[Illustration: CÆDES COLIGNII ET SOCIORUM EJUS.
THE MASSACRE IN PARIS.
From the Picture in the Vatican by Vasari.]
THE
MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW.
PRECEDED BY A
HISTORY OF THE RELIGIOUS WARS IN THE
REIGN OF CHARLES IX.
BY HENRY WHITE.
[Illustration]
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1868.
PREFACE.
In the following pages I have endeavored to describe the great struggle
which devastated France in the latter half of the sixteenth century,
and culminated in the memorable tragedy of St. Bartholomew’s Day.
The nature of that struggle can not be fairly understood, unless the
condition of the Protestants under Francis I. and his two immediate
successors be taken into consideration. In those fiery times of trial
the Huguenot character was formed, and the nation gradually separated
into two parties, so fanatically hostile, that the extermination of the
weaker seemed the only possible means of re-establishing the unity of
France.
The three preliminary chapters necessarily contain many notices of
the cruel persecutions which the Reformers had to suffer at the hands
of the dominant Church; but the author would be much grieved were it
supposed that he had written those chapters with any desire to rekindle
the dying embers of religious strife. On that portion of his work he
dwells with pain and regret; but such pages of history contain warnings
that it may be well to repeat from time to time. Though there may be
little danger of our drifting back to the atrocities of the sixteenth
century, and though we no longer burn men, mob-law and other forms
of terrorism are still employed to stifle free discussion, and check
individual liberty. From this to the prison, the rack, and the stake,
the step is not so wide as it appears. Moreover, it is good to revive
occasionally the memory of those who have “served God in the fire,” for
the instruction of their descendants, who have the good fortune to live
in times when they can “honor God in the sunshine.” Such examples of
patience and firmness under torture, of self-devotion, of child-like
reliance on the spiritual promises of their Divine Master, of obedience
to conscience, and of faithfulness to duty, are fruitful for all ages.
They serve to show not only that persecution is a mistake, but that
the final victory is not with the successful persecutor. Man’s real
strength consists in prudence and foresight--qualities which belong
but to few; and if this small intelligent class (and such the early
Reformers were, even by the confession of their enemies) be driven
out or exterminated, the ignorant masses are lost. Spain and Italy
have never recovered from the self-inflicted wounds of the sixteenth
century; and if France has suffered in a less degree, it is because
persecution did not so completely succeed in destroying freedom of
thought and liberty of conscience.
The author has tried to write impartially: he has weighed conflicting
evidence carefully, and has never willingly allowed prejudices to
direct his judgment. That he has succeeded in holding the balance
even, is more than he can venture to hope; but in such a cause there
is consolation even in failure. If he has not painted the unscrupulous
Catherine de Medicis and the half-insane Charles in such dark colors as
preceding writers, he has carefully abstained from whitewashing them.
He has shown that they both possessed many estimable qualities, and has
carefully marked the steps by which they attained such an eminence in
evil.[1]
In the earlier pages of this history the followers of the new creed
in France are called indifferently Protestants or Huguenots. The use
of the former word is not strictly correct; but it is preferable
to the awkward term “Reformed,” by which the French Dissenters
designate themselves. By their enemies they were usually denominated
Calvinists--a term which I have generally avoided on account of
the erroneous ideas connected with it among ordinary readers. In
the present day it is seldom used without a sneer. With all the
complacency of ignorance, men write of “grim Calvinists who justify the
burning of Servetus.” Calvinists, grim or otherwise, do not justify
persecution; and as regards Servetus, his execution was approved of
by all the Protestant divines of Germany and Switzerland, and Calvin
was perhaps the only man who tried to save the arch-heretic’s life.
Whatever may have been the errors of the Reformer of Geneva, he was
one of the greatest men of his day, and as an author he stands in
the first rank of early French prose-writers. Englishmen who owe so
many of their liberties to the influence of his opinions during the
counter-reformation of the seventeenth century, should be the last
people to look unkindly upon his failings.
Respecting the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, there are two theories.
Some writers contend that it was the result of a long premeditated
plot, and this view was so ably maintained by John Allen in the
_Edinburgh Review_ (vol. xliv. 1826), that nothing farther was
left to be said on the subject. Others are of opinion that it was the
accidental result of a momentary spasm of mingled terror and fanaticism
caused by the unsuccessful attempt to murder Coligny. This theory has
been supported by Ranke in a review of Capefigue’s “Histoire de la
Réforme,” printed in the second volume of his “Historisch-politische
Zeitschrift” (1836), and in the first volume of his “Französische
Geschichte;” by Soldan in his “Frankreich und die Bartholomäus-Nacht;”
by Baum in his “Leben Beza’s;” and by Coquerel in the “Revue
Théologique” in 1859. Since they wrote, many new materials tending to
confirm their views have come to light, some of which are for the first
time noticed in this volume.
Foremost in value among the materials for this portion of the French
history are the extracts from the “Simancas Archives,” published by
M. Gachard in the “Correspondance de Philippe II.” The letters of
Catherine de Medicis (as published by Alberi) throw a new light upon
some of the obscurer parts of the reign of Charles IX.; and though it
would be unwise to trust them implicitly, I can scarcely imagine a more
valuable contribution to French history than a complete collection of
her correspondence. Her letters are scattered all over France: a few
have been printed in local histories, but far the greater part of them
(including those in the collection of Mr. Murray of Albemarle Street)
remain almost unknown. Much curious information has been gleaned from
the “Relazioni” of the Venetian embassadors, edited by Alberi, or in
the more accessible volumes of Tommaseo and Baschet. I need not point
out the value of the documents contained in the correspondence of
Aubespine, La Mothe-Fénelon, Cardinal Granvelle, and in the “Archives
de la Maison d’Orange-Nassau,” published by Groen van Prinsterer. The
letters of the English agents in France, so singularly neglected by
many writers, help to explain several of the incidents of the Tumult
of Amboise and the proposed war in Flanders in 1572. The omission from
Walsingham’s correspondence of all account of the Massacre is much to
be lamented. Though I have sought for it in vain, I still entertain
a hope that it may some day be recovered. In the Record Office there
is a curious report by the famous Kirkaldy of Grange, of which Mr.
Froude has already made use in his last volume. Two other remarkable
contemporary letters--one in Spanish, the other in German--are noticed
in their proper place.
Either personally or through the help of kind friends the author
has searched far and wide among the provincial records of France.
The sources of the information thus acquired have been carefully
indicated in the notes, and the result has often been to discredit the
statements of the older writers, carelessly copied by their successors.
Two remarkable instances connected with Toulouse and Lyons will be
observed in the course of the history. The Médicis MSS. at Le Puy, the
manuscripts in the public library at Rouen, the letters of Charles IX.
at Tours, the Acts Consulaires of Lyons, the Consular and Parliament
Registers of Toulouse, the Registers of Caen, the Livre du Roi at
Dijon, the Municipal Archives and Baptismal Registers at Provins, the
Comptes Consulaires at Gap, have contributed to enrich this volume on
several important matters. The public records of Montpelier, Nismes,
Grenoble, Clermont-Ferrand, Bayeux, and other places, as well as the
unpublished Memoirs of Jacques Gaches, and the MS. of President Latomy,
which differs considerably from the printed text, have also furnished
their contingent of information. Much curious and interesting matter
has been found in Haag’s “France Protestante,” and in the “Bulletin de
la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme François.”
The reader will find very little in this volume about the internal
development of the Reformed Church; for such information he must look
to theological histories and to writers who have made theology their
study. Laymen who venture into that field rarely escape the imputation
of ignorance or heterodoxy.
_December, 1867._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
[1500–1547.]
Causes of the Reformation--Lefevre of Etaples--Francis
I.--Revival of Learning--La Renaissance--Clerical
Manners--Early Converts and first Victims--Jacques
Pavannes, Berquin--Margaret of Valois--Calvin and
his Institutes--The King’s Inconstancy--Edict of
Fontainebleau--Two Heretics burned--Treaty of
Crespy--Vaudois Persecution--The Baron of Oppède--Massacre
at Mérindol--Cry of Indignation--Sadolet, Bishop of
Carpentras--Tragedy of Meaux--A Cloud of Witnesses--Stephen
Dolet and Robert Stephens--Marot--The last Martyr--Death of
Francis I.--His Funeral Sermon--His Character PAGE 1
CHAPTER II.
HENRY II.
[1547–1559.]
Henry II.--Catherine and
Diana--Montmorency--Coronation--King enters
Paris--Fêtes--Heretic Burning--New Edicts--Chambres
Ardentes--Edict of Chateaubriant--Persecution at Angers,
Le Puy, Velay--Inquisition proposed--Resistance of
Parliament--Siege and Battle of St. Quentin--Affair of the
Rue St. Jacques--Martyrdom of Philippa de Lunz--Calvin’s
Letter--Pré aux Clercs and Marot’s Psalms--Peace of
Cateau-Cambresis--Divisions in the Paris Parliament--The
Mercurial of June--Du Faur and Du Bourg arrested--First
Synod of Reformed Churches--Confession of Faith and Book of
Discipline--Edict of Ecouen--The Tournament--Henry’s Death 22
CHAPTER III.
REIGN OF FRANCIS II.
[1559–1560.]
Catherine de Medicis--The Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of
Lorraine--St. André--Anthony of Navarre and Condé--Coligny
and Andelot--Disgrace of Montmorency--Persecuting
Edicts--Execution of Du Bourg--Discontent in France--Edict
of Chambord--La Renaudie--The Meeting at Nantes--Tumult
of Amboise--Bloody Reprisals--Castelnau’s Trial
and Execution--The Duke’s Viands--Aubigné and his
Son--Grace of Amboise--Regnier de la Planche--Renewal
of Persecutions--L’Hopital made Chancellor--Edict of
Romorantin--Religious and Political Malcontents--Abuse
of the Pulpit--The Tiger--General Lawlessness--Huguenot
Violence--Demand for a Council--Montbrun and
Mouvans--L’Hopital’s Inaugural Address--Les Politiques--The
Notables at Fontainebleau--Montluc and Marillac--Meeting
at Nerac--Address presented to Anthony--The Court at
Orleans--Arrest and Trial of Condé--Death of Francis II. 61
CHAPTER IV.
FRANCE AT THE ACCESSION OF CHARLES IX.
[1560.]
Contrast--Power of King and Nobles--The
Provinces--Roads--Rate of Traveling--Forests--Wild
Animals--Brigandage--Inns--League of the
Loire--Agriculture--Condition of the
Peasantry--Rent--Serfage--Wages--Cost of
Provisions--Food--Sumptuary Laws--Social
Changes--Ignorance of the People--Population
of France--Taxation--Army and Navy--The
Clergy--Superstitions--Justice--Punishments--Brutality of
Manners--Domestic Architecture--Paris--Cities of France:
Orleans, Rouen, Bordeaux, Dieppe, Lyons, Boulogne, Dijon,
Moulins, St. Etienne, and Toulouse 112
CHAPTER V.
FROM THE ACCESSION OF CHARLES IX. TO THE MASSACRE OF VASSY.
[1560–1562.]
Character of the Boy-King--Portrait of Catherine--The
States-General--The Chancellor’s Address--Speeches of
the Three Orators--Agitation in the Provinces--Religious
Amnesty--Edict of July--Provincial Assemblies
Convoked--Instructions of the Isle of France--The
Triumvirate--States of Pontoise--Proposals of
Reform--Colloquy of Poissy--Beza--Conference in the Queen’s
Chamber--King’s Speech--Beza’s Defense--Catherine’s Liberal
Spirit--Spread of New Doctrines--Monster Congregations--The
Guises Intrigue with Spain--Violence of the
Clergy--Massacres at Cahors and Aurillac--Amiens--Huguenot
Outrages--Riot of St. Médard--Notables at St.
Germains--Edict of January, 1562--Violence at Dijon and
Aix--Anthony’s Apostasy--The Duke and the Cardinal at
Saverne--Massacre at Vassy--Both Parties Arm--Guise Enters
Paris--Plot to Seize the King 145
CHAPTER VI.
FIRST RELIGIOUS WAR.
[1562–1563.]
Beginning of Reaction--Causes of the War--The
Huguenots arm--Advice of Coligny’s Wife--Covenant of
Association--Massacre at Sens and Sisteron--Discipline of
the Armies--Catherine attempts to mediate--Conference
at Thoury--Negotiations broken off--Fearful state of
Paris--The Constable’s violence--Appeals to Foreign
Sympathy--Successes of the Royalists--Atrocities at Blois
and Tours--Rouen Besieged--The Breach stormed--The Hour
of Vengeance--Pastor Marlorat hanged--Death of Anthony of
Navarre--Disturbances in Normandy--Offer of Amnesty--Battle
of Dreux--Condé and Montmorency captured--St. André
killed--Siege of Orleans--Duke of Guise murdered--Poltrot
de Méré--Pacification of Amboise--Distress caused by the
War--Death of Coligny’s Son--Letter to his Wife 195
CHAPTER VII.
CHAOS.
[1562–1563.]
Nature of the Struggle--Montluc--His Barbarity--Des
Adrets--His Ferocity--Murders at Gaillac--The Reform
in Provence and Languedoc--Scenes at Orange--Revolt
at Valence--Disturbances at Lyons--Compromise--La
Rochelle--Massacre at Toulouse--Exodus of
Sisteron--Sauteries of Macon--Limoux--Palm Sunday
at Castelnaudary--The Monks of St. Calais--Violence
in Berry--The Châtelaine of Avallon--The Proctor
of Bar--Atrocities of the Bishop of Le Mans and
his Lieutenant--Huguenot Cruelties at Dieppe and
Bayeux--Angoulême--Quarrels at Court--Siege of
Havre--Duplicity of English Government--Charles Proclaimed
of Age--His Character--Council of Trent 229
CHAPTER VIII.
THE MEETING AT BAYONNE.
[June, 1565–March, 1568.]
The Royal progress--Bayonne in June--Identical
note--Amusements--Political Deliberations--The Queen of
Navarre Excommunicated--Catherine’s Remonstrance--The
Pope yields--State of Gascony--Assembly of Notables at
Moulins--Feud between Guise and Coligny--Montmorency and
the Cardinal--Disturbed state of Maine--Montluc pacifies
Gascony--Embassy from Germany--Rebellion in Flanders--March
of Alva--Condé leaves the Court--Rumored Plot--Huguenot
Meeting at Chatillon--War resolved upon--Attempt to seize
Charles--Huguenot Rising--Battle of St. Denis--Death of the
Constable--German Auxiliaries--Michelade of Nismes--Siege
of Chartres--Peace of Longjumeau--Death of Coligny’s Wife 247
CHAPTER IX.
JARNAC AND MONCONTOUR.
[1568–1570.]
State of the Country--The National Party--Atrocities
and Retaliation--L’Hopital’s Retirement--The Catholic
League--League of Toulouse--The New Plot--The
Flight to Rochelle--Aid from England--Anjou,
Commander-in-Chief--Battle of Jarnac--Death of
Condé--Henry of Bearn--Siege of Cognac--Junction of Duke
Wolfgang--Death of Brissac--Battle of Roche-Abeille--Siege
of Poitiers--Moncontour--The Admiral’s letter to his
Children--Siege of St. Jean D’Angely--Desmarais--The Great
March--Cruelties at Orthez, Auxerre, Orleans, Cognat,
Aurillac--Coligny’s illness--Battle of Arnay-le-Duc--Treaty
of St. Germains 283
CHAPTER X.
THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM.
[August, 1570, to August, 1572.]
Albert and Pierre de Gondi, Birague, Strozzi,
Nevers, and Henry of Guise--Marriage of Charles
IX.--Nuptial Festivities at Paris--Embassy of the
German Princes--Violent Sermons--Outrages at Orange
and Rouen--Objects of the Politiques--Revolt in
Flanders--Position of Affairs--Interview between the King
and Prince Louis of Nassau--Spanish Threats--Coligny’s
Marriage--The Admiral goes to Blois--Conferences with the
King--Proposed Marriage of Henry and Margaret--Murder
of Lignerolles--The Gastine Cross--Queen of Navarre
at Blois--Alessandrino’s Special Embassy--Letters to
Rome--Negotiations--Pope refuses the Dispensation--Fears of
the Parisians 319
CHAPTER XI.
THE MARRIAGE AND THE PLOT.
[August, 1572.]
Proposed German and English Alliances--Anjou’s
Refusal--Treaty with England--Capture
of Mons--Defeat of Genlis--Walsingham’s
Dispatches--War-Excitement--Deliberations in
Council--Charles at Montpipeau--Catherine follows
him--Her tears--Increasing influence of Coligny--His
Death resolved on--Joan of Navarre in Paris--Her sudden
Death--Distrust and Warnings--Coligny’s firmness--Plot
and Counterplot--Henry of Navarre enters Paris--The
Wedding--Masque at the Hôtel Bourbon--The Admiral’s
last Letter--Plot to Assassinate him--The Duchess of
Nemours--Maurevel sent for 353
CHAPTER XII.
THE ASSASSINATION.
[22d, 23d, and 24th August.]
Coligny in the Tennis-Court--The Fatal Shot--The
King’s Indignation and Threats--Letters to Provincial
Governors--Precautions in the City--Interview between
Charles and the Admiral--Despair of Catherine
and Anjou--The Huguenot Council--Threats of
violence--De Pilles and Pardaillan at the Louvre--The
Turning-point--Conversation between Catherine and
Anjou--Meeting in the Tuileries Garden--Guard sent
to Coligny--Scene in the King’s Closet--Catherine’s
Argument--De Retz Protests--Charles Yields at last--Guise
in the City--Precautions--Anjou and Angoulême ride
through Paris--Municipal Arrangements--Charles and La
Rochefoucault--Margaret and her sister Claude--Coligny’s
last Night 379
CHAPTER XIII.
THE FESTIVAL OF BLOOD.
[August and September, 1572.]
The Huguenot Gentleman Killed--Midnight at the
Louvre--Charles still hesitates--The Conspirators
at the window--The pistol-shot--Guise recalled too
late--Scene at Coligny’s Hotel--The assault and
murder--Indignities--Montfauçon--Scene at the Louvre--Queen
Margaret’s alarm--Proclamations--Salviati’s letter--List
of Atrocities--Death of Ramus and La Place--Charles
fires upon the Fugitives--Escape of Montgomery, Sully,
Duplessis-Mornay, Caumont--The Miracle of the White
Thorn--Charles conscience-stricken--Thanksgiving
and Justification--Execution of Briquemaut and
Cavaignes--Abjuration of Henry and Condé 404
CHAPTER XIV.
MASSACRE IN THE PROVINCES.
[August to October, 1572.]
Instructions to the Governors--The Count of Tende--Nantes
and Alençon--Massacres at Saumur, Angers, Lyons, Orleans,
Troyes, Rouen, Meaux, Bordeaux, and Toulouse--St. Hérem’s
letter--The stolen Dispatch--The Governor of Bayonne--The
Bishop of Lisieux--Chabot at Arnay-le-Duc--Senlis, Provins,
Château-Thierry, Dieppe, and Nismes spared--The Number of
Victims--Contemporary Judgments--Dorat’s Panegyric--Jean
Le Masle--Pierre Charpentier and Sorbin--Rejoicings at
Rome--Exultation of Philip II.--Horror in England--John
Knox’s Denunciation--The Emperor Maximilian’s regret 446
CHAPTER XV.
THE CLOSING SCENE.
[1572–1574.]
Reaction--Tolerant Protestations of
Government--Walsingham’s disbelief and caution--Renewal
of Civil War--Mission of Cardinal Orsini--Siege of
Rochelle--Honorable terms of Capitulation--Siege of
Sancerre--Famine--Horrible scenes--Capitulation--Meeting
at Montauban--Troubled state of France--Intrigues of
Alençon--Shrove-Tuesday plot--La Mole and Coconnas
executed--Charles falls ill--Conversation with
Henry of Navarre--Charles’s visions--His Huguenot
nurse--Her exhortations--The King’s remorse--His dying
words--Suspicions of Poison--His character--His married
life--Judgment of Posterity 471
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
CÆDES COLIGNII ET SOCIORUM EJUS. THE MASSACRE IN
PARIS (from the Picture in the Vatican by Vasari) _Frontispiece._
GASPARD DE COLIGNY 68
CATHERINE DE MEDICIS 146
THE
MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
[1500–1547.]
Causes of the Reformation--Lefevre of Etaples--Francis
I.--Revival of Learning--La Renaissance--Clerical Manners--Early
Converts and First Victims--Jacques Pavannes, Berquin--Margaret
of Valois--Calvin and his Institutes--The King’s
Inconstancy--Edict of Fontainebleau--Two Heretics Burned--Treaty
of Crespy--Vaudois Persecution--The Baron of Oppede--Massacre
at Merindol--Cry of Indignation--Sadolet, Bishop of
Carpentras--Tragedy of Meaux--A Cloud of Witnesses--Stephen
Dolet and Robert Stephens--Marot--The Last Martyr--Death of
Francis I.--His Funeral Sermon--His Character.
The sixteenth century has been rightly called the era of the
Renaissance. Then learning and religion revived; the fine arts received
a fresh development. Then a new spirit breathed upon the nations, and
the people began to feel that they were intended to be something better
than hewers of wood and drawers of water--mere beasts of burden or
tribute-paying machines for the use of their lords. The great Reform
movement had been preparing from afar. Had Constantinople never fallen,
had Eastern learning not been driven to seek an asylum in the West,
the religious revolution might have been retarded; it could not have
been prevented. In the hour when Guttenberg printed the first sheet of
his Bible the spiritual despotism of Rome began to totter. It was a
strange period of excitement, when Vasco de Gama made his way to India
round the Cape of Storms, and when Columbus returned triumphant from
the discovery of a new world. A spirit of restlessness and scepticism
pervaded all Europe. Monks in their cloisters, hermits in their cells,
barons in their castles, lawyers in their courts, priests in their
rural parsonages, all felt it alike. Princes on the throne doubted
the infallibility of the Church, or drove the Holy Father from his
capital. There seemed to be nothing sacred against the attacks of the
wits and scholars of the day. Rabelais, under the mask of his cynical
buffoonery, made the clergy a laughing-stock. Erasmus, with a satire as
keen as Voltaire’s, assailed the most prominent abuses of the Church.
Ulrich von Hutten, in his “Epistles of Obscure Men,” attacked the same
abuses, with less polished weapons but in a more popular style. But
if the iconoclasts of the sixteenth century had used no other arms
than wit and satire, and done no more than brand the vicious lives and
extortionate practices of the clergy, they would never have reformed
the world. The doctrines of the Church had degenerated into an empty
formalism leaving the heart untouched, the life unchanged. On a sudden,
as if by mutual arrangement, a new race of preachers sprang up in
Europe. Lefevre in France, Zuingle in Switzerland, Tyndale in England,
and Luther in Germany, all taught the same doctrine. In each country
the Reformation assumed a peculiar form, though preserving the same
general characteristics; and just in the proportion as Protestantism
has yielded to, and in its turn moulded these characteristics, it has
survived and flourished to the present time. If the Reform was almost
crushed out in France, it was because it took too little account of
national character. And yet the French Reformation was exclusively of
native growth. Lefevre and his disciple Farel began to preach, some
years before Luther, that great doctrine of justification by faith
which was the foundation-stone of the new Church.
There are men who still deny the necessity of the great religious
revolution of the sixteenth century, and contend that a slight reform
in discipline, such as a pious pope would have conceded, was all that
the Church required. But if such a reform had been possible, would
it have been lasting? We have seen within these few years how little
that singular phenomenon, a liberal pope, can do--how impotent he is
when the clergy are opposed to him. It is very probable that if the
Church had seriously undertaken to reform itself, the great disruption
never would have taken place; for, as Ranke says, “Even the Protestants
severed themselves slowly and reluctantly from the communion of the
Church.”[2] France was fully prepared for a religious reform. The king
had made his court the most learned centre in Europe; for among the
many noble qualities possessed by Francis I., not the least of them
was the patronage he extended to artists and men of letters. The great
painters Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto, and Rosso were invited
from Italy to adorn his palaces with their magic pencils. Lascaris,
a learned Greek, was commissioned to form the king’s library at
Fontainebleau. Under the advice of the learned Budæus the college of
France was established for the study of the Greek and Hebrew languages.
This great intellectual movement, especially the study of Hebrew,
“which turned Christians into Jews,”[3] so terrified that guardian of
orthodoxy, the theological college of the Sorbonne, that
They in their zeal splenetic
Forbade the Greek and Hebrew tongues as heathen and heretic.
So wrote Marot, adding that they proved the truth of the old proverb,
“Learning has for enemy no creature but a dunce.”
The Church of France was no worse than many other portions of the Roman
fold. So long as the people themselves were ignorant, the ignorance
of the priesthood did not trouble them; but immediately their own
eyes were opened, they became conscious of the deficiencies of their
pastors. And it would have been well for them had ignorance been the
worst failing of the clergy: they were vicious also. A contemporary
manuscript tells us that “many are so ignorant that they can not
interpret what is said in the course of divine service, and are unable
to read or write; so negligent that they have left off preaching
altogether.... They take delight in worldly pleasures, and spend the
greater part of the day in taverns, drinking, gambling, and toying with
women, and keep a _truande_ in their houses.”[4] How the priests
abused the simple confidence of their flocks is evident from the pious
frauds they practiced, particularly in the matter of relics. Of one
instance of this tampering with the religious feelings of the people,
it was said, “that either the Virgin Mary must have had two mothers, or
her mother must have had two heads.” A feather from the angel Gabriel’s
wing, or a bottle of Egyptian darkness, were silly but harmless
deceptions; but there were others which to name is impossible.[5]
In the field thus prepared for the truth, the new doctrines spread
rapidly, one great help to their diffusion being the use of the French
language, while the orthodox clergy stuck so obstinately to their
Latin, that Antony de Mouchi, surnamed Demochares, felt it necessary to
apologize for using the vernacular in a work he had written in answer
to a Huguenot pamphlet.[6] At first the converts were more numerous
among the educated and high-born, than among the low and unlettered
multitude. They early received the baptism of fire. In 1524, while
Francis I. was in captivity at Madrid, the Parliament of Paris revived
an edict of Louis XII. concerning blasphemy, and nominated a commission
to try Lutherans and other heretics. In the following year, a brief of
Clement VII. ratified this encroachment on the rights of the Church,
approving of the commissioners or inquisitors appointed, permitting
them to enter upon their duties “with apostolical authority,” and
ordering them to try their prisoners “without noise and without form
of judgment, as is the custom in such cases.”[7] This bull, besides
condemning heretics to be punished in body and goods, forbade all
persons to supply them with corn, wine, oil, or other merchandise,
under pain of being treated as accomplices. That this bull was
something more than an empty threat, is evident from a letter written
by Clement to congratulate the Parliament of Paris on the way in which
they had carried it out, adding “that the new errors were as opposed to
the State as to the Church.” We need not stop to show that the kingdom
which has always put itself forward as the champion of Popery, both in
the East and in the West, is that in which the Church and the State
have suffered more from revolution than any Protestant country.
One of the first victims in Paris was Jacques Pavannes, who procured a
temporary respite by recanting. Although young in years, he afterward
showed a firmness and faith that would have become a veteran warrior
of Christ. Withdrawing his recantation, he was condemned to suffer by
fire, and when at the stake he spoke with such unction that a doctor
of the Sorbonne declared “it would have been better for the Church to
have paid a million of money than have allowed Pavannes to address
the people.” (1525). A more illustrious victim was Louis de Berquin,
scion of a noble family of Artois: by his scholarship and wit--he was
of the Erasmian school--he had mortally offended the monks and (if the
expression be allowable) the old fogyism of the Sorbonne. The king and
his sister, Margaret of Valois, had saved him two or three times; but
at last he was caught in the toils, and his trial was hurried on so
that Francis should not have the opportunity of interfering. (1529).
Fourteen victims of less note suffered not long after; but ideas are
not to be burned out at the stake or stifled in prisons, and it soon
became evident that the new doctrines were spreading wider and wider
every day. “The smoke of these sacrifices,” says Mezeray, “had got into
people’s heads.”
The followers of the new creed had but one friend at court, and this
was Margaret of Valois, the king’s sister, a pious tender-hearted
woman, who had interposed more than once to rescue the victims of
the Sorbonne and of Rome. She was not a Protestant, and shrank from
any rupture with Catholicism. She would have liked to see the old
and the new Church united, each yielding something to the other.
The age, however, was not one for compromises. Day by day the lines
of demarkation became more strongly marked, especially after the
publication of Calvin’s “Institutes of the Christian Religion” (1535),
which became at once the text-book and the charter of the evangelicals
in France. Calvin was a thorough-going reformer. To adopt a familiar
distinction, while Luther rejected nothing that was not condemned by
Scripture, Calvin accepted nothing that was not directly countenanced
by it. Luther’s system was, probably, the wiser, as it did not break
directly with the past; but either principle carried to extremes is
faulty. Looking at the subsequent history of Protestantism in France,
we can see how (under the Calvinistic form) it excited an antagonism
never felt in Germany; it seemed to aim at deposing the king as well as
the pope. And it is doubtful whether such a cold undecorated form of
religion is suited to the warm and impulsive temperament of the Celtic
race which forms the lowest stratum of the French population.
In France it was long before the Reformation reached the lower
classes--the masses, as it is the fashion to call them; the rural
gentry, the men of education, the well-to-do tradesmen, artists, and
“all who from their callings possessed any elevation of mind,” were
the first converts.[8] They were naturally opposed by the clergy and
the lawyers, for corporate bodies are always great enemies to change.
Francis I. appears to have seen the desirability of a reform in the
Church, not so much from religious as from political motives. He
hated the monks, and was thwarted by the Sorbonne; he read the Holy
Scriptures with his sister Margaret, and took the extraordinary step
of inviting Melanchthon to France in order to arrange some compromise
by which Popery and Protestantism might be united. It was a vain
dream, even if the king were sincere, which is exceedingly doubtful.
He might at one time have pleaded that the persecutions were carried
on without his knowledge and even in defiance of him; but on 21st
January, 1535, he took an active part in the burning of six unfortunate
“Lutherans.” In this case his pride had been hurt by some rude and
indefensible proceedings of the Reformed party;[9] but he could be
equally unfeeling and unscrupulous from mere political expediency. In
the same month of January, 1535, he issued a royal edict commanding
the instant extirpation of heresy in every form; all who aided or
harbored heretics, or did not inform against them, were to be punished
as principals; and informers were to receive one-fourth part of the
confiscation and fines--a sure mode of procuring victims. This decree
was modified in June, when Francis was coquetting with the Protestant
princes of Germany; but the pains and penalties were only remitted to
such as abjured their faith and returned to the bosom of the Church.
On 1st June, 1540, appeared the famous edict of Fontainebleau,
confirming all previous edicts, and ordering the strictest search to
be made for heretics; and, as if its provisions were not harsh enough,
letters patent were issued at the end of October, 1542, enjoining every
parliament in the kingdom to “execute prompt and rigorous judgment,”
so that the new heresy might be destroyed root and branch. No time was
lost in carrying out these dreadful instructions. Among the victims
of this renewed persecution was one Delavoye, who being told that a
warrant was out against him, and that the officers were on their way to
seize him, refused to hide himself as his friends advised. “Hirelings
and false prophets may do so,” he said; “but following the example of
St. Paul, ‘_I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die for the
name of the Lord Jesus._’” Another sufferer, Constantine by name,
was taken to execution in a scavenger’s cart. In allusion to this he
said, “Truly hath the apostle declared, ‘_We are as the filth of the
earth, and the offscouring of all things._’ We stink in the nostrils
of the men of this world; but let us rejoice, for the savor of our
death will be acceptable to God and serviceable to the Church.”
A German residing in Paris in the summer of 1542 wrote to a friend
an account of the execution of two heretics which he had witnessed.
In his letter we learn how sympathy for the victims tended to make
converts. One of them was a smooth-cheeked youth under twenty years
of age, the son of a shoe-maker; the other, a man with a long white
beard, stooping under the burden of fourscore years. The young man had
spoken contemptuously of images, comparing them to the gods of the
heathen; the old man had protested against prayers to the saints, and
had declared that all Christians were priests. Both were condemned to
suffer at the same stake for their “Lutheranism,” as it was called.
As the youth refused to retract, he was to have his tongue cut out.
No change could be observed in his face when the hangman approached
him to perform this first act of cruelty. He put the tongue out as far
as he could, the torturer pulled it out still farther with pinchers,
and cut it off, slapping the martyr with it on the cheek. He then
threw the tongue among the crowd, who, “it is said,” adds the writer
conscientiously, “picked it up and flung it back in the martyr’s face.
As he got out of the cart, he looked as if he were going to a feast
and not to punishment.” Unmoved by the howling and the savage cries
of the mob, he took his place calmly at the post, where a chain was
passed round him. He now and then spat the blood from his mouth, but
kept his eyes fixed on heaven, as if looking there for help. When the
executioner covered his head with sulphur and pointed to the fire, he
still smiled and bowed, as if to show he died willingly. The old man,
who was the father of a large family and much respected for his upright
life, had retracted, and his punishment was consequently modified. He
was strangled before being thrown into the flames; “yet some,” adds the
eye-witness, “thought this punishment too mild, and would have had him
burned alive.”[10]
The history of persecution contains little novelty: it is the same
story of calumnious accusations and savage fury from the letter of
Pliny to the invectives of the monks in the sixteenth century. The
council which assembled at Bourges in 1528 not only condemned all
Lutheran doctrines whatsoever, but compared heretics with sorcerers
and magicians in order to render them more odious. The Reformers were
accused of being bad subjects, rebels, revolutionists, aiming at the
overthrow of the monarchy as well as the perversion of religion. This
Francis I. pretended to believe, though he knew better; and it is
this charge which Calvin so eloquently refutes in his “Letter to the
King,” prefixed to his “Christian Institutes.” “Is it possible,” he
asks, “that we who have never been heard to utter a seditious word,
and whose lives have always been known to be simple and peaceable,
should be plotting the overthrow of the kingdom? And what is more,
being now driven from our homes (he is referring particularly to the
emigration after the persecutions of 1534), we cease not to pray for
your prosperity.... Praised be God, we have not profited so ill by the
gospel, that our lives can not hold forth to our detractors an example
of liberality, chastity, compassion, temperance, patience, modesty,
and all other virtues. Verily the truth beareth witness for us that we
fear and honor God purely, when by our life and by our death we desire
his name to be sanctified.” In the “Institutes” he went still farther,
laying down principles that almost consecrate oppression. “We must show
a wicked tyrant such honor as our Lord has condescended to ordain....
We must show this obedience through fear of God, as we serve God
himself, since it is from him that princes derive their power.” This
obedience, however, he is very careful to restrict to secular matters.
“When God ordained mortals to rule, he did not abdicate his rights. If
kings command any thing contrary to him it should have no honor, for,
says Peter, we ought to obey God rather than men.”
The cruelties of this age may be accounted for, though they can not
be excused. Within the memory of living men, political heretics have
been punished quite as severely (the stake excepted) as religious
heretics, and that too without the same excuse. The priest when he
burned the body hoped, or professed to hope, to save the soul: the
political heretic was often sacrificed to secure a party or a minister
in power. The persecutors of the sixteenth century must not, therefore,
be overwhelmed with inconsiderate reproval: they were but men, living
in an age when persecution was a duty, and heretics had no rights.
There is still too much of the savage in the human breast, though
civilization has done much to extinguish it; in the reign of Francis
I. the savage was uppermost. But so remarkably did the blood of the
martyrs prove the seed of the Church, that a Catholic writer compares
the “Lutherans” of this time to the fabulous hydra; when one head was
cut off, two sprang up in its place. And no wonder; for the author of
the “History of Heresies” writes of these martyrs, even while ascribing
their patient endurance to satanic influence, “that Christianity had
revived in all its primitive simplicity.”
In 1544 Francis I. concluded the treaty of Crespy with the Emperor
Charles V., by which the two monarchs bound themselves to exterminate
heresy within their respective dominions. The king chanced to be ill of
a dangerous disease brought on by his licentiousness, and for five or
six weeks his life hung upon a thread. The bigoted Cardinal de Tournon,
making him believe that his sufferings were a judgment from God, urged
him to propitiate heaven by destroying heresy. Moved by these motives,
and by misrepresentations which the victims had no opportunity of
correcting, for they were never heard, Francis issued an order for the
extirpation of the Waldenses of Provence, who appear to have excited
the wrath of the clergy to a terrible height. These Vaudois, as they
are usually called, the better to distinguish them from the Waldenses
of Savoy, lived in the south-east corner of France, between the Durance
and the Alps. They were a peaceable, God-fearing, industrious race,[11]
and had been a living protest against the Church of Rome for hundreds
of years--even from the days of Constantine, if their annals may be
trusted. Louis XII. is reported to have called them “better Christians
than himself;”[12] and a Romish missionary, who was sent to turn them
from the error of their ways, was himself converted and forced to
acknowledge that “he had learned more from the little Vaudois children
than he had ever done at college.” In the wildest valleys of the Alps,
and on rocky heights where the chamois could hardly keep his footing,
they built their huts and tended their flocks. They had covered a
barren district with smiling harvests, “making the desert blossom as
the rose.” Du Bellay, governor of Piedmont, describes them as “a simple
people,” paying their _taille_ to the crown and the _droits_
to their lord more regularly than their orthodox neighbors. But their
virtues were their chief crime in the eyes of the king’s clerical
advisers. In 1540 the Parliament of Provence had condemned twenty-three
of these poor creatures to be burned alive for contumacy, and ordered
their country to be laid waste. The sanguinary decree farther directed
the towns of Mérindol and Cabrières, and other places, which had been
the refuge and retreat of the heretics, to be razed to the ground, the
caves which had served them for an asylum to be destroyed, the forests
cut down, the fruit-trees rooted up, the rebel chiefs put to death,
and their wives and children banished for life.”[13] Some friends of
the poor Vaudois succeeded in getting the decree suspended until 1st
January, 1545; when Francis I., hoping to do a meritorious work that
would atone for his dissolute life, ordered it to be enforced. To
John Menier, baron of Oppède, and chief president of the Parliament
of Provence, was entrusted the task of carrying out the royal decree.
He was one of those happily rare individuals who delight in slaughter
from mere blood-thirstiness. He made no distinction between believers
and heretics. The troops under his orders--wild mercenaries with more
of the brigand than of the disciplined soldier--wasted the country
with fire and sword. From the frightful detail of cruelties one little
fact may be gathered characteristic of the man. All the inhabitants
of the town of Mérindol, which stood on the Durance,[14] were put to
the sword, with the exception of one person, a poor idiot, who had
ransomed his life by promising a soldier two crowns. Oppède heard of
it, and sending for the soldier, gave him the two crowns, and having
thus bought the prisoner, ordered him to be tied to a tree and shot
forthwith. “I know how to treat these people,” he roared out; “I will
send them, children and all, to live in hell.” The small town of
Cabrières, in the same neighborhood and a little south of the poetic
Vaucluse, was treated with similar severity. Every house was destroyed;
between 700 and 800 persons were killed in the streets or fields; a
number of women who had fled for refuge to a barn were burned to death,
and those who had escaped the sword and fire were sent to the galleys
“with circumstances of inhumanity,” says the historian, “that would
have deserved our pity on any other occasion.”[15] “In one church,”
says Guérin, “I saw between four and five hundred poor souls of women
and children butchered.” Twenty-five women--
Præcipites atra ceu tempestate columbæ
Condensæ--
who had taken refuge in a cavern in the papal territory of Avignon,
were smothered to death, the vice-legate kindling the fire with his own
hands.[16] In fine, twenty-four towns and villages were destroyed and
3000 persons put to death. Such little boys and girls as the soldiers
did not want were sold into slavery: they might be purchased for a
crown apiece. And that none might escape, the Parliament of Provence
issued a proclamation, forbidding the neighbors to offer the Vaudois
either food or shelter, so that many were starved to death in the
mountains.[17]
The tale of these fearful atrocities provoked a cry of indignation from
one end of the country to the other:[18] even the king complained that
his orders had been exceeded, but not until after the letters patent
of 18th August, 1545, approving of all that had been done. We are told
that the memories of these cruelties haunted his dying-bed, and that he
bequeathed to his son the duty of taking vengeance on the murderers of
the Vaudois. This may be true, but when the Swiss cantons remonstrated
with him for his cruelty, he bade them mind their own business, for
the heretics had merely received the just reward of their crimes. The
only person punished for these horrors--and that was at the suit of
Madame de Cantal, whose property had been ruined by the slaughter of
her peasantry--was one Guérin, king’s advocate in the Parliament of
Aix.[19] M. d’Oppède appears to have been so terrified at the mere
idea of being tried, that he fell ill and died in great suffering; a
judgment of God, as the Reformed declared it. A Catholic historian
of these days has ventured to apologize for cruelties which could
find no defender in the sixteenth century. “Certain names,” he says,
“are branded for what is the result of a popular force and movement
by which they are carried away. In a religious and believing state
of society there are necessities, as there have been cruel political
necessities at another epoch. Exaltation of ideas drives men to crime
as by a fatality.”[20] Such reasoning will justify any crime, public
or private. To admit the cowardly doctrine of “necessity,” is to
destroy moral responsibility, to make intellect subservient to matter,
and justice to brute force. It makes the usurper or the murderer
accuser, judge and executioner in his own cause. It is a vindication of
_coups d’état_--a deification of successful villainy. If generally
admitted, it would induce a moral torpor fatal to all intelligence.
There were men living in the Catholic communion in the sixteenth
century who thought very differently from the paradoxical historian
of the nineteenth. Sadolet, Bishop of Carpentras--a man so full of
kindness and charity that a modern writer has called him the “Fénelon
of his age”--interfered to suspend the execution of the first decree
against the Vaudois of Mérindol. He was a ripe scholar and corresponded
with all the learned men of the day, heretical or orthodox, including
Calvin and Melanchthon. To the latter he wrote: “I am not the man to
hate another because he differs from me in opinion.”[21] When Sturm of
Strasburg accused him of lying, he said: “You should have left such
coarse terms to Luther: they are unbecoming a mind like yours. But you
are mistaken, and I am sure you will return to your usual polite style.
If ever you, Bucer, or Melanchthon have need of me, I am ready to serve
you in more than words.” It is pleasing to meet with such a character,
when religious prejudice ran so high on both sides.
One of the most terrible tragedies to which the persecuting edicts
gave rise occurred at Meaux, in October, 1546, when sixty persons were
seized in the house of Stephen Mangin, where they had met to hear a
sermon. As the soldiers were taking them through the streets to prison,
some of the Protestant spectators burst out with Marot’s noble version
of the seventy-ninth Psalm--
Behold, O God! how heathen hosts
Have thy possessions seized;
Thy sacred house they have defiled,
Thy holy city raz’d.
From Meaux they were transferred to Paris for trial, which resolved
itself into an attempt to extort a confession from them by torture.
They were sentenced to be carried back to Meaux, and fourteen of them
were to be burned alive in the market-place, after suffering the
question extraordinary. Others were to be hung up by the shoulders
during the execution of their brethren, and then to be flogged and
imprisoned for life in a monastery. As they were passing through a
forest on their way back, a man followed them shouting: “Brethren,
remember Him who is in heaven above.” He was caught, flung into the
cart, and put to death with the rest. Stephen Mangin, who was regarded
as the ringleader, first had his tongue cut out; he was then dragged
on a hurdle from the prison to the place of execution, where he and
his companions, after being tortured, were burned at fourteen stakes
arranged in a circle, praising God to their last breath. One Dr.
Picard, a celebrated man in his day, preached a sermon on the occasion,
in which he declared it was necessary to salvation to believe that
these fourteen poor creatures were condemned to the bottomless pit;
and if an angel came from heaven to say the contrary, he must not
be listened to; “for God would not be God, if he did not damn them
eternally.”
The example thus set at Meaux was imitated in other parts of France;
but, far from checking the progress of the new doctrines, it served to
prove the strong faith of the converts. Thus Jean Chapot, who had been
denounced for bringing a bale of heretical books from Geneva, would
not give up the names of the persons to whom he had sold them, though
he was almost torn asunder on the rack. One Mark Moreau of Troyes
displayed similar firmness and constancy at the stake, to which he
was condemned after being tortured, because he refused to betray the
other Lutherans in that city. Francis Daugy cried out from the midst of
the flames: “Be of good cheer, brethren, I see heaven opening and the
Son of God stretching out his arms to receive me.” As the Demoiselle
Michelle de Caignoncle was going to the stake, one of her poor
pensioners ran by her side crying: “You will never give us alms again.”
“Yes, once more!” she said, and threw her slippers to the woman, who
was barefoot. One Thomas of St. Paul was taken out of the flames and
urged to recant. “Put me back into the fire,” he exclaimed: “I am on
the road to heaven.”
Among the victims of this reign was one whose name occupies a
conspicuous place in the history of the revival of learning. Stephen
Dolet, famous among the poets of the Renaissance, had set up a
printing-press at Lyons, where he appears to have been unpopular among
those of his own trade, through supporting the compositors who had
“struck” for higher wages. He had been twice condemned for heresy: once
on the information of the infamous Anthony Mouchi, a doctor of the
Sorbonne and heretic-finder to the Inquisition, who has transmitted his
name to posterity under the form of _mouchard_. Dolet had escaped
to Piedmont; but yearning with that love for his native country, which
is so strong a characteristic of the French people, he returned to
Lyons, where he was speedily arrested and carried to Paris. Here he
was accused and convicted of atheism, the charge being founded on his
translation of a passage in Plato. While in prison, hourly expecting
death, he exclaimed: “My whole life has been a struggle; thank God,
it is over at last.”[22] When he was led to the stake in the Place
Maubert, the executioner bade him invoke the Virgin and St. Stephen,
his patron saint, or else his tongue would be cut out and he would
be burned alive. Dolet repeated the required formula, and then was
hanged and burned (3d August, 1546). Dolet must not be ranked among the
martyrs of religion: he suffered because he had offended the clergy by
his independent spirit. The doctors of the Sorbonne would willingly
have forgiven his being a printer and an atheist, if he had not stood
forward as the champion of free thought.
Robert Etienne (or Stephens, as he is called by English scholars) was
more fortunate than Dolet. Up to the age of twenty-five he continued
in the Romish Church, professing a doubtful sort of orthodoxy, like
many other celebrated men of that day; and it is probable that he
would have continued in this undecided equivocal state all his life,
but for the virulent attacks made upon him by certain theologians, who
were violent in proportion to their stupidity. His quarrel with the
Sorbonne began as early as 1523, when that same body, which in 1470 had
invited the first printers to Paris, took alarm at the agitation of
men’s minds and turned fiercely against its own work. The presumption
of a young man, and he a layman, to correct a text of Scripture, seemed
monstrous. The publication of his Latin Bibles in 1528 and 1532, and
more especially that of the small portable Bible in 1534, aggravated
their hostility. But all this was as nothing to the rage excited by his
edition of the Latin Bible in 1545, wherein he had collected the notes
of that learned professor of Hebrew, Francis Vatable. In these notes
the active inquisitors of the Sorbonne found a number of heretical
propositions, such as a denial of the existence of purgatory, of the
efficaciousness of confession, and so forth. Hitherto Robert had
been able to escape the fate of his heterodox brother Dolet, through
the intervention of the king and the influence of John du Bellay and
others. But against this last tempest the royal authority seemed
powerless. The Faculty of Theology instituted proceedings against him,
when, unhappily for him, Francis I. died; and although Robert Etienne
found an equally kind patron in his successor, the character of the new
king was more impressionable. The Sorbonne attacked him more violently,
and foreseeing that Henry would be unable to protect him, he quitted
France, as Clement Marot, Olivetan, Amyot, and most of the professors
of the Royal College had done before him. Beza tells us that all
learning was suspected, and that hence many good but learned Catholics
were numbered among the heretics. A man was liable to be condemned for
not lifting his cap on passing an image (and they were at the corner
of almost every street), for not kneeling at the sound of the _Ave
Maria_ bell, and for eating meat on fast days. Clement Marot was
sent to prison and narrowly escaped burning for eating some bacon
during Lent.
Ils vinrent à mon logement:
Lors se va dire un gros paillard,
Par là, morbleu, voilà Clement,
Prenez-le, il a mangé le lard!
The fasting, or not fasting, on certain days soon became a test of
orthodoxy.
One of the last victims of this reign was Jean Brugière, who, after
several imprisonments and escapes, was taken to Paris, tried, and
condemned to be burned alive at Issoire (3d March, 1547). He was
transferred to Montferrand, where Ory, the inquisitor, discussed the
“real presence” with him. “If you deny,” said Ory, “that the body of
our Lord is in the host, when the priest has pronounced the sacramental
words, you deny the power of God, who can do every thing.” “I do not
deny the power of God,” answered Brugière, “for we are not disputing
whether God has power or not to do it, so much as what he has done
in his Holy Sacrament, and what he desires us to do.” When the time
of his suffering came, the priests pressed a crucifix to his lips,
and bade him call on the Virgin and saints. “Let me,” he said with a
smile, “let me think of God before I die. I am content with the only
advocate he has appointed for sinners.” While preparing the rope or
chain, the executioner slipped and fell. Brugière, who remained calm
and unmoved, held out his hand to raise him. “Cheer up! M. Pouchet, I
hope you are not hurt,” he said. When the fire was kindled, he raised
his eyes to the cross and exclaimed: “Oh heavenly Father, I beseech
thee, for the love of thy Son, that thou wilt be pleased to comfort me
in this hour by thy Holy Spirit, in order that the work begun in me
may be perfected to thy glory and to the benefit of thy poor Church.”
When all was over, the crowd withdrew in silence. The curate of Issoire
said, as he returned home: “May God give me grace to die in the faith
of Brugière.”[23]
Francis I. died slowly of a disgusting malady, the consequence of his
licentious amours. For a time his life was prolonged by the use of
potent medicines; but the opportunity thus given him of redeeming the
past was wasted in regrets that he had not extirpated heresy.[24] He
used often to say, if we may credit Brantome, that this novelty--the
Reformation--“tended to the overthrow of all monarchy, human and
divine.” Yet none of the kings who embraced the new creed lost their
thrones; while the devotee Henry III., and the converted Henry IV.,
both fell by orthodox daggers. The king’s funeral sermon was preached
by Pierre du Chastel, Bishop of Macon, whose orthodoxy had become
suspected in consequence of the attempts he had made to save Stephen
Dolet. When Cardinal de Tournon reproached him with this, the good
prelate made answer: “I acted like a bishop, you like a hangman.” When
the sermon was published, the Sorbonne hunted out several heretical
propositions, particularly a passage where the bishop, after extolling
Francis as a saint of the highest order, continued: “I am convinced
that, after so holy a life, the king’s soul, on leaving his body,
was transported to heaven without passing through the flames of
purgatory.”[25] The Sorbonne protested against this, and a deputation
of doctors went to St. Germains, where the court was staying, to
denounce the heretical panegyrist. They were received by John de
Mendoza, the first chamberlain, who desired them to be quite easy in
their minds: “If you had known His Majesty as well as I did, you would
have understood the meaning of the bishop’s words. The king could never
stop anywhere, however agreeable the place might be; and if he went to
purgatory, he only remained there long enough to look about him, and
was off again.” _Solvuntur risu tabulæ!_ The doctors retired in
confusion: there was no answering such a jest.
The character of Francis is a “mingled yarn.” He had great virtues,
but he also had great vices. He had noble aspirations, but he often
suffered them to be obscured by ignoble passions. All his life long he
allowed himself to be led by women. Had they all been like his sister,
Margaret of Valois, it would have been well for him, for France, and
for religion; but they were more frequently such as the Duchess of
Valentinois, and even worse. He was ambitious, but it was more for his
kingdom than for himself; he was a warrior, though not equal to his
rivals; he was sumptuous and extravagant, but architects and painters,
historians and poets, scholars and wits, were not neglected by him. He
was impressionable and superstitious, but he often checked the fiery
zeal of the persecutors, tried to reform the clergy in his dilettante
fashion, and was never bigoted except when frightened by the priests,
or when he fancied his personal dignity insulted. It is not wonderful
that Frenchmen look back to him with pride, for he represents the
national character in its best as well as in its worst phases.