Chapter V…

Chapter V

MELANCHTHON'S ATTEMPT AT CONCILIATION, AND THE YEAR OF THE PLACARDS.

It appears almost incredible that, so late as in the year 1534, the hope of reuniting the discordant views of the partisans of reform and the adherents of the Roman Church should have been seriously entertained by any considerable number of reflecting minds, for the chasm separating the opposing parties was too wide and deep to be bridged over or filled. There were irreconcilable differences of doctrine and practice, and tendencies so diverse as to preclude the possibility of harmonious action.

[Sidenote: Hopes of reunion in the church.]

Not so, however, thought many sincere persons on both sides, and not less on the side of the Reformation than on that of the Roman Catholic Church. True, the claims of the papacy were insupportable, and the most flagrant abuses prevailed; but many of the reformers believed it quite within the bounds of possibility that the great body of the supporters of the church might be brought to recognize and renounce these abuses, and break the tyrannical yoke that had, for so many centuries, rested upon the neck of the faithful. The ancient fabric of religion, they said, is indeed disfigured by modern additions, and has been brought, by long neglect, to the very verge of ruin. But these tasteless excrescences can easily be removed, the ravages of time reverently repaired, and the grand old edifice restored to its pristine symmetry and magnificence. In a word, it was a general reformation that was contemplated--no radical reconstruction after a novel plan. And the future council, in which all phases of opinion would be freely represented, was to provide the adequate and sufficient cure for all the ills afflicting the body politic and ecclesiastic.

By some of the more sanguine adherents of both parties these flattering expectations were long entertained. With others the attempt to effect a religious reconciliation seems to have served merely as a mask to hide political designs; and at this distance of time it is among the most difficult problems of history to determine the proportion in which earnest zeal and rank insincerity entered as factors into the measures undertaken for the purpose of reconciling theological differences. Especially is this true respecting the overtures made by the French monarch to Philip Melanchthon, which now claim our attention.

[Sidenote: Melanchthon and Du Bellay.]

[Sidenote: A plan of reconciliation.]

Early in the spring of the year 1534 Melanchthon received a courteous visit at Wittemberg from an agent of the distinguished French diplomatist, Guillaume du Bellay-Langey, envoy to the Protestant princes of Germany. The interview paved the way for a long correspondence between Melanchthon and Du Bellay himself, in which the latter threw out suggestions of the practicability of some plan for bringing the intelligent and candid men in both countries to adopt a common ground in respect to religion. Finally, in response to Du Bellay's earnest request, his correspondent consented to draw up such a scheme as appeared to himself proper to serve for the basis of union. The result was a paper of a truly wonderful character, in which the reader scarcely knows whether to admire the evident charity dictating every line, or to smile at the simplicity betrayed in the extravagant concessions. In a letter accompanying his proposal Melanchthon set forth at some length both his motives and his hopes. In touching upon controverted points, he claimed to have exhibited a moderation that would prove to be not without utility to the church. He professed his own belief that an accommodation might be effected on every doctrinal point, if only a free and amicable conference were to be held, under royal auspices, between a few good and learned men. The subjects of dispute were less numerous than was generally supposed, and the edge of many a sharply drawn theological distinction had been insensibly worn away by the softening hand of time. By such a conference as he proposed the perils of a public discussion could be avoided--a form of controversy fatal, for the most part, to the peace of the unlearned. In fact, no radical change was absolutely required in the ancient order or in ecclesiastical polity. Not even the pontifical authority itself need necessarily be abolished; for it was the desire of the Lutheran party, so far as possible, to retain all the accustomed forms. In fine, he begged Du Bellay to exhort the monarchs of Europe to concord while yet there was room left for the counsels of moderation. What calamities might otherwise be in store! What a ruin both of church and state, should a collision of arms be precipitated![328]

But Melanchthon's ardor had carried him far beyond his true reckoning. No other reformer could have brought himself to approve the articles now submitted for the king's perusal; while it was certain that not even this unbounded liberality would satisfy the exorbitant demands of the Roman party.

[Sidenote: Melanchthon's concessions.]

Melanchthon not only admitted that an ecclesiastical system with bishops in many cities was lawful, but that the Roman pontiff might preside over the entire episcopate. He countenanced, to a certain extent, the current doctrine respecting human tradition and the retention of auricular confession. He discerned a gradual approach to concord in respect to justification, and found no difficulty in the divergent views of free will and original sin. He did, indeed, insist upon the rejection of the worship of saints, and advocate expunging from the ritual all appeals for their assistance. So, too, monks ought to be allowed to forsake the cloister, and monastic establishments could then be advantageously turned into schools of learning. The celibacy of the clergy should, in like manner, be forthwith granted. There was, however, in his view, one point that bristled with difficulties. How to remove them Melanchthon confessed himself unable to suggest. The question of the popish mass was the Gordian knot which must be reserved for the future council of the church to untie or cut.[329]

[Sidenote: His own misgivings.]

A faint suspicion seems, however, to have flitted through the Wittemberg reformer's mind, that possibly, after all his large admissions, his attempt was but labor lost! For, in a letter to Martin Bucer, written on the very day he despatched his communication to Du Bellay, he more than hinted his own despair of effecting an agreement with the Pope of Rome, and excused himself for his apparently lavish proffers, on the plea that he was desirous of making his good French friends comprehend the chief points of controversy![330]

[Sidenote: A favorable impression made on Francis.]

Melanchthon's articles, faithfully transmitted by Du Bellay, produced on the mind of Francis a favorable impression. The ambitious monarch welcomed the prospect of a speedy removal of the doctrinal differences that had previously marred the perfect understanding he wished to maintain with the Protestant princes of Germany. Whether, however, any higher motives than considerations of a political character weighed with him, may well be doubted.

Meantime, an unexpected occurrence for the time dispelled all thought of that harvest of conciliation and harmony which the more moderate reformers looked for as likely to spring up from the seed so liberally sown by Melanchthon.

[Sidenote: Indiscreet partisans of reform.]

If, among the advocates of the purification of the church, there was a party which, with Melanchthon, seemed ready to jeopard some of the most vital principles of the great moral and religious movement, in the vain hope of again cementing an unnatural union with the Roman system, there was another faction, to which moderation and half-way measures were utterly repulsive. Its partisans believed themselves warranted in resorting to open acts expressive of detestation of the gilded idolatry of the popular religion. For their views they alleged the Old Testament history as sufficient authority. Had not the servants of Jehovah braved the resentment of the priests of Baal, and disregarded the threats of kings and queens? Why treat the saints' images, the crucifixes, the gorgeous robes and manufactured relics, with more consideration than was displayed by Hebrew prophets in dealing with heathen abominations? So inveterate an evil as the corruption of all that is most sacred in Christianity could only be successfully combated by vigor and decision. Only under heavy and repeated blows does the monarch of the forest yield to the axe of the woodman.

Between the extremes of ill-judged concession and untimely rashness, the great body of those who had embraced the Reformation endeavored to hold a middle course, but found themselves exposed to many perils, not the result of their own actions, but brought upon them by the timidity or foolhardiness of their associates. A lamentable instance of the kind must now be noticed.

[Sidenote: Placards and pasquinades.]

For many months the street-walls of Paris had been employed by both sides in the great controversies of the day, for the purpose of giving publicity to their views. Under cover of night, placards, often in the form of pasquinades, were posted where they would be likely to meet the eyes of a large number of curious readers. So, in the excitement following the arrest and exile of Beda and other impertinent and seditious preachers, placards succeeded each other nightly. In one the theologians of the Sorbonne were portrayed to the life, and each in all his proper colors, by an unfriendly pencil. In another, "Paris, flower of nobility" was passionately entreated to sustain the wounded faith of God, and the King of Glory was supplicated to confound "the accursed dogs," the Lutherans.[331] Under the circumstances, it was not strange that the "Lutheran" placard was hastily torn down by some zealot, with the exclamation that the author was a heretic, while a crowd stood all day about the other transcribing its unpoetic but pious exhortations to burn the offenders against Divine justice, and no one attempted to remove it.

[Sidenote: Mission of Feret to Switzerland.]

The success of this method of reaching the masses, who could never be induced to read a formal treatise or book, suggested to some of the more ardent "Lutherans" of Paris the idea of preparing a longer placard, which should boldly attack the cardinal errors of the papal system of religion. But, the press being closely watched in the French capital, it was thought best to have the placard printed in Switzerland, where, indeed, the most competent and experienced hands might be found for composing such a paper. The messenger employed was a young man named Feret, an apprentice of the king's apothecary;[332] and the printing seems to have been done in the humble but famous establishment of Pierre Van Wingle, in the retired Vale of Serrieres, just out of Neufchatel, and on the same presses which, in 1533, gave to the world the first French reformed liturgy, and, two years later, the Protestant translation of the Bible into the French language by Olivetanus.[333] There is less certainty respecting the authorship, but it seems highly probable that not Farel, but an enthusiastic and somewhat hot-headed writer, Antoine de Marcourt, must be held responsible for this imprudent production.[334]

[Sidenote: The placard against the mass.]

Feret, having on his return eluded detection at the frontiers, reached Paris in safety. He brought with him a large number of copies of a broadside headed, "True Articles respecting the horrible, great and insupportable Abuses of the Papal Mass." Among those to whom the paper was secretly submitted, there were some who, more prudent than the rest, decidedly opposed its publication. It was too violent, they said. The writer's ill-advised severity would answer no good purpose. The tract would alienate the sympathy of many, and thus retard, instead of advancing, the cause it advocated.[335] Remonstrance, however, proved futile.

Early on the morning of the eighteenth of October, 1534, a placard was found posted upon the walls in all the principal thoroughfares of the metropolis. Everywhere it was read with horror and indignation, mingled with rage; and loud threats and curses were uttered against its unknown author.

The document that called forth these expressions and was the occasion of more important commotions in the sequel, had so direct and potent an influence upon the fortunes of the Reformation in France that it cannot be passed over without a brief reference to the general character of its contents. It began with a solemn address: "I invoke heaven and earth in testimony of the truth, against that proud and pompous papal mass, through which (if God remedy not speedily the evil) the world will be wholly desolated, destroyed, and ruined. For therein is our Lord so outrageously blasphemed and the people so blinded and seduced, that it ought no longer to be suffered or endured." Every Christian must needs be assured that the one sacrifice of Christ, being perfect, demands no repetition. Still the world has long been, and now is, flooded with wretched sacrificing priests, who yet proclaim themselves liars, inasmuch as they chant every Sunday in their vespers, that Christ is a priest forever after the order of Melchisedec. Wherefore not only every man of sound understanding, but "they themselves, in spite of themselves, must admit that the Pope and all his brood of cardinals, bishops, monks, and canting mass-priests, with all who consent thereunto, are false prophets, damnable deceivers, apostates, wolves, false shepherds, idolaters, seducers, liars and execrable blasphemers, murderers of souls, renouncers of Jesus Christ, of his death and passion, false witnesses, traitors, thieves, and robbers of the honor of God, and more detestable than devils." After citing from the book of Hebrews some passages to establish the sufficiency of Christ, the writer addresses his opponents: "I demand then of all sacrificing priests, whether their sacrifice be perfect or imperfect? If imperfect, why do they deceive the poor people? If perfect, why need it be repeated? Come forward, priests, and reply if you can!"

The body of Christ cannot, it is argued, be contained in the host. It is above, whither also we are bidden raise our hearts and look for the Lord. To breathe or mutter over the bread and wine, and then adore them, is idolatry. To enjoin this adoration on others is a doctrine of devils. But these impudent heretics, not ashamed of attempting to imprison the body of Jesus in their wafer, have even dared to place this caution in the rubric of their missals, "If the body of our Lord, being devoured of mice or spiders, has been destroyed or much gnawed, or if the worm be found altogether within, let it be burned and placed in the reliquary." "O Earth! How dost thou not open and swallow up these horrible blasphemers! Wretched men, is this the body of the Lord Jesus, the true Son of God? Doth he suffer himself to be eaten of mice and spiders? He who is the bread of angels and of all the children of God, is he given to us to become the food of animals? Will ye make him who is incorruptible at the right hand of God to be the prey of worms and corruption? Were there no other error than this in your infernal theology, well would ye deserve the fagot! Light then your fires to burn yourselves, not us who refuse to believe in your idols, your new gods, and new Christs that suffer themselves to be eaten indifferently by animals and by you who are no better than animals!"[336] Closing with a vivid contrast between the fruits of the mass and those of the true Supper of our Lord, the writer finally exclaims of his opponents, "Truth fails them, Truth threatens and pursues them, Truth terrifies them; by which their reign shall shortly be destroyed forever."[337]

[Sidenote: The popular excitement in Paris.]

It would be difficult to exaggerate the effect produced upon the populace of Paris by this intemperate handbill. If any part of the ceremonial of the church was deeply rooted in the devotion of the common people, it was the service of the mass. And in attacking the doctrine of the Real Presence, the authors of this libel, distributed under cover of the darkness, had, in the estimation of the rabble, proved themselves more impious and deserving a more signal punishment than that sacrilegious Jew whose knife had drawn drops of miraculous blood from the transubstantiated wafer. Not the parish priests, nor the doctors of the Sorbonne, could surpass the infuriated populace in loud execrations of the wretch for whom burning alive seemed too mild a punishment.

[Sidenote: Anger of the king.]

But a second act of ill-timed rashness accomplished a result even more disastrous for Protestantism than the kindling of the fanatical zeal of the people; for it inflamed the anger of the king, and made him, what all the persuasions of the Roman court had hitherto failed to make him, a determined enemy and persecutor of the "new doctrines." A copy of the placard was secretly affixed by night to the very door of the royal bedchamber in the castle of Amboise,[338] where Francis and his court were at the time sojourning. If the contents of the tract offended the religious principles carefully inculcated upon the king by his spiritual instructors, the audacity of the person who, disregarding bars, bolts and guards, had presumed to invade the privacy of the royal abode and obtrude his unwelcome message, could not but be regarded in the light of a direct personal insult. Francis had not been in the habit of troubling himself about the private opinions of the learned on vexed points of theology; nor had he been inclined to permit his more fanatical subjects to harass any of those eminent scholars whose literary attainments added lustre to his brilliant court. Yet his claim to the right of enforcing uniformity of belief--and that uniformity a complete conformity to his own creed--had rather been held in abeyance than relinquished. Louis de Berquin had, at his cost, discovered that the royal protection could not be expected even by a personal favorite and a scholar of large acquisitions, when, not content with holding doctrines deemed heretical, he strove to promulgate them. The interposition of Margaret of Angouleme had proved unavailing in his behalf. The heretics who had now ventured to nail an expose of their dogmas on his bedchamber door could scarcely anticipate greater clemency.

[Sidenote: Political considerations.]

To personal motives were added political considerations. Indulgence to the perpetrators of an act so insulting to the Roman Catholic religion might drive the pontiff, whose friendship was an essential requisite of success in Francis's ambitious projects, to become the fast friend of the emperor, his rival. Pope Clement the Seventh had been succeeded by Paul the Third. The alliance cemented by the marriage of the Duke of Orleans to Catharine de' Medici had been dissolved by the death of the bride's uncle. The favor of the new Pope must be conciliated. Under such circumstances, what were the sufferings of a few poor reformers, when weighed in the balance against the triple crown of his Holiness?

[Sidenote: Fruitless intercession of Margaret.]

Francis determined to return to Paris for the purpose of superintending in person a search for the culprits. It is true that the Queen of Navarre attempted to moderate his anger by suggesting that it was not unlikely that the placard, far from being composed by the "Lutherans," was the cunning device of their enemies, who thus sought to insure the ruin of the innocent. But the king appears not unreasonably to have rejected the suggestion as improbable; although, seven years later, Margaret reminded him of her surmise, and maintained that the sequel had strongly confirmed its accuracy.[339]

[Sidenote: Francis abolishes the art of printing.]

Far, indeed, from yielding to his sister's persuasions, Francis in his anger took a step which he would certainly have been glad himself, a few months later, to be able to forget, and of which his panegyrists have fruitlessly striven to obliterate the memory. On the thirteenth of January, 1535, after the lapse of nearly three months from the date of the publication of the placards--an interval that might surely be regarded as sufficiently long to permit his overheated passions to cool down--the king sent to the Parliament of Paris an Edict absolutely prohibiting any exercise of the Art of Printing in France, on pain of the halter! It was no secret from whom the ignoble suggestion had come. A year and a half earlier (on the seventh of June, 1533), the theologians of the Sorbonne had presented Francis an urgent petition, in view of the multiplication of heretical books, wherein they set forth the absolute necessity of suppressing forever by a severe law the pestilent art which had been the parent of so dangerous a progeny.[340] The king was now acting upon the advice of his ghostly counsellors!

[Sidenote: He suspends the disgraceful edict.]

Happily for Francis, however, whose ambition it had hitherto been to figure as a modern Maecenas, even a subservient parliament declined the customary registration. The king, too, coming to his senses after the lapse of six weeks, so far yielded to the remonstrances of his more sensible courtiers as to recall his rash edict, or, rather, suspend its operation until he could give the matter more careful consideration. Meanwhile he undertook to institute a censorship. The king was to select twelve persons of quality and pecuniary responsibility, from a list of twice that number of names submitted by parliament; and this commission was to receive the exclusive right to print--and that, in the city of Paris alone--such books as might be approved by the proper authorities and be found necessary to the public weal. Until the appointment of the twelve censors the press was to remain idle! Nor was the suspension of the prohibitory ordinance to continue a day longer than the term required by the monarch to decide whether he preferred to modify its provisions or leave them unchanged. "Albeit on the thirteenth day of January, 1534,"[341] wrote this much lauded patron of letters, "by other letters-patent of ours, and for the causes and reasons therein contained, we prohibited and forbade any one from thenceforth printing, or causing to be printed, any books in our kingdom, on pain of the halter: nevertheless, we have willed and ordained that the execution and accomplishment of our said letters, prohibitions and injunctions, be and continue suspended and surcease until we shall otherwise provide."[342]

[Sidenote: Vigorous proceedings of parliament.]

Meantime, parliament had not been slack in obeying the command to search diligently for the authors and publishers of the placards. Many reputed "Lutherans" had been arrested, some of whom, it was given out, pretended to reveal the existence of a plot of the reformers to fall upon the good Christians of the metropolis while assembled in their churches for divine worship, and assassinate them in the midst of their devotions! The credulous populace made no difficulty in accepting the tale. Paris shuddered at the thought of its narrow escape, and some hundreds of thousands of men and women reverently crossed themselves and thanked heaven they had not fallen a prey to the blood-thirsty designs of a handful of peaceable and unarmed adherents of the "new doctrines!" As for Francis himself, a grave historian tells us that his apprehensions were inflamed by the very mention of the word "conspiracy."[343]

[Sidenote: Abundance of victims.]

The investigation had been committed to practised hands. The prosecuting officer, or lieutenant-criminel, Morin, was as famous for his cunning as he was notorious for his profligacy. Moreover, the judicious addition of six hundred livres parisis to his salary afforded him a fresh stimulus and prevented his zeal from flagging.[344] The timidity or treachery of one of the prisoners facilitated the inquest. Terrified by the prospect of torture and death, or induced by hope of reward, a person, obscurely designated as le Guainier, or Gueynier,[345] made an ample disclosure of the names and residences of his former fellow-believers. The pursuit was no longer confined to those who had been concerned in the distribution of the placards. All reputed heretics were apprehended, and, as rapidly as their trials could be prosecuted, condemned to death. There was a rare harvest of falsehood and misrepresentation. No wonder that innocent and guilty were involved in one common fate.[346]

It does not come within the scope of this history to give an edifying account of the courage displayed by the victims of the frenzy consequent upon the placards. The very names of many are unknown. Among the first to be committed to the flames was a young man, Barthelemi Milon, whom paralysis had deprived of the use of the lower half of his body.[347] His unpardonable offence was that copies of the placard against the mass had been found in his possession. A wealthy draper, Jean du Bourg, had been guilty of the still more heinous crime of having posted some of the bills on the walls. For this he was compelled before execution to go through that solemn mockery of penitence, the amende honorable, in front of the church of Notre Dame, with but a shirt to conceal his nakedness, and holding a lighted taper in his hand; afterward to be conducted to the Fontaine des Innocents, and there have the hand that had done the impious deed cut off at the wrist, in token of the public detestation of his "high treason against God and the king." A printer, a bookseller, a mason, a young man in orders, were subjected to the same cruel death. But these were only the first fruits of the prosecution.[348] However opinions may differ respecting the merits of the cause for which they suffered, there can be but one view taken of their deportment in the trying hour of execution. In the presence of the horrible preparatives for torture, the most clownish displayed a fortitude and a noble consciousness of honest purpose, contrasted with which the pusillanimous dejection, the unworthy concessions, and the premeditated perjury of Francis, during his captivity at Madrid not ten years before, appear in no enviable light. The monarch who bartered away his honor to regain his liberty[349] might have sat at the feet of these, his obscure subjects, to learn the true secret of greatness.

[Sidenote: The great expiatory procession.]

The punishment of the persons who had taken part in the preparation and dissemination of the placards was deemed an insufficient atonement for a crime in the guilt of which they had involved the city, and, indeed, the whole kingdom. As the offence excelled in enormity any other within the memory of man, so it was determined to expiate it by a solemn procession unparalleled for magnificence. Thursday, the twenty-first of January, 1535, was chosen for the pageant. Along the line of march the streets had been carefully cleaned. A public proclamation had bidden every householder display from his windows the most beautiful and costly tapestries he possessed. At the doors of all private mansions large waxen tapers burned, and, at the intersection of all side streets, wooden barriers, guarded by soldiers, precluded the possibility of interruption.

Early on the appointed morning, the entire body of the clergy of Paris, decked out in their most splendid robes and bearing the insignia of their respective ranks, assembled in Notre Dame, and thence in solemn state marched to the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, to meet the king. Sixteen dignitaries bore aloft the precious reliquary of Sainte Genevieve; others in similar honor supported the no less venerated reliquary of Saint Marcel. Those skilled in local antiquities averred that never before had the sacred remains of either saint been known to be brought across the Seine to grace any similar display.

At Saint Germain l'Auxerrois--that notable church under the very shadow of the Louvre, whose bell, a generation later, gave the first signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day--the royal court and the civil and municipal bodies that had been permitted to appear on so august an occasion, were in waiting. At length the magnificent column began its progress, and threading the crowded streets of St. Honore and St. Denis, made its way, over the bridge of Notre Dame, to the island upon which stood and still stands the stately cathedral dedicated to Our Lady. Far on in the van rode Eleonore, Francis's second queen, sister to the emperor, conspicuous for her dignified bearing, dressed in black velvet and mounted on a palfrey with housings of cloth of gold. In her company were the king's daughters by his former wife, the "good Queen Claude," all in dresses of crimson satin embroidered with gold; while a large number of princesses and noble ladies, with attendant gentlemen and guards, constituted their escort.

The monastic orders came next. Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, Carmelites, all were there, with burning tapers and highly prized relics. The parish churches were represented in like manner by their clergy; and these were followed by the chapter of the cathedral and by the multitudinous professors and scholars of the university. Between this part of the procession and the next, came a detachment of the Swiss guards of the king, armed with halberds, and a band of skilled musicians performing, on trumpets, hautboys, and other instruments, the airs of the solemn hymns of the church.

An honorable place was held by the ecclesiastics of the "Sainte Chapelle," originally built by Louis the Ninth, in the precincts of his own palace, for the reception of the marvellous relics he brought home from Holy Land. Those relics were all here, together with the other costly possessions of the chapel--the crown of thorns, the true cross, Aaron's rod that budded, the great crown of St. Louis, the head of the holy lance, one of the nails used in our Lord's crucifixion, the tables of stone, some of the blood of Christ, the purple robe, and the milk of the Virgin Mary--all borne in jewelled reliquaries by bishops.

Four cardinals in scarlet robes followed--Givri, Tournon, Le Veneur, and Chatillon--an uncongenial group, in which the violent persecutor and the future partisan of the Reformation walked side by side. But the central point in the entire procession was occupied not by these, but by Jean du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, bearing aloft a silver cross in which was enclosed the consecrated wafer of the eucharist, whose title to adoration it was the grand object of the celebration to vindicate. The king's three sons--the dauphin, and the Dukes of Orleans and Angouleme--with a fourth prince of the blood--the Duke of Bourbon Vendome--held the supports of a magnificent canopy of velvet, sprinkled with golden fleurs-de-lis, above the bishop and his sacred charge. Francis himself walked behind him, with a retinue of nobles, officers of government, judges of parliament, and other civilians closing the line. The king was naturally the object of universal observation.

Dressed in robes of black velvet lined with costly furs, he devoutly followed the elevated host, with uncovered head, and with a large waxen taper in his hands. Several stations had, at great expense, been erected along the designated route. At each of these the procession halted, and the Bishop of Paris placed the silver cross with its precious contents in a niche made to receive it. Then the king, having handed his taper to the Cardinal of Lorraine at his side, knelt down and reverently worshipped with joined hands, until a grand anthem in honor of the sacrament had been intoned. The scene had been well studied, and it made the desired impression upon the by-standers. "There was no one among the people," say the registers of the Hotel de Ville in unctuous phrase, "be he small or great, that did not shed warm tears and pray God in behalf of the king, whom he beheld performing so devout an act and worthy of long remembrance. And it is to be believed that there lives not a Jew nor an infidel who, had he witnessed the example of the prince and his people, would not have been converted to the faith."[350]

[Sidenote: Memorable speech of the king.]

At the conclusion of the mass--the most brilliant that had ever been celebrated within the walls of the cathedral, Francis proceeded to the episcopal palace, to dine in public, with the princes his children, the high nobility, cardinals, ambassadors, privy counsellors, and some of the judges of the Parliament of Paris. Here it was that he delivered a speech memorable in the history of the great religious movement of the time. Addressing parliament and representatives of the lower judiciary, Francis plainly disclaimed all sympathy with the Reformation. "The errors," he said, "which have multiplied, and are even now multiplying, are but of our own days. Our fathers have shown us how to live in accordance with the word of God and of our mother Holy Church. In that church I am resolved to live and die, and I am determined to prove that I am entitled to be called Very Christian. I notify you that it is my will that these errors be driven from my kingdom. Nor shall I excuse any from the task. Were one of my arms infected with this poison, I should cut it off! Were my own children contaminated, I should immolate them![351] I therefore now impose this duty upon you, and relieve myself of responsibility." Turning to the doctors of the university, the king reminded them that the care of the faith was entrusted to them, and he therefore appealed to them to watch over the orthodoxy of all teachers and report all defections to the secular courts.

[Sidenote: Constancy of the sufferers.]

Francis had spoken in the heat of passion, but, in the words of a contemporary, "if his fury was great, still greater was the constancy of the martyrs."[352] Of this, indeed, the king did not have to wait long for a proof. For, after having witnessed, in company with the queen, the amende honorable of six condemned "Lutherans" or "Christaudins," which took place on the square in front of the cathedral, Francis, as he returned to the Louvre, passed the places where these unfortunates were undergoing their supreme torments--three near the Croix du Tiroir, in the Rue St. Honore, and three at the Halles. The first were men of some note--Simon Fouhet, of Auvergne, one of the royal choristers, supposed to have been the person who posted the placard in the castle of Amboise, Audebert Valleton, of Nantes, and Nicholas L'Huillier, from the Chatelet of Paris. The others were of an inferior station in life--a fruitster, a maker of wire-baskets, and a joiner. All, however, with almost equal composure, submitted to their fate as to the will of Heaven, rather than the sentence of human judges; scarcely seeming, in their firm anticipation of an immortal crown, to notice the tumultuous outcries of an infuriated mob which nearly succeeded in snatching them from the officers of the law, in order to have the satisfaction of tearing their bodies to pieces.[353]

[Sidenote: Ingenious contrivance for protracting torture.]

It would seem, however, that the most relentless enemy could scarcely have complained that any womanish indulgence had been shown to the persons singled out to expiate the crime of posting the placard against the mass. To delay the advent of death, the sole term of their excruciating sufferings, an ingeniously contrived instrument of torture was put in play, which if not altogether novel, had at least been but seldom employed up to this time. Instead of being bound to the stake and simply roasted to death by means of the fagots heaped up around him, the victim was now suspended by chains over a blazing fire, and was alternately lowered into it and drawn out--a refinement of cruelty whose principal recommendation to favor lay in the fact that the diversion it afforded the spectators could be made to last until they were fully satisfied, and the executioner chose to allow the writhing sufferer to be suffocated in the flames.[354] So satisfactory were the results of the Estrapade, that it came to be universally employed as the instrument for executing "Lutherans," with the exception of a favored few, to whom the privilege was accorded of being hung or strangled before their bodies were thrown into the fire. Such was, soon after this time, the fate of a woman, a school-teacher by profession, found guilty of heresy. In any case, the judges took effectual measures to forestall the deplorable consequences that might ensue from permitting the "Lutherans" to address the by-standers, and so pervert them from the orthodox faith. The hangman was instructed to pierce their tongue with a hot iron, or to cut it out altogether; just as, at a later date, the sound of the drum was employed to drown the last utterances of the victims of despotism.[355]

[Sidenote: Flight of Marot.]

The flames of persecution were not extinguished with the conclusion of the solemn expiatory pageant. For months strangers sojourning in Paris shuddered at the horrible sights almost daily meeting their eyes.[356] The lingering hope that a prince naturally clement and averse to needless bloodshed, would at length tire of countenancing these continuous scenes of atrocity, seemed gradually to fade away. Great numbers of the most intelligent and scholarly consulted their safety in flight; the friendly court of Renee of France, Duchess of Ferrara, affording, for a time, asylum to Clement Marot, the poet, and to many others. Meantime the suspected "Lutherans" that could not be found were summoned by the town-crier to appear before the proper courts for trial. A list of many such has escaped destruction of time.[357] Fortunately, most of them had gotten beyond the reach of the officers of the law, and the sentence could, at most, effect only the confiscation of their property.

[Sidenote: Royal declaration of Coucy, July 16, 1535.]

As summer advanced, however, the rigor of the persecution was perceived to be somewhat abating. Finally, on the sixteenth of July, the king so far yielded to the urgency of open or secret friends of progress among the courtiers, as to issue a "Declaration" to facilitate the return of the fugitives. "Forasmuch," said Francis, "as the heresies, which, to our great displeasure, had greatly multiplied in our kingdom, have ceased, as well by the Divine clemency and goodness, as by the diligence we have used in the exemplary punishment of many of their adherents--who, nevertheless, were not in their last hours abandoned by the hand of our Lord, but, turning to Him, have repented, and made public confession of their errors, and died like good Christians and Catholics--no further prosecution of persons suspected of heresy shall be made, but they will be discharged from imprisonment, and their goods restored. For the same reason, all fugitives who return and abjure their errors within six months will receive pardon. But Sacramentarians[358] and the relapsed are excluded from this offer. Furthermore, all men are forbidden, under pain of the gallows, and of being held rebels and disturbers of the public peace, to read, teach, translate or print, whether publicly or in private, any doctrine contrary to the Christian faith."[359] The concession, it must be confessed, was not a very liberal one; for the exiles could return only on condition of recanting. Yet the new regulations were mild in comparison with the previous practice, which consigned all the guilty alike to death, and left no room for repentance. Consequently, there were not a few, especially of the learned who had been suspected of heresy, that were found ready to avail themselves of the permission, even on the prescribed terms.

[Sidenote: Alleged intercession of Pope Paul III.]

In explanation of this change in the policy of Francis, the most remarkable rumors circulated among the people. Not the least strange was one that has been preserved for us by a contemporary.[360] It was reported in the month of June, 1535, that Pope Paul the Third, having been informed of "the horrible and execrable" punishments inflicted by the king upon the "Lutherans," wrote to Francis and begged him to moderate his severity. The pontiff did, indeed, express his conviction that the French monarch had acted with the best intentions, and in accordance with his claim to be called the Very Christian King. But he added, that when God, our Creator, was on earth, He employed mercy rather than strict justice. Rigor ought not always to be resorted to; and this burning of men alive was a cruel death, and better calculated to lead to rejection of the faith than to conversion.[361] He therefore prayed the king to appease his anger, to abate the severity of justice, and grant pardon to the guilty. Francis, consequently, because of his desire to please his Holiness, became more moderate, and enjoined upon parliament to practise less harshness. For this reason the judges ceased from criminal proceedings against the "Lutherans," and many prisoners were discharged both from the Conciergerie and from the Chatelet.

That this extraordinary rumor was in general circulation appears from the circumstance that it is alluded to by a Paris correspondent of Melanchthon; while another account that has recently come to light states it not as a flying report, but as a well-ascertained fact.[362] Its singularity is shown from its apparent inconsistency with the well-known history and sentiments of the Farnese Paul. It is difficult to conceive how the pontiff who approved of the Society of Jesus and instituted the Inquisition in the kingdom of Naples, could have been touched with compassion at the recital of the suffering of French heretics. Yet the paradoxes of history are too numerous to permit us to reject as apocryphal a story so widely current, or to explain it away by making it only a popular echo of the convictions of the more enlightened as to the views that were most befitting the claimant to a universal episcopate.

[Sidenote: Clemency again dictated by policy.]

Francis himself, however, made no such statement to the Venetian ambassador at his court. Marino Giustiniano, who gave in his report to the doge and senate this very year, was informed by the French king that, on hearing of the suspension by the Emperor Charles the Fifth of all sentences of death against the Flemish heretics, he had also himself ordered that against every species of heretics, except the Sacramentarians, proceedings should indeed be held as before, but not to the extremity of death.[363] It is evident, therefore, that the suppression of the most cruel features of the persecution had no higher motive than political considerations. Francis had worked himself into a frenzy, and counterfeited the sincerity of a bigot, when it was necessary to make the Pope a friend, and a show of sanguinary ardor seemed most adapted to accomplish his object. He now became tolerant, on discovering that the course he had entered upon was alienating the Protestant princes of Germany, upon whose support he relied in his contest with Charles the Fifth. The turning-point appears to have been coincident with the time when he found that the emperor was endeavoring to outbid him by offering a short-lived toleration to the Netherlanders.

[Sidenote: Francis writes to the German princes.]

Only eleven days after the solemn propitiatory procession, and while the trial and execution of the French reformers were still in progress, Francis had written to his allies beyond the Rhine, in explanation of the severe punishment of which such shocking accounts had been circulated in their dominions. He justified his course by alleging the disorderly and rebellious character of the culprits, and laid great stress upon the care he had taken to secure German Protestants from danger and annoyance.[364]

[Sidenote: Melanchthon entreated to come to France.]

A month later, Vore de la Fosse was on his way to Wittemberg, on a private mission to Melanchthon. He was bearer of a long and important letter from John Sturm. The learned writer, a German scholar of eminence and a friend of the reformed doctrines, was at this time lecturing in Paris, and after his departure from Francis's dominions, became rector of the infant university of Strasbourg. He contrasted the hopeful strain in which he had described to his correspondent the prospects of religion, a year since, with the terrors of the present situation. Crediting the king with the best intentions, he cast the blame of so disastrous a change upon the insane authors of the placards, who had drawn on themselves a punishment that would have been well deserved, had it been moderate in degree. But, unhappily, the innocent had been involved with the guilty, and informers had gratified private malice by magnifying the offence. Francis had, it was true, been led, at the intercession of Guillaume du Bellay and his brother, the Bishop of Paris, to interpose his authority and protect the Germans residing in his realm. But, none the less, he begged Melanchthon to fly to his succor, and to exert an influence over the king which was the result of Vore's continual praise, in putting an end to this unfortunate state of things. Francis, he added, was willing to give pledges for the reformer's safety, and would send him back in great honor to his native land, after the conclusion of the proposed conference. "Lay aside, therefore," wrote Sturm, "the consideration of kings and emperors, and believe that the voice that calls you is the voice of God and of Christ."[365] Vore followed up this invitation with great earnestness both in personal interviews and by letter.[366]

[Sidenote: His perplexity.]

What answer should the reformer give to so pressing an invitation? In his acknowledgment of Sturm's letter, Melanchthon confessed that no deliberation had ever occasioned him so much perplexity. It was not that domestic ties retained him or dangers deterred him. But he was harassed by the fear that he would be unable to accomplish any good. If only this doubt--amounting almost to despair--could be removed, he would fly to France without delay. He approved--so he assured his correspondent--of checking those fanatics who were engaged in sowing absurd and vile doctrines, or created unnecessary tumults. But there were others against whom no such charge could be brought, but who modestly professed the Gospel. If through his exertions some slight concessions were obtained, while points of greater importance were sacrificed, he would benefit neither church nor state. What if he secured immunity from punishment for such as had laid aside the monk's cowl? Must he then consent to the execution of those conscientious men who disapproved of the evident abuses of the mass and of the worship of the saints? Now, as it was precisely the expression of this disapprobation that had caused the present massacres, he trembled with fear lest he should be put in the position of one that justified these atrocious severities. In short, it was his advice, he said, in view of the cunning devices by which the "phalanxes" of monks were wont to play upon the hopes and fears of the high-born, that Francis, if honestly desirous of consulting the glory of Christ, and the tranquillity of the church, be rather exhorted to assemble a general council. Other measures appeared to him, not only useless, but fraught with peril.[367]

[Sidenote: Formal invitation from the king.]

At this point the king himself took a direct part in the correspondence. On the twenty-third of June, 1535, he sent Melanchthon a formal request to visit his court, and there dispute, in his presence, with a select company of doctors, concerning the restoration of doctrinal unity and ecclesiastical harmony. He assured the reformer that he had been prompted by his own great zeal to despatch Vore with this letter--itself a pledge of the public faith--and besought him to suffer no one to persuade him to turn a deaf ear to the summons.[368] Sturm, Cardinal du Bellay, and his brother, all wrote successively, and urged Melanchthon to come to a conference from which they hoped for every advantage.[369]

[Sidenote: Melanchthon consents.]

No wonder that, after receiving so complimentary an invitation, Melanchthon concluded to go to France, and applied (on the eighteenth of August) to the Elector John Frederick for the necessary leave of absence. He briefly sketched the history of the affair, and set forth his own reluctance to enter upon his delicate mission, until provided with the elector's permission and a safe conduct from the French monarch. Two or three months only would be consumed, and he had made arrangements for supplying his chair at Jena during this short absence.[370] It appears, however, that Melanchthon felt less confident of obtaining a gracious reply to his request than his words would seem to indicate. Consequently, he deemed it prudent to ask Luther to write first and urge his suit. The latter did not refuse his aid. "I am moved to make this prayer," said Luther in his letter to the elector, "by the piteous entreaty of worthy and pious persons who, having themselves scarcely escaped the flames, have by great efforts prevailed upon the king to suspend the carnage and extinguish the fires until Melanchthon's arrival. Should the hopes of these good people be disappointed, the bloodhounds may succeed in creating even greater bitterness, and proceed with burning and strangling. So that I think that Master Philip cannot with a clear conscience abandon them in such straits, and defraud them of their hearty encouragement."[371]

[Sidenote: The elector refuses to let him go.]

But even the great theological doctor's intercession was unavailing. The very day the elector received "Master Philip's" application, he wrote to Francis explaining his reasons for refusing to let Melanchthon go to Paris. It is true that the letter was not actually sent until some ten days later;[372] but no entreaties could move the elector to reconsider his decision. Melanchthon indignantly left the court and returned to Jena.[373] Here he subsequently received a written refusal from John Frederick, couched in language far from agreeable. The elector expressed astonishment that he should have permitted matters to go so far, and that he continued to apply for permission even after his prince's desire had been intimated. The danger to be apprehended for the peace of Germany was far greater than any possible advantage that could be expected from his mission. And the writer hinted very distinctly that little confidence could be reposed in Francis's professions, where the Gospel was concerned, as public history sufficiently demonstrated.[374]

[Sidenote: Melanchthon's chagrin.]

The most ungrateful of tasks was reserved for Melanchthon himself--the task of explaining his inability to fulfil his engagement. In a letter to Francis, he expressed the hope that the delay might be only temporary, and he exhorted the king to resist violent counsels, while seeking to promote religious harmony and public tranquillity by peaceable means. To Du Bellay and Sturm he complained not a little of the "roughness" of his prince, whom he had never found more "harsh." He thought that the true motive of the elector's refusal was to be found in the exaggerated report that he had given up everything, merely because he had spoken too respectfully of the ecclesiastical power. "I am called a deserter," he writes. "I am in great peril among our own friends on account of this moderation; as moderate citizens are wont in civil discords to be badly received by both sides. Evidently the fate of Theramenes impends over me; for I believe Xenophon, who affirms that he was a good man, not Lysias, who reviles him."[375]

[Sidenote: The proposed conference reprobated by the Sorbonne.]

Meanwhile the proposed conference encountered no less decided reprobation from the Sorbonne, to which Francis had submitted his project. For the "articles" drawn up by Melanchthon, a year before, in a spirit of conciliation much too broad to please the Protestants, when placed in the hands of the same theological body, in a modified form, and without the name of the author, were returned with a very unfavorable report. The Parisian doctors suggested that, as an appropriate method of satisfying himself whether there was any hope of accommodation, Francis might propound such interrogatories as these to the German theologians from whom the articles emanated: "Whether they confessed the church militant, founded by divine right, to be incapable of erring in faith and good morals, of which church, under our Lord Jesus Christ, St. Peter and his successors have been the head. Whether they will obey the church, receive the books of the Bible[376] as holy and canonical, accept the decrees of the general councils and of the Popes, admit the Fathers to be the interpreters of the Scriptures, and conform to the customs of the church?" As an insufferable grievance they complained that the "articles" were not a request for pardon, but actually a demand for concessions.[377]

The plan to entrap Melanchthon and some considerable portion of the German Protestants into conciliatory proposals which Luther and the more decided reformers could not admit, having failed through the abrupt and tolerably rude refusal of the Elector of Saxony to permit his theological professor to comply with the invitation of Francis, the latter appears to have determined to put the best appearance upon the affair. Accordingly, he promptly signified to the Sorbonne his approval of its action, and he seems even to have suffered the rumor to gain currency that he was himself dissuaded from bringing Melanchthon to France, by the skilful arguments of the Cardinal of Tournon.[378]

In spite of the rebuff he had received, however, Francis made an attempt to effect such an arrangement with the Protestant princes of Germany as would secure their co-operation in his ambitious projects against Charles the Fifth. To compass this end he was quite willing to make concessions to the Lutherans as extensive as those which Melanchthon had offered the Roman Catholics.

[Sidenote: Du Bellay's representations at Smalcald.]

Four months had not elapsed since the unsuccessful issue of his first mission, before Du Bellay was again in Germany. On the nineteenth of December, he presented himself to the congress of Protestant princes at Smalcald. Much of his address was devoted to a vindication of his master from the charge of cruelty to persons of the same religious faith as that of the hearers. The envoy insisted that the Germans had been misinformed: If Francis had executed some of his subjects, he had not thereby injured the Protestants. The culprits professed very different doctrines. The creed of the Germans had been adopted by common consent. Francis admitted, indeed, that there were some useless and superfluous ceremonies in the church, but could not assent to their indiscriminate abrogation unless by public decree. Ought not the Protestant princes to ascribe to their friend, the French king, motives as pure and satisfactory as those that impelled them to crush the sedition of the peasants and repress the Anabaptists? As for himself, Francis, although mild and humane, both from native temperament and by education, had seen himself compelled, by stern necessity and the dictates of prudence, to check the promptings of his own heart, and assume for a time attributes foreign to his proper disposition. For gladly as he listened to the temperate discussion of any subject, he was justly offended at the presumption of rash innovators, men that refused to submit to the judgment of those whose prerogative it was to decide in such matters as were now under consideration.

[Sidenote: He makes, in the name of Francis, a Protestant confession.]

Not content with general assurances, Du Bellay, in a private interview with Brueck, Melanchthon, and other German theologians, ventured upon an exposition of Francis's creed which we fear would have horrified beyond measure the orthodox doctors of the Sorbonne.[379] He informed them, with a very sober face, that the king's religious belief differed little from that expressed in Melanchthon's "Common Places." His theologians had never been able to convince him that the Pope's primacy was of divine right. Nor had they proved to his satisfaction the existence of purgatory, which, being the source of their lucrative masses and legacies, they prized as their very life and blood. He was inclined to limit the assumption of monastic vows to persons of mature age, and to give monks and nuns the right of renouncing their profession and marrying. He favored the conversion of monasteries into seminaries of learning. While the French theologians insisted upon the celibacy of the priesthood, for himself he would suggest the middle ground of permitting such priests as had already married to retain their wives, while prohibiting others from following their example, unless they resigned the sacerdotal office. He would have the sacramental cup administered to the laity when desired, and hoped to obtain the Pope's consent. He even admitted the necessity of reform in some of the daily prayers, and reprehended the want of moderation exhibited by the Sorbonne, which not only condemned the Germans, but would not hesitate on occasion to censure the cardinals or the Holy Pontiff himself.

[Sidenote: The Germans are not deceived.]

We cannot find that Du Bellay's honeyed words produced any very deep impression. Princes and theologians knew tolerably well both how sincere was the king's profession of friendliness to the "Lutheran" tenets, and what was the truth respecting the persecution that had raged for months within his dominions. The western breezes came freighted with the fetid smoke of human holocausts, and not even the perfume of Francis's delicately scented speeches could banish the disgust caused by the nauseating sacrifice. The princes might listen with studied politeness to the king's apologetic words, and assent to the general truth that sedition should be punished by severity; but they took the liberty, at the same time, to express a fervent prayer that the advocates of a reformed religion and a pure gospel might not be involved in the fate of the unruly. And they disappointed the monarch by absolutely declining to enter into any alliance against the Emperor Charles the Fifth. The French ambassador returned home, and Francis so dexterously threw aside the mask of pretended favor to a moderate reformation in the church, that it soon became a disputed question whether he had ever assumed it at all.[380]

[Sidenote: Efforts of the French Protestants in Switzerland and Germany.]

Meantime the French Protestants were unremitting in their efforts to obtain a more satisfactory solution of the religious question than was contained in the Declaration of Coucy. They wrote to Strasbourg, to Berne, to Zurich, to Basle, imploring the intercession of these states. Particular attention was drawn to the severe treatment endured by their brethren in Provence and Dauphiny. The writers declared themselves to be not rebels, but the most loyal of subjects, recognizing one God, one faith, one law, and one king. They were not "Lutherans," nor "Waldenses," nor "heretics;" but simply Christians, accepting the Decalogue, the Apostles' Creed, and every doctrine taught in either Testament. It was unreasonable that they should be compelled by fines, imprisonment, or bodily pains, to abjure their faith, unless their errors were first proved from the Bible, or before the convocation of a General Council.[381]

[Sidenote: An appeal from Strasbourg and Zurich.]

The Swiss and Germans made a prompt response. The Senate of Strasbourg addressed Francis, praising his clemency, but calling his attention to the danger all good men were exposed to. "If but a single little word escape the mouth of good Christian men, directed against the most manifest abuses, nay, against the flagitious crimes of those who are regarded as ecclesiastics, how easy will it be, inasmuch as these very ecclesiastics are their judges, to cry out that words have been spoken to the injury of the true faith, the Church of God, and its traditions?"[382]

Zurich, going even further, made the direct request of its royal ally, that hereafter all persons accused of holding heretical views should be permitted by his Majesty to clear themselves by an appeal to the pure Word of God, and no longer be subjected without a hearing to torture and manifold punishments.[383] Berne and Basle remonstrated with similar urgency.

[Sidenote: An embassy receives an unsatisfactory reply.]

Receiving no reply to their appeal, in consequence of the king's attention being engrossed by the war then in progress with the emperor, and by reason of the dauphin's unexpected death, the same cantons and Strasbourg, a few months later, were induced to send a formal embassy. But, if the envoys were fed with gracious words, they obtained no real concession. Francis assured the Bernese and their confederates that "it was, as they well knew, only for love of them that he had enlarged the provisions of his gracious Edict of Coucy, by lately[384] extending pardon to all exiles and fugitives"--that is, "Sacramentarians" and "relapsed" persons included. This, it seemed to him, "ought to satisfy them entirely."[385] It was a polite, but none the less a very positive refusal to entertain the suggestion that the abjuration of their previous "errors" should no longer be required of all who wished to avail themselves of the amnesty. Nor did it escape notice as a significant circumstance, that Francis selected for his mouth-piece, not the friendly Queen of Navarre, but the rough and bigoted Grand-Maitre--Anne de Montmorency, the future Constable of France.[386]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 328: Melanchthon to Du Bellay, Aug. 1, 1534, Opera (Bretschneider, Corpus Reformatorum), ii. 740.]

[Footnote 329: This is only a brief summary of the most essential points in these strange articles, which may be read entire in Melanch. Opera, ubi supra, ii. 744-766.]

[Footnote 330: Ibid., ii. 775, 776.]

[Footnote 331: See the interesting letter of a young Strasbourg student at Paris, Pierre Siderander, May 28, 1533, Herminjard, Correspondance des reformateurs, iii. 58, 59. The refrain of one placard,

"Au feu, au feu! c'est leur repere! Faiz-en justice! Dieu l'a permys,"

gave Clement Marot occasion to reply in a couple of short pieces, the longer beginning:

"En l'eau, en l'eau, ces folz seditieux." ]

[Footnote 332: Crespin, Actiones et Monimenta (Ed. of 1560), fol. 64.]

[Footnote 333: Bulletin, ix. 27, 28.]

[Footnote 334: Merle d'Aubigne, on the authority of the hostile Florimond de Raemond, ascribes it to Farel. But the style and mode of treatment are quite in contrast with those of Farel's "Sommaire," republished almost precisely at this date; while many sentences are taken verbatim from another treatise, "Petit Traicte de l'Eucharistie," unfortunately anonymous, but which there is good reason to suppose was written by Marcourt. The author of the latter avows his authorship of the placard. See the full discussion by Herminjard, Correspondance des reformateurs, iii. 225, note, etc.]

[Footnote 335: Courault was foremost in his opposition. Crespin, Actiones et Monimenta, fols. 64, 65.]

[Footnote 336: "Qui estes pire que bestes, en vos badinages lesquels vous faites a l'entour de vostre dieu de paste, duquel vous vous jouez comme un chat d'une souris: faisans des marmiteux, et frappans contre vostre poictrine, apres l'avoir mis en trois quartiers, comme estans bien marris, l'appelans Agneau de Dieu, et lui demandans la paix."]

[Footnote 337: This singular placard is given in extenso by Gerdesius, Hist. Evang. Renov., iv. (Doc.) 60-67; Haag, France prot., x. pieces justif., 1-6; G. Guiffrey, Cronique du Roy Francoys I^er, Appendix, 464-472.]

[Footnote 338: Journal d'un bourgeois, 442. Not Blois, as the Hist. ecclesiastique, i. 10, and, following it, Soldan, Merle d'Aubigne, etc., state. Francis had left Blois as early as in September for the castle of Amboise, see Herminjard, Corresp. des reformateurs, iii. 231, 226, 236.]

[Footnote 339: "Ne me puis garder de vous dire qu'il vous souviengne de l'opinion que j'avois que les vilains placars estoient fait par ceux guiles cherchent aux aultres." Marg. de Navarre to Francis I., Nerac, Dec., 1541, Genin, ii. No. 114. Although Margaret's supposition proved to be unfounded, it was by no means so absurd as the reader might imagine. At least, we have the testimony of Pithou, Seigneur de Chamgobert, that a clergyman of Champagne confessed that he had committed, from pious motives, a somewhat similar act. The head of a stone image of the Virgin, known as "Our Lady of Pity," standing in one of the streets of Troyes, was found, on the morning of a great feast-day in September, 1555, to have been wantonly broken off. There was the usual indignation against the sacrilegious perpetrators of the deed. There were the customary procession and masses by way of atonement for the insult offered to high Heaven. But Friar Fiacre, of the Hotel-Dieu, finding himself some time later at the point of death, and feeling disturbed in conscience, revealed the fact that from religious considerations he had himself decapitated the image, "in order to have the Huguenots accused of it, and thus lead to their complete extermination!" Recordon, Protestantisme en Champagne, ou recits extraits d'un MS. de N. Pithou (Paris, 1863), 28-30.]

[Footnote 340: A. F. Didot, Essai sur la typographie, in Encyclop. moderne, xxvi. 760, apud Herminjard, iii. 60.]

[Footnote 341: That is, 1535 New Style. For it will remembered that, until 1566, the year in France began with Easter, instead of with the first day of January. Leber, Coll. de pieces rel. a l'hist. de France, viii. 505, etc.]

[Footnote 342: "Combien que ... nous eussions prohibe et defendu que nul n'eust des lors en avant a imprimer ou faire imprimer aulcuns livres en nostre royaulme, sur peine de la hart." As neither of these disgraceful edicts was formally registered by parliament, they are both of them wanting in the ordinary records of that body, and in all collections of French laws. The first seems, indeed, to have disappeared altogether. M. Crapelet, Etudes sur la typographie, 34-37, reproduces the second, dated St. Germain-en-Laye, February 23, 1534/5, from a volume of parliamentary papers labelled "Conseil." Happily, the preamble recites the cardinal prescription of the previous and lost edict, as given above in the text. M. Merle d'Aubigne carelessly places the edict abolishing printing after, instead of before, the great expiatory procession. Hist. of the Reformation in the Time of Calvin, iii. 140.]

[Footnote 343: Felibien, Hist. de la ville de Paris, ii. 997.]

[Footnote 344: Soissons MS., Bulletin, xi. 255.]

[Footnote 345: I. e., gainier, sheath-or scabbard-maker. Hist. ecclesiastique, i. 10; Journal d'un bourgeois, 444; see Varillas, Hist. des revol. arrivees dans l'Eur. en matiere de rel., ii. 222.]

[Footnote 346: "Qui ad se ea pericula spectare non putabant, qui non contaminati erant eo scelere, hi etiam in partem poenarum veniunt. Delatores et quadruplatores publice comparantur. Cuilibet simul et testi et accusatori in hac causa esse licet." J. Sturm to Melanchthon, Paris, March 4, 1535, Bretschneider, Corpus Reformatorum, ii. 855, etc.]

[Footnote 347: The name and the affliction of this first victim give Martin Theodoric of Beauvais an opportunity, which he cannot neglect, to compare him with a pagan malefactor and contrast him with a biblical personage. "Hunc gladium ultorem persenserunt quam plurimi degeneres et alienigenae in flexilibus perversarum doctrinarum semitis obambulantes; inter alios, paralyticus Lutheranus Neroniano Milone perniciosior. Cui malesano opus erat salutifer Christus, ut sublato erroris grabato, viam Veritatis insequutus fuisset. At vero elatus, in funesto sacrilegi cordis desiderio perseverans, flammis combustus cum suis participibus seditiosis Gracchis, exemplum sui cunctis haereticis relinquens deperiit. Et peribunt omnes sive plebeii, sive primates," etc. Paraclesis Franciae (Par. 1539), 5.]

[Footnote 348: The Journal d'un bourgeois, 444-452, gives an account, in the briefest terms and without comment, of the sentences pronounced and executed. See also G. Guiffrey, Cronique du Roy Francois I^er, 111-113.]

[Footnote 349: The real message sent by Francis I. to his mother, after the disaster of Pavia, was quite another thing from the traditional sentence: "Tout est perdu sauf l'honneur." What he wrote was: "Madame, pour vous avertir comme je porte le ressort de mon infortune, de toutes choses ne m'est demeure que l'honneur et la vie sauve," etc. Papiers d'Etat du Card, de Granvelle, i. 258. It is to be feared that, if saved in Italy, his honor was certainly lost in Spain, where, after vain attempts to secure release by plighting his faith, he deliberately took an oath which he never meant to observe. So, at least, he himself informed the notables of France on the 16th of December, 1527: "Et voulurent qu'il jurast; ce qu'il fist, sachant ledict serment n'estre valable, au moyen de la garde qui luy fust baillee, et qu'il n'estoit en sa liberte." Isambert, Recueil des anc. lois franc., xii. 292.]

[Footnote 350: Registres de l'hotel de ville. Felibien, pieces justif., v. 345. In the preceding account these records, together with those of parliament (ibid., iv. 686-688), the narrative of Felibien himself (ii. 997-999), and the Soissons MS. (Bulletin, xi. 254, 255), have been chiefly relied upon. See also Cronique du Roy Francoys I^er, 113-121.]

[Footnote 351: "En sorte que si un des bras de mon corps estoit infecte de cette farine, je le vouldrois coupper; et si mes enfans en estoient entachez, je les vouldrois immoler." Voltaire (Hist. du parlement de Paris, i. 118), citing the substance of this atrocious sentiment from Maimbourg and Daniel, who themselves take it from Mezeray, says incredulously: "Je ne sais ou ces auteurs ont trouve que Francois premier avait prononce ce discours abominable." M. Poirson answers by giving as authority Theodore de Beze (Hist. eccles., i. 13). But on referring to the documentary records from the Hotel de Ville, among the pieces justificatives collected by Felibien, v. 346, the reader will find the speech of Francis inserted at considerable length, and apparently in very nearly the exact words employed. The contemporary Cronique du Roy Francoys I^er, giving the fullest version of the speech (pp. 121-12), attributes to the king about the same expressions.]

[Footnote 352: Histoire eccles., i. 13.]

[Footnote 353: Histoire eccles., ubi supra.]

[Footnote 354: "Une espece d'estrapade ou l'on attachoit les criminels, que les bourreaux, par le moyen d'une corde, guindoient en haut, et les laissoient ensuite tomber dans le feu a diverses reprises, pour faire durer leur supplice plus longtems." Felibien, ii. 999.]

[Footnote 355: Gerdes, Hist. Evang. renov., iv. 109. For the nature of the penalty, see Bastard D'Estang, Les parlements de France, i. 425, note on punishments.]

[Footnote 356: When John Sturm wrote, March 4th, eighteen--when Latomus wrote, somewhat later, twenty-four--adherents of the Reformation had suffered capitally. Bretschneider, Corp. Reform., ii. 855, etc. "Plusieurs aultres hereticques en grant nombre furent apres bruslez a divers jours," says the Cronique du Roy Francoys I^er, p. 129, "en sorte que dedans Paris on ne veoit que potences dressees en divers lieux," etc.]

[Footnote 357: G. Guiffrey, Cronique du Roy Francoys I^er, 130-132; Soissons MS. in Bulletin, etc., xi. 253-254. We may recognize, among the misspelt names, those, for example, of Pierre Caroli, doctor of theology and parish priest of Alencon, already introduced to our notice; Jean Retif, a preacher; Francois Berthault and Jean Courault, lately associated in preaching the Gospel under the patronage of the Queen of Navarre; besides the scholar Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples, and Guillaume Feret, who brought the placards from Switzerland.]

[Footnote 358: Under the head of Sacramentarians were included all who, like Zwingle, denied the bodily presence of Christ in or with the elements of the eucharist.]

[Footnote 359: "De ne lire, dogmatiser, translater, composer ni imprimer, soit en public ou en prive, aucune doctrine contrariant a la foy chretionne." Declaration of Coucy, July 16, 1535, Isambert, Recueil des anc. lois franc., xii. 405-407. See also a similar declaration, May 31, 1536, ibid., xii. 504.]

[Footnote 360: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, 458, 459.]

[Footnote 361: Neantmoins Dieu le createur, luy estant en ce monde, a plus use de misericorde que de rigueur, et qu'il ne faut aucunes fois user de rigueur, et que c'est une cruelle mort de faire brusler vif un homme, dont parce il pourroit plus qu'autrement renoncer la foy et la loy. Ibid., ubi supra.]

[Footnote 362: "Et le tres-crestien et bon roy Francois premier du nom, a la priere du pape, pardonna a tous, excepte a ceulx qui avoient touche a l'honneur du saint sacrement de l'autel." Soissons MS., Bulletin, xi. 254. Sturm to Melanchthon, July 6, 1535, says: "Pontificem etiam aiunt aequiorem esse, et haud paulo meliorem quam fuerunt caeteri. Omnino improbat illam suppliciorum crudelitatem, et de hac re dicitur misisse [literas ad Regem]." Herminjard, iii. 311. Cf. Erasmus Op., 1513.]

[Footnote 363: "Sapendo, come sua Maesta m'ha detto, che Cesare in Fiandra aveva sospeso ogni esecuzione di morte contro questi eretici, ha anche egli concesso che contra ogni sorte di eretici si proceda come avanti, ma citra mortem, eccetto i sacramentarii." Relazione del clarissimo Marino Giustiniano (1535), Relaz. Venete, i. 155.]

[Footnote 364: Francis I. to the German Princes, February 1, 1535, Bretschneider, Corpus Reform., ii. 828, etc.]

[Footnote 365: Sturm to Melanchthon, March 4, 1535, Bretschneider, Corpus Reform., ii. 855, etc.]

[Footnote 366: A letter of Vore is found in Bretschneider, ubi supra, ii, 859.]

[Footnote 367: Melanchthon to Sturm, May 5, 1535, ibid., ii. 873.]

[Footnote 368: Ibid., ii. 879. The address was, "Dilecto nostro Philippo Melanchthoni."]

[Footnote 369: "Nihil est quod de vestro congressu non sperem," are Cardinal du Bellay's words, June 27th. Ibid., ii. 880, 881.]

[Footnote 370: Ibid., ii. 904, 905. The university had been temporarily removed from Wittemberg to Jena, on account of the prevalence of the plague.]

[Footnote 371: Luther to the Elector of Saxony, Aug. 17, 1535, Works (Ed. Dr. J. K. Innischer), lv. 103.]

[Footnote 372: August 28, 1535. The reasons alleged to Francis were, the injurious rumors the mission might give rise to, and the damage to the university from Melanchthon's absence. At some future time, the elector said, he would permit Melanchthon to visit the French king, should his Majesty still desire him to do so, and present hinderances be removed.]

[Footnote 373: "Subindignabundus hinc discessit." Luther to Justus Jonas, Aug. 19.]

[Footnote 374: "Daneben was eurer Person halb, dessgleichen auch in Sachen des Evangelii fuer Trost, Hoffnung oder Zuversicht zu dem Franzosen zu haben, ist wohl zu bedenken, dieweil vormals wenig Treue oder Glaube von ihm gehalten, wie solches die oeffentliche Geschicht anzeigen." Letter of Aug. 24, 1535. The elector expressed himself at greater length to his chancellor, Dr. Brueck (Pontanus). Such a mission would appear suspicious when the elector was on the point of having a conference with the King of Hungary and Bohemia. Melanchthon might make concessions that Dr. Martin (Luther) and others could not agree to, and the scandal of division might arise. Besides, he could not believe the French in earnest; they doubtless only intended to take advantage of Melanchthon's indecision. For it was to be presumed that those most active in promoting the affair were "more Erasmian than evangelical (mehr Erasmisch denn Evangelisch)." Bretschneider, ii. 909, etc.]

[Footnote 375: See the three letters, and other interesting correspondence, Bretschneider, ii. 913, etc. However it may have been with M., Luther's regret at the elector's refusal was of brief duration. As early as Sept. 1st he wrote characteristically to Justus Jonas: "Respecting the French envoys, so general a rumor is now in circulation, originating with most worthy men, that I have ceased to wish that Philip should go with them. It is suspected that the true envoys were murdered on the way, and others sent in their place(!) with letters by the papists, to entice Philip out. You know that the Bishops of Maintz, Luettich, and others, are the worst tools of the Devil; wherefore I am rather anxious for Philip. I have therefore written carefully to him. The World is the Devil, and the Devil is the World." Luther's Works (Ed. Walch), xxi. 1426.]

[Footnote 376: That is, including the apocryphal books.]

[Footnote 377: "Qui est, Sire," they observe with evident amazement at the bare suggestion, "demander de nous retirer a eux, plus qu'eux se convertir a l'Eglise." The articles having been submitted through Du Bellay, August 7, 1535, the Faculty's answer was returned on the 30th of the same month, accompanied by a more elaborate Instructio, the former in French, the latter in Latin. Both are printed among the Monumenta of Gerdes, 75-78, and 78-86.]

[Footnote 378: Florimond de Raemond (l. vii. c. 4), and others writers copying from him, represent Tournon as purposely putting himself in the king's way with an open volume of St. Irenaeus in his hands. Obtaining in this way his coveted opportunity of portraying the perils arising from intercourse with heretics, the prelate enforced his precepts by reading a pretended story related by St. Polycarp, that the Apostle John had on one occasion hastily left the public bath on perceiving the heretic Cerinthus within. Soldan (Gesch. des Prot. in Frankreich, i. 163) sensibly remarks that little account ought to be made of the statements of a writer who associates Louise de Savoie--in her later days a notorious enemy of the Reformation, who had at this time been four years dead--- with her daughter Margaret, in "importuning" the king to invite Melanchthon.]

[Footnote 379: Some years earlier, Du Bellay had, while on an embassy, set forth his royal master's pretended convictions in favor of the Reformation with so much verisimilitude as to alarm the papal nuncio, who dreaded the effect of his speeches upon the Protestants. "Non e piccola murmoration qui en Corte, ch'l Orator Francese facea piu che l'officio suo richiede in animar Lutherani." Aleander to Sanga, Ratisbon, July 2, 1532, Vatican MSS., Laemmer, 141.]

[Footnote 380: Sleidan, De statu rel. et reipubl., lib. ix., ad annum 1535. The Jesuit Maimbourg rejects the secret conference of Du Bellay as apocryphal, in view of Francis's persecution of the Protestants at Paris, and his declaration of January 21st. But Sleidan's statement is fully substantiated by an extant memorandum by Spalatin, who was present on the occasion (printed in Seckendorff, Gerdes, iv. 68-73 Doc., and Bretschneider, ii. 1014). It receives additional confirmation from a letter of the Nuncio Morone to Pope Paul III., Vienna, Dec. 26, 1536 (Vatican MSS., Laemmer, 178). Morone received from Doctor Matthias, Vice-Chancellor of the Empire, an account of Francis's recent offer to the German Protestants "di condescendere nelle loro opinioni," on condition of their renouncing obedience to the emperor. He reserved only two points of doctrine as requiring discussion: the sacrifice of the mass, and the authority and primacy of the Pope. The Protestants rejected the interested proposal of the royal convert.]

[Footnote 381: The authorship of this interesting document, and the way it reached its destination, are equally unknown. It is published--for the first time, I believe--in Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss, Opera Calvini (1872), x. part ii. 55, 56.]

[Footnote 382: Senatus Argentoratensis Francisco Regi, July 3, 1536, ibid., x. 57-61.]

[Footnote 383: Senatus Turicensis Francisco Regi, July 13, 1536, ibid., x. 61.]

[Footnote 384: Edict of Lyons, May 31, 1536, Herminjard, iv. 192.]

[Footnote 385: Francois I^er aux Conseils de Zurich, Berne, Bale et Strasbourg, Compiegne, Feb. 20, and Feb. 23, 1537, Basle MSS., ibid., iv. 191-193. Cf. the documents, mostly inedited, iv. 70, 96, 150.]

[Footnote 386: Le Conseil de Berne au Conseil de Bale, March 15, 1537, ibid., iv. 202, 203, Sleidan (Strasb. ed. of 1555), lib x. fol. 163 verso. It must, however, be remarked that the "evangelical cities" would not take the rebuff as decisive, and, within a few months, were again writing to Francis in behalf of his persecuted subjects of Nismes and elsewhere. Le Conseil de Berne a Francois I^er, Nov. 17, 1537, Berne MSS., Herminjard, iv. 320.]

VI. CALVIN AND GENEVA.--MORE SYSTEMATIC PERSECUTION BY THE KING

[Sidenote: The placards of 1534 mark an epoch in the history of the Huguenots.]

In the initial stage of great enterprises a point may sometimes be distinguished at which circumstances, in themselves trivial, have shaped the entire future. Such a point in the history of the Huguenots is marked by the appearance of the "Placards" of 1534. The pusillanimous retreat of Bishop Briconnet from the advanced post he had at first assumed, robbed Protestantism of an important advantage which might have been retained had the prelate proved true to his convictions. But the "Placards," with their stern and uncompromising logic, their biting sarcasm, their unbridled invective, directed equally against the absurdities of the mass and the inconsistencies of its advocates, exerted a far more lasting and powerful influence than even the lamentable defection of the Bishop of Meaux. Until now the attitude of Francis with respect to the "new doctrines" had been uncertain and wavering. It was by no means impossible that, imitating the example of the Elector of Saxony, the French monarch should even yet put himself at the head of the movement. Severe persecution had, indeed, dogged the steps of the Reformation. Fire and gibbet had been mercilessly employed to destroy it. The squares of Paris had already had the baptism of blood. But the cruelties complained of by the "Lutherans," if tolerated by Francis, had their origin in the bigotry of others. The Sorbonne and the Parisian Parliament, Chancellor Duprat and the queen mother, Louise of Savoie, are entitled to the unenviable distinction of having instigated the sanguinary measures of repression directed against the professors of the Protestant faith, of which we have already met with many fruits. The monarch, greedy of glory, ambitious of association with cultivated minds, and aspiring to the honor of ushering in the new Augustan age, more than once seemed half-inclined to embrace those religious views which commended themselves to his taste by association with the fresh and glowing ideas of the great masters in science and art. More than once had the champions of the Church trembled for their hold upon the sceptre-bearing arm; while as often their opponents, with Francis's own sister, had cherished illusory hopes that the eloquent addresses of Roussel and other court-preachers had left a deep impress on the king's heart.

[Sidenote: The orthodoxy of Francis no longer questioned.]

But the "Placards" effectually dissipated alike these hopes and these fears. There was no longer any question as to the orthodoxy of Francis. Apologists for the Reformation might seek to undeceive his mind and remove his prejudices. His own emissaries might endeavor to persuade the Germans, of whose alliance he stood in need, that his views differed little from theirs. But there can be no doubt that, whatever his previous intentions had been, from this time forth his resolution was taken, to use his own expression already brought to the reader's notice, to live and die in Mother Holy Church, and demonstrate the justice of his claim to the title of "very Christian." The audacity of the Protestant enthusiast who penetrated even into the innermost recesses of the royal castle, and affixed the placards to the very chamber door of the king, was turned to good account by Cardinal Tournon and other courtiers of like sentiments, and was adduced as a proof of the assertion so often reiterated, that a change of religion necessarily involved also a revolution in the State. The free tone of the placards seemed to reveal a contemptuous disregard of dignities. The ridicule cast upon the doctrine of transubstantiation was an assault on one of the few dogmas respecting which Francis had implicit confidence in the teachings of the Church. Henceforth the king figures on the page of history as a determined opponent and persecutor of the Reformation, less hostile, indeed, to the "Lutherans," than to the "Sacramentarians," or "Zwinglians," but nevertheless an avowed enemy of innovation. The change was recognized and deplored by the Reformers themselves; who, seeing Francis in the last years of his reign give the rein to shameful debauchery, and meantime suffer the public prisons to overflow with hundreds of innocent men and women, awaiting punishment for no other offence than their religious faith, pointedly compared him to the effeminate Sardanapalus surrounded by his courtezans.[387]

[Sidenote: Change in the courtiers.]

While so marked a change came over the disposition of the king, it is not strange that a similar revolution was noticed in the sentiments of the courtiers--a class ever on the alert to detect the slightest variation in the breeze to which they trim their sails. The greater part of the high dignitaries, the early historian of the reformed churches informs us, adapting themselves to the king's humor, abandoned the study of the Bible, and in time became violent opponents of practices which they had sanctioned by their own example. Even Margaret of Navarre is accused by the same authority--and he honestly represents the belief of the contemporary reformers--of having yielded to these seductive influences. She plunged, like the rest, he tells us, into conformity with the most reprehensible superstitions; not that she approved them, but because Gerard Roussel and similar teachers persuaded her that they were things indifferent. Thus, allowing herself to trifle with truth, she was so blinded by the spirit of error as to offer an asylum in her court of Nerac to Quintin and Pocques, blasphemous "Libertines" whose doctrines called forth a refutation from the pen of Calvin.[388]

[Sidenote: The French Reformation becomes a popular movement.]

[Sidenote: Geneva the centre of activity.]

The French Reformation was thus constrained to become a popular movement. The king had refused to lead it. The nobles turned their backs upon it. Its adherents, threatened with the gallows and stake, or driven into banishment, could no longer look for encouragement or direction toward Paris and the vicinage of the court. The timid counsels of the high-born were to be exchanged for the bold and fiery words of reformers sprung from the people. Excluded from the luxurious capital, the Huguenots were, during a long series of years, to draw their inspiration from a city at the foot of the Alps--a city whose invigorating climate was no less adapted to harden the intellectual and moral constitution than the bodily frame, and where rugged Nature, if she bestowed wealth with no lavish hand, manifested her impartiality by more liberal endowments conferred upon man himself. Geneva henceforth becomes the centre of reformatory activity, of which fact we need no stronger evidence than the severe legislation of France to destroy its influence; and the same causes that gave the direction of the movement to the people shaped its theological tendencies. Under the guidance of Francis and Margaret, it must have assumed much of the German or Lutheran type; or, to speak more correctly, the direct influence of Germany upon France, attested by the name of "Lutherans," up to this time the ordinary appellation of the French Protestants, would have been rendered permanent. But now the persecution they had experienced, in consequence of their opposition to the papal mass, confirmed the French reformers in their previous views, and disinclined them to admit even such a "consubstantiation" as Luther's followers insisted upon.

[Sidenote: Geneva secures its independence.]

The same complicated political motives that led Francis to relax his excessive rigor against the Protestants of his realm, in order to avoid provoking the anger of the German princes, prompted him to assist in securing the independence of Geneva, which, at the time, he little dreamed would so soon become the citadel of French Protestantism. After a prolonged contest, the city on the banks of the Rhone had shaken off the yoke of its bishop, and had bravely repelled successive assaults made by the Duke of Savoy. The first preachers of the Reformation, Farel and Froment, after a series of attempts and rebuffs for romantic interest inferior to no other episode in an age of stirring adventure, had seen the new worship accepted by the majority of the people, and by the very advocates of the old system, Caroli and Chapuis. If the grand council had thus far hesitated to give a formal sanction to the religious change, it was only through fear that the taking of so decided a step might provoke more powerful enemies than the neighboring duke. The latter, being fully resolved to humble the insubordinate burgesses, had for two years been striving to cut off their supplies by garrisons maintained in adjoining castles and strongholds; nor would his plans, perhaps, have failed, but for the intervention of two powerful opponents--Francis and the Swiss Canton of Berne.

[Sidenote: with the assistance of Francis I.]

Louise de Savoie was the sister of Duke Charles. Her son had a double cause of resentment against his uncle: Charles had refused him free passage through his dominions, when marching against the Milanese; and, contrary to all justice, he persistently refused to give up the marriage portion of his sister, the king's mother. Francis avenged himself, both for the insult and for the robbery, by permitting a gentleman of his bedchamber, by the name of De Verez, a native of Savoy, to throw himself into the beleaguered city with a body of French soldiers.

[Sidenote: and the Bernese.]

While Geneva was thus strengthened from within, the Bernese, on receipt of an unsatisfactory reply to an appeal in behalf of their allies, came to their assistance with an army of ten or twelve thousand men. Discouraged by the threatening aspect his affairs had assumed, Charles relaxed his grasp on the throat of his revolted subjects, and withdrew to a safe distance. His obstinacy, however, cost him the permanent loss not only of Geneva, but of a considerable part of his most valuable territories, including the Pays de Vaud--a district which, after remaining for more than two hundred and fifty years a dependency of Berne, has within the present century (in 1803), become an independent canton of the Swiss confederacy.[389]

[Sidenote: Calvin the apologist of the Protestants.]

The horrible slanders put in circulation abroad, in justification of the atrocities with which the unoffending Protestants of France were visited, furnished the motive for the composition and publication of an apology that instantly achieved unprecedented celebrity, and has long outlived the occasion that gave it birth. The apology was the "Institutes;" the author, John Calvin. With the appearance of his masterpiece, a great writer and theologian, destined to exercise a wide and lasting influence not only upon France, but over the entire intellectual world, enters upon the stage of French history to take a leading part in the unfolding religious and political drama.

[Sidenote: His birth and training.]

[Sidenote: Studies at Paris;]

[Sidenote: also at Orleans and Bourges.]

John Calvin was born on the tenth of July, 1509, at Noyon, a small but ancient city of Picardy. His family was of limited means, but of honorable extraction. Gerard Cauvin, his father, had successively held important offices in connection with the episcopal see. As a man of clear and sound judgment, he was sought for his counsel by the gentry and nobility of the province--a circumstance that rendered it easy for him to give to his son a more liberal course of instruction than generally fell to the lot of commoners. It is not denied by Calvin's most bitter enemies that he early manifested striking ability. In selecting for him one of the learned professions, his father naturally preferred the church, as that in which he could most readily secure for his son speedy promotion. It may serve to illustrate the degree of respect at this time paid to the prescriptions of canon law, to note that Charles de Hangest, Bishop of Noyon, conferred on John Calvin the Chapelle de la Gesine, with revenues sufficient for his maintenance, when the boy was but just twelve years of age! Such abuses as the gift of ecclesiastical benefices to beardless youths, however, were of too frequent occurrence to attract special notice or call forth unfriendly criticism. With the same easy disregard of churchly order the chapter of the cathedral of Noyon permitted Calvin, two years later, to go to Paris, for the purpose of continuing his studies, without loss of income; although, to save appearances, a pretext was found in the prevalence of some contagious disease in Picardy. Not long after, his father perceiving the singular proficiency he manifested, determined to alter his plans, and devoted his son to the more promising department of the law, a decision in which Calvin himself, already conscious of secret aversion for the superstitions of the papal system, seems dutifully to have acquiesced. To a friend and near relation, Pierre Robert Olivetanus, the future translator of the Bible, he probably owed both the first impulse toward legal studies and the enkindling of his interest in the Sacred Scriptures. Proceeding next to Orleans, in the university of which the celebrated Pierre de l'Etoile, afterward President of the Parliament of Paris, was lecturing on law with great applause, Calvin in a short time achieved distinction. Marvellous stories were told of his rapid mastery of his subject. Not only did he occasionally fill the chair of an absent professor, and himself lecture, to the great admiration of the classes, but he was offered the formal rank of the doctorate without payment of the customary fees. Declining an honorable distinction which would have interfered with his plan of perfecting himself elsewhere, he subsequently visited the University of Bourges, in order to enjoy the rare advantage of listening to Andrea Alciati, of Milan, reputed the most learned and eloquent legal instructor of the age.

[Sidenote: His studies under Wolmar.]

Meanwhile, however, Calvin's interest in biblical study had been steadily growing, and at Bourges that great intellectual and religious change appears to have been effected which was essential to his future success as a reformer. He attached himself to Melchior Wolmar, a distinguished professor of Greek, who had brought with him from Germany a fervent zeal for the Protestant doctrines. Wolmar, reading in the young law student the brilliant abilities that were one day to make his name illustrious, prevailed upon him to devote himself to the study of the New Testament in the original. Day and night were spent in the engrossing pursuit, and here were laid the foundations of that profound biblical erudition which, at a later date, amazed the world, as well, unfortunately, as of that feeble bodily health that embittered all Calvin's subsequent life with the most severe and painful maladies, and abridged in years an existence crowded with great deeds.

[Sidenote: Translates Seneca "De Clementia."]

The illness and death of his father called Calvin back to Noyon,[390] but in 1529 we find him again in Paris, where three years later he published his first literary effort. This was a commentary on the two books of Seneca, "De Clementia," originally addressed to the Emperor Nero. The opinion has long prevailed that it was no casual selection of a theme, but that Calvin had conceived the hope of mitigating hereby the severity of the persecution then raging. The author's own correspondence, however, betrays less anxiety for the attainment of that lofty aim, than nervous uneasiness respecting the literary success of his first venture. Indeed, this is not the only indication that, while Calvin was already, in 1532, an accomplished scholar, he was scarcely as yet a reformer, and that the stories of his activity before this time as a leader and religious teacher, at Paris and even at Bourges, deserve only to be classed with the questionable myths obscuring much of his history up to the time of his appearance at Geneva.[391]

[Sidenote: Calvin's escape from Paris to Angouleme.]

The incident that occasioned Calvin's flight from Paris was narrated in a previous chapter. Escaping from the officers sent to apprehend him as the real author of the inaugural address of the rector, Nicholas Cop, Calvin found safety and scholastic leisure in the house of his friend Louis du Tillet, at Angouleme. If we could believe the accounts of later writers, we should imagine the young scholar dividing his time in this retreat between the preparation of his "Institutes" and systematic labors for the conversion of the inhabitants of the south-west of France. Tradition still points out the grottos in the vicinity of Poitiers, where, during a residence in that city, Calvin is said to have exclaimed, pointing to the Bible lying open before him: "Here is my mass;" and then, with uncovered head and eyes turned toward heaven, "Lord, if at the judgment-day thou shalt reprove me because I have abandoned the mass, I shall reply with justice, 'Lord, thou hast not commanded it. Here is thy law. Here are the Scriptures, the rule thou hast given me, wherein I have been unable to find any other sacrifice than that which was offered upon the altar of the cross!'"[392]

[Sidenote: He resigns his benefices.]

[Sidenote: He reaches Basle.]

The caverns bearing Calvin's name may never have witnessed his preaching, and the address ascribed to him rests on insufficient authority;[393] but it is certain that the future reformer about this time took his first decided step in renouncing connection with the Roman Church, by resigning his benefices, the revenues of which he had enjoyed, although precluded by his youth from receiving ordination.[394] Not many months later, finding himself solicited on all sides to take an active part as a teacher of the little companies of Protestants arising in different cities of France, he resolved to leave France and court elsewhere obscurity and leisure to prosecute undisturbed his favorite studies.[395] Accordingly, we find him, after a brief visit to Paris and Orleans, reaching the city of Basle, apparently toward the close of the year 1534.[396]

[Sidenote: Apologetic character given to his great work.]

It was here that Calvin appears to have conceived for the first time the purpose of giving a practical aim to the great work upon the composition of which he had been some time busy. In spite of his professions of unsullied honor, Francis the First had not hesitated to disseminate, by means of his agents beyond the Rhine, the most unfounded and injurious reports respecting his Protestant subjects. It was time that these aspersions should be cleared away, and an attempt be made to touch the heart of the persecuting monarch with compassion for the unoffending objects of his blind fury. Such was the object Calvin set before himself in a preface to the first edition of the "Institutes," addressed "To the Very Christian King of France."[397] It was a document of rare importance.

[Sidenote: The preface to the "Christian Institutes."]

[Sidenote: Eloquent peroration.]

He briefly explained the original design of his work to be the instruction of his countrymen, whom he knew to be hungering and thirsting for the truth. But the persecutions that had arisen and that left no place for sound doctrine in France induced him to make the attempt at the same time to acquaint the king with the real character of the Protestants and their belief. He assured Francis that the book contained nothing more nor less than the creed for the profession of which so many Frenchmen were being visited with imprisonment, banishment, outlawry, and even fire, and which it was sought to exterminate from the earth. He drew a fearful picture of the calumnies laid to the charge of this devoted people, and of the wretched church of France, already half destroyed, yet still a butt for the rage of its enemies. It was the part of a true king, as the vicegerent of God, to administer justice in a cause so worthy of his consideration. Nor ought the humble condition of the oppressed to indispose him to grant them a hearing; for the doctrine they professed was not their own, but that of the Almighty himself. He boldly contrasted the evangelical with the papal church, and refuted the objections urged against the former. He defended its doctrine from the charge of novelty, denied that miracles--especially such lying wonders as those of Rome--were necessary in confirmation of its truth, and showed that the ancient Fathers, far from countenancing, on the contrary, condemned the superstitions of the day. He refuted the charge that Protestants forsook old customs when good, or abandoned the only visible church; and in a masterly manner vindicated the Reformation from the oft-repeated charge of being the cause of sedition, conflict, and confusion. He begged for a fair and impartial hearing. "But," he exclaimed in concluding, "if the suggestions of the malevolent so fill your ears as to leave no room for the reply of the accused, and those importunate furies continue, with your consent, to rage with bonds and stripes, with torture, confiscation, and fire, then shall we yield ourselves up as sheep appointed for slaughter, yet so as to possess our souls in patience, and await the mighty hand of God, which will assuredly be revealed in good time, and be stretched forth armed for the deliverance of the poor from their affliction, and for the punishment of the blasphemers now exulting in confidence of safety. May the Lord of Hosts, illustrious king, establish your seat in righteousness and your throne with equity."[398]

[Sidenote: Has no effect in allaying persecution.]

[Sidenote: Calvin achieves distinction.]

The learned theologian's eloquent appeal failed to accomplish its end. If Francis ever received, he probably disdained to read even the dedication, classed by competent critics among the best specimens of writing in the French language,[399] and must have regarded the volume to which it was prefixed as a bold vindication of heresy, and scarcely less insulting to his majesty than the placards themselves. Others, better capable of forming a competent judgment, or more willing to give it a dispassionate examination, applauded the success of a hazardous undertaking that might have appalled even a more experienced writer than the French exile of Noyon. The Institutes gave to a young man, who had scarcely attained the age at which men of mark usually begin to occupy themselves with important enterprises, the reputation of being the foremost theologian of the age.

[Sidenote: He revises the Bible of Olivetanus.]

Other studies invited Calvin's attention. Not content with perfecting himself in the original languages of the Holy Scriptures, he revised with care the French Protestant Bible, translated by his relation Olivetanus, of which we shall have occasion to speak in another chapter. Meanwhile, in an age of intense mental and moral awakening, no scholastic repose, such as he had pictured to himself, awaited one who had made good his right to a foremost rank among the athletes in the intellectual arena.

[Sidenote: Visits Italy.]

Before his unexpected call to a life of unremitting conflict, Calvin visited Italy. In the entire absence of any trustworthy statement of the occasion of this journey, it is almost idle to speculate on the objects he had in view.[400] Certain, however, it is that the court of the Duchess Renee, at Ferrara, offered to a patriotic Frenchman attractions hard to be resisted.

[Sidenote: The court of Renee de France.]

[Sidenote: Brantome's eulogy of Renee.]

The younger daughter of Louis the Twelfth resembled her father not less in character than in appearance and speech.[401] Cut off by the pretended Salic law from the prospect of ascending the throne, she had in her childhood been thrown as a straw upon the variable tide of fortune. After having been promised in marriage to Charles of Spain, heir to the most extensive and opulent dominions the sun shone upon, and future Emperor of Germany, she had (1528) been given in marriage to the ruler of a petty Italian duchy, himself as inferior to her in mind as in moral character.[402] As for Renee, if her face was homely and unprepossessing, her intellect was vigorous. She had turned to good account the opportunities for self-improvement afforded by her high rank. Admiring courtiers made her classical and philosophical attainments the subject of lavish panegyric, perhaps with a better basis of fact than in the case of many other princes of the time; while with the French, her countrymen, the generous hospitality she dispensed won for her unfading laurels. "Never was there a Frenchman," writes the Abbe de Brantome, "who passing through Ferrara applied to her in his distress and was suffered to depart without receiving ample assistance to reach his native land and home. If he were unable to travel through illness, she had him cared for and treated with the utmost solicitude, and then gave him money to continue his journey."[403] Ten thousand poor Frenchmen are said to have been saved by her munificent charity, on the occasion of the recall of the Duke of Guise, after Constable Montmorency's disastrous defeat at St. Quentin. Her answer to the remonstrance of her servants against this excessive drain upon her slender resources bore witness at once to the sincerity of her patriotism and to a virile spirit which no Salic law could extinguish.[404]

The brief stay of Calvin at Ferrara is involved in the same obscurity that attends his motives in visiting Italy. But it is known that he exerted at this time a marked influence not only on others,[405] but on Renee de France herself, who, from this period forward, appears in the character of an avowed friend of the reformatory movement. Calvin had from prudence assumed the title of Charles d'Espeville, and this name was retained as a signature in his subsequent correspondence with the duchess.

[Sidenote: Calvin leaves Ferrara.]

A point so close to the centre of the Roman Catholic world as Ferrara could scarcely afford safety to an ardent reformer, even if the fame of his "Institutes" had not yet reached Rome; and Ercole the Second was too dependent upon the Holy See to shrink from sacrificing the guest his wife had invited to the palace. Returning, therefore, from Ferrara, without apparently pursuing his journey to Rome or even to Florence, Calvin retraced his steps and took refuge beyond the Alps. Possibly he may have stopped on the way in the valley of Aosta, and displayed a missionary activity, which has been denied by several modern critics, but is attested by local monuments and tradition, and has some support in contemporary documents.[406]

[Sidenote: Revisits France.]

[Sidenote: Is recognized while passing through Geneva.]

[Sidenote: Farel compels him to remain.]

Once more in Basle, Calvin resolved, after a final visit to the home of his childhood, to seek out some quiet spot in Germany, there to give himself up to those scholarly labors which he fancied would be more profitable to France than the most active enterprises he might engage in as a preacher of the Gospel. He had accomplished the first part of his design, had disposed of his property in Noyon, and was returning with his brother and sister, when the prevalence of war in the Duchy of Lorraine led him to diverge from his most direct route, so as to traverse the dominions of the Duke of Savoy and the territories of the confederate cantons of Switzerland. Under these circumstances, for the first time, he entered the city of Geneva, then but recently delivered from the yoke of its bishop and of the Roman Church. He had intended to spend there only a single night.[407] He was accidentally recognized by an old friend, a Frenchman, who at the time professed the reformed faith, but subsequently returned to the communion of the Church of Rome.[408] Du Tillet was the only person in Geneva that detected in the traveller, Charles d'Espeville, the John Calvin who had written the "Institutes." He confided the secret to Farel, and the intrepid reformer whose office it had hitherto been to demolish, by unsparing and persistent blows, the popular structure of superstition, at once concluded that, in answer to his prayers, a man had been sent him by God capable of laying, amid the ruins, the foundations of a new and more perfect fabric. Farel sought Calvin out, and laid before him the urgent necessities of a church founded in a city where, under priestly rule, disorder and corruption had long been rampant. At first his words made no impression. Calvin had traced out for himself a very different course, and was little inclined to exchange a life of study for the perpetual struggles to which he was so unexpectedly summoned. But when he met Farel's request with a positive refusal, pleading inexperience, fondness for literary pursuits, and aversion to scenes of tumult and confusion, the Genevese reformer assumed a more decided tone. Acting under an impulse for which he could scarcely account himself, Farel solemnly prayed that the curse of God might descend on Calvin's leisure and studies, if purchased at the price of neglecting the duty to which the voice of the Almighty Himself, by His providence, distinctly called him.[409]

The amazed and terrified student felt--to use his own expression--that God had stretched forth His arm from heaven and laid violent hold upon him, rendering all further resistance impossible. He yielded to the unwelcome call, and became the first theological professor of Geneva. Somewhat later he was prevailed upon to add to his functions the duties of one of the pastors of the city.

[Sidenote: Farel's own recollections.]

If the scene impressed itself ineffaceably on the memory or one of the principal actors, its effect, we may be sure, was no less lasting in the case of the other. More than a quarter of a century after, Farel, on receiving the announcement that his worst apprehensions had been realized, in the death of his "so dear and necessary brother Calvin," wrote to a friend a touching letter, in which he referred in a few sentences to the same striking interview. "Oh, why am not I taken away in his stead, and why is not he, so useful, so serviceable, here in health, to minister long to the churches of our Lord! To Whom be blessing and praise, that, of His grace, He made me fall in with him where I had never expected to meet him, and, contrary to his own plans, compelled him to stop at Geneva, and made use of him there and elsewhere! For he was urged on one side and another more than could be told, and specially by me, who, in God's name, urged him to undertake matters that were harder than death. And albeit he begged me several times, in the name of God, to have mercy on him and suffer him to serve God in other ways, as he has always thus occupied himself, nevertheless, seeing that what I asked was in accordance with God's will, in doing himself violence he has done more and more promptly than any one else has done, surpassing not only others, but himself. Oh, how happily has he run an excellent race!"[410]

[Sidenote: Calvin becomes the head of the commonwealth.]

[Sidenote: His view respecting church and state,]

[Sidenote: and the punishment of heresy.]

For twenty-eight years the name of Calvin was inseparably associated with that of the city which owes its chief renown to his connection with it. Excepting the three years of exile, from 1538 to 1541, occasioned by a powerful reaction against his rigid system of public morality, he was, during the whole of this period, the recognized head of the Genevese commonwealth. A complete mastery of the principles of law, acquired by indefatigable study at Orleans and Bourges, before the loftier teachings of theology engrossed his time and faculties, qualified him to draw up a code to regulate the affairs of his adopted country. If its detailed prohibitions and almost Draconian severity are repugnant to the spirit of the present age, the general wisdom of the legislator is vindicated by the circumstance that he transformed a city noted for the prevalence of every form of turbulence and immorality into the most orderly republic of Christendom. Few, it is true, will be found to defend the theory respecting the duty of the state toward the church in which Calvin acquiesced. But the cruel deaths of Gruet and Servetus were only the legitimate fruits of the doctrine that the civil authority is both empowered and bound to exercise vigilant supervision over the purity of the church. In this doctrine the reformers of the sixteenth century were firm believers. They held, as John Huss had held a hundred years before, that Truth could appropriately appeal for support to physical force, under circumstances that would by no means have justified a similar resort on the part of Error. The consistent language of their lives was, "If we speak not the truth, we refuse not to die." "If the Pope condemns the pious for heresy, and furious judges unjustly execute on the innocent the penalty due to heretics, what madness is it thence to infer that heretics ought not to be destroyed for the purpose of aiding the pious! As for myself, since I read that Paul said that he did not refuse death if he had done anything to deserve it, I openly offered myself frequently prepared to undergo sentence of death, if I had taught anything contrary to the doctrine of piety. And I added, that I was most worthy of any punishment imaginable, if I seduced any one from the faith and doctrine of Christ. Assuredly I cannot have a different view with regard to others from that which I entertain respecting myself."[411] So wrote Farel, and almost all his contemporaries agreed with him. And thus it happened that the conscientious Calvin and the polished Beza were at the pains of writing long treatises, to prove that "heretics are justly to be constrained by the sword,"[412] almost at the very moment when they were begging the Bernese to intercede with their ally, King Henry the Second, of France, in behalf of the poor Protestants languishing in the dungeons of Lyons, or writing consolatory letters to Peloquin and De Marsac, destined to suffer death in the flames not many days before the execution of the Spanish physician at Geneva.[413]

[Sidenote: His fault the fault of the age.]

In truth, however, it was less Calvin than the age in which he lived that must be held responsible for the crime against humanity with which his name has come to be popularly associated. He did, indeed, desire and urge that Servetus should be punished capitally, although he made an earnest but unsuccessful effort to induce the magistrates to mitigate the severity of the sentence, by the substitution of some more merciful mode of execution.[414] But the other principal reformers of Germany and Switzerland--Melanchthon, Haller, Peter Martyr, and Bullinger gave their hearty endorsement to the cruel act;[415] while if any further proof were needed to attest the sincerity and universality of approval accorded to it, it is afforded by the last letters of the brave men who were themselves awaiting at Chambery, a few mouths later, death by the same excruciating fate as that which befell Servetus at Geneva.[416]

[Sidenote: Calvin shuns notoriety.]

The prominence obtained by Calvin as chief theologian and pastor of the church of Geneva, however, was foreign to his tastes. He was by preference a scholar, averse to notoriety, fond of retirement, and, if we are to believe his own judgment, timid and even pusillanimous by nature.[417] He had in vain sought seclusion in France. From Basle and Strasbourg he made a hasty retreat in order to preserve his incognito, and avoid the fame the Institutes were likely to earn for him.[418] Only Farel's adjuration detained him in Geneva, and he subsequently confessed that his fortitude was not so great but that he rejoiced even more than was meet when the turbulent Genevese expelled him from their city.[419] But not even then was he able to secure the coveted quiet, for Martin Bucer was not slow in imitating the urgency of Farel, and employed the warning example of the prophet Jonah seeking to flee from the will of the Almighty, to induce him to employ himself in the organization and administration of the French church at Strasbourg.[420] Not less decided was Calvin's reluctance to accede to the repeated invitations of the council and people of Geneva, that he should return and resume his former position.

[Sidenote: His character and natural endowments.]

[Sidenote: He is consulted by Protestants in every quarter of Europe.]

Such was the man who was called to take the reins of the spiritual direction, not only of a single small city, but of a large body of earnest thinkers throughout France, and even to distant parts of Christendom--a man of stern and uncompromising devotion to that system which he believed to be truth; of slender imagination, but of a memory prodigious in its grasp, of an understanding wonderfully acute, and of a power of exposition and expression unsurpassed by that possessed by any writer among his contemporaries. His constitution, naturally weak, had been still further enfeebled by excessive application to study. In his letters there are frequent references to the interruptions occasioned by violent pains in his head, often compelling him to stop many times in the writing of a single letter.[421] His strength was taxed to the utmost by the unremitting toil incident to his multifarious occupations. The very recital of his labors fills us with amazement. He preached twice every Sunday, besides frequent sermons on other days. He lectured three times a week on theology. He made addresses in the consistory, and delivered a lecture every Friday in the conference on the Scriptures known as the "Congregation." To these public burdens must be added others imposed upon him by his wide reputation. From all parts of the Protestant world, but especially from every spot in France where the Reformation had gained a foothold, the opinion of Calvin was eagerly sought on various points of doctrine and ecclesiastical practice. To Geneva, and especially to Calvin, the obscure and persecuted adherents of the same faith, not less than the most illustrious of the Protestant nobility, looked for counsel and direction. Under his guidance that system was adopted for supplying France with ministers of the Gospel which led the Venetian ambassador, near the end of the great reformer's life, to describe Geneva as the mine from which the ore of heresy was extracted.[422] How faithfully he discharged the trust committed to him is sufficiently attested by a voluminous correspondence, some portions of which have escaped the wreck of time; while the steady advance of the doctrines he advocated is an enduring monument to the zeal and sagacity of his exertions.

[Sidenote: Meets with bitter opposition,]

[Sidenote: but obtains the support of the people.]

In his arduous undertaking, however, Calvin had to encounter no little opposition in the very city of Geneva. It was this, even more than bodily infirmity, that bore severely upon his spirits, and robbed him of the rest demanded alike by his overtaxed body and mind. His advocacy of strenuous discipline procured him relentless enemies among the Genevese of the "Libertine" party. Those were stormy times for Calvin, when, in derision of the student, legislator, and theologian, deafening salutes were fired by night before his doors, and when the dogs were set upon him in the streets.[423] But, when we read of the violent antagonism elicited by the publication of the severe provisions of the "Ordinances," regulating even the minor details of the life of a Genevese citizen, it must not be forgotten that the unpopular system, although devised by Calvin, was not imposed by him upon unwilling subjects, but established by a free and decisive vote of the people, in the exercise of its sovereignty, and influenced to its adoption by the same considerations that had determined Calvin himself in devising it.[424]

[Sidenote: An estimate of Calvin by Etienne Pasquier.]

Such a man could not fail to secure the respect of his opponents, and the undisguised admiration of all who could regard his character and work with some degree of impartiality. Among the most virtuous of his contemporaries was the excellent Etienne Pasquier, who described him as he appeared in the eyes of men of culture--men who, without forsaking the Roman Catholic Church, were stanch friends of reform and of progress. "He was a man," says Pasquier, "that wrote equally well in Latin and in French, and to whom our French tongue is greatly indebted for having enriched it with an infinite number of fine touches. It were my wish that it had been for a better subject. He was a man, moreover, marvellously versed and nurtured in the books of the Holy Scriptures, and such that, had he directed his mind in the right way, he might have ranked with the most illustrious doctors of the church. And, in the midst of his books and his studies, he was possessed of the most active zeal for the progress of his sect. We sometimes saw our prisons overflowing with poor, misled people, whom he unceasingly exhorted, consoled, and comforted by his letters; and there were never lacking messengers to whom the doors were open, in spite of any exertions of the jailers to the contrary. Such were the methods by which he gained over step by step a part of our France."[425]

[Sidenote: Continued persecution.]

[Sidenote: The tongues of the victims cut out, and records burned.]

The flames of the persecution kindled by the publication of the placards continued to burn. From Paris, where Laurent de la Croix fell a victim to the rage of the priests, the conflagration spread to Essarts, in Poitou, where a simple girl was consigned to the fire for reproving a Franciscan monk; and to Macon, where an unlearned peasant underwent a like punishment, amazing his judges by the familiarity he displayed with the Bible. Agen, in Guyenne, and Beaune, in Burgundy, witnessed similar scenes of atrocious cruelty; while at Nonnay, Andre Berthelin was burned alive, because, when wending his way to the great fair of Lyons, he refused to kneel down before one of the many pictures or images set up by the roadside for popular adoration. At Rouen, four brave reformers were thrown into a tumbril, reeking with filth, to be drawn to the place of execution, one of them exclaiming with radiant countenance: "Truly, as says the apostle, we are the offscouring of the earth, and we now stink in the nostrils of the men of the world. But let us rejoice, for the savor of our death will be a sweet savor unto God, and will profit our brethren."[426] But the details of these executions are too horrible and too similar to find a place here. Nor, indeed, would it be possible to frame a complete statement of the case of each of the constant sufferers; for, from this time forward, it became a favorite practice with those who presided over these bloody assizes to cut out the tongues of their victims, lest their eloquent appeals should shake the confidence of the spectators in the established faith, and afterward to throw the official record of the trial of Protestants into the fire that consumed their bodies, in order to prevent its furnishing edifying material for the martyrology.[427]

[Sidenote: Failure of persecution.]

But, as usual, persecution failed utterly of accomplishing what had been expected of it. For a brief moment, indeed, Francis flattered himself that exemplary punishments had purged his kingdom of the professors of the hated doctrines.[428] But, in the course of a few years, he discovered that, in spite of continued severities, the "new faith" had so spread--partly by means of persons suffered to return, in virtue of the royal declaration of Coucy (on the sixteenth of July, 1535), and partly through the teachings of others who lay concealed during the first violence of the storm--that he had good reason to fear that the last errors were worse than the first.[429] What rendered the matter still more serious was the favor shown to the heretics by persons of high rank and influence.[430]

[Sidenote: Edict of Fontainebleau cuts off appeal, June 1, 1540.]

With the view of employing still more rigid means for the detection and punishment of the offenders, a fresh edict was published from Fontainebleau, on the first of June, 1540. In this long and sanguinary document the monarch--or the Cardinal of Tournon, who enjoyed the credit of a principal part in its preparation--enjoined upon the officers of all the royal courts, whether judges of parliament, seneschals, or bailiffs, to institute proceedings concurrently against all persons tainted with heresy. No appeal was to be permitted to delay their action. The examination of the suspected took precedence of all other cases. Tribunals of inferior jurisdiction were instructed to send prisoners for heresy, together with the record of their examination, to the sovereign courts of parliament, there to be tried in the "Chambre criminelle." The appeal to the "Grand' chambre," customarily allowed to persons claiming immunity on account of order or station, was expressly cut off, so as to render the course of justice more expeditious. Negligent judges were threatened with suspension and removal from office. The high vassals of the crown were ordered to lend to the royal courts their counsel and assistance, and to surrender to them all offenders as guilty of sedition and disturbance of the public peace--crimes of which the king claimed exclusive cognizance. Ecclesiastics were exhorted to show equal diligence in the prosecution of culprits that were in orders. In short, every servant of the king was bidden to abstain from harboring or favoring the "Lutherans," since the errors and false doctrines the latter disseminated, it was said, contained within them the crime of treason against God and the king, as well as of sedition and riot.[431] Every loyal subject must, therefore, denounce the heretics and employ all means to extirpate them, just as all men are bound to run to help in extinguishing a public conflagration.[432]

[Sidenote: Exceptional fairness of President Caillaud.]

The last injunction was not altogether unnecessary. Even among the judges of parliament there were fair-minded persons not inclined to condemn accused men or books on mere report. The ambassador of Henry the Eighth having, in 1538, denounced an English translation of the Holy Scriptures that was in press at Paris, the chancellor commissioned President Caillaud to investigate the case. The latter, finding that the printer's excuse was the scarcity of paper in England, quietly set about a comparison of the suspected version with accessible French translations. He said nothing to doctors of theology or royal prosecuting officers. "It seemed to me," he reported, "quite unnecessary to give the matter such notoriety. Moreover, I mistrusted that, without further investigation, without even looking into it, they would have condemned the English translation for the sole reason that it is in that tongue. For I have seen them sustain that the Holy Scriptures ought not to be translated into the French language or any other vernacular tongue. Nevertheless, the Bible in French was printed in this city so long ago as in 1529, and again this present year, and is for sale by the most wealthy printers. For my part I have seen no prohibition either by the church or by the secular authority, although I once heard some decretal alleged in condemnation." Unfortunately such judges as Louis Caillaud were rare--men that would take the pains to obtain the services of a person acquainted with the English language to translate aloud a Bible suspected of heretical teachings, while themselves testing its accuracy by scanning versions made from the Vulgate and the Hebrew original![433]

[Sidenote: Royal letters from Lyons, Aug. 30, 1542.]

Two years more had scarcely passed before fresh legislation against the Protestants demonstrated the impotence of all measures thus far resorted to. The interval had certainly been improved by their enemies, for the stake had its victims to boast of.[434] And yet the new religious body had its ministers and its secret conventicles, with an ever increasing number of adherents. Accordingly, on the thirtieth of August, 1542, Francis, then at Lyons, addressed new letters patent to the various parliaments, enjoining new vigilance and activity. Previous edicts had not borne all the fruit expected from them; for there was still a bad seed of error and damnable doctrines--so wrote the king--growing and multiplying from day to day. So exemplary a punishment must, therefore, be inflicted, as might forever terrify offenders.[435] The king even threatened delinquent prelates with seizure of their temporalities, in case they failed to exercise due diligence in so important a matter.[436]

[Sidenote: Audacity of the "Lutherans" of Bordeaux.]

[Sidenote: Francis I. and the Sacramentarians.]

King, bishops and parliaments were terribly in earnest. All were agreed that Protestantism must and should be crushed, however little they harmonized as to the reasons of its increase or the method of suppressing it. The Archbishop of Bordeaux denounced to the parliament of that city the growing audacity of the "Lutherans" of his diocese, who had even dared to preach their doctrines publicly. He accounted for this disorder by the fact that the prosecution and exemplary punishment of heretics had ceased to be the uniform rule; as if the experience of the past score of years had not demonstrated the futility of attempting to compel religious uniformity by the fear of human tribunals and ignominious death. He therefore begged the parliament to spare neither him nor his brother prelates in the matter of defraying the expense of bringing "Lutherans" to trial and death. The secular judges were of the same mind with the prelates, and both took new courage from a declaration of Francis himself, which the archbishop had recently heard with his own ears at Angouleme. In the presence of Cardinal Tournon and others, the king had assured him that "he desired that no sacramentarian should be permitted to abjure, but that all such heretics should be remorselessly put to death!"[437] By such pitiless measures did Francis still think to establish his unimpeachable loyalty to the doctrine of transubstantiation.

[Sidenote: Royal ordinance of Paris, July 23, 1543.]

But, as ill success continued to attend every attempt to crush the Reformation in France, it was necessary to find some plausible explanation of the failure. The ecclesiastical counsellors of the king alleged that they discovered it in the recent edicts themselves, which they represented as derogating from the efficiency of both prelates and inquisitors of the faith. To meet this new objection, Francis complaisantly published another ordinance (on the twenty-third of July, 1543), carefully defining the respective provinces of the lay and clerical judges. Prelates and inquisitors were authorized to proceed, in accordance with canon law, to obtain information alike against clergymen and laymen, in case of suspected heresy, and the secular judges were strictly enjoined to afford them all needed assistance in execution of their writs of summons and arrest. But all persons guilty of open heresy, and not actually in holy orders, must be given over, together with the documents relating to their offences, to the royal judges and to the courts of parliament, and by them tried as seditious disturbers of the peace and tranquillity of the commonwealth and of the king's subjects, secret conspirators against the prosperity of his estate, and rebels against his authority and laws.[438] In order, however, to secure to the ecclesiastical tribunals their full control over clergymen, it was provided that any churchman condemned to banishment, or any other punishment short of death, should immediately after the "amende honorable," and before execution of sentence, be remitted to his spiritual superiors to undergo deprivation of office, and such other penalties as canon law might prescribe.[439]

[Sidenote: Heresy to be punished as sedition.]

[Sidenote: Repression proves a failure.]

But the succession of edicts, each surpassing the last in severity, had not rendered the path of the judges, whether lay or ghostly, altogether easy. There were found prisoners, accused of holding and teaching heretical doctrines, well skilled in holy lore, however ignorant of the casuistry of the schools, who made good their assertion that they could give a warrant for all their distinctive tenets from the Sacred Scriptures. Their arguments were so cogent, their citations were so apposite, that the auditors who had come with the expectation of witnessing the confusion of a heretic, often departed absorbed in serious consideration of a system that had so much the appearance of truth when defended by a simple man in jeopardy of his life, and when fortified by the authority of the Bible. More learned reformers had appealed successfully to the Fathers to whose teachings the church avowed its implicit obedience. It was clear that some standard of orthodoxy must be established. For, if St. Augustine or St. Cyprian might be brought up to prove the errors of the priests, what was it but allowing the reformers to place the Roman Church at the bar, even in the very courts of justice? Might not the most damaging losses be expected to flow from such trials?

The public courts, indeed, were not the only places where the inconsistencies of the established church with its own ancient standards and representative theologians were brought out into bold relief. The pulpits of the very capital resounded, it was alleged, with contradictory teachings, scandalizing the faithful not a little at the holy season of Advent.[440]

[Sidenote: The Sorbonne's Twenty-five Articles.]

To put an end to so anomalous a state of affairs, the Parisian theologians, with the consent of the king, resolved to enunciate the true Catholic faith, in the form of twenty-five articles meeting all questions now in dispute (on the tenth of March, 1543). Of the general contents of this new formulary, it is sufficient to observe that it more concisely expressed the doctrines developed in the decisions of the Council of Trent; that it insisted upon baptism as essential to the salvation even of infants; that it magnified the freedom of the human will, and maintained the justification of the sinner by works as well as by faith; and that, dwelling upon the bodily presence of Christ in the consecrated wafer, it affirmed the propriety of denying the cup to the laity, the utility of masses for the dead, the lawfulness of the invocation of the blessed Virgin and the saints, the existence of purgatory, the infallibility of the church, the authority of tradition, and the divine right of the Pope.[441]

[Sidenote: Francis gives them the force of law.]

On the twenty-third of July, 1543, the very day of the publication of the edict of persecution previously mentioned, Francis by letters-patent gave the force of law to the exposition of the faith drawn up by the theological faculty of "his blessed and eldest daughter, the University of Paris." Henceforth no other doctrines could be professed in France. Dissent was to be treated as "rebellion" against the royal authority.[442]

[Sidenote: Persecution more systematic.]

[Sidenote: The inquisitor Matthieu Ory.]

The sanguinary legislation at which we have glanced bore its most atrocious fruits in the last years of Francis, and in the reign of his immediate successor. The consideration of this topic must, however, be reserved for succeeding chapters. Until now the persecution had been carried on with little system, and its intensity had varied according to the natural temperament and disposition of the Roman Catholic prelates, not less than the zeal of the civil judges. Many clergymen, as well as lay magistrates, had exhibited a singular supineness in the detection and punishment of the reformed. Some bishops, supposed to be at heart friendly to the restoration of the church to its pristine purity of doctrine and practice, had scarcely instituted a serious search. The royal edicts themselves bear witness to their reluctance, in spite of threatened suspension and deprivation. It is true that an attempt had been made to secure greater thoroughness and uniformity, by augmenting the number of inquisitors of the faith, and this, notwithstanding the fact that their authority infringed upon that of the bishops, whose right was scarcely questioned to exclusive cognizance of heresy within their respective dioceses. Not only had Matthieu Ory[443] and others been appointed with jurisdiction over the entire kingdom, but a special inquisitor was created for the province of Normandy. Even these persons, however, were not always equally zealous in the performance of their allotted task. It was notorious that the good cheer with which Ory was regaled by the astute Protestants of Sancerre led him to report them to be excellent people. A deputy, who next visited the reputed heretics, brought back an equally flattering statement. And so the persecuting "lieutenant particulier" of Bourges seems to have had some ground for his complaint, "that good wine and a right new coat caused all these inquisitors to return well satisfied, without bringing him any prey."[444]

[Sidenote: The Nicodemites and Libertins.]

It could not be otherwise, however, than that these severe measures and the employment of new agents in the pitiless work of persecution should induce many feeble souls to suppress their true sentiments, and to make the attempt, under an external conformity with the Roman Church, to maintain opinions and a private devotion quite inconsistent with their professions. And, while the progress of the Reformation was seriously impeded by the timidity of this class of irresolute persons--appropriately styled by their contemporaries "the Nicodemites"--scarcely less danger threatened the same doctrines from the insidious assaults of the Libertines, a party which, ostensibly aiming at reform and religious liberty, really asked only for freedom in the indulgence of vicious propensities. Against both of these pernicious tendencies the eloquent reformer of Geneva employed his pen in forcible treatises, which were not without effect in checking their inroads.[445]

[Sidenote: Margaret of Navarre at Bordeaux.]

It must be confessed that the Queen of Navarre herself gave no little aid and comfort to the advocates of timid and irresolute counsels, by a course singularly wanting in ingenuousness. This amiable princess knew how to express herself with such ambiguity as to perplex both religious parties and heartily satisfy neither the one side nor the other. She was the avowed friend and correspondent of Melanchthon and Calvin. She was believed to be in substantial agreement with the Protestants. Her views of the fundamental doctrine of justification by faith and the paramount authority of the Holy Scriptures were those for which many a Protestant martyr had laid down his life. Even on the question of the Lord's Supper, her opinions, if mystical and somewhat vague, were certainly far removed from the dogmas of the Roman Church. She condemned, it is true, the extreme to which the "Sacramentarians" went, but it was difficult to see precisely wherein the modified mass she countenanced differed from the reformed service. Certainly not a line in her correspondence with Calvin points to any important difference of sentiment known by either party to exist between them. What shall we say, then, on reading of such language as she used in 1543, when addressing the Parliament of Bordeaux? She had been deputed by her brother to represent him, and was, consequently, received by the court, (on the twenty-fourth of May) with honors scarcely, if at all, inferior to those that would have been accorded to Francis had he presented himself in person. Her special commission was to notify parliament of an expected attack by the English, and to request that due preparation should be made to ward it off. From this topic she passed to that of heresy, in respect to which she expressed herself to this effect: "She exhorted and prayed the court to punish and burn the true heretics, but to spare the innocent, and have compassion upon the prisoners and captives."[446] If, as the interesting minute of the queen's visit informs us, she next proceeded to claim the immemorial right, as a daughter of France, to open the prisons and liberate the inmates according to her good pleasure,[447] it can scarcely be imagined that the assertion of the right at this time had any other object in view than the release of those imprisoned for conscience' sake. It is true that she took pains to protest that she would avoid meddling with prisoners incarcerated for other crimes than such as her brother was accustomed to pardon; but as the interference of Francis in behalf of Berquin, Marot, and others accused of heresy, was sufficiently notorious, her guarantee could scarcely be considered very broad. Certainly she was not likely to find a "true heretic" worthy of the stake among all those imprisoned as "Lutherans" in the city of Bordeaux.

[Sidenote: Negotiations in Germany.]

[Sidenote: Hypocritical representations made by Charles of Orleans.]

While Francis, as we have seen, was from year to year aggravating the severity of his enactments against the adherents of the Reformation in his own kingdom, he did not forget his old role of ally of the Protestant princes of the empire. It would be too wide a digression from the true scope of this work, should we turn aside to chronicle the successive attempts of the French monarch to secure these powerful auxiliaries in his struggle with his great rival of the house of Hapsburg. One incident must suffice. The hypocrisy of Francis could, perhaps, go no farther than it carried him when, in 1543, his son Charles, Duke of Orleans, at the head of a royal army took possession of the Duchy of Luxemburg. The duke, who can hardly be imagined to have allowed himself to take any important step, certainly no step fraught with such momentous consequences as might be expected to follow this, without explicit instructions from his father, at once despatched an envoy to the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse. The subordinate agent in this game of duplicity was instructed to assure the great Protestant leaders that it was the earnest desire of the Duke of Orleans to see the Gospel preached throughout the whole of France. It was true that filial reverence had hitherto restrained him from gratifying his desires in this direction in his Duchy of Orleans; but in the government of Luxemburg and of all other territories acquired by right of arms, he hoped to be permitted by his royal father to follow his own preferences, and there he solemnly promised to introduce the proclamation of God's holy word. In return for these liberal engagements, the duke desired the German princes, then on the point of meeting for conference at Frankfort, to admit him to an alliance offensive and defensive, especially in matters concerning religion. He assured them of the support not only of his own forces, but of his father's troops, committed to him to use at his discretion, adding, as a further motive, the prospect that the Gospel would find more ready welcome in the rest of France, when the king saw its German advocates close allies of his youngest son.[448]

[Sidenote: Commendable scepticism of the Germans.]

But the princes were much too familiar with the wiles of Francis to repose any confidence in the lavish professions of his son. And the historian who discovers that the more intimately the king strove to associate himself with the German Protestants, the more fiercely did he commit the Protestants of France to the flames, in order to demonstrate to the Pope the immaculate orthodoxy of his religious belief, will not fail to applaud their discernment. Not until toward the very close of Francis's reign, when the Lutherans descried portents of a storm that threatened them with utter extermination, raised by the bigotry or craft of Charles the Fifth, did they manifest any anxiety to enter into near connection with the French monarch.

Francis was reaping the natural rewards of a crooked policy, dictated by no strong convictions of truth or duty, but shaped according to the narrow suggestions of an unworthy ambition. If he punished heretics at home, it was partly to secure on his side the common sentiment of the Roman Catholic world, partly because the enemies of the Reformation had persuaded him that the change of religion necessarily involved the subversion of established order and of royal authority. If he made overtures to the Protestant princes of Germany, the flimsy veil of devotion to their interests was too transparent to conceal the total want of concern for anything beyond his own personal aggrandizement.

Two mournful exemplifications of the fruits of his persecuting measures must, however, be presented to the reader's notice, before the curtain can be permitted to fall over the scene on which this monarch played his part. The massacre of Merindol and Cabrieres and the execution of the "Fourteen of Meaux" are the melancholy events that mark the close of a reign opening, a generation earlier, so auspiciously.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 387: The Protestants might be pardoned, under the circumstances, if their language was somewhat bitter respecting both emperor and king. "Combien que j'espere que nostre Antioche (Charles V.), qui nous presse maintenant, sera serre de si pres, qu'il ne luy souviendra des gouttes de ses mains, ne de ses pieds; car il en aura par tout le corps. De son compagnon Sardanapalus (Francis I.), Dieu luy garde la pareille. Car ils sont bien dignes de passer tous deux par une mesme mesure." Calvin to M. de Falaise, Feb. 25, 1547, Lettres francaises, i. 191.--The expression "Sardanapalus inter scorta" occurs in a letter of Calvin to Farel, Feb. 20, 1546 (Bonnet, Letters of John Calvin, ii., 35, 36). It will, therefore, be seen from the date that Merle d'Aubigne is mistaken in referring the description to Henry II. Hist. de la Ref., liv. xii. c. 1.]

[Footnote 388: Histoire ecclesiastique, i. 14.]

[Footnote 389: Memoires de Martin du Bellay (Edition Petitot), xviii. 271-273. See also Mignet, Etablissement de la reforme religieuse a Geneve, Mem. historiques, ii. 308, etc. Also, Merle d'Aubigne, Hist. of the Reformation in the Time of Calvin, v. 395, etc.]

[Footnote 390: In dedicating to Wolmar his commentary on II. Corinthians, Calvin deplored the loss sustained in the interruption of his Greek studies under his old teacher, "manum enim, quae tua est humanitas, porrigere non recusasses ad totum stadii decursum, nisi me, ab ipsis prope carceribus, mors patris revocasset." Upon the basis of the words here italicized, Merle d'Aubigne builds up a story of outcries and intrigues of priests (against Calvin) who "did all in their power to get him put into prison"! Ref. in Time of Calvin, ii. 28. M. Herminjard observes hereupon that one need not be very thoroughly versed in Latin or in Roman antiquities to understand Calvin's allusion; and every classical scholar will sympathize with M. Herminjard when he expresses, in view of the historian's blunder, "un etonnement proportionne a la celebrite de l'auteur." Corresp. des reformateurs, ii. 333.]

[Footnote 391: See the very sensible remarks of Herminjard, ubi supra, iii. 202.]

[Footnote 392: A. Crottet, Histoire des eglises ref. de Pons, Gemozac, et Mortagne en Saintonge (Bordeaux, 1841), 10-11, and Merle d'Aubigne, Hist. of the Ref. in the Time of Calvin (Am. ed.), iii. 53, tell the story without any misgivings, and the latter with characteristic embellishment. But it rests on the unsupported and slender authority of Florimond de Raemond, lib. vii. c. 14, from whose account I cannot even find that the scene was laid in the caverns.]

[Footnote 393: Staehelin (Johannes Calvin, Leben und ausgewaehlte Schriften, i. 33) well remarks that what makes this address very suspicious is the circumstance that a quite similar passage occurs in Calvin's letter to Sadolet, leading us to the conclusion that we have here only a "reminiscence" of this much later document.]

[Footnote 394: He resigned his chapel of La Gesine and his curacy of Pont l'Eveque, May 4, 1534. Herminjard, iii. 201.]

[Footnote 395: This, and not the persecution at that time raging in France, is the reason assigned by Calvin himself in the preface to his commentary on the Psalms, where he tells us that, the very year of his conversion, seeing "que tous ceux qui avoyent quelque desir de la pure doctrine se rangeoyent a lui pour apprendre," he began to seek some hiding-place and means of withdrawing from men. "Et de faict," he adds, "je veins en Allemagne, de propos delibere, afin que la je peusse vivre a requoy en quelque coin incognu." Corresp. des reformateurs, iii. 242, 243. See the same in the Latin ed., Calvini opera (Amsterdam, 1667), iii. c. 2. This preface is dated Geneva, July 23, 1557.]

[Footnote 396: Whether before or after the appearance of the "Placards," is uncertain. On Calvin's early life, see Beza's Life, already referred to; the Histoire ecclesiastique; various letters in J. Bonnet's Letters of Calvin, and Herminjard, Corresp. des reformateurs; Haag, France protestante; the reformer's life by Paul Henry, D.D., and especially the scholarly work of Dr. E. Staehelin (2 vols., Elberfeld, 1860-1863).]

[Footnote 397: The mooted question whether Calvin wrote the Institutes originally in Latin or in French--in other words, whether there was a French edition before the first Latin edition of 1536--has been set at rest by M. Jules Bonnet, who, in a contribution to the Bulletin de l'histoire du protestantisme francais, vi. (1858) 137-142, establishes the priority of the Latin. The chief points in the proof are: 1st, the absence of even a single copy of the supposed French edition of 1535; 2d, Calvin's statement to Francis Daniel, Oct. 13, 1536, "I am kept continually occupied upon the French version of my little book;" 3d, his decisive words in the preface to the edition of 1551: "Et premierement l'ay mis en latin a ce qu'il pust servir a toutes gens d'estude, de quelque nation qu'ils fussent; puis apres desirant de communiquer ce qui en pouvoit venir de fruict a nostre nation francoise, l'ay aussy translate en nostre langue." See also chap. iii. of Professors Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss, Introd. to Institution de la religion chretienne (Calv. Opera, t. iii.).]

[Footnote 398: Opera Calvini (Amst., 1667), t. ix.]

[Footnote 399: "La dedicace a Francois I^er, qui est peut-etre une des plus belles choses que possede notre langue." Paul L. Jacob, bibliophile (Lacroix), "Avertissement" prefixed to Oeuvres francaises de Calvin. The Institutes he designates "ce chef-d'oeuvre de science theologique, de philosophie religieuse et de style." "Here," says Henri van Laun, "was a force and concision of language never before heard in France.... The influence of Calvin's writings upon the style of his successors, and upon the literary development of his country, cannot easily be over-estimated. With him French prose may be said to have attained its manhood; the best of his contemporaries, and of those who had preceded him, did but use as a staff or as a toy that which he employed as a burning sword." History of French Literature (New York, 1876), i. 338, 339.]

[Footnote 400: Yet it is more probable, as Staehelin suggests (Joh. Calvin, ii. 93), that the classical associations of Italy drew him to the peninsula, which was at that time the home of art, than that his fame, having already penetrated to Ferrara, procured him a direct invitation from Renee to visit her.]

[Footnote 401: Showing, according to Brantome, "en son visage et en sa parole qu'elle estoit bien fille du Roy et de France." Dames illustres, Renee de France.]

[Footnote 402: See the pompous ceremonial on this occasion and the epithalamium of Clement Marot, in Cronique du Roy Francois I^er (G. Guiffrey, 1860), 68-73.]

[Footnote 403: Dames illustres, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 404: "Que voulez-vous? Ce sont des pauvres Francois de ma maison; et lesquels si Dieu m'eust donne barbe au menton et que je fusse homme, seroient maintenant tous mes sujets. Voire me seroient-ils tels, si cette meschante Loy Salicque ne me tenoit trop de rigueur." Ibid., ubi supra. A readable account of the life of this remarkable woman is given in "Some Memorials of Renee of France, Duchess of Ferrara" (2d edit., London, 1859), a volume enriched, to some extent, with letters drawn from the Paris National Library, and from less accessible collections in Great Britain.]

[Footnote 405: Possibly including the wonderfully precocious child, Olympia Morata. See M. Jules Bonnet's monograph, Vie d'Olympia Morata, episode de la Renaissance et de la Reforme en Italie. Staehelin has well traced Calvin's religious influence upon Renee and the important family of Soubise. Joh. Calvin, i. 94-110. The extant letters of Calvin to Renee are full of manly and Christian frankness, and affectionate loyalty. Lettres francaises, i. 428, etc.]

[Footnote 406: Staehelin is skeptical about, and Prof. Billiet and M. Douen reject altogether the story of Calvin's labors at Aosta. Thus much M. Bonnet believes to be established by concurrent MS. and traditional authority: That, early in the year 1536, Calvin had succeeded in gaining over to the reformed doctrines a number of influential men in this Alpine valley, of the families of La Creste, La Visiere, Vaudan, Borgnion, etc.; that he and his converts were accused of plotting to induce the district to embrace Protestantism, and imitate the example of its Swiss neighbors, by constituting itself a canton, free of the Duke of Savoy; that the estates, on the 28th of February, 1536, declared their intention (with a unanimity procured, perhaps, by the expulsion of the opposite party) to live and die in the obedience of the Duke of Savoy and of mother Holy Church; that Calvin and his principal adherents escaped with difficultly into Switzerland; and that expiatory processions were instituted at Aosta, in token of gratitude for deliverance from heresy, in which the bishop and the most prominent noblemen, as well as the common people, "walked with bare feet and in sackcloth and ashes, notwithstanding the rigor of the season." Tradition still points out the "farm-house of Calvin," his "bridge," and the window by which he is said to have escaped. The event is commemorated by a monument of the market-place, bearing an inscription that testifies to its having been erected in 1541, and renewed in 1741 and 1841. See the interesting Aostan documents contributed by M. Bonnet to the Bulletin de l'hist. du protest. francais, ix. (1860) 160-168, and his letter to Prof. Rilliet, ibid., xiii. (1864) 183-192.]

[Footnote 407: This is Calvin's distinct statement: "quum rectum iter Argentoratum tendenti bella clausissent, hac (Geneva) celeriter transire statueram, ut non longior quam unius noctis morae in urbe mihi foret." Calvin, Preface to Psalms.]

[Footnote 408: "Unus homo, qui nunc turpi defectione iterum ad Papistas rediit, statim fecit ut innotescerem." Ibid., ubi supra. Consequently Beza, in his Latin Life of Calvin, is mistaken when he asserts: "eos [sc. Farel and Viret] igitur quum, ut inter bonos fieri solet, Calvinus transiens invisisset," etc.; for it was Farel that sought him out, on Du Tillet's information.]

[Footnote 409: Calvin, in the preface to the Psalms already quoted, says: "Genevae non tam consilio, vel hortatu, quam formidabili Gulielmi Farelli obtestatione retentus sum, ac si Deus violentam mihi e coelo manum injiceret. Et quum privatis et occultis studiis me intelligeret esse deditum, ubi se vidit rogando nihil proficere, usque ad maledictionem descendit, ut Deus otio meo malediceret, si me a ferendis subsidiis in tanta necessitate subducerem. Quo terrore perculsus susceptum iter ita omisi," etc.--Beza throws these words into Farel's mouth: "At ego tibi, inquit, studia tua praetextenti denuntio Omnipotentis Dei nomine, futurum ut nisi in opus istud Domini nobiscum incumbas, tibi non tam Christum quam teipsum quaerenti Dominus maledicat." Vita Calvini (Op. Calv., Amst. 1661, tom. i).]

[Footnote 410: This interesting letter, dated Neufchatel, June 6, 1564, was communicated by M. Herminjard to the editor of the fine edition of Farel's Du Vray Usage de la Croix, printed by J. G. Fick, Geneva, 1865, who gives it entire, pp. 314, etc.]

[Footnote 411: "Sane non possum de aliis aliud sentire quam quod de me statuo." Farel to Calvin, Sept. 8, 1553, Calv. Opera, ix. (Epistolae), 71.]

[Footnote 412: Declaration pour maintenir la vraye foy que tiennent tous chrestiens de la Trinite des personnes en un seul Dieu. Par Jean Calvin. Contre les erreurs detestables de Michel Servet Espaignol. Ou il est aussi monstre, qu'il est licite de punir les heretiques: et qu'a bon droict ce meschant a este execute par justice en la ville de Geneve. 1554.--In this famous little book the author classifies doctrinal errors according to their gravity. Slight superstitions and the ignorance into which simple folk have fallen, are to be borne with till God reveal the truth to them. Offences of greater magnitude, because injurious to the church, should be visited with mild penalties. "But when malicious spirits attempt to overthrow the foundations of religion, utter execrable blasphemies against God, and disseminate damnable speeches, like deadly poison, to drag souls to perdition--in short, engage in schemes to cause the people to revolt from the pure doctrine of God--then it is necessary to have recourse to the extreme remedy, so that the evil may not spread farther" (pp. 48, 49).]

[Footnote 413: See Calvin to C. and T. Zollicoffre, March 28, and the same to Peloquin and De Marsac, Aug. 22, 1553. Servetus was burned Oct. 27.]

[Footnote 414: Two months before the execution Calvin wrote to Farel, Aug. 20, 1553: "Spero capitale saltem fore judicium poenae vero atrocitatem remitti cupio;" and on the 26th of October, he again wrote, "Genus mortis conati sumus mutare, sed frustra. Cur non profecerimus, coram narrandum differo." Calv. Opera, ix. 70, 71. As it is thus in evidence not only that Calvin did not burn Servetus, but desired him not to be burned, and made an ineffectual attempt to rescue him from the flames, we might anticipate for the stale calumny a speedy end, were not the tenacity of life characterizing such inventions so notorious as to have passed into a proverb.]

[Footnote 415: Melanchthon, for example, after expressing his entire satisfaction with Calvin's treatise, and his conviction that the church both now and hereafter owes and will owe him gratitude for it, adds: "Affirmo etiam, vestros magistratus juste fecisse, quod hominem blasphemum, re ordine judicata, interfecerunt." Mel. to Calvin, Oct. 14, 1554, Opera (Bretschneider), viii. 362.]

[Footnote 416: Laborie, one of the heroic "five," sending from prison an account of his examination, states that, when one of his judges asked him whether he did not know that God had by Moses sanctioned the punishment of heretics, he freely admitted it: "Haereticos certe puniendos facile concessi, et in exemplum proposui impurum illum canem Servetum, qui Genevae ultimo supplicio affectus fuit: verum sedulo caverent, ne in Christianos et Dei filios velut haereticos animadvertant," etc. Letter in Crespin, Actiones et Monimenta Martyrum (Genevae, 1560), fol. 291.]

[Footnote 417: "Ego qui natura timido, molli et pusillo animo esse fateor." Preface to the Psalms.]

[Footnote 418: "Porro, an propositum esset mihi famam aucupari, patuit ex brevi discessu, praesertim quum nemo illic sciverit me authorem esse." Ibid.]

[Footnote 419: "Me tamen non tanta sustinnit magnanimitas, quin turbulenta ejectione plus quam deceret laetatus sim." Ibid.]

[Footnote 420: "Praestantissimus Christi minister, M. Bucerus me iterum simili qua usus fuerat Farellus, obsecratione, ad novam stationem retraxit. Jonae itaque exemplo, quod proposuerat, territus," etc. Ibid.]

[Footnote 421: "La difficulte est," he writes to M. de Falaise, April, 1546, "des fascheries et rompemens de teste qui interviennent, pour interrompre vingt fois une lettre, ou encore d'advantaige." He adds (and the details are interesting) that, although his general health is good, "je suis tormente sans cesse d'une doleur qui ne me souffre quasi rien faire. Car oultre les sermons et lectures, il y a desja un mois que je n'ay gueres faict, tellement que j'ay presque honte de vivre arnsi inutile." Lettres francaises, i. 141, 142. Many a scholar of his day, or of ours, would consider a week of health well occupied with the preparation and delivery of two sermons and three theological lectures.]

[Footnote 422: "Ginevra ... che e la minera di questa sorte di metallo." Relazione di M. Suriano, 1561. Relations des Amb. Venitiens, i. 528.]

[Footnote 423: This period of his life was referred to by him in his last address to the body of his colleagues: "J'ay vescu icy en combats merveilleux; j'ay este salue par mocquerie le soir devant ma porte de 50 ou 60 coups d'arquebute. Que pensez-vous que cela pouvoit estonner un pauvre escholier, timide comme je suis, et comme je l'ay toujours este, je le confesse?... On m'a mis les chiens a ma queue, criant here, here, et m'ont prins par la robbe et par les jambes." Adieux de Calvin, apud Bonnet, Lettres francaises, ii. 575.]

[Footnote 424: "This sacrifice," M. Gaberel forcibly observes, "has scarcely a parallel in history. Men willingly consent to make the greatest efforts, to perform the most painful acts of self-denial, with the aim of saving their country. Formerly the Genevese suffered unto death to preserve their independence. Now the same unselfish spirit is demanded of them in ordinary times that they exhibited in evil days. And, if the people accepts the 'Ordinances,' it is because it has narrowly scanned the slavery to which that moral license was leading it, which Rome authorizes in order to confiscate all other liberties. It accepts the 'Ordinances' because it has just escaped the treacherous machinations, the servitude prepared for it by men whose principle is to go just as their own heart leads them.... Strengthened by this vote, Calvin can henceforth hope to succeed in his project, and make of Geneva the Protestant metropolis, bearing as its motto, 'Holiness to the Lord.'" Histoire de l'eglise de Geneve, i. 346, 347.]

[Footnote 425: Recherches de la France (ed. of 1621), p. 769. Giovanni Michiel, in 1561, told the Doge of Venice: "Ne potria vostra Serenita creder l'intelligenza e le pratiche grandi che ha nel regno il principal ministro di Genevra che chiamano il Calvino, Francese e Picardo di nazione, uomo di estraordinaria autorita, per la vita, per la dottrina, e per i scritti appresso tutti quelli di questa sette." Rel. des Amb. Ven., i. 415.]

[Footnote 426: Histoire ecclesiastique, i. 13-17; Crespin, Actiones et Monimenta (Geneva, 1560), fol. 65, etc.]

[Footnote 427: Histoire ecclesiastique, i. 15.]

[Footnote 428: "En maneire que pensions nostredit royaume en estre purge du tout et nettoye," Francis is made to say in the Edict of Fontainebleau. Isambert, Recueil des anciennes lois francaises, xii. 677, etc.]

[Footnote 429: "Tellement qu'il est fort a douter que les nouveaux erreurs soient pires que les premiers." Ibid., xii. 677.]

[Footnote 430: "Plusieurs gros personnages, qui secrettement les recelent, supportent et favorisent en leurs fausses doctrines, leur aydans et subvenans de leurs biens, de lieux, et de places secrettes et occultes, esquelles ils retirent leurs sectateurs, pour les instruire esdites erreurs et infections." Ibid., xii. 677.]

[Footnote 431: "Attendu que tels erreurs et fausses doctrines contiennent en soy crime de leze majeste divine et humaine, sedition du peuple, et perturbation de nostre estat et repos public." Ibid., xii. 680.]

[Footnote 432: "Mais tantost et incontinent qu'ils en seront advertis, les reveler a justice, et de tout leur pouvoir aider a les extirper, comme un chacun doit courir a esteindre le feu public." Ibid., xii. 680.]

[Footnote 433: President Louis Caillaud to the chancellor (Antoine Du Bourg), Oct. 22, 1538. Musee des archives nationales; Documents orig. exposes dans l'Hotel Soubise (Paris, 1872), 347.]

[Footnote 434: Among others, two "Lutherans," otherwise unknown to us, whose execution a young German student, Eustathius de Knobelsdorf, witnessed on the Place Maubert, and described in a letter to George Cassander, professor at Bruges, like himself a Roman Catholic. One of the "Lutherans," a beardless youth of scarcely twenty years, the son of a shoemaker, after having his tongue cut out and his head smeared with sulphur, far from showing marks of terror, signified, by a motion to the executioner, his perfect willingness to meet death. "I doubt, my dear Cassander," writes De Knobelsdorf, "whether those celebrated philosophers, who have written so many books on the contempt of death, would have endured so cruel tortures with such constancy. So far did this youth seem to be raised above what is of man." Letter of July 10, 1542. Translated in Bulletin, vi. (1858), 420-423; and Baum, Theodor Beza, i. 52-55.]

[Footnote 435: "En sorte que la justice, punition, correction, et demonstration en soit faite telle et si griefve, que ce puisse estre perpetuel exemple a tous autres."]

[Footnote 436: Isambert, Recueil des anciennes lois francaises, xii. 785-787.]

[Footnote 437: "Lui a dit qu'il voulait qu'aucun sacramentaire ne fut admis a abjurer, ains fut puni de mort." Reg. secr. du Parl. de Bordeaux, July 7, 1543, Boscheron des Portes, i. 47, 48.]

[Footnote 438: "Conspirateurs occultes contre la prosperite de nostre estat, dependant principalement et en bonne partie de la conservation de l'integrite de la foy catholique en nostredit royaume, rebelles et desobeyssans a nous et a nostre justice." Recueil des anc. lois francaises, xii. 819.]

[Footnote 439: Ibid., xii. 820.]

[Footnote 440: The preamble of the royal letters giving execution to the Twenty-five Articles of the Sorbonne mentions as a moving cause "plusieurs scandales et schismes par cy devant intervenus, et mesmement en cest advent de Noel dernier passe, par le moyen et a l'occasion de contentions, contradictions et altercations de certain predicateurs preschans et publians divers et contraires doctrines." Recueil des anc. lois francaises, xii. 820.]

[Footnote 441: Recueil des anc. lois franc., xii. 821-825. Among other recommendations appended to the articles, was the following somewhat interesting one, designed to correct the irreverence of the age: "Quand il vient a propos d'alleguer le nom des saincts apostres et evangelistes ou saincts docteurs, qu'ils n'ayent a les nommer par leurs norm simplement, sans aucune preface d'honneur, comme ont accoustume dire, 'Paul,' 'Jacques,' 'Mathieu,' 'Pierre,' 'Hierosme,' 'Augustin,' etc. Et ne leur doit estre grief adjouster et preposer le nom de 'sainct,' en disant, 'sainct Pierre,' 'sainct Paul,' etc.!"]

[Footnote 442: Ibid., xii. 820. In answer to these Articles, Calvin wrote his "Antidote aux articles de la faculte Sorbonique de Paris."]

[Footnote 443: Ory, Oriz, or Oritz, as his name was indifferently written, was a prominent character in subsequent scenes of blood, and was, as we may hereafter see, the agent employed by Henry II. to cajole, or frighten his aunt, Renee, and bring her back into the bosom of the Roman Church. The letters-patent giving this personage, who is styled "doctor of theology and prior of the preaching friars (Dominicans) of Paris," authority to exercise the functions of inquisitor of the faith throughout the kingdom, in place of Valentin Lievin, deceased, are of May 30, 1536, Recueil des anc. lois fr., xii. 503. Similar letters were issued April 10, 1540. His confirmation by Henry II., June 22, 1550, ibid., xiii. 173.]

[Footnote 444: Histoire ecclesiastique, i. 13. It is, in fact, an interesting circumstance that Rocheli, or Rochetti, the deputy inquisitor referred to in the text, not long after became a convert to Protestantism, and applied himself to preaching the doctrines he had once labored to overturn.]

[Footnote 445: The first, entitled "Epistolae duae; prima de fugiendis impiorum illicitis sacris et puritate Christianae religionis; secunda de Christiani hominis officio in sacerdotiis papalis ecclesiae vel administrandis vel abjiciendis," 1537. The second, "Contre la secte fantastique et furieuse des Libertins qui se disent spirituels," 1544. The latter, from its pointed reference to Quintin and Pocquet, two notorious leaders, seems to have given offence to Margaret of Navarre, by whom they had been harbored in ignorance of their true character. A letter written to the queen by Calvin immediately upon learning this, April 28, 1545 (Bonnet, Lettres francaises, i. 111-117), is at once one of the best examples of his nervous French style, and a fine illustration of manly courage tempered with respect for a princess who had deserved well of Protestantism. A single sentence admirably portrays his attitude toward the formidable sect which had so devastated the Low Countries and had now entered France in the persons of two of its worst apostles--a sect regarded by him as more pernicious and execrable than any previously existing: "Un chien abaye, s'il voit qu'on assaille son maistre; je seroys bien lasche, si en voyant la verite de Dieu ainsi assaillie, je faisoys du muet sans sonner mot."]

[Footnote 446: "A exhorte et prie la cour de vouloir faire punir et bruler les vrais heretiques," etc. Reg. du Parl., May 24, 1543, Boscheron des Portes, Hist. du parlement de Bordeaux, i. 63.]

[Footnote 447: "Reclame son privilege de fille de France ecrit dans un livre qui est a Saint Denis, de faire ouvrir les prisons," etc. Ibid., ubi supra.]

[Footnote 448: The text of this singular document, dated Rheims, Sept. 8, 1543, is in Gerdes., Hist. Reform., iv. (Monumenta) 107-109. When the "Instructions" fell into the hands of Charles V., he naturally tried to make capital of a paper so little calculated to please Roman Catholics, emanating from a son of the "Most Christian king." And Francis thought himself compelled to clear himself from the charge of lukewarmness in the faith, if not of actual heretical bias, by exercising fresh severities upon the devoted Protestants of his own dominions.]