II. THE REFORMATION AT MEAUX…

II. THE REFORMATION AT MEAUX

[Sidenote: Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples.]

The reformatory movement, whose almost simultaneous rise at so many different points constitutes one of the most noticeable features of the history of Europe in the sixteenth century, originated, so far as France was concerned, within the bosom of that famous nursery of mediaeval learning, the University of Paris. Among the teachers who, during the later years of the reign of Louis the Twelfth, attracted the studious from the most distant parts of Christendom, Jacques Lefevre, a native of Etaples in Picardy, held a high rank for natural ability and extensive acquirements. It is true that neither his personal appearance nor his extraction commanded respect: he was diminutive in stature, and he could boast of no noble blood running in his veins.[128] A more formidable hinderance in the path to distinction had been the barbarous instruction he had received from incompetent masters, both in the inferior schools and in the university itself. But all obstacles, physical, social, and intellectual, melted away before the ardor of an extraordinarily active mind. Rising steadily above the contracted views, the blind respect for authority, and the self-satisfied ignorance of the instructors of his youth and the colleagues of his manhood and old age, he greeted with delight the advent of those liberal ideas which had wrought so wonderful a change in Germany and Italy. A thirst for knowledge even led him, in imitation of the sages of the early world, to travel to distant parts of Europe, and, if we may credit the statements of his admiring disciples, to pursue his investigations into portions of Asia and Africa.

[Sidenote: Restores letters to France.]

[Sidenote: His wide range of study.]

To Jacques Lefevre, of Etaples--better known to foreigners under the Latin designation of Faber Stapulensis--belongs the honor of restoring letters to France. His eulogist, Scaevola de Sainte-Marthe, has not exaggerated his merit, when, placing him in the front rank of the learned men whom he celebrates, he likens the Picard doctor to a new sun rising from the Belgian coast to dissipate the fogs and darkness investing his native land and pour upon its youth the full beams of a purer teaching.[129] Lefevre confined his attention to no single branch of learning. He was equally proficient in mathematics, in astronomy, and in Biblical literature and criticism.[130] Brilliant attainments in so many departments were commended yet more to the admiration of beholders by a modest and unassuming deportment, by morals above reproach, and by a disinterested nature in which there was no taint of avarice. The sincerity of his unselfish love of knowledge was said to be attested by the liberality with which he renounced the entire income of his small patrimony in favor of his needy relations.[131]

[Sidenote: His pupil, Guillaume Farel.]

Enjoying a reputation for profound and exact learning which had spread to foreign countries, and admired even by the great humanist Erasmus, Lefevre had drawn to him a small band of the most promising of the scholars in attendance upon the university. Prominent among these for brilliancy and fiery zeal was a student more than thirty years younger than his teacher, Guillaume Farel, destined to fill an important place in the annals of the French reformation, and to play a leading role in the history of Geneva and Neufchatel. Farel was born in 1489, near Gap, in Dauphiny, and his childhood was spent at the foot of the Alps. Unlike Lefevre, he belonged to a family of considerable importance in the provincial nobility. The contrast was still more marked between the mild and timid professor and the pupil in whose nature courage was so prominent an element that it often assumed the appearance of imprudent contempt of danger.

[Sidenote: Devotion of scholar and pupil.]

But, in spite of dissimilarity of character, Lefevre and Farel lived together in close friendship. Together they frequented the churches, and united in the pious work, as they regarded it, of decking out with flowers the pictures of the saints, to whose shrines they made frequent pilgrimages. Lefevre was scrupulously exact in the performance of his religious duties, and was especially punctual in attendance on the mass. In his zeal for the church, he had even undertaken as a meritorious task to compile the lives of the saints whose names appear on the Roman calendar, and had actually committed to the press an account of those whose feast-days fell within the months of January and February.[132] On the other hand, Farel was so sincere an adherent of the current faith, that, to employ his own forcible description, he had become "a very Pantheon, full of intercessors, saviors and gods, of whom his heart might have passed for a complete register." The papacy had so entrenched itself in his heart, that even the Pope and papal church were not so papal as he. The man who came to him with the Pope's endorsement appeared to him like a god, while he would gladly have overwhelmed in ruin the sacrilegious wretch that dared to say a word against the Roman pontiff and his authority.[133]

[Sidenote: Lefevre's commentary on the Pauline Epistles.]

But the enthusiastic devotion of Lefevre and his more impetuous disciple to the tenets of the Roman church was to be shaken by a closer study of the Scriptures. In 1508 Lefevre completed a Latin commentary upon the Psalms.[134] In 1512 he published a commentary in the same language on the Pauline Epistles--a work which may indeed fall short of the standard of criticism established by a subsequent age, but yet contains a clear enunciation of the doctrine of justification by faith, the cardinal doctrine of the Reformation.[135]

[Sidenote: Foresees the coming reformation.]

Thus, five years before Luther posted his theses on the doors of the church at Wittemberg, Jacques Lefevre had proclaimed, in no equivocal terms, his belief in the same great principles. But Lefevre's lectures in the college and his written commentary were addressed to the learned. Consequently they produced no such immediate and startling effect as the ninety-five propositions of the Saxon monk. Lefevre was not himself to be an active instrument in the French reformation. His office was rather to prepare the way for others--not, perhaps, more sincere, but certainly more courageous--to enter upon the hazardous undertaking of attempting to renovate the church. His faithful disciple, indeed, has preserved for us a remarkable prophecy, uttered by Lefevre at the very time when he was still assiduous in his devotion to the Virgin Mary and the saints. Grasping Farel by the hand, the venerable doctor more than once addressed to him the significant words, which made a deep impression on the hearer's mind: "Guillaume, the world is going to be renewed, and you will behold it!"[136]

[Sidenote: Controversy with Beda.]

[Sidenote: The Sorbonne's declaration.]

Lefevre did not intermit his biblical studies. In 1518 he published a short treatise on "the three Marys," to prove that Mary the sister of Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, and "the woman which was a sinner," were not one and the same person, according to the common belief of the time. Unfortunately, the Roman church, by the lessons set down for the feast-days, had given its sanction to the prevalent error. Now, the fears and suspicions of the theologians of the Sorbonne had, during the past year, been aroused by the fame of Martin Luther's "heresy," and they were ready to resent any attempt at innovation, however slight, either in doctrine or in practice, as evidence of heretical proclivities. Natalis Beda, the ignorant but pedantic syndic of the theological faculty, entered the lists as Lefevre's opponent, and an animated dispute was waged between the friends of the two combatants. Of so great moment was the decision regarded by Poncher, Bishop of Paris, that he induced Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, to write an essay in refutation of the views of Lefevre.[137] But the Sorbonne, not content with this, on the ninth of November, 1521, declared that he was a heretic who should presume to maintain the truth of Lefevre's proposition. Lefevre himself would probably have experienced even greater indignities at the hands of parliament--whose members were accustomed to show excessive respect to the fanatical demands of the faculty--had not Guillaume Petit, the king's confessor, induced Francis to interfere in behalf of the Picard professor.[138]

[Sidenote: Briconnet, Bishop of Meauz.]

To these two actors in the drama of the French reformation a third must now be added. Guillanme Briconnet, Bishop of Meaux, stood in the front rank of aspiring and fortunate churchmen. His father, commonly known as the Cardinal of St. Malo, had passed from the civil administration into the hierarchy of the Gallican Church. Rewarded for services rendered to Louis the Eleventh and Charles the Eighth by the gift of the rich abbey of St. Germain-des-Pres and the archbishopric of Rheims, he had, in virtue of his possession of the latter dignity, anointed Louis the Twelfth at his coronation. As cardinal, he had headed the French party in the papal consistory, and, more obedient to his sovereign than to the pontiff, when Louis demanded the convocation of a council at Pisa to resist the encroachments of Julius the Second, the elder Briconnet left Rome to join in its deliberations, and to face the dangers attending an open rupture with the Pope. The cardinal was now dead, having left to Guillaume, born previously to his father's entrance into orders, a good measure of the royal favor he had himself enjoyed. The younger Briconnet had been successively created Archdeacon of Rheims and Avignon, Abbot of St. Germain-des-Pres, and Bishop of Lodeve and Meaux. His title of Count of Montbrun gave him, moreover, a place in the nobility.[139] Meantime a reformatory tendency had early revealed itself in the efforts made by the young ecclesiastic to enforce the observance of canonical discipline by the luxurious friars of the monastery of St. Germain. Here, too, he had tasted the first fruits of the opposition which was before long to test his firmness and constancy.

Briconnet had been appointed Bishop of Meaux (March 19, 1516) about the same time that Francis the First despatched him as special envoy to treat with the Pope. It would seem that the intimate acquaintance with the papal court gained on this occasion, confirming the impressions made by a previous diplomatic mission in the time of Louis the Twelfth, convinced Briconnet that the church stood in urgent need of reform; and he resolved to begin the work in his own diocese.

[Sidenote: Lefevre and Farel invited to Meaux.]

Weary of the annoyance and peril arising from the ignorance and malice of his enemies, the theologians of the Sorbonne, Lefevre d'Etaples longed for a more quiet home, where he might reasonably hope to contribute his share to the great renovation descried long since by his prophetic glance. He was now invited by Briconnet, to whom his learning and zeal were well known, to accompany him to Meaux, where, at the distance of a little more than a score of miles from the capital, he would at least be rid of the perpetual clamor against Luther and his doctrines that assailed his ears in Paris.[140] He was accompanied, or followed, to Meaux by his pupil, Farel. Over the views of the latter a signal change had come since he entered the university, full of veneration for the saints, and an enthusiastic supporter of the mass, of the papal hierarchy, and of every institution authorized by ecclesiastical tradition. After a painful mental struggle, of which he has himself given us a graphic account,[141] Farel had been reluctantly brought to the startling conviction that the system of which he had been an enthusiastic advocate was a tissue of falsehoods and an abomination in God's sight. It required no more than this to bring a man of so resolute a character to a decision. Partly by his own assiduous application to study, especially of the Greek and Hebrew languages and of the Church Fathers, partly through the influence of Lefevre, he had become professor of philosophy in the college of the Cardinal Le Moine. This advantageous position he resigned, in order that he might be able to second the labors of Lefevre in the new field which Bishop Briconnet had thrown open to him. Other pupils or friends of the Picard doctor followed--Michel d'Arande, Gerard Roussel, and others, all more or less thoroughly imbued with the same sentiments.

[Sidenote: The king's mother and sister encourage the preaching of the reformers.]

A new era had now dawned upon the neglected diocese of Meaux. Bishop Briconnet was fully possessed by his new-born zeal. The king's mother and his only sister had honored him with a visit not long after Lefevre's arrival,[142] and had left him confident that in his projected reforms, and especially in the introduction of the preaching of the Word of God, he might count upon their powerful support. "I assure you," Margaret of Angouleme wrote him a month later, "that the king and madame are entirely decided to let it be understood that the truth of God is not heresy."[143] And a few weeks later the same princely correspondent declared that her mother and brother were "more intent than ever upon the reformation of the church."[144] With such flattering prospects the reformation opened at Meaux.

[Sidenote: Immediate results.]

From the year 1521, when the ardent friends of religious progress made their appearance in the city, the pulpits, rarely entered by the curates or by the mendicant monks unless to demand a fresh contribution of money, were filled with zealous preachers. The latter expounded the Gospel, in place of rehearsing the stories of the "Golden Legend;" and the people, at first attracted by the novelty of the sound, were soon enamored of the doctrines proclaimed. These doctrines stood, indeed, in signal opposition to those of the Roman church. By slow but sure steps the advocates of the Reformation had come to assume a position scarcely less unequivocal than that of Luther in Germany. In 1514, two years after the publication of the commentary in which he had clearly enunciated the Protestant doctrine on one cardinal point, Lefevre would seem still to have been unsurpassed in his devotion to pictures and images.[145] Two years later he was regarded by Luther as strangely deficient in a clear apprehension of spiritual truths which, nevertheless, he fully exemplified in a life of singular spirituality and sincerity.[146] And it was not until 1519 that, by the arguments of his own pupil, Farel, he was convinced of the impropriety of saint-worship and of prayers for the dead.[147] But now there could be no doubt respecting Lefevre's attitude. Placed by Bishop Briconnet in charge of the "Leproserie," and subsequently entrusted with the powers of vicar-general over the entire diocese,[148] he exerted an influence not hard to trace. A contemporary, when chronicling, a few years later, that "the greater part of Meaux was infected with the false doctrines of Luther," made the cause of all the trouble to be one Fabry (Lefevre), a priest and scholar, who rejected pictures from the churches, forbade the use of holy water for the dead, and denied the existence of purgatory.[149]

[Sidenote: Gerard Roussel and Mazurier.]

The mystic Gerard Roussel, an eloquent speaker, whom the bishop appointed curate of St. Saintin, and subsequently treasurer and canon of the cathedral, was prominent among the new preachers, but was surpassed in exuberant display of zeal by Martial Mazurier, Principal of the College de St. Michel in Paris, who now fulfilled the functions of curate of the church of St. Martin at Meaux.

[Sidenote: Apprehension of the monks aroused.]

[Sidenote: De Roma's threat.]

It was not long before the apprehension of the monastic orders was aroused by the great popularity of the new teachers. The wool-carders, weavers, and fullers accepted the novel doctrine with delight as meeting a want which they had discovered in spite of poverty and ignorance. The day-laborers frequenting the neighborhood of Meaux, to aid the farmers in harvest-time, carried back to their more secluded districts the convictions they had obtained, and themselves became efficient agents in the promulgation of the faith elsewhere. If the anticipations of a speedy spread of the reformation throughout France were brilliant in the minds of its early apostles, the determination of its opponents was equally fixed. An incident occurred about this time which might almost be regarded as of prophetic import. Farel, who was present, is our sole informant. On one occasion Lefevre and a few friends were engaged in conversation with some warm partisans of the old abuses, when the old doctor, warming at the prospect he seemed to behold, exclaimed, "Already the Gospel is winning the hearts of the nobles and of the common people alike! Soon it will spread over all France, and cast down the inventions which the hand of man has set up." "Then," angrily retorted one De Roma, a Dominican monk, "Then I, and others like me, will join in preaching a crusade; and should the king tolerate the proclamation of the Gospel, we shall drive him from his kingdom by means of his own subjects!"[150]

The Dominican friar stood forth at that moment the embodiment of the monastic spirit speaking defiance to the nascent reform. The church of the state, with its rich abbeys and priories, its glorious old cathedrals, and boundless possessions of lands and houses, was not to be resigned without a struggle so terrific as to shake the foundations of the throne itself. The germ of the Guises and the League, with Jacques Clement and Ravaillac, was already formed, and possessed a prodigious latent vitality.

[Sidenote: Briconnet's activity.]

Bishop Briconnet was himself active in promoting the evangelical work, preaching against the most flagrant abuses, and commending to the confidence of his flock the more eloquent preachers whom he had introduced. The incredible rumor even gained currency that the hot-headed prelate went through his diocese casting down the images and sparing no object of idolatrous worship in the churches.[151] But, however improbable it may be that Briconnet ever engaged in any such iconoclastic demonstrations, it is a strong Roman Catholic partisan who has preserved the record of this significant warning given by the prelate to his flock, and elicited either by the consciousness of his own moral feebleness, or by a certain vague premonition of danger: "Even should I, your bishop, change my speech and teaching, beware that you change not with me!"[152]

[Sidenote: Lefevre translates the New Testament.]

Under Briconnet's protection Jacques Lefevre assumed a task less restricted in its influence than preaching, in which he probably took a less active part than his coadjutors. The Bible was a closed book to the common people in France. The learned might familiarize themselves with its contents by a perusal of the Latin Vulgate; but readers acquainted with their mother tongue alone were reduced to the necessity of using a rude version wherein text and gloss were mingled in inextricable confusion, and the Scriptures were made to countenance the most absurd abuses.[153] The best furnished libraries rarely contained more than a few detached books of the Bible, and these intended for ornament rather than use.[154] Lefevre resolved, therefore, to apply himself to the translation of the Sacred Scriptures from the Latin Vulgate into the French language. In June, 1523, he published a version of the four gospels, and in the autumn of the same year he gave to the world the rest of the New Testament. Five years later he added a translation of the Old Testament. It was a magnificent undertaking, prompted by a fervent desire to promote the spiritual interests of his countrymen. In its execution, the inaccuracies incident to so novel an enterprise, and the comparative harshness of the style, can readily be forgiven. For, aside from its own merits, the version of Lefevre d'Etaples formed the basis for the subsequent version of Robert Olivetanus, itself the groundwork of many later translations.

[Sidenote: The translation eagerly bought.]

[Sidenote: Delight of Lefevre.]

Lefevre and his associates had not erred in anticipating remarkable results from the publication of the Scriptures in the language of the people. The copies of the New Testament no sooner left the press than they were eagerly bought. They penetrated into obscure hamlets to which no missionary of the "new doctrines" could find access. By the wool-carders of Meaux the prize thus unexpectedly placed within reach was particularly valued. The liberality of Bishop Briconnet is said to have freely supplied copies to those who were too poor to afford the purchase-money. The prelate introduced the French Scriptures into the churches of Meaux, where the unparalleled innovation of reading the lessons in an intelligible tongue struck the people with amazement. "You can scarcely imagine," wrote the delighted Lefevre to a distant friend,[155] "with what ardor God is moving the minds of the simple, in some places, to embrace His word since the books of the New Testament have been published in French, though you will justly lament that they have not been scattered more widely among the people. The attempt has been made to hinder the work, under cover of the authority of parliament; but our most generous king has become in this matter the defender of Christ's cause, declaring it to be his pleasure that his kingdom shall hear the word of God freely and without hinderance in the language which it understands. At present, throughout our entire diocese, on feast-days, and especially on Sunday, both the epistle and gospel are read to the people in the vernacular tongue, and the parish priest adds a word of exhortation to the epistle or gospel, or both, at his discretion."

There did, indeed, seem to be amply sufficient ground for the "exultation" expressed by the worthy Picard at the rapid progress of the Reformation throughout Europe and the flattering prospects offered in France itself.[156] Everything seemed for a time to promise success at Meaux. Bishop Briconnet received with delight the advice of the Swiss and German reformers. The letters of Oecolampadius, from Basle, in particular so deeply impressed him, that he commissioned Gerard Roussel to read in the French language and explain the meaning of the Pauline Epistles every morning to a promiscuous gathering of persons of both sexes, and chose out the most evangelical preachers to perform similar duty in all the more important places in his diocese.[157]

[Sidenote: Enmity of the Franciscans.]

[Sidenote: Weakness of Bishop Briconnet.]

But the bishop had excited the active enmity of a resolute and suspicious foe. In forbidding the Franciscan monks entrance to any pulpit within his jurisdiction, he had, even before the advent of Lefevre and the reformed teachers, incurred their violent animosity.[158] The new movement, while arousing their indignation, gave them the opportunity they coveted for invoking the power of the university and of parliament. At first the bishop was bold enough to denounce the doctors of the Sorbonne as Pharisees and false prophets,[159] while in his private correspondence he stigmatized the clergy as "the estate by the coldness of which all the others are frozen,"[160] or even as "that which is the ruin of all the rest."[161] But, frightened by the incessant clamor and attacks of his enemies, he began gradually to waver, and presently lost all courage. In the end he yielded so far as to suffer to be published in his name official documents which were intended to overturn from the foundation the very fabric he had been striving to rear. In one of these, a "Synodal Decree" addressed to the faithful of his diocese, the bishop was made to condemn the books of Martin Luther, and to denounce Luther himself as one who was plotting the overthrow of "the estate which keeps all the rest in the path of duty."[162] Quite another description of the clergy this from either of the descriptions which he gave to Margaret of Angouleme! The other document was a letter to the clergy of his diocese, warning them against certain preachers "brought in by himself to share his pastoral cares," who, under cover of proclaiming the Gospel, had "dared, in defiance of the evangelical truth, to preach that purgatory does not exist, and that, consequently, we must not pray for the dead, nor invoke the very holy Virgin Mary and the saints."[163]

The precise time of Briconnet's pusillanimous defection, as marked by the publication of these pastoral letters, is involved in some obscurity; for assuredly the date affixed to the transcripts that have come down to us conflicts too seriously with the well-known facts of history to be accepted as correct.[164]

Later Roman Catholic historians have asserted that the act was a voluntary one; that Briconnet had never in reality sympathized with the religious views of reformers whom he had invited to Meaux simply because of his admiration for learning; that no sooner did he discover the heretical nature of their teachings than he removed them from the posts to which they had been assigned; and that he spent the residue of his life in the vain endeavor to retrieve the fatal consequences of his mistake.[165] But this view is confirmed by nothing in the prelate's extant correspondence. Everywhere there is evidence that until his courage broke down, Briconnet was in full accord with the reformers. His first step may possibly have been justified at the bar of conscience by the plausible suggestion that, since the anger of the Sorbonne had been directed specially against Meaux, the evangelical preachers could be more serviceable elsewhere. But, from the mere withdrawal of support to positive measures of repression, the transition was both natural and speedy.

[Sidenote: He is cited to appear before the Parliament.]

Unsatisfied by Bishop Briconnet's merely negative course, the Parliament of Paris at length cited him to appear and answer before a commission consisting of two of its own counsellors. The information thus obtained was next to be submitted to the judges delegated by the Pope, a tribunal of the institution of which an account will be given in another chapter.[166] To this secret investigation Briconnet objected, and begged to be tried in open court by the entire body of parliament;[167] but his petition was rejected, and his examination proceeded before the inquisitorial commission. What measures were there taken to influence him is not known. To Martial Mazurier, lately an enthusiastic preacher of the "Lutheran" doctrines, who had himself, through fear, receded from his advanced position, the doubtful honor is ascribed of having been prominent in exertions to overcome the prelate's lingering scruples. However this may be, when Briconnet had given sufficient guarantees to satisfy the Sorbonne that no apprehension need be entertained of a repetition in Meaux of the dangerous experiment of the public instruction of the people in the Holy Scriptures, there was nothing to be gained by his condemnation. He was accordingly acquitted of all charge of heresy, although condemned to pay the sum of two hundred livres as the expense of bringing to trial the "heretics" whom he had himself helped to make such.[168] Hereupon he is said to have returned to his diocese, and, having convened a synod, to have prohibited, as we have seen, the circulation of Luther's writings, reintroduced the ecclesiastical practices that had been condemned or discarded, and given to the persecution now set on foot his unequivocal sanction.[169]

[Sidenote: Dispersion of the reformed teachers.]

The teachers whom Briconnet had so cordially invited to assist him were compelled one by one to abandon Meaux. Among the earliest to leave was Farel.[170] His was no faint heart. If he gave up his activity in Brie, it was only to return to his native Dauphiny, where a young nobleman, Anemond de Coct, and a preacher, Pierre de Sebeville, were among the leading men whose conversion was the fruit of his indefatigable exertions. After a visit to Guyenne, of which little is known, he passed into German Switzerland, and labored successively in Basle, Strasbourg, and Montbeliard.[171]

[Sidenote: Annoyances of those who remain.]

Lefevre and Roussel were among the last to withdraw; but, beset with watchful enemies, they found their position neither safe nor comfortable. It was as difficult to maintain a semblance of friendship with an ecclesiastical system which they detested in their hearts, as to refuse their sympathy and support to the persecuted whose opinions they shared without possessing the courage necessary to suffer in attestation of the common faith. Busy informers at one time found evidence, more than warranting the suspicion that Roussel's manuscripts had furnished the material of which scandalous placards defamatory of the Pope were framed.[172] A little later the proctor of the cathedral drew attention to the irregular conventicles held in the church itself, every Sunday and feast-day, after Roussel had preached. These "combers, carders, and other persons of the same stamp, unlettered folk,"[173] brought with them books containing the Epistles of St. Paul, the Gospels, and the Psalms, in flagrant disregard of the prohibitions they had heard respecting the discussion of such topics as faith, the sacraments, the privileges of Rome, and the use of pictures in the churches. It was made the occasion of "charitable rebuke" and then of formal complaint against Roussel by his fellow canons, that he failed to repeat the angelic salutation, according to the orthodox practice, after the exordium of his sermon. To the combined exhortations and threats of his accusers Roussel replied in the chapter that, if he had done wrong, it belonged to the bishop to reprove him, but that as to himself he esteemed the repetition of the Lord's Prayer quite as efficacious as the recital of the Ave Maria.[174]

[Sidenote: Lefevre and Roussel take refuge in Strasbourg.]

[Sidenote: Excessive caution of Roussel.]

At last danger thickened, and Lefevre and Roussel found themselves forced to leave Meaux (October, 1525), and sought refuge within the hospitable walls of Strasbourg; for the persecuting measures adopted by the regent, Louise de Savoie, and the Parliament of Paris, during the king's captivity, as we shall shortly see, had placed the lives of even such prudent reformers in peril.[175] In the free city on the banks of the Rhine, Lefevre met his pupil Farel, and in the midst of cordial greetings was reminded by him that the day of "renovation" which he had long since predicted and desired had really come.[176] But the contrast between the two men had become sharply drawn. The fearless athlete, soon to measure his strength with no puny antagonists at Neufchatel, Lausanne, Geneva, and so many other places in French Switzerland, whose course was to be a succession of rough encounters, discovered that the master from whom he had received the impulse that shaped his entire life, shrank from sundering the last link binding him to the Roman church. And Gerard Roussel was even more timid. The elegant preacher, with fair prospects of preferment, could not bring himself openly to espouse the quarrel of oppressed truth. A mysticism investing his entire belief, and perverting his moral perceptions, led him to imagine that the heart might be kept pure in the midst of many external corruptions, and that the enlightened could worship the Almighty acceptably in spite of superstitious observances, which, while countenancing by apparent acquiescence, they rejected in their hearts. The excellence of the reformation already inaugurated at Strasbourg made a deep and very favorable impression upon Roussel. He wrote to Bishop Briconnet that the daily preaching of a pure doctrine, "without dross or leaven of the Pharisees,"[177] the crowds of attentive hearers, the schools presided over by men as illustrious for piety as for letters, and the careful provision for the poor, would delight his correspondent were he to see them. He did not dissemble his own great satisfaction that the monasteries had been changed into educational establishments, the pictures taken away from the churches, and every altar removed except one, on which the communion was celebrated, as nearly as possible, according to the plan of its institution.[178] At the same time he renounced none of his excessive caution. His words were still those he had uttered when urged, a twelvemonth earlier, by Farel, Oecolampadius, and Zwingle, to strike out boldly and by an open dispute on religion compel the attention of the thoughtless world. "The flesh is weak! As my friends, Lefevre and others, urge, the convenient season has not yet come, the Gospel has not yet been scattered sufficiently far and wide. We must not assume the Lord's prerogative for sending laborers into the harvest, but leave the work to Him whose it is, and who can easily raise up a far richer harvest than that for whose safety we are solicitous!"[179]

Such were the paltry evasions of cowardly souls, to excuse themselves for the neglect of admitted duty. We cannot wonder at the burning words of condemnation which this pusillanimity called forth from the pen of brave Pierre Toussain. "I have spoken to Lefevre and Roussel," he wrote some months later, "but certainly Lefevre has not a particle of courage. May God confirm and strengthen him! Let them be as wise as they please, let them wait, procrastinate, and dissemble; the Gospel will never be preached without the cross! When I see these things, when I see the mind of the king, the mind of the duchess [Margaret of Angouleme] as favorable as possible to the advancement of the Gospel of Christ, and those who ought to forward this matter, according to the grace given them, obstructing their design, I cannot refrain from tears. They say, indeed: 'It is not yet time, the hour has not come!' And yet we have here no day or hour. What would not you do had you the Emperor and Ferdinand favoring your attempts? Entreat God, therefore, in behalf of France, that she may at length be worthy of His word."[180]

The remainder of the task imposed on the weak Bishop of Meaux and his new allies, the monks of St. Francis, proved a more difficult undertaking. The shepherds had been dispersed, but the flock refused to forsake the fold. From the nourishing food they had discovered in the Word of God, they could not be induced to return to the husks offered to them in meaningless ceremonies, celebrated in an unknown tongue by men of impure lives. The Gospels in French remained more attractive than the legendary, even after the bishop had abandoned the championship of the incipient reformation. Briconnet's own expressed wish was granted: if he had "changed his speech and teaching," the common people, at least, had not changed with him.

[Sidenote: The wool-carder, Jean Leclerc, tears down a papal bull.]

[Sidenote: His barbarous sentence.]

Among the first fruits of the Reformation in Meaux was a wool-carder, Jean Leclerc, into whose hands had fallen one of Lefevre's French Testaments. He was a man of strong convictions and invincible resolution. A bull, issued by Clement the Seventh in connection with the approaching jubilee, had been posted on the doors of the cathedral (December, 1524). It offered indulgence, and enjoined prayers, fasting, and partaking of the Communion, in order to obtain from heaven the restoration of peace between princes of Christendom. Leclerc secretly tore the bull down, substituting for it a placard in which the Roman pontiff figured as veritable Antichrist. Diligent search was at once instituted for the perpetrator of this offence, and for the author of the subsequent mutilation of the prayers to the Virgin hung up in various parts of the same edifice. A truculent order was also issued in the bishop's name, threatening all persons that might conceal their knowledge of the culprits with public excommunication, every Sunday and feast-day, "with ringing of bells and with candles lighted and then extinguished and thrown upon the earth, in token of eternal malediction."[181] Leclerc was discovered, and taken to Paris for trial. The barbarous sentence of parliament was, that he be whipped in Paris by the common executioner on three successive days, then transferred to Meaux to receive the like punishment, and finally branded on the forehead with a red-hot iron, before being banished forever from the kingdom.[182]

The cruel prescription was followed out to the letter (March, 1525). A superstitious multitude flocked together to see and gloat over the condign punishment of a heretic, and gave no word of encouragement and support. But, as the iron was leaving on Leclerc's brow the ignominious imprint of the fleur-de-lis,[183] a single voice suddenly broke in upon the silence. It was that of his aged mother, who, after an involuntary cry of anguish, quickly recovered herself and shouted, "Hail Jesus Christ and his standard-bearers!"[184] Although many heard her words, so deep was the impression, that no attempt was made to lay hands upon her.[185]

[Sidenote: He is burned alive at Metz.]

From Meaux, Leclerc, forced to leave his home, retired first to Rosoy, and thence to Metz.[186] Here, while supporting himself by working at his humble trade, he lost none of his missionary spirit. Not content with communicating a knowledge of the doctrines of the Reformation to all with whom he conversed, his impatient zeal led him to a new and startling protest against the prevalent, and, in his view, idolatrous worship of images. Learning that on a certain day a solemn procession was to be made to a shrine situated a few miles out of the city gates, he went to the spot under cover of night, and hurled the sacred images from their places. On the morrow the horrified worshippers found the objects of their devotion prostrated and mutilated, and their rage knew no bounds. It was not long before the wool-carder was apprehended. His religious sentiments were no secret, and he had been seen returning from the scene of his nocturnal exploit. He promptly acknowledged his guilt, and was rescued from the infuriated populace only to undergo a more terrible doom at the hands of the public executioner (July 22, 1525). His right hand was cut off at the wrist, his arms, his nose, his breast were cruelly torn with pincers; but no cry of anguish escaped the lips of Leclerc. The sentence provided still further that, before his body should be consigned to the flames, his head be encircled with a red-hot band of iron. As the fervent metal slowly ate its way toward his very brain, the bystanders with amazement heard the dying man calmly repeat the words of Holy Writ: "Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands." He had not completed the Psalmist's terrific denunciation of the crime and folly of image-worship when his voice was stifled by the fire and smoke of the pyre into which his impatient tormentors had hastily thrown him. If not actually the first martyr of the French Reformation, as has commonly been supposed, Jean Leclerc deserves, at least, to rank among the most constant and unswerving of its early apostles.[187]

[Sidenote: Jacques Pauvan.]

The poor wool-carder of Meaux was succeeded by more illustrious victims. One was of the number of the teachers who had been attracted to Bishop Briconnet's diocese by the prospect of contributing to the progress of a purer doctrine. Jacques Pauvan[188] was a studious youth who had come from Boulogne, in Picardy, to perfect his education in the university, and had subsequently abandoned a career in which he bade fair to obtain distinction, in order to assist his admired teacher, Lefevre, at Meaux. He was an outspoken man, and disguised his opinions on no point of the prevailing controversy. He asserted that purgatory had no existence, and that God had no vicar. He repudiated excessive reliance on the doctors of the church. He indignantly rejected the customary salutation to the Virgin Mary, "Hail Queen, Mother of mercy!" He denied the propriety of offering candles to the saints. He maintained that baptism was only a sign, that holy water was nothing, that papal bulls and indulgences were an imposture of the devil, and that the mass was not only of no avail for the remission of sins, but utterly unprofitable to the hearer, while the Word of God was all-sufficient.[189]

Pauvan was put under arrest, and his theses, together with the defence of their contents which one Matthieu Saunier was so bold as to write, were submitted to the Sorbonne. Its condemnation was not long withheld. "A work," said the Paris theologians, "containing propositions extracted and compiled from the pernicious errors of the Waldenses, Wickliffites, Bohemians, and Lutherans, being impious, scandalous, schismatic, and wholly alien from the Christian doctrine, ought publicly to be consigned to the flames in the diocese of Meaux, whence it emanated. And Jacques Pauvan and Matthieu Saunier should, by all judicial means, be compelled to make a public recantation."[190]

Even strong men have their moments of weakness. Pauvan was no exception to the rule. Besides the terrors of the stake, the persuasions of Martial Mazurier came in to shake his constancy. This latter, a doctor of theology, had at one time been so carried away with the desire of innovation as to hurl down a statue of their patron saint standing at the door of the monastery of the Franciscans. He had now, as we have already seen, become the favorite instrument in effecting abjurations similar to his own. His suggestions prevailed over Pauvan's convictions.[191] The young scholar consented to obey the Sorbonne's demand. The faculty's judgment had been pronounced on the ninth of December, 1525; a fortnight later, on the morrow of Christmas day--a favorite time for striking displays of this kind--Pauvan publicly retracted his "errors," and made the usual "amende honorable," clad only in a shirt, and holding a lighted taper in his hand.[192]

[Sidenote: He is burned on the Place de Greve.]

If Pauvan's submission secured him any peace, it was a short-lived peace. Tortured by conscience, he soon betrayed his mental anguish by sighs and groans. Again he was drawn from the prison, where he had been confined since his abjuration,[193] and subjected to new interrogatories. With the opportunity to vindicate his convictions, his courage and cheerfulness returned. As a relapsed heretic, no fate could be in store for him but death at the stake, and this he courageously met on the Place de Greve.[194] But the holocaust was inauspicious for those who with this victim hoped to annihilate the "new doctrines." Before mounting the huge pyre heaped up to receive him, Pauvan was thoughtlessly permitted to speak; and so persuasive were his words that it was an enemy's exclamation that "it had been better to have cost the church a million of gold, than that Pauvan had been suffered to speak to the people."[195]

[Sidenote: The hermit of Livry.]

Scarcely more encouraging to the advocates of persecution was the scene in the area in front of Notre-Dame de Paris, when, at the sound of the great cathedral bell, an immense crowd was gathered to witness the execution of an obscure person, known to us only as "the hermit of Livry"--a hamlet on the road to Meaux. With such unshaken fortitude did he encounter the flames, that the astonished spectators were confidently assured by their spiritual advisers that he was one of the damned who was being led to the fires of hell.[196]

[Sidenote: Bishop Briconnet becomes the jailer of the "Lutherans."]

Where less rigor was deemed necessary, the penalty for having embraced the reformed tenets was reduced to imprisonment for a term of years, often with bread and water for the only food and drink. The place of confinement was sometimes a monastery, at other times the "prisons of Monseigneur the Bishop of Meaux."[197] Thus Briconnet enjoyed the rare and exquisite privilege of acting as jailer of unfortunates instructed by himself in the doctrines for the profession of which they now suffered! Meantime their companions having escaped detection, although deprived of the advantage of public worship, continued for years to assemble for mutual encouragement and edification, as they had opportunity, in private houses, in retired valleys or caverns, or in thickets and woods. Their minister was that person of their own number who was seen to be the best versed in the Holy Scriptures. After he had discharged his functions in the humble service, by a simple address of instruction or exhortation, the entire company with one voice supplicated the Almighty for His blessing, and returned to their homes with fervent hopes for the speedy conversion of France to the Gospel.[198] Thus matters stood for about a score of years, until a fresh attempt was made to constitute a reformed church at Meaux, the signal, as will appear in the sequel, for a fresh storm of persecution.

[Sidenote: Lefevre's subsequent history.]

A few words here seem necessary respecting the subsequent fortunes of the venerable teacher whose name at this point fades from the history of the French Reformation. The action of parliament (August 28, 1525), in condemning, at the instigation of the syndic of the theological faculty, nine propositions extracted from his commentary on the Gospels, and in forbidding the circulation of his translation of the Holy Scriptures, had given Lefevre d'Etaples due warning of danger. We have already seen that a few weeks later (October, 1525) he had taken refuge in Strasbourg under the pseudonym of Antonius Peregrinus. But the incognito of so distinguished a stranger could not be long maintained, and before many days the very boys in the streets knew him by his true name.[199] Meantime the Sorbonne, in his absence, proceeded to censure a large number of propositions drawn from another of Lefevre's works. Shortly after a letter was received from Francis the First, written in his captivity at Madrid, and enjoining the court to suspend its vexatious persecution of a man "of such great and good renown, and of so holy a life," until the king's return. The refractory judges, however, neglected to obey the order, and continued the proceedings instituted against Lefevre.[200]

[Sidenote: Lefevre and the Nuncio Aleander.]

When, however, Francis succeeded in regaining his liberty, a year later, he not only recalled Lefevre and his companion, Roussel, from exile, but conferred upon the former the honorable appointment of tutor to his two daughters and his third and favorite son, subsequently known as Charles, Duke of Orleans.[201] This post, while it enabled him to continue the prosecution of his biblical studies, also gave him the opportunity of instilling into the minds of his pupils some views favorable to the Reformation.[202] A little later Margaret of Angouleme secured for Lefevre the position of librarian of the royal collection of books at Blois; but, as even here he was subjected to much annoyance from his enemies, Margaret, now Queen of Navarre, sought and obtained from her brother permission to take the old scholar with her to Nerac, in Gascony.[203] Here, in the ordinary residence of his patron, and treated by the King of Navarre with marked consideration, Lefevre d'Etaples was at last safe from molestation. The papal party did not, indeed, despair of gaining him over. The Nuncio Aleander, in a singular letter exhumed not long since from the Vatican records, expressed himself strongly in favor of putting forth the effort. Lefevre's "few errors" had at first appeared to be of great moment, because published at a time when to correct or change the most insignificant syllable, or a faulty rendering, in the ancient translations of the Holy Scriptures approved by the church, was an unheard-of innovation. But, now that more important questions had come up to arrest attention, the mere matter of retranslation, without introducing unsound doctrine, seemed to be a thing of little or no consequence.[204] Let Lefevre but leave the heretical company which he kept, and let him make the least bit of a retraction respecting some few passages in his works, and the whole affair would at once be arranged.[205]

[Sidenote: Lefevre's mental suffering.]

The reconciliation of Lefevre with the church did not take place. The "bit of a retraction" was never written. But none the less are Lefevre's last days reported to have been disturbed by harassing thoughts. The noble old man, who had consecrated to the translation of the Bible and to exegetical comment upon its books the energy of many years, and who had suffered no little obloquy in consequence, could not forgive himself that he had not come forward more manfully in defence of the truth. One day, not long before his death, it is said, while seated at the table of the King and Queen of Navarre, he was observed to be overcome with emotion. When Margaret expressed her surprise at the gloomy deportment of one whose society she had sought for her own diversion, Lefevre mournfully exclaimed, "How can I contribute to the pleasure of others, who am myself the greatest sinner upon earth?" In reply to the questions called forth by so unexpected a confession, Lefevre, while admitting that throughout his long life his morals had been exemplary, and that he was conscious of no flagrant crime against society, proceeded, in words frequently interrupted by sobs, to explain his deep penitence: "How shall I, who have taught others the purity of the Gospel, be able to stand at God's tribunal? Thousands have suffered and died for the defence of the truth in which I instructed them; and I, unfaithful shepherd that I am, after attaining so advanced an age, when I ought to love nothing less than I do life--nay, rather, when I ought to desire death--I have basely avoided the martyr's crown, and have betrayed the cause of my God!" It was with difficulty that the queen and others who were present succeeded in allaying the aged scholar's grief.[206]

The "anguish of spirit and terror of God's judgment experienced by so pious an old man as Lefevre," because he had concealed the truth which he ought openly to have espoused, supplied an instructive warning for his even more timid disciples. Farel, who never lacked courage, was not slow to avail himself of it. Taking advantage of the freedom of an old associate, he addressed a letter containing an account of Lefevre's death, with some serious admonitions, to Michel d'Arande, who never venturing to separate from a church whose corruptions he acknowledged, had reached the position of Bishop of Saint Paul-Trois-Chateaux, in Dauphiny. The letter has perished, but the reply in which the prelate's dejection and internal conflicts but too plainly appear, has seen the light after a burial of three centuries. Admitting the guilt of his course, the bishop begs the intrepid reformer to pray for him continually, and meanwhile not to withhold his friendly exhortations, that at length the writer may be able to extricate himself from the deep mire in which he finds no firm foundation to stand upon.[207]

Such was the unhappy state of mind to which many good, but irresolute men were reduced, who, in view of the persecution certain to follow an open avowal of their reformatory sentiments, endeavored to persuade themselves that it was permissible to conceal them under a thin veil of external conformity to the rites of the Roman church.

[Sidenote: Fortunes of Gerard Roussel.]

Gerard Roussel, the most distinguished representative of this class of mystics, was appointed by the Queen of Navarre to be her preacher and confessor, and promoted successively to be Abbot of Clairac and Bishop of Oleron. Yet he remained, to his death, a sincere friend of the Reformation. Occasionally, at least, he preached its doctrines with tolerable distinctness; as, for instance, in the Lenten discourses delivered by him, in conjunction with Courault and Bertault, before the French court in the Louvre (1532). In his writings he was still more outspoken. Some of them might have been written not only by a reformer, but by a disciple of Calvin, so sharply drawn were the doctrinal expositions.[208] Meanwhile, in his own diocese he set forth the example of a faithful pastor. Even so bitter an enemy of Protestantism as Florimond de Raemond, contrasting Roussel's piety with the worldliness of the sporting French bishops of the period, is forced to admit that his pack of hounds was the crowd of poor men and women whom he daily fed, his horses and attendants a host of children whom he caused to be instructed in letters.[209]

And yet, Gerard Roussel's half measures, while failing to conciliate the adherents of the Roman church, alienated from him the sympathies of the reformers; for they saw in his conduct a weakness little short of entire apostasy. More modern Roman Catholic writers, for similar reasons, deny that Roussel was ever at heart a friend of the Reformation.[210] Not so, however, thought the fanatics of his own time. While the Bishop of Oleron was one day declaiming, in a church of his diocese, against the excessive multiplication of feasts, the pulpit in which he stood was suddenly overturned, and the preacher hurled with violence to the ground. The catastrophe was the premeditated act of a religious zealot, who had brought with him into the sacred place an axe concealed under his cloak. The fall proved fatal to Gerard Roussel, who is said to have expressed on his death-bed similar regrets to those which had disturbed the last hours of Lefevre d'Etaples. As for the murderer, although arrested and tried by the Parliament of Bordeaux, he was in the end acquitted, on the ground that he had performed a meritorious act, or, at most, committed a venial offence, in ridding the world of so dangerous a heretic as the Bishop of Oleron.[211]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 128: Scaevolae Sammarthani Elog. lib. i., i. 3. "Statura fuit supra modum humili," etc.]

[Footnote 129: Sc. Sammarthani Elog., ubi supra.]

[Footnote 130: Lefevre's scientific works were numerous, and some of them passed through many editions during the early years of the sixteenth century. See Haag, La France protestante, art. Lefevre. I have before me his edition of the Arithmetic of Boetius, with introduction and commentary, of the year 1510, and copies of his Astronomical Treatises of 1510 and 1516, the last of these published at Cologne.]

[Footnote 131: Sc. Sammarth. Elog., ubi supra.]

[Footnote 132: Epistre a tons Seigneurs et Peuples (Edit. J. G. Fick), 172.]

[Footnote 133: The passage in which Farel describes his former superstition is so characteristic, that I quote a few sentences: "Pour vray la papaute n'estoit et n'est tant papale que mon coeur l'a este.... Car tellement il avoit aveugle mes yeux et perverti tout en moy, que s'il y avoit personnage qui fut approuve selon le pape, il m'estoit comme Dieu; si quelqu'un faisoit ou disoit quelque chose, d'ou le pape et son estat en fut en quelque mespris, j'eusse voulu qu'un tel ... fut du tout abbatu, ruine et destruit.... Ainsy Satan avoit loge le pape, sa papaute, tout ce qui est de luy en mon coeur, de sorte que le pape mesme, comme je croy, n'en avoit point tant en soy ne [ni] les siens aussy, comme il y en avoit en moy.... Et ainsy je persevere, ayant mon panteon en mon coeur, et tant d'advocats, tant de sauveurs, tant de dieux que rien plus ... tellement que je pouvoye bien estre tenu pour un registre papal, pour martyrologe," etc. Epistre a tous Seigneurs et Peuples, 164, 167, 169.]

[Footnote 134: Herminjard, Correspondance des Reformateurs, i. 4, 481.]

[Footnote 135: See the dedication, dated Dec. 15, 1512, Herminjard, Correspondance des Reformateurs, i. 2-9.]

[Footnote 136: Letter of Farel to Pellican (1556), Herminjard, Correspondance des Reformateurs, i. 481: "Pius senex, Jacobus Faber, quem tu novisti, ante annos plus minus quadraginta, me manu apprehensum, ita alloquebatur: 'Gulielme, oportet orbem mutari, et tu videbis' dicebat." So in the "Epistre a tous Seigneurs et Peuples" (Ed. Fick), 170: "Souventefois me disoit que Dieu renouvelleroit le monde, et que je le verroye." A few years later, at Strasbourg, the reformer reminded his former master of his prediction: "Voicy par la grace de Dieu, le commencement de ce qu'autrefois m'avez dit du renouvellement du monde," and Lefevre, then in exile, blessed God, and begged Him to perfect what he had then seen begun at Strasbourg. Ibid., 171. These statements are confirmed by a passage in the Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles, in which, after deploring the corruption of the church, Lefevre observes: "Yet the signs of the times announce that a renewal is near, and while God is opening new ways for the preaching of the Gospel, by the discoveries and conquests of the Portuguese and Spaniards in all parts of the world, we must hope that He will visit His church and raise it from the degradation into which it is fallen." Herminjard, i. 5.]

[Footnote 137: Scaevolae Sammarthani, Elogia doctorum in Gallia virorum, lib. i. (Jenae, 1696); Bayle, s. v. Fevre and Farel; Tabaraud, Biographie univ., art. Lefevre; C. Schmidt, Wilhelm Farel, in Leben und ausgew. Schriften d. Vaeter d. ref. Kirche; C. Cheneviere, Farel, Froment, Viret (Geneve, 1835).]

[Footnote 138: Gaillard, Histoire de Francois premier (Paris, 1769), vi. 397. It was the unpardonable offence of Lefevre in the eyes of his critic that he, a simple master of arts, had dared to investigate matters that fell to the province of doctors of theology alone. Letter of H. C. Agrippa (1519), in Herminjard, Correspondance des Reformateurs, i. 51: "Tantum virum semel atque iterum ... vocarunt hominem stultum, insanum fidei, Sacrarum Literarum indoctum et ignarum, et qui, duntaxat humanarum artium Magister, praesumptuose se ingerat iis quae spectant ad Theologos." As it clearly appears that Lefevre was not a doctor of the Sorbonne, Professor Soldan is mistaken in saying: "Seit 1493 lebte er als Doctor der Theologie zu Paris, u. s. w." The error is of long standing.]

[Footnote 139: See Alphonse de Beauchamp's sketches of the lives of the two Briconnets, in the Biographie universelle.]

[Footnote 140: According to a contemporary letter, this was the sole cause of Lefevre's departure. "Faber Stapulensis ab urbe longe abest ad XX. lapidem, neque ullam ob causam quam quod convitia in Lutherum audire non potest." Glareanus to Zwingle, Paris, July 4, 1521, Herminjard, i. 71.]

[Footnote 141: Epistre a tous Seigneurs et Peuples, 168-175.]

[Footnote 142: In October, 1521. Herminjard, i. 76.]

[Footnote 143: "Vous asseurant que le Roy et Madame ont bien delibere de donner a congnoistre que la verite de Dieu n'est point heresie." Margaret of Angouleme to Briconnet, Nov., 1521, MSS. National Lib., Herminjard, i. 78; Genin, ii. 273.]

[Footnote 144: "Vos piteulx desirs de la reformacion de l'Eglise, ou plus que jamais le Roy et Madame sont affectionnes." Same to same, Dec, 1521, Ibid., Herminjard, i. 84; Genin, ii. 274. Compare Louise de Savoie's own entry in her journal, in December, 1522, a year later, to which reference has already been made.]

[Footnote 145: See the valuable remarks of M. Herminjard (i. 289, note) respecting the date of the "manifestation of the Gospel" in France.]

[Footnote 146: Luther to Spalatin, Oct. 19, 1516, Herminjard, i. 26.]

[Footnote 147: Herminjard, i. 41, 205, 206.]

[Footnote 148: Lefevre was placed in charge of the Leproserie, Aug. 11, 1521, and was appointed vicar-general au spirituel, May 1, 1523. Herminjard, i. 71 and 157.]

[Footnote 149: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, 277, under date of 1526.]

[Footnote 150: "Moy et autres comme moy, leverons une cruciade de gens, et ferons chasser le Roy de son Royaume par ses subjectz propres, s'il permet que l'Evangile soit presche." Farel au Duc de Lorraine, Herminjard, i. 483.]

[Footnote 151: Pierre de Sebeville au Chevalier Coct, Grenoble, Dec. 28, 1524: "Je te notifie que l'evesque de Meaulx en Brie, pres Paris, cum Jacobo Fabro Stapulensi, depuis trois moys en visitant l'evesche, ont brusle actu tous les imaiges, reserve le crucifix, et sont personellement ajournes a Paris, a ce moys de Mars venant, coram suprema curia, et universitate erucarum parrhissiensium, quare id factum est." Herminjard, i. 315.]

[Footnote 152: Fontaine, Histoire catholique, apud Merle d'Aubigne, Hist. de la Reform., liv. xii. The earliest Protestant chronicle, by Antoine Froment, of which there is a MS. fragment in the Library of Geneva, gives a slightly different form to Briconnet's caution: "Autrefois, en leur preschant l'Evangile, il leur avoit dit, comme Sainct Paul escript au Gallates, que sy luy-mesme ou un Ange du ciel leur preschoit autre doctrine que celle qu'il leur preschoit, qu'ils ne [le] receussent pas." Herminjard, i. 158.]

[Footnote 153: Nisard, Histoire de la litterature francaise, i. 275. The only printed work in favor of which the claim of Lefevre's translation to be the oldest in the French language could be disputed is the "Bible" of Guyars des Moulins, finished in 1297, and printed by order of Charles VIII. in 1487; but the greater part of this is a free translation, not of the Scriptures themselves, but of a summary--the "Historia scholastica" of Pierre le Mengeur (latinized "Comestor")--and is consequently no bible at all. See M. Charles Read, in Bulletin, i. 76, who remarks that, "everything considered, it may therefore be asserted that the translations of Lefevre d'Etaples and of Olivetanus are the first versions without embellishment or gloss (non historiees et non glossees), and that thus the first two versions of the Bible into the language of the people are Protestant."]

[Footnote 154: The inventory of the library of the Count of Angouleme, father of Margaret and Francis I., consisting of nearly two hundred volumes, contains the title "Les Paraboles de Salomon, les Espistres Saint Jehan, les Espistres Saint Pol et l'Apocalipse, le tout en ung volume, escript en parchemin et a la main, et en francoys, couvert de velous changeant et a deux fermoeres, l'un aux armes de mon diet Seigneur, et l'autre aux armes de ma dicte dame." Aristotle, Boethius, Boccaccio, and Dante figure in the list, the latter both in Italian and in French. The inventory is printed in an appendix to the edition of the Heptameron of Margaret of Angouleme published by the Soc. dea bibliophiles francais (Paris, 1853), a work enriched with many original documents of considerable value.]

[Footnote 155: This important letter of Lefevre to Farel, July 6, 1524, first published in part from the MS. in the Geneva Library, in the Bulletin de l'hist. du prot. franc., xi. (1862), 212, is given in full by Herminjard, i. 220, etc.]

[Footnote 156: "O bone Deus, quanto exulto gaudio, cum percipio hanc pure agnoscendi Christum gratiam, jam bonam partem pervasisse Europae! Et spero Christum tandem nostras Gallias hac benedictione invisurum."]

[Footnote 157: "Provinciam interpretandi populo promiscui sexus, quotidie una hora mane, epistolas Pauli lingua vernacula editas, non concionando, sed per modum lecturae interpretando." Lefevre to Farel, ubi supra, i. 222. He gives the names of four such "lectores puriores"--Gadon, Mangin, Neufchasteau, and Mesnil--of whom we know little.]

[Footnote 158: Parliament, however, as late as June 1, 1525, sustained his episcopal authority by prohibiting the monks from preaching in Meaux, whether in the morning or in the evening, when the bishop either himself preached or had preaching before him in that part of the day. Reg. of Parliament, Preuves des Libertez de l'Eglise Gallicane, iv. 102.]

[Footnote 159: Gaillard, vi. 409.]

[Footnote 160: "L'estat par la froideur duquel tous les aultres sont gellez." Briconnet to Margaret of Angouleme, Dec. 22, 1521, Herminjard, i. 86.]

[Footnote 161: "Celluy qui tous ruyne." Same to same, Jan. 31, 1524, ibid., i. 186.]

[Footnote 162: "L'etat qui contient tous les autres dans le devoir," as translated by Herminjard, i. 154.]

[Footnote 163: See both documents in Herminjard, i. 153 and 156.]

[Footnote 164: Instead of October 15, 1523, it is probable that these documents ought to be placed nearly, if not quite, two years later. See M. Herminjard's remarks on this difficult point, Correspondance des reformateurs, i. 158, note. The same uncertainty affects Briconnet's subsequent pastoral, revoking the powers accorded to "Lutheran preachers," attributed to December 13, 1523, ibid., i. 171.]

[Footnote 165: Maimbourg, Histoire du Calvinisme (Paris, 1682), liv. i. 11-14; Daniel, Histoire de France (Paris, 1755), x. 23.]

[Footnote 166: Registres du parlement, Oct. 3, 1525, Preuves des Libertez de l'Eglise gallicane, iv. 102.]

[Footnote 167: "Et supplie la Cour qu'il soit interroge en pleine cour, et non par Commissaires." Registres du parlement, Oct. 20, 1525, ibid., iv. 103.]

[Footnote 168: Registres du parlement, Nov. 29, 1525, where the Bishop of Meaux is ordered to pay 200 livres parisis for the trial of the heretics, prisoners from Meaux (Preuves des Libertez, iii. 166), and the receipt for the same (Ibid., ubi supra). This was, however, merely an application of the general prescription of Nov. 24, 1525, requiring all prelates to defray the expenses of the trial of any heretics discovered in their dioceses, with the right to indemnify themselves from the property of the convicted heretics (Ibid., iii. 165). So the Archbishop of Tours contributed to the expenses incurred in the trial of Jean Papillon, Feb. 5, 1526 (Ibid., iii. 167).]

[Footnote 169: Daniel, x. 23, 24; Gaillard, vi. 409-411.]

[Footnote 170: Neither the reason nor the precise time of his departure is known. It was apparently as early as 1523.]

[Footnote 171: See Haag, La France protestante, art. Farel; Dr. E. Schmidt, Wilhelm Farel, in Hagenbach, Leben d. Vaeter und Begruender der Reformirten Kirche, vii. 3, etc. A brief but very accurate sketch in Herminjard, i. 178, etc.]

[Footnote 172: MS. Seminary of Meaux, January 11, 1524/5, Bulletin, x. 220.]

[Footnote 173: "Plusieurs peigneurs, cardeurs et autres gens de meme trempe, non lettres."]

[Footnote 174: MS. Seminary of Meaux, February 6, 1524/5, Bulletin, x. 220.]

[Footnote 175: Compare for the date, Herminjard, i. 378, 389, 401. Gerard Roussel was ordered by parliament to be seized wherever found, etiam in loco sacro. So, too, were Caroli and Prevost. Jacques Lefevre was cited to appear. Registres du parlement, Oct. 3, 1525, Preuves des Libertez de l'Egl. gall., iii. 102, 103.]

[Footnote 176: Farel to Pellican, 1556, Herminjard, i. 481.]

[Footnote 177: "Ita invigilent Verbo ecclesiarum ministri, ut, nulla pene hora diei, suum desit pabulum et quidem syncerum, ut nulla subsit palea aut fermenti pharisaici commissura."]

[Footnote 178: Roussel to Briconnet, Strasbourg, Dec, 1525, Herminjard, i. 406, 407.]

[Footnote 179: Roussel to Farel, Meaux, Aug. 24, 1524, Herminjard, i. 271--a document that throws a flood of light upon the motives of the conduct of both Roussel and Lefevre. A letter of the same date to Oecolampadius is, in some respects, even more instructive. Notice the pitiful weakness revealed in these sentences: "Reclamabunt episcopi, reclamabunt doctores, reclamabunt scholae, assentiente populo, occurret Senatus (parliament). Quid faciet homuncio adversus tot leones?" Herminjard, i. 278. A reference to the book of Daniel might have enabled the Canon of Meaux to answer his own question.]

[Footnote 180: Pierre Toussain to Oecolampadius, Malesherbes, July 26, 1526, Herminjard, i. 447.]

[Footnote 181: Mandement de Guillaume Briconnet an clerge de son diocese, le 21 janvier, 1525, Herminjard, i. 320, etc.]

[Footnote 182: It may seem surprising that Jean Leclerc escaped the stake in punishment of his temerity. But the reason is found in the circumstance that he was tried, not for heresy, but for irreverence. This appears from the Registres du parlement for March 20, 1524/5. The interesting discussions of that session, printed in the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. francais, iii. (1854) 23, etc., establish the fact that the reformed doctrines were already making formidable headway in Paris and the adjoining towns. A brother of Bishop Briconnet took a prominent part in the debate, and gave a deplorable view of the prevalence of impiety and heresy in the higher circles of society.]

[Footnote 183: For a description of the punishment, see Bastard d'Estang, Les parlements de France.]

[Footnote 184: "Vive Jesus Christ et ses enseignes!"]

[Footnote 185: Histoire ecclesiastique des eglises reformees, attributed to Theodore Beza (Ed. of Lille, 1841), i. 4; Crespin, Actiones et Monimenta Martyrum (Geneva, 1560), fol. 46; Haag, La France protestante, art. Leclerc; Daniel, x. 23, who finds no more suitable epithet for Leclerc than "ce scelerat."]

[Footnote 186: At this time a city of the Empire, and not conquered by France until the reign of Henry II. (1552).]

[Footnote 187: The story of Leclerc's fortunes is told both by Crespin, ubi supra, fol. 46, and by the Histoire ecclesiastique, i. 4; but, strange to say, both these early authorities fall into the same error: they place the first arrest of Leclerc in 1523, and his death a year later. Almost all subsequent writers have implicitly followed their authority. The Registres du parlement de Paris, already referred to, March 20, 1524/5, fix the former event as having occurred only three days before--"depuis trois jours" (p. 27); while Francois Lambert's letter to the Senate of Besancon, dated August 15, 1525, expressly states that Leclerc was burned Saturday, July 22, 1525. Herminjard, i. 372. Jean Chatellain had been executed at Vic, in Lorraine, six months earlier (January 12, 1525). See P. Lambert to the Elector of Saxony, Herminjard, i. 346.]

[Footnote 188: In accordance with the uncertain orthography of the age, the name is variously written--Pauvan, Pauvant, Pavanne, or Pouvent.]

[Footnote 189: Pauvan's propositions, with the vindication by Saunier (or Saulnier) are recapitulated in the censure of the theological faculty, dated Dec. 9, 1525, and published in extenso among the documents appended to Gerdesius, Hist. Evang. Renov., iv. 36, etc. Professor Soldan (i. 107) and others are incorrect in placing the propositions and their condemnation by the Sorbonne subsequent to the abjuration, which in this very document the Sorbonne demands.]

[Footnote 190: Ibid., iv. 47.]

[Footnote 191: "You err, Master Jacques," Crespin tells us that Mazurier used to say, "You err, Master Jacques; for you have not looked into the depth of the sea, but merely upon the surface of the waters and waves." "You err, Master Jacques" became a proverbial expression in the mouths of the inhabitants of Meaux for a generation or more. Actiones et Monimenta (Geneva, 1560), fol. 52 verso.]

[Footnote 192: "Tout nud, en sa chemise, criant mercy a Dieu et a la vierge Marie." Journal d'un bourgeois, ubi infra.]

[Footnote 193: His sentence seems to have been seven years' imprisonment in the priory of St. Martin des Champs, and it was the prior that denounced him to parliament. Ibid., ubi infra.]

[Footnote 194: Crespin, ubi supra, fol. 53; Hist. eccles., i. 4; Haag, France prot., s. v. On the 26th of August, 1526, if, as is likely, he is the "jeune filz, escolier beneficie, non aiant encore ses ordres de prestrise, nomme maistre ... natif de Therouanne, en Picardie," whom the Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris refers to--page 291--as having abjured on Christmas eve, 1525, and been burned "le mardi 28^e aoust, 1526." At any rate, as M. Herminjard has remarked, Beza and Crespin are certainly wrong in placing Pauvan's recantation and execution respectively a year too early (in 1524 and 1525, instead of 1525 and 1526). The date of the Sorbonne's judgment is decisive on this point.]

[Footnote 195: Our authority for the remark of the Parisian doctor, Pierre Cornu, is Farel, in a MS. note to a hitherto inedited letter of Pauvan, and in his speech at the discussion at Lausanne. Herminjard, i. 293, 294. Farel's application was not without pungency: "Votre foi est-elle si bien fondee qu'un jeune fils, qui encore n'avoit point de barbe, vous ait fait tant de dommage, sans avoir tant etudie ne veu, sans avoir aucun degre, et vous etiez tant?" The admirer of heroic fortitude will scarcely subscribe to the words of the Jesuit Daniel, Hist. de France, x. 24: "On ne donne place dans l'histoire a ces meprisables noms, que pour ne laisser ignorer la premiere origine de la funeste contagion," etc.]

[Footnote 196: Histoire eccles., i. 4.]

[Footnote 197: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris sous le regne de Francois I^er, April 14, 1526, p. 284.]

[Footnote 198: Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fol. 118.]

[Footnote 199: Haag, La France protestante, art. Lefevre; Schmidt, Wilhelm Farel. Bayle (Diet. s. v. Fevre) maintains, on the authority of Melchior Adam's Life of Capito, that Lefevre and Roussel were sent by Margaret of Angouleme on a secret mission to Strasbourg. Erasmus, in a letter of March, 1526, and Sleidan (lib. v. ad fin.) know nothing of this, and speak of the trip as merely a flight.]

[Footnote 200: Haag, ubi supra, vi. 507, note.]

[Footnote 201: Haag, La France protestante, art. Lefevre; Gaillard, Hist. de Francois premier, vi. 411. The boy, at this time Duke of Angouleme, did not assume the name of Charles until after his eldest brother's death. The Swiss cantons, acting as his sponsors, had given him the somewhat uncommon Christian name Abednego (Abdenago)! Herminjard, ii. 17, 195.]

[Footnote 202: The Duke of Orleans may have had sincere predilections for Protestantism. At least, it is barely possible that the very remarkable instructions given to his secretary, Antoine Mallet, when on the 8th of September, 1543, Charles sent him to the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse, were something besides mere diplomatic intrigue to secure for his father's projects the support of these Protestant princes. See, however, a fuller discussion of this incident farther on, Chapter VI.]

[Footnote 203: Margaret to Anne de Montmorency, Genin, Lettres de Marguerite d'Angouleme, i. 279, and Herminjard, ii. 250.]

[Footnote 204: "Come un cavallo ch' ha un apostema stringendoli il naso non sente il cauterio."]

[Footnote 205: "Una retrattationcella." The letter of the Nuncio to Sanga, secretary of Clement VII., Brussels, December 30, 1531, appeared in H. Laemmer, Monumenta Vaticana (ex Tabulariis Sanctae Sedis Apostolicae Secretis), Friburgi Brisgoviae, 1861. I have called attention to its importance in the Bulletin de la Societe de l'hist. du prot. franc., xiv. (1865), 345. M. Herminjard has given a French translation, ii. 386.]

[Footnote 206: This incident has been rejected as apocryphal by Bayle, and, after him, by Tabaraud (in the Biographie universelle), as well as more recently by Haag (France protestante). It has rested until now on the unsupported testimony of Hubert Thomas, secretary of the Elector Palatine, Frederick II., whom he accompanied on a visit to Charles V. in Spain. On his return the Elector fell sick at Paris, where he received frequent visits from the King and Queen of Navarre. It was on one of these occasions that Margaret related to him this story, in the hearing of the secretary. (It is reproduced in Jurieu, Histoire du Calvinisme, etc., Rotterdam, 1683, pt. i. 70.) Bayle objected that it was incredible that the reformers should have failed to allude to so striking and suggestive an occurrence. The objection has been scattered to the winds. With singular good fortune, M. Jules Bonnet has discovered among the hidden treasures of the Geneva Library an original memorandum in Farel's own handwriting, prefixed to a letter he had received from Michel d'Arande, fully confirming the discredited statements. "Jacobus Faber Stapulensis noster laborans morbo quo decessit, per aliquot dies ita perterritus fuit judicio Dei, ut actum de se vociferaret, dicens se aeternum periisse, quod veritatem Dei non aperte professus fuerit, idque dies noctesque vociferando querebatur. Et cum a Gerardo Rufo admoneretur ut bono esset animo, Christo quoque fideret, is respondit: 'Nos damnati sumus, veritatem celavimus quam profiteri et testari debebamus.' Horrendum erat tam pium senem ita angi animo et tanto horrore judicii Dei concuti; licet tandem liberatus bene sperare coeperit ac perrexerit de Christo." Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., etc., xi. 215; Herminjard, iii. 400.]

[Footnote 207: "Quo tandem ex hoc profundo limo, in quo non est substantia, eripi queam." Michel d'Arande to Farel (1536 or 1537), Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. franc., ubi supra; Herminjard, iii. 399, etc.]

[Footnote 208: Speaking of Roussel's as yet inedited MS., "Familiere exposition du symbole et de l'oraison dominicale," Professor C. Schmidt, than whom no one has better studied the mysticism of the sixteenth century, remarks that the basis of the work is the doctrine of justification by faith, the sole authority invoked is that of the Scriptures, the only head of the church is Jesus Christ, the perfect church is the invisible church, the visible church is recognized by the preaching of the Gospel in its purity, and by the administration of the two sacraments as originally instituted. He adds that the doctrines of the Lord's Supper and of predestination are expounded in a thoroughly Calvinistic manner. See Professor S.'s excellent monograph, "Le mysticisme quietiste en France au debut de la reformation sous Francois premier," read before the Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., Bulletin, vi. 449, etc.]

[Footnote 209: Historia de ortu, progressu et ruina haereseon hujus saeculi (Col. 1614), lib. vii. c. 3, p. 392.]

[Footnote 210: E. g., Tabaraud, Biographie univ., art. Roussel.]

[Footnote 211: Haag, France protestante, art. Gerard Roussel; Gaillard, Hist. de Francois premier, vi. 418; Flor. de Raemond, ubi supra.]

Chapter III

FRANCIS I. AND MARGARET OF ANGOULEME--EARLY REFORMATORY MOVEMENTS AND STRUGGLES.

[Sidenote: Francis I. and his sister.]

[Sidenote: The portrait of the king.]

Francis the First and his sister, Margaret of Angouleme, were destined to exercise so important an influence in shaping the history of the French Reformation during the first half of the sixteenth century, that a glance at their personal history and character seems indispensable. Francis Was in his twenty-first year when, by the extinction of the elder line of the house of Orleans, the crown came to him as the nearest heir of Louis the Twelfth.[212] He was tall, but well proportioned, of a fair complexion, with a body capable of enduring without difficulty great exposure and fatigue. In an extant portrait, taken five years later, he is delineated with long hair and scanty beard. The drooping lids give to his eyes a languid expression, while the length of his nose, which earned him the sobriquet of "le roi au long nez," redeems his physiognomy from any approach to heaviness.[213] On the other hand, the Venetian Marino Cavalli, writing shortly before the close of his reign, eulogizes the personal appearance of Francis, at that time more than fifty years old. His mien was so right royal, we are assured, that even a foreigner, never having seen him before, would single him out from any company and instinctively exclaim, "This is the king!" No ruler of the day surpassed him in gravity and nobility of bearing. Well did he deserve to succeed that long line of monarchs upon each of whom the sacred oil, applied at his coronation in the cathedral of Rheims, had conferred the marvellous property of healing the king's-evil by a simple touch.[214]

[Sidenote: His character and tastes.]

At his accession, the lively imagination of Francis, fed upon the romances of chivalry that constituted his favorite reading, called up the picture of a brilliant future, wherein gallant deeds in arms should place him among the most renowned knights of Christendom. The ideal character he proposed for himself involving a certain regard for his word, Francis's mind revolted from imitating the plebeian duplicity of his wily predecessor, Louis the Eleventh--a king who enjoyed the undesirable reputation of never having made a promise which he intended in good faith to keep. The memory of the disingenuous manner in which Louis, by winking at the opposition of the Parliament of Paris, had suffered the revocation of the Pragmatic Sanction to fail, in spite of his own solemn engagements to carry it into execution, was, undoubtedly, one of the leading motives inducing the young prince, at the very beginning of his reign, to adopt the arbitrary measures already spoken of in a preceding chapter, respecting the papal concordat. Not for half his kingdom, he repeatedly declared, would he break the pledge he had given his Holiness. It is not difficult, however, to reconcile the pertinacity of Francis, on this occasion, with the frequent and well authenticated instances of bad faith in his dealings with other monarchs.

If his literary abilities were slender and his acquirements meagre, this king had at least the faculty of appreciating excellence in others. The scholars and wits whom, as we have seen, he succeeded in gathering about him, repaid his munificence with lavish praise, couched in all manner of verse, and in every language employed in the civilized world. Even later historians have not hesitated to rate him much higher than his very moderate abilities would seem to warrant.[215] The portrait drawn by the biographer of his imperial rival is, perhaps, full as advantageous as a regard for truth will permit us to accept. "Francis," says Robertson, "notwithstanding the many errors conspicuous in his foreign policy and domestic administration, was nevertheless humane, beneficent, generous. He possessed dignity without pride, affability free from meanness, and courtesy exempt from deceit. All who had access to him, and no man of merit was ever denied that privilege, respected and loved him. Captivated with his personal qualities, his subjects forgot his defects as a monarch, and, admiring him as the most accomplished and amiable gentleman in his dominions, they hardly murmured at acts of maladministration, which, in a prince of less engaging dispositions, would have seemed unpardonable."[216]

[Sidenote: Contrast between Francis I. and Charles V.]

Two monarchs could scarcely be more dissimilar than were Francis and the Emperor Charles. "So great is the difference between these two princes," says the Venetian Giustiniano, "that, as her most serene majesty the Queen of Navarre, the king's sister, remarked to me when talking on the subject, one of the two must needs be created anew by God after the pattern of the other, before they could agree. For, whilst the most Christian king is reluctant to assume the burden of great thoughts or undertakings, and devotes himself much to the chase or to his own pleasures, the emperor never thinks of anything but business and aggrandizement; and, whereas the most Christian king is simple, open, and very liberal, and quite sufficiently inclined to defer to the judgment and counsel of others, the emperor is reserved, parsimonious, and obstinate in his opinions, governing by himself, rather than through any one else."[217]

This diversity of temperament and disposition had ample scope for manifestation during the protracted wars waged by the two monarchs with each other. Fit representative of the race to which he belonged, Francis was bold, adventurous, and almost resistless in the impetuosity of a first assault. But he soon tired of his undertakings, and relinquished to the cooler and more calculating Charles the solid fruits of victory.[218]

[Sidenote: Francis's religious convictions.]

Of the possession of deep religious convictions I do not know that Francis has left any satisfactory evidence. That he was not strongly attached to the Roman church, that he thoroughly despised the ignorant monks, whose dissolute lives he well knew, that he had no extraordinary esteem for the Pope, all this is clear enough from many incidents of his life. It would even appear that, at one or two points, he might have been pleased to witness such a reformation of the church as could be effected without disturbing the existing order. To this he was the more inclined, that he found almost all the men distinguished for their learning arrayed on the side of the "new doctrines," as they were styled, while the pretorian legion of the papacy was headed by the opponents of letters.

[Sidenote: His fear of innovation.]

It will be found, however, that several circumstances tended to counteract or reverse the king's favorable prepossessions. Not least influential was a pernicious sentiment studiously instilled in his mind by those whose material interests were all on the side of the maintenance of the existing system--that a change of religion necessarily involves a change of government. We shall hear much during the century of this lying political axiom. When Francis, in his irritation at the Pope, suggested, on one occasion, to the Nuncio, that he might be compelled to follow the example Henry the Eighth, of England, had set him, and permit the spread of the "Lutheran" religion in France, the astute prelate replied: "Sire, to speak with all frankness, you would be the first to repent your rash step. Your loss would be greater than the Pope's; for a new religion established in the midst of a people involves nothing short of a change of prince."[219] And the same author that records this incident tells us that Francis hated the Lutheran "heresy," and used to say that this, like every other new sect, tended more to the destruction of kingdoms than to the edification of souls.[220] Nor must it be overlooked that Francis doubtless felt strongly confirmed in his persuasion, by the rash and disorderly acts of some restless and inconsiderate spirits such as are wont eagerly to embrace any new belief. Not the peasants' insurrections in Germany alone, but as well the excesses of the iconoclasts, and the imprudence of the authors of the famous placards of 1534, although their acts were distinctly repudiated by the vast majority of the French reformers, inflicted irretrievable damage, by furnishing plausible arguments to those who accused the Protestants of being authors or abettors of riot and confusion.

[Sidenote: His loose morals.]

A second reason of the early estrangement of Francis from the "new doctrines" has more frequently been overlooked. The rigid code of morals which the reformers established, and which John Calvin attempted to make in Geneva the law of the state, repelled a prince who, though twice married and both times to women devoted to his interests and faithful to their vows, treated his lawful wives with open neglect, and preferred to consort with perfidious mistresses, who sold to the enemy for money his confidential disclosures--a prince who, not satisfied with introducing excesses until then unheard of among his nobles, was not ashamed to bestow the royal bounty upon the professed head of the degraded women whom he allowed to accompany the court from place to place.[221]

[Sidenote: His anxiety to obtain the support of the Pope.]

If to these two motives we add a third--the desire of the king to avail himself of the important influence of the Roman pontiff upon the politics of Europe--we shall be at no loss to account for the singular fact that the brother of Margaret of Angouleme, in spite of his sister's entreaties and the promptings of his own better feeling--at times in defiance of his own manifest advantage--became during the later part of his reign the first of that long line of persecutors of whom the Huguenots were the unhappy victims.

[Sidenote: Studious disposition of Margaret.]

Margaret was two years older than her brother. Born April 11, 1492, in the city of Angouleme, she enjoyed, in common with Francis, all the opportunities of liberal culture afforded by her exalted station. These opportunities her keener intellect enabled her to improve far better than the future king. While Francis was indulging his passion for the chase, in company with Robert de la Marck, "the Boar of the Ardennes," Margaret was patiently applying herself to study. It is not always easy to determine how much is to be set down as truth, and how much belongs to the category of fiction, in the current stories of the scholarly attainments of princely personages. But there is good reason in the present case to believe that, unlike most of the ladies of her age that were reputed prodigies of learning, Margaret of Angouleme did not confine herself to the modern languages, but became proficient in Latin, besides acquiring some notion of Greek and Hebrew. By extensive reading, and through intercourse with the best living masters of the French language, she made herself a graceful writer. She was, moreover, a poet of no mean pretensions, as her verses, often comparing favorably with those of Clement Marot, abundantly testify. It was, however, to the higher walks of philosophical and religious thought that Margaret felt most strongly drawn. Could implicit credit be given to the partial praises of her professed eulogist, Charles de Sainte-Marthe, who owed his escape from the stake to her powerful intercession, we might affirm that the contemplation of the sublime truths of Revelation early influenced her entire character, and that "the Spirit of God began then to manifest His presence in her eyes, her expression, her walk, her conversation--in a word, in all her actions."[222]

[Sidenote: Her personal appearance.]

But, whatever may have been the precocious virtues of Margaret at the age of fifteen, it is certain that when, by her brother's elevation to the throne, she was introduced to the foremost place at court, it was her remarkable qualities of heart, quite as much as her recognized mental abilities, that called forth universal admiration. Her personal appearance, it is true, was a favorite subject for the encomium of poets; but her portraits fail to justify their panegyrics, and convey no impression of beauty. The features are large, the nose as conspicuously long as her brother's; yet the sweetness of expression, upon which Marot is careful chiefly to dwell in one of his elegant poetical epistles, is not less noticeable.[223]

[Sidenote: Her political Influence.]

In the conduct of public affairs Margaret took no insignificant part. Francis was accustomed so uniformly to entrust his mother and sister with important state secrets, that to the powerful council thus firmly united by filial and fraternal ties the term "Trinity" was applied, not only by the courtiers, but by the royal family itself.[224] Foreign diplomatists extolled Margaret's intelligent statesmanship, and asserted that she was consulted on every occasion.[225] It is a substantial claim of Margaret to the respect of posterity, that the influence thus enjoyed was, apparently, never prostituted to the advancement of selfish ends, but constantly exerted in the interest of learning, humanity, and religious liberty.

Margaret was first married, in 1509, to the Duke of Alencon, a prince whose cowardice on the battle-field of Pavia (1525), where he commanded the French left wing, is said to have been the principal cause of the defeat and capture of his royal brother-in-law. He made good his own escape, only to die, at Lyons, of disease induced by exposure and aggravated by bitter mortification. The next two years were spent by Margaret in unremitting efforts to secure her brother's release. With this object in view she obtained from the emperor a safe-conduct enabling her to visit and console Francis in his imprisonment at Madrid, and endeavor to settle with his captor the terms of his ransom. But, while admiring her sisterly devotion, Charles showed little disposition to yield to her solicitations. In fact, he even issued an order to seize her person the moment the term of her safe-conduct should expire--a peril avoided by the duchess only by forced marches. As it was, she crossed the frontier, it is said, a single hour before the critical time. The motive of this signal breach of imperial courtesy was, doubtless, the well-founded belief that Margaret was bearing home to France a royal abdication in favor of the Dauphin.[226]

[Sidenote: Margaret marries Henry of Navarre.]

Early in 1527, Margaret was married with great pomp to Henri d'Albret, King of Navarre.[227] The match would seem to have been prompted by love and admiration on her side; for the groom had performed a romantic exploit in effecting his escape from prison after his capture at Pavia.[228] In spite of the great disparity between the ages of Margaret and her husband,[229] the union was congenial, and added greatly to the power and resources of the latter. The duchies of Alencon and Berry more than equalled in extent the actual domain of the King of Navarre; for, from the time when Ferdinand the Catholic (in July, 1512) wrested from brave Catharine of Foix and her inefficient husband John[230] all their possessions on the southern slope of the Pyrenees,[231] the authority of the titular monarch was respected only in the mountainous district of which Pau was the capital, and to which the names of Bearn or French Navarre are indifferently applied. The union thus auspiciously begun lasted, unbroken by domestic contention, until the death of Margaret, in 1549;[232] and the pompous ceremonial attending the queen's obsequies is said to have been a sincere attestation of the universal sorrow affecting the King of Navarre and his subjects alike.

[Sidenote: She corresponds with Bishop Briconnet.]

It was through the instrumentality of the Bishop of Meaux that Margaret of Angouleme was first drawn into sympathy with the reformatory movement. Unsatisfied with herself and with the influences surrounding her, she sought in Briconnet a spiritual adviser and guide. The prelate, in the abstruse and almost unintelligible language of exaggerated mysticism, endeavored to fulfil the trust. His prolix correspondence still exists in manuscript in the National Library of Paris, together with the replies of his royal penitent. Its incomprehensibility may perhaps forever preclude the publication of the greater part;[233] but we can readily forgive the bishop's absurdities and far-fetched conceits, when we find him in his letters leading Margaret to the Holy Scriptures as the only source of spiritual strength, and enjoining a humble and docile reception of its teachings.

[Sidenote: Luther's teachings condemned by the Sorbonne.]

On the fifteenth of April, 1521, the University of Paris, whose opinion respecting Luther's tenets the entire Christian world had for two years been anxiously expecting, pronounced its solemn decision. It condemned the writings of the German monk to the flames, on the ground that they were seductive, insulting to the hierarchy, contrary to Scripture, and schismatic. It likened his latest production, De Captivitate Babylonica, to Alcoran. It branded as preposterous the notion that God had reserved the discovery of what is needful to the salvation of the faithful for Martin Luther to make; as though Christ had left his spouse, the Church, so many centuries, and until now, in the darkness and blindness of error. Such sentiments as he uttered were a denial of the first principles of the faith, an unblushing profession of impiety, an arrogance so impious that it must be repressed by chains and censures--nay, by fire and by flame, rather than refuted by argument.[234] A long list of heretical propositions selected from Luther's works was appended.[235]

[Sidenote: Melanchthon's defence.]

In the month of June following, Melanchthon replied to the Sorbonne's condemnation. He declared that, could the great Gerson and his illustrious associates and predecessors rise from the dead, they would fail to recognize in the present race of theologians their legitimate offspring, and that they would deplore the misfortune of the university as well as of the whole of Christendom, in that sophists had usurped the place of theologians, and slanderers the seat of Christian doctors. As for the silly letter prefixed to the decree, the reformer wrote, it is a feeble production full of womanish fury: "He pretends to the sole possession of wisdom. He contemns us. He is a Manichaean, a Montanist; he is mad. Let him be compelled by fire and flame." Who could refrain from derisive laughter at the unmanly and truly monkish weakness of such threats?[236]

[Sidenote: Regency of Louise de Savoie.]

In the summer of 1523 the king, in order to provide for the government of France during his expected absence from the capital, appointed his mother temporary regent--a dignity which Louise de Savoie enjoyed more than once during Francis's reign. The chancellor, Antoine Duprat, embraced the opportunity to persuade the queen mother that she could not better atone for the irregularities of her own life than by enforcing submission to the authority of the papal church. What causes had contributed to the very radical change apparently effected in her mental attitude to the established ecclesiastical system, since she had in the preceding December discovered the monks, of whatever color their cowl might be, to be arrant "hypocrites" and the most "dangerous generation of human kind"--if, indeed, any such change in her mental attitude had really taken place at all, and her present zeal was not altogether assumed from political motives--we have not the means of determining with certainty. However this may be, she was now induced to take a much more decided stand than Francis had ever taken in opposition to the reformed doctrines, of whose spread, not only in Meaux and other cities in the provinces, but even in Paris, both in the schools of learning and without, there began to be symptoms alarming to the hierarchy.

[Sidenote: The Sorbonne's recommendations for the extirpation of heresy.]

As a preliminary step, the regent sent her confessor, Friar Gilbert Nicolai, to the Sorbonne, with instructions to consult it respecting "the means to be employed for purging this very Christian realm of the damnable doctrine of Luther." It need scarcely be said that the message was received with great delight. The theological doctors soon replied, rendering thanks to Almighty God for having inspired Louise with the holy purpose of executing whatever might be found most likely to promote God's honor and the prosperity of France.[237] What measures did they propose to her as best calculated to accomplish this laudable end? Sermons, disputations, books, and other scholastic means, they write, may be employed in the refutation of the errors of Luther, as indeed they are every day employed, at the Sorbonne's instigation, and from this instrumentality some good effects may be expected; but since, after all, neither sermons nor books, however learned and conclusive, compel any person to renounce his heretical views, more practical and coercive measures must be adopted if the object is to be attained. All royal officers must be enjoined strictly to enforce every order promulgated against heretics. The prelates must be urged to demand, on pain of excommunication, the surrender of all books of Luther or his supporters found in their dioceses. Meanwhile, the highest ecclesiastical censures are to be directed against those who in any way uphold the heterodox belief. It is only in this way that hope can reasonably be entertained of suppressing this pernicious innovation, which may yet inflict still greater evils upon unfortunate France; since the Scriptures tell us that pestilence, famine, and war served as a rod for the punishment of God's chosen nation of old, whenever it forsook the pure precepts of the law given by the Almighty.

In reply to another inquiry made by the regent at the same time, the Sorbonne enters into greater detail. If any one complains that he is unjustly accused of favoring the heresy that has recently appeared, let him clear himself by following St. Paul's example, who, when brought to the knowledge of the truth, instantly undertook the defence of what he had ignorantly persecuted. Rumors that some persons in high places are friendly to the spread of the new errors have gained lamentable currency, both at home and abroad. They have obtained confirmation from the praise lately lavished by "some great personages" upon the doctrine of Luther, and the blame poured upon its opponents. The execution of the king's order for the burning of Luther's books has been singularly delayed. Worst of all have been the obstacles placed in the way of the pious efforts of the prelates, either without the consent of the king, or by him ill-advised--for example, in the proceedings of the Bishop of Paris against Louis de Berquin. Similar impediments have been interposed to prevent the condemnation by parliament and university of the printed works of this same Berquin and of Lefevre d'Etaples; while, as if to make the affair still more scandalous, two treatises lately written in refutation of Luther's doctrines have been seized in the name of the king and by his authority.[238]

[Sidenote: Wide circulation of Luther's works.]

Such were the complaints of the theological faculty, such the means suggested for the destruction of the new leaven that was already beginning to assert its mission to permeate society. There were certainly sufficient grounds for apprehension. The works of Luther, as we have before seen, had early been translated into French, and a contemporary writer confirms the statement that they had already been widely disseminated.[239] An order of parliament, referred to in its communication to the regent, had indeed been published, to the sound of the trumpet, throughout the city of Paris (August 3, 1521), strictly commanding all booksellers, printers, and others that might have copies in their possession, to give them up within the space of eight days, on pain of imprisonment and fine.[240] But even this measure failed to accomplish the desired result. The Reformation was silently extending its influence, as some significant events sufficiently proved.

[Sidenote: Lambert, the first French monk to embrace the Reformation.]

At Avignon, copies of several of the writings of Martin Luther fell into the hands of Francois Lambert, son of a former private secretary of the papal legate entrusted with the government of the Comtat Venaissin. He was a man of vivid imagination, keen religious sensibilities, and marked oratorical powers. He had at the age of fifteen been so deeply impressed by the saintly appearance of the Franciscans as to seek admission to their monastery as a novice. No sooner did he assume, a year later (1503), the irrevocable vows that constituted him a monk, than his disenchantment began. According to his own account, the quarrelsome and debauched friars no longer felt any of the solicitude they had previously entertained lest the knowledge of their excesses should deter him from embracing a "religious" life. A few years later Lambert became a preacher, and having, through a somewhat careful study of the Holy Scriptures, embraced more evangelical views than were held by most of his order, began to deliver discourses as well received by the people as they were hated by his fellow-monks. Great was the outcry against him when he openly denounced the misdeeds of a worthless vender of papal indulgences; still greater when copies of Luther's treatises were found in his possession. The books were seized, sealed, condemned, and burned, although scarcely a glance had been vouchsafed at their contents. It was enough for the monkish judges to cry: "They are heretical! They are heretical!" "Nevertheless," exclaims honest Lambert, kindling with indignation at the remembrance of the scene, "I confidently assert that those same books of Luther contain more of pure theology than all the writings of all the monks that have lived since the creation of the world."[241]

[Sidenote: He is also the first to renounce celibacy.]

Lambert had made full trial of the monastic life. He had even immured himself for some time in a Carthusian retreat, but found its inmates in no respect superior to the Franciscans. At last an opportunity for escape offered. In 1522, when a score of years had passed since he entered upon his novitiate, he was despatched with letters to the general of his order. Instead of fulfilling his commission, he traversed Switzerland, and made his way to Wittemberg, where he satisfied the desire he had long entertained, of meeting the great reformer to whose works he owed his own spiritual enlightenment. Full of zeal for the propagation of the doctrines he had embraced, Lambert, not long after (1524), established himself at Metz as a favorable point from which France might be influenced. But the commotion excited by his opponents--perhaps, also, his own lack of prudence--compelled him within a fortnight to flee to Strasbourg.[242] Here, more secure, but scarcely more judicious, he busied himself with sending over the French borders numbers of tracts composed or translated by himself, and addressing to Francis and the chief persons of his court appeals which, doubtless, rarely if ever reached their eyes.[243] In another field of labor, to which the Landgrave of Hesse called him, Francois Lambert performed services far more important than any he was permitted to render his native land. As the first French monk to throw aside his habit--above all, as the first to renounce celibacy and defend in a published treatise the step he had taken (1523), no French reformer, even among those of far greater abilities and wider influence, was regarded by the adherents of the Roman Catholic Church with so intense a dislike.[244]

The firm hold which the Reformation was gaining on the population of several places of great importance, close upon the eastern frontiers of the kingdom, was a portent of evil in the eyes of the Sorbonne; for Metz, St. Hippolyte, and Montbeliard, all destined to be absorbed in the growing territories of France, were already bound to it by close ties of commercial intercourse.

[Sidenote: Jean Chatellain, of Metz.]

In Metz the powerful appeals of an Augustinian monk, Jean Chatellain, had powerfully moved the masses. He was as eloquent as he was learned, as commanding in appearance as fearless in the expression of his belief.[245] The attempt to molest him would have proved a very dangerous one for the clergy of Metz to make; for the enthusiasm of the laity in his support knew no bounds, and the churchmen prudently avoided giving it an occasion for manifestation. But, no sooner had Chatellain been induced on some pretext to leave the safe protection of the walls, than a friar of his own order and monastery betrayed him to the bishop.[246] He was hurriedly taken to Nommeny, and thence to Vic for trial and execution. In vain did the Inquisitor of the Faith strive to shake his constancy. His judges were forced to liken their incorrigible prisoner to the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear. As "a preacher of false doctrines," an "apostate" and a "liar toward God Almighty," they declared him excommunicated and deprived of whatever ecclesiastical benefices he might hold. The faithful compiler of the French martyrology gives in accurate, but painful, detail the successive steps by which Chatellain was stripped of the various prerogatives conferred upon him in ordination. I shall not repeat the story of sacred vessels placed in his hands only to be hastily snatched from them, of the scraping of his fingers supposed to remove the grace of consecration, of chasuble and stole indignantly taken away--in short, of all the petty devices of a malice at which the mind wearies and the heart sickens. It was perhaps a fitting sequel to the ceremony that the degrading bishop should hand his victim over to the representative of the secular arm to be put to death, with a hypocritical recommendation to mercy: "Lord Judge, we entreat you as affectionately as we can, as well by the love of God, as from pity and compassion, and out of respect for our prayers, that you do this wretched man no injury tending to death or the mutilation of his body."[247] The prayer was granted--according to the intent of the petitioner. On the twelfth of January, 1525, Chatellain was led to the place of execution, as cheerful in demeanor, the witnesses said, as if walking to a feast. At the stake he knelt and offered a short prayer, then met his horrible sentence with a constancy that won many converts to the faith for which he had suffered. At the news of the fate of their admired teacher, the citizens of Metz could not contain their rage. A tumultuous scene ensued, in which it was well that the ecclesiastics--there were more than nine hundred within the walls[248]--escaped with no greater injury at the hands of the angry populace than some passing insults. John Vedast, an evangelical teacher, was at that time in confinement, reserved for a similar doom to that of Chatellain. He was liberated by the people, who, in a body membering several thousand men, visited his prison and enabled him to escape to a safe refuge. It was not until a strong detachment of troops had been thrown into the city that the burgesses were reduced to submission.[249] "None the less," admits a Roman Catholic historian, "did Lutheranism spread over the entire district of Metz."[250]

[Sidenote: Tragic end of Wolfgang Schuch.]

At St. Hippolyte, a town near the Swiss frontier, dependent upon the Duke of Lorraine, similar success and a similarly tragic end were the results of the zealous labors of Wolfgang Schuch, a priest of German extraction. The "good duke" Antoine, having been led to confound the peaceable disciples of Schuch with the revolted peasants, whose ravages had excited widespread alarm throughout Germany, publicly proclaimed his intention of visiting the town that harbored them with fire and sword. To propitiate him by removing his misapprehension, Schuch wrote to the duke a singularly touching letter containing a candid exposition of the religion he professed;[251] but finding that his missive had been of no avail, he resolved to immolate himself in behalf of his flock. At Nancy, the capital of the duchy, whither he had gone to dissuade Antoine from executing his savage threats, he was thrown into a loathsome dungeon, while the University of Paris was consulted respecting the soundness of thirty-one propositions extracted from his writings by the Inquisitor of Lorraine. On the nineteenth of August, 1525--the theologians of the Sorbonne having some months before reported unfavorably upon the theses submitted to them--Wolfgang Schuch was consigned to the flames.[252]

[Sidenote: Farel at Montbeliard.]

Less sanguinary results attended the Reformation at Montbeliard, where the indefatigable Farel was the chief actor. One of those highly dramatic incidents, in which the checkered life of this remarkable man abounds, is said to have preceded his withdrawal from the city. Happening, on St. Anthony's day, to meet, upon a bridge spanning a narrow stream in the neighborhood, a solemn procession headed by priests chanting the praises of the saint whose effigy they bore aloft, Farel was seized with an uncontrollable desire to arrest the impious service. Snatching the image from the hands of ecclesiastics who were little prepared for so sudden an onslaught, he indignantly cried, "Wretched idolaters, will you never forsake your idolatry?" At the same instant he threw the saint into the water, before the astonished devotees had time to interfere. Had not some one just then opportunely raised the shout, "The saint is drowning," it might have gone hard with the fearless iconoclast.[253]

The Reformation was thus gaining a foothold in the bishopric of Metz, in the duchy of Lorraine, and the county of Montbeliard--districts as yet independent of France, in which country they were subsequently merged. But, if suffered to be victorious at these important points, it might readily cross the borders and spread with irresistible force to the contiguous parts of Francis's dominions. Nearer home, the reformatory movement at Meaux, though abandoned by the bishop who had fostered its first development, was not wholly suppressed. In Lyons and Grenoble, Friar Aime Maigret had preached such evangelical sermons--in French to the people and in Latin to the Parliament of Dauphiny--that he had been sent to Paris to be examined by the Sorbonne. The primate and his council had seen with solicitude that from the ashes of Waldo and the Poor Men of Lyons "very many new shoots were springing up,"[254] and called for some signal act of severity to repress the growing evil.

[Sidenote: Pierre Caroli lectures on the Psalms.]

In Paris itself the Sorbonne found reason for alarm. The sympathy of Margaret of Angouleme with the friends of progress was recognized. It had already availed for the deliverance of Louis de Berquin, whose remarkable history will find a place in the next chapter. Nor did the redoubted syndic of the theological faculty, Beda, or Bedier, reign without a rival in the academic halls. Pierre Caroli, one of the doctors invited by Briconnet to Meaux, a clever wrangler, and never better pleased than when involved in controversy, albeit a man of shallow religious convictions and signal instability, wearied out by his counter-plots the illustrious heresy-hunter. When forbidden to preach, Caroli opened a course of lectures upon the Psalms in the College de Cambray. Having then been interdicted from continuing his prelections, he made the modest request to be permitted to finish the exposition of the 22d Psalm, which he had begun. This being refused, the disputatious doctor posted the following notice on the doors of the college: "Pierre Caroli, wishing to conform to the orders of the sacred faculty, ceases to teach. He will resume his lectures (when it shall please God) where he left off, at the verse, 'They pierced my hands and my feet.'"[255]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The Heptameron of the Queen of Navarre.]

I have reserved for this place a few remarks respecting the Heptameron of Margaret of Angouleme, which seem required by the disputed character or this singular work. I have spoken at length of the virtues of the Queen of Navarre, and I may here add a statement of my strong conviction that the accusation is altogether groundless which ascribes a sinister meaning to the strong expressions of sisterly affection so frequent in her correspondence with Francis the First (see M. Genin, Supplement a la notice sur Marg. d'Angouleme, prefixed to the second volume of the Letters). Nor do I make any account of the vague statement of that mendacious libertine, Brantome, who doubtless imagined himself to be paying the Queen of Navarre the most delicate compliment, when he said, that "of gallantry she knew more than her daily bread."

But, whatever the purity of Margaret's own private life, the fact which cannot be overlooked is that a book of a decidedly immoral tendency was composed and published under her name. Her most sincere admirers would hail with gratification any satisfactory evidence that the Heptameron was written by another hand. Unfortunately, there seems to be none. On the contrary, we have Brantome's direct testimony to the effect that the composition of the book was the employment of the queen's idle hours when travelling about in her litter, and that his grandmother, being one of Margaret's ladies of honor, was accustomed to take charge of her writing-case (Ed. Lalanne, viii. 126). Equally untenable is the view taken by the historian De Thou (liv. vi., vol. x. 508), who makes the fault more venial by representing the Heptameron to have been composed by the fair author in her youth. (So, too, Soldan, i. 89.) I am sorry to have to say that the events referred to in the stories themselves belong to a period reaching within a year or two of Margaret's death.

The facts, then, are simply these: The tales of Boccaccio's Decameron were read with great delight by Margaret, by Francis the First, and by his children. They resolved, therefore, to imitate the great Italian novelist by committing to writing the most remarkable incidents supplied by the gossip of the court (see the Prologue to the Heptameron). Francis and his children, finding that Margaret greatly excelled in this species of composition, soon renounced the unequal strife, but encouraged her to pursue an undertaking promising to afford them much amusement. Apportioning, after the example of Boccaccio, a decade of stories, illustrative of some single topic, to each day's entertainment, the Queen of Navarre had reached the seventh day, when the death of her brother, the near approach of her own end, and disgust with so frivolous an occupation, induced her to suspend her labors. The Heptameron, as the interrupted work was now called, was not apparently intended for publication, but was, after Margaret's death, printed under the auspices of her daughter, the celebrated Jeanne d'Albret.

As to the stories themselves, they treat of adventures, in great part amorous and often immodest. In this particular they are scarcely less objectionable than those of Boccaccio. They differ from the latter in the circumstance that the author's avowed purpose is to insert none but actual occurrences. They are distinguished from them more especially by the attempt uniformly made to extract a wholesome lesson from every incident. The prevalent vices of the day are portrayed--with too much minuteness of detail, indeed, but only that they may be held up to the greater condemnation. It is particularly the monks of various orders who, for their flagrant crimes against morality, are made the object of biting sarcasm. The abominable teachings of these professed instructors of religion are justly reprobated. For example, in the Forty-fourth Nouvelle, Parlamente, while admitting that some Franciscans preach a pure doctrine, affirms that "the streets are not paved with such, so much as marked by their opposites;" and she relates the attempt of one of their prominent men, a doctor of theology, to convince some members of his own fraternity that the Gospel is entitled to no more credit than Caesar's Commentaries. "From the hour I heard him," she adds, "I have refused to believe the words of any preacher unless I find them in agreement with God's Word, which is the true touchstone to ascertain what words are true and what false" (Ed. Soc. des bibliophiles, ii. 382-384).

Modern French litterateurs have not failed to eulogize the author as frequently rivalling her model in dramatic vividness of narration. At the same time they take exception to the numerous passages wherein she "preaches," as detracting from the artistic merit of her work. It is, however, precisely the feature here referred to that constitutes, in the eyes of reflecting readers, the chief, if not the sole, redeeming trait of the Heptameron. As a favorable example, illustrating the nature of the pious words and exhortations thrown in so incongruously with stories of the most objectionable kind, I translate a few sentences from the Prologue, in which Oisile (the pseudonym for Margaret herself) speaks: "If you ask me what receipt I have that keeps me so joyful and in such good health in my old age, it is this--that as soon as I rise I take and read the Holy Scriptures. Contemplating there the goodness of God, who sent His Son to earth to announce the glad tidings of the remission of all sins by the gift of His love, passion, and merits, the consideration causes me such joy that I take my psalter and sing in my heart as humbly as I can, while repeating with my lips those beautiful psalms and hymns which the Holy Ghost composed in the heart of David and other authors; and the satisfaction I derive from this does me so much good that all the ills that may befall me through the day appear to me to be blessings, seeing that I bear in my heart Him who bore them for me. In like manner, before I sup, I withdraw to give sustenance to my soul in reading, and then at night I recall all I have done during the past day, in order to ask for the pardon of my faults and thank God for His gifts. Then in His love, fear and peace I take my rest, assured from every ill. Wherefore, my children, here is the pastime upon which I settled long since, after having in vain sought contentment of spirit in all the rest.... For he that knows God sees everything beautiful in Him, and without Him everything unattractive." Prologue, 13-15.

If any one object that no quantity of pious reflections can compensate for the positive evil in the Heptameron, I can but acquiesce in his view, and concede that M. Genin has been much too lenient in his estimate of Margaret's fault. It is a riddle which I leave to the reader to solve, that a princess of unblemished private life, of studious habits, and of not only a serious, but even a positively religious turn of mind--in short, in every way a noble pattern for one of the most corrupt courts Europe has ever seen--should, in a work aiming to inculcate morality, and abundantly furnished with direct religious exhortation, have inserted, not one, but a score of the most repulsive pictures of vice, drawn from the impure scandal of that court.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 212: He was born at Cognac, Sept. 12, 1494.]

[Footnote 213: See the fac-simile in the magnificent work of M. Niel, Portraits des personnages francais les plus illustres du 16me siecle, Paris, 1848, 2 vols. fol.]

[Footnote 214: The envoy's description of Francis's curative power is interesting. "Ha una proprieta, o vero dono da Dio, come han tutti li re di Francia, di far guarire li amalati di scrofule.... E questo lo fa in giorno solenne, come Pasqua, Natale e Nostra Donna. Si confessa e communica; dipoi tocca li amalati in croce al volto, dicendo: 'Il Re ti tocca, e Iddio ti guarisca!'" Cavalli thinks there can be no doubt of the reality of the cures effected; otherwise, why should continually increasing numbers of sick folk come from the most distant countries, if they received no benefit? Relazioni Venete (Alberi), ser. i., i. 237. It must not be imagined, however, that the kings of France engrossed all virtue of this kind. The monarchs of England were wont to hallow on Good Friday certain rings which thenceforth guaranteed the wearer against epilepsy. These cramp-rings, as they were called, were no less in demand abroad than at home. Sir John Mason wrote from Brussels, April 25, 1555, that many persons had expressed the desire to obtain them, and begged Sir W. Petrie to interest himself in procuring him some of this year's blessing by Queen Mary. MSS. State Paper Office.]

[Footnote 215: The small size of the brain and the depression of the forehead indicated in all the different contemporary portraits of Francis have been noticed by M. Niel (Portraits, i. 10), who dryly adds that in view of them he might have been inclined to withhold the eulogies he has inserted in his notice of the monarch, "had he not recollected in time that the laws of phrenology are not infallible."]

[Footnote 216: Robertson, Charles V., iii. 396.]

[Footnote 217: Relazione di Francia (1538), Alberi, i. 203, 204. It will be noticed that Giustiniano wrote at a period when the youthful ardor of Francis had somewhat cooled down.]

[Footnote 218: The French king's proverbial ill-success gave rise to the taunt that his was "un esser savio in bocca e non in mente," but Marino Cavalli is charitably inclined to ascribe his misfortune rather to the lack of the right men to execute his designs, than to any fault of his own. Rel. des Amb. Ven., Tommaseo, i. 282.]

[Footnote 219: "Sire, vous en seriez marri le premier, et vous en prendroit tres mal, et y perdriez plus que le pape; car une nouvelle religion, mise parmi un peuple, ne demande apres que changement du prince." Brantome, M. l'Admiral de Chastillon, Oeuvres, ix. 202.]

[Footnote 220: Brantome, Femmes illustres: Marguerite, reine de Navarre. Also Homines ill.: Francois premier (Oeuvres, vii. 256, 257).]

[Footnote 221: The Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. franc., v. 380, 381, publishes from a MS. in the library of the Louvre, an order from Francis I., countersigned by Bayard, directing his treasurer to pay to "Cecille de Viefville, dame des filles de joye suivans nostre court," the sum of forty-five livres tournois. This gift is to be shared with "les autres femmes de sa voccation," as she and they shall see fit, and to be received as "a New-Year's present for the first of January past, such as it has been customary from all time to make." The last clause may have been inserted for the purpose of palliating the disgraceful usage. This precious document is followed by Cecile's receipt, dated, like the order, Hesdin, February 18, 1539 (1540 New Style).]

[Footnote 222: Ch. de Sainte-Marthe, Oraison funebre, 1550, apud Genin, i. 3.]

[Footnote 223:

Une doulceur assise en belle face, Qui la beaulte des plus belles efface; D'un regard chaste ou n'habite nul vice;

. . . . . . . .

Tons ces beaulx dons et mille davantaige Sont en ung corps ne de hault parentaige, Et de grandeur tant droicte et bien formee, Que faicte semble expres pour estre aymee D'hommes et dieux.

--Ined. Epistle of Marot to Margaret, prefixed to Genin, Notice, xiii., xiv. One of the two crayons of Margaret by contemporary artists, reproduced by Niel, Portraits des personnages illustres, etc., tome ii., was taken in early life; the other represents her as wearing the sombre dress she preferred in her last years.]

[Footnote 224: Vie politique de Marg. d' Angouleme, by Leroux de Lincy, prefixed to the Heptameron (Ed. of the Soc. des bibliophiles), i. p. lxiv.]

[Footnote 225: "La serenissima regina di Navarra ... e donna di molto valore, e spirito grande, e che intervienne in tutti i consigli." Relaz. di Francesco Giustiniano, 1538, Alberi, i. 203.]

[Footnote 226: The document contained a proviso that, should Francis be liberated, the Dauphin was to restore to him the sovereignty for the term of his natural life. It was dated Madrid, November, 1525. Isambert, Recueil des anciennes lois, etc., xii. 237-244.]

[Footnote 227: "Le mercredy penultiesme jour de janvier, au dict an, ils furent espousez an diet lieu de Saint Germain (en Laye). Apres furent faictes jouxtes et tournois et gros triomphes par l'espace de huict jours ou environ." Journal d'un bourgeois, 302. Olhagaray states the date differently, viz., January 24th; ubi infra, 488.]

[Footnote 228: See Olhagaray, Histoire de Foix, Bearn, et Navarre (Paris, 1609), 487.]

[Footnote 229: He was born April, 1503, and was consequently eleven years younger than Margaret.]

[Footnote 230: Catharine's bitter reproach addressed to her husband has become famous: "Had I been king, and you queen, we had been reigning in Navarre at this moment." Prescott, Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, iii. 353. Olhagaray gives another of her speeches: "O Roy vous demeures Jean d'Albret, et ne penses plus au Royaume de Navarre que vous avez perdu par vostre nonchalance." Ubi supra, 455.]

[Footnote 231: The Spanish conquest of Navarre is narrated at length by Prescott, Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, iii. 347-367. See also Olhagaray, 454, etc., and Moncaut, Histoire des Pyrenees, iv. 233-271. It will be borne in mind that the great crime of John d'Albret was his adhesion to Louis XII. of France, in his determined struggle with Julius II.; and that Ferdinand's title was justified by a pretended bull of this Pope giving the kingdoms of his enemies to be a prey to the first invader that might seize them in behalf of the Pontifical See. The bull, however, is now generally admitted to be a Spanish forgery. See Prescott, ubi supra. Baron A. de Ruble observes (Mem. de La Huguerye, 1, note): "On sait aujourd'hui que cette bulle est apocryphe."]

[Footnote 232: Brantome does, indeed, accuse Henry of using severity toward his wife, on account of her religious innovations, until threatened with the displeasure of Francis; but the truth seems to be that the King of Navarre was himself not ill-disposed to the religious reformation.]

[Footnote 233: M. Herminjard has been criticised for inserting too many of Bishop Briconnet's epistles in the first volume of his Correspondance des reformateurs dans les pays de langue francaise. M. Genin also gives specimens of the bishop's bombast, observing maliciously: "Si Briconnet argumenta en pareil style aux conciles de Pise et du Latran, il dut embarrasser beaucoup ses adversaires." Lettres de Marg. d'Angouleme, i. 128.]

[Footnote 234: "O impiam et inverecundam arrogantiam," etc. See chapter I., p. 24.]

[Footnote 235: Determinatio Facultatis, etc., Gerdes., iv. (Doc.) 10, etc.; Bretschneider, Corpus Reformatorum (Opera Melanchthonis), i. 366, etc., 371, etc.]

[Footnote 236: Adversus furiosum Parisiensium theologastrorum decretum Philippi Melanchthonis pro Luthero apologia, Bretschneider, i. 399-416.]

[Footnote 237: Lettre de la faculte de theologie a la reine, Oct. 7, 1523, Gerdes., iv. (Doc.) 16, 17.]

[Footnote 238: Articules concernans les responces que apres meure deliberation a fait la faculte de theologie. Gerdes., iv. (Doc.) 17-21.]

[Footnote 239: "Qui [les livres de Luther] furent imprimez et publiez par toutes les villes d'Alemaigne et par tout le royaume de France." Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, 94.]

[Footnote 240: Ibid., 104.]

[Footnote 241: "Ego confidenter loquar, credens in Domino quod verum sit, quod plus syncerioris theologiae in libris praedictis continetur, quam in omnibus scriptis omnium monachorum, qui a principio fuerunt."]

[Footnote 242: A contemporary song (1525) denouncing woes against Strasbourg for harboring the "Lutherans," contains these doggerel lines:

"Ce faulx Lambert, heretique mauldict, Te fait prendre la dance De l'infemal deduyt."

Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. franc., ix. (1860) 381.]

[Footnote 243: Margaret of Angouleme, out of all patience, at last sent word requesting him to desist from these untimely letters to her brother--"qu'il n'escripva plus ny au Roy ny a aultres." Toussain to Farel, December 17, 1524, Herminjard, i. 313.]

[Footnote 244: Witness the malignant satisfaction exhibited by the Nuncio Aleander when noting the reported death of Lambert and his entire family: "Mi ha detto hoggi, che Francesco Lamberto d'Avignon, qual fugito dal monasterio, et ito astar un tempo con Luther ha scritto infiniti libri contra la Chiesa di Dio, quest' anno in terra del Langravio di Hassia insieme con la moglie et figliuoli tutti miserabilmente, et come da miracolo, in gran calamita son crepati." Aleander to Sanga, Brussels, November 25, 1531, Vatican Library, Laemmer, Monumenta, 90. See Lambert's autobiographical sketch, entitled: "Rationes propter quas Minoritarum conversationem habitumque rejecit," Gerdes., iv. (Doc.) 21-28, and translated, Herminjard, i. 118, etc.; F. W. Hassencamp, Fr. Lambert von Avignon; Haag, France prot., s. v.; Baum, Lambert von Avignon.]

[Footnote 245: So says Lambert, who states: "Novi ilium ex intimis; fuit enim mihi perinde atque Jonathas Davidi." Praef. ad Comm. in Hoseam, Gerdes., Scrinium antiquarium, vi. 490.]

[Footnote 246: The Bishop of Metz was John, Cardinal of Lorraine, uncle of the more notorious Cardinal Charles. Chatellain had written a poetical chronicle of Metz reaching to the year 1524. A friendly hand continued it, and recorded the fate of Chatellain, described as

"Augustin, grand Docteur Qui estoit grand predicateur."

The chronicle, which certainly possesses no striking literary merit, is printed among the Preuves of Dom Calmet, Histoire de Lorraine (Nancy, 1748), iii. pp. cclxxii., etc.]

[Footnote 247: Crespin, Actiones et Monimenta (Geneva, 1560), fol. 44-46.]

[Footnote 248: "Quorum (Antichristi prophetae) faex in eadem civitate tam multa est, ut eosdem nongentos esse ferant." Lamberti praef. ad Comm. in Hoseam, Gerdes., Scrinium Antiq., vi. 485, etc.]

[Footnote 249: Ibid., ubi supra.]

[Footnote 250: Hist. de l'eglise gallicane, apud Gaillard, vi. 404.]

[Footnote 251: The letter is given by Crespin, Actiones et Monimenta, fol. 50; also Gerdes., iv. (Doc), 48-50.]

[Footnote 252: Gerdes., iv. 51; Crespin, fol. 49-52; Haag, s. v.]

[Footnote 253: The incident, it must be confessed, is by no means above suspicion (see Kirchhofer, Life of Wm. Farel, London ed., p. 40, and Schmidt, Wilhelm Farel, p. 6), although, as Merle d'Aubigne observes, Hist. of the Reformation, bk. xii. c. 13, it is in keeping with Farel's character. Oecolampadius, foreseeing the possibility of his indulging in such inconsiderate words and actions, warned him, as early as Aug. 19, 1524, to temper his zeal with mildness, and to treat his opponents rather as was most expedient, than as they deserved to be treated. Herminjard, i. 265-267.]

[Footnote 254: "Ceste heresie lutherienne, qui commance fort a pulluler par deca. Et jam plures de cineribus valde (Valdo) renascuntur plantulae." Council of the Archbishop of Lyons to Noel Beda, January 23, 1525. The title of primate was assumed both by the Archbishop of Sens and the Archbishop of Lyons, the former having apparently the better claim and enjoying nominally a Wider supremacy (as "Primat des Gaules et de Germanie"); but the latter gradually vindicated his pretension to spiritual authority over most of France. See Encyclopedie methodique, s. v. Sens, and Lyon.]

[Footnote 255: Gaillard, Hist. de Francois premier, vi. 408.]

IV. INCREASING SEVERITY.--LOUIS DE BERQUIN

[Sidenote: Captivity of Francis I.]

The year 1525 was critical as well in the religious as in the political history of France. On the twenty-fourth of February, in consequence of the disaster at Pavia, Francis fell into the hands of his rival--Charles, by hereditary descent King of Spain, Naples, and Jerusalem, sovereign, under various titles, of the Netherlands, and by election Emperor of Germany--a prince whose vast possessions in both hemispheres made him at once the wealthiest and most powerful of living monarchs. With his unfortunate captivity, all the fanciful schemes of conquest entertained by the French king fell to the ground. But France felt the blow not less keenly than the monarch. One of the most gallant armies that ever crossed the Alps had been lost. The kingdom was by no means invulnerable, for the capital itself might easily reward a well-executed invasion from the side of Flanders. The recuperative energies of the country could be put forth to little advantage, so long as the place of the king--fons omnis jurisdictionis, as the French legists styled him--was filled by a woman in the capacity of regent. France bade fair to exhibit to the world the inherent weakness of a despotism wherein all power, in fact as well as in theory, centres ultimately in the single person of the supreme ruler as autocrat. For it was his standing boast that he was "emperor" in his own realm, holding it of none other than God, and responsible to God alone, and that as king and emperor he had the exclusive right to make ordinances from which no subject could appeal without rendering himself liable to the penalties pronounced upon traitors.[256] Now that the head was taken away, who could answer for the harmonious action of the body which had been wont to depend upon him alone for direction?

[Sidenote: Change in the religious policy of Louise de Savoie.]

Louise de Savoie, to whom the direction of affairs had been confided during her son's absence in Italy, had, for greater convenience, transferred the court temporarily to the city of Lyons, where, under the protection of Margaret of Angouleme, the most evangelical preachers of France had been allowed to proclaim the tenets of the reformers within the churches and in the hearing of thousands of eager listeners. The queen mother had not yet ventured decidedly to depart from the tolerant system hitherto pursued by the crown.[257] But the announcement of the capture of Francis effected a complete revolution in her policy. There is no inherent improbability in the story that Chancellor Duprat--the statesman and ecclesiastic who had gained so strong an ascendancy over the mind of Louise that he was shortly promoted to the Archbishopric of Sens and rewarded with the rich abbey of Saint Benoit-sur-Loire--insinuated to the queen mother that the misfortunes befalling France were tokens of the Divine displeasure. Had Francis spared no exertions to destroy the first germs of the heresy so insidiously introduced into his kingdom, he would not now, said the churchman, be languishing in the dungeons of Milan or Madrid. Nor could hopes be entertained of his deliverance, and of a return of Heaven's favor, unless the queen mother bestirred herself to retrieve his mistake by the introduction of new measures to crush heresy. Thus is the chancellor said to have argued, and to have earned the cardinal's hat at the Pope's hands. However this may be, it is certain that motives of policy were no less influential than the pious considerations which, perhaps, might have carried full as much conviction had they come from the lips of a more exemplary prelate.[258] The regent was certainly not ignorant of the fact that the support of Clement the Seventh, now specially needed in the delicate diplomacy lying immediately before her, could best be secured by proving to the pontiff's satisfaction that the house of Valois was clear of all suspicion of harboring or fostering the "Lutheran" doctrines and their adherents.

The ordinary appliances for the suppression of heresy--a duty entrusted by canon law, so far as the preliminary search and the trial of the suspected was concerned, to the bishops and their courts--had confessedly proved inadequate. The prelates were in great part non-residents, and could not from a distance narrowly watch the progress of the objectionable tenets in their dioceses. One or two of their number were accused of culpable sluggishness, if not of indifference or something worse. The question naturally arose, What new and more effective procedure could be devised?

[Sidenote: A commission appointed to try "Lutherans."]

After mature deliberation, the privy council resolved upon a plan which was virtually to remove the cognizance of crimes against religion from the clergy, and commit it to a mixed commission. The Parliament of Paris was accordingly notified that the bishop of that city stood ready to delegate his authority to conduct the trial of all heretics found within his jurisdiction to such persons as parliament might select for the discharge of this important function; and the latter body proceeded at once to designate two of its own members to act in conjunction with two doctors of the Sorbonne, and receive the faculties promised by the Bishop of Paris.[259] A few days later (March 29, 1525), in making a necessary substitution for one of the members who was unable to serve, parliament not only empowered the commission thus constituted to try the "Lutheran" prisoners, Pauvan and Saulnier, but directed the Archbishops of Lyons and Rheims, and the bishops or chapters of eight of the remaining most important dioceses, to confer upon it similar authority to that already received at the hands of the bishop of the metropolis.[260]

[Sidenote: The commission a new form of inquisition.]

[Sidenote: The inquisition hitherto jealously watched.]

It was, however, no ordinary tribunal which the highest civil court of the kingdom was erecting. The commission was in effect nothing less than a new phase of the Inquisition, embodying many of the most obnoxious features of that detested tribunal. It is true that the "Holy Office," in a modified form, had existed in France ever since the persecutions directed against the Albigenses and the bloody campaigns of Simon de Montfort. But the seat of the solitary Inquisitor of the Faith was Toulouse, not Paris, and his powers had been jealously circumscribed by the courts of justice and the diocesan prelates, both equally interested in rearing barriers to prevent his incursions into their respective jurisdictions. The Inquisitor of Toulouse was now only a spy and informer.[261] Parliament, in particular, had clearly enunciated the principle that neither inquisitor nor bishop had the right to arrest a suspected heretic, inasmuch as bodily seizure was the exclusive prerogative of the officers of the crown. The judges of this supreme court had summoned to their bar a bishop, and his "official," or vicar, and had exacted from them an explicit disavowal of any intention to arrest, in the case of a person whom they had merely detained, as they asserted, until such time as they could deliver him into the hands of a competent civil officer.[262] And it had become a maxim of French jurisprudence, that "an inquisitor of the faith has no power of capture or arrest, save with the assistance, and by authority, of the secular arm."[263]

[Sidenote: Parliament breaks down the safeguards of personal liberty.]

But the Parliament of Paris, at the instigation of the regent's advisers, and with the consent of the bishops, was breaking down these important safeguards of personal liberty. It not only accorded to the mixed inquisitorial commission, consisting of two lay and two clerical members, the authority to apprehend persons suspected of heresy, but removed the proceedings of the commission almost entirely from review and correction. A pretext for this extraordinary course was found in the delays heretofore experienced from the interposition of technical difficulties. "The commissioners," said parliament, "by virtue of the authority delegated to them, shall secretly institute inquiries against the Lutherans, and shall proceed against them by personal summons, by bodily arrest, by seizure of goods, and by other penalties. Their decisions shall be executed in spite of any and every opposition and appeal, save in case of the final sentence."[264] While conferring such extravagant privileges, parliament took pains to prescribe that the decisions of the commission should be executed precisely as if they had emanated from the supreme court itself. Such were the lengths to which the most conservative judges were willing to go, in the hope of speedily eradicating the reformed doctrines from French soil.

[Sidenote: The commission endorsed by Clement VII.]

The regent and her master-spirit, the chancellor, did not rest here. The commission was not irrevocable; and its authority might be disputed. The work of parliament must receive the papal sanction. For this Clement the Seventh did not keep them long waiting. He addressed to parliament (May 20, 1525) a brief conceived in a vein of fulsome eulogy, expressing his marvellous commendation of their acts--acts which he declared to be worthy of the reputation for wisdom in which the French tribunal was justly held. And he incited the judges to fresh zeal by the consideration that the new madness that had fallen upon the world was prepared to confound and overturn, not religion alone, but all rule, nobility, pre-eminence and superiority--nay, all law and order. The reader, it may be feared, will tire of the frequency with which the same trite suggestions recur. It is, however, not a little important to emphasize the argument which the Roman Curia, and its emissaries at the courts of kings, were never weary of reiterating in the ears of the rich and powerful. And as they seized with avidity every slight incident of disorder that could by any means be associated with the great religious movement now in progress, and presented it as corroboratory proof of the charge preferred against the "Lutherans," it is not surprising that they were generally successful in their appeal to the fears of a class which had so much at stake.

In addition to his endorsement of their pious zeal, Clement's brief informed the judges of parliament that they would find in the accompanying bull his formal confirmation of the inquisitorial commission.[265]

This "letter with the leaden seal," dated the seventeenth of May, might well have opened the eyes of less devoted subjects of the Roman See to the injury they were inflicting upon the French liberties, heretofore so cherished an object of judicial solicitude. Addressing itself to the four commissioners named by parliament, the bull recited the lamentable progress of the doctrines of that "son of iniquity and heresiarch, Martin Luther," and praised the ardor displayed to stay their dissemination in France. It next declared that the Pope, by the advice and with the unanimous consent of the cardinals, instructed the commissioners to proceed either singly or collectively against those persons who had embraced heretical views, "simply and quietly, without noise or form of judgment." He empowered them to act independently of the prelates of the kingdom and the Inquisitor of the Faith, or to call in their assistance, as they should see fit. They might summon witnesses, under pain of ecclesiastical censures. They might make investigations against and put on trial all those infected with heresy, even should the guilty be bishops or archbishops in the church, or be clothed with the ducal authority in the state. When convicted, such persons were to be punished by arrest and imprisonment, or cut off, "like rotten members, from the communion of the church, and consigned to eternal damnation with Satan and his angels." The commissioners were further authorized to grant permission to any one of the faithful who chose so to do to invade, occupy, and acquire for himself the lands, castles, and goods of the heretics, seizing their persons and leading them away into life-long slavery. From the sentence of the commissioners all appeal, even to the "Apostolic See" itself, was expressly cut off.[266]

[Sidenote: Its powers enlarged by the papal bull.]

Rome had made one of its most brilliant strokes. While adopting as his own the commissioners appointed by parliament, Clement had enlarged their already exorbitant prerogatives, and consummated their independence of secular interference. A new and more efficient inquisition was thus introduced into France, with its secret investigation and unlimited power of inflicting punishment. The Parliament of Paris had, however, committed itself too fully to think of demurring. Accordingly, it proceeded (June 10th) to enter on its records both the regent's letter and the bull of the Pope, to which the letter enjoined obedience.[267]

We have in a previous chapter seen some of the first fruits of the establishment of the inquisitorial commission, in the proceedings instituted against Lefevre d'Etaples, Gerard Roussel, and others who took part in the attempted reformation of the diocese of Meaux. But, chief among those whom it was sought to destroy, through the agency of the new and well-furbished weapon against heretics, was a nobleman of Artois, whose repeated and remarkable escapes from the hand of the executioner, viewed in connection with the tragic fate that at last overtook him, invest his story with a romantic interest.

[Sidenote: Character of Louis de Berquin.]

[Sidenote: He becomes a warm partisan of the Reformation.]

Louis de Berquin was a man of high rank, whom friends and enemies alike admired for his uncommon acuteness of mind and his great attainments in letters and science. A contemporary Parisian, whose diary has supplied us more than one of those graphic traits that assist much in bringing before our eyes the living forms of the great actors in the world's past history, seems to have been strongly impressed by the commanding appearance and elegance of dress of De Berquin, at this time in the very prime of life.[268] But the great Erasmus, his correspondent, stood in far greater admiration of his extraordinary learning, his purity of life--a rare excellence in a nobleman of the court of Francis the First--his kindness and freedom from all ostentation, his uncompromising hatred of every form of meanness and injustice,[269] and a fearless courage which, in the eyes of the timid sage of Rotterdam, appeared to fall little short of foolhardiness. Like most of the really earnest reformers, De Berquin was originally a very strict observer of the ordinances of the church, and was unsurpassed in attention to fasts, feast-days, and the mass. It was indignation and contempt for the petty persecution inaugurated by Beda and his associates of the Sorbonne that first led him to examine the tenets of Lefevre. From Lefevre's works he naturally passed to those of the German reformers. His curiosity turning to admiration, he began to translate and annotate the most striking treatises that fell into his hands. Not content with this, he set himself to writing books on the same topics, and incidentally depicted in no flattering colors the intolerance and ignorance of the Paris theologians. As he made no attempt at concealment, his activity was soon known.

[Sidenote: His first imprisonment.]

In the spring of 1523, De Berquin's house was visited, his books and papers were seized, and an inventory was made. Beda was the leader of the authorities in the whole affair. Parliament ordered the books and manuscripts to be examined and reported upon by the theological faculty. What the report would be, it was not hard to surmise. When such works were found in De Berquin's possession as that entitled "Speculum Theologastrorum," and another giving Luther's reasons for maintaining the universal priesthood of Christian believers; when the notes in De Berquin's own handwriting condemned as blasphemous, and as derogatory to the power of the Holy Ghost, the ascription of praise to the Virgin Mary as the "fountain of all grace"--but one answer could be expected to the requisition of parliament. The books and manuscripts were pronounced heretical; their author was commanded to retract. This De Berquin refused to do, and he was, consequently, shut up in the conciergerie--the civil prison within the walls of the ancient palace in which parliament sat. Four days later he was transferred to the dungeons of the Bishop of Paris, to be judged by him with the aid of two counsellors of parliament and of such theologians as he should see fit to call in.[270]

[Sidenote: He is released by order of the king.]

The case was fast becoming serious. De Berquin was made of sterner stuff than the weaklings who recant through fear of the stake; and the syndic of Sorbonne was fully resolved to have him burned if he remained constant. Happily, just at this critical moment the king interfered. From Melun, which he had reached on his way toward the south of France, he despatched an officer--one "Captain Frederick," as his name appears in the records--to demand the release of De Berquin, whose trial he had evoked for the consideration of his own royal council. Parliament attempted to interpose technical difficulties, and responded that the prisoner was no longer in its keeping. But "Captain Frederick" was provided against any quibbling. As his instructions were to break open whatever prison-doors might be barred against him, it was not long before the expected prey of the theologians was given into his custody. In the end De Berquin was set at liberty, such an examination of his case having been made by the king's council as courtiers are wont to institute when the accused is the favorite of the monarch.[271]

[Sidenote: Advice of Erasmus.]

It was about this time that Erasmus first made the acquaintance of Louis de Berquin. The Artesian nobleman took occasion to write to the great Dutch humanist, of whom he stood in great admiration, to inform him of the position assumed in reference to the writings of the latter by Beda and Du Chesne. Erasmus tells us that he was delighted with his new correspondent. But the constitutional timidity of the scholar compelled him to answer De Berquin by words of caution rather than of encouragement: "If you are wise, repress your encomiums; do not disturb the hornets, and spend your time in your favorite studies. At all events, do not involve me; for the consequences might be inconvenient for us both." But the dictates of worldly wisdom had no influence over De Berquin. Presently Erasmus was vexed to find that De Berquin in his writings was appealing to his friend's authority, and quoting the sentiments of the latter in defence of his own opinions. Now thoroughly alarmed at De Berquin's imprudence, Erasmus remonstrated, plainly intimating that whatever delight others might derive from conflicts such as he saw approaching, nothing was less grateful to himself.

[Sidenote: Berquin's second imprisonment.]

[Sidenote: Francis again orders his release.]

Meantime Louis de Berquin had retired to his own estates, in the expectation of pursuing his plans with less danger of interference than in the capital. Even there, however, he was not safe. The propitious moment for striking a decisive blow seemed to his enemies to have come when, the king being a captive, his mother, the regent, had permitted Pope and parliament to erect a tribunal for the summary trial and execution of heretics. The Bishop of Amiens, in whose diocese De Berquin's lands were situated, having applied to parliament, easily obtained the authority to seize him, disregarding even the ordinary rights of asylum.[272] After his arrest he was again transferred from the episcopal palace to the conciergerie at Paris, and his trial entrusted to the new inquisitorial commission. A series of propositions extracted from his writings, and censured by the Sorbonne, insured his condemnation as a relapsed heretic, and De Berquin was handed over to the secular arm for condign punishment. But again, at the very instant when his ruin was imminent, he met with unexpected deliverance. The sympathy of the king's sister was enlisted, and she used her influence with her mother to obtain an order adjourning all proceedings against De Berquin until the monarch should be released. Meanwhile she wrote urgent letters in his behalf to Francis and to his favorite, the grand master of the palace and future constable of France, Anne de Montmorency. The reply came in an order from the king, at Madrid, directing his parliament to cease from giving disturbance to Berquin and such men of learning.[273]

[Sidenote: Dilatory measures of parliament.]

It is suggestive of the delays attending even the execution of the will of so arbitrary a prince as Francis, that, although De Berquin was thus delivered from the immediate prospect of death, months passed before he regained his liberty. Successive royal orders were required to secure any alleviation of his hard confinement. Thus, when his health suffered from want of exercise and pure air, parliament grudgingly permitted him to leave his solitary cell for an hour morning and evening, at such time as the court might be clear of other prisoners whom he could contaminate. And when De Berquin complained that his books and writing materials had been denied him, the extent of the parliament's generosity was to grant him "the epistles of St. Jerome and some other Catholic books." At length, the king's patience becoming exhausted by the court's procrastination and technical objections, he sent (November 21, 1526) the Provost of Paris forcibly to remove De Berquin from the conciergerie to the Louvre, where he was soon restored his freedom.[274]

[Sidenote: Hopes of Margaret of Angouleme.]

The return of Francis from Madrid, and the rescue of Berquin, Lefevre, Roussel, and others, from the dangers to which they had been exposed, encouraged the more sanguine reformers to hope that now at length the king would declare himself openly in favor, if not of the evangelical doctrines, at least of some form of religions toleration. Margaret of Angouleme had certainly labored piously and assiduously to open her brother's eyes to the true character of his fanatical advisers. In a letter still preserved and apparently written even before Francis had been removed from Italy to Spain, she begged him to regard his misfortune as only a mark of the Divine love, and intended to give him time for reflection and consecration. This end being accomplished, Heaven would gloriously deliver him and make him a blessing to all Christendom--nay, even to infidel nations to be converted by his means.[275]

However fanciful these brilliant anticipations may now appear, they did not seem unreasonable at the time. It was not improbable that the example of the illustrious German princes, his allies, who had embraced the Reformation, might incline Francis decidedly to the same side. Margaret had conceived great expectations, based upon a projected visit to the French court by Count Von Hohenlohe, Dean of the Cathedral of Strasbourg--a nobleman, who, having become a Protestant, was anxious to turn to the advantage of his new convictions the influence secured to him by high social rank. The correspondence of Francis's sister with the zealous German noble opens a suggestive page of history. At first, Margaret, while applauding the count's design and building great hopes upon it, advises him to defer his visit until the king's return from Spain. Two months later, she is even more anxious to see Hohenlohe in Paris, but feels constrained to tell him that his friends have, for a certain reason, concluded that the proper time has not yet arrived. A third letter, dated after the restoration of Francis to his throne, informs us what that certain reason was. "I cannot tell you all the grief I feel," Margaret writes, "for I clearly see that the state of things is such that your coming cannot be productive of the comfort you would desire. The king would not be glad to see you. The reason that your visit is deemed inadvisable is the deliverance of the king's children, which the king esteems as important as the deliverance of his own person."[276]

[Sidenote: Francis I. violates his pledges to Charles V.]

Here was the secret! Unfortunately for the Reformation, policy was supposed to make it an imperative duty to conciliate the favor of the Pope, no less after the release of Francis than while he was yet a prisoner. There were the young princes sent by the regent as hostages for the fulfilment of the treaty with Charles of Spain, for whose liberation measures were to be devised. And there was the oath--to the shame of Francis, it must be added--from the binding force of which the king hoped to be relieved by authority of the Roman bishop; for scarcely had Francis set foot on his own dominions, when he unblushingly retracted all his treaty stipulations. He announced to the emperor that the cession of Burgundy, the Viscounty of Auxonne, and other territories, which had been made by his imperial captor the indispensable condition of his release, was entirely out of the question; and that his promises, extorted while he was in duress, were of no validity! Nevertheless, he offered, in lieu thereof, the payment of a larger ransom than had ever been proffered by a king of France. Indignant at a perfidy somewhat flagrant, even for an age tolerably well accustomed to breaches of faith, the emperor refused the substitute. The arms recently laid aside were resumed. Clement the Seventh and Venice became the allies of Francis, who for the present figured as the champion of the papacy; while his rival, by suffering the traitor Constable de Bourbon with an army of German soldiers to besiege the pontiff in his capital, became responsible in the eyes of the world for all the atrocities of the famous sack of the city of Rome. When, at length, after three years of hard fighting, peace was concluded by the treaty of Cambray (July, 1529), the terms agreed upon at Madrid were virtually carried into effect; but the emperor consented to receive the sum of two millions of Crowns--ecus-au-soleil--in place of Burgundy, and on payment to restore to the French the dauphin and the Duke of Orleans, the future Henry the Second, so long detained as hostages in Spain.

[Sidenote: The king's necessities.]

[Sidenote: A despotic course suggested.]

Meantime the revenues of the royal domain, having during the late wars been subjected to a long and unremitting drain, had proved utterly inadequate to meet the extraordinary demand of treasure for the resumption of the hostilities following close upon Francis's release. Recourse must be had to the purses of the king's subjects. The right to levy taxes resided in the States General alone, and Francis was reluctant, at so critical a juncture, to trample on a time-hallowed principle. He did not, indeed, hesitate to admit that he had been gravely counselled by some of his advisers to resort to a more despotic course; for they maintained that, in so praiseworthy an undertaking as the effort to recover the young princes, the king was warranted by all laws, divine and human, in laying under contribution every one of his subjects, of whatever rank or condition.[277] But, as the same ends might be attained by methods more agreeable to law and precedent, Francis preferred to have recourse to them.

[Sidenote: An assembly of notables.]

On the sixteenth of December, 1527, one of those anomalous political bodies was convened in the palace of the Parisian parliament to which the name of an assembly of notables is given. All the orders of the state were represented; but the form of a meeting of the States General (as we have seen, most distasteful to the despotic monarch) was studiously avoided.[278] In reply to a very full exposition of the present condition of the kingdom and of the incidents of his capture, made by Francis in person to the assembled clergymen, nobles, jurists, and burgesses of Paris, each order in turn gave its opinion. All united in approving the refusal of the king to surrender Burgundy to the emperor, and in expressing their unwillingness to allow his Majesty to return to Spain and thus redeem the promise he had given in case the treaty failed to be carried into effect. All likewise professed their readiness to contribute, according to their ability, to the necessities of the crown.

The first president, M. de Selve, in the name of parliament, delivered a discourse which the clerk of the assembly, no doubt aptly, describes as "crammed with Latin and with quotations from Scripture, to prove that the treaty of Madrid was null and void."[279] His grounds were that the king could neither dispose of his own person, which belonged to the state, nor alienate Burgundy, which, being a fief of the first rank and a bulwark of the kingdom, was inseparable from France. But probably the whole prodigious mass of classic lore, and of scriptural quotation, even more unfamiliar to most of his hearers, which the pedantic president forced upon the digestion of the unfortunate notables, was required to prove to their satisfaction that Francis had in this affair played the part of the "gentilhomme" he boasted of being.

[Sidenote: Speech of the Cardinal of Bourbon.]

The speech of the Cardinal of Bourbon was especially important. He announced the willingness of the representatives of the French clergy cheerfully to supply the 1,300,000 livres asked of their order, although at the same time he suggested the propriety of first convoking provincial councils, in which the church might be more fully consulted. With this gracious concession, however, the cardinal coupled three requests, of which the first and third concerned the liberation of the Pope from his imprisonment and the conservation of the liberties of the Gallican church; but the second had a pointed reference to the Reformation: he prayed "that the king might be pleased to uproot and extirpate the damnable and insufferable Lutheran sect which had, not long since, secretly entered the realm, with all the other heresies that were multiplying therein." By thus acting, he assured him, Francis "would perform the duty of a good prince bearing the name of Very Christian King."

[Sidenote: Francis promises to prove himself "Very Christian."]

The gratified monarch, delighted with the complaisance of his clerical subjects, did not hesitate to accede to all the petitions the Cardinal offered, and declared that, "so far as concerned heresies, he was determined not to endure them, but would cause them to be wholly extirpated and driven from his kingdom," inflicting on any found tainted therewith such exemplary punishment as to demonstrate his right to the honorable title he bore.[280]

It was a rash promise that Francis had made. Like many other absolute monarchs, he expected without trouble to bring the religious convictions of his subjects into conformity with the standard he was pleased to set up.[281] He had yet to learn that there are beliefs which, when they take root in the hearts of humble and illiterate peasants or artisans, are too firmly fixed to be eradicated by the most excruciating tortures man's ingenuity has been able to contrive. Through fire and sword, the victim now of persecution, again of open war, the faith denominated heresy was yet to survive, not only the last lineal descendant of the king then sitting on the throne of France, but the rule of the dynasty which was destined to succeed to the power, and reproduce not a few of the mistakes, of the Valois race.

[Sidenote: The provincial council of Sens.]

In accordance with the suggestion of the Cardinal of Bourbon, three provincial councils were held early in the ensuing year (1528). The most important was the council of the ecclesiastical province of Sens, which met, however, in the Augustinian monastery at Paris. It was scarcely to be expected that a synod presided over by Antoine Duprat, who, to the dignity of cardinal and the office of Chancellor of France, added the Bishopric of Albi and the Archbishopric of Sens, with the claim to be Primate of the Gauls and of Germany, should discuss with severity the morals of the clergy, or issue stringent canons against the abuse of the plurality of benefices. As an offset, however, the Council of Sens had much to say respecting the new reformation. The good fathers saw in the discordant views of Luther and Carlstadt, of Melanchthon and Zwingle, proof positive that the new doctrines the reformers advanced were devoid of any basis of truth. They ridiculed the claim of the Protestants to the presence of the Spirit of God. But they reserved their severest censures for the practice of holding secret conventicles, and, with an irony best appreciated by those who understand the penalties inflicted by the law on the discovered heretics, they gently reminded the men and women to whom the celebration of a single religious service according to the dictates of their conscience would have insured instantaneous condemnation and a death at the stake, that God hates the deeds of darkness, and that Christ himself said, "What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light."[282]

[Sidenote: The punishment of heretics.]

More practical were the prescriptions of the council's decrees respecting the punishment of offenders against the unity of the faith. Heretics who, after conviction, refused to be "united to the church," were to be consigned to prison for life, priests to be degraded, the relapsed to be given over to the secular arm without a hearing. Heretical books, including translations of the Bible, were to be surrendered to the bishop. Indeed, it was stipulated that every book treating of the faith, and printed within the past twenty years, should be submitted to him for examination. Nor was the council satisfied to leave the discovery of heresy to accident. It was particularly enjoined upon every bishop that he, or some competent person appointed by him, should visit any portion of his diocese in which the taint of unsound doctrine was reported to exist, and compel three or more persons of good standing, or even the entire body of the inhabitants of a neighborhood, to denounce under oath those who entertained heretical views, the frequenters of secret conventicles, and even those who merely held aloof from the conversation of the faithful. Lest this stimulus to informers should prove insufficient to extract the desired knowledge, the threat was added that persons refusing to testify would be treated as suspected, and themselves proceeded against.[283]

[Sidenote: The councils of Bourges and Lyons.]

Not less severe toward the "Lutheran" doctrines did the other two provincial councils show themselves. At the Council of Bourges, the Cardinal of Tournon presided as archbishop--a prelate who was to attain unenviable notoriety as the prime instigator of the massacre of Merindol and Cabrieres, of which an account will be given in a subsequent chapter. Besides the usual regulations for the censure of heretical books and the denunciation of "Lutherans," the decrees contain the significant direction that the professors in the University of Bourges shall employ in their instructions no authors calculated to divert the students from the ceremonies of the church--a caution deriving its importance from the circumstance that the university, under the patronage of Margaret of Angouleme, now Duchess of Berry as well as Queen of Navarre, had become a centre of reformatory activity.

The letter in which the king had called upon the Archbishop of Lyons to convene the clergy of his province, declared that Francis had ever held the accursed sect of the "Lutherans" in hatred, horror, and abomination, and that its extirpation was an object very near his heart, for the accomplishment of which he would employ all possible means;[284] and the Council of Lyons responded by cordial approval and by the enactment of fresh regulations to suppress conventicles, to prevent the farther dissemination of Luther's writings, and, indeed, to forbid all discussion of matters of faith by the laity. At the same time the council unconsciously revealed the necessity imposed on the private Christian to investigate for himself the nature and grounds of his belief, by strongly reprobating the disastrous custom of admitting into sacred orders a host of illiterate, uncultivated persons of low antecedents--beardless youths--and by confessing that this wretched practice had justly excited the contempt of the world.[285]

[Sidenote: Financial help bought by persecution.]

Everywhere the clergy conceded the subsidy required by the exigencies of the kingdom. But they left Francis in no doubt respecting the price of their complaisance. This was nothing less than the extermination of the new sect that had made its appearance in France. And the king comprehended and fell in with the terms upon which the church agreed to loosen its purse-strings. No doubtful policy must now prevail! No more Berquins can be permitted to make their boast that they have been able, protected by the king's panoply, to beard the lion in his den!

[Sidenote: Insult to an image.]

An incident occurring in Paris, before the adjournment of the Council of Sens, gave Francis a specious excuse for inaugurating the more cruel system of persecution now demanded of him, and tended somewhat to conceal from the king himself, as well as from others, the mercenary motive of the change. Just after the solemnities of Whitsunday, an unheard of act of impiety startled the inhabitants of the capital, and fully persuaded them that no object of their devotions was safe from iconoclastic violence. One of those numerous statues of the Virgin Mary, with the infant Jesus in her arms, that graced the streets of Paris, was found to have been shockingly mutilated. The body had been pierced, and the head-dress trampled under foot. The heads of the mother and child had been broken off and ignominiously thrown in the rubbish.[286] A more flagrant act of contempt for the religious sentiment of the country had perhaps never been committed. The indignation it awakened must not be judged by the standard of a calmer age.[287] In the desire to ascertain the perpetrators of the outrage, the king offered a reward of a thousand crowns. But no ingenuity could ferret them out. A vague rumor, indeed, prevailed, that a similar excess had been witnessed in a village four or five leagues distant, and that the culprits when detected had confessed that they had been prompted to its commission by the promise of a paltry recompense of one hundred sous for every image destroyed. But, since no one seems ever to have been punished, it is probable that this report was a fabrication; and the question whether the mutilation of the Virgin of the Rue des Rosiers was the deliberate act of a religious enthusiast, or a freak of drunken revellers, or, as some imagined, a cunning device of good Catholics to inflame the popular passions against the "Lutherans," must, for the present, at least, remain a subject of profound doubt.

[Sidenote: Expiatory processions.]

But, whoever may have been the author, pains were taken to expiate the sacrilege. Successive processions visited the spot. In one of these, five hundred students of the university, chosen from different colleges and belonging to the first families, bore lighted tapers, which they placed on the temporary altar erected in front of the image. The clergy, both secular and regular, came repeatedly with all that was most precious in attire and relics. To add still more to the pomp of the propitiatory pilgrimages, Francis himself took part in a magnificent display, made on the Fete-Dieu, or Corpus Christi (the eleventh of June). He was preceded by heralds and by the Dukes of Cleves and Ferrara and other noblemen of high rank, while behind him walked the King of Navarre, the Cardinal of Lorraine, the Ambassadors of England, Venice, Florence, and other foreign states, the officers of parliament, and a crowd of gentlemen of the king's house, archers and persons of all conditions bringing up the rear. On reaching the spot where the mutilated statue still occupied its niche, Francis, after appropriate religious exercises, ascended the richly carpeted steps, and reverently substituted an effigy in solid silver, of similar size, in place of the image which had been the object of insult.[288]

[Sidenote: Other icoconoclastic excesses.]

From this time forward, iconoclastic demonstrations became more common. Paintings, also, when exposed to the public view, shared the perils to which unprotected statues were subjected. The Virgin, and such reputable saints as St. Roch and St. Fiacre, depicted on the walls of the Rue St. Martin, were wantonly disfigured, some two years later; so that at last, the Parliament of Paris, in despair of preventing the repetition of the act, or of discovering its authors, adopted the prudent course of forbidding that any sacred representation should be placed on the exterior walls of a house within ten feet of the ground![289]

[Sidenote: Berquin's third arrest.]

[Sidenote: He disregards the cautions of Erasmus.]

The repeated assurances whereby Francis had conciliated the clergy, and secured their contributions to the exchequer, embarrassed him in the exercise of leniency toward Louis de Berquin, now for the third time arraigned for heresy. Moreover, the audacity and violence of the iconoclasts, characteristics assumed by him to be indicative of a disposition to overturn all government, probably took away any inclination he would otherwise have had to interfere in the intrepid nobleman's behalf. De Berquin had no sooner been released from his former imprisonment than he set himself to prepare for new conflicts with his bigoted antagonists. He even resolved to assume the offensive. In vain did Erasmus entreat him to be prudent, suggest the propriety of his temporarily going abroad, and propose that he should apply for some diplomatic commission as a plausible excuse for absenting himself. Beda, he told him, was a monster with many heads, each breathing out poison, while in the "Faculty" he had to do with an immortal antagonist. The monks would secure his ruin were his cause more righteous than that of Jesus Christ. Finally, the tremulous scholar begged him, if no consideration of personal safety moved him, at least not to involve so ardent a lover of peace as Erasmus in a conflict for which he had no taste. But his reasoning had no weight with a man of high resolve and inflexible principle, who could see no honorable course but openly meeting and overthrowing error. "Do you ask," wrote Erasmus to a correspondent interested in learning De Berquin's fate, "what I accomplished? By every means I employed to deter him I only added to his courage."[290] If we may believe Erasmus's strong expressions--for his own writings have very nearly disappeared--De Berquin assailed the monks with a freedom almost equal to that employed by the Old Comedy in holding up to merited derision the foibles of Athenian generals and statesmen. He even extracted twelve blasphemous propositions from Beda's utterances, and obtained a letter from the king enjoining the Sorbonne either to pass sentence of condemnation on their syndic's assertions, or to prove their truth from the Holy Scriptures.[291] The Dutch philosopher, aghast at his friend's incredible temerity, besought him instantly to seek safety in flight; and, when this last appeal proved as ineffectual as all his frequent efforts in the past, he confessed that he almost regretted that a friendship had ever arisen which had occasioned him so much trouble and disquiet.[292]

A third time Louis de Berquin was arrested, on application of the officer known as the Promoteur de la foi. His trial was committed to twelve judges selected by parliament, among whom figured not only the first president and the vicar-general of the Bishop of Paris, but, strange to say, even so well-disposed and liberal a jurist as Guillaume Bude, the foremost French scholar of the age for broad and accurate learning.[293] The case advanced too slowly to meet De Berquin's impatience. In the assurance of ultimate success, he is even accused by a contemporary chronicler of having offered the court two hundred crowns to expedite the trial.[294] It soon became evident, however, from, the withdrawal of the liberties at first accorded, that Be Berquin would scarcely escape unless the king again interposed--a contingency less likely to occur in view of the incessant appeals with which Francis was plied, addressed at once to his interest, his conscience, and his pride. But the more desperate the cause of Berquin, and the more uncertain the king's disposition, the more urgent the intercessions of Margaret of Angouleme, whose character is nowhere seen to better advantage than in her repeated letters to her brother about this time.[295]

[Sidenote: Berquin sentenced to public penance, branding, and imprisonment.]

The sentence was rendered on the sixteenth of April, 1529. De Berquin, being found guilty of heresy, was condemned to do public penance in front of Notre Dame, with lighted taper in hand, and crying for mercy to God and the blessed Virgin. Next, on the Place de Greve, he was to be ignominiously exhibited upon a scaffold, while his books were burned before his eyes. Taken thence in a cart to the pillory, and again exposed to popular derision on a revolving stage, he was to have his tongue pierced and his forehead branded with the ineffaceable fleur-de-lis. His public disgrace over, De Berquin was to be imprisoned for life in the episcopal jail.[296]

[Sidenote: He appeals, is sentenced to death, and is executed.]

More than twenty thousand persons--so intense a hatred had been stirred up against the reformers--assembled to witness the execution of a sentence malignantly cruel.[297] But, for that day, their expectation was disappointed. Louis de Berquin gave notice that he appealed to the absent king and to the Pope himself. It was no part of the programme, however, that the thrice-convicted heresiarch should gain a fresh respite and enlist powerful friends in effecting his release. No sooner were the judges satisfied that he persisted in his appeal, in spite of the secret and urgent advice of Bude and others, than they rendered a new and more severe sentence (on the seventeenth of April): he must pay the forfeit of his obstinacy with his life, and that, too, within a few hours.[298]

The cause of this intemperate haste is clearly set forth by a contemporary--doubtless an eye-witness of the execution--all whose sympathies were on the side of the prosecution. It was "lest recourse be had to the king, or to the regent then at Blois;"[299] for the delay of even a few days might have brought from the banks of the Loire another order removing De Berquin's case from the commission to the royal council.

The historian must leave to the professed martyrologist the details of the constant death of Louis de Berquin, as of the deaths of many other less distinguished victims of the intolerant zeal of the Sorbonne. Suffice it to say that although, when he undertook to address the people, his voice was purposely drowned by the din of the attendants, though the very children filled the air with shouts that De Berquin was a heretic, though not a person was found in the vast concourse to encourage him by the name of "Jesus"--an accustomed cry even at the execution of parricides--the brave nobleman of Artois met his fate with such composure as to be likened by a by-stander to a student immersed in his favorite occupations, or a worshipper whose devout mind was engrossed by the contemplation of heavenly things.[300] There were indeed blind rumors, as usual in such cases; to the effect that De Berquin recanted at the last moment; and Merlin, the Penitentiary of Notre Dame, who attended him, is reported to have exclaimed that "perhaps no one for a hundred years had died a better Christian."[301] But the "Lutherans" of Paris had good reason to deny the truth of the former statement, and to interpret the latter to the advantage of De Berquin's consistent faith--so great was the rejoicing over the final success attained in crushing the most distinguished, in silencing the boldest and most outspoken advocate of the reformation of the church. For, in the eyes of the theological faculty and of the clergy of France, Louis de Berquin merited to be styled, by way of pre-eminence, a heresiarch.[302]

[Sidenote: Francis treats with the Germans.]

Three years had not elapsed since the blow struck at the "Lutheran" doctrines in France, in the execution of their most promising and intrepid representative, before the hopes of the friends of the Reformation again revived from a consideration of the king's political relations. Disappointed at the contemptuous reception of their confession of faith by the Emperor at Augsburg, the Protestant princes of Germany had formed a defensive league. Francis, having basely abandoned his former allies, was left alone to combat the gigantic power of a rival between two portions of whose dominions his own kingdom lay exposed. Every consideration of prudence dictated the policy of lending to the German Protestants, in their endeavor to humble the pride of their common antagonist, the most efficient support of his arms. Under these circumstances religious differences were impotent to prevent the union. Accordingly, in May, 1532, through his ambassador, the sagacious Du Bellay, Francis promised the discontented Elector of Saxony and his associates the contribution of a large sum to enable them to make a sturdy resistance. But the peace shortly concluded with Charles rendered the proffered aid for a time unnecessary.[303]

[Sidenote: and with Henry VIII. of England.]

Equally unproductive of advantage to the professors of the reformed faith was the alliance for mutual defence between Francis and Henry the Eighth of England. Both monarchs were inspired with the same hatred of the emperor, and each had equal reason to complain of the insatiable rapacity of the Roman court. But neither at the pompous interview of the two kings at Boulogne, nor afterward, could Henry prevail upon Francis to take any decided measures against the Pope such as the former, weary of the obstacles thrown in the way of his divorce from Catharine of Aragon, was ready to venture. In his intercourse with the English king, Francis is said to have adopted for his guiding principle the motto, "Ami jusqu'a l'autel,"[304] and declined to sacrifice his orthodoxy to his interests. But the truth was that, in the view of Francis, his interests and his orthodoxy were coincident; and the difficulty experienced by the two kings in coming to a common understanding lay in the fact that, as has been well remarked, while in the enmity of Francis it was not the Pope but the emperor that occupied the foremost place, it was just the reverse with Henry.[305]

[Sidenote: Meeting of Francis I. and Clement, at Marseilles.]

[Sidenote: Marriage of Henry of Orleans to Catharine de' Medici.]

Francis had no thought of throwing away so valuable an auxiliary in his Italian projects, or of permanently attaching to Charles so dangerous an opponent as the papal power. And thus it happened that, a year from the time of his consultation with Henry, Francis proceeded to Marseilles to extend a still more cordial welcome to Clement himself. The wily pontiff had so dazzled the eyes of the king, that the latter had consented to, if he had not actually proposed, a marriage between Henry, Duke of Orleans, his second son, and Catharine de' Medici, the Pope's niece.[306] The match was not flattering to Francis's pride; but there were great prospective advantages, and the bride was less objectionable because the bridegroom, as a younger son, was not likely to ascend the throne. But here again the king was destined to be disappointed. Clement's death, soon after, destroyed all hope of Medicean support in Italy; and the death of Francis, the dauphin, made Henry of Orleans heir apparent to the throne. It was not long before the French people, with the soundness of judgment generally characterizing the deliberate conclusions reached by the masses, came to the opinion, expressed by one of the Venetian ambassadors two years after the wedding: "Monseigneur of Orleans is married to Madam Catharine de' Medici, to the dissatisfaction of all France; for it seems to everybody that the most Christian king was cheated by Pope Clement."[307] Such were the evil auspices under which the Italian girl, only fourteen years of age,[308] entered a country over whose destinies she was to exert a pernicious influence.

[Sidenote: Francis refuses to join in a crusade against heresy.]

There was another part of the Pope's designs in the execution of which he was less successful. He could not persuade Francis to join in a general scheme for the extermination of heresy. In the very first interview, Clement had sounded his host's disposition respecting the propriety of a new crusade. He had bluntly submitted for consideration the question, "Ought not Francis and the pious princes of Germany, with the emperor at their head, to gather up their forces, enlist troops, and make all needful preparations, to overwhelm the followers of Zwingle and Luther; in order that, affrighted by the terrible retribution visited upon their fellows, the remaining heretics should hasten to make their submission to the Roman Church?" At the same time he threw out hints of his ability to assist in the good work if only the French monarch would not refuse his co-operation. But Francis was not ready for so sanguinary an undertaking. Unmoved by the Pope's repeated solicitations, he replied that it seemed to him that "neither piety nor concord would be promoted by substituting an appeal to arms for the appeal to the Holy Scriptures, to whose ultimate decision both Zwinglians and Lutherans professed themselves at all times anxious to submit their doctrines and practice." He added the unpalatable advice that the matters in dispute be considered by a free and impartial council, and declared that, when the council had rendered its verdict, he would spare no pains to sustain it. All the usual pontifical artifices proved abortive. Francis, while valuing highly the friendship of Rome, was not willing to forego the advantages of alliance with the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse.[309]

While the fickle monarch was thus drawn in opposite directions by conflicting political considerations--at one time strengthening the hands of the Protestant princes of Germany, at another, making common cause with the Pope--the same diversity characterized the internal condition of France.

[Sidenote: Execution of Jean de Caturce at Toulouse.]

At Toulouse, the seat of one of most noted parliaments, Jean de Caturce, a lawyer of ability, was put to death by slow fire in the summer of 1532. His unpardonable offence was that he had once made a "Lutheran" exhortation, and that, in the merry-making on the Fete des Rois--Epiphany--he had recommended that the prayer, "May Christ reign in our hearts!" be substituted for the senseless cry, "The king drinks!" No more ample ground of accusation was needed in a city where the luckless wight who failed to take off his cap before an image, or fall on his knees when the bell rang out at "Ave Maria," was sure to be set upon as a heretic.[310]

[Sidenote: Le Coq's evangelical sermon.]

In striking contrast with the tragedy enacted in the chief city of the south was the favor openly showed to the reformers by the Queen of Navarre, not only in her own city of Bourges, but in Paris itself. The intercessions she had addressed to her brother for the victims of priestly persecution had long since betrayed her secret leaning; and the translation of her "Hours" into French by the Bishop of Senlis, who, by her direction, suppressed all that most directly countenanced superstitious beliefs, was naturally taken as strong confirmation of the prevalent suspicion. But, when she introduced Berthault, Courault, and her own almoner, Roussel, to the pulpits of the capital, and protected them in their evangelical labors, the case ceased to admit of doubt.[311] She even persuaded the king to listen to a sermon in which Le Coq, curate of St. Eustache, argued with force against the bodily presence of Christ in the eucharist, and maintained that the very words, "Sursum corda" in the church service, pointed Him out as to be found at the right hand of God in heaven. Indeed, the eloquent preacher had nearly convinced his royal listener, when the Cardinals of Tournon and Lorraine, by a skilful stratagem, succeeded in destroying the impression he had received, and, it is said, in inducing Le Coq to make a retraction.[312] But the opposition to the public proclamation of the reformed doctrines was too formidable for their advocates to stem. Beda and his colleagues in the Sorbonne left no device untried to silence the preachers; and, although the restless syndic was in the end forced to expiate his seditious words and writings by an amende honorable in front of the church of Notre Dame, and died in prison,[313] Roussel and his fellow-preachers had long before been compelled to exchange their public discourses for private exhortations, and finally to discontinue even these and retreat from Paris.[314]

[Sidenote: Margaret attacked in the College of Navarre.]

Even so, however, the theologians could not contain their indignation at the insult they had received. In the excess of their zeal they went so far as to hold up the king's sister to condemnation and derision, in one of those plays which the students of the College de Navarre were accustomed annually to perform, as a scholastic exercise in public oratory (on the first of October, 1533). A gentle queen was here represented as throwing aside needle and distaff, at the crafty suggestion of a tempting fury, and as receiving in lieu of those feminine implements a copy of the Gospels--when, lo! she was suddenly transformed into a cruel tyrant. It was perhaps hard to detect the exact connection between the acceptance of the holy book and so disastrous a change of character--neither the students of the College de Navarre nor their teachers thought it worth while to trouble themselves about such trifles--but there was no difficulty in recognizing Margaret in the principal actor of the play, or in deciphering the name of Master Gerard Roussel--Magister Gerardus--in Megaera, the fury with the flaming torch, that seduced her. On complaint of his sister, Francis, in some indignation, ordered the arrest of the author of the insipid drama, as well as of the youthful performers. The former could not be found, and the latter, thanks to the queen's clemency, escaped with a less rigorous punishment than the insult deserved.[315]

[Sidenote: Her Miroir de l'ame pecheresse.]

An equally audacious act was the insertion of a work published by Margaret, under the title of Le miroir de l'ame pecheresse, in a list of prohibited books. When the university, to whom the censorship of the press was entrusted, was called to account by the king, all the faculties promptly repudiated any intention to cast doubt upon the orthodoxy of his sister, and even the originator of the offensive prohibition was forced to plead ignorance of the authorship of the volume in question. The rector of the university terminated the long series of disclaimers by rendering thanks to Francis for his fatherly patience.[316]

[Sidenote: Rector Cop's address to the university.]

Just a month after the unlucky dramatic representation of the College de Navarre, the city was furnished with fresh food for scandal. On All Saints' day (the first of November, 1533), the university assembled according to custom in the church of the Mathurins, to listen to an address delivered by the rector. But Nicholas Cop's discourse was not of the usual type. Under guise of a disquisition on "Christian Philosophy," the orator preached an evangelical sermon, with the First Beatitude for his text, and propounded the view that the forgiveness of sin and eternal life are simple gifts of God's grace that cannot be earned by man's good works.[317]

[Sidenote: Its extraordinary character.]

Never had academic harangue contained sentiments savoring so strongly of the tenets of the persecuted reformers. True, the rector had not omitted the ordinary invitation to his hearers to join him in the salutation of the Virgin.[318] But even this mark of orthodox Catholicity could not remove the taint of heresy from an address the whole drift of which was to establish the cardinal doctrine of the theology of Luther and Zwingle. It was a bold step. The doctors of the Sorbonne could not suppress their indignation, and Franciscan monks denounced the rector to the Parliament of Paris. When summoned to appear before the court to answer the charges brought against him, Cop at first endeavored to arouse in the university the traditional jealousy of this invasion of scholastic privileges, claiming that these were violated by his being cited to parliament before he had been in the first instance tried by his peers. And, indeed, after a tumultuous meeting of the university, called at the Mathurins a fortnight after the delivery of Cop's address (the nineteenth of November), the Faculty of Arts came to the same conclusion.[319] But, although the "Four Nations," and apparently the Faculty of Medicine also, promised their support, the Faculties of Theology and Law refused, and Cop did not venture to press his point. Warned of his danger by a friendly tongue, when already on his way to the Palais de Justice, in full official costume and accompanied by his beadles, he consulted his safety by a precipitate flight from the city and from the kingdom.[320]

[Sidenote: Calvin the real author.]

The incidents just narrated derive their chief interest from the circumstance that they bring to our notice for the first time a young man, Jean Cauvin, or Calvin, of Noyon, soon to figure among the most important actors in the intellectual and religious history of the modern world; for it was not many days before the authorship of the startling theological doctrines enunciated by the rector was directly traced to his friend and bosom companion, the future reformer of Geneva. In fact, Calvin seems to have supplied Cop with the entire address--a production not altogether unworthy of that clear and vigorous intellect which, within less than two years, conceived the plan of and matured the most orderly and perfect theological treatise of the Reformation--the "Institution Chretienne." Between the sketch of Christian Philosophy in the discourse written for the rector, and the Christian Institutes, there is, nevertheless, a contrast too striking to be overlooked. And if the salutation to the Virgin, in the exordium, was actually penned by Calvin, as is not improbable, the change in his religious convictions would appear to have been as marked and rapid as the development of his intellectual faculties. At any rate, the recent discovery of the complete manuscript of Nicholas Cop's oration ranks among the most opportune and welcome of antiquarian successes in our times.[321]

[Sidenote: He seeks safety in flight.]

Calvin was soon reduced to the necessity of following the rector's example in fleeing from Paris; for the part he had had in preparing the address had become the public talk. The young scholar--he was only in his twenty-fifth year--sought for by the sanguinary lieutenant-criminel, Jean Morin, barely made good his escape. Proceeding to Angouleme, he enjoyed, under the friendly roof of Louis de Tillet, a short period of quiet and an opportunity to pursue his favorite studies.[322]

[Sidenote: Francis rejects roughly the intercession of the Bernese.]

The incessant representations made to the king respecting the rapid progress of "Lutheran" doctrines in France, and perhaps also the occurrence of such incidents as that just mentioned, seem to have been the cause of the adoption of new measures against the Reformation and its professors. Already, in October, Francis had written a rough answer to the Council of the Canton of Berne, expressing extreme surprise that they had ventured to intercede for the relatives of Guillaume Farel, accused of heresy, and to beg him to give no credit in this matter either to the royal officers or to the inquisitors of the faith.[323] And he had used these significant words: "Desiring the preservation of the name of very Christian king, acquired for us by our predecessors, we have nothing in the world more at heart than the entire extirpation of heresies, and nothing could induce us to suffer them to take root in our kingdom. Of this you may rest well assured, and leave us to proceed against them, without your giving yourselves any solicitude. For neither your prayers, nor those of any one else whomsoever, could be of any avail in this matter with us."[324]

[Sidenote: Royal letter to the Bishop of Paris.]

On his return from the marriage of his son Henry to Catharine de' Medici, celebrated only four days before Cop's university harangue, Francis was induced to make new provisions for the detection and punishment of dissent. Alarmed by the progress of "Lutheran" sentiments in his very capital, as reported to him by parliament, he not only urged that body to renewed diligence, but directed the Bishop of Paris, the tolerant Jean du Bellay, who may have been suspected of too much supineness in the matter,[325] to confer upon two counsellors of parliament all the authority necessary to act for him, without prejudice to his jurisdiction in other cases.[326] Both parliament and bishop were at the same time notified of the receipt of two fresh bulls, kindly furnished by Pope Clement, at Francis's request, to help in the good work of extirpating "that accursed Lutheran sect."[327]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Elegies on Louis de Berquin.]

The number of extant poems on the death of Louis de Berquin attests very clearly the estimate placed upon him by the Roman Catholics as the most dangerous heretic--in fact, the heresiarch of the day. A stanza of eight lines, which seems to have been popular (for it has been discovered in MS. both in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Genin, i. 219, and in the library of Soissons, Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. franc., xi. 131), represents the four elements as conspiring, at God's bidding, to take vengeance upon him:

"Du faux Berquin et de ses documens Dieu s'est venge par les quatre elemens: Terre luy a desnie sepulture; Feu l'a destruit et sa fausse escripture; Tisons par eau pluviale arrosez Se sont plus fort esmeus et embrasez. Dont (pour la fin du malheureux comprendre) L'air par les vents en a receu la cendre."

I have been so fortunate as to discover two other poems on the same subject, in a little collection in my possession entitled Martini Theodorici Bellovaci Epigrammata (Parisiis, 1539), which seems to be of such rarity that these pieces may almost be viewed in the light of inedited documents. They are of special interest because of the singular circumstance that this collection of extremely "Catholic" effusions is dedicated to Odet de Coligny, Cardinal of Chatillon, Archbishop of Toulouse, Bishop and Count of Beauvais, elder brother of the more famous Admiral massacred on St. Bartholomew's day. Cardinal Chatillon, created such when only thirteen years old, was, at the time of the publication of this book, a youth of scarcely more than twenty-two, and a devout Roman Catholic, but subsequently, as elsewhere stated, became an avowed Protestant and a prominent Huguenot leader.

In the first of these poems, under the heading of Elegia Ludovici Berquuyni, the writer would almost seem to have had in mind the description by the ancient dramatists of the impious warfare of Capaneus breathing out boastful threats against Jove himself (Septem con. Theb., 416, etc.), or the Titans in conflict with the Gods.

"Occultum patuit quod non celarier ultra Debuit. Excellens Jupiter egit opus. Sublimi elatum dejecit sede potentem, Qui modo regnabat, qui modo jura dabat, Quique superbifico regalia limina gressu Tantum incedebat, pastus honore levi, Et cedrina petens famae monimenta perennis. Insigni optabat sanctior esse Numa. Lector, Ave, et causam properes dignoscere: casus Haereseos foeda labe volutus erat. Hoc impune nefas solida an ratione stetisset, Et Petri hausissent aequora vasta ratim, Inviolata fides aeterno permanet aevo. Percutit injustos ira molesta Dei; Quem neque praemeditans latuit Nero, funera cujus Distulit adversa in tempora longa vice. Occidit ergo miser, Divumque hominumque favore, Traduxitque illuc sors malesuada virum. Nil gravius pugnare Deo, pugnare feroci Fortunae. Vinci magnus uterque nequit."

The other elegy is shorter and less striking in conception, but gives a similar impression of the importance assigned to Louis de Berquin's activity and influence:

"Francia dum hymnidico resonet paeane juventus, Parisia extincto gaudeat hoste phalanx. Hic dudum, et nuper morbo scabiosus edaci, Francorum reliquas inficiebat oves. Cognitus haud potuit mundari errore nefando, Quin purgaretur lucidiore foco. Nam quamvis concessa esset clementia, durus Obstitit, et rapido malluit igne mori."

The library of Soissons contains a MS. lament from a Protestant source over the death of De Berquin, which is at once simple and touching. It is printed in the Bulletin, xi. 129-131.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 256: Registres du parlement, Feb. 26, 1417/8, Preuves des Libertez, i. 124, etc.]

[Footnote 257: Yet the trial of Aime Maigret had been specially committed by Louise to the Sorbonne, as early as January, 1525 (Letter of the Council of the Archbishop of Lyons to Beda, Jan. 23, 1525, Herminjard, i. 326); and Zwingle knew, in March, of a more or less successful effort to convince the regent that the evangelical doctrines were subversive of peace--the proof alleged being drawn from Germany, where "everything was turned upside down." Dedication to Francis I., prefixed to De vera et falsa religione commentarius, Herminjard, i. 351.]

[Footnote 258: See Mezeray's unfavorable portrait of the unscrupulous Duprat, Abrege chron., iv. 584.]

[Footnote 259: The four were Philippe Pot, President in the chambre des enquetes, and Andre Verjus, a counsellor, from parliament, and Guillaume Du Chesne and Nicholas Le Clerc, doctors of theology. For the first on the list, Jacques de la Barde was soon after substituted. Registres du parlement, March 20, 1524/5, Preuves des Libertez, i. 164.]

[Footnote 260: Registres du parlement, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 261: Soldan, Gesch. des Prot. in Frankreich, i. 102.]

[Footnote 262: Registres du parlement, July 29, 1458, Preuves des Libertez, i. 138.]

[Footnote 263: "Un inquisiteur de la foi n'a capture ou arret en ce royaume, sinon par l'aide et autorite du bras seculier." Pithou, Essaie, art. 37.]

[Footnote 264: "Nonobstant oppositions ou appellations quelconques, semota executione a definitiva, si en est appelle." Registres du parlement, Preuves des Libertez, iii. 164.]

[Footnote 265: "Nos quoque comprobavimus ... sicut per alias nostras sub plumbo literas poteritis cognoscere." Registres du parlement, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 266: Recueil des anc. lois francaises, par Jourdan, Decrusy et Isambert, xii. 232-237.]

[Footnote 267: Isambert, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 268: The author of the anonymous Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, 383, 384. His description, written in 1528, is interesting: "Ledict Barquin avoit environ 50 ans, et portoit ordinairement robbe de veloux, satin et damas, et choses (chausses) d'or, et estoit de noble lignee et moult grand clerc, expert en science et subtil, mais neantmoins il faillit en son sens." Erasmus makes him some seven years younger, Letter to Utenhoven, July 1, 1529, Opera, ii. 1206, seq.; and Herminjard, Correspondance des reformateurs, ii. 183, seq.]

[Footnote 269: His account is important, but too full for insertion here. See the letter above quoted.]

[Footnote 270: Arret du parlement, Aug. 5, 1523, Haag, France prot. s. v. Berquin.]

[Footnote 271: Felibien, Hist. de la ville de Paris, ii. 948; Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, 169, 170; Haag, s. v.; Erasmus, Opera, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 272: "Etiam in loco sacro." Registres du parlement, January 8, 1526, Preuves des Libertez, iii., 166.]

[Footnote 273: Margaret's gratitude to Montmorency for his kind offices is very fully attested by a passage in an extant letter (Genin, Lettres de Marg. d'Ang., 1ere Coll., No. 54): "Vous merciant du plaisir que m'aves fait pour le pauvre Berquin, que j'estime aultant que si c'estoit moy mesmes, et par cela pouves vous dire que vous m'aves tiree de prison, etc." To Francis she expressed the assurance "que Celuy pour qui je croy qu'il a souffert aura agreable la misericorde que pour son honneur avez fait a son serviteur et au vostre." Ibid., 2de Coll., No. 35.]

[Footnote 274: The chief authorities for the first two imprisonments of De Berquin are the long and important letter of Erasmus, to which I shall have occasion again to refer (Opera, ii. 1206, seq.), Felibien, Hist. de la ville de Paris, ii. 948, 984, 985; Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, 169, 170, 277, 278; Haag, s. v.]

[Footnote 275: It is somewhat amusing, in the light of subsequent events, to read such outbursts of sisterly enthusiasm as this: "O que bien-heureuse sera vostre brefve prison, par qui Dieu tant d'ames deslivrera de celle d'infidelite et esternelle damnacion." Lettres de Marg. d'Ang., 2de Coll., No. 5, Lyons, May 1525. See, too, 1ere Coll., No. 26, addressed to Montmorency.]

[Footnote 276: Margaret's letters to Count Hohenlohe were translated into Latin and published by himself. M. Genin has rendered them into French, and inserted them in his Lettres de Marg. d'Angouleme, 1ere Coll., Nos. 48-51. The letter of July 5, 1526, is the most important.]

[Footnote 277: This precious bit of special pleading deserves notice. In the instructions of the king to the Archbishop of Lyons, to be read at the council in that city, Francis thus expressed himself: "Et combien que pour ung tel et si bon oeuvre que celluy qui se offre de present, le dict sire fut conseille, que juridiquement et par tous droicts divins et humains, il pouvoit et debvoit raisonnablement mettre, subimposer et faire contribuer toutes manieres de gens, de quelque qualite, auctorite, condition qu'ils fuissent, soient d'eglise, nobles, ou du tiers et commun estat, au paiement de la ditte rancon, etc." Labbei Concilia, xix. fol. 1137.]

[Footnote 278: The reason assigned for not convoking the States General in proper form, viz., that time did not permit the necessary delay, must be considered scarcely sufficient to explain the irregularity. Ibid., ubi supra.]

[Footnote 279: "Fist un discours farci de latin et de citations de l'Ecriture, dans lequel il conclut que le traite de Madrid estoit nul." Isambert, xii. 299.]

[Footnote 280: The declaration is significant and noteworthy as the first of many similar assurances. Among the documents in Isambert, Recueil des anc. lois francaises, is a full account of the proceedings of the notables, xii. 292-301.]

[Footnote 281: If Francis was sanguine of success in suppressing the Reformation in his kingdom, there were others who went farther still. Barthelemi de Chassanee this very year (1527) chronicles the destruction of "Lutheranism" in France as an accomplished fact! The passage is not unworthy of notice. After explaining the significance of the fleurs-de-lis on the royal escutcheon by the wonderful efficacy of the lily as the antidote of the serpent's poison, and remarking that the kings of France had thrice extracted the mortal virus from the bite of Mohammed, "serpentis venenosi," the writer adds: "Et, his temporibus, videmus nostram fidem et religionem Christianam sanatam esse a morsu pestiferi serpentis Lutheri, qui infinitas haereses in fide Christiana seminavit, quae fuerunt extirpatae a Rege nostro Francisco Christianissimo, qui non cessat insudare, ut Clemens summus Pontifex a sua Sede ejectus restituatur, quem Carolus Borbonius dux exercitus Caroli Austriaci electi in Imperatorem, in urbe obsederat hoc anno Domini 1527 die 6 Maii." Catalogus Gloriae Mundi, fol. 143.]

[Footnote 282: Labbei Concilia, xix. fol. 1160.]

[Footnote 283: The reader may, if his patience will hold out, wade through the prolix decrees of the Council of Sens as published by Cardinal Duprat in 1529, and printed in Labbei Concilia (Venice, 1732), xix. 1149-1202. It is worthy of remark that the confiscation of the property of condemned heretics, if laymen, to the state, is ordered, "tanquam reorum laesae majestatis." Fol. 1159.]

[Footnote 284: Labbei Concilia, xix. fol. 1139.]

[Footnote 285: The words of the decree are sufficiently distinct: "Illam plurimum gravem et onerosam ecclesiis, laicis vero contemtibilem, sacerdotum multitudinem, qui solent plerumque illiterati, moribus inculti, servilibus operibus addicti, imberbes, inopes, fictitiis titulis ad sacros ordines obrepere, non sine magno status clericalis opprobrio." Ibid., xix. fol. 1128. The decrees of the councils of Bourges and Lyons are given in Labbei Concilia, xix. 1041-1048, and 1095 etc.]

[Footnote 286: The image was affixed to the house of the Sieur de Beaumont, at the corner of the Rue des Hosiers and the Rue des Juifs. Felibien, Hist. de Paris, iv. 676.]

[Footnote 287: The strong language of the author of the "Cronique du Roi Francoys I^er" (edited by G. Guiffrey, Paris, 1860) may serve as an index of the popular feeling: "La nuict du dimenche, dernier jour de may, ... par quelque ung pire que ung chien mauldict de Dieu, fut rompue et couppee la teste a une ymaige de la vierge Marie ... qui fut une grosse horreur a la crestiente." Page 66.]

[Footnote 288: The silver image, though protected by an iron grating, fared no better than its predecessor. Stolen before the death of Francis, it was succeeded by a wooden statue, and, when this was destroyed by "heretics," by one of marble! The detailed accounts of the expiatory processions in Felibien, ii. 982, 983, in the Registres du parlement, ibid., iv. 677-679, in G. Guiffrey, appendix to "Cronique du Roy Francoys I^er," 446-459, from MSS. Nat. Lib., in Gaillard, vi. 434, 435, and in the Journal d'un bourgeois, 348-351, give a vivid view of the picturesque ceremonial of the times. It must have been a very substantial compensation for the trouble to which the unknown author of the outrage of the Rue des Rosiers put the clergy, that the mutilated statue of the Virgin, having been placed above the altar in the church of St. Gervais, was said to have wrought notable miracles, and even to have raised two children from the dead! Journal d'un bourgeois, ubi supra. See also "Cronique du Roy Francoys I^er," 67, and especially the poem (Ibid., appendix, 459-464), in twenty-five stanzas of eight lines each, which, I fear, has nothing to recommend it, unless it be length!]

[Footnote 289: May, 1530. Felibien, ii 988, 989; Journal d'un bourgeois, 410.]

[Footnote 290: "Quaeris, quid profecerim? Tot modis deterrens, addidi animum."]

[Footnote 291: Erasmus to Utenhoven, ubi supra; also his letter to Vergara, Sept. 2, 1527, and Beda's Apology, Herminjard, ii. 38, 39, 40.]

[Footnote 292: Erasmus to Utenhoven, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 293: It was one of the great merits of Francis I., in the eyes of De Thou, the historian, that he had drawn Bude from comparative obscurity, and, following his wise counsels, founded the College Royale. Erasmus styled him "The Wonder of France" (De Thou, liv. iii., i. 233), and Scaevole de Ste. Marthe, "omnium, qui hoc patrumque saeculo vixere, sine controversia doctissimus" (Elog. 3). He was at this time one of the maitres de requetes. Crespin, fol. 58.]

[Footnote 294: Journal d'un bourgeois, 378.]

[Footnote 295: The series of letters ends with a prayer which it would have been difficult, we must suppose, for a brother to resist: "Il vous plera (plaira), Monseigneur, faire en sorte que l'on ne die (dise) point que l'eslongnement vous ait fait oblier vostre tres-humble et tres-obeissante subjette et seur MARGUERITE." Genin, 2de Coll., No. 52.]

[Footnote 296: A MS. of the Bibliotheque Nationale, printed by M. Genin (i. 218, etc.), and G. Guiffrey, Cronique, etc., 76, note, gives these and other interesting details, which are in part confirmed by Erasmus.]

[Footnote 297: Ibid., ubi supra.]

[Footnote 298: It was a slight suggestion of mercy that prompted the judges to permit him to be strangled before his body was consigned to the flames.]

[Footnote 299: "Ce qui fut faict et expedie ce mesme jour en grande diligence, affin qu'il ne fut recourru du Roy ne de madame la Regente, qui estoit lors a Bloys, etc." Journal d'un bourgeois, 383.]

[Footnote 300: For De Berquin's history, see Erasmus, ubi supra; Journal d'un bourgeois, 378, etc.; Crespin, Actiones et Monimenta (ed. of 1560), fol. 57-59; Histoire eccles., i. 5; Felibien, ii. 985; Haag, s. v.]

[Footnote 301: Journal d'un bourgeois, and Hist. eccles., ubi supra.]

[Footnote 302: So he is styled by Martin of Beauvais, writing some few months later, in a sufficiently bold plea for the use of fire and fagot: "Si vero haeresiarchae Berquini, et suorum sequacium pervicacia delibutus (haereticus) incorrigibilis videatur, ne fortassis plusquam vipereum venenum latenter surrepat, et sanos inficere possit, subito auferte eum de medio vestrum, execrantes atque aversantes illius perversitatem, et abscisum velut palmitem aridum (juxta Joannis sententiam) subjectis ignibus torrere facite." Paraclesis catholica Franciae ad Francos, ut fortes in Fide et Vocatione qua vocati sunt, permaneant, authore Martino Theodorico Bellovaco, Juris Caesarei Professore (Parisiis, 1539), p. 14.--See note at the end of this chapter.]

[Footnote 303: F. W. Barthold, Deutschland und die Hugenoten, i. 15; Soldan, Gesch. des Prot. in Frankreich, i. 115-120.]

[Footnote 304: Mezeray, Abrege chronologique, iv. 577.]

[Footnote 305: Soldan, i. 121.]

[Footnote 306: October 28, 1533.]

[Footnote 307: "Con mala sodisfazione di tutta la Francia, perche pare ad ogniuno che Clemente pontefice abbia gabbato questo re cristianissimo." Marino Giustiniano (1535), Relaz. Ven., Alberi, i. 191.]

[Footnote 308: Catharine de' Medici was born April 13, 1519.]

[Footnote 309: These interesting particulars are contained in a MS. letter in the Zurich Archives (probably written by Oswald Myconius to Joachim Vadian). The writer had them directly from the mouth of Guillaume du Bellay, the French ambassador, who was with the king at the interview of Marseilles. Du Bellay also gave some details of his own conversations with Clement. The latter freely admitted that there were some things that displeased him in the mass, but naturally wanted so profitable an institution to be treated tenderly and cautiously. Correspond. des reformateurs, iii. 183-186.]

[Footnote 310: The truth respecting Toulouse probably lies about midway between the censures of the Huguenot and the eulogy of the Roman Catholic historian. According to the author of the Histoire ecclesiastique, the parliament was the most sanguinary in France, the university careless of letters, the population jealous of any proficiency in liberal studies. According to Florimond de Raemond, writing somewhat later, Toulouse was worthy of eternal praise, because, notwithstanding a marvellous confluence of strangers from all parts, and in spite of being completely surrounded by regions infected with heresy, it had so persisted in the faith as to contain within its walls not a single family that did not live in conformity with the prescriptions of the church! Historia de ortu, progressu et ruina haereseon hujus saeculi, ii. 486.]

[Footnote 311: Crespin, Actiones et Monimenta, fol. 64.]

[Footnote 312: Florimond de Raemond, ii. 394, 395.]

[Footnote 313: March 6, 1535. Journal d'un bourgeois, 453.]

[Footnote 314: Hist. eccles., i. 9; Crespin, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 315: John Calvin gives a contemporary's account in a letter to Francois Daniel from Paris, October, 1533. Herminjard, Correspond. des reformateurs, iii. 106, etc.; and translated in Bonnet, Calvin's Letters, i. 36, etc. See also Jean Sturm's letter of about the same date, Herminjard, iii. 93.]

[Footnote 316: Calvin's letter above quoted, one of the oldest of his MS. autographs. Dr. Paul Henry, in his valuable Life and Times of John Calvin (Eng. trans., i. 37) inadvertently makes Cop rector of the Sorbonne, an office that never existed.]

[Footnote 317: A single sentence may serve to indicate the distinctness with which this is asserted: "Evangelium remissionem peccatorum et justificationem gratis pollicetur; neque enim accepti sumus Deo quod legi satisfaciamus, sed ex sola Christi promissione, de qua qui dubitat pie vivere non potest, et gehennae incendium sibi parat." Opera Calvini, Baum, Cunitz, et Reuss, x. 34.]

[Footnote 318: Some officious pen has indeed stricken out from the MS. the sentence, "Quod nos consecuturos spero, si beatissimam Virginem solenni illo praeconio longe omnium pulcherrimo salutaverimus: Ave gratia plena!" But on the margin the sensible Nicholas Colladon, a colleague of Beza and an early biographer of Calvin, has written the words: "Haec, quia illis temporibus danda sunt, ne supprimenda quidem putavimus."]

[Footnote 319: "AEgre fert Facultas injuriam toti unversitati illatam, quod tractus fuerit ad superiorem Judicem ... summus suus magistratus, et, eam ob rem, censet Facultas ut ejus accusatores et qui supplicationem superiori Judici porrexerunt, citentur in facie universitatis, causas rei allaturi." Bullaeus, vi. 238, apud Herminjard, iii. 117, note. See many interesting particulars respecting the privileges claimed by the university, in Pasquier, Recherches de la France, liv. iii. ch. 29.]

[Footnote 320: He was to have been thrown into the Conciergerie. See Beza's preface to Calvin's Com. on Joshua, 1565, apud Herminjard, iii. 118, note. Parliament complained to Francis, and the latter in his reply, Lyons, Dec. 10, 1533, ordered proceedings to be instituted for the capture of Cop and the punishment of the person who had facilitated his flight by giving him warning. Francis to parliament, Herminjard, iii. 118. A reward of 300 crowns was accordingly offered for the apprehension of the fugitive rector, dead or alive. Martin Bucer to Amb. Blaurer, January, 1534, Herminjard, iii. 130.]

[Footnote 321: A fragment of Cop's address--about the first third--was discovered by M. Jules Bonnet in the MSS. of the Library of Geneva, bearing on the margin the note: "Haec Joannes Calvinus propria manu descripsit, et est auctor." This portion is printed in Herminjard, Corresp. des reformateurs, iii. 418-420, and Calv. Opera, Baum, Cunitz, et Reuss, ix. 873-876. Merle d'Aubigne used it in his Hist. of the Ref. in the time of Calvin, ii. 198, etc. Still more fortunate than M. Bonnet, Messrs. Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss very recently found a complete copy of the same address in the archives of one of the churches of Strasbourg. The newly found portion is of great interest. Calvini Op., x. (1872), 30-36.]

[Footnote 322: Calvin to Fr. Daniel (1534), Bonnet, i. 41; Histoire eccles., i. 9.]

[Footnote 323: Francis I. to Council of Berne, Marseilles, Oct. 20, 1533, MS. Berne Archives, Herminjard, iii. 95, 96.]

[Footnote 324: Berne was accustomed to give and take hard blows. So, although the chancellor of the canton endorsed on the king's missive the words, "Rude lettre du Roi, ... relative aux Farel," the council was not discouraged; but, when sending two envoys, about a month later, to the French court, instructed them, among other things, again to intercede for a brother of Farel. Herminjard, iii. 96, note.]

[Footnote 325: Du Bellay was himself believed, not without reason, to have sympathy for the reformed doctrine, and it was under his auspices, as well as those of the King and Queen of Navarre, that the evangelical preachers had lately held forth in the pulpits of the capital. See, for instance, Bucer to Blaurer, Jan., 1534, Herminjard, Corresp. des reformateurs, iii. 130.]

[Footnote 326: Francis I.'s letter to Du Bellay, Lyons, Dec. 10, 1533, MS. Dupuy Coll., Bibl. nat., Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. franc., i. 437. His orders to parliament of same date, Herminjard, Corresp. des reformateurs, iii. 114, etc.]

[Footnote 327: Francis to parliament, ubi supra, iii. 116.]