy of the victims, by disconcerting the plans of their
enemies, doubtless contributed much to the temporary lull. No one
attracted in this respect greater attention than the most illustrious
person among the prisoners--the daughter of the Seigneur de Rambouillet
and wife of De Rentigny, standard-bearer of the Duke of Guise--who
resolutely rejected the pardon, based on a renunciation of her faith,
which her father and husband brought her from the king, and urged her
with tears to accept.[648] Others, who, on account of their youth, were
expected to be but poor advocates of their doctrinal views, proved more
than a match for their examiners. The course was finally adopted of
distributing the prisoners, about one hundred in number, in various
monastic establishments, whose inmates might win them back to the Roman
Catholic Church, whether by argument or by harsher means. The judges
could thus rid themselves of the irksome task of lighting new fires, and
the energies of the religious orders were put to some account. But the
result hardly met the expectations formed. If a few Protestants obtained
their liberty, and incurred the censures of their brethren, by unworthy
confessions of principle,[649] many more were allowed to escape by the
monks, who soon had reason to desire "that their cloisters might be
purged of such pests, through fear lest the contagion should spread
farther," and found it "burdensome to support without compensation so
large a number of needy persons."[650]
[Sidenote: Controversial pamphlets.]
While the Protestants were thus demonstrating, by the fortitude with
which they encountered severe suffering and even death, the sincerity of
their convictions and the purity of their lives, their enemies were
unremitting in exertions to aggravate the odium in which they were held
by the people. An inquisitor and doctor of the Sorbonne, the notorious
De Mouchy, or Demochares, as he called himself, wrote a pamphlet to
prove them heretics by the decisions of the doctors. A bishop found the
signs of the true church in the _bells_ at the sound of which the
Catholics assembled, and marks of Antichrist in the _pistols_ and
_arquebuses_ whose discharge was said to be the signal for the gathering
of the heretics. A third controversialist went so far as to accuse the
Protestants not only of impurity, but of denying the divinity of Christ,
the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, and even the
existence of God.[651]
[Sidenote: Capture of Calais, January, 1558.]
Meanwhile, public affairs assumed a more encouraging aspect. Francis of
Guise, recalled from Italy, where his ill-success had been the salvation
of the poor Waldenses in their Alpine valleys,[652] had assumed command
of a large force, consisting partly of the troops he had taken to Italy,
partly of noblemen and gentlemen that flocked to his standard in answer
to the king's summons for the defence of the French capital. With this
army he succeeded in capturing, in the beginning of January, 1558, the
city of Calais, for two hundred years an English possession.[653] The
achievement was not a difficult one. The fortifications had been
suffered to go to ruin, and the small garrison was utterly insufficient
to resist the force unexpectedly sent against it.[654] But the success
raised still higher the pride of the Guises.
[Sidenote: Registry of the inquisition edict.]
[Sidenote: Antoine of Navarre, Conde, and other princes favor the
Reformation.]
The auspicious moment was seized by the Cardinal of Lorraine to induce
Henry, on the ninth of January, to hold in parliament a _lit de
justice_, and compel the court to register in his presence the obnoxious
edict of the previous year, establishing the _inquisition_.[655] But the
engine which had been esteemed both by Pope and king the only sure
means of repressing heresy, failed of its end. New churches arose; those
that previously existed rapidly grew.[656] The Reformation, also, now,
for the first time, was openly avowed by men of the first rank in the
kingdom. Its opponents were filled with dismay upon beholding Antoine de
Bourbon, King of Navarre, his brother Louis, Prince of Conde, and
Francois d'Andelot, brother of Admiral Coligny, at the head of the
hitherto despised "Lutherans." Antoine de Bourbon-Vendome was, next to
the reigning monarch and his children, the first prince of the blood.
Since his marriage with Jeanne d'Albret--in consequence of which he
became titular King of Navarre--he had resided for much of the time in
the city of Pan, where his more illustrious son, Henry the Fourth, was
born. Here he had attended the preaching of Protestant ministers. On his
return to court, not long after the capture of Calais, he took the
decided step of frequenting the gatherings of the Parisian Protestants.
Subsequently he rescued a prominent minister--Antoine de Chandieu--from
the Chatelet, in which he was imprisoned, by going in person and
claiming him as a member of his household.[657] Well would it have been
for France had the Navarrese king always displayed the same courage.
Conde and D'Andelot were scarcely less valuable accessions to the ranks
of the Protestants.
[Sidenote: Embassy from the Protestant Electors of Germany.]
Other causes contributed to delay the full execution of the plan of the
Inquisition. A united embassy from the three Protestant Electors of
Germany--the Count Palatine, the Duke of Saxony, and the Marquis of
Brandenburg--and from the Dukes of Deux Ponts and Wurtemberg, bearing a
powerful appeal to Henry in behalf of his persecuted subjects, arrived
in Paris.[658] Such noble and influential petitioners could not be
dismissed--especially at a time when their assistance was
indispensable--without a gracious reply;[659] and, in order that the
German princes might not have occasion to accuse Henry of too flagrant
bad faith, the persecution was allowed for a short time to abate.
[Sidenote: Psalm-singing on the Pre aux Clercs.]
An incident of an apparently trivial character, which happened at Paris
not long after, proved very clearly that the severities inflicted on
some of those connected with the meeting in the Rue St. Jacques had
utterly failed of accomplishing their object. On the southern side of
the Seine, opposite the Louvre, there stretched, just outside of the
city walls, a large open space--the public grounds of the university,
known as the _Pre aux Clercs_.[660] This spot was the favorite promenade
of the higher classes of the Parisians. It happened that, on a certain
afternoon in May,[661] a few voices in the crowd began to sing one of
the psalms which Clement Marot and Theodore de Beze had translated into
French. At the sound the walks and games were forsaken. The tune was
quickly caught up, and soon the vast concourse joining in the words,
either through sympathy or through love of novelty, the curious were
attracted from all quarters to listen to so strange an entertainment.
For many successive evenings the same performance was repeated. The
numbers increased, it was said, to five or six thousand. Many of the
chief personages of the kingdom were to be seen among those who took
part. The King and Queen of Navarre were particularly noticed because
of the pleasure they manifested. By the inmates of the neighboring
College of the Sorbonne the demonstration was interpreted as an open
avowal of heresy. The use of the French language in devotional singing
was calculated to throw contempt upon the time-honored usage of
performing divine service in the Latin tongue.[662] To the king, at this
time absent from the city, the psalm-singing was represented as a
beginning of sedition, which must be suppressed lest it should lead to
the destruction at once of his faith and of his authority. Henry, too
ready a listener to such suggestions, ordered the irregularity to cease;
and the Protestant ministers and elders of Paris, desirous of giving an
example of obedience to the civil power in things indifferent, enjoined
on their members to desist from singing the psalms elsewhere than in
their own homes.[663]
[Sidenote: Conference of Cardinals Lorraine and Granvelle.]
The visit of the Dowager Duchess of Lorraine, who was permitted to meet
her son upon the borders of France, afforded a good opportunity for an
informal discussion of the terms of the peace that was to put an end to
a war of which both parties were equally tired. There, in the fortress
of Peronne, the Cardinal of Lorraine held a conference with Antoine
Perrenot, Cardinal of Granvelle; and a friendship was cemented between
the former and the Spanish court boding no good for the quiet of France
or the stability of the throne.
[Sidenote: D'Andelot, Coligny's younger brother, denounced.]
Little was effected in the direction of peace. But Cardinal Lorraine
received valuable hints touching the best method for humbling the
enemies of his house. Of these no one was more formidable than
D'Andelot, who had distinguished himself greatly in the war on the
Flemish borders. This young nobleman, the Bishop of Arras affirmed, had
been found, during the captivity from which he had recently escaped, to
be infected with the contagion of the "new doctrines." Since his return
to France, he had even ventured to send a heretical volume to console
his brother, the admiral, in prison. The cardinal, jealous of the houses
of Chatillon and Montmorency, promptly reported to the king the story of
D'Andelot's defection from the faith. His brother, the Duke of Guise,
loudly declared that, although he was ready to march to the siege of
Thionville, he could entertain no hope of success if D'Andelot were
suffered to accompany him, in command of the French infantry.[664]
[Sidenote: D'Andelot in Brittany.]
The sympathy of the younger Chatillon was daily becoming more openly
avowed. On a recent visit to Brittany (April, 1558), he had taken with
him Fleury and Loiseleur, Protestant ministers. For the first time, the
westernmost province of France heard the doctrines preached a generation
before in Meaux. The crowd of provincial nobles, flocking to pay their
respects to D'Andelot and his wife, Claude de Rieux, heiress of vast
estates in this region, were both surprised and gratified at enjoying
the opportunity of listening to preachers whose voice had penetrated to
almost every nook of France save this. So palpable were the effects,
that D'Andelot's brief tour in Brittany furnished additional grounds for
Henry's suspicions respecting the young nobleman's soundness in the
faith.[665]
[Sidenote: D'Andelot summoned to appear before the king.]
[Sidenote: His manly defence.]
D'Andelot was summoned to appear before the king and clear himself of
the charges preferred against him. Henry is said, indeed, to have sent
previously D'Andelot's brother, the Cardinal of Chatillon, and his
cousin, Marshal Montmorency, the constable's eldest son, to urge him to
make a submissive and satisfactory explanation. But their exertions were
futile. Henry began the conversation by reminding D'Andelot of the great
intimacy he had always allowed him and the love he bore him. He told him
that he had expected of him anything rather than a revolt from the
religion of his prince and an adherence to new doctrines. And he
announced as the principal points in his conduct which he condemned,
that he had allowed the "Lutheran" views to be preached on his estates,
that he had frequented the _Pre aux Clercs_, that he absented himself
from the mass, and that he had sent "books from Geneva" to his brother,
the admiral, in his captivity. D'Andelot replied with frankness and
intrepidity. He professed gratitude for the many favors he had received
from the monarch, a gratitude he had never tired of making known by
perilling life and property in that prince's cause. But the doctrine he
had caused to be preached was good and holy, and such as his forefathers
had held. He denied having been at the _Pre aux Clercs_, but avowed his
entire approval of the service of praise in which the multitude had
there engaged. As for his absence from the mass, he thanked God for
removing the veil of ignorance that once covered his eyes, and declared
that, with the Almighty's favor, he would never again be present at its
celebration. In fine, he begged Henry to regard his life and property as
being entirely at the royal disposition, but to leave him a free
conscience. The Cardinal of Lorraine, who alone of the courtiers was
present, here interposed to warn the speaker of the bad way into which
he had entered; but D'Andelot replied by appealing to the prelate's own
conscience in testimony of the truth of the doctrines he had once
favored, but now, from ambitious motives, persecuted.
[Sidenote: Henry orders him to be imprisoned.]
[Sidenote: Embarrassment of the court.]
Greatly displeased with so frank an avowal of sentiments that would have
cost one less nobly connected his life, Henry now pointed to the collar
of the "Order of St. Michael" around D'Andelot's neck, and exclaimed: "I
did not give you this order to be so employed; for you swore to attend
mass and to follow my religion." "I knew not what it is to be a
Christian," responded D'Andelot; "nor, had God then touched my heart as
He now has, should I have accepted it on such a condition."[666] Unable
any longer to endure the boldness of D'Andelot--who richly deserved the
title he popularly bore, _the fearless knight_[667]--Henry angrily
commanded him to leave his presence. The young man was arrested and
taken by the archers of the guard to Meaux, whence he was subsequently
removed to Melun.[668] The position of the court was, however, an
embarrassing one. Henry manifested no desire to retain long as a
prisoner, much less to bring to the _estrapade_, the nephew of the
constable, and a warrior who had himself held the honorable post of
Colonel-General of the French infantry, and was second to none in
reputation for valor and skill. The most trifling concession would be
sufficient to secure the scion of the powerful families of Chatillon and
Montmorency. Even this concession, however, could not for a considerable
time be gained. D'Andelot resisted every temptation, and his
correspondence breathed the most uncompromising determination.
[Sidenote: D'Andelot's constancy.]
[Sidenote: His temporary weakness.]
In a long and admirable letter to Henry, it is true, he humbly asked
pardon for the offence his words had given. And he begged the king to
believe that, "save in the matter of obedience to God and of
conscience," he would ever faithfully expose life and means to fulfil
the royal commands. But he also reiterated his inability to attend the
mass, and plainly denounced as blasphemy the approval of any other
sacrifice than that made upon the Cross.[669] To the ministers of Paris
he wrote, expressing a resolution equally strong; and the letters of the
latter, as well as of the great Genevese reformer, were well calculated
to sustain his courage. But D'Andelot was not proof against the
sophistries of Ruze, a doctor of the Sorbonne and confessor of the king.
Moved by the entreaties of his wife,[670] of his uncle the constable,
and of his brother the Cardinal of Chatillon, he was induced, after two
months of imprisonment, to consent to be present, but without taking any
part, at a celebration of the mass. By the same priest D'Andelot sent a
submissive message to the king, to which the bearer, we have reason to
believe, attributed a meaning quite different from that which D'Andelot
had intended to convey. The noble prisoner was at once released; but the
voice of conscience, uniting with that of his faithful friends, soon led
him to repent bitterly of his temporary, but scandalous weakness. From
this time forward he resumes the character of the intrepid defender of
the Protestant doctrines--a character of which he never again divests
himself.[671]
[Sidenote: The bloody decemvirate.]
[Sidenote: Anxiety for peace.]
Meanwhile, Henry and his adviser, the Cardinal of Lorraine, who really
little deserved the reproaches showered on them by the Pope, took steps
to encounter the new assaults which the reformed doctrines were making
on the established church in every quarter of the kingdom. If the
Parliament of Paris began to exhibit reluctance to shed more innocent
blood, it was far otherwise with the decemvirate to whom the three
cardinals had delegated their inquisitorial functions, and whose power
was supreme.[672] But, to the prosecution of the work of exterminating
heresy in France, the continuance of the war with Spain offered
insurmountable obstacles. It diverted the attention of the government
from the multiplication of "Lutheran" churches and communities. It
hampered the court, by compelling it to mitigate its severities, in
consequence of the importunate intercessions of its indispensable
allies, the Protestant princes across the Rhine and the confederated
cantons of Switzerland. Besides, the war had borne no fruit but
disappointment. If Calais had been recovered, St. Quentin and other
strongholds, which were the key to Paris, had been lost. The brilliant
capture of Thionville (on the twenty-second of June, 1558) had been more
than balanced by the disastrous rout of Marshal de Thermes at Gravelines
(on the thirteenth of July).[673]
The almost uninterrupted hostilities of the last twelve years had not
only exhausted the few thousand crowns which Henry had found in the
treasury at his accession to the throne, but had reduced the French
exchequer to as low an ebb as that of the Spanish king.[674] His
antagonist was as anxious as Henry to reduce his expenditures, and
obtain leisure for crushing heresy in the Low Countries and wherever
else it had shown itself in his vast dominions. Constable Montmorency,
too, employed his powerful influence to secure a peace which would
restore him liberty, and the place in the royal favor likely to be
usurped by the Guises, if his absence from court were to last much
longer. And Paul the Fourth was now as earnestly desirous of effecting a
reconciliation between the contending monarchs--that they might unitedly
engage in the holy work of persecution--as he had been a few years
before to embroil them in war.[675]
[Sidenote: The treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, April 3, 1559.]
The common desire for peace found expression in the appointment of
plenipotentiaries, who met, about the middle of October, in the
monastery of Cercamps, near Cambray. France was represented by
Montmorency, the Cardinal of Lorraine, Marshal St. Andre, Morvilliers,
Bishop of Orleans, and Claude de l'Aubespine, Secretary of State. The
Duke of Alva, William of Orange, Ruy-Gomez de Silva, the Bishop of
Arras, and Viglius appeared on the part of Philip. England and Savoy
were also represented by their envoys. After preliminary discussions,
the conference adjourned, to meet in February of the succeeding year at
Cateau-Cambresis.[676] Here, on the third of April, 1559, was concluded
a treaty of peace that terminated the struggle for ascendancy in which
France and Spain had been engaged, with brief intermissions, ever since
the accession of Francis the First and Charles the Fifth.
So far as France was concerned, it was an inglorious close. By a single
stroke of the pen Henry gave up nearly two hundred places that had been
captured by the French from their enemies during the last thirty years.
In return he received Ham, St. Quentin, and three other strongholds held
by Philip on his northern frontier. All the fruits of many years of war
and an infinite loss of life and treasure[677] were surrendered in an
instant for a paltry price. The Duke of Savoy recovered states which had
long been incorporated in the French dominions. The jurisdictions of two
parliaments of France became foreign territory. The inhabitants of Turin
were left to forget the language they had begun to speak well. The King
of Spain could now come to the very gates of Lyons, which before the
peace had stood, as it were, in the middle of the kingdom, but was now
turned into a border city.[678]
[Sidenote: Sacrifice of French interests.]
Such were the concessions Henry was willing to make for the purpose of
obtaining peace abroad, that he might turn his arms against his own
subjects. Philip, if equally zealous, was certainly too prudent to
exhibit his eagerness so clearly to his opponent. The interests of
France had been sacrificed to the bigotry of her monarch and the
selfishness of his advisers. When the terms of the agreement were made
known, they awakened in every true Frenchman's breast a feeling of shame
and disgust.[679] Henry himself manifested embarrassment when
attempting to justify his course.[680] Abroad the improbable tidings
were received with incredulity.[681]
[Sidenote: Was there a secret treaty for the extermination of the
Protestants?]
The treaty of Cateau-Cambresis contained but one article on the subject
of religion--that which bound the monarchs of Spain and France to put
forth their united exertions for securing a "holy universal council."
But common report had it that the omission of more detailed reference to
the subject lying so near to the heart of both kings was fully
compensated by a secret treaty taken up exclusively with this
subject.[682] That treaty was represented as developing a plan which
contemplated nothing less than the entire and violent destruction of
heresy by the united efforts of their Catholic and Very Christian
Majesties. By a single concerted massacre of all dissidents, the whole
of Europe was to be brought back to its allegiance to the see of St.
Peter.[683] Unfortunately, the secret treaty, if it ever existed, has
never come to light; nor have we the testimony of a single person who
pretends to have seen it, or to be acquainted with its contents. Indeed,
the circumstances of the case seem to render such a united effort as
the conjectural treaty supposes either Quixotic or
superfluous--Quixotic, if the two monarchs, without the concurrence of
the empire, whose crown had passed from Charles, not to his son Philip,
but to his brother Ferdinand, should institute a scheme for a general
crusade against the professors of the doctrines that had already gained
a firm foothold in one-half of Germany, in Great Britain, and the
Scandinavian lands of Northern Europe; superfluous, if it respected only
the dominions of the high contracting powers. For the purpose of Henry
was no less clearly and repeatedly proclaimed than that of Philip. No
subject of either crown could ignore at whom the first blow would be
struck, after the pressure of the foreign war had been removed.[684]
Nor, in the execution of their plans, could either monarch imagine
himself to stand in need of the assistance of his royal brother; for it
was not an open war to be carried on, but as yet a struggle with
_persons_, numerous without doubt, but, nevertheless, _suspected_ rather
than _convicted_ of heresy, and discovered, for the most part, only by
diligent search.
[Sidenote: The Prince of Orange learns Henry's and Philip's designs.]
But, if we have reason to think that the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis was
accompanied by no secret and formal stipulations having reference to a
combined assault upon Protestantism, we at least know that the
negotiations it occasioned gave rise to a singular disclosure of the
policy of Philip the Second in the Netherlands--a policy which he deemed
applicable to Christendom entire. Among the ambassadors of Philip and
the hostages for the execution of the treaty was William of Orange, the
future deliverer of the United Provinces. Henry, supposing that the
nobleman to whom so honorable a trust had been committed enjoyed the
confidence of his master to an equal extent with the Duke of Alva, his
colleague, imprudently broached the subject of the suppression of
heresy. The prince wisely encouraged the misapprehension, in order to
avoid incurring the contempt in which he would have been held had the
discovery been made that Philip had not taken him into his confidence.
Henry, waxing earnest on the theme, revealed the intention of Philip and
Alva to establish in the Netherlands "a worse than Spanish Inquisition."
Thus much the prince himself published to the world.[685] The learned
President De Thou adds that Philip's subsequent design was to join his
arms to those of France, to make a joint attack upon the "new
sectaries."[686] This is not altogether impossible. But the plan was
general and vague. Its execution was still in the distant future. Its
details were probably but little elaborated. If, outside of the
dominions of the two monarchs, any points of attack were proposed with
distinctness, they were the free city of Strasbourg, the Canton of Berne
with its dependency, the _Pays de Vaud_--but, above all, _Geneva_.
[Sidenote: Danger menacing the city of Geneva.]
That small republic, insignificant in size, but powerful through the
influence of its teachers and the books with which its presses teemed,
was the eyesore of Roman Catholic France. It was the home of French
refugees for religion's sake; and the strictest laws could not check the
stream of money that flowed thither for their support. It was the
nursery of the reformed doctrines; and the death penalty was ineffectual
to cut off intercourse, or to dam up the flood of Calvinistic books
which it poured over the kingdom.
Calvin himself and his friends momentarily expected the blow to fall
upon their devoted heads.[687] But the same hand that so often in the
eventful history of Geneva interposed in its behalf, by a signal
occurrence warded off the stroke.
[Sidenote: A joint expedition against Geneva proposed by Henry,]
[Sidenote: but declined by the Duke of Alva.]
The apprehensions of the Genevese were well founded. In June, 1559, and
but a few days before the date of Calvin's letter, Philip the Second
made the offer to the French king, through the Duke of Alva, then in
Paris, to aid him in exterminating the Protestants of France. Henry
declined for the moment to avail himself of the assistance, which he
regarded as unnecessary; but he sent the Constable Montmorency to
propose that both monarchs should make a joint expedition against
Geneva, and declared himself ready to employ all his forces in the pious
undertaking. It may surprise us to learn that the prudent duke in turn
rejected the crusade against the Protestant citadel. Even Philip and his
equally bigoted agents could close their ears to the call to become the
instruments in the extirpation of heresy. While they could see neither
reason nor religion in the temporizing policy occasionally manifested by
other Roman Catholic sovereigns in their dealings with Protestant
subjects, Philip and Alva never suffered their hatred of schism to be so
uncompromising as to interfere with what they considered a material
interest of the state. Unfortunately for Philip, the quarrel of Geneva
would inevitably be espoused by the Bernese and the inhabitants of the
other Protestant cantons of Switzerland; and it was certainly
undesirable to provoke the enmity of a powerful body of freemen,
situated in dangerous proximity to the "Franche Comte"--the remnant of
Burgundy still in Spanish hands. It was no less imprudent, in view of
future contingencies, to render still more difficult the passage from
his Catholic Majesty's dominions in Northern Italy to the Netherlands.
So Alva, as he himself reports to his master, rejected the constable's
proposition, contenting himself with a few empty phrases respecting the
great profit that would flow to the cause of God and of royalty from an
exclusion of Roman Catholic subjects from that pestilent city on the
shores of Lake Leman.[688]
[Sidenote: Parliament suspected of heretical leanings.]
Henry had deemed the progress of the reformed doctrines in France so
formidable[689] as to dictate the necessity of making peace with Philip,
even upon humiliating terms. But where should he begin the savage work
for which he had made such sacrifices? His spiritual advisers pointed to
the courts of justice, which they accused of being lukewarm, and even
infected with heresy. For years they had been dwelling upon the same
theme. In 1556 the Sorbonne had denounced the parliament itself as
altogether heretical;[690] and, although Henry showed some indignation
at the suggestion, and sarcastically asked whether the theologians
aspired to become the supreme judges of the kingdom, it was notorious,
two years later, that they had succeeded in sowing in his breast a
general distrust respecting the orthodoxy of the entire body.[691] Nor
was the suspicion groundless. Chosen from among the most highly educated
of French jurisconsults, belonging to a court upon which high
prerogatives had been conferred, holding for life a post of enviable
distinction, and regarded as the supreme guardians of law and equity, it
was in accordance with the very nature of things that the counsellors of
the Parisian parliament should so far participate in the progress of
ideas in the sixteenth century as to begin to look with abhorrence upon
the bloody task imposed on them by the royal edicts. Into what
profession would liberal views gain an earlier admission than that of
the appointed expositors of the rules of right?
Some recent occurrences not only seemed to demonstrate the fact that the
principles of clemency had penetrated into the halls of parliament, but
pointed out the very chamber which was most influenced by them. In the
_Tournelle_, or criminal chamber of parliament--before which those
accused of Protestantism most naturally came--under the presidency of
Seguier,[692] the majority of the counsellors had recently conducted a
trial of four youths, on a charge of "Lutheranism," in so skilful a
manner as to avoid asking any question the answer to which might
compromise the prisoners. And when the bigots insisted on propounding a
crucial inquiry, and elicited a decided expression of Protestant
sentiments, some of the judges showed unmistakable sympathy, and the
chamber, to save appearances in some slight degree, condemned them to
leave the country within a fortnight, instead of instantly confirming
the sentence of death which had been pronounced against three of their
number by the inferior courts.[693] Other "Christaudins" had been sent
to their bishops for trial, although their guilt was patent to all.[694]
In fine, the Cardinal of Lorraine laid to the account of parliament the
spread of the new doctrines throughout France.[695]
[Sidenote: The Mercuriale.]
In order to discover the truth of the charges, a convocation of the
members of all the chambers was ordered for the last Wednesday of April,
Such a gathering for inquiry into the sentiments and morals of the
judges was called, from the day of the week on which it was held, a
_Mercuriale_.[696] The object of the convocation was announced by the
royal procureur-general, Bourdin, to be the establishment of an
understanding between the "Grand' chambre" and the "Tournelle"--the
former of which relentlessly condemned the "Lutherans" to the flames,
while the latter, to the great scandal of justice, had let off several
with simple banishment. The wily adversary of the "new doctrines,"
therefore, called upon the judges to express their opinions respecting
the best method of effecting a return to uniformity. The snare was not
laid in vain. For in the free declaration of sentiment, in which the
members according to custom indulged, several judges were bold enough to
call for the assembling of the Oecumenical Council promised by the
lately ratified treaty of peace, as the sole method of extirpating
error, and to propose meanwhile the suspension of the capital penalties
ordained by the royal edicts.[697]
At his admission into parliament each judge had taken an oath to
maintain inviolable secrecy in reference to the deliberations of the
court. This was rightly supposed to relate in particular to the
expressions of opinion before any formal decision. Nevertheless, the
king was at once acquainted by the First President, Le Maistre, and by
Minard, one of the presidents _a mortier_, with the entire proceedings
of the _Mercuriale_. He was told that the "Lutheranism" of certain
judges was now manifest. They had spoken in abominable terms of the
mass, of the ecclesiastical ordinances, and of prevailing abuses. It
would be the ruin of the church if such daring were suffered to pass by
unrebuked.[698]