Internally, the vigorous Jagiello strengthened both the military and

financial resources of his people. To meet the constant inroads of the

Tartars he established the Cossacks, a rough cavalry formed of the

hunters, {140} fishers, and graziers of the Ukraine, quite analogous to

the cowboys of the American Wild West. From being a military body they

developed into a state and nation that occupied a special position in

Poland and then in Russia. Sigismund's fiscal policy, by recovering

control of the mint and putting the treasury into the hands of capable

bankers, effectively provided for the economic life of the government.

[Sidenote: Reformation]

Poland has generally been as open to the inroads of foreign ideas as to

the attacks of enemies; a peculiar susceptibility to alien culture, due

partly to the linguistic attainments of many educated Poles and partly

to an independent, almost anarchical disposition, has made this nation

receive from other lands more freely than it gives. Every wave of new

ideas innundates the low-lying plain of the Vistula. So the

Reformation spread with amazing rapidity, first among the cities and

then among the peasants of that land. In the fifteenth century the

influence of Huss and the humanists had in different ways formed

channels facilitating the inrush of Lutheranism. The unpopularity of a

wealthy and indolent church predisposed the body politic to the new

infection. Danzig, that "Venice of the North," had a Lutheran preacher

in 1518; while the Edict of Thorn, intended to suppress the heretics,

indicates that as early as 1520 they had attracted the attention of the

central government. But this persecuting measure, followed thick and

fast by others, only proved how little the tide could be stemmed by

paper barriers. The cities of Cracow, Posen, and Lublin, especially

susceptible on account of their German population, were thoroughly

infected before 1522. Next, the contagion attacked the country

districts and towns of Prussia, which had been pretty thoroughly

converted prior to its secularization.

The first political effect of the Reformation was to {141} stimulate

the unrest of the lower classes. Riots and rebellions, analogous to

those of the Peasants' War in Germany, followed hard upon the preaching

of the "gospel." Sigismund could restore order here and there, as he

did at Danzig in 1526 by a military occupation, by fining the town and

beheading her six leading innovators, but he could not suppress the

growing movement. For after the accession of the lower classes came

that of the nobles and gentry who bore the real sovereignty in the

state. Seeing in the Reformation a weapon for humiliating and

plundering the church, as well as a key to a higher spiritual life,

from one motive or the other, they flocked to its standard, and, under

leadership of their greatest reformer, John Laski, organized a powerful

church.

The reign of Sigismund II [Sidenote: Sigismund II, 1548-1572] saw the

social upheaval by which the nobility finally placed the power firmly

in their own hands, and also the height of the Reformation. By a law

known as the "Execution" the assembly of nobles finally got control of

the executive as well as of the legislative branch of the government.

At the same time they, with the cordial assistance of the king, bound

the country together in a closer bond known as the Union of Lublin.

[Sidenote: 1569] Though Lithuania and Prussia struggled against

incorporation with Poland, both were forced to submit to a measure that

added power to the state and opened to the Polish nobility great

opportunity for political and economic exploitation of these lands.

Not only the king, but the magnates and the cities were put under the

heel of the ruling caste. This was an evolution opposite to that of

most European states, in which crown and bourgeoisie subdued the once

proud position of the baronage. But even here in Poland one sees the

rising influence of commerce and the money-power, in that the Polish

nobility was largely composed of small {142} gentry eager and able to

exploit the new opportunities offered by capitalism. In other

countries the old privilege of the sword gave way to the new privilege

of gold; in Poland the sword itself turned golden, at least in part;

the blade kept its keen, steel edge, but the hilt by which it was

wielded glittered yellow.

[Sidenote: Protestantism]

Unchecked though they were by laws, the Protestants soon developed a

weakness that finally proved fatal to their cause, lack of organization

and division into many mutually hostile sects. [Sidenote: 1537] The

Anabaptists of course arrived, preached, gained adherents, and were

suppressed. [Sidenote: 1548] Next came a large influx of Bohemian

Brethren, expelled from their own country and migrating to a land of

freedom, where they soon made common cause with the Lutherans.

[Sidenote: 1558] Calvinists propagated the seeds of their faith with

much success. Finally the Unitarians, led by Lelio Sozini, found a

home in Poland and made many proselytes, at last becoming so powerful

that they founded the new city of Racau, whence issued the famous

Racovian Catechism. At one time they seemed about to obtain the

mastery of the state, but the firm union of the Trinitarian Protestants

at Sandomir [Sidenote: 1570] checked them until all of them were swept

away together by the resurging tide of Catholicism. Several versions

of the Bible, Lutheran, Socinian, and Catholic, were issued.

So powerful were the Evangelicals that at the Diet of 1555 they held

services in the face of the Catholic king, and passed a law abolishing

the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts. This measure, of

course, allowed freedom of all new sects, both those then in control of

the Diet and the as yet unfledged Antitrinitarians. Nevertheless a

strong wish was expressed for a national, Protestant church, and had

Sigismund had the advantages, as he had the matrimonial difficulties,

of Henry VIII, he might have {143} established such a body. But he

never quite dared to take the step, dreading the hostility of Catholic

neighbors. Singularly enough the championship of the Catholic cause

was undertaken by Greek-Catholic Muscovy, [Sidenote: 1562] whose Czar,

Ivan, represented his war against Poland as a crusade against the new

iconoclasts. Unable to act with power, Sigismund cultivated such means

of combating Protestantism as were ready to his hand. His most

trenchant weapon was the Order of Jesuits, who were invited to come in

and establish schools. Moreover, the excellence of their colleges in

foreign lands induced many of the nobility to send their sons to be

educated under them, and thus were prepared the seeds of the

Counter-Reformation.

The death of Sigismund without an heir left Poland for a time

masterless. During the interregnum the Diet passed the Compact of

Warsaw by which absolute religious liberty was granted to all

sects--"Dissidentes de Religione"--without exception. [Sidenote:

January 28, 1573] But, liberal though the law was, it was vitiated in

practice by the right retained by every master of punishing his serfs

for religious as well as for secular causes. Thus it was that the

lower classes were marched from Protestant pillar to Catholic post and

back without again daring to rebel or to express any choice in the

matter.

The election of Henry of Valois, [Sidenote: Henry, May 11, 1573] a

younger son of Catharine de' Medici, was made conditional on the

acceptance of a number of articles, including the maintenance of

religious liberty. The prince acceded, with some reservations, and was

crowned on February 21, 1574. Four months later he heard of the death

of his brother, Charles IX, making him king of France. Without daring

to ask leave of absence, he absconded from Poland on June 18, thereby

abandoning a throne which was promptly declared vacant.

The new election presented great difficulties, and {144} almost led to

civil war. While the Senate declared for the Hapsburg Maximilian II,

the Diet chose Stephen Báthory, prince of Transylvania. [Sidenote:

Stephen Báthory, 1576-86] Only the unexpected death of Maximilian

prevented an armed collision between the two. Báthory, now in

possession, forced his recognition by all parties and led the land of

his adoption into a period of highly successful diplomacy and of

victorious war against Muscovy. His religious policy was one of

pacification, conciliation, and of supporting inconspicuously the

Jesuit foundations at Wilna, Posen, Cracow, and Eiga. But the full

fruits of their propaganda, resulting in the complete reconversion of

Poland to Catholicism were not reaped until the reign of his successor,

Sigismund III, a Vasa, of Sweden. [Sidenote: Sigismund III, 1586-1632]

[Sidenote: Bohemia]

Bohemia, a Slav kingdom long united historically and dynastically with

the Empire, as the home of Huss, welcomed the Reformation warmly, the

Brethren turning first to Luther and then to Calvin. After various

efforts to suppress and banish them had failed of large success, the

Compact of 1567 granted toleration to the three principal churches. As

in Poland, the Jesuits won back the whole land in the next generation,

so that in 1910 there were in Bohemia 6,500,000 Catholics and only

175,000 Protestants.

[Sidenote: Hungary, 1526]

Hungary was so badly broken by the Turks at the battle of Mohács that

she was able to play but little part in the development of Western

civilization. Like her more powerful rival, she was also distracted by

internal dissention. After the death of her King Lewis at Mohács there

were two candidates for the throne, Ferdinand the Emperor's brother and

John Zapolya, [Sidenote: Zapolya, 1526-40] "woiwod" or prince of

Transylvania. Protestantism had a considerable hold on the nobles,

who, after the shattering of the national power, divided a portion of

the goods of the church between them. {145} The Unitarian movement was

also strong for a time, and the division this caused proved almost

fatal to the Reformation, for the greater part of the kingdom was won

back to Catholicism under the Jesuits' leadership. [Sidenote:

1576-1612] In 1910 there were about 8,600,000 Catholics in Hungary and

about 3,200,000 Protestants.

[Sidenote: Transylvania]

Transylvania, though a dependency of the Turks, was allowed to keep the

Christian religion. The Saxon colonists in this state welcomed the

Reformation, formally recognizing the Augsburg Confession in a synod of

1572. Here also the Unitarians attained their greatest strength, being

recruited partly from those expelled from Poland. They drew their

inspiration not merely from Sozini, but from a variety of sources, for

the doctrine appeared simultaneously among certain Anabaptist and

Spiritualist sects. Toleration was granted them on the same terms as

other Christians. The name "Unitarian" first appears in a decree of

the Transylvania Diet of the year 1600. An appreciable body of this

persuasion still remains in the country, together with a number of

Lutherans, Calvinists, and Romanists, but the large majority of the

people belong to two Greek Catholic churches.

{146}

CHAPTER III

SWITZERLAND

SECTION 1. ZWINGLI

[Sidenote: The Swiss Confederation]

Amid the snow-clad Alps and azure lakes of Switzerland there grew up a

race of Germans which, though still nominally a part of the Empire,

had, at the period now considered, long gone on its own distinct path

of development. Politically, the Confederacy arose in a popular revolt

against the House of Austria. The federal union of the three forest

cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, first entered into in 1291 and

made permanent in 1315, was strengthened by the admission of Lucerne

(1332), Zug (1352), Glarus (1351) and of the Imperial Cities of Zurich

(1351) and Berne (1353). By the admission of Freiburg and Solothurn

(1481), Basle (1501), Schaffhausen (1501) and Appenzell (1513) the

Confederacy reached the number of thirteen cantons at which it remained

for many years. By this time it was recognized as a practically

independent state, courted by the great powers of Europe. Allied to

this German Confederacy were two Romance-speaking states of a similar

nature, the Confederacies of the Valais and of the Grisons.

The Swiss were then the one free people of Europe. Republican

government by popular magistrates prevailed in all the cantons.

Liberty was not quite democratic, for the cantons ruled several subject

provinces, and in the cities a somewhat aristocratic electorate held

power; nevertheless there was no state in Europe approaching the Swiss

in self-government. Though they were generally accounted the best

soldiers of the {147} day, their military valor did not redound to

their own advantage, for the hardy peasantry yielded to the

solicitations of the great powers around them to enter into foreign,

mercenary service. The influential men, especially the priests, took

pensions from the pope or from France or from other princes, in return

for their labors in recruiting. The system was a bad one for both

sides. Swiss politics were corrupted and the land drained of its

strongest men; whereas the princes who hired the mercenaries often

found to their cost that such soldiers were not only the most

formidable to their enemies but also the most troublesome to

themselves, always on the point of mutiny for more pay and plunder.

The Swiss were beginning to see the evils of the system, and prohibited

the taking of pensions in 1503, though this law remained largely a dead

letter. [Sidenote: September 13-14, 1515] The reputation of the

mountaineers suffered a blow in their defeat by the French at

Marignano, followed by a treaty with France, intended by that power to

make Switzerland a permanent dependency in return for a large annual

subsidy payable to each of the thirteen cantons and to the Grisons and

Valais as well. The country suffered from faction. The rural or

"Forest" cantons were jealous of the cities, and the latter, especially

Berne, the strongest, pursued selfish policies of individual

aggrandizement at the expense of their confederates.

As everywhere else, the cities were the centers of culture and of

social movements. Basle was famous for its university and for the

great printing house of Froben. Here Albert Dürer had stayed for a

while during his wandering years. Here Sebastian Brant had studied and

had written his famous satire. Here the great Erasmus had come to

publish his New Testament.

But the Reformation in Switzerland was only in [Sidenote: 1521-9] {148}

part a child of humanism. Nationalism played its rôle in the revolt

from Rome, memories of councils lingered at Constance and Basle, and

the desire for a purer religion made itself felt among the more

earnest. Switzerland had at least one great shrine, that of

Einsiedeln; to her Virgin many pilgrims came yearly in hopes of the

plenary indulgence, expressly promising forgiveness of both guilt and

penalty of sin. Berne was the theater of one of the most reverberating

scandals enacted by the contemporary church. [Sidenote: The Jetzer

scandal] A passionately contested theological issue of the day was

whether the Virgin had been immaculately conceived. This was denied by

the Dominicans and asserted by the Franciscans. Some of the Dominicans

of the friary at Berne thought that the best way to settle the affair

was to have a direct revelation. For their fraudulent purposes they

conspired with John Jetzer, a lay brother admitted in 1506, who died

after 1520. Whether as a tool in the hands of others, or as an

imposter, Jetzer produced a series of bogus apparitions, bringing the

Virgin on the stage and making her give details of her conception

sufficiently gross to show that it took place in the ordinary, and not

in the immaculate, manner. [Sidenote: 1509] When the fraud was at

last discovered by the authorities, four of the Dominicans involved

were burnt at the stake.

But the vague forces of discontent might never have crystallized into a

definite movement save for the leadership of Ulrich Zwingli.

[Sidenote: Zwingli] He was born January 1, 1484, on the Toggenburg,

amidst the lofty mountains, breathing the atmosphere of freedom and

beauty from the first. As he wandered in the wild passes he noticed

how the marmots set a sentry to warn them of danger, and how the

squirrel crossed the stream on a chip. When he returned to the home of

his father, a local magistrate in easy circumstances, he heard {149}

stirring tales of Swiss freedom and Swiss valor that planted in his

soul a deep love of his native land. The religion he learned was good

Catholic; and the element of popular superstition in it was far less

weird and terrible than in Northern Germany. He remembered one little

tale told him by his grandmother, how the Lord God and Peter slept

together in the same bed, and were wakened each morning by the

housekeeper coming in and pulling the hair of the outside man.

Education began early under the tuition of an uncle, the parish priest.

At ten Ulrich was sent to Basle to study. Here he progressed well,

becoming the head scholar, and here he developed a love of music and

considerable skill in it. Later he went to school at Berne, where he

attracted the attention of some friars who tried to guide him into

their cloister, an effort apparently frustrated by his father. In the

autumn of 1498 he matriculated at Vienna. For some unknown cause he

was suspended soon afterwards, but was readmitted in the spring of

1500. Two years later he went to Basle, where he completed his studies

by taking the master's degree. [Sidenote: 1506] While here he taught

school for a while. Theology apparently interested him little; his

passion was for the humanities, and his idol was Erasmus. Only in 1513

did he begin to learn Greek.

If, at twenty-two, before he had reached the canonical age, Zwingli

took orders, and became parish priest at Glarus, it was less because of

any deep religious interest than because he found in the clerical

calling the best opportunity to cultivate his taste for letters. He

was helped financially by a papal pension of fifty gulden per annum.

His first published work was a fable. [Sidenote: 1510] The lion, the

leopard, and the fox (the Emperor, France, and Venice) try to drive the

ox {150} (Switzerland) out of his pasture, but are frustrated by the

herdsman (the pope). The same tendencies--papal, patriotic, and

political--are shown in his second book, [Sidenote: 1512] an account of

the relations between the Swiss and French, and in _The Labyrinth_,

[Sidenote: 1516] an allegorical poem. The various nations appear again

as animals, but the hero, Theseus, is a patriot guided by the Ariadne

thread of reason, while he is vanquishing the monsters of sin, shame,

and vice. Zwingli's natural interest in politics was nourished by his

experiences as field chaplain of the Swiss forces at the battles of

Novara [Sidenote: 1513] and Marignano. [Sidenote: 1515]

Was he already a Reformer? Not in the later sense of the word, but he

was a disciple of Erasmus. Capito wrote to Bullinger in 1536: "While

Luther was in the hermitage and had not yet emerged into the light,

Zwingli and I took counsel how to cast down the pope. For then our

judgment was maturing under the influence of Erasmus's society and by

reading good authors." Though Capito over-estimated the opposition of

the young Swiss to the papacy, he was right in other respects.

Zwingli's enthusiasm for the prince of humanists, perfectly evident in

his notes on St. Paul, stimulated him to visit the older scholar at

Basle in the spring of 1516. Their correspondence began at the same

time. Is it not notable that in _The Labyrinth_ the thread of Ariadne

is not religion, but reason? His religious ideal, as shown by his

notes on St. Paul, was at this time the Erasmian one of an ethical,

undogmatic faith. He interpreted the Apostle by the Sermon on the

Mount and by Plato. He was still a good Catholic, without a thought of

breaking away from the church.

[Sidenote: October, 1516-December, 1518]

From Glarus Zwingli was called to Einsiedeln, where he remained for two

years. Here he saw the superstitious absurdities mocked by Erasmus.

Here, too, {151} he first came into contact with indulgences, sold

throughout Switzerland by Bernard Samson, a Milanese Franciscan.

Zwingli did not attack them with the impassioned zeal of Luther, but

ridiculed them as "a comedy." His position did not alienate him from

the papal authorities, [Sidenote: September 1, 1516] for he applied

for, and received, the appointment of papal acolyte. How little

serious was his life at this time may be seen from the fact that he

openly confessed that he was living in unchastity and even joked about

it.

Notwithstanding his peccadillos, as he evidently regarded them, high

hopes were conceived of his abilities and independence of character.

When a priest was wanted at Zurich, [Sidenote: January 1, 1519] Zwingli

applied for the position and, after strenuous canvassing, succeeded in

getting it.

Soon after this came the turning-point in Zwingli's life, making of the

rather worldly young man an earnest apostle. Two causes contributed to

this. The first was the plague. Zwingli was taken sick in September

and remained in a critical condition for many months. As is so often

the case, suffering and the fear of death made the claims of the other

world so terribly real to him that, for the first time, he cried unto

God from the depths, and consecrated his life to service of his Saviour.

[Sidenote: 1519]

The second influence that decided and deepened Zwingli's life was that

of Luther. He first mentions him in 1519, and from that time forth,

often. All his works and all his acts thereafter show the impress of

the Wittenberg professor. Though Zwingli himself sturdily asserted

that he preached the gospel before he heard of Luther, and that he

learned his whole doctrine direct from the Bible, he deceived himself,

as many men do, in over-estimating his own originality. He was truly

able to say that he had formulated some {152} of his ideas, in

dependence on Erasmus, before he heard of the Saxon; and he still

retained his capacity for private judgment afterwards. He never

followed any man slavishly, and in some respects he was more radical

than Luther; nevertheless it is true that he was deeply indebted to the

great German.

Significantly enough, the first real conflict broke out at Zurich early

in 1520. Zwingli preached against fasting and monasticism, and put

forward the thesis that the gospel alone should be the rule of faith

and practice. He succeeded in carrying through a practical reform of

the cathedral chapter, but was obliged to compromise on fasting. Soon

afterwards Zurich renounced obedience to the bishop. The Forest

Cantons, already jealous of the prosperity of the cities, endeavored to

intervene, but were warned by Zwingli not to appeal to war, as it was

an unchristian thing. Opposition only drove his reforming zeal to

further efforts.

In the spring of 1522 Zwingli formed with Anna Reinhard Meyer a union

which he kept secret for two years, when he married her in church. In

the marriage itself, though it was by no means unhappy, there was

something lacking of fine feeling and of perfect love.

[Sidenote: Reformation in Zurich]

As the reform progressed, the need of clarification was felt. This was

brought about by the favorite method of that day, a disputation. The

Catholics tried in vain to prevent it, and it was actually held in

January, 1523, on 67 theses drawn up by Zwingli. Here, as so often, it

was found that the battle was half won when the innovators were heard.

They themselves attributed this to the excellence of their cause; but,

without disparaging that, it must be said that, as the psychology of

advertising has shown, any thesis presented with sufficient force to

catch the public ear, is {153} sure to win a certain number of

adherents. [Sidenote: October 27, 1523] The Town Council of Zurich

ordered the abolition of images and of the mass. The opposition of the

cathedral chapter considerably delayed the realization of this program.

In December the Council was obliged to concede further discussion. It

was not until Wednesday, April 12, 1525, that mass was said for the

last time in Zurich. Its place was immediately taken, the next day,

Maundy Thursday, by a simple communion service. At the same time the

last of the convents were suppressed, or put in a condition assuring

their eventual extinction. Other reforms included the abolition of

processions, of confirmation and of extreme unction. With homely

caution, a large number of simple souls had this administered to them

just before the time allotted for its last celebration. Organs were

taken out of the churches, and regular lectures on the Bible given.

Alarmed by these innovations the five original cantons,--Unterwalden,

Uri, Schwyz, Lucerne and Zug,--formed a league in 1524 to suppress the

"Hussite, Lutheran, and Zwinglian heresies." For a time it looked like

war. Zwingli and his advisers drew up a remarkably thorough plan of

campaign, including a method of securing allies, many military details,

and an ample provision for prayer for victory. War, however, was

averted by the mediation of Berne as a friend of Zurich, and the

complete religious autonomy of each canton was guaranteed.

The Swiss Reformation had to run the same course of separation from the

humanists and radicals, and of schism, as did the German movement.

Though Erasmus was a little closer to the Swiss than he had been to the

Saxon Reformers, he was alienated by the outrageous taunts of some of

them and by the equally unwarranted attempts of others to show that he

agreed {154} with them. "They falsely call themselves evangelical," he

opined, "for they seek only two things: a salary and a wife."

Then came the break with Luther, of which the story has already been

told. The division was caused neither by jealousy, nor by the one

doctrine--that of the real presence--on which it was nominally fought.

There was in reality a wide difference between the two types of

thought. The Saxon was both mystic and a schoolman; to him religion

was all in all and dogma a large part of religion. Zwingli approached

the problem of salvation from a less personal, certainly from a less

agonized, and from a more legal, liberal, empiric standpoint. He felt

for liberty and for the value of common action in the state. He

interpreted the Bible by reason; Luther placed his reason under the

tuition of the Bible in its apparent meaning.

[Sidenote: Anabaptists, 1522]

Next came the turn of the Anabaptists--those Bolsheviki of the

sixteenth century. Their first leaders appeared at Zurich and were for

a while bosom friends of Zwingli. But a parting of the ways was

inevitable, for the humanist could have little sympathy with an

uncultured and ignorant group--such they were, in spite of the fact

that a few leaders were university graduates--and the statesman could

not admit in his categories a purpose that was sectarian as against the

state church, and democratic as against the existing aristocracy.

[Sidenote: 1523]

His first work against them shows how he was torn between his desire to

make the Bible his only guide and the necessity of compromising with

the prevailing polity. As he was unable to condemn his opponents on

any consistent grounds he was obliged to prefer against them two

charges that were false, though probably believed true by himself. As

they were {155} ascetics in some particulars he branded them as

monastic; for their social program he called them seditious.

The suppression of the Peasants' Revolt had the effect in Switzerland,

as elsewhere, of causing the poor and oppressed to lose heart, and of

alienating them from the cause of the official Protestant churches. A

disputation with the Anabaptist leaders was held at Zurich; [Sidenote:

November 6-8, 1525] they were declared refuted, and the council passed

an order for all unbaptized children to be christened within a week.

The leaders were arrested and tried; Zwingli bearing testimony that

they advocated communism, which he considered wrong as the Bible's

injunction not to steal implied the right of private property. The

Anabaptists denied that they were communists, but the leaders were

bound over to keep the peace, some were fined and others banished. As

persecuting measures almost always increase in severity, it was not

long before the death penalty was denounced against the sectaries, and

actually applied. In a polemic against the new sect entitled _In

Catabaptistarum Strophas Elenchus_, [Sidenote: July 1527] Zwingli's

only argument is a criticism of some inconsistencies in the

Anabaptists' biblicism; his final appeal is to force. His strife with

them was harder than his battle with Rome. It seems that the reformer

fears no one so much as him who carries the reformer's own principles

to lengths that the originator disapproves. Zwingli saw in the

fearless fanatics men prepared to act in political and social matters

as he had done in ecclesiastical affairs; he dreaded anarchy or, at

least, subversion of the polity he preferred, and, like all the other

men of his age, he branded heresy as rebellion and punished it as crime.

[Sidenote: Theocracy]

By this time Zurich had become a theocracy of the same tyrannical type

as that later made famous by {156} Geneva. Zwingli took the position

of an Old Testament prophet, subordinating state to church. At first

he had agreed with the Anabaptists in separating (theoretically) church

and state. But he soon came to believe that, though true Christians

might need no government, it was necessary to control the wicked, and

for this purpose he favored an aristocratic polity. All matters of

morals were strictly regulated, severe laws being passed against

taverns and gambling. The inhabitants were forced to attend church.

After the suppression of the Catholics and the radicals, there

developed two parties just as later in Geneva, the Evangelical and the

Indifferent, the policy of the latter being one of more freedom, or

laxity, in discipline, and in general a preference of political to

religious ends.

[Sidenote: Basle November, 1522]

The Reformation had now established itself in other cities of German

Switzerland. Oecolampadius coming to Basle as the bearer of

Evangelical ideas, won such success that soon the bishop was deprived

of authority, [Sidenote: 1524] two disputations with the Catholics were

held, [Sidenote: 1525] and the monasteries abolished. [Sidenote: 1527]

Oecolampadius, after taking counsel with Zwingli on the best means of

suppressing Catholic worship, branded the mass as an act worse than

theft, harlotry, adultery, treason, and murder, called a meeting of the

town council, and requested them to decree the abolition of Catholic

worship. [Sidenote: October 27, 1527] Though they replied that every

man should be free to exercise what religion he liked, on Good Friday,

1528, the Protestants removed the images from Oecolampadius's church,

and grumbled because their enemies were yet tolerated. Liberty of

conscience was only assured by the fairly equal division of the

membership of the town council. On December 23, 1528, two hundred

citizens assembled and presented a petition, drawn up by Oecolampadius,

for the suppression of {157} the mass. On January 6, 1529, under

pressure from the ambassadors of Berne and Zurich, the town council of

Basle decreed that all pastors should preach only the Word of God, and

asked them to assemble for instruction on this point. The compromise

suited no one and on February 8 the long prepared revolution broke out.

Under pretence that the Catholics had disobeyed the last decree, a

Protestant mob surrounded the town hall, planted cannon, and forced the

council to expel the twelve Catholic members, meanwhile destroying

church pictures and statues. "It was indeed a spectacle so sad to the

superstitious," Oecolampadius wrote to Capito, "that they had to weep

blood. . . . We raged against the idols, and the mass died of sorrow."

A somewhat similar development took place in Berne, St. Gall,

Schaffhausen, and Glarus. The favorite instrument for arousing popular

interest and support was the disputation. Such an one was held at

Baden in May and June, 1526. Zwingli declined to take part in this and

the Catholics claimed the victory. This, however, did them rather harm

than good, for the public felt that the cards had been stacked. A

similar debate at Berne in 1528 turned that city completely to the

Reformation. A synod of the Swiss Evangelical churches was formed in

1527. This made for uniformity. The publication of the Bible in a

translation by Leo Jud and others, with prefaces by Zwingli, proved a

help to the Evangelical cause. [Sidenote: 1530] This translation was

the only one to compete at all successfully with Luther's.

The growing strength of the Protestant cantons encouraged them to carry

the reform by force in all places in which a majority was in favor of

it. Zwingli's far-reaching plans included an alliance with Hesse and

with Francis I to whom he dedicated his {158} two most important

theological works, _True and False Religion_ and _An Exposition of the

Christian Faith_. [Sidenote: April, 1529] The Catholic cantons

replied by making a league with Austria. War seemed imminent and

Zwingli was so heartily in favor of it that he threatened resignation

if Zurich did not declare war. This was accordingly done on June 8.

Thirty thousand Protestant soldiers marched against the Catholic

cantons, which, without the expected aid from Austria, were able to put

only nine thousand men into the field. Seeing themselves hopelessly

outnumbered, the Catholics prudently negotiated a peace without risking

a battle. [Sidenote: First Peace of Cappel] The terms of this first

Peace of Cappel forced the Catholics to renounce the alliance with

Austria, and to allow the majority of citizens in each canton to decide

the religion they would follow. Toleration for Protestants was

provided for in Catholic cantons, though toleration of the old religion

was denied in the Evangelical cantons.

This peace marked the height of Zwingli's power. He continued to

negotiate on equal terms with Luther, and he sent missionaries into

Geneva to win it to his cause and to the Confederacy. The Catholic

cantons, stung to the quick, again sought aid from Austria and raised

another and better army. [Sidenote: Defeat of Zwingli] Zwingli heard

of this and advocated a swift blow to prevent it--the "offensive

defence." Berne refused to join Zurich in this aggression, but agreed

to bring pressure to bear on the Catholics [Sidenote: May 1531] by

proclaiming a blockade of their frontiers. An army was prepared by the

Forest Cantons, but Berne, whose entirely selfish policy was more

disastrous to the Evangelical cause than was the hostility of the

league, still refused to engage in war. Zurich was therefore obliged

to meet it alone. An army of only two thousand Zurichers marched out,

accompanied by Zwingli as field chaplain. Eight thousand Catholic

troops attacked, utterly defeated them, and {159} killed many on the

field of battle. [Sidenote: October 11, 1531] Zwingli, who, though a

non-combatant, was armed, was wounded and left on the field. Later he

was recognized by enemies, killed, and his body burned as that of a

heretic.

The defeat was a disaster to Protestant Switzerland not so much on

account of the terms of peace, which were moderate, as because of the

loss of prestige and above all of the great leader. His spirit

however, continued to inspire his followers, and lived in the Reformed

Church. Indeed it has been said, though with exaggeration, that Calvin

only gave his name to the church founded by Zwingli, just as Americus

gave his name to the continent discovered by Columbus. In many

respects Zwingli was the most liberal of the Reformers. In his last

work he expressed the belief that in heaven would be saved not only

Christians and the worthies of the Old Testament but also "Hercules,

Theseus, Socrates, Aristides, Antigonus, Numa, Camillus, the Catos and

Scipios. . . . In a word no good man has ever existed, nor shall there

exist a holy mind, a faithful soul, from the very foundation of the

world to its consummation, whom you will not see there with God."

Nevertheless, Zwingli was a persecutor and was bound by many of the

dogmatic prepossessions of his time. But his religion had in it less

of miracle and more of reason than that of any other founder of a

church in the sixteenth century. He was a statesman, and more willing

to trust the people than were his contemporaries, but yet he was ready

to sacrifice his country to his creed.

For a short time after the death of so many of its leading citizens in

the battle of Cappel, Zurich was reduced to impotence and despair. Nor

was she much comforted or assisted by her neighbors. Oecolampadius

died but a few weeks after his friend; while {160} Luther and Erasmus

sang paeans of triumph over the prostration of their rivals. Even

Calvin considered it a judgment of God. Gradually by her own strength

Zurich won her way back to peace and a certain influence. [Sidenote:

Bullinger, 1504-75] Zwingli's follower, Henry Bullinger, the son of a

priest, was a remarkable man. He not only built up his own city but

his active correspondence with Protestants of all countries did a great

deal to spread the cause of the Evangelical religion. In conjunction

with Myconius, he drew up the first Swiss confession, [Sidenote: 1536]

accepted by Zurich, Berne, Basle, Schaffhausen, St. Gall, Mülhausen and

Biel; [Sidenote: 1549] and later he made the agreement with Calvin

known as the Consensus Tigurinus. In this the Zwinglian and

Calvinistic doctrines of the eucharist were harmonized as far as

possible. But while the former decreased the latter increased, and

Geneva took the place of Zurich as the metropolis of the Reformed faith.

SECTION 2. CALVIN

On January 15, 1527, Thomas von Hofen wrote Zwingli from Geneva that he

would do all he could to exalt the gospel in that city but that he knew

it would be vain, for there were seven hundred priests working against

him. This letter gives an insight into the methods by which new

territory was evangelized, the quarters whence came the new influences,

and the forces with which they had to contend.

Among the early missionaries of "the gospel" in French-speaking lands,

one of the most energetic was William Farel. [Sidenote: Farel,

1489-1565] He had studied at Paris under Lèfevre d'Étaples, and was

converted to Lutheranism as early as 1521. He went first to Basle,

where he learned to know Erasmus. Far from showing respect to the

older and more famous man, he scornfully told him to his face that

Froben's wife knew more theology than {161} did he. Erasmus's

resentment showed itself in the nickname Phallicus that he fastened on

his antagonist. From Basle Farel went to Montbéliard and Aigle,

preaching fearlessly but so fiercely that his friend Oecolampadius

warned him to remember rather to teach than to curse. [Sidenote: 1528]

After attending the disputation at Berne he evangelized western

Switzerland. His methods may be learned from his work at Valangin on

August 15, 1530. He attended a mass, but in the midst of it went up to

the priest, tore the host forcibly from his hands, and said to the

people: "This is not the God whom you worship: he is above in heaven,

even in the majesty of the Father." In 1532 he went to Geneva.

Notwithstanding the fact that here, as often elsewhere, he narrowly

escaped lynching, he made a great impression. His red hair and hot

temper evidently had their uses.

[Sidenote: Calvin, 1509-64]

_The_ Reformer of French Switzerland was not destined to be Farel,

however, but John Calvin. Born at Noyon, Picardy, his mother died

early and his father, who did not care for children, sent him to the

house of an aristocratic friend to be reared. In this environment he

acquired the distinguished manners and the hauteur for which he was

noted. When John was six years old his father, Gerard, had him

appointed to a benefice just as nowadays he might have got him a

scholarship. At the age of twelve Gerard's influence procured for his

son another of these ecclesiastical livings and two years later this

was exchanged for a more lucrative one to enable the boy to go to

Paris. Here for some years, at the College of Montaigu, Calvin studied

scholastic philosophy and theology under Noel Beda, a medieval

logic-chopper and schoolman by temperament. At the university Calvin

won from his fellows the sobriquet of "the accusative case," on account

of his censorious {162} and fault-finding disposition. At his father's

wish John changed from theology to law. For a time he studied at the

universities of Orleans and Bourges. At Orleans he came under the

influence of two Protestants, Olivetan and the German Melchior Volmar.

On the death of his father, in 1531, he began to devote himself to the

humanities. His first work, a commentary on Seneca's _De Clementia_,

witnesses his wide reading, his excellent Latin style, and his ethical

interests.

It was apparently through the humanists Erasmus and Lefèvre that he was

led to the study of the Bible and of Luther's writings. Probably in

the fall of 1533 he experienced a "conversion" such as stands at the

head of many a religious career. A sudden beam of light, he says, came

to him at this time from God, putting him to the proof and showing him

in how deep an abyss of error and of filth he had been living. He

thereupon abandoned his former life with tears.

In the spring of 1534 Calvin gave up the sinecure benefices he had

held, and towards the end of the year left France because of the

growing persecution, for he had already rendered himself suspect.

After various wanderings he reached Basle, where he published the first

edition of his _Institutes of the Christian Religion_. [Sidenote:

Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1536] It was dedicated, like two

of Zwingli's works, to Francis I, with a strong plea for the new faith.

It was, nevertheless, condemned and burnt publicly in France in 1542.

Originally written in Latin it was translated by the author into French

in 1541, and reissued from time to time in continually larger editions,

the final one, of 1559, being five times as bulky as the first

impression. The thought, too, though not fundamentally changed, was

rearranged and developed. Only in the redaction of 1541 was {163}

predestination made perfectly clear. The first edition, like Luther's

catechism, took up in order the Decalogue, the Creed, the Lord's

Prayer, and the Sacraments. To this was added a section on Christian

liberty, the power of the church, and civil government. In the last

edition the arrangement followed entirely the order of articles in the

Apostles' Creed, all the other matter being digested in its relation to

faith.

[Sidenote: A system of theology]

In the _Institutes_ Calvin succeeded in summing up the whole of

Protestant Christian doctrine and practice. It is a work of enormous

labor and thought. Its rigid logic, comprehensiveness, and clarity

have secured it the same place in the Protestant Churches that the

_Summa_ of Aquinas has in the Roman theology. It is like the _Summa_,

in other ways, primarily in that it is an attempt to derive an

absolute, unchangeable standard of dogma from premises considered

infallible. Those who have found great freshness in Calvin, a new life

and a new realism, can do so only in comparison with the older

schoolmen. Calvin simply went over their ground, introducing into

their philosophy all the connotations that three centuries of progress

had made necessary. This is not denying that his work was well written

and that it filled a need urgently felt at the time. Calvin cultivated

style, both French and Latin, with great care, for he saw its immense

utility for propaganda. He studied especially brevity, and thought

that he carried it to an extreme, though the French edition of the

_Institutes_ fills more than eight hundred large octavo pages.

However, all things are relative, and compared to many other

theologians Calvin is really concise and readable.

There is not one original thought in any of Calvin's works. I do not

mean "original" in any narrow sense, for to the searcher for sources it

seems that {164} there is literally nothing new under the sun. But

there is nothing in Calvin for which ample authority cannot be found in

his predecessors. Recognizing the Bible as his only standard, he

interpreted it according to the new Protestant doctors. First and

foremost he was dependent on Luther, and to an extent that cannot be

exaggerated. Especially from the _Catechisms_, _The Bondage of the

Will_, and _The Babylonian Captivity of the Church_, Calvin drew all

his principal doctrines even to details. He also borrowed something

from Bucer, Erasmus and Schwenckfeld, as well as from three writers who

were in a certain sense his models. Melanchthon's _Commonplaces of

Theology_, Zwingli's _True and False Religion_, and Farel's _Brief

Instruction in Christian Faith_ had all done tentatively what he now

did finally.

[Sidenote: Theocentric character]

The center of Calvin's philosophy was God as the Almighty Will. His

will was the source of all things, of all deeds, of all standards of

right and wrong and of all happiness. The sole purpose of the

universe, and the sole intent of its Creator, was the glorification of

the Deity. Man's chief end was "to glorify God and enjoy him forever."

God accomplished this self-exaltation in all things, but chiefly

through men, his noblest work, and he did it in various ways, by the

salvation of some and the damnation of others. And his act was purely

arbitrary; he foreknew and predestined the fate of every man from the

beginning; he damned and saved irrespective of foreseen merit. "God's

eternal decree" Calvin himself called "frightful." [1] The outward

sign of election to grace he thought was moral behavior, and in this

respect he demanded the uttermost from himself and from his followers.

The elect, he thought, were certain of salvation. The highest virtue

was faith, a matter more {165} of the heart than of the reason. The

divinity of Christ, he said, was apprehended by Christian experience,

not by speculation. Reason was fallacious; left to itself the human

spirit "could do nothing but lose itself in infinite error, embroil

itself in difficulties and grope in opaque darkness." But God has

given us his Word, infallible and inerrant, something that "has flowed

from his very mouth." "We can only seek God in his Word," he said,

"nor think of him otherwise than according to his Word."

Inevitably, Calvin sought to use the Bible as a rigid, moral law to be

fulfilled to the letter. His ethics were an elaborate casuistry, a

method of finding the proper rule to govern the particular act. He

preached a new legalism; [Sidenote: Legalism] he took Scripture as the

Pharisees took the Law, and Luther's sayings as they took the Prophets,

and he turned them all into stiff, fixed laws. Thus he crushed the

glorious autonomy of his predecessor's ethical principles. It was

Kant, who denied all Luther's specific beliefs, but who developed his

idea of the individual conscience, that was the true heir of his

spirit, not Calvin who crushed the spirit in elaborating every jot and

tittle of the letter. In precisely the same manner Calvin killed

Luther's doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. To Calvin the

church was a sacramental, aristocratic organization, with an

authoritative ministry. The German rebelled against the idea of the

church as such; the Frenchman simply asked what was the true church.

So he brought back some of the sacramental miracle of baptism and the

eucharist. In the latter he remained as medieval as Luther, never

getting beyond the question of the mode of the presence of the body and

blood of Christ in the bread and wine. His endeavor to rationalize the

doctrine of Augsburg, especially with reference to the Zwinglians, had

disastrous results. Only two {166} positions were possible, that the

body and blood were present, or that they were not. By endeavoring to

find some middle ground Calvin upheld a contradiction in terms: the

elements were signs and yet were realities; the body was really there

when the bread was eaten by a believer, but really not there when the

same bread was eaten by an infidel. The presence was actual, and yet

participation could only occur by faith. While rejecting some of

Luther's explanations, Calvin was undoubtedly nearer his position than

that of Zwingli, which he characterized as "profane."

As few instructed and thinking persons now accept the conclusions of

the _Institutes_, it is natural to underestimate the power that they

exercised in their own day. This book was the most effective weapon of

Protestantism. This was partly because of the style, but, still more

because of the faultless logic. [Sidenote: His logic] The success of

an argument usually depends far less on the truth of the premises than

on the validity of the reasoning. And the premises selected by Calvin

not only seemed natural to a large body of educated European opinion of

his time, but were such that their truth or falsity was very difficult

to demonstrate convincingly. Calvin's system has been overthrown not

by direct attack, but by the flank, in science as in war the most

effective way. To take but one example out of many that might be

given: what has modern criticism made of Calvin's doctrine of the

inerrancy of Scripture? But this science was as yet all but unknown:

biblical exegesis there was in plenty, but it was only to a minute

extent literary and historical; it was almost exclusively philological

and dogmatic.

Calvin's doctrine of the arbitrary dealing out of salvation and

damnation irrespective of merit has often excited a moral rather than

an intellectual revulsion. To his true followers, indeed, like

Jonathan {167} Edwards, it seems "a delightful doctrine, exceeding

bright, pleasant and sweet." [Sidenote: Eternal damnation] But many

men agree with Gibbon that it makes God a cruel and capricious tyrant

and with William James that it is sovereignly irrational and mean.

Even at that time those who said that a man's will had no more to do

with his destiny than the stick in a man's hand could choose where to

strike or than a saddled beast could choose its rider, aroused an

intense opposition. Erasmus argued that damnation given for inevitable

crimes would make God unjust, and Thomas More blamed Luther for calling

God the cause of evil and for saying "God doth damn so huge a number of

people to intolerable torments only for his own pleasure and for his

own deeds wrought in them only by himself." An English heretic, Cole

of Faversham, said that the doctrine of predestination was meeter for

devils than for Christians. "The God of Calvin," exclaimed Jerome

Bolsec, "is a hypocrite, a liar, perfidious, unjust, the abetter and

patron of crimes, and worse than the devil himself."

But there was another side to the doctrine of election. There was a

certain moral grandeur in the complete abandon to God and in the

earnestness that was ready to sacrifice all to his will. And if we

judge the tree by its fruits, at its best it brought forth a strong and

good race. The noblest examples are not the theologians, Calvin and

Knox, not only drunk with God but drugged with him, much less

politicians like Henry of Navarre and William of Orange, but the rank

and file of the Huguenots of France, the Puritans of England, "the

choice and sifted seed wherewith God sowed the wilderness" of America.

These men bore themselves with I know not what of lofty seriousness,

and with a matchless disdain of all mortal peril and all earthly

grandeur. Believing themselves chosen vessels and elect instruments of

grace, they could neither {168} be seduced by carnal pleasure nor awed

by human might. Taught that they were kings by the election of God and

priests by the imposition of his hands, they despised the puny and

vicious monarchs of this earth. They remained, in fact, what they

always felt themselves to be, an elite, "the chosen few."

Having finished his great work, Calvin set out on his wanderings again.

For a time he was at the court of the sympathetic Renée de France,

Duchess of Ferrara. When persecution broke out here, he again fled

northward, and came, by chance, to Geneva. [Sidenote: Geneva] Here

Farel was waging an unequal fight with the old church. Needing

Calvin's help he went to him and begged his assistance, calling on God

to curse him should he not stay. "Struck with terror," as Calvin

himself confessed, he consented to do so.

Beautifully situated on the blue waters of Lake Leman in full view of

Mont Blanc, Geneva was at this time a town of 16,000 inhabitants, a

center of trade, pleasure, and piety. The citizens had certain

liberties, but were under the rule of a bishop. As this personage was

usually elected from the house of the Duke of Savoy, Geneva had become

little better than a dependency of that state. The first years of the

sixteenth century had been turbulent. The bishop, John, had at one

time been forced to abdicate his authority, but later had tried to

resume it. The Archbishop of Vienne, Geneva's metropolitan, had then

excommunicated the city and invited Duke Charles III of Savoy to punish

it. The citizens rose under Bonivard, renounced the authority of the

pope, expelled the bishop and broke up the religious houses. To guard

against the vengeance of the duke, a league was made with Berne and

Freiburg.

On October 2, 1532, William Farel arrived from Berne. At Geneva as

elsewhere tumult followed his {169} preaching, but it met with such

success that by January, 1534, he held a disputation which decided the

city to become evangelical. The council examined the shrines

[Sidenote: 1535] and found machinery for the production of bogus

miracles; provisionally abolished the mass; [Sidenote: May 21, 1536]

and soon after formally renounced the papal religion.

At this point Calvin arrived, and began preaching and organizing at

once. He soon aroused opposition from the citizens, galled at his

strictness and perhaps jealous of a foreigner. [Sidenote: Calvin

expelled, February 1538] The elections to the council went against

him, and the opposition came to a head shortly afterwards. The town

council decided to adopt the method of celebrating the eucharist used

at Rome. For some petty reason Calvin and Farel refused to obey, and

when a riot broke out at the Lord's table, the council expelled them

from the city.

Calvin went to Strassburg, where he learned to know Bucer and

republished his _Institutes_. Here he married Idelette de Bure, the

widow of an Anabaptist, [Sidenote: August, 1540] who was never in

strong health and died, probably of consumption, on March 29, 1549.

Calvin's married life lacked tenderness and joy. The story that he

selected his wife because he thought that by reason of her want of

beauty she would not distract his thoughts from God, is not well

founded, but it does illustrate his attitude towards her. The one or

more children born of the union died in infancy.

Calvin attended the Colloquy at Ratisbon, [Sidenote: 1541] in the

result of which he was deeply disappointed. In the meantime he had not

lost all interest in Geneva. When Cardinal Sadoleto wrote, in the most

polished Latin, an appeal to the city to return to the Roman communion,

Calvin answered it. [Sidenote: September 1, 1539] The party opposed

to him discredited itself by giving up the city's rights to Berne, and,

was therefore overthrown. The perplexities presenting themselves to

the council were {170} beyond their powers to solve, and they felt

obliged to recall Calvin, [Sidenote: Calvin returns, 1541] who returned

to remain for the rest of his life.

[Sidenote: Theocracy]

His position was so strong that he was able to make of Geneva a city

after his own heart. The form of government he caused to prevail was a

strict theocracy. The clergy of the city met in a body known as the

Congregation, a "venerable company" that discussed and prepared

legislation for the consideration of the Consistory. In this larger

body, besides the clergy, the laity were represented by twelve elders

chosen by the council, not by the people at large. The state and

church were thus completely identified in a highly aristocratic polity.

"The office of the Consistory is to keep watch on the life of every

one." Thus briefly was expressed the delegation of as complete powers

over the private lives of citizens as ever have been granted to a

committee. The object of the Ecclesiastical Ordinances was to create a

society of saints. The Bible was adopted as the norm; all its

provisions being enforced except such Jewish ceremonies as were

considered abrogated by the New Testament. The city was divided into

quarters, and some of the elders visited every house at least once a

year and passed in review the whole life, actions, speech, and opinions

of the inmates. The houses of the citizens were made of glass; and the

vigilant eye of the Consistory, served by a multitude of spies, was on

them all the time. In a way this espionage but took the place of the

Catholic confessional. A joke, a gesture was enough to bring a man

under suspicion. The Elders sat as a regular court, hearing complaints

and examining witnesses. It is true that they could inflict only

spiritual punishments, such as public censure, penance,

excommunication, or forcing the culprit to demand pardon in church on

his knees. But when {171} the Consistory thought necessary, it could

invoke the aid of the civil courts and the judgment was seldom

doubtful. Among the capital crimes were adultery, blasphemy,

witchcraft, and heresy. Punishments for all offences were

astonishingly and increasingly heavy. During the years 1542-6 there

were, in this little town of 16,000 people, no less than fifty-eight

executions and seventy-six banishments.

In judging the Genevan theocracy it is important to remember that

everywhere, in the sixteenth century, punishments were heavier than

they are now, and the regulation of private life minuter.[2]

Nevertheless, though parallels to almost everything done at Geneva can

be found elsewhere, it is true that Calvin intensified the medieval

spirit in this respect and pushed it to the farthest limit that human

nature would bear.

First of all, he compelled the citizens to fulfil their religious

duties. He began the process by which later the Puritans identified

the Jewish Sabbath and the Lord's Day. Luther had thought the

injunction to rest on the Seventh Day a bit of Jewish ceremonial

abrogated by the new dispensation and that, after attending church, the

Christian might devote the day to what work or pleasure he thought

proper. Calvin, however, forbade all work and commanded attendance on

sermons, of which an abundance were offered to the devout. In addition

to Sunday services there were, as in the Catholic church, morning

prayers every work day and a second service three days a week. All

ceremonies with a vestige of popery about them were forbidden.

[Sidenote: 1555] The keeping of Christmas was prohibited under pain of

fine and imprisonment.

"As I see that we cannot forbid men all diversions," sighed Calvin, "I

confine myself to those that are really bad." This class was

sufficiently large. The {172} theater was denounced from the pulpit,

especially when the new Italian habit of giving women's parts to

actresses instead of to boys was introduced. According to Calvin's

colleague Cop, "the women who mount the platform to play comedies are

full of unbridled effrontery, without honor, having no purpose but to

expose their bodies, clothes, and ornaments to excite the impure

desires of the spectators. . . . The whole thing," he added, "is very

contrary to the modesty of women who ought to be shamefaced and shy."

Accordingly, attendance on plays was forbidden.

[Sidenote: Supervision of conduct]

Among other prohibited amusements was dancing, especially obnoxious as

at that time dances were accompanied by kisses and embraces. Playing

cards, cursing and swearing were also dealt with, as indeed they were

elsewhere. Among the odd matters that came before the Consistory were:

attempted suicide, possessing the _Golden Legend_ (a collection of

saints' lives called by Beza "abominable trash"), paying for masses,

betrothing a daughter to a Catholic, fasting on Good Friday, singing

obscene songs, and drunkenness. A woman was chastized for taking too

much wine even though it did not intoxicate. Some husbands were mildly

reprimanded, not for beating their wives which was tolerated by

contemporary opinion, but for rubbing salt and vinegar into the wales.

Luxury in clothing was suppressed; all matters of color and quality

regulated by law, and even the way in which women did their hair. In

1546 the inns were put under the direct control of the government and

strictly limited to the functions of entertaining--or rather of

boarding and lodging--strangers and citizens in temporary need of them.

Among the numerous rules enforced within them the following may be

selected as typical:

[Sidenote: Rules for inns]

If any one blasphemes the name of God or says, "By {173} the body,

'sblood, zounds" or anything like, or who gives himself to the devil or

uses similar execrable imprecations, he shall be punished. . . .

If any one insults any one else the host shall be obliged to deliver

him up to justice.

If there are any persons who make it their business to frequent the

said inns, and there to consume their goods and substance, the host

shall not receive them.

Item the host shall be obliged to report to the government any insolent

or dissolute acts committed by the guests.

Item the host shall not allow any person of whatever quality he be, to

drink or eat anything in his house without first having asked a

blessing and afterwards said grace.

Item the host shall be obliged to keep in a public place a French

Bible, in which any one who wishes may read, and he shall not prevent

free and honest conversation on the Word of God, to edification, but

shall favor it as much as he can.

Item the host shall not allow any dissoluteness like dancing, dice or

cards, nor shall he receive any one suspected of being a debauche or

ruffian.

Item he shall only allow people to play honest games without swearing

or blasphemy, and without wasting more time than that allowed for a

meal.

Item he shall not allow indecent songs or words, and if any one wishes

to sing Psalms or spiritual songs he shall make them do it in a decent

and not in a dissolute way.

Item nobody shall be allowed to sit up after nine o'clock at night

except spies.

Of course, such matters as marriage were regulated strictly. When a

man of seventy married a girl of twenty-five Calvin said it was the

pastor's duty to reprehend them. The Reformer often selected the women

he thought suitable for his acquaintances who wanted wives. He also

drew up a list of baptismal names which he thought objectionable,

including the names of "idols,"--_i.e._ saints venerated near

Geneva--the names of kings and offices to whom God alone {174}

appoints, such as Angel or Baptist, names belonging to God such as

Jesus and Emanuel, silly names such as Toussaint and Noel, double names

and ill-sounding names. Calvin also pronounced on the best sort of

stoves and got servants for his friends. In fact, there was never such

a busy-body in a position of high authority before nor since. No

wonder that the citizens frequently chafed under the yoke.

If we ask how much was actually accomplished by this minute regulation

accompanied by extreme severity in the enforcement of morals, various

answers are given. When the Italian reformer Bernardino Occhino

visited Geneva in 1542, he testified that cursing and swearing,

unchastity and sacrilege were unknown; that there were neither lawsuits

nor simony nor murder nor party spirit, but that universal benevolence

prevailed. Again in 1556 John Knox said that Geneva was "the most

perfect school of Christ that ever was on earth since the days of the

apostles. In other places," he continued, "I confess Christ to be

truly preached, but manners and religion so sincerely reformed I have

not yet seen in any place besides." But if we turn from these personal

impressions to an examination of the acts of the Consistory, we get a

very different impression. [Sidenote: Morals of Geneva] The records

of Geneva show more cases of vice after the Reformation than before.

The continually increasing severity of the penalties enacted against

vice and frivolity seem to prove that the government was helpless to

suppress them. Among those convicted of adultery were two of Calvin's

own female relatives, his brother's wife and his step-daughter Judith.

What success there was in making Geneva a city of saints was due to the

fact that it gradually became a very select population. The worst of

the incorrigibles were soon either executed or banished, and their

places taken by a large influx of {175} men of austere mind, drawn

thither as a refuge from persecution elsewhere, or by the desire to sit

at the feet of the great Reformer. Between the years 1549 and 1555 no

less than 1297 strangers were admitted to citizenship. Practically all

of these were immigrants coming to the little town for conscience's

sake.

[Persecution]

Orthodoxy was enforced as rigidly as morality. The ecclesiastical

constitution adopted in 1542 brought in the Puritan type of divine

service. Preaching took the most important place in church,

supplemented by Bible reading and catechetical instruction. Laws were

passed enforcing conformity under pain of losing goods and life. Those

who did not expressly renounce the mass were punished. A little girl

of thirteen was condemned to be publicly beaten with rods for saying

that she wanted to be a Catholic. Calvin identified his own wishes and

dignity with the commands and honor of God. One day he forbade a

citizen, Philibert Berthelier, to come to the Lord's table. Berthelier

protested and was supported by the council. "If God lets Satan crush

my ministry under such tyranny," shrieked Calvin, "it is all over with

me." The slightest assertion of liberty on the part of another was

stamped out as a crime. Sebastian Castellio, a sincere Christian and

Protestant, but more liberal than Calvin, fell under suspicion because

he called the Song of Songs obscene, and because he made a new French

version of the Bible to replace the one of Olivetan officially

approved. He was banished in 1544. Two years later Peter Ameaux made

some very trifling personal remarks about Calvin, for which he was

forced to fall on his knees in public and ask pardon.

But opposition only increased. The party opposing Calvin he called the

Libertines--a word then meaning something like "free-thinker" and

gradually getting {176} the bad moral connotation it has now, just as

the word "miscreant" had formerly done. [Sidenote: January, 1547] One

of these men, James Cruet, posted on the pulpit of St. Peter's church

at Geneva a warning to Calvin, in no very civil terms, to leave the

city. He was at once arrested and a house to house search made for his

accomplices. This method failing to reveal anything except that Gruet

had written on one of Calvin's tracts the words "all rubbish," his

judges put him to the rack twice a day, morning and evening, for a

whole month. The frightful torture failed to make Gruet incriminate

anyone else, and he was accordingly tried for heresy. He was charged

with "disparaging authors like Moses, who by the Spirit of God wrote

the divine law, saying that Moses had no more power than any other

man. . . . He also said that all laws, human and divine, were made at

the pleasure of man." He was therefore sentenced to death for

blasphemy and beheaded on July 26, 1547, "calling on God as his Lord."

After his death one of his books was found and condemned. To justify

this course Calvin alleged that Gruet said that Jesus Christ was a

good-for-nothing, a liar, and a false seducer, and that he (Gruet)

denied the existence of God and immortality. Evangelical freedom had

now arrived at the point whore its champions first took a man's life

and then his character, merely for writing a lampoon!

Naturally such tyranny produced a reaction. The enraged Libertines

nicknamed Calvin Cain, and saved from his hands the next personal

enemy, Ami Perrin, whom he caused to be tried for treason. [Sidenote:

October 16, 1551] A still more bitter dose for the theocrat was that

administered by Jerome Bolsec, who had the audacity to preach against

the doctrine of predestination. Calvin and Farel refuted him on the

spot and had him arrested. Berne, Basle and Zurich intervened and,

when solicited for {177} an expression on the doctrine in dispute,

spoke indecisively. The triumph of his enemies at this rebuke was hard

for Calvin to bear and prepared for the commission of the most

regrettable act of his career.

[Sidenote: Servetus, 1531]

The Spanish physician Michael Servetus published, in Germany, a work on

the _Errors concerning the Trinity_. His theory was not that of a

modern rationalist, but of one whose starting point was the authority

of the Bible, and his unitarianism was consequently of a decidedly

theological brand, recalling similar doctrines in the early church.

Leaving Germany he went to Vienne, [Sidenote: 1553] in France, and got

a good practice under an assumed name. He later published a work

called, perhaps in imitation of Calvin's _Institutio, The Restitution

of Christianity_, setting forth his ideas about the Trinity, which he

compared to the three-headed monster Cerberus, but admitting the

divinity of Christ. He also denied the doctrine of original sin and

asserted that baptism should be for adults only. He was poorly advised

in sending this book to the Reformer, with whom he had some

correspondence. With Calvin's knowledge and probably at his

instigation, though he later issued an equivocating denial, William

Trie, of Geneva, denounced Servetus to the Catholic inquisition at

Vienne and forwarded the material sent by the heretic to Calvin. On

June 17, 1553, the Catholic inquisitor, expressly stating that he acted

on this material, condemned Servetus to be burnt by slow fire, but he

escaped and went to Geneva.

Here he was recognized and arrested. Calvin at once appeared as his

prosecutor for heresy. The charges against him were chiefly concerned

with his denial of the Trinity and of infant baptism, and with his

attack on the person and teaching of Calvin. As an example of the

point to which Bibliolatry could suppress candor it may be mentioned

that one of the {178} charges against him was that he had asserted

Palestine to be a poor land. This was held to contradict the

Scriptural statement that it was a land flowing with milk and honey.

The minutes of the trial are painful reading. It was conducted on both

sides with unbecoming violence. Among other expressions used by

Calvin, the public prosecutor, were these: that he regarded Servetus's

defence as no better than the braying of an ass, and that the prisoner

was like a villainous cur wiping his muzzle. Servetus answered in the

same tone, his spirit unbroken by abuse and by his confinement in a

horrible dungeon, where he suffered from hunger, cold, vermin, and

disease. He was found guilty of heresy and sentenced to be burnt with

slow fire. Calvin said that he tried to alter the manner of execution,

but there is not a shred of evidence, in the minutes of the trial or

elsewhere, that he did so. Possibly, if he made the request, it was

purely formal, as were similar petitions for mercy made by the Roman

inquisitors. At any rate, while Calvin's alleged effort for mercy

proved fruitless, he visited his victim in prison to read him a

self-righteous and insulting lecture. Farel, also, reviled him on the

way to the stake, at which he perished on October 26, 1553, [Sidenote:

Death of Servetus] crying, "God preserve my soul! O Jesus, Son of the

eternal God, have mercy on me!" Farel called on the bystanders to

witness that these words showed the dying man to be still in the power

of Satan.

This act of persecution, one of the most painful in the history of

Christianity, was received with an outburst of applause from almost all

quarters. Melanchthon, who had not been on speaking terms with Calvin

for some years, was reconciled to him by what he called "a signal act

of piety." Other leading Protestants congratulated Calvin, who

continued persecution systematically. Another victim of his was

Matthew {179} Gribaldi, whom he delivered into the hands of the

government of Berne, with a refutation of his errors. [Sidenote:

1564.] Had he not died of the plague in prison he would probably have

suffered the same fate as Servetus.

[Sidenote: Complete theocracy, 1555]

Strengthened by his victory over heresy, Calvin now had the chance to

annihilate his opponents. On May 15, 1555, he accused a number of them

of treason, and provided proof by ample use of the rack. With the

party of Libertines completely broken, Calvin ruled from this time

forth with a rod of iron. The new Geneva was so cowed and subservient

that the town council dared not install a new sort of heating apparatus

without asking the permission of the theocrat. But a deep rancor

smouldered under the surface. "Our incomparable theologian Calvin,"

wrote Ambrose Blaurer to Bullinger, "labors under such hatred of some

whom he obscures by his light that he is considered the worst of

heretics by them." Among other things he was accused of levying

tribute from his followers by a species of blackmail, threatening

publicly to denounce them unless they gave money to the cause.

[Sidenote: International Calvinism]

At the same time his international power and reputation rose. Geneva

became the capital of Protestantism, from which mandates issued to all

the countries of Western Europe. Englishmen and Frenchmen, Dutchmen

and Italians, thronged to "this most perfect school of Christ since the

apostles" to learn the laws of a new type of Christianity. For

Calvin's Reformation was more thorough and logical than was Luther's.

The German had regarded all as permitted that was not forbidden, and

allowed the old usages to stand in so far as they were not repugnant to

the ordinances of the Bible. But Calvin believed that all was

forbidden save what was expressly allowed, and hence abolished as

superstitious accretions all the elements of the medieval cult that

could find no warrant in the {180} Bible. Images, vestments, organs,

bells, candles, ritual, were swept away in the ungarnished

meeting-house to make way for a simple service of Bible-reading,

prayer, hymn and sermon. The government of the church was left by

Calvin in close connection with the state, but he apparently turned

around the Lutheran conception, making the civil authority subordinate

to the spiritual and not the church to the state.

Whereas Lutheranism appealed to Germans and Scandinavians, Calvinism

became the international form of Protestantism. Even in Germany Calvin

made conquests at the expense of Luther, but outside of Germany, in

France, in the Netherlands, in Britain, he moulded the type of reformed

thought in his own image. It is difficult to give statistics, for it

is impossible to say how far each particular church, like the Anglican

for example, was indebted to Calvin, how far to Luther, and how far to

other leaders, and also because there was a strong reaction against

pure Calvinism even in the sixteenth century. But it is safe to say

that the clear, cold logic of the _Institutes_, the good French and

Latin of countless other treatises and letters, and the political

thought which amalgamated easily with rising tides of democracy and

industrialism, made Calvin the leader of Protestantism outside of the

Teutonic countries of the north. His gift for organization and the

pains he took to train ministers and apostles contributed to this

success.

[Sidenote: Death of Calvin, May 27, 1564]

On May 27, 1564 Calvin died, worn out with labor and ill health at the

age of fifty-five. With a cold heart and a hot temper, he had a clear

brain, an iron will, and a real moral earnestness derived from the

conviction that he was a chosen vessel of Christ. Constantly tortured

by a variety of painful diseases, he drove himself, by the demoniac

strength of his will, to perform labor that would have taxed the

strongest. {181} The way he ruled his poor, suffering body is symbolic

of the way he treated the sick world. To him the maladies of his own

body, or of the body politic, were evils to be overcome, at any cost of

pain and sweat and blood, by a direct effort of the will. As he never

yielded to fever and weakness in himself, so he dealt with the vice and

frivolity he detested, crushing it out by a ruthless application of

power, hunting it with spies, stretching it on the rack and breaking it

on the wheel. But a gentler, more understanding method would have

accomplished more, even for his own purpose.

[Sidenote: Beza, 1519-1605]

His successor at Geneva, Theodore Beza, was a man after his own heart

but, as he was far weaker, the town council gradually freed itself from

spiritual tyranny. Towards the end of the century the pastors had been

humbled and the questions of the day were far less the dogmatic

niceties they loved than ethical ones such as the right to take usury,

the proper penalty for adultery, the right to make war, and the best

form of government.

[1] "Decretum Dei aeternum horribile."

[2] See below. Chapter X, section 3.

{182}

CHAPTER IV

FRANCE

SECTION 1. RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION

[Sidenote: France]

Though, at the opening of the sixteenth century, the French may have

attained to no greater degree of national self-consciousness than had

the Germans, they had gone much farther in the construction of a

national state. The significance of this evolution, one of the

strongest tendencies of modern history, is that it squares the outward

political condition of the people with their inward desires. When once

a nation has come to feel itself such, it cannot be happy until its

polity is united in a homogeneous state, though the reverse is also

true,--that national feeling is sometimes the result as well as the

cause of political union. With the growth of a common language and of

common ideals, and with the improvement of the methods of

communication, the desire of the people for unity became stronger and

stronger, until it finally overcame the centrifugal forces of feudalism

and of particularism. These were so strong in Germany that only a very

imperfect federation could be formed by way of national government, but

in France, though they were still far from moribund, external pressure

and the growth of the royal power had forged the various provinces into

a nation such as it exists today. The most independent of the old

provinces, Brittany, was now united to the crown by the marriage of its

duchess Anne to Louis XII. [Sidenote: Louis XII, 1498-1515]

{183}

Anne ==_Louis XII_ Charles, Count==Louise

Duchess of | _1498-1515_ of Angoulême | of Savoy

Brittany | |

| |

| |

| |

+---------+-------------+ |

|2 1| |

Renée==Hercules II, Claude==(1)_Francis I_ Margaret==(1)Charles,

Duke of | _1515-47_ Duke of

Ferrara | (2)==Eleanor, Alençon

| sister of ==(2)Henry II,

| Emperor | King of

| Charles V | Navarre

| |

_Henry II_==Catharine de' |

_1547-59_ | Medici d. 1589 Joan ==Anthony

| d'Albret| of

| | Bourbon

| | Duke of

| | Vendôme

+--------+------+------+----+-+----------------+ |

| | | | | | |

_Francis II_, | _Henry III_ | Elizabeth (1)Margaret==_Henry IV_,

_1559-60_ | _1574-89_ | ==(3)Philip II (2)Mary de' 1589-1610

==Mary, Queen | | King of Spain Medici

of Scots | |

| |

_Charles IX_ Francis, Duke

_1560-74_ of Alençon and

Anjou, d. 1584

[Transcriber's note: "d." has been used here as a substitute

for the "dagger" symbol (Unicode U+2020) that signifies the

person's year of death.]

Geographically, France was nearly the same four hundred years ago as it

is today, save that the eastern {184} frontier was somewhat farther

west. The line then ran west of the three Bishoprics, Verdun, Metz and

Toul, west of Franche Comté, just east of Lyons and again west of Savoy

and Nice.

Politically, France was then one of a group of semi-popular,

semi-autocratic monarchies. The rights of the people were asserted by

the States General which met from time to time, usually at much longer

intervals than the German Diets or the English Parliaments, and by the

Parlements of the various provinces. These latter were rather high

courts of justice than legislative assemblies, but their right to

register new laws gave them a considerable amount of authority. The

Parlement of Paris was the most conspicuous and perhaps the most

powerful.

[Sidenote: Concordat, 1516]

The power of the monarch, resting primarily on the support of the

bourgeois class, was greatly augmented by the Concordat of 1516, which

made the monarch almost the supreme head of the Gallican church. For

two centuries the crown had been struggling to attain this position.

It was because so large a degree of autonomy was granted to the

national church that the French felt satisfied not to go to the extreme

of secession from the Roman communion. It was because the king had

already achieved a large control over his own clergy that he felt it

unnecessary or inadvisable to go to the lengths of the Lutheran princes

and of Henry VIII. In that one important respect the Concordat of

Bologna took the place of the Reformation.

[Sidenote: Francis I, 1515-47]

Francis I was popular and at first not unattractive. Robust, fond of

display, ambitious, intelligent enough to dabble in letters and art, he

piqued himself on being chivalrous and brave. But he wasted his life

and ruined his health in the pursuit of pleasure. His face, as it has

come down to us in contemporary paintings, is disagreeable. He was, as

with unusual candor a {185} contemporary observer put it, a devil even

to the extent of considerably looking it.

While to art and letters Francis gave a certain amount of attention, he

usually from mere indolence allowed the affairs of state to be guided

by others. Until the death of his mother, Louise of Savoy, [Sidenote:

1531] he was ruled by her. Thereafter the Constable Anne de

Montmorency was his chief minister. The policy followed was the

inherited one which was, to a certain point, necessary in the given

conditions. In domestic affairs, the king or his advisors endeavored

to increase the power of the crown at the expense of the nobles. The

last of the great vassals strong enough to assert a quasi-independence

of the king was Charles of Bourbon. [Sidenote: 1523-4] He was

arrested and tried by the Parlement of Paris, which consistently

supported the crown. Fleeing from France he entered the service of

Charles V, [Sidenote: 1526] and his restoration was made an article of

the treaty of Madrid. His death in the sack of Rome closed the

incident in favor of the king. [Sidenote: May, 1527]

The foreign policy of France was a constant struggle, now by diplomacy,

now by arms, with Charles V. The principal remaining powers of Europe,

England, Turkey and the pope, threw their weight now on one side now on

the other of the two chief antagonists. Italy was the field of most of

the battles. Francis began his reign by invading that country and

defeating the Swiss at Marignano, thus conquering Milan. [Sidenote:

September 14-15, 1515] The campaigns in Italy and Southern France

culminated in the disastrous defeat of the French at Pavia. [Sidenote:

February 24, 1525] Francis fought in person and was taken prisoner.

"Of all things nothing is left me but honor and life," he wrote his

mother.

Francis hoped that he would be freed on the payment of ransom according

to the best models of chivalry. He found, however, when he was removed

to {186} Madrid in May, that his captor intended to exact the last

farthing of diplomatic concession. Discontent in France and the ennui

and illness of the king finally forced him to sign a most

disadvantageous treaty, [Sidenote: January 14, 1526] renouncing the

lands of Burgundy, Naples and Milan, and ceding lands to Henry VIII.

The king swore to the document, pledged his knightly honor, and as

additional securities married Eleanor the sister of Charles and left

two of his sons as hostages.

Even when he signed it, however, he had no intention of executing the

provisions of the treaty which, he secretly protested, had been wrung

from him by force. The deputies of Burgundy refused to recognize the

right of France to alienate them. Henry VIII at once made an alliance

against the "tyranny and pride" of the emperor. Charles was so

chagrined that he challenged Francis to a duel. This opera bouffe

performance ended by each monarch giving the other "the lie in the

throat."

Though France succeeded in making with new allies, the pope and Venice,

the League of Cognac, [Sidenote: May, 1526] and though Germany was at

that time embarrassed by the Turkish invasion, the ensuing war turned

out favorably to the emperor. The ascendancy of Charles was so marked

that peace again had to be made in his favor in 1529. The treaty of

Cambrai, as it was called, was the treaty of Madrid over again except

that Burgundy was kept by France. She gave up, however, Lille, Douai

and other territory in the north and renounced her suzerainty over

Milan and Naples. Francis agreed to pay a ransom of two million crowns

for his sons. Though he was put to desperate straits to raise the

money, levying a 40 per cent. income tax on the clergy and a 10 per

cent. income tax on the nobles, he finally paid the money and got back

his children in 1530.

By this time France was so exhausted, both in {187} money and men, that

a policy of peace was the only one possible for some years.

Montmorency, the principal minister of the king, continued by an active

diplomacy to stir up trouble for Charles. While suppressing Lutherans

at home he encouraged the Schmalkaldic princes abroad, going to the

length of inviting Melanchthon to France in 1535. With the English

minister Cromwell he came to an agreement, notwithstanding the

Protestant tendencies of his policy. An alliance was also made with

the Sultan Suleiman, secretly in 1534, and openly proclaimed in 1536.

In order to prepare for the military strife destined to be renewed at

the earliest practical moment, an ordinance of 1534 reorganized and

strengthened the army.

Far more important for the life of France than her incessant and

inconclusive squabbling with Spain was the transformation passing over

her spirit. It is sometimes said that if the French kings brought

nothing else back from their campaigns in Italy they brought back the

Renaissance. [Sidenote: Reformation] There is a modicum of truth in

this, for there are some traces of Italian influence before the reign

of Francis I. But the French spirit hardly needed this outside

stimulus. It was awakening of itself. Scholars like William Budé and

the Estiennes, thinkers like Dolet and Rabelais, poets like Marot, were

the natural product of French soil. Everywhere, north of the Alps no

less than south, there was a spontaneous efflorescence of intellectual

activity.

The Reformation is often contrasted or compared with the Renaissance.

In certain respects, where a common factor can be found, this may

profitably be done. But it is important to note how different in kind

were the two movements. One might as well compare Darwinism and

Socialism in our own time. The one was a new way of looking at things,

a fresh {188} intellectual start, without definite program or

organization. The other was primarily a thesis: a set of tenets the

object of which was concrete action. The Reformation began in France

as a school of thought, but it soon grew to a political party and a new

church, and finally it evolved into a state within the state.

[Sidenote: Christian Renaissance]

Though it is not safe to date the French Reformation before the

influence of Luther was felt, it is possible to see an indigenous

reform that naturally prepared the way for it. Its harbinger was

Lefèvre d'Étaples. This "little Luther" wished to purify the church,

to set aside the "good works" thereof in favor of faith, and to make

the Bible known to the people. He began to translate it in 1521,

publishing the Gospels in June 1523 and the Epistles and Acts and

Apocalypse in October and November. The work was not as good as that

of Luther or Tyndale. It was based chiefly on the Vulgate, though not

without reference to the Greek text. Lefèvre prided himself on being

literal, remarking, with a side glance at Erasmus's _Paraphrases_, that

it was dangerous to try to be more elegant than Scripture. He also

prided himself on writing for the simple, and was immensely pleased

with the favorable reception the people gave his work. To reach the

hearts of the poor and humble he instituted a reform of preaching,

instructing his friends to purge their homilies of the more grossly

superstitious elements and of the scholastic theology. Instead of this

they were to preach Christ simply with the aim of touching the heart,

not of dazzling the mind.

Like-minded men gathering around Lefèvre formed a new school of

thought. It was a movement of revival within the church; its leaders,

wishing to keep all the old forms and beliefs, endeavored to infuse

into them a new spirit. To some extent they were in conscious reaction

against the intellectualism of Erasmus {189} and the Renaissance. On

the other hand they were far from wishing to follow Luther, when he

appeared, in his schism.

Among the most famous of these mystical reformers were William

Briçonnet, Bishop of Meaux, and his disciple, Margaret d'Angoulême,

sister of Francis I. Though a highly talented woman Margaret was weak

and suggestible. She adored her dissolute brother and was always, on

account of her marriages, first with Charles, duke of Alençon,

[Sidenote: 1509] and then with Henry d'Albret, king of Navarre,

[Sidenote: 1527] put in the position of a suppliant for his support.

She carried on an assiduous correspondence with Briçonnet as her

spiritual director, being attracted first by him and then by Luther,

chiefly, as it seems, through the wish to sample the novelty of their

doctrines. She wrote _The Mirror of the Sinful Soul_ in the best style

of penitent piety. [Sidenote: 1531] Its central idea is the love of

God and of the "debonnaire" Jesus. She knew Latin and Italian, studied

Greek and Hebrew, and read the Bible regularly, exhorting her friends

to do the same. She coquetted with the Lutherans, some of whom she

protected in France and with others of whom in Germany she

corresponded. She was strongly suspected of being a Lutheran, though a

secret one. Capito dedicated to her a commentary on Hosea; Calvin had

strong hopes of winning her to an open profession, but was

disappointed. Her house, said he, which might have become the family

of Jesus Christ, harbored instead servants of the devil. Throughout

life she kept the accustomed Catholic rites, and wrote with much

respect to Pope Paul III. But fundamentally her religious idealism was

outside of any confession.

This mystically pious woman wrote, in later life, the _Heptameron_, a

book of stories published posthumously. Modelled on the _Decameron_,

it consists {190} almost entirely of licentious stories, told without

reprobation and with gusto. If the mouth speaketh from the fullness of

the heart she was as much a sensualist in thought as her brother was in

deed. The apparent contradictions in her are only to be explained on

the theory that she was one of those impressionable natures that,

chameleon-like, always take on the hue of their environment.

But though the work of Lefèvre and of Briçonnet, who himself gave his

clergy an example of simple, biblical preaching, won many followers not

only in Meaux but in other cities, it would never have produced a

religious revolt like that in Germany. The Reformation was an

importation into France; "The key of heresy," as John Bouchet said in

1531, "was made of the fine iron of Germany." At first almost all the

intellectuals hailed Luther as an ally. Lefèvre sent him a greeting in

1519, and in the same year Budé spoke well of him. His books were at

this time approved even by some doctors of the Sorbonne. But it took a

decade of confusion and negation to clarify the situation sufficiently

for the French to realize the exact import of the Lutheran movement,

which completely transformed the previously existing policy of Lefèvre.

The chief sufferer by the growth of Lutheranism was not at first the

Catholic church but the party of Catholic reform. The schism rent the

French evangelicals before it seriously affected the church. Some of

them followed the new light and others were forced back into a

reactionary attitude.

[Sidenote: Luther's books.]

The first emissaries of Luther in France were his books. Froben

exported a volume containing nearly all he had published up to October,

1518, immediately and in large quantities to Paris. In 1520 a student

there wrote that no books were more quickly bought. At first only the

Latin ones were intelligible to the {191} French, but there is reason

to believe that very early translations into the vernacular were made,

though none of this period have survived. It was said that the books,

which kept pouring in from Frankfort and Strassburg and Basle, excited

the populace against the theologians, for the people judged them by the

newly published French New Testament. A bishop complained that the

common people were seduced by the vivacity of the heretic's style.

[Sidenote: 1523]

It did not take the Sorbonne long to define its position as one of

hostility. The university, which had been lately defending the

Gallican liberties and had issued an appeal from pope to future

council, was one of the judges selected by the disputants of the

Leipzig debate. Complete records of the speeches, taken by notaries,

were accordingly forwarded to Paris by Duke George of Saxony, with a

request for an opinion. After brief debate the condemnation of Luther

by the university was printed. [Sidenote: April 15, 1521]

Neither was the government long in taking a position. That it should

be hostile was a foregone conclusion. Francis hated Lutheranism

because he believed that it tended more to the overthrow of kingdoms

and monarchies than to the edification of souls. He told Aleander, the

papal nuncio, that he thought Luther a rascal and his doctrine

pernicious. [Sidenote: March, 1521]

[Sidenote: April 1523]

The king was energetically seconded by the Parlement of Paris. A royal

edict provided that no book should be printed without the imprimatur of

the university. The king next ordered the extirpation of the errors of

Martin Luther of Saxony, and, having begun by burning books, continued,

as Erasmus observed was usually the case, by burning people. The first

to suffer was John Vallière. At the same time Briçonnet was summoned

to Paris, [Sidenote: 1523] sharply reprimanded for leniency to heretics

and fined two hundred livres, in {192} consequence of which he issued

two decrees against the heresy, charging it with attempting to subvert

the hierarchy and to abolish sacerdotal celibacy. [Sidenote: 1524]

When Lefèvre's doctrines were condemned, he submitted; those of his

disciples who failed to do so were proscribed. But the efforts of the

government became more strenuous after 1524. Francis was at this time

courting the assistance of the pope against the emperor, and moreover

he was horrified by the outbreak of the Peasants' War in Germany.

Convinced of the danger of allowing the new sect to propagate itself

any further he commanded the archbishops and bishops of his realm to

"proceed against those who hold, publish and follow the heresies,

errors and doctrines of Martin Luther." [Sidenote: 1525] Lefèvre and

some of his friends fled to Strassburg. Arrests and executions against

those who were sometimes called "heretics of Meaux," and sometimes

Lutherans, followed.

The theologians did not leave the whole burden of the battle to the

government. A swarm of anti-Lutheran tracts issued from the press.

Not only the heresiarch, but Erasmus and Lefèvre were attacked. Their

translations of the Bible were condemned as blasphemies against Jerome

and against the Holy Ghost and as subverting the foundations of the

Christian religion. Luther's sacramental dogmas and his repudiation of

monastic vows were refuted.

Nevertheless the reform movement continued. At this stage it was

urban, the chief centers being Paris, Meaux, and Lyons. Many merchants

and artisans were found among the adherents of the new faith. While

none of a higher rank openly professed it, theology became, under the

lead of Margaret, a fashionable subject. Conventicles were formed to

read the Bible in secret not only among the middle classes but also at

court. Short tracts continued to be the best {193} methods of

propaganda, and of these many were translations. Louis de Berquin of

Artois, [Sidenote: Berquin, 1490-1529] a layman, proved the most

formidable champion of the new opinions. Though he did little but

translate other men's work he did that with genius. His version of

Erasmus's _Manual of a Christian Knight_ was exquisitely done, and his

version of Luther's _Tesseradecas_ did not fall short of it. Tried and

condemned in 1523, he was saved by the king at the behest of Margaret.

[Sidenote: 1526] The access of rigor during the king's captivity gave

place to a momentary tolerance. Berquin, who had been arrested, was

liberated, and Lefèvre recalled from exile. But the respite was brief.

Two years later, Berquin was again arrested, tried, condemned, and

executed speedily to prevent reprieve on April 17, 1529. But the

triumph of the conservatives was more apparent than real. Lutheranism

continued to gain silently but surely.

While the Reformation was growing in strength and numbers, it was also

becoming more definite and coherent. Prior to 1530 it was almost

impossible to tell where Lutheranism began and where it ended. There

was a large, but vague and chaotic public opinion of protest against

the existing order. But after 1530 it is possible to distinguish

several parties, three of which at first reckoned among the supporters

of the Reformation, now more or less definitely separated themselves

from it. The first of these was the party of Meaux, the leaders of

which submitted to the government and went their own isolated way.

Then there was a party of Erasmian reform, mainly intellectual but

profoundly Christian. Its leader, William Budé, felt, as did Erasmus,

that it was possible to unite the classical culture of the Renaissance

with a purified Catholicism. Attached to the church, and equally

repelled by some of the dogmas and by the apparent {194} social effects

of the Reformation, Budé, who had spoken well of Luther in 1519,

repudiated him in 1521.

[Sidenote: Humanists]

Finally there was the party of the "Libertines" or free-thinkers, the

representatives of the Renaissance pure and simple. Revolutionaries in

their own way, consciously rebels against the older culture of the

Middle Ages, though prepared to canvass the new religion and to toy

with it, even to use it as an ally against common enemies, the interest

of these men was fundamentally too different from that of the Reformers

to enable them to stand long on the same platform. There was Clement

Marot, [Sidenote: Marot] a charming but rather aimless poet, a protégé

of Margaret and the ornament of a frivolous court. Though his poetic

translation of the Psalms became a Protestant book, his poetry is often

sensual as well as sensuous. Though for a time absenting himself from

court he re-entered it in 1536 at the same time "abjuring his errors."

[Sidenote: Rabelais]

Of the same group was Francis Rabelais, whose _Pantagruel_ appeared in

1532. Though he wrote Erasmus saying that he owed all that he was to

him, he in fact appropriated only the irony and mocking spirit of the

humanist without his deep underlying piety. He became a universal

skeptic, and a mocker of all things. The "esprit gaulois," beyond all

others alive to the absurdities and inconsistency of things, found in

him its incarnation. He ridiculed both the "pope-maniacs" and the

"pope-phobes," the indulgence-sellers and the inquisitors, the

decretals "written by an angel" and the Great Schism, priests and kings

and doubting philosophers and the Scripture. Paul III called him "the

vagabond of the age." Calvin at first reckoned him among those who

"had relished the gospel," but when he furiously retorted that he

considered Calvin "a demoniacal imposter," the theologian of Geneva

loosed against him a furious invective in his {195} _Treatise on

Offences_. Rabelais was now called "a Lucian who by his diabolic

fatuity had profaned the gospel, that holy and sacred pledge of life

eternal." William Farel had in mind Rabelais's recent acceptance from

the court of the livings of Meudon and St. Christophe de Jambet, when

he wrote Calvin on May 25, 1553: "I fear that avarice, that root of

evil, has extinguished all faith and piety in the poets of Margaret.

Judas, having sold Christ and taken the biretta, instead of Christ has

that hard master Satan." [1]

[Sidenote: Catholic reform]

The stimulus given by the various attacks on the church, both

Protestant and infidel, showed itself promptly in the abundant spirit

of reform that sprang up in the Catholic fold. The clergy and bishop

braced themselves to meet the enemy; they tried in some instances to

suppress scandals and amend their lives; they brushed up their theology

and paid more attention to the Bible and to education.

But the "Lutheran contagion" continued to spread and grow mightily. In

1525 it was found only at Paris, Meaux, Lyons, Grenoble, Bourges, Tours

and Alençon. Fifteen years later, though it was still confined largely

to the cities and towns, there were centers of it in every part of

France except in Brittany. The persecution at Paris only drove the

heretics into hiding or banished them to carry their opinions broadcast

over the land. The movement swept from the north and east. The

propaganda was not the work of one class but of all save that of the

great nobles. It was not yet a social or class affair, but a purely

intellectual and religious one. It is impossible to {196} estimate the

numbers of the new sect. In 1534 Aleander said there were thirty

thousand Lutherans in Paris alone. On the contrary René du Bellay said

that there were fewer in 1533 than there were ten years, previous.

[Sidenote: Protestant progress] True it is that the Protestants were

as yet weak, and were united rather in protest against the established

order than as a definite and cohesive party. Thus, the most popular

and successful slogans of the innovators were denunciation of the

priests as anti-Christs and apostates, and reprobation of images and of

the mass as idolatry. Other catchwords of the reformers were, "the

Bible" and "justification by faith." The movement was without a head

and without organization. Until Calvin furnished these the principal

inspiration came from Luther, but Zwingli and the other German and

Swiss reformers were influential. More and more, Lefèvre and his

school sank into the background.

For a time it seemed that the need of leadership was to be supplied by

William Farel. His learning, his eloquence, and his zeal, together

with the perfect safety of action that he found in Switzerland, were

the necessary qualifications. The need for a Bible was at first met by

the version of Lefèvre, printed in 1532. But the Catholic spirit of

this work, based on the Vulgate, was distasteful to the evangelicals.

Farel asked Olivetan, an excellent philologist, to make a new version,

which was completed by February 1535. Calvin wrote the preface for it.

It was dedicated to "the poor little church of God." In doctrine it

was thoroughly evangelical, replacing the old "évêques" and "prêtres"

by "surveillants" and "anciens," and omitting some of the Apocrypha.

Encouraged by their own growth the Protestants became bolder in their

attacks on the Catholics. The situation verged more and more towards

violence; {197} neither side, not even the weaker, thought of tolerance

for both. On the night of October 17-18 some placards, written by

Anthony de Marcourt, were posted up in Paris, Orleans, Rouen, Tours and

Blois and on the doors of the king's chamber at Amboise. They

excoriated the sacrifice of the mass as a horrible and intolerable

abuse invented by infernal theology and directly counter to the true

Supper of our Lord. The government was alarmed and took strong steps.

Processions were instituted to appease God for the sacrilege. Within a

month two hundred persons were arrested, twenty of whom were sent to

the scaffold and the rest banished after confiscation of their goods.

But the government could not afford to continue an uninterruptedly

rigorous policy. The Protestants found their opportunity in the

exigencies of the foreign situation. In 1535 Francis was forced by the

increasing menace of the Hapsburgs to make alliance not only with the

infidel but with the Schmalkaldic League. He would have had no

scruples in supporting abroad the heresy he suppressed at home, but he

found the German princes would accept his friendship on no terms save

those of tolerance to French Protestants. Accordingly on July 16,

1535, Francis was obliged to publish an edict ordering persecution to

cease and liberating those who were in prison for conscience's sake.

But the respite did not last long. New rigors were undertaken in April

1538. Marot retracted his errors, and Rabelais, while not

fundamentally changing his doctrine, greatly softened, in the second

edition of his _Pantagruel_, [Sidenote: 1542] the abusive ridicule he

had poured on the Sorbonne. But by this time a new era was

inaugurated. The deaths of Erasmus and Lefèvre in 1536 gave the _coup

de grace_ to the party of the Christian {198} Renaissance, and the

publication of Calvin's _Institutes_ in the same year finally gave the

French Protestants a much needed leader and standard.

[1] _Harvard Theological Review_, 1919, p. 209. Margaret had died

several years before, but Rabelais was called her poet because he had

claimed her protection and to her wrote a poem in 1545. _Oeuvres de

Rabelais_, ed. A. Lefranc, 1912, i, pp. xxiii, cxxxix. _Cf_. also

Calvin's letter to the Queen of Navarre, April 28, 1545. _Opera_, xii,

pp. 65 f.

SECTION 2. THE CALVINIST PARTY. 1536-1559

[Sidenote: Truce of Nice, 1538]

The truce of Nice providing for a cessation of hostilities between

France and the Hapsburgs for ten years, was greeted with much joy in

France. Bonfires celebrated it in Paris, and in every way the people

made known their longing for peace. Little the king cared for the

wishes of his loyal subjects when his own dignity, real or imagined,

was at stake. The war with Charles, that cursed Europe like an

intermittent fever, broke out again in 1542. Again France was the

aggressor and again she was worsted. The emperor invaded Champagne in

person, arriving, in 1544, at a point within fifty miles of Paris. As

there was no army able to oppose him it looked as if he would march as

a conqueror to the capital of his enemy. But he sacrificed the

advantage he had over France to a desire far nearer his heart, that of

crushing his rebellious Protestant subjects. Already planning war with

the League of Schmalkalden he wished only to secure his own safety from

attack by his great rival. [Sidenote: Treaty of Crépy, 1544] The

treaty made at Crépy was moderate in its terms and left things largely

as they were.

[Sidenote: Henry II, 1547-59]

On March 31, 1547, Francis I died and was succeeded by his son, Henry

II, a man of large, strong frame, passionately fond of all forms of

exercise, especially of hunting and jousting. He had neither his

father's versatility nor his fickleness nor his artistic interests.

His policy was influenced by the aim of reversing his father's wishes

and of disgracing his father's favorites.

[Sidenote: 1533]

While his elder brother was still alive, Henry had married Catharine

de' Medici, a daughter of Lorenzo {199} II de' Medici of Florence. The

girl of fourteen in a foreign country was uncomfortable, especially as

it was felt, after her husband became Dauphin, that her rank was not

equal to his. The failure to have any children during the first ten

years of marriage made her position not only unpleasant but precarious,

but the birth of her first son made her unassailable. In rapid

succession she bore ten children, seven of whom survived childhood.

Though she had little influence on affairs of state during her

husband's reign, she acquired self-confidence and at last began to talk

and act as queen.

[Sidenote: Diana of Poitiers]

At the age of seventeen Henry fell in love with a woman of thirty-six,

Diana de Poitiers, to whom his devotion never wavered until his death,

when she was sixty. Notwithstanding her absolute ascendancy over her

lover she meddled little with affairs of state.

[Sidenote: Admiral Coligny, 1519-72]

The direction of French policy at this time fell largely into the hands

of two powerful families. The first was that of Coligny. Of three

brothers the ablest was Gaspard, Admiral of France, a firm friend of

Henry's as well as a statesman and warrior. Still more powerful was

the family of Guise, the children of Claude, Duke of Guise, who died in

1527. [Sidenote: Francis of Guise] The eldest son, Francis, Duke of

Guise, was a great soldier. His brother, Charles, Cardinal of

Lorraine, won a high place in the councils of state, and his sister

Mary, by her marriage with James V of Scotland, brought added prestige

to the family. The great power wielded by this house owed much to the

position of their estates, part of which were fiefs of the French king

and part subject to the Empire. As suited their convenience they could

act either as Frenchmen or as foreign nobles.

[Sidenote: Expansion]

Under Henry France enjoyed a period of expansion such as she had not

had for many years. The {200} perpetual failures of Francis were at

last turned into substantial successes. This was due in large part to

the civil war in Germany and to the weakness of England's rulers,

Edward VI and Mary. It was due in part to the irrepressible energy of

the French bourgeois and gentlemen, in part to the genius of Francis of

Guise. The co-operation of France and Turkey, rather an identity of

interests than a formal alliance, a policy equally blamed by

contemporaries and praised by historians, continued. But the successes

achieved were due most of all to the definite abandonment of the hope

of Italian conquests and to the turning of French arms to regions more

suitable for incorporation under her government.

War having been declared on Charles, the French seized the Three

Bishoprics, at that time imperial fiefs, Metz, Verdun, and Toul. A

large German army under Alva besieged Metz, but failed to overcome the

brilliant defence of Francis of Guise. Worn by the attrition of

repulsed assaults and of disease the imperial army melted away. When

the siege was finally raised Guise distinguished himself as much by the

humanity with which he cared for wounded and sick enemies as he had by

his military prowess.

Six years later Guise added fresh laurels to his fame and new

possessions to France by the conquest of Calais and Guines, the last

English possessions in French territory. The loss of Calais, which had

been held by England since the Hundred Years War, was an especially

bitter blow to the islanders. These victories were partly

counterbalanced by the defeats of French armies at St. Quentin on the

Somme [Sidenote: 1557] and by Egmont at Gravelines. [Sidenote: 1558]

When peace was signed at Cateau-Cambrésis, [Sidenote: Peace of

Cateau-Cambrésis, 1559] France renounced all her conquests in the

south, but kept the Three Bishoprics and Calais, all of which became

her permanent possessions.

[Sidenote: Calvinism]

{201} While France was thus expanding her borders, the internal

revolution matured rapidly. The last years of Francis and the reign of

Henry II saw a prodigious growth of Protestantism. What had begun as a

sect now became, by an evolution similar to that experienced in

Germany, a powerful political party. It is the general fate of new

causes to meet at first with opposition due to habit and the

instinctive reaction of almost all minds against "the pain of a new

idea." But if the cause is one suited to the spirit and needs of the

age, it gains more and more supporters, slowly if left to itself,

rapidly if given good organization and adequate means of presenting its

claims. The thorough canvassing of an idea is absolutely essential to

win it a following. Now, prior to 1536, the Protestants had got a

considerable amount of publicity as well through their own writings as

through the attacks of their enemies. But not until Calvin settled at

Geneva and began to write extensively in French, was the cause

presented in a form capable of appealing to the average Frenchman.

Calvin gave not only the best apology for his cause, but also furnished

it with a definite organization, and a coherent program. He supplied

the dogma, the liturgy, and the moral ideas of the new religion, and he

also created ecclesiastical, political, and social institutions in

harmony with it. A born leader, he followed up his work with personal

appeals. His vast correspondence with French Protestants shows not

only much zeal but infinite pains and considerable tact in driving home

the lessons of his printed treatises.

Though the appeal of Calvin's dogmatic system was greater to an age

interested in such things and trained to regard them as highly

important, than we are likely to suppose at present, this was not

Calvinism's only or even its main attraction to intelligent people.

Like {202} every new and genuine reform Calvinism had the advantage of

arousing the enthusiasm of a small but active band of liberals. The

religious zeal as well as the moral earnestness of the age was

naturally drawn to the Protestant side. As the sect was persecuted, no

one joined it save from conscientious motives. Against the laziness or

the corruption of the prelates, too proud or too indifferent to give a

reason for their faith, the innovators opposed a tireless energy in

season and out of season; against the scandals of the court and the

immorality of the clergy they raised the banner of a new and stern

morality; to the fires of martyrdom they replied with the fires of

burning faith.

The missionaries of the Calvinists were very largely drawn from

converted members of the clergy, both secular and regular, and from

those who had made a profession of teaching. For the purposes of

propaganda these were precisely the classes most fitted by training and

habit to arouse and instruct the people. Tracts were multiplied, and

they enjoyed, notwithstanding the censures of the Sorbonne, a brisk

circulation. The theater was also made a means of propaganda, and an

effective one.

Picardy continued to be the stronghold of the Protestants throughout

this period, though they were also strong at Meaux and throughout the

north-east, at Orleans, in Normandy, and in Dauphiné. Great progress

was also made in the south, which later became the most Protestant of

all the sections of France.

[Sidenote: Catholic measures]

Catholics continued to rely on force. There was a counter-propaganda,

emanating from the University of Paris, but it was feeble. The

Jesuits, in the reign of Henry II, had one college at Paris and two in

Auvergne; otherwise there was hardly any intellectual effort made to

overcome the reformers. Indeed, the Catholics hardly had the munitions

for such a combat. {203} Apart from the great independents, holding

themselves aloof from all religious controversy, the more intelligent

and enterprising portion of the educated class had gone over to the

enemy.

But the government did its best to supply the want of argument by the

exercise of authority. New and severe edicts against "the heresies and

false doctrines of Luther and his adherents and accomplices" were

issued. The Sorbonne prohibited the reading and sale of sixty-five

books by name, including the works of Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin,

Dolet, and Marot, and all translations of the Bible issued by the

publishing house of Estienne.

The south of France had in earlier centuries been prolific in sects

claiming a Protestantism older than that of Augsburg. Like the

Bohemian Brethren they eagerly welcomed the Calvinists as allies and

were rapidly enrolled in the new church. Startled by the stirring of

the spirit of reform, the Parlement of Aix, acting in imitation of

Simon de Monfort, [Sidenote: 1540] ordered two towns, Merindol and

Cabrières, destroyed for their heresy. The sentence was too drastic

for the French government to sanction immediately; it was therefore

postponed by command of the king, but it was finally executed, at least

in part. [Sidenote: 1545] A ghastly massacre took place in which

eight hundred or more of the Waldenses perished. A cry of horror was

raised in Germany, in Switzerland, and even in France, from which the

king himself recoiled in terror.

Only a few days after his accession Henry issued an edict against

blasphemy, and this was followed by a number of laws against heresy. A

new court of justice was created to deal with heretics. [Sidenote:

October 8, 1547] From its habit of sending its victims to the stake it

soon became known as the Chambre Ardente. Its powers were so extensive

that the clergy protested against them as {204} infringements of their

rights. In its first two years it pronounced five hundred

sentences,--and what sentences! Even in that cruel age its punishments

were frightful. Burning alive was the commonest. If the heretic

recanted on the scaffold he was strangled before the fire was lit; if

he refused to recant his tongue was cut out. [Sidenote: June, 1551]

Those who were merely suspected were cast into dungeons from which many

never came out alive. Torture was habitually used to extract

confession. For those who recanted before sentence milder, but still

severe, punishments were meted out: imprisonment and various sorts of

penance. By the edict of Chateaubriand a code of forty-six articles

against heresy was drawn up, and the magistrate empowered to put

suspected persons under surveillance.

In the face of this fiery persecution the conduct of the Calvinists was

wonderfully fine. They showed great adroitness in evading the law by

all means save recantation and great astuteness in using what poor

legal means of defence were at their disposal. On the other hand they

suffered punishment with splendid constancy and courage, very few

failing in the hour of trial, and most meeting death in a state of

exaltation. Large numbers found refuge in other lands. During the

reign of Henry II fourteen hundred fled to Geneva, not to mention the

many who settled in the Netherlands, England, and Germany.

[Sidenote: Protestant growth]

Far from lying passive, the Calvinists took the offensive not only by

writing and preaching but by attacking the images of the saints. Many

of these were broken or defaced. One student in the university of

Paris smashed the images of the Virgin and St. Sebastian and a stained

glass window representing the crucifixion, and posted up placards

attacking the cult of the saints. For this he was pilloried three

times and then shut into a small hole walled in on all sides {205} save

for an aperture through which food was passed him until he died.

Undaunted by persecution the innovators continued to grow mightily in

numbers and strength. The church at Paris, though necessarily meeting

in secret, was well organized. The people of the city assembled

together in several conventicles in private houses. By 1559 there were

forty fully organized churches (_églises dressées_) throughout France,

and no less than 2150 conventicles or mission churches (_églises

plantées_). Estimates of numbers are precarious, but good reason has

been advanced to show that early in the reign of Henry the Protestants

amounted to one-sixth of the population. Like all enthusiastic

minorities they wielded a power out of proportion to their numbers.

Increasing continually, as they did, it is probable, but for the

hostility of the government, they would have been a match for the

Catholics. At any rate they were eager to try their strength. A new

and important fact was that they no longer consisted entirely of the

middle classes. High officers of government and great nobles began to

join their ranks. In 1546 the Bishop of Nîmes protected them openly,

being himself suspected, probably with justice, of Calvinism. In 1548

a lieutenant-general was among those prosecuted for heresy. Anthony of

Bourbon, a descendant of Louis IX, a son of the famous Charles,

Constable of France, and husband of Joan d 'Albret, queen of Navarre,

who was a daughter of Margaret d'Angoulême, became a Protestant.

[Sidenote: 1555] About the same time the great Admiral Coligny was

converted, though it was some years before he openly professed his

faith. His brother, d'Andelot, also adhered to the Calvinists but was

later persuaded by the king and by his wife to go back to the Catholic

fold.

So strong had the Protestants become that the {206} French government

was compelled against its will to tolerate them in fact if not in

principle, and to recognize them as a party in the state with a

quasi-constitutional position. The synod held at Paris in May, 1559,

was evidence that the first stage in the evolution of French

Protestantism was complete. This assembly drew up a creed called the

_Confessio Gallicana_, setting forth in forty articles the purest

doctrine of Geneva. Besides affirming belief in the common articles of

Christianity, this confession asserted the dogmas of predestination,

justification by faith only, and the distinctive Calvinistic doctrine

of the eucharist. The worship of saints was condemned and the

necessity of a church defined. For this church an organization and

discipline modelled on that of Geneva was provided. The country was

divided into districts, the churches within which were to send to a

central consistory representatives both clerical and lay, the latter to

be at least equal in number to the former. Over the church of the

whole nation there was to be a national synod or "Colloque" to which

each consistory was to send one clergyman and one or two lay elders.

Alarmed by the growth of the Protestants, Henry II was just preparing,

after the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, to grapple with them more

earnestly than ever, when he died of a wound accidentally received in a

tournament. [Sidenote: July 10, 1559] His death, hailed by Calvin as

a merciful dispensation of Providence, conveniently marks the ending of

one epoch and the beginning of another. For the previous forty years

France had been absorbed in the struggle with the vast empire of the

Hapsburgs. For the next forty years she was completely occupied with

the wars of religion. Externally, she played a weak rôle because of

civil strife and of a contemptible government. Indeed, all her

interests, both foreign and domestic, were from this {207} time

forgotten in the intensity of the passions aroused by fanaticism. The

date of Henry's demise also marks a change in the evolution of the

French government. Hitherto, for some centuries, the trend had been

away from feudalism to absolute monarchy. The ideal, "une foi, une

loi, un roi" had been nearly attained. But this was now checked in two

ways. The great nobles found in Calvinism an opportunity to assert

their privileges against the king. The middle classes in the cities,

especially in those regions where sectionalism was still strong, found

the same opportunity but turned it to the advantage of republicanism.

A fierce spirit of resistance not only to the prelates but to the

monarch, was born. There was even a considerable amount of democratic

sentiment. The poor clergy, who had become converted to Calvinism,

were especially free in denouncing the inequalities of the old régime

which made of the higher clergy great lords and left the humbler

ministers to starve. The fact is that the message of Calvinism was

essentially democratic in that the excellence of all Christians and

their perfect equality before God was preached. [Sidenote: Equality

preached] Interest in religion and the ability to discuss it was not

confined to a privileged hierarchy, but was shared by the humblest. In

a ribald play written in 1564 it is said:[1]

If faut que Jeanne [a servant] entre les pots

Parle de reformation;

La nouvelle religion

A tant fait que les chambrières,

Les serviteurs et les tripières

En disputent publiquement.

But while the gay courtier and worldling sneered at the religion of

market women and scullerymaids, he had little cause to scoff when he

met the Protestants {208} in debate at the town hall of his city, or on

the field of battle.

Finally, the year 1559 very well marks a stage in the development of

French Protestantism. Until about 1536 it had been a mere unorganized

opinion, rather a philosophy than a coherent body. From the date of

the publication of the _Institutes_ to that of the Synod of 1559 the

new church had become organized, self-conscious, and definitely

political in aims. But after 1559 it became more than a party; it

became an _imperium in imperio_. There was no longer one government

and one allegiance in France but two, and the two were at war.

[Sidenote: The Huguenots]

It was just at this time that the name of Huguenot applied to the

Protestants, hitherto called "Lutherans," "heretics of Meaux" and, more

rarely, "Calvinists." The origin of the word, first used at Tours in

1560, is uncertain. It may possibly come from "le roi Huguet" or

"Hugon," a night spectre; the allusion then would be to the ghostly

manner in which the heretics crept by night to their conventicles.

Huguenot is also found as a family name at Belfort as early as 1425.

It may possibly come from the term "Hausgenossen" as used in Alsace of

those metal-workers who were not taken into the gild but worked at

home, hence a name of contempt like the modern "scab." It may also

come from the name of the Swiss Confederation, "Eidgenossen," and

perhaps this derivation is the most likely, though it cannot be

considered beyond doubt. Whatever the origin of the name the picture

of the Huguenot is familiar to us. Of all the fine types of French

manhood, that of the Huguenot is one of the finest. Gallic gaiety is

tempered with earnestness; intrepidity is strengthened with a new moral

fibre like that of steel. Except in the case of a few great lords, who

joined the party without serious conviction, the high standard of the

Huguenot morals was recognized even by their enemies. In an age of

profligacy the "men of the religion," as they called themselves, walked

the paths of rectitude and sobriety.

[1] Remy Belleau: _La Reconnue_, act 4, scene 2.

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