The History of Protestantism |
| Chapter 1 | . . . | THE DOCTOR OF ETAPLES, THE FIRST PROTESTANT TEACHER IN
FRANCE Arrival of a New Actor – Central Position of France – Genius of its People – Tragic Interest of its Protestantism – Louis XII. – Perdam Babylonis Nomen, – The Councils of Pisa and the Lateran Francis I. and Leo X. – Jacques Lefevre – His Birth and Education Appointed to a Chair in the Sorbonne – His Devotions – His Lives of the Saints – A Discovery – A Free Justification – Teaches this Doctrine in the Sorbonne – Agitation among the Professors – A Tempest gathering. |
| Chapter 2 | . . . | FAREL, BRICONNET, AND THE EARLY REFORMERS OF FRANCE A Student from the Dauphinese Alps – William Farel – Enters University of Paris – Becomes a Pupil Of Lefevre – His Doubts – Passes with Lefevre into the New Day – Preaches in the Churches – Retires to Switzerland – William Briconnet, Bishop of Meaux – Briconnet goes on a Mission to Rome – State of the City – His Musings on his Way back – Change at Meaux – The Bible – What Briconnet Saw in it – Begins the Reformation of his Diocese – Characters of Francis I. and Margaret of Valois. |
| Chapter 3 | . . . | THE FIRST PROTESTANT CONGREGATION OF FRANCE A Bright Morning – Sanguine Anticipations of the Protestants – Lefevre Translates the Bible – Bishop of Meaux Circulates it – The Reading of it at Meaux – Reformation of Manners – First Protestant Flock in France – Happy Days – Complaints of the Tavern-keepers – Murmurs of the Monks – The King Incited to set up the Scaffold – Refuses – The "Well of Meaux." |
| Chapter 4 | . . . | COMMENCEMENT OF PERSECUTION IN FRANCE The World's Center – The Kingdoms at War – In the Church, Peace – The Flock at Meaux – Marot's Psalms of David universally Sung in France – The Odes of Horace – Calvin and Church Psalmody – Two Champions of the Darkness, Beda and Duprat – Louisa of Savoy – Her Character – The Trio that Governed France – They Unsheathe the Sword of Persecution – Briconnet's Fall. |
| Chapter 5 | . . . | THE FIRST MARTYRS OF FRANCE The Flock at Meaux – Denis, a "Meaux Heretic" – Visited in Prison by his former Pastor, Briconnet – The Interview – Men Burned and yet they Live – Pavane – Imprisoned for the Gospel – Recants – His Horror of Mind – Anew Confesses Christ – Is Burned – His the First Stake in Paris – Martyrdom of the Hermit of Livry – Leclerc, the Wool-comber – Acts as Pastor – Banished from Meaux – Retires to Metz – Demolishes the Images at the Chapel of Mary – Procession – Astonishment of Processionists – Leclerc Seized – Confesses – His Cruel Death – Bishop Briconnet. |
| Chapter 6 | . . . | CALVIN: HIS BIRTH AND EDUCATION Greater Champions about to Appear – Calvin – His Birth and Lineage – His Appearance and Disposition – His Education – Appointed to a Chaplaincy – The Black Death – Sent to La Marche at Paris – Mathurin Cordier – Friendship between the Young Pupil and his Teacher – Calvin Charmed by the Great Latin Writers – Luther's and Calvin's Services to their respective Tongues – Leaves the School of La Marche. |
| Chapter 7 | . . . | CALVIN'S CONVERSION Calvin in the Montaigu – His Devotions and Studies – Auguries of his Teachers – Calvin still in Darkness – Trebly Armed – Olivetan – Discussions between Olivetan and Calvin – Doubts Awakened – Great Struggles of Soul – The Priests Advise him to Confess – Olivetan sends him to the Bible – Opens the Book – Sees the Cross – Another Obstacle – The "Church" – Sees the Spiritual Glory of the True Church – The Glory of the False Church Vanishes – One of the Great Battles of the World – Victory and its Fruits. |
| Chapter 8 | . . . | CALVIN BECOMES A STUDENT OF LAW Gate of the New Kingdom – Crowds Pressing to Enter – The Few only Able to do so – Lefevre and Farel Sighing for the Conversion of Francis I. – A Greater Conversion – Calvin Refuses to be made a Priest – Chooses the Profession of Law – Goes to Orleans – Pierre de l'Etoile – Calvin becomes his Scholar – Teaching of Etoile on the Duty of the State to Punish Heterodoxy – Calvin among his College Companions – A Victory – Calvin Studies Greek – Melchior Wolmar – Calvin Prepared for his Work as a Commentator – His Last Mental Struggle. |
| Chapter 9 | . . . | CALVIN THE EVANGELIST, AND BERQUIN THE MARTYR. Calvin Abandons the Study of the Law – Goes to Bourges – Bourges under Margaret of Navarre – Its Evangelisation already Commenced – The Citizens entreat Calvin to become their Minister – He begins to act as an Evangelist in Bourges – The Work extends to the Villages and Castles around – The Plottings of the Monks – His Father's Death calls Calvin away – A Martyr, Louis de Berquin – His Youth – His Conversion – His Zeal and Eloquence in Spreading the Gospel – Imprisoned by the Sorbonnists – Set at Liberty by the King – Imprisoned a Second and a Third Time – Set at Liberty – Erasmus' Counsel – Berquin Taxes the Sorbonnists with Heresy – An Image of the Virgin Mutilated – Berquin consigned to the Conciergerie – His Condemnation and Frightful Sentence – Efforts of Budaeus – Berquin on his Way to the Stake – His Attire – His Noble Behaviour – His Death. |
| Chapter 10 | . . . | CALVIN AT PARIS, AND FRANCIS NEGOTIATING WITH GERMANY AND
ENGLAND. The Death of the Martyr not the Death of the Cause – Calvin at Noyon – Preaches at Pont l'Eveque – His Audience – How they take his Sermon – An Experiment – Its Lessen – Calvin goes to Paris – Paris a Focus of Literary Light – The Students at the University – Their Debates – Calvin to Polemics adds Piety – He Evangelises in Paris – Powers of the World – Spain and France kept Divided – How and Why – The Schmalkald League holds the Balance of Power – Francis I. approaches the German Protestants – Failure of the Negotiation – Francis turns to Henry VIII. – Interview between Francis and Henry at Boulogne – Fetes – League between the Kings of France and England – Francis's Great Error |
| Chapter 11 | . . . | THE GOSPEL PREACHED IN PARIS – A MARTYR. Margaret of Navarre – Her Hopes – Resolves to have the Gospel Preached in France – The City Churches not to be had – Opens a Private Chapel in the Louvre – A Large and Brilliant Assembly convenes – The Preachers – Paris Penitent and Reforming – Agitation in the Sorbonne – The Sorbonnists apply to the King – The Monks occupy the Pulpits – They Threaten the King – Beda Banished – Excitement in Paris – The Populace Remain with Rome – The Crisis of France – The Dominican Friar, Laurent de la Croix – His Conversion – Preaches in France – Apprehended and conducted to Paris – His Torture – His Condemnation – His Behaviour at the Stake – France makes her Choice: she will Abide with Rome. |
| Chapter 12 | . . . | CALVIN'S FLIGHT FROM PARIS. Out of Paris comes the Reformer – The Contrasts of History – Calvin's Interview with the Queen of Navarre – Nicholas Cop, Rector of the Sorbonne – An Inaugural Discourse – Calvin Writes and Cop Delivers it – The Gospel in Disguise – Rage of the Sorbonne – Cop flies to Basle – The Officers on their way to Arrest Calvin – Calvin is let down by the Window – Escapes from Paris disguised as a Vine-Dresser – Arrives in Angouleme – Received at the Mansion of Du Tillet – Here projects the Institutes – Interview with Lefevre – Lefevre's Prediction. |
| Chapter 13 | . . . | FIRST PROTESTANT ADMINISTRATION OF THE LORD'S SUPPER IN
FRANCE. Calvin goes to Poictiers — Its Society — Calvin draws Disciples round him — Re-unions — The Gardens of the Basses Treilles — The Abbot Ponthus — Calvin's Grotto — First Dispensation of the Lord's Supper in France — Formation of a Protestant Congregation — Home Mission Scheme for the Evangelisation of France — The Three First Missionaries — Their Labors and Deaths — Calvin Leaves Poictiers — The Church of Poictiers — Present State and Aspect of Poictiers. |
| Chapter 14 | . . . | CATHERINE DE MEDICI. St. Paul — Calvin — Desire to Labor in Paris — Driven from this Field — Francis I. Intrigues to Outmanoeuvre Charles V. — Offers the Hand of his Second Son to the Pope's Niece — Joy of Clement VII. — The Marriage Agreed on — Catherine de Medici — Rise of the House of Medici — Cosmo I. — His Patronage of Letters and Scholars — Fiesole — Descendants of Cosmo — Clement VII. — Birth of Catherine de Medici — Exposed to Danger — Lives to Mount the Throne of France — Catherine as a Girl — Her Fascination — Her Tastes — Her Morals — Her Love of Power; etc. |
| Chapter 15 | . . . | MARRIAGE OF HENRY OF FRANCE TO CATHERINE DE MEDICI. The Pope sets Sail — Coasts along to France — Meets Francis I. at Marseilles — The Second Son of the King of France Married to Catherine de Medici — Her Promised Dowry — The Marriage Festivities — Auguries — Clement's Return Voyage — His Reflections — His Dream of a New Era — His Dream to be Read Backwards — His Troubles — His Death — Catherine Enters France as Calvin is Driven Out — Retrogression of Protestantism — Death and Catherine de Medici — Death's Five Visits to the Palace — Each Visit Assists Catherine in her Ascent to Power — Her Crimes — She Gains no Real Success. |
| Chapter 16 | . . . | MELANCTHON'S PLAN FOR UNITING WITTEMBERG AND ROME. The Laborers Scattered — The Cause Advances — The Dread it Inspires — Calvin and Catherine — A Contrast — The Keys and the Fleur-de-Lis — The Doublings of Francis — Agreement between Francis and Philip of Hesse at Bar-le-Duc — Campaign — Wurtemberg Restored to Christopher — Francis I's Project for Uniting Lutheranism and Romanism — Du Bellay's Negotiations with Bucer — Melancthon Sketches a Basis of Union — Bucer and Hedio add their Opinion — The Messenger Returns with the Paper to Paris — Sensation — Council at the Louvre — Plan Discussed — An Evangelical Pope. |
| Chapter 17 | . . . | PLAN OF FRANCIS I. FOR COMBINING LUTHERANISM AND
ROMANISM. End of Conference — Francis I, takes the Matter into his own Hand — Concocts a New Basis of Union — Sends Copies to Germany, to the Sorbonne and the Vatican — Amazement of the Protestants — Alarm of the Sorbonnists — They send a Deputation to the King — What they Say of Lutheranism — Indignation at the Vatican — These Projects of Union utterly Chimerical — Excuse of the Protestants of the Sixteenth Century — Their Stand-point Different from Ours — Storms that have Shaken the World, but Cleared the Air. |
| Chapter 18 | . . . | FIRST DISCIPLES OF THE GOSPEL IN PARIS. Calvin now the Center of the Movement — Shall he enter Priest's Orders? — Hazard of a Wrong Choice — He walks by Faith — Visits Noyon — Renounces all his Preferments in the Romish Church — Sells his Patrimonial Inheritance — Goes to Paris — Meets Servetus — His Opinions — Challenges Calvin to a Controversy — Servetus does not Keep his Challenge — State of things at Paris — Beda — More Ferocious than ever — The Times Uncertain — Disciples in Paris — Bartholemew Millon — His Deformity — Conversion — Zeal for the Gospel — Du Bourg, the Draper — Valeton, of Nantes — Le Compte — Giulio Camillo — Poille, the Bricklayer — Other Disciples — Pantheists — Calvin's Forecastings — Calvin quits Paris and goes to Strasburg. |
| Chapter 19 | . . . | THE NIGHT OF THE PLACARDS. Inconstancy of Francis — Two Parties in the young French Church: the Temporisers and the Scripturalists — The Policy advocated by each — Their Differences submitted to Farel — The Judgment of the Swiss Pastors — The Placard — Terrific Denunciation of the Mass — Return of the Messenger — Shall the Placards be Published? — Two Opinions — Majority for Publication — The Kingdom Placarded in One Night — The Morning — Surprise and Horror — Placard on the Door of the Royal Bed-chamber — Wrath of the King. |
| Chapter 20 | . . . | MARTYRS AND EXILES. Plan of Morin. — The Betrayer — Procession of Corpus Christi — Terror of Paris — Imprisonment of the Protestants — Atrocious Designs attributed to them — Nemesis — Sentence of the Disciples — Execution of Bartholomew Millon — Burning of Du Bourg — Death of Poille — His Tortures — General Terror — Flight of Numbers — Refugees of Rank — Queen of Navarre — Her Preachers — All Ranks Flee — What France might have been, had she retained these Men — Prodigious Folly. |
| Chapter 21 | . . . | OTHER AND MORE DREADFUL MARTYRDOMS. A Great Purgation Resolved on — Preparations — Procession — The Four Mendicants — Relics: the Head of St. Louis; the True Cross, etc. — Living Dignitaries — The Host — The King on Foot — His Penitence — Of what Sins does he Repent? — The Queen — Ambassadors, Nobles, etc. — Homage of the Citizens — High Mass in Notre Dame — Speech of the King — The Oath of the King — Return of Procession — Apparatus of Torture — Martyrdom of Nicholas Valeton — More Scaffolds and Victims — The King and People's Satisfaction — An Ominous Day in the Calendar of France — The 21st of January. |
| Chapter 22 | . . . | BASLE AND THE "INSTITUTES." Glory of the Sufferers — Francis I. again turns to the German Protestants — They Shrink back — His Doublings — New Persecuting Edicts — Departure of the Queen of Navarre from Paris — New Day to Bearn — Calvin — Strasburg — Calvin arrives there — Bucer, Capito, etc. — Calvin Dislikes their Narrowness — Goes on to Basle — Basle — Its Situation and Environs — Soothing Effect on Calvin's Mind — His Interview with Erasmus — Erasmus "Lays the Egg" — Terrified at what Comes of it — Draws back — Calvin's Enthusiasm — Erasmus' Prophecy — Catherine Klein — First Sketch of the Institutes—What led Calvin to undertake the Work — Its Sublimity, but Onerousness. |
| Chapter 23 | . . . | THE "INSTITUTES." Calvin Discards the Aristotelian Method — How a True Science of Astronomy is Formed — Calvin Proceeds in the same way in Constructing his Theology — Induction — Christ Himself sets the Example of the Inductive Method — Calvin goes to the Field of Scripture — His Pioneers — The Schoolmen — Melanchthon — Zwingli — The Augsburg Confession — Calvin's System more Complete — Two Tremendous Facts — First Edition of the Institutes — Successive Editions — The Creed its Model — Enumeration of its Principal Themes-God the Sole Fountain of all things — Christ the One Source of Redemption and Salvation — The Spirit the One Agent in the Application of Redemption — The Church — Her Worship and Government. |
| Chapter 24 | . . . | CALVIN ON PREDESTINATION AND ELECTION. Calvin's Views on the Affirmative Side — God as the Author of all things Ordains all that is to come to pass — The Means equally with the End comprehended in the Decree — As Sovereign, God Executes all that comes to pass — Calvin's Views on the Negative Side — Man a Free Agent — Man an Accountable Being — Calvin maintained side by side God's Eternal Ordination and Man's Freedom of Action — Cannot Reconcile the Two — Liberty and Necessity — Tremendous Difficulties confessed to Attach to Both Theories — Explanations — Locke and Sir William Hamilton — Growth of the Institutes. |
| Chapter 25 | . . . | CALVIN'S APPEAL TO FRANCIS I. Enthusiasm evoked by the appearance of the Institutes—Marshals the Reformed into One Host — Beauty of the Style of the Institutes—Opinions expressed on it by Scaliger, Sir William Hamilton, Principal Cunningham, M. Nisard — The Institutes an Apology for the Reformed — In scathing Indignation comparable to Tacitus — Home-thrusts — He Addresses the King of France — Pleads for his Brethren — They Suffer for the Gospel — Cannot Abandon it — Offer themselves to Death — A Warning — Grandeur of the Appeal — Did Francis ever Read this Appeal? |
BOOK FIRST
FROM RISE OF PROTESTANTISM IN FRANCE (1510) TO PUBLICATION OF THE INSTITUTES (1536)
CHAPTER 1 Back to Top
THE DOCTOR OF ETAPLES, THE FIRST PROTESTANT TEACHER IN FRANCE
Arrival of a New Actor – Central Position of France – Genius of its People
– Tragic Interest of its Protestantism – Louis XII. – Perdam Babylonis
Nomen, – The Councils of Pisa and the Lateran Francis I. and Leo X. – Jacques
Lefevre – His Birth and Education Appointed to a Chair in the Sorbonne – His
Devotions – His Lives of the Saints – A Discovery – A Free Justification
– Teaches this Doctrine in the Sorbonne – Agitation among the Professors –
A Tempest gathering.
THE area of the Reformation – that great movement which,
wherever it comes, makes all things new is about to undergo enlargement. The stage,
already crowded with great actors – England, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark
– is to receive another accession. The plot is deepening, the parts are multiplying,
and the issues give promise of being rich and grand beyond conception. It is no mean actor
that is now to step upon that stage on which the nations do battle, and where, if
victorious, they shall reap a future of happiness and glory; but if vanquished, there
await them decadence, and shame, and ruin. The new nationality which has come to mingle in
this great drama is France.
At the opening of the sixteenth century, France held a foremost place among the countries
of Europe. It might not unworthy aspire to lead in a great movement of the nations. Placed
in the center of the civilized West, it touched the other kingdoms of Christendom at a
great many points. On its south and south-east was Switzerland; on its east and north-east
were Germany and the Low Countries; on its north, parted from it only by the narrow sea,
was England At all its gates, save those that looked towards Italy and Spain, was the
Reformation waiting for admission. Will France open, and heartily welcome it? Elevated on
this central and commanding site, the beacon-lights of Protestantism will shed their
effulgence all around, making the day clearer where the light has already dawned, and the
night less dark where the shades still linger.
The rich endowments of the people made it at once desirable and probable that France would
embrace the Reformation. The French genius is one of marvelous adaptability. Quick,
playful, trenchant, subtle, it is able alike to concentrate itself in analytical
investigations, and to spread itself out in creations of poetic beauty and intellectual
sublimity. There is no branch of literature in which the French people have not excelled.
They have shone equally in the drama, in philosophy, in history, in mathematics, and in
metaphysics. Grafted on a genius so elegant and yet so robust, so playful and yet so
Penetrating – in short, so many sided – Protestantism will display itself under
a variety of new and beautiful lights, which will win converts in quarters where the
movement has not been regarded hitherto as having many attractions to recommend it –
nay, rather where, it has been contemned as "a root out of a dry ground."
We are entering on one of the grandest yet most tragic of all the pages of our history.
The movement which we now behold entering France is to divide – deeply and fiercely
divide the nation; for it is a characteristic of the French people that whatever, cause
they embrace, they embrace with enthusiasm; and whatever cause they oppose, they oppose
with an equal enthusiasm. As we pass on the scenes will be continually shifting, and the
quick alternations of hope and fear will never cease to agitate us. It is, so to speak, a
superb gallery we are to traverse; colossal forms look down upon us as we pass along. On
this hand stand men of gigantic wickedness, on that men of equally gigantic virtue –
men whose souls, sublimed by piety and trust in God, have attained to the highest pitch of
endurance, of self-sacrifice, of heroism. And then the lesson at the close, so distinct,
so solemn. For we are justified in affirming that in a sense France has glorified
Protestantism more by rejecting it than other countries have done by accepting it.
We lift the curtain at the year 1510. On its rising we find the throne of France occupied
by Louis XII., the wisest sovereign of his time. He has just assembled a Parliament at
Tours to resolve for him the question whether it is lawful to go to war with the Pope, who
violates treaties, and sustains his injustice by levying soldiers and fighting battles?[1] The warlike Julius II. then
occupied the chair which a Borgia had recently filled.
Ignorant of theology, with no inclination, and just as little capacity, for the spiritual
duties of his see, Julius II. passed his whole time in camps and on battle-fields. With so
bellicose a priest at its center, Christendom had but little rest. Among others whom the
Pope disquieted was the meek and upright Louis of France; hence the question which he put
to his Parliament. The answer of that assembly marks the moral decadence of the Papacy,
and the contempt in which the thunderbolts of the Vatican were beginning to be held.
"It is lawful for the king," said they, "not only to act defensively but
offensively against such a man"[2] Fortified
by the advice of his Parliament, Louis gave the command to his armies to march, and two
years later he indicated sufficiently his own opinion of the Papacy and its crowned chief,
when he caused a coin to be struck at Naples bearing the words, Perdan Babylonis nomen [3] These symptoms announced the
near approach of the new times.
Other things were then being transacted which also gave plain indication that the old age
was about to close and a new age to open. Weary of a Pope who made it his sole vocation to
marshal armies and conquer cities and provinces, who went in person to the battle-field,
but never once appeared in the pulpit, the Emperor Maximilian I. and Louis of France
agreed to convoke a Council [4] for
"the Reformation of the Church in its head and members." That Council was now
sitting at Pisa. It summoned the Pope to its bar, and when Julius II. failed to appear,
the Council suspended him from his office, and forbade all people to obey him.[5] The Pope treated the decree of
the Fathers with the same contempt which he had shown to their summons. He convoked
another Council at the Lateran, made void that of Pisa, with all its decrees, fulminated
excommunication against Louis,[6] suspended
Divine worship in France, and delivered the kingdom to whomsoever had the will and the
power to seize upon it.[7]
Thus Council met Council, and the project of the two sovereigns for a Reformation came to
nothing, as later and similar attempts were destined to do.
For the many evils that pressed upon the world, a Council was the only remedy that the age
knew, and at every crisis it betook itself to this device. God was about to plant in
society a new principle, which would become the germ of its regeneration.
Julius II. was busied with his Council of the Lateran when (1513) he died, and was
succeeded in the Papal chair by Cardinal John de Medici, Leo X.
With the new Pope came new manners at Rome. Underneath, the stream of corruption continued
steadily to flow, but on the surface things were changed. The Vatican no longer rang with
the clang of arms. Instead of soldiers, troops of artists and musicians, crowds of
masqueraders and buffoons now filled the palace of the Pope. The talk was no longer of
battles, but of, pictures and statues and dancers. Soon Louis of France followed his
former opponent, Julius II., to the grave. He died on the 1st January, 1515, and was
succeeded by his nephew, Francis I.
The new Pope and the new king were not unlike in character. The Renaissance had touched
both, communicating to them that refinement of outward manners, and that aesthetical
rather than cultivated taste, which it never failed to impart to all who came under its
influence. The strong, wayward, and selfish passions of the men it had failed to correct.
Both loved to surround themselves with pomps. Francis was greedy of fame, Leo was greedy
of money, and both were greedy of pleasure, and the characteristic passions of each became
in the hand of an overruling Providence the means of furthering the great movement which
now presents itself on the scene.
The river which waters great kingdoms, and bears on its bosom the commerce of many
nations, may be traced up to some solitary fountain among the far-off hills. So was it
with that river of the Water of Life that was now to go forth to refresh France. It had
its first rise in a single soul. It is the year 1510, and the good Louis XII. is still
upon the throne. A stranger visiting Paris at that day, more especially if of a devout
turn, would hardly have failed to mark an old man, small of stature and simple in manners,
going his round of the churches and, prostrate before their images, devoutly
"repeating his hours:" This man was destined to be, on a small scale, to the
realm of France what Wicliffe had been, on a large, to England and the world –
"the morning star of the Reformation." His name was Jacques Lefevre. He was born
at Etaples, a village of Picardy,[8] about
the middle of the previous century, and was now verging on seventy, but still hale and
vigorous. Lefevre had all his days been a devout Papist, and even to this hour the shadow
of Popery was still around him, and the eclipse of superstition had not yet wholly passed
from off his soul. But the promise was to be fulfilled to him, "At evening time it
shall be light." He had all along had a presentiment that a new day was rising on the
world, and that he should not depart till his eyes had seen its light.
The man who was the first to emerge from the darkness that covered his native land is
entitled to a prominent share of our attention. Lefevre was in all points a remarkable
man. Endowed with an inquisitive and capacious intellect, hardly was there a field of
study open to those ages which he had not entered, and in which he had not made great
proficiency. The ancient languages, the belles lettres, history, mathematics, philosophy,
theology; – he had studied them all. His thirst for knowledge tempted him to try what
he might be able to learn from other lands besides France. He had visited Asia and Africa,
and seen all that the end of the fifteenth century had to show. Returning to France he was
appointed to a chair in the Sorbonne, or Theological Hall of the great Paris University,
and soon he drew around him a crowd of admiring disciples. He was the first luminary,
Erasmus tells us, in that constellation of lights; but he was withal so meek, so amiable,
so candid, and so full of loving-kindness, that all who knew him loved him. But there were
those among his fellow-professors who envied him the admiration of which he was the
object, and insinuated that the man who had visited so many countries, and had made
himself familiar with so many subjects, and some of them so questionable, could hardly
have escaped some taint of heresy, and could not be wholly loyal to Mother Church.
They set to watching him; but no one of them all was so punctual and exemplary in his
devotions. never was he absent from mass; never was his place empty at the procession, and
no one remained so long as Lefevre on his knees before the saints. Nay, often might this
man, the most distinguished of all the professors of the Sorbonne, be seen decking the
statues of Mary with flowers.[9] No
flaw could his enemies find in his armor.
Lefevre, thinking to crown the saints with a fairer and more lasting garland than the
perishable flowers he had offered to their images, formed the idea of collecting and
re-writing their lives: He had already made some progress in his task when the thought
struck him that he might find in the Bible materials or hints that would be useful to him
in his work. To the Bible – the original languages of which he had studied – he
accordingly turned. He had unwittingly opened to himself the portals of a new world.
Saints of another sort than those that had till this moment engaged his attention now
stood before him – men who had received a higher canonisation than that of Rome, and
whose images the pen of inspiration itself had drawn. The virtues of the real saints
dimmed in his eyes the glories of the legendary ones. The pen dropped from his hand, and
he could proceed no farther in the task on which till now he had labored with a zeal so
genial, and a perseverance so untiring.
Having opened the Bible, Lefevre was in no haste to shut it. He saw that not only were the
saints of the Bible unlike the saints of the Roman Calendar, but that the Church of the
Bible was unlike the Roman Church. From the images of Paul and Peter, the doctor of
Etaples now turned to the Epistles of Paul and Peter, from the voice of the Church to the
voice of God. The plan of a free justification stood revealed to him. It came like a
sudden revelation – like the breaking of the day. In 1512 he published a commentary,
of which a copy is extant in the Bibliotheque Royale of Paris, on the Epistles of Paul. In
that work he says, "It is God who gives us, by faith, that righteousness which by
grace alone justifies to eternal life."[10]
The day has broken. This utterance of Lefevre assures us of that. It is but a
single ray, it is true; but it comes from Heaven, it is light Divine, and will yet scatter
the darkness that broods over France. It has already banished the gloom of monkery from
the soul of Lefevre; it will do the same for his pupils – for his countrymen, and he
knows that he has not received the light to put it under a bushel. Of all places, the
Sorbonne was the most dangerous in which to proclaim the new doctrine. For centuries no
one but the schoolmen had spoken there, and now to proclaim in the citadel and sanctuary
of scholasticism a doctrine that would explode what had received the reverence, as it had
been the labor, of ages, and promised, as was thought, eternal fame to its authors, was
enough to make the very stones cry out from the venerable walls, and was sure to draw down
a tempest of scholastic ire on the head of the adventurous innovator. Lefevre had attained
an age which is proverbially wary, if not timid; he knew well the risks to which he was
exposing himself, nevertheless he went on to teach the doctrine of salvation by grace.
There rose a great commotion round the chair whence proceeded these unwonted sounds. With
very different feelings did the pupils of the venerable man listen to the new teaching.
The faces of some testified to the delight which his doctrine gave them. They looked like
men to whose eyes some glorious vista had been suddenly opened, or who had unexpectedly
lighted upon what they had long but vainly sought. Astonishment or doubt was plainly
written on the faces of others, while the knitted brows and flashing eyes of some as
plainly bespoke the anger that inflamed them against the man who was razing, as they
thought, the very foundations of morality.
The agitation in the class-room of Lefevre quickly communicated itself to the whole
university. The doctors were in a flutter. Reasonings and objections were heard on every
side, frivolous in some cases, in others the fruit of blind prejudice, or dislike of the
doctrine. But some few were honest, and these Lefever made it his business to answer,
being desirous to show that his doctrine did not give a license to sin, and that it was
not new, but old; that he was not the first preacher of it in France, that it had been
taught by Irenaeus in early times, long before the scholastic theology was heard of; and
especially that this doctrine was not his, not Irenaeus', but God's, who had revealed it
to men in his Word.
Mutterings began to be heard of the tempest that was gathering in the distance; but as yet
it did not burst, and meanwhile Lefevre, within whose soul the light was growing clearer
day by day, went on with his work.
It is important to mark that these occurrences took place in 1512. Not yet, nor till five
years later, was the name of Luther heard of in France. The monk of Wittemberg had not yet
nailed his Theses against indulgences to the doors of the Schloss-kirk. From Germany then,
most manifest it is, the Reformation which we now see springing up on French soil did not
come.
Even before the strokes of Luther's hammer in Wittemberg are heard ringing the knell of
the old times, the voice of Lefevre is proclaiming beneath the vaulted roof of the
Sorbonne in Paris the advent of the new age. The Reformation of France came out of the
Bible as really as the light which kindles mountain and plain at daybreak comes out of
heaven. And as it was in France so was it in all the countries of the Reform. The Word of
God, like God himself, is light; and from that enduring and inexhaustible source came
forth that welcome clay which, after a long and protracted night, broke upon the nations
in the morning of the sixteenth century.
CHAPTER 2 Back to Top
FAREL, BRICONNET, AND THE EARLY REFORMERS OF FRANCE
A Student from the Dauphinese Alps – William Farel – Enters University of Paris
– Becomes a Pupil Of Lefevre – His Doubts – Passes with Lefevre into the
New Day – Preaches in the Churches – Retires to Switzerland – William
Briconnet, Bishop of Meaux – Briconnet goes on a Mission to Rome – State of the
City – His Musings on his Way back – Change at Meaux – The Bible –
What Briconnet Saw in it – Begins the Reformation of his Diocese – Characters of
Francis I. and Margaret of Valois.
AMONG the youth whom we see gathered round the chair of the
aged Lefevre, there is one who specially attracts our notice. It is easy to see that
between the scholar and his master there exists an attachment of no ordinary kind. There
is no one in all that crowd of pupils who so hangs upon the lips of his teacher as does
this youth, nor is there one on whom the eyes of that teacher rest with so kindly a light.
This youth is not a native of France. He was born among the Alps of Dauphine, at Gap, near
Grenoble, in 1489. His name is William Farel.
His parents were eminently pious, measured by the standard of that age. Never did morning
kindle into glory the white mountains, in the midst of which their dwelling was placed,
but the family was assembled, and the bead-roll duly gone over; and never did evening
descend, first enkindling then paling the Alps, without the customary hymn to the Virgin.
The parents of the youth, as he himself informs us, believed all that the priests told
them; and he, in his turn, believed all that his parents told him.
Thus he grew up till he was about the age of twenty – the grandeurs of nature in his
eye all hours of the day, but the darkness of superstition deepening year by year in his
soul. The two – the glory of the Alps and the glory of the Church – seemed to
blend and become one in his mind. It would have been as hard for him to believe that Rome
with her Pope and holy priests, with her rites and ceremonies, was the mere creation of
superstition, as to believe that the great mountains around him, with their snows and
their pine-forests, were a mere illusion, a painting on the sky, which but mocked the
senses, and would one day dissolve like an unsubstantial though gorgeous exhalation.
"I would gnash my teeth like a furious wolf," said he, speaking of his blind
devotion to Rome at this period of his life, "when I heard any one speaking against
the Pope."
It was his father's wish that he should devote himself to the profession of arms, but the
young Farel aspired to be a scholar. The fame of the Sorbonne had reached him in his
secluded native valley, and he thirsted to drink at that renowned well of learning.
Probably the sublimities amid which he daily moved had kept alive the sympathies of a mind
naturally ardent and aspiring. He now (1510) set out for Paris, presented himself at the
gates of its university, and was enrolled among its students.
It was here that the young Dauphinese scholar became acquainted with the doctor of
Etaples. There were but few points to bring them together, one would have thought, and a
great many to keep them apart. The one was young, the other old; the one was enthusiastic,
the other was timid; but these differences were on the surface only. The two were kindred
in their souls, both were noble, unselfish, devout, and in an age of growing skepticism
and dissoluteness the devotion of both was as sincere as it was ardent. This was the link
that bound them together, and the points of contrast instead of weakening only tended the
more firmly to cement their friendship. The aged master and the young disciple might often
be seen going their rounds in company, and visiting the same shrines, and kneeling before
the same images.
But now a change was commencing in the mind of Lefevre which must part the two for ever,
or bind them together yet more indissolubly. The spiritual dawn was breaking in the soul
of the doctor of Etaples; would his young disciple be able to enter along with him into
that new world into which the other was being translated? In his public teaching Lefevre
now began to let fall at times crumbs of the new knowledge he had gleaned from the Bible.
"Salvation is of grace," would the professor say to his pupils.
"The Innocent One is condemned and the criminal is acquitted." "It is the
cross of Christ alone that openeth the gates of heaven and shutteth the gates of
hell."[1] Farel
started as these words fell upon his ear. What did they import, and where would they lead
him? Were then all his visits to the saints, and the many hours on his knees before their
images, to no purpose – prayers flung into empty space? The teachings of his youth,
the sanctities of his home, nay, the grandeurs of the mountains which were associated in
his mind with the beliefs he had learned at their feet, rose up before him, and appeared
to frown upon him, and he wished he were back again, where, encompassed by the calm
majesty of the hills, he might no longer feel these torturing doubts.
Farel had two courses before him, he must either press forward with Lefevre into the
light, or abjuring his master as a heretic, plunge straightway into deeper darkness.
Happily God had been preparing him for the crisis. There had been for some time a tempest
in the soul of the young student. Farel had lost his peace, and the austerities he had
practiced with a growing rigor had failed to restore it. What Scripture so emphatically
terms "the terrors of death and the pains of hell" had taken hold upon him. It
was while he was in this state, feeling that he could not save himself, and beginning to
despair of ever being saved, that the words were spoken in his hearing, "The cross of
Christ alone openeth the gates of heaven." Farel felt that this was the only
salvation to suit him, that if ever he should be saved it must be "of grace,"
"without money and without price," and so he immediately pressed in at the
portal which the words of Lefevre had opened to him, and rejoined his teacher in the new
world into which that teacher himself had so recently entered.[2] The tempest was at an end: he was now in the quiet haven.
"All things," said he, "appear to me under a new light. Scripture is
cleared up." "Instead of the murderous heart of a ravening wolf, he came
back," he tells us, "quietly like a meek and harmless lamb, having his heart
entirely withdrawn from the Pope and given to Jesus Christ."[3]
For a brief space Jacques Lefevre and Guillaume Farel shone like twin stars in the
morning sky of France. The influence of Lefevre was none the less efficient that it was
quietly put forth, and consisted mainly in the dissemination of those vital truths from
which Protestantism was to spring among the young and ardent minds that were gathered
round his chair, and by whom the new doctrine was afterwards to be published from the
pulpit, or witnessed for on the scaffold. "Lefevre was the man," says Theodore
Beza, "who boldly began the revival of the pure religion of Jesus Christ, and as in
ancient times the school of Socrates sent forth the best orators, so from the lecture-room
of the doctor of Etaples issued many of the best men of the age and of the Church."[4] Peter Robert Olivetan, the
translator of the first French Bible from the version of Lefevre, is believed to have been
among the number of those who received the truth from the doctor of Etaples, and who, in
his turn, was the means of enlisting in the service of Protestantism the greatest champion
whom France, or perhaps any other country, ever gave to it.
While Lefevre scattered the seed in his lecture-room, Farel, now fully emancipated from
the yoke of the Pope, and listening to no teaching but that of the Bible, went forth and
preached in the temples. He was as uncompromising and bold in his advocacy of the Gospel
as he had aforetime been zealous in behalf of Popery. "Young and resolute," says
Felice, "he caused the public places and temples to resound with his voice of
thunder."[5] He
labored for a short time in Meaux,[6] where
Protestantism reaped its earliest triumphs: and when the gathering storm of persecution
drove him from France, which happened soon thereafter, Farel directed his steps towards
those grand mountains from which lie had come, and preaching in Switzerland with a courage
which no violence could subdue, and an eloquence which drew around him vast crowds, he
introduced the Reformation into his native land. He planted the standard of the cross on
the shores of the lake of Neuchatel and on those of the Leman, and eventually carried it
within the gates of Geneva, where we shall again meet him. He thus became the pioneer of
Calvin.
We have marked the two figures – Lefevre and Farel – that stand out with so
great distinctness in this early dawn. A third now appears whose history possesses a great
although a melancholy interest. After the doctor of Etaples no one had so much to do with
the introduction of Protestantism into France as the man whom we now bring upon the stage.[7] He is William Briconnet, Count
of Montbrun, and Bishop of Meaux, a town about eight leagues east of Paris, and where
Bossuet, another name famous in ecclesiastical annals, was also, at an after-period,
bishop. Descended from a noble family, of good address, and a man of affairs, Briconnet
was sent by Francis I. on a mission to Rome. The most magnificent of all the Popes –
Leo X. – was then in the Vatican, and Briconnet's visit to the Eternal City gave him
an opportunity of seeing the Papacy in the noon of its glory, if now somewhat past the
meridian of its power.
It was the same Pope to whom the Bishop of Meaux was now sent as ambassador to whom the
saying is ascribed, "What a profitable affair this fable of Christ has been to
us!" To Luther in his cell, alone with his sins and his conscience, the Gospel was a
reality; to Leo, amidst the statues and pictures of the Vatican, his courtiers, buffoons
and dancers, the Gospel was a fable. But this "fable" had done much for Rome. It
had filled it – no one said with virtues – but with golden dignities, dazzling
honors, and voluptuous delights. This fable clothed the ministers of the Church in purple,
seated them every day at sumptuous tables, provided for them splendid equipages drawn by
prancing steeds, and followed by a long train of liveried attendants: while couches of
down were spread for them at night on which to rest their wearied frames – worn out,
not with watching or study, or the care of souls, but with the excitements of the chase or
the pleasures of the table. The viol, the tabret, and the harp were never silent in the
streets of Rome. Her citizens did not need to toil or spin, to turn the soil or plough the
main, for the corn and oil, the silver and the gold of all Christendom flowed thither.
They shed copiously the juice of the grape in their banquets, and not less copiously the
blood of one another in their quarrels. The Rome of that age was the chosen home of pomps
and revels, of buffooneries and villanies, of dark intrigues and blood-red crimes.[8] "Enjoy we the Papacy,"
said Leo, when elected, to his nephew Julian de Medici, "since God has given it to
us."
But the master-actor on this strange stage was Religion, or the "Fable" as the
Pontiff termed it. All day long the bells tolled; even at night their chimes ceased not to
be heard, telling the visitor that even then prayer and praise were ascending from the
oratories and shrines of Rome. Churches and cathedrals rose at every few paces: images and
crucifixes lined the streets: tapers and holy signs sanctified the dwellings: every hour
processions of shorn priest, hooded monk, and veiled nun swept along, with banners, and
chants, and incense. Every new day brought a new ceremony or festival, which surpassed in
its magnificence and pomp that of the day before. What an enigma was presented to the
Bishop of Meaux! What a strange city was Rome – how full of religion, but how empty
of virtue! Its ceremonies how gorgeous, but its worship how cold; its priests how
numerous, and how splendidly arrayed! It wanted only that their virtues should be as
shining as their garments, to make the city of the Pope the most resplendent in the
universe. Such doubtless were the reflections of Briconnet during his stay at the court of
Leo.
The time came that the Bishop of Meaux must leave Rome and return to France. On his way
back to his own country he had a great many more things to meditate upon than when on his
journey southward to the Eternal City. As he climbs the lower ridges of the Apennines, and
casts a look behind on the fast-vanishing cluster of towers and domes, which mark the site
of Rome on the bosom of the Campagna, we can imagine him saying to himself, "May not
the Pope have spoken infallibly for once, and may not that which I have seen enthroned
amid so much of this world's pride and power and wickedness be, after all, only a
'fable'?" In short, Briconnet, like Luther, came back from Rome much less a son of
the Church than he had been before going thither.[9]
New scenes awaited him on his return, and what he had seen in Rome helped to
prepare him for what he was now to witness in France. On getting back to his diocese the
Bishop of Meaux was astonished at the change which had passed in Paris during his absence.
There was a new light in the sky of France: a new influence was stirring in the minds of
men. The good bishop thirsted to taste the new knowledge which he saw was transforming the
lives and gladdening the hearts of all who received it. He had known Lefevre before going
to Rome, and what so natural as that he should turn to his old friend to tell him whence
had come that influence, so silent yet so mighty, which was changing the world? Lefevre
put the Bible into his hands: it was all in that book. The bishop opened the mysterious
volume, and there he saw what he had missed at Rome – a Church which had neither
Pontifical chair nor purple robes, but which possessed the higher splendor of truth and
holiness. The bishop felt that this was the true Spouse of Christ.
The Bible had revealed to Briconnet, Christ as the Author of a free salvation, the
Bestower of an eternal life, without the intervention of the "Church," and this
knowledge was to him as "living water," as "heavenly food." "Such
is its sweetness," said he, "that it makes the mind insatiable, the more we
taste of it the more we long for it. What vessel is able to receive the exceeding fullness
of this inexhaustible sweetness?"[10]
Briconnet's letters are still preserved in MS.; they are written in the mazy
metaphorical style which disfigured all the productions of an age just passing from the
flighty and figurative rhetoric of the schoolmen to the chaster models of the ancients,
but they leave us in no doubt as to his sentiments. He repudiates works as the foundation
of the sinner's justification, and puts in their room Christ's finished work apprehended
by faith, and, laying little stress on external ceremonies and rites, makes religion to
consist in love to God and personal holiness. The bishop received the new doctrine without
experiencing that severe mental conflict which Farel had passed through. He found the gate
not strait, and entered in – somewhat too easily perhaps – and took his place in
the little circle of disciples which the Gospel had already gathered round it in France
– Lefevre, Farel, Roussel, and Vatable, all four professors in the University of
Paris – although, alas! he was not destined to remain in that holy society to the
close.
Of the five men whom Protestantism had called to follow it in this kingdom, the Bishop of
Meaux, as regarded the practical work of Reformation, was the most powerful. The whole of
France he saw needed Reformation; where should he begin? Unquestionably in his own
diocese. His rectors and cures walked in the old paths. They squandered their revenues in
the dissolute gaieties of Paris, while they appointed ignorant deputies to do duty for
them at Meaux. In other days Briconnet had looked on this as a matter of course: now it
appeared to him a scandalous and criminal abuse. In October, 1520, he published a mandate,
proclaiming all to be "traitors and deserters who, by abandoning their flocks, show
plainly that what they love is their fleece and their wool." He interdicted,
moreover, the Franciscans from the pulpits of his diocese. At the season of the grand
fetes these men made their rounds, amply provided with new jests, which put their hearers
in good humor, and helped the friars to fill their stomachs and their wallets. Briconnet
forbade the pulpits to be longer desecrated by such buffooneries. He visited in person,
like a faithful bishop, all his parishes; summoned the clergy and parishioners before him:
inquired into the teaching of the one and the morals of the other: removed ignorant cures,
that is, every nine out of ten of the clergy, and replaced them with men able to teach,
when such could be found, which was then no easy matter. To remedy the great evil of the
time, which was ignorance, he instituted a theological seminary at Meaux, where, under his
own eye, there might be trained "able ministers of the New Testament;" and
meanwhile he did what he could to supply the lack of laborers, by ascending the pulpit and
preaching himself, "a thing which had long since gone quite out of fashion."[11]
Leaving Meaux now, to come back to it soon, we return to Paris. The influence of
Briconnet's conversion was felt among the high personages of the court, and the literary
circles of the capital, as well as amidst the artizans and peasants of the diocese of
Meaux. The door of the palace stood open to the bishop, and the friendship he enjoyed with
Francis I. opened to Briconnet vast opportunities of spreading Reformed views among the
philosophers and scholars whom that monarch loved to assemble round him. One high-born,
and wearing a mitre, was sure to be listened to where a humbler Reformer might in vain
solicit audience. The court of France was then adorned by a galaxy of learned men –
Budaeus, Du Bellay, Cop, the court physician, and others of equal eminence – to all
of whom the bishop made known a higher knowledge than that of the Renaissance.[12] But the most illustrious convert
in the palace was the sister of the king, Margaret of Valois. And now two personages whom
we have not met as yet, but who are destined to act a great part in the drama on which we
are entering, make their appearance.
The one is Francis I., who ascended the throne just as the new day was breaking over
Europe; the other is his sister, whom we have named above, Margaret of Angouleme. The
brother and sister, in many of their qualities, resembled each other. Both were handsome
in person, polished in manners, lively in disposition, and of a magnanimous and generous
character. Both possessed a fine intellect, and both were fond of letters, which they had
cultivated with ardor: Francis, who was sometimes styled the Mirror of Knighthood,
embodied in his person the three characteristics of his age – valor, gallantry, and
letters; the latter passion had, owing to the Renaissance, become a somewhat fashionable
one. "Francis I.," says Guizot, "had received from God all the gifts that
can adorn a man: he was handsome, and tall, and strong; his amour, preserved in the
Louvre, is that of a man six feet high; his eyes were brilliant and soft, his smile was
gracious, his manners were winning."[13]
Francis aspired to be a great king, but the moral instability which tarnished his many
great qualities forbade the realization of his idea. It was his fate, after starting with
promise in every race, to fall behind before reaching the goal. The young monarch of Spain
bore away from him the palm in arms. Despite his great abilities, and the talents he
summoned to his aid, he was never able to achieve for France in politics any but a second
place. He chased from his dominions the greatest theological intellect of his age, and the
literary glory with which he thought to invest his name and throne passed over to England.
He was passionately fond of his sister, whom he always called his "darling;" and
Margaret was not less devoted in affection for her brother. For some time the lives, as
the tastes, of the two flowed on together; but a day was to come when they would be
parted. Amid the frivolities of the court, in which she mingled without defiling herself
with its vices, the light of the Gospel shone upon Margaret, and she turned to her Savior.
Francis, after wavering some time between the Gospel and Rome, between the pleasures of
the world and the joys that are eternal, made at last his choice, but, alas! on the
opposite side to that of his lovely and accomplished sister. Casting in his lot with Rome,
and staking crown, and kingdom, and salvation upon the issue, he gave battle to the
Reformation.
We turn again to Margaret, whose grace and beauty made her the ornament of the court, as
her brilliant qualities of intellect won the admiration and homage of all who came in
contact with her.[14] This
accomplished princess, nevertheless, began to be unhappy. She felt a heaviness of the
heart which the gaieties around her could not dispel. She was in this state, ill at ease,
yet not knowing well what it was that troubled her, when Briconnet met her (1521).[15] He saw at once to the bottom of
her heart and her griefs. He put into her hand what Lefevre had put into his own –
the Bible; and after the eager study of the Word of God, Margaret forgot her fears and her
sins in love to her Savior. She recognized in him the Friend she had long sought, but
sought in vain, in the gay circles in which she moved, and she felt a strength and courage
she had not known till now. Peace became an inmate of her bosom. She was no longer alone
in the world. There was now a Friend by her side on whose sympathy she could cast herself
in those dark hours when her brother Francis should frown, and the court should make her
the object of its polished ridicule.
In the conversion of Margaret a merciful Providence provided against the evil days that
were to come. Furious storms were at no great distance, and although Margaret was not
strong enough to prevent the bursting of these tempests, she could and did temper their
bitterness. She was near the throne. The sweetness of her spirit was at times a restraint
upon the headlong passions of her brother. With quiet tact she would defeat the plot of
the monk, and undo the chain of the martyr, and not a few lives, which other wise would
have perished on the scaffold, were through her interposition saved to the Reformation.
CHAPTER 3 Back to Top
THE FIRST PROTESTANT CONGREGATION OF FRANCE
A Bright Morning – Sanguine Anticipations of the Protestants – Lefevre
Translates the Bible – Bishop of Meaux Circulates it – The Reading of it at
Meaux – Reformation of Manners – First Protestant Flock in France – Happy
Days – Complaints of the Tavern-keepers – Murmurs of the Monks – The King
Incited to set up the Scaffold – Refuses – The "Well of Meaux."
A MORNING without clouds was rising on France, and Briconnet
and Lefevre believed that such as the morning had been so would be the day, tranquil and
clear, and waxing ever the brighter as it approached its noon. Already the Gospel had
entered the palace. In her lofty sphere Margaret of Valois shone like a star of soft and
silvery light, clouded at times, it is true, from the awe in which she stood of her
brother and the worldly society around her, but emitting a sweet and winning ray which
attracted the eye of many a beholder.
The monarch was on the side of progress, and often made the monks the butt of his biting
satire. The patrons of literary culture were the welcome guests at the Louvre. All things
were full of promise, and, looking down the vista of coming years, the friends of the
Gospel beheld a long series of triumphs awaiting it – the throne won, the ancient
superstition overturned, and France clothed with a new moral strength becoming the
benefactress of Christendom. Such was the future as it shaped itself to the eyes of the
two chief leaders of the movement. Triumphs, it is true, glorious triumphs was the Gospel
to win in France, but not exactly of the kind which its friends at this hour anticipated.
Its victories were to be gained not in the lettered conflicts of scholars, nor by the aid
of princes; it was in the dungeon and at the stake that its prowess was to be shown. This
was the terrible arena on which it was to agonize and to be crowned. This, however, was
hidden from the eyes of Briconnet and Lefevre, who meanwhile, full of faith and courage,
worked with all their might to speed on a victory which they regarded as already half won.
The progress of events takes us back to Meaux. We have already noted the Reformation set
on foot there by the bishop, the interdict laid on the friars, who henceforward could
neither vent their buffooneries nor fill their wallets, the removal of immoral and
incapable cures, and the founding of a school for the training of pastors. Briconnet now
took another step forward; he hastened to place the Reform upon a stable basis – to
open to his people access to the great fountain of light, the Bible.
It was the ambition of the aged Lefevre, as it had been that of our own Wicliffe, to see
before he died every man in France able to read the Word of God in his mother tongue. With
this object he began to translate the New Testament.[1] The four Gospels in French were published on the 30th October,
1522; in a week thereafter came the remaining books of the New Testament, and on the 12th
October, 1524, the whole were published in one volume at Meaux.[2] The publication of the translated Bible was going on
contemporaneously in Germany. Without the Bible in the mother tongues of France and
Germany, the Reformation must have died with its first disciples; for, humanly speaking,
it would have been impossible otherwise to have found for it foothold in Christendom in
face of the tremendous opposition with which the powers of the world assailed it. The
bishop, overjoyed, furthered with all his power the work of Lefevre. He made his steward
distribute copies of the four Gospels to the poor gratis.[3] "He spared," says Crespin, "neither gold nor
silver," and the consequence was that the New Testament in French was widely
circulated in all the parishes of his diocese.
The wool trade formed the staple of Meaux, and its population consisted mainly of
wool-carders, spinners, weavers.[4] Those
in the surrounding districts were peasants and vine-dressers. In town and country alike
the Bible became the subject of study and the theme of talk. The artizans of Meaux
conversed together about it as they plied the loom or tended the spindle. At meal-hours it
was read in the workshops. The laborers in the vineyards and on the corn-fields, when the
noontide came and they rested from toil, would draw forth the sacred volume, and while one
read, the rest gathered round him in a circle and listened to the words of life. They
longed for the return of the meal-hour, not that they might eat of the bread of earth, but
that they might appease their hunger for the bread whereof he that eateth shall never die.[5]
These men had grown suddenly learned, "wiser than their teachers," to use
the language of the book they were now so intently perusing. They were indeed wiser than
the tribe of ignorant cures, and the army of Franciscan monks, whose highest aim had been
to make their audience gape and laugh at their jests. Compared with the husks on which
these men had fed them, this was the true bread, the heavenly manna. "Of what use are
the saints to us?" said they. "Our only Mediator is Christ."[6] To offer any formal argument to
them that this book was Divine, they would have felt to be absurd. It had opened heaven to
them. It had revealed the throne of God, and their way to it by the one and only Savior.
Whose book, then, could this be but God's? and whence could it have come but from the
skies?
And well it was that their faith was thus simple and strong, for no less deep a conviction
of the Gospel's truth would have sufficed to carry them through what awaited them. All
their days were not to be passed in the peaceful fold of Meaux. Dark temptations and fiery
trials, of which they could not at this hour so much as form a conception, were to test
them at no distant day. Could they stand when Briconnet should fall? Some of these men
were at a future day to be led to the stake. Had their faith rested on no stronger
foundation than a fine logical argument – had their conversion been only a new
sentiment and not a new nature – had that into which they were now brought been a new
system merely and not a new world – they could not have braved the dungeon or looked
death in the face. But these disciples had planted their feet not on Briconnet, not on
Peter, but on "the Rock," and that "Rock" was Christ: and so not all
the coming storms of persecution could cast them down. Not that in themselves they could
not be shaken – they were frail and fallible, but their "Rock" was
immovable; and standing on it they were unconquerable – unconquerable alike amid the
dark smoke and bitter flames of the Place de Greve as amid the green pastures of Meaux.
But as yet these tempests are forbidden to burst, and meanwhile let us look somewhat more
closely at this little flock, to which there attaches this great interest, that it was the
first Protestant congregation on the soil of France. They were the workmanship, not of
Briconnet, but of the Spirit, who by the instrumentality of the Bible had called them to
the "knowledge of Christ," and the "fellowship of the saints." Let us
mark them at the close of the day. Their toil ended, they diligently repaired from the
workshop, the vineyard, the field, and assembled in the house of one of their number. They
opened and read the Holy Scriptures; they conversed about the things of the Kingdom; they
joined together in prayer, and their hearts burned within them. Their numbers were few,
their sanctuary was humble, no mitred and vested priest conducted their services, no choir
or organ-peal intoned their prayers; but ONE was in the midst of them greater than the
doctor of the Sorbonne, greater than any King of France, even he who has said, "Lo, I
am with you alway" – and where he is, there is the Church.
The members of this congregation belonged exclusively to the working class. Their daily
bread was earned in the wool-factory or in the vineyard. Nevertheless a higher
civilization had begun to sweeten their dispositions, refine their manners, and ennoble
their speech, than any that the castles of their nobility could show. Meek in spirit,
loving in heart, and holy in life, they presented a sample of what Protestantism would
have made the whole nation of France, had it been allowed full freedom among a people who
lacked but this to crown their many great qualities.
By-and-by the churches were opened to them. Their conferences were no longer held in
private dwellings: the Christians of Meaux now met in public, and usually a qualified
person expounded to them, on these occasions, the Scriptures. Bishop Briconnet took his
turn in the pulpit, so eager was he to hold aloft "that sweet, mild, true, and only
light," to use his own words, "which dazzles and enlightens every creature
capable of receiving it; and which, while it enlightens him, raises him to the dignity of
a son of God."[7] These
were happy days. The winds of heaven were holden that they might not hurt this young vine;
and time was given it strike its roots into the soil before being overtaken by the
tempest.
A general reformation of manners followed the entrance of Protestantism into Meaux. No
better evidence could there be of this than the complaints preferred by two classes of the
community especially – the tavern-keepers and the monks. The topers in the wine-shops
were becoming fewer, and the Begging Friars often returned from their predatory excursions
with empty sacks. Images, too, if they could have spoken, would have swelled the murmurs
at the ill-favored times, for few now bestowed upon them either coin or candles. But
images can only wink, and so they buried their griefs in the inarticulate silence of their
own bosoms. Blasphemies and quarrellings ceased to be heard; there were now quiet on the
streets and love in the dwellings of the little town.
But now the first mutterings of the coming storm began to be heard in Paris; even this
brought at first only increased prosperity to the Reformed Church at Meaux. It sent to the
little flock new and greater teachers. The Sorbonne – that ancient and proud champion
of orthodoxy – knew that these were not times to slumber: it saw Protestantism rising
in the capital; it beheld the flames catching the edifice of the faith. It took alarm: it
called upon the king to put down the new opinions by force. Francis did not respond quite
so zealously as the Sorbonne would have liked. He was not prepared to patronize
Protestantism, far from it; but, at the same time, he had no love for monks, and was
disposed to allow a considerable margin to "men of genius," and so he forbade
the Sorbonne to set up the scaffold.
Still little reliance could be placed upon the wavering and pleasure-loving king, and
Lefevre, on whom his colleagues of the Sorbonne had contrived to fasten a quarrel, might
any hour be apprehended and thrown into prison. "Come to Meaux," said Briconnet
to Lefevre and Farel, "and take part with me in the work which is every day
developing into goodlier proportions"[8] They accepted the invitation; quitting the capital they went to
live at Meaux, and thus all the Reformed forces were collected into one center.
The glory which had departed from Paris now rested upon this little provincial town. Meaux
became straightway a light in the darkness of France, and many eyes were turned towards
it. Far and near was spread the rumor of the "strange things" that were taking
place there, and many came to verify with their own eyes what they had heard. Some had
occasion to visit its wool markets; and others, laborers from Picardy and more distant
places, resorted to it in harvest time to assist in reaping its fields; these visitors
were naturally drawn to the sermons of the Protestant preachers moreover, French New
Testaments were put into their hands, and when they returned to their homes many of them
carried with them the seeds of the Gospel, and founded churches in their own districts,[9] some of which, such as Landouzy in the department of Aisne,
still exist.[10] Thus
Meaux became a mother of Churches: and the expression became proverbial in the first half
of the sixteenth century, with reference to any one noted for his Protestant sentiments,
that "he had drunk at the well of Meaux."[11]
We love to linger over this picture, its beauty is so deep and pure that we are
unwilling to tear ourselves from it. Already we begin to have a presentiment, alas! to be
too sadly verified hereafter, that few such scenes will present themselves in the eventful
but tempestuous period on which we are entering. Amid the storms of the rough day coming
it may solace us to look back to this delicious daybreak. But already it begins to
overcast. Lefevre and Farel have been sent away from the capital. The choice that Paris
has made, or is about to make, strikes upon our ear as the knell of coming evil. The
capital of France has already missed a high honor, even that of harboring within her walls
the first congregation of French Protestants. This distinction was reserved for Meaux,
though little among the many magnificent cities of France. Paris said to the Gospel,
"Depart. This is the seat of the Sorbonne; this is the king's court; here there is no
room for you; go, hide thee amid the artizans, the fullers and wool-combers of
Meaux." Paris knew not what it did when it drove the Gospel from its gates. By the
same act it opened them to a long and dismal train of woes – faction, civil war,
atheism, the guillotine, siege, famine, death.
CHAPTER 4 Back to Top
COMMENCEMENT OF PERSECUTION IN FRANCE
The World's Center – The Kingdoms at War – In the Church, Peace – The Flock
at Meaux – Marot's Psalms of David universally Sung in France – The Odes of
Horace – Calvin and Church Psalmody – Two Champions of the Darkness, Beda and
Duprat – Louisa of Savoy – Her Character – The Trio that Governed France
– They Unsheathe the Sword of Persecution – Briconnet's Fall.
THE Church is the center round which all the affairs of the
world revolve. It is here that the key of all politics is to be found. The continuance and
advance of this society is a first principle with him who sits on the right hand of Power,
and who is at once King of the Church and King of the Universe; and, therefore, from his
lofty seat he directs the march of armies, the issue of battles, the deliberation of
cabinets, the decision of kings, and the fate of nations, so as best to further this one
paramount end of his government. Here, then, is the world's center; not in a throne that
may be standing to-day, and in the dust to-morrow, but in a society – a kingdom
– destined to outlast all the kingdoms of earth, to endure and flourish throughout
all the ages of time.
It cannot but strike one as remarkable that at the very moment when a feeble evangelism
was receiving its birth, needing, one should think, a fostering hand to shield its
infancy, so many powerful and hostile kingdoms should start up to endanger it. Why place
the cradle of Protestantism amid tempests? Here is the powerful Spain; and here, too, is
the nearly as powerful France. Is not this to throw Protestantism between the upper and
the nether mill-stones? Yet he "who weigheth the mountains in scales, and the hills
in a balance," permitted these confederacies to spring up at this hour, and to wax
thus mighty. And now we begin to see a little way into the counsels of the Most High
touching these two kingdoms. Charles of Spain carries off the brilliant prize of the
imperial diadem from Francis of France. The latter is stung to the quick; from that hour
they are enemies; war breaks out between them; their ambition drags the other kingdoms of
Europe into the arena of conflict; and the intrigues and battles that ensue leave to
hostile princes but little time to persecute the truth. They find other uses for their
treasures, and other enterprises for their armies. Thus the very tempests by which the
world was devastated were as ramparts around that new society that was rising up on the
ruins of the old. While outside the Church the roar of battle never ceased, the song of
peace was heard continually ascending within her. "God is our refuge and strength, a
very present help in time of trouble. Therefore, will not we fear, although the earth be
removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea. God is in the
midst of her; she shall not be removed."
From this hasty glance at the politics of the age, which had converted the world into a
sea with the four winds warring upon it, we come back to the little flock at Meaux. That
flock was dwelling peacefully amid the green pastures and by the living waters of truth.
Every day saw new converts added to their number, and every day beheld their love and zeal
burning with a purer flame. The good Bishop Briconnet was going in and out before them,
feeding with knowledge and understanding the flock over which, not Rome, but the Holy
Ghost had made him overseer. Those fragrant and lovely fruits which ever spring up where
the Gospel comes, and which are of a nature altogether different from, and of a quality
infinitely superior to, those which any other system produces, were appearing abundantly
here. Meaux had become a garden in the midst of the desert of France, and strangers from a
distance came to see this new thing, and to wonder at the sight. Not unfrequently did they
carry away a shoot from the mother plant to set it in their own province, and so the vine
of Meaux was sending out her branches, and giving promise, in the opinion of some, at no
distant day of filling the land with her shadow.
At an early stage of the Reformation in France, the New Testament, as we have related in
the foregoing chapter, was translated into the vernacular of that country. This was
followed by a version of the Psalms of David in 1525, the very time when the field of
Pavia, which cost France so many lives, was being stricken. Later, Clement Marot, the
lyrical poet, undertook – at the request of Calvin, it is believed the task of
versifying the Psalms, and accordingly thirty of them were rendered into metre and
published in Paris in 1541, dedicated to Francis I [1] Three years afterwards (1543), he added twenty others, and
dedicated the collection, "to the ladies of France." In the epistle dedicatory
the following verses occur: –
The prophecy of the poet was fulfilled. The combined majesty
and sweetness of the old Hebrew Psalter took: captive the taste and genius of the French
people. In a little while all France, we may say, fell to singing the Psalms. They
displaced all other songs, being sung in the first instance to the common ballad music.
"This holy ordinance," says Quick, "charmed the ears, heart, and affections
of court and city, town and country. They were sung in the Louvre, as well as in the Pres
des Clercs, by the ladies, princes, yea, by Henry II. himself. This one ordinance alone
contributed mightily to the downfall of Popery and the propagation of the Gospel. It took
so much with the genius of the nation that all ranks and degrees of men practiced it, in
the temples and in their families. No gentleman professing the Reformed religion would sit
down at his table without praising God by singing. It was an especial part of their
morning and evening worship in their several houses to sing God's praises."
This chorus of holy song was distasteful to the adherents of the ancient worship. Wherever
they turned, the odes of the Hebrew monarch, pealed forth in the tongue of France, saluted
their ears, in the streets and the highways, in the vineyards and the workshops, at the
family hearth and in the churches. "The reception these Psalms met with," says
Bayle, "was such as the world had never seen."[3] To strange uses were they put on occasion. The king, fond of
hunting, adopted as his favorite Psalm, "As pants the hart for water-brooks,"
etc. The priests, who seemed to hear in this outburst the knell of their approaching
downfall, had recourse to the expedient of translating the odes of Horace and setting them
to music, in the hope that the pagan poet would supplant the Hebrew one [4] The rage for the Psalter
nevertheless continued unabated, and a storm of Romish wrath breaking out against Marot,
he fled to Geneva, where, as we have said above, he added twenty other Psalms to the
thirty previously published at Paris, making fifty in all. This enlarged Psalter was first
published at Geneva, with a commendatory preface by Calvin, in 1543. Editions were
published in Holland, Belgium, France, and Switzerland, and so great was the demand that
the printing, presses could not meet it. Rome forbade the book, but the people were only
the more eager on that account to possess it.
Calvin, alive to the mighty power of music to advance the Reformation, felt nevertheless
the incongruity and indelicacy of singing such words to profane airs, and used every means
in his power to rectify the abuse. He applied to the most eminent musicians in Europe to
furnish music worthy of the sentiments. William Franc, of Strasburg, responding to this
call, furnished melodies for Marot's Psalter; and the Protestants of France and Holland,
dropping the ballad airs, began now to sing the Psalms to the noble music just composed.
Now, for the first time, was heard the "Old Hundredth," and some of the finest
tunes still in use in our Psalmody.
After the death of Mater (1544) Calvin applied to his distinguished coadjutor, Theodore
Beza, to complete the versification of the Psalms. Beza, copying the style and spirit of
Marot, did so,[5] and
thus Geneva had the honor of giving to Christendom the first whole book of Psalms ever
rendered into the metre of any living language.
This narration touching the Psalms in French has carried us a little in advance of the
point of time we had reached in the history. We retrace our steps.
A storm was brewing at Paris. There were two men in the capital, sworn champions of the
darkness, holding high positions. The one was Noel Beda, the head of the Sorbonne. His
chair – second only, in his own opinion, to that of the Pope himself – bound him
to guard most sacredly from the least heretical taint that orthodoxy which it was the
glory of his university to have preserved hitherto wholly uncontaminated. Beda was a man
of very moderate attainments, but he was moderate in nothing else. He was bustling,
narrow-minded, a worshipper of scholastic forms, a keen disputant, and a great intriguer.
"In a single Beda," Erasmus used to say, "there are three thousand
monks." Never did owl hate the day more than Beda did the light. He had seen with
horror some rays struggle into the shady halls of the Sorbonne, and he made haste to
extinguish them by driving from his chair the man who was the ornament of the university
– the doctor of Etaples.
The other truculent defender of the old orthodoxy was Antoine Duprat. Not that he cared a
straw for othodoxy in itself, for the man had neither religion nor morals, but it fell in
with the line of his own political advancement to affect a concern for the faith. A
contemporary Roman Catholic historian, Beaucaire de Peguilhem, calls him "the most
vicious of bipeds." He accompanied his master, Francis I., to Bologna, after the
battle of Marignano, and aided at the interview at which the infamous arrangement was
effected, in pursuance of which the power of the French bishops and the rights of the
French Church were divided between Leo X. and Francis I. This is known in history as the
Concordat of Bologna; it abolished the Pragmatic Sanction – the charter of the
liberties of the Gallican Church – and gave to the king the power of presenting to
the vacant sees, and to the Pope the right to the first-fruits. A red hat was the reward
of Duprat's treachery. His exalted office – he was Chancellor of France – added
to his personal qualities made him a formidable opponent. He was able, haughty,
overbearing, and never scrupled to employ violence to compass his ends. He was, too, a man
of insatiable greed. He plundered on a large scale in the king's behoof, by putting up to
sale the offices in the gift of the crown; but he plundered on a still larger scale in his
own, and so was enormously rich. By way of doing a compensatory act he built a few
additional wards to the Maison de Dieu, on which the king, whose friendship he shared
without sharing his esteem, is said to have remarked "that they had need to be large
if they were to contain all the poor the chancellor himself had made."[6] Such were the two men who now
rose up against the Gospel.[7]
They were set on by the monks of Meaux. Finding that their dues were diminishing at an
alarming rate the Franciscans crowded to Paris, and there raised the cry of heresy. Bishop
Briconnet, they exclaimed, had become a Protestant, and not content with being himself a
heretic, he had gathered round him a company of even greater heretics than himself, and
had, in conjunction with these associates, poisoned his diocese, and was laboring to
infect the whole of France; and unless steps were immediately taken this pestilence would
spread over all the kingdom, and France would be lost. Duprat and Beda were not the men to
listen with indifferent ears to these complaints.
The situation of the kingdom at that hour threw great power into the hands of these men.
The battle of Pavia – the Flodden of France – had just been fought. The flower
of the French nobility had fallen on that field, and among the slain was the Chevalier
Bayard, styled the Mirror of Chivalry. The king was now the prisoner of Charles V. at
Madrid. Pending the captivity of Francis the government was in the hands of his mother,
Louisa of Savoy. She was a woman of determined spirit, dissolute life, and heart inflamed
with her house's hereditary enmity to the Gospel, as shown in its persecution of the
Waldensian confessors. She had the bad distinction of opening in France that era of
licentious gallantry which has so long polluted both the court and the kingdom, and which
has proved one of the most powerful obstacles to the spread of the pure Gospel. It must be
added, however, that the hostility of Louisa was somewhat modified and restrained by the
singular sweetness and piety of her daughter, Margaret of Valois. Such were the trio
– the dissolute Louisa, regent of the kingdom; the avaricious Duprat, the chancellor;
and the bigoted Beda, head of the Sorbonne into whose hands the defeat at Pavia had
thrown, at this crisis, the government of France. There were points on which their
opinions and interests were in conflict, but all three had one quality in common –
they heartily detested the new opinions.
The first step was taken by Louisa. In 1523 she proposed the following question to the
Sorbonne: "By what means can the damnable doctrines of Luther be chased and
extirpated from this most Christian kingdom?" The answer was brief, but emphatic:
"By the stake;" and it was added that if the remedy were not soon put in force,
there would result great damage to the honor of the king and of Madame Louisa of Savoy.
Two years later the Pope earnestly recommended rigor in suppressing "this great and
marvelous disorder, which proceeds from the rage of Satan;"[8] otherwise, "this mania will not only destroy religion, but
all principalities, nobilities, laws, orders, and ranks besides."[9] It was to uphold the throne,
preserve the nobles, and maintain the laws that the sword of persecution was first
unsheathed in France!
The Parliament was convoked to strike a blow while yet there was time. The Bishop of Meaux
was summoned before it. Briconnet was at first firm, and refused to make any concession,
but at length the alternative was plainly put before him – abandon Protestantism or
go to prison. We can imagine the conflict in his soul. He had read the woe denounced
against him who puts his hand to the plough and afterwards withdraws it. He could not but
think of the flock he had fed so lovingly, and which had looked up to him with an
affection so tender and so confiding. But before him was a prison and mayhap a stake. It
was a moment of supreme suspense. But now the die is cast. Briconnet declines the stake
– the stake which in return for the life of the body would have given him life
eternal. On the 12th of April, 1523, [10] he was condemned to pay a fine, and was sent back to his diocese
to publish three edicts, the first restoring public prayers to the Virgin and the saints,
the second forbidding any one to buy or read the books of Luther, while the third enjoined
silence on the Protestant preachers.
What a stunning blow to the disciples at Meaux! They were dreaming of a brilliant day when
this dark storm suddenly came and scattered them. The aged Lefevre found his way, in the
first instance, to Strasburg, and ultimately to Nerac. Farel turned his steps toward
Switzerland, where a great work awaited him. Of the two Roussels, Gerard afterwards
powerfully contributed to the progress of the Reformation in the kingdom of Navarre.[11] Martial Mazurier went the same
road with Briconnet, and was rewarded with a canonry at Paris.[12] The rest of the flock, too poor to flee, had to abide the brunt of
the tempest.
Briconnet had saved his mitre, but at what a cost! We shall not judge him. Those who
joined the ranks of Protestantsism at a later period did so as men "appointed unto
death," and girded themselves for the conflict which they knew awaited them. But at
this early stage the Bishop of Meaux had not those examples of self-devotion before him
which the martyr-roll of coming years was to furnish. He might reason himself into the
belief that he could still love his Savior in his heart, though he did not confess him
with the mouth: that while bowing before Mary and the saints he could inwardly look up to
Christ, and lean for salvation on the Crucified One: that while ministering at the altars
of Rome he could in secret feed on other bread than that which she gives to her children.
It was a hard part which Briconnet put upon himself to act; and, without saying how far it
is possible, we may ask how, if all the disciples of Protestantism had acted this part,
could we ever have had a Reformation?
CHAPTER 5 Back to Top
THE FIRST MARTYRS OF FRANCE
The Flock at Meaux – Denis, a "Meaux Heretic" – Visited in Prison by
his former Pastor, Briconnet – The Interview – Men Burned and yet they Live
– Pavane – Imprisoned for the Gospel – Recants – His Horror of Mind
– Anew Confesses Christ – Is Burned – His the First Stake in Paris –
Martyrdom of the Hermit of Livry – Leclerc, the Wool-comber – Acts as Pastor
– Banished from Meaux – Retires to Metz – Demolishes the Images at the
Chapel of Mary – Procession – Astonishment of Processionists – Leclerc
Seized – Confesses – His Cruel Death – Bishop Briconnet.
Briconnet had recanted: but if the shepherd had fallen the
little ones of the flock stood their ground. They continued to meet together for prayer
and the reading of the Scriptures, the garret of a wool-comber, a solitary hut, or a copse
serving as their place of rendezvous.[1] This congregation was to have the honor of furnishing martyrs
whose blazing stakes were to shine like beacons in the darkness of France, and afford
glorious proof to their countrymen that a power had entered the world which, braving the
terror of scaffolds and surmounting the force of armies, would finally triumph over all
opposition.
Let us take a few instances. A humble man named Denis, one of the "Meaux
heretics," was apprehended; and in course of time he was visited in his prison by his
former pastor, Briconnet. His enemies at times put tasks of this sort upon the fallen
prelate, the more thoroughly to humiliate him. When the bishop made his unexpected
appearance in the cell of the poor prisoner, Denis opened his eyes with surprise,
Briconnet hung his with embarrassment. The bishop began with stammering tongue, we may
well believe, to exhort the imprisoned disciple to purchase his liberty by a recantation.
Denis listened for a little space, then rising up and steadfastly fixing his eyes upon the
man who had once preached to him that very Gospel which he now exhorted him to abjure,
said solemnly, "'Whosoever shall deny me before men, him shall I also deny before my
Father who is in heaven!'" Briconnet reeled backwards and staggered out of the
dungeon. The interview over, each took his own way: the bishop returned to his palace, and
Denis passed from his cell to the stake.[2]
That long and terrible roll on which it was so hard, yet so glorious, to write
one's name, was now about to be unfolded. This was no roll of the dead: it was a roll of
the living; for while their contemporaries disappeared in the darkness of the tomb and
were seen and heard of no more on earth, those men whose names were written there came out
into the light, and shone in glory un-dimmed as the ages rolled past, telling that not
only did they live, but their cause also, and that it should yet triumph in the land which
they watered with their blood. This was a wondrous and great sight, men burned to ashes
and yet living.
We select another from this band of pioneers. Pavane, a native of Boulogne and disciple of
Lefevre, was a youth of sweetest disposition, but somewhat lacking in constitutional
courage. He held a living in the Church, though he was not as yet in priest's orders.
Enlightened by the truth, he began to say to his neighbors that the Virgin could no more
save them than he could, and that there was but one Savior, even Jesus Christ. This was
enough: he was apprehended and brought to trial. Had he blasphemed Christ only, he would
have been forgiven: he had blasphemed Mary, and could have no forgiveness. He must make a
public recantation or, hard alternative, go to the stake. Terrified at death in this
dreadful form, Pavane consented to purge himself from the crime of having spoken
blasphemous words against the Virgin. On Christmas Eve (1524) he was required to walk
through the streets bare-headed and barefooted, a rope round his neck and a lighted taper
in his hand, till he came to the Church of Notre Dame. Standing before the portals of that
edifice, he publicly begged pardon of "Our Lady" for having spoken disparagingly
of her. This act of penitence duly performed, he was sent back to his prison.
Returned to his dungeon, and left to think on what he had done, he found that there were
things which it was more terrible to face than death. He was now alone with the Savior
whom he had denied. A horror of darkness fell upon his soul. No sweet promise of the Bible
could he recall: nothing could he find to lighten the sadness and heaviness that weighed
upon him. Rather than drink this bitter cup he would a hundred times go to the stake. He
who turned and looked on Peter spoke to Pavane, and reproved him for his sin. His tears
flowed as freely as Peter's did. His resolution was taken. His sighings were now at an
end: he anew made confession of his faith in Christ. The trial of the "relapsed
heretic" was short; he was hurried to the stake. "At the foot of the pile he
spoke of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper with such force that a doctor said, 'I wish
Pavane had not spoken, even if it had cost the Church a million of gold.'"[3] The fagots were quickly lighted,
and Pavane stood with unflinching courage amid the flames till he was burned to ashes.
This was the first stake planted in the capital of France, or indeed within the ancient
limits of the kingdom. We ask in what quarter of Paris was it set up? In the Place de
Greve. Ominous spot! In the Place de Greve were the first French martyrs of the
Reformation burned. Nearly three hundred years pass away; the blazing stake is no longer
seen in Paris, for there are now no longer martyrs to be consumed. But there comes another
visitant to France, the Revolution namely, bringing with it a dreadful instrument of
death; and where does the Revolution set up its guillotine? In the same Place de Greve, at
Paris. It was surely not of chance that on the Place de Greve were the first martyrs of
the Reformation burned, and that on the Place de Greve were the first victims of the
Revolution guillotined.
The martyrdom of Pavane was followed, after a short while, by that of the Hermit of Livry,
as he was named. Livry was a small burgh on the road to Meaux. This confessor was burned
alive before the porch of Notre Dame. Nothing was wanting which his persecutors could
think of that might make the spectacle of his death terrible to the on-lookers. The great
bell of the temple of Notre Dame was rung with immense violence, in order to draw out the
people from all parts of Paris. As the martyr passed along the street, the doctors told
the spectators that this was one of the damned who was on his way to the fire of hell.
These things moved not the martyr; he walked with firm step and look undaunted to the spot
where he was to offer up his life.[4]
One other martyrdom of these early times must we relate. Among the disciples at
Meaux was a humble wool-comber of the name of Leclerc. Taught of the Spirit, he was
"mighty in the Scriptures," and being a man of courage as well as knowledge, he
came forward when Briconnet apostatised, and took the oversight of the flock which the
bishop had deserted. Leclerc had received neither tonsure nor imposition of hands, but the
Protestant Church of France had begun thus early to act upon the doctrine of a universal
spiritual priesthood. The old state of things had been restored at Meaux. The monks had
re-captured the pulpits, and, with jubilant humor, were firing off jests and reciting
fables, to the delight of such audiences as they were able to gather round them.[5] This stirred the spirit of
Leclerc; so one day he affixed a placard to the door of the cathedral, styling the Pope
the Antichrist, and predicting the near downfall of his kingdom. Priests, monks, and
citizens gathered before the placard, and read it with amazement. Their amazement quickly
gave place to rage. Was it to be borne that a despicable wool-carder should attack the
Pontiff? Leclerc was seized, tried, whipped through the streets on three successive days,
and finally branded on the forehead with a hot iron, and banished from Meaux. While
enduring this cruel and shameful treatment, his mother stood by applauding his constancy.[6]
The wool-comber retired to Metz, in Lorraine. Already the light had visited that
city, but the arrival of Leclerc gave a new impulse to its evangelisation. He went from
house to house preaching the Gospel; persons of condition, both lay and clerical, embraced
the Reformed faith; and thus were laid in Metz, by the humble hands of a wool-carder, the
foundations of a Church which afterwards became flourishing. Leclerc, arriving in Metz
with the brand of heretic on his brow, came nevertheless with courage unabashed and zeal
unabated; but he allowed these qualities, unhappily, to carry him beyond the limits of
prudence.
A little way outside the gates of the city stood a chapel to Mary and the saints of the
province. The yearly festival had come round, and to-morrow the population of Metz would
be seen on their knees before these gods of stone. Leclerc pondered upon the command,
"Thou shalt break down their images," and forgot the very different
circumstances of himself and of those to whom it was originally given. At eve, before the
gates were shut, he stole out of the city and passed along the highway till he reached the
shrine. He sat down before the images in mental conflict. "Impelled," says Beza,
"by a Divine afflatus,"[7] he
arose, dragged the statues from their pedestals, and, having broken them in pieces,
strewed their fragments in front of the chapel. At daybreak he re-entered Metz.
All unaware of what had taken place at the chapel, the procession marshalled at the usual
hour, and moved forward with crucifixes and banners, with flaring tapers and smoking
incense. The bells tolled, the drums were beat, and with the music there mingled the chant
of the priest.
And now the long array draws nigh the chapel of Our Lady. Suddenly drum and chant are
hushed; the banners are cast on the ground, the tapers are extinguished, and a sudden
thrill of horror runs through the multitude. What has happened? Alas! the rueful sight.
Strewn over the area before the little temple lie the heads, arms, legs of the deities the
processionists had come to worship, all cruelly and sacrilegiously mutilated and broken. A
cry of mingled grief and rage burst forth from the assembly.
The procession returned to Metz with more haste and in less orderly fashion than it had
come. The suspicions of all fell on Leclerc. He was seized, confessed the deed, speedy
sentence of condemnation followed, and he was hurried to the spot where he was to be
burned. The exasperation of his persecutors had prepared for him dreadful tortures. As he
had done to the images of the saints so would they do to him. Unmoved he beheld these
terrible preparations. Unmoved he bore the excruciating agonies inflicted upon him. He
permitted no sign of weakness to tarnish the glory of his sacrifice. While his foes were
lopping off his limbs with knives, and tearing his flesh with red-hot pincers, the martyr
stood with calm and intrepid air at the stake, reciting in a loud voice the words of the
Psalm –
If Leclerc's zeal had been indiscreet, his courage was truly
admirable. Well might his death be called "an act of faith." He had by that
faith quenched the violence of the fire – nay, more, he had quenched the rage of his
persecutors, which was fiercer than the flames that consumed him. "The
beholders," says the author of the Acts of the Martyrs, "were astonished, nor
were they untouched by compassion," and not a few retired from the spectacle to
confess that Gospel for which they had seen the martyr, with so serene and noble a
fortitude, bear witness at the burning pile.[9]
We must pause a moment to contemplate, in contrasted lights, two men – the
bishop and the wool-comber. "How hardly shall they who have riches enter the kingdom
of heaven!" was the saying of our Lord at the beginning of the Gospel dispensation.
The saying has seldom been more mournfully verified than in the case of the Bishop of
Meaux. "His declension," says D'Aubigne, "is one of the most memorable in
the history of the Church."
Had Briconnet been as the wool-carder, he might have been able to enter into the
evangelical kingdom; but, alas! he presented himself at the gate, carrying a great burden
of earthly dignities, and while Leclerc pressed in, the bishop was stopped on the
threshold. What Briconnet's reflections may have been, as he saw one after another of his
former flock go to the stake, and from the stake to the sky, we shall not venture to
guess. May there not have been moments when he felt as if the mitre, which he had saved at
so great a cost, was burning his brow, and that even yet he must needs arise and leave his
palace, with all its honors, and by the way of the dungeon and the stake rejoin the
members of his former flock who had preceded him, by this same road, and inherit with them
honors and delights higher far than any the Pope or the King of France had to bestow
– crowns of life and garlands that never fade? But whatever he felt, and what ever at
times may have been his secret resolutions, we know that his thoughts and purposes never
ripened into acts. He never surrendered his see, or cast in his lot with the despised and
persecuted professors of those Reformed doctrines, the Divine sweetness of which he
appeared to have once so truly relished, and which aforetime he labored to diffuse with a
zeal apparently so ardent and so sincere. In communion with Rome he lived to his dying
day. His real character remains a mystery. Is it forbidden to hope that in his last hours
the gracious Master, who turned and looked on Peter and Pavane, had compassion on the
fallen prelate, and that, the blush of godly shame on his face, and the tears of unfeigned
and bitter sorrow streaming from his eyes, he passed into the presence of his Savior, and
was gathered to the blessed company above – now the humblest of them all – with
whom on earth he had so often taken sweet counsel as they walked together to the house of
God?
CHAPTER 6 Back to Top
CALVIN: HIS BIRTH AND EDUCATION
Greater Champions about to Appear – Calvin – His Birth and Lineage – His
Appearance and Disposition – His Education – Appointed to a Chaplaincy –
The Black Death – Sent to La Marche at Paris – Mathurin Cordier –
Friendship between the Young Pupil and his Teacher – Calvin Charmed by the Great
Latin Writers – Luther's and Calvin's Services to their respective Tongues –
Leaves the School of La Marche.
THE young vine just planted in France was bending before the
tempest, and seemed on the point of being uprooted. The enemies of the Gospel, who,
pending the absence of the king, still a prisoner at Madrid, had assumed the direction of
affairs, did as it pleased them. Beda and Duprat, whom fear had made cruel, were planing
stake after stake, and soon there would remain not one confessor to tell that the Gospel
had ever entered the kingdom of France. The Reformation, which as yet had hardly commenced
its career, was already as good as burned out. But those who so reasoned overlooked the
power of Him who can raise up living witnesses from the ashes of dead ones. The men whom
Beda had burned filled a comparatively narrow sphere, and were possessed of but humble
powers; mightier champions were about to step upon the stage, whom God would so fortify by
his Spirit, and so protect by his providence, that all the power of France should not
prevail against them, and from the midst of the scaffolds and blazing stakes with which
its enemies had encompassed it, Protestantism would come forth to fill Christendom with
disciples and the world with light.
The great leader of the Reformation in Germany stepped at once upon the scene. No note
sounded his advent and no herald ushered him upon the stage. From the seclusion of his
monastery at Erfurt came Luther startling the world by the suddenness of his appearing,
and the authority with which he spoke. But the coming of the great Reformer of France was
gradual. If Luther rose on men like a star that blazes suddenly forth in the dark sky,
Calvin's coming was like that of day, sweetly and softly opening on the mountain-tops,
streaking the horizon with its silver, and steadily waxing in brightness till at last the
whole heavens are filled with the splendor of its light.
Calvin, whose birth and education we are now briefly to trace, was born in humble
condition, like most of those who have accomplished great things for God in the world. He
first saw the light on the 10th of July, 1509, at Noyon in Picardy.[1] His family was of Norman
extraction.[2] His
grandfather was still living in the small town of Pont l'Eveque, and was a cooper by
trade. His father, Gerard, was apostolic notary and secretary to the bishop, through whom
he hoped one day to find for his son John preferment in the Church, to which, influenced
doubtless by the evident bent of his genius, he had destined him. Yes, higher than his
father's highest dream was the Noyon boy to rise in the Church, but in a more catholic
Church than the Roman.
Let us sketch the young Calvin. We have before us a boy of about ten years. He is of
delicate mould, small stature, with pale features, and a bright burning eye, indicating a
soul deeply penetrative as well as richly emotional. There hangs about him an air of
timidity and shyness [3] ,
– a not infrequent accompaniment of a mind of great sensibility and power lodged in a
fragile bodily organisation. He is thoughtful beyond his years; devout, too, up to the
standard of the Roman Church, and beyond it; he is punctual as stroke of clock in his
religious observances.[4] Nor
is it a mere mechanical devotion which he practices. The soul that looks forth at those
eyes can go mechanically about nothing. As regards his morals he has been a Nazarite from
his youth up: no stain of outward vice has touched him. This made the young Calvin a
mystery in a sort to his companions. By the beauty of his life, if not by words, he became
their unconscious reprover.[5] From
his paternal home the young Calvin passed to the stately mansion of the Mommors, the lords
of the neighborhood. The hour that saw Calvin cross this noble threshold was a not
uneventful one to him. He was not much at home in the stately halls that now opened to
receive him, and often, he tells us, he was fain to hide in some shady corner from the
observation of the brilliant company that filled them. But the discipline he here
underwent was a needful preparation for his life's work. Educated with the young Mommors,
but at his father's cost,[6] he
received a more thorough classical grounding, and acquired a polish of manners to which he
must ever have remained a stranger had he grown up under his father's humble roof. He who
was to be the counsellor of princes, a master in the schools, and a legislator in the
Church, must needs have an education neither superficial nor narrow.
The young Calvin mastered with wonderful ease what it cost his class-fellows much labor
and time to acquire. His knowledge seemed to come by intuition. While yet a child he loved
to pray in the open air, thus giving proof of expansiveness of soul. The age could not
think of God but as dwelling in "temples made with hands." Calvin sublimely
realized him as One whose presence fills the temple of the universe. In this he resembles
the young Anselm, who, lifting his eyes to the grand mountains that guard his native
valley of Aosta, believed that if he could climb to their summit he would be nearer him
who has placed his throne in the sky. At this time the chaplaincy of a small church in the
neighborhood, termed La Gesine, fell vacant, and Gerard Chauvin, finding the expense of
his son's education too much for him, solicited and obtained (1521) from the bishop the
appointment for his son John.[7] Calvin
was then only twelve years of age; but it was the manner of the times for even younger
persons to hold ecclesiastical offices of still higher grade – to have a bishop's
crozier, or a cardinal's hat, before they were well able to understand what these
dignities meant.[8] The
young Chaplain of Gesine had his head solemnly shorn by the bishop on the eve of Corpus
Christi,[9] and although not yet admitted
into priest's orders, he became by this symbolic act a member of the clergy, and a servant
of that Church of which he was to become in after-life, without exception, the most
powerful opponent, and the foe whom of all others she dreaded the most.
Two years more did the young Chaplain of La Gesine continue to reside in his native town
of Noyon, holding his title, but discharging no duties, for what functions could a child
of twelve years perform? Now came the Black Death to Noyon. The pestilence, a dreadful
one, caused great terror in the place, many of the inhabitants had already been carried
off by it, and the canons petitioned the chapter for leave to live elsewhere during its
ravages. Gerard Chauvin, trembling for the safety of his son, the hope of his life, also
petitioned the chapter to give the young chaplain "liberty to go wherever he pleased,
without loss of his allowance." The records of the chapter show, according to the
Vicar-General Desmay, and the Canon Levasseur, that this permission was granted in August,
1523. [10] The young Mommors were about to
proceed to Paris to prosecute their studies, and Gerard Chauvin was but too glad of the
opportunity of sending his son along with his fellow-students and comrades, to study in
the capital. At the age of fourteen the future Reformer quitted his father's house.
"Flying from one pestilence," say his Romish historians, "he caught
another."
At Paris, Calvin entered the school or college of La Marche. There was at that time in
this college a very remarkable man, Mathurin Cordier, who was renowned for his exquisite
taste, his pure Latinity, and his extensive erudition.[11] These accomplishments might have opened to Cordier a path to
brilliant advancement, but he was one of those who prefer pursuing their own tastes, and
retaining their independence, to occupying a position where they should to some extent
have to sacrifice both. He devoted his whole life to the teaching of youth, and his fame
has come down to our own days in connection with one of his books still used in some
schools under the title of Cordier's Colloquies.
One day Mathurin Cordier saw a scholar, about fourteen years of age, fresh from the
country, enter his school. His figure was slender, his features were sallow, but his eye
lent such intelligence and beauty to his face that the teacher could not help remarking
him. Cordier soon saw that he had a pupil of no ordinary genius before him, and after the
first few days the scholar of fourteen and the man of fifty became inseparable. At the
hour of school dismissals it was not the play-ground, but his loving, genial instructor,
who grew young again in the society of his pupil, that Calvin sought. Such was the great
teacher whom God had provided for the yet greater scholar.
Mathurin Cordier was not the mere linguist. His mind was fraught with the wisdom of the
ancients. The highest wisdom, it is true, he could not impart, for both master and pupil
were still immersed in the darkness of superstition, but the master of La Marche initiated
his pupil into the spirit of the Renaissance, which like a balmy spring was chasing away
the winter of the Middle Ages, and freshening the world with the rich verdure and
attractive blossoms of ancient civilization. The severe yet copious diction of Cicero, the
lofty thoughts and deep wisdom of this and of other great masters of Roman literature, the
young Calvin soon learned to appreciate and to admire. He saw that if he aspired to wield
influence over his fellowmen, he must first of all perfect himself in the use of that
mighty instrument by which access is gained to the heart and its deep fountains of
feeling, and its powerful springs of action touched and set in motion – language,
namely, and especially written language. From this hour the young student began to graft
upon his native tongue of France those graces of style, those felt cities of expression,
that flexibility, terseness, and fire, which should fit it for expressing with equal ease
the most delicate shade of sentiment or the most powerful burst of feeling.
It is remarkable surely that the two great Reformers of Europe should have been each the
creator of the language of his native country. Calvin was the father of the French tongue,
as Luther was the father of the German. There had been a language in these countries,
doubtless, since the days of their first savage inhabitants, a "French" and a
"German" before there was a Calvin and a Luther, just as there was a
steam-engine before James Watt. But it is not more true that Watt was the inventor of the
steam-engine, by making it a really useful instrument, than it is true that Luther and
Calvin were the creators of their respective tongues as now spoken and written.
Calvin found French, as Luther had found German, a coarse, meager speech – of narrow
compass, of small adaptability, and the vehicle of only low ideas. He breathed into it a
new life. A vastly wider compass, and an infinitely finer flexibility, did he give it.
And, moreover, he elevated and sanctified it by pouring into it the treasures of the
Gospel, thereby enriching it with a multitude of new terms, and subliming it with the
energies of a celestial fire. This transformation in the tongue of France the Reformer
achieved by the new thinking and feeling he taught his countrymen; for a language is
simply the outcome of the life of the people by whom it is spoken.
"Under a lean and attenuated body," says one of his enemies, "he displayed
already a lively and vigorous spirit, prompt at repartee, bold to attack; a great faster,
either on account of his health, and to stop the fumes of the headache which assaulted him
continually, or to have his mind more free for writing, studying, and improving his
memory. He spoke but little, but his words were always full of gravity, and never missed
their aim: he was never seen in company, but always in retirement."[12] How unlike the poetic halo that
surrounds the youth of Luther! "But," asks Bungener, "is there but one
style of poetry, and is there no poetry in the steady pursuit of the good and true all
through the age of pleasure, illusion, and disorder?"[13]
That Calvin was the father of French Protestantism is, of course, admitted by all;
but we less often hear it acknowledged that he was the father of French literature. Yet
this service, surely a great one, ought not to be passed over in silence. It is hard to
say how much the illustrious statesmen and philosophers, the brilliant historians and
poets, who came after him, owed to him. They found in the language, which he had so
largely helped to make fit for their use, a suitable vehicle for the talent and genius by
which they made themselves and their country famous. Their wit, their sublimity, and their
wisdom would have been smothered in the opaque, undramatic, poverty-stricken, and
inharmonious phraseology to which they would have been forced to consign them. Than
language there is no more powerful instrumentality for civilising men, and there is no
more powerful instrumentality for fashioning language than the Gospel.
"Luther," says Bossuet, "triumphed orally, but the pen of Calvin is the
more correct. Both excelled in speaking the language of their country." "To
Calvin," says Etienne Pasquier, "our tongue is greatly indebted." "No
one of those who preceded him excelled him in writing well," says Raemond, "and
few since have approached him in beauty and felicity of language."
Calvin fulfilled his course under Cordier, and in 1526 he passed to the College of
Montaigu, one of the two seminaries in Paris – the Sorbonne being the other for the
training of priests. His affection for his old master of La Marche, and his sense of
benefit received from him, the future Reformer carried with him to the new college –
nay, to the grave. In after-years he dedicated to him his Commentary on the First Epistle
to the Thessalonians. In doing so he takes occasion to attribute to the lessons of Cordier
all the progress he had made in the higher branches of study, and if posterity, he says,
derives any fruit from his works, he would have it known that it is indebted for it, in
part at least, to Cordier.
CHAPTER 7 Back to Top
CALVIN'S CONVERSION
Calvin in the Montaigu – His Devotions and Studies – Auguries of his Teachers
– Calvin still in Darkness – Trebly Armed – Olivetan – Discussions
between Olivetan and Calvin – Doubts Awakened – Great Struggles of Soul –
The Priests Advise him to Confess – Olivetan sends him to the Bible – Opens the
Book – Sees the Cross – Another Obstacle – The "Church" –
Sees the Spiritual Glory of the True Church – The Glory of the False Church Vanishes
– One of the Great Battles of the World – Victory and its Fruits.
ON crossing the threshold of La Montaigu, Calvin felt himself
in a new but not a better atmosphere. Unlike that of La Marche, which was sunny with the
free ideas of Republican Rome, the air of Montaigu was musty with the dogmas of the
school-men. But as yet Calvin could breathe that air. The student with the pale face, and
the grave and serious deportment, did not fail to satisfy the most scholastic and churchy
of the professors at whose feet he now sat. His place was never empty at mass; no first
did he ever profane by tasting forbidden dish; and no saint did he ever affront by failing
to do due honor to his or her fete-day.
The young student; was not more punctual in his devotions than assiduous in his studies.
So ardent was he in the pursuit of knowledge that often the hours of meal passed without
his eating. Long after others were locked in sleep he was still awake; he would keep
poring over the page of schoolman or Father till far into the morning. The inhabitants of
that quarter of Paris were wont to watch a tiny ray that might be seen streaming from a
certain window of a certain chamber – Calvin's – of the college after every
other light had been extinguished, and long after the midnight hour had passed. His
teachers formed the highest hopes of him.
A youth of so fine parts, of an industry so unflagging, and who was withal so pious, was
sure, they said, to rise high in the Church. They prognosticated for him no mere country
curacy or rectorship, no mere city diocese, nothing less was in store for such a scholar
than the purple of a cardinal. He who was now the pride of their college, was sure in time
to become one of the lights of Christendom. Yes! one of the lights of Christendom, the
student with the pale face and the burning eye was fated to become. Wide around was his
light to beam; nor was it the nations of Europe only, sitting meanwhile in the shadow of
Rome, that Calvin was to enlighten, but tribes and peoples afar off, inhabiting islands
and continents which no eye of explorer had yet discovered, and no keel of navigator had
yet touched, and of which the Christendom of that hour knew nothing.
But the man who had been chosen as the instrument to lead the nations out of their
prison-house was meanwhile shut up in the same doleful captivity, and needed, first of
all, to be himself brought out of the darkness. The story of his emancipation – his
struggles to break his chain – is instructive as it is touching. Calvin is made to
feel what Scripture so emphatically terms "the power of darkness," the strength
of the fetter, and the helplessness of the poor captive, that "remembering the gall
and the wormwood" he may be touched with pity for the miseries of those he is called
to liberate, and may continue to toil in patience and faith till their fetters are broken.
The Reformation was in the air, and the young student could hardly breathe without
inhaling somewhat of the new life; and yet he seemed tolerably secure against catching the
infection. He was doubly, trebly armed. In the first place, he lived in the orthodox
atmosphere of the Montaigu; he was not likely to hear anything there to corrupt his faith:
secondly, his head had been shorn; thus he stood at the plough of Rome, and would he now
turn back? Then, again, his daily food were the schoolmen, the soundly nutritious
qualities of whose doctrines no one in the Montaigu questioned. Over and above his daily
and hourly lessons, the young scholar fortified himself against the approaches of heresy
by the rigid observance of all outward rites. True, he had a mind singularly keen,
penetrating, and inquisitive; but this did not much help the matter; for when a mind of
that caste takes hold of a system like the Papacy, it is with a tenacity that refuses
again to let it go; the intellect finds both pleasure and pride in the congenial work of
framing arguments for the defense of error, till at last it becomes the dupe of its own
subtlety. This was the issue to which the young Calvin was now tending. Every day his mind
was becoming more one-sided; every day he contemplated the Papacy more and more, not as it
was in fact, but as idealised and fashioned in his own mind; a few years more and his
whole thinking, reasoning, and feeling would have been intertwined and identified with the
system, every avenue would have been closed and barred against light, and Calvin would
have become the ablest champion that ever enrolled himself in the ranks of the Roman
Church. We should, at this day, have heard much more of Calvin than of Bellarmine.
But God had provided an opening for the arrow to enter in the triple armor in which the
young student was encasing himself. Calvin's cousin, Olivetan, a disciple of Lefevre's,
now came to Paris. Living in the same city, the cousins were frequently in each other's
company, and the new opinions, which were agitating Paris, and beginning to find
confessors in the Place de Greve, became a topic of frequent converse between them.[1] Nay, it is highly probable that
Calvin had witnessed some of the martyrdoms we have narrated in a previous chapter. The
great bell of Notre Dame had summoned all Paris – and why not Calvin? – to see
how the young Pavane and the hermit of Livry could stand with looks undismayed at the
stake. Olivetan and Calvin are not of one mind on the point, and the debates wax warm.
Olivetan boldly assails, and Calvin as boldly defends, the dogmas of the Church. In this
closet there is a great battlefield. There are but two combatants before us, it is true;
but on the conflict there hang issues far more momentous than have depended on many great
battles in which numerous hosts have been engaged. In this humble apartment the Old and
the New Times have met. They struggle the one with the other, and as victory shall incline
so will the New Day rise or fade on Christendom. If Olivetan shall be worsted and bound
again to the chariot-wheel of an infallible Church, the world will never see that
beautiful version of the New Testament in the vernacular of France, which is destined to
accomplish so much in the way of diffusing the light. But if Calvin shall lower his sword
before his cousin, and yield himself up to the arguments of Lefevre's disciple, what a
blow to Rome! The scholar on whose sharp dialectic weapon her representatives in Paris
have begun to lean in prospect of coming conflict, will pass over to the camp of the
enemy, to lay his brilliant genius and vast acquirements at the feet of Protestantism.
The contest between the two cousins is renewed day by day. These are the battles that
change the world – not those noisy affairs that are fought with cannons and sabres,
but those in which souls wrestle to establish or overthrow great principles. "There
are but two religions in the world," we hear Olivetan saying. "The one class of
religions are those which men have invented, in all of which man saves himself by
ceremonies and good works; the other is that one religion which is revealed in the Bible,
and which teaches man to look for salvation solely from the free grace of God."
"I will have none of your new doctrines," Calvin sharply rejoins; "think
you that I have lived in error all my days?" But Calvin is not so sure of the matter
as he looks. The words of his cousin have gone deeper into his heart than he is willing to
admit even to himself; and when Olivetan has taken farewell for the day, scarce has the
door been closed behind him when Calvin, bursting into tears, falls upon his knees, and
gives vent in prayer to the doubts and anxieties that agitate him.
The doubts by which his soul was now shaken grew in strength with each renewed discussion.
What shall he do? Shall he forsake the Church? That seems to him like casting himself into
the gulf of perdition. And yet can the Church save him? There is a new light breaking in
upon him, in which her dogmas are melting away; the ground beneath him is sinking. To what
shall he cling? His agitation grew anon into a great tempest. He felt within him "the
sorrows of death," and his closet resounded with sighs and groans, as did Luther's at
Erfurt. This tempest was not in the intellect, although doubtless the darkness of his
understanding had to do with it; its seat was the soul – the conscience. It consisted
in a sense of guilt, a consciousness of vileness, and a shuddering apprehension of wrath.
So long as he had to do merely with the saints, creatures like himself, only a little
holier it might be, it was all well. But now he was standing in the presence of that
infinitely Holy One, with whom evil cannot dwell. He was standing there, the blackness and
vileness of his sin shown in the clear light of the Divine purity; he was standing there,
the transgressor of a law that says, "The soul that sinneth shall die" –
that death how awful, yet that award how righteous! – he was standing there, with all
in which he had formerly trusted – saints, rites, good works – swept clean away,
with nothing to protect him from the arm of the Lawgiver. He had come to a Judge without
an advocate. It did not occur to him before that he needed an advocate, at least other
than Rome provides, because before he saw neither God's holiness nor his own guilt; but
now he saw both.
The struggle of Calvin was not the perplexity of the skeptic unable to make up his mind
among conflicting systems, it was the agony of a soul fleeing from death, but seeing as
yet no way of escape. It was not the conflict of the intellect which has broken loose from
truth, and is tossed on the billows of doubt and unbelief a painful spectacle, and one of
not infrequent occurrence in our century; Calvin's struggle was not of this sort; it was
the strong wrestlings of a man who had firm hold of the great truths of Divine revelation,
although not as yet of all these truths, and who saw the terrible realities which they
brought him face to face with, and who comprehended the dreadful state of his case, fixed
for him by his own transgressions on the one hand, and the irrevocable laws of the Divine
character and government on the other.[2] A struggle this of a much more terrific kind than any mere
intellectual one, and of this latter sort was the earnestness of the sixteenth century.
Not knowing as yet that "there is forgiveness with God," because as yet he did
not believe in the "atonement," through which there cometh a free forgiveness,
Calvin at this hour stood looking into the blackness of eternal darkness. Had he doubted,
that doubt would have mitigated his pain; but he did not and could not doubt; he saw too
surely the terrible reality, and knew not how it was to be avoided. Here was himself, a
transgressor; there was the law, awarding death, and there was the Judge ready – nay,
bound – to inflict it: so Calvin felt.
The severity of Calvin's struggle was in proportion to the strength of his
self-righteousness. That principle had been growing within him from his youth upwards. The
very blamelessness of his life, and the punctuality with which he discharged all the acts
of devotion, had helped to nourish it into rigor and strength; and now nothing but a
tempest of surpassing force could have beaten down and laid in the dust a pride which had
been waxing higher and stronger with every rite he performed, and every year that passed
over him. And till his pride had been laid in the dust it was impossible that he could
throw himself at the feet of the Great Physician.
But meanwhile, like King Joram, he went to physicians "who could not heal him of his
disease;" mere empirics they were, who, gave him beads to count and relics to kiss,
instead of the "death" that atones and the "blood" that cleanses.
"Confess!"[3] cried
the doctors of the Montaigu, who could read in his dimmed eye and wasting form the agony
that was raging in his soul, and too surely divined its cause. "Confess,
confess!" cried they, in alarm, for they saw that they were on the point of losing
their most promising pupil, on whom they had built so many hopes. Calvin went to his
confessor; he told him – not all – but as much as he durst, and the Father gave
him kindly a few anodynes from the Church's pharmacopoeia to relieve his pain. The patient
strove to persuade himself that his trouble was somewhat assuaged, and then he would turn
again to the schoolmen, if haply he might forget, in the interest awakened by their
subtleties and speculations, the great realities that had engrossed him. But soon there
would descend on him another and fiercer burst of the tempest, and then groans louder even
than before would echo through his chamber, and tears more copious than he had yet shed
would water his couch.[4]
One day, while the young scholar of the Montaigu was passing through these
struggles, he chanced to visit the Place de Greve, where he found a great crowd of
priests, soldiers, and citizens gathered round a stake at which a disciple of the new
doctrines was calmly yielding up his life. He stood till the fire had done its work, and a
stake, an iron collar and chain, and a heap of ashes were the only memorials of the
tragedy he had witnessed. What he had seen awakened a train of thoughts within him.
"These men," said he to himself, "have a peace which I do not possess. They
endure the fire with a rare courage. I, too, could brave the fire, but were death to come
to me, as it comes to them, with the sting of the Church's anathema in it, could I face
that as calmly as they do? Why is it that they are so courageous in the midst of terrors
that are as real as they are dreadful, while I am oppressed and tremble before
apprehensions and forebodings? Yes, I will take my cousin Olivetan's advice, and search
the Bible, if haply I may find that 'new way' of which he speaks, and which these men who
go so bravely through the fire seem to have found." He opened the Book which no one,
says Rome, should open unless the Church be by to interpret. He began to read, but the
first effect was a sharper terror. His sins had never appeared so great, nor himself so
vile as now.[5]
He would have shut the Book, but to what other quarter could he turn? On every side
of him abysses appeared to be opening. So he continued to read, and by-and-by he thought
he could discern dimly and afar off what seemed a cross, and One hanging upon it, and his
form was like the Son of God. He looked again, and the vision was clearer for now he
thought he could read the inscription over the head of the Sufferer: "He was wounded
for our iniquities, he was bruised for our transgressions; the chastisement of our peace
was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed." A ray now shone through his
darkness; he thought he could see a way of escape – a shelter where the black tempest
that lowered over him would no longer beat upon his head; already the great burden that
pressed upon him was less heavy, it seemed as if about to fall off, and now it rolled down
as he kept gazing at the "Crucified." "O Father," he burst out –
it was no longer the Judge, the Avenger – "O Father, his sacrifice has appeased
thy wrath; his blood has washed away my impurities; his cross has borne my curse; his
death has atoned for me!" In the midst of the great billows his feet had touched the
bottom: he found the ground to be good: he was upon a rock.
Calvin, however, was not yet safe on shore and past all danger. One formidable obstacle he
had yet to surmount, and one word expresses it – the Church. Christ had said,
"Lo, I am with you alway." The Church, then, was the temple of Christ, and this
made unity – unity in all ages and in all lands – one of her essential
attributes. The Fathers had claimed this as a mark of the true Church. She must be one,
they had said.
Precisely so; but is this unity outward and visible, or inward and spiritual? The
"Quod semper, quod ubique et ab omnibus," if sought in an outward, realization,
can be found only in the Church of Rome. How many have fallen over this stumbling-block
and never risen again; how many even in our own age have made shipwreck here! This was the
rock on which Calvin was now in danger of shipwreck. The Church rose before his eyes, a
venerable and holy society; he saw her coming down from ancient times, covering all lands,
embracing in her ranks the martyrs and confessors of primitive times, and the great
doctors of the Middle Ages, with the Pope at their head, the Vicar of Jesus Christ. This
seemed truly a temple of God's own building. With all its faults it yet was a glorious
Church, Divine and heavenly. Must he leave this august society and join himself to a few
despised disciples of the new opinions? This seemed like a razing of his name from the
Book of Life. This was to invoke excommunication upon his own head, and write against
himself a sentence of exclusion from the family of God – nay, from God himself! This
was the great battle that Calvin had yet to fight.
How many have commenced this battle only to lose it! They have been beaten back and beaten
down by the pretended Divine authority of "the Church," by the array of her
great names and her great Councils, and though last, not least, by the terror of her
anathemas. It is not possible for even the strongest minds, all at once, to throw off the
spell of the great Enchantress Nor would even Calvin have conquered in this sore battle
had he not had recourse to the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Ever and
anon he came back to the Bible; he sought for the Church as she is there shown – a
spiritual society, Christ her Head, the Holy Spirit her life, truth her foundation, and
believers her members – and in proportion as this Church disclosed her beauty to him,
the fictitious splendor and earthly magnificence which shone around the Church of Rome
waned, and at last vanished outright.
"There can be no Church," we hear Calvin saying to himself, "where the
truth is not. Here, in the Roman Communion, I can find only fables, silly inventions,
manifest falsehoods, and idolatrous ceremonies. The society that is founded on these
things cannot be the Church. If I shall come back to the truth, as contained in the
Scriptures, will I not come back to the Church? and will I not be joined to the holy
company of prophets and apostles, of saints and martyrs? And as regards the Pope, the
Vicar of Jesus Christ, let me not be awed by a big word. If without warrant from the
Bible, or the call of the Christian people, and lacking the holiness and humility of
Christ, the Pope place himself above the Church, and surround himself with worldly pomps,
and arrogate lordship over the faith and consciences of men, is he therefore entitled to
homage, and must I bow down and do obeisance? The Pope," concluded Calvin, "is
but a scarecrow, dressed out in magnificences and fulminations. I will go on my way
without minding him."
In fine, Calvin concluded that the term "Church" could not make the society that
monopolized the term really "the Church." High-sounding titles and lofty
assumptions could give neither unity nor authority; these could come from the Truth alone;
and so he abandoned "the Church" that he might enter the Church – the
Church of the Bible.
The victory was now complete. The last link of Rome's chain had been rent from his soul;
the huge phantasmagoria which had awed and terrified him had been dissolved, and he stood
up in the liberty wherewith Christ had made him free. Here truly was rest after a great
fight – a sweet and blessed dawn after a night of thick darkness and tempest.
Thus was fought one of the great battles of the world. When one thinks of what was won for
mankind upon this field, one feels its issues important beyond all calculation, and would
rather have conquered upon it than have won all the victories and worn all the laurels of
Caesar and Alexander. The day of Calvin's conversion is not known, but the historian
D'Aubigne, to whose research the world is indebted for its full and exact knowledge of the
event, has determined the year, 1527; and the place, Paris – that city where some of
the saints of God had already been put to death, and where, in years to come, their blood
was to be poured out like water. The day of Calvin's conversion is one of the memorable
days of time.
CHAPTER 8 Back to Top
CALVIN BECOMES A STUDENT OF LAW
Gate of the New Kingdom – Crowds Pressing to Enter – The Few only Able to do so
– Lefevre and Farel Sighing for the Conversion of Francis I. – A Greater
Conversion – Calvin Refuses to be made a Priest – Chooses the Profession of Law
– Goes to Orleans – Pierre de l'Etoile – Calvin becomes his Scholar –
Teaching of Etoile on the Duty of the State to Punish Heterodoxy – Calvin among his
College Companions – A Victory – Calvin Studies Greek – Melchior Wolmar
– Calvin Prepared for his Work as a Commentator – His Last Mental Struggle.
THE Reformation has come, and is setting up anew the kingdom
of the Gospel upon the earth. Flinging wide open its portals, and stationing no sentinel
on the threshold, nor putting price upon its blessings, it bids all enter. We see great
multitudes coming up to the gate, and making as if they would press in and become citizens
of this new State. Great scholars and erudite divines are groping around the door, but
they are not able to become as little children, and so they cannot find the gate. We see
ecclesiastics of every grade crowding to that portal; there stands the purple cardinal,
and there too is the frocked friar, all eagerly inquiring what they may do that they may
inherit eternal life; but they cannot part with their sins or with their
self-righteousness, and so they cannot enter at a gate which, however wide to the poor in
spirit, is strait to them. Puissant kings, illustrious statesmen, and powerful nations
come marching up, intent seemingly on enrolling themselves among the citizens of this new
society. They stand on the very threshold; another step and all will be well; but, alas!
they hesitate; they falter; it is a moment of terrible suspense. What blinds them so that
they cannot see the entrance? It is a little word, a potent spell, which has called up
before them all imposing image that looks the impersonation of all the ages, and the
embodiment of all apostolic virtues and blessings – "the Church." Dazzled
by this apparition, they pause – they reel backwards – the golden moment passes;
and from the very gates of evangelical light, they take the downward road into the old
darkness. The broad pathway is filled from side to side by men whose feet have touched the
very threshold of the kingdom, but who are now returning, some offended by the simplicity
of the infant Church; others scared by the scaffold and the stake; others held back by
their love of ease or their love of sin. A few only are able to enter in and earn the
crown, and even these, enter only after sore rightings and great agonies of soul. It was
here that the Reformation had its beginning – not in the high places of the world,
amid the ambitions of thrones and the councils of cabinets. It struggled into birth in the
low places of society, in closets, and the bosoms of the penitent, amid tears and strong
cries and many groans.
Paris was not one of those cities that were destined to be glorified by the light of
Protestantism, nevertheless it pleased God, as narrated in the last chapter, to make it
the scene of a great conversion.[1] Lefevre
and Farel were sighing to enrol among the disciples of the Gospel a great potentate,
Francis I. If, thought they, the throne can be gained, will not the preponderance of power
on the side of the Gospel infallibly assure its triumph in France? But God, whose thoughts
are not as man's thoughts, was meanwhile working for a far greater issue, the conversion
even of a pale-faced student in the College of Montaigu, whose name neither Lefevre nor
Farel had ever happened to hear, and whose very existence was then unknown to them. They
little dreamed what a conflict was at that very hour going on so near to them in a small
chamber in an obscure quarter of Paris. And, although they had known it, they could as
little have conjectured that when that young scholar had bowed to the force of the truth,
a mightier power would have taken its place at the side of the Gospel than if Francis and
all his court had become its patrons and champions. Light cannot be spread by edict of
king, or by sword of soldier. It is the Bible, preached by the evangelist, and testified
to by the martyr, that is to bid the Gospel, like the day, shine forth and bless the
earth.
From the hour of Calvin's conversion he became the center of the Reformation in France,
and by-and-by the center of the Reformation in Christendom: consequently in tracing the
several stages of his career we are chronicling the successive developments of the great
movement of Protestantism. His eyes were opened, and he saw the Church of Rome
disenchanted of that illusive splendor – that pseudo-Divine authority – which
had aforetime dazzled and subdued him. Where formerly there stood a spiritual building,
the House of God, the abode of truth, as he believed, there now rose a temple of idols.
How could he minister at her altars? True, his head had been shorn, but he had not yet
received that indelible character which is stamped on all who enter the priesthood, and so
it was not imperative that he should proceed farther in that path. He resolved to devote
himself to the profession of law. This mode of retreat from the clerical ranks would
awaken no suspicion.
It is somewhat remarkable that his father had come, at about the same time, to the same
resolution touching the future profession of his son, and thus the young Calvin had his
parent's full consent to his new choice – a coincidence which Beza has pointed out as
a somewhat striking one. The path on which Gerard Chauvin saw his son now entering was one
in which many and brilliant honors were to be won: and not one of those prizes was there
which the marvelous intellect and the rare application of that son did not bid fair to
gain. Already Gerard in fancy saw him standing at the foot of the throne, and guiding the
destinies of France. Has Calvin then bidden a final adieu to theology, and are the courts
of law and the offices of State henceforth to claim him as their own? No! he has turned
aside but for a little while, that by varying the exercise of his intellect he may bring
to the great work that lies before him a versatility of power, all amplitude of knowledge,
and a range of sympathy not otherwise attainable. Of that work he did not at this hour so
much as dream, but He who had "called him from the womb, and ordained him a prophet
to the nations," was leading him by a way he knew not.
The young student – his face still pale, but beaming with that lofty peace that
succeeds such tempests as those which had beat upon him – crosses for the last time
the portal of the Montaigu, and, leaving Paris behind him, directs his steps to Orleans,
the city on the banks of the Loire which dates from the days of Aurelian, its founder. In
that city was a famous university, and in that university was a famous professor of law,
Pierre de l'Etoile, styled the Prince of Jurists.[2] It was the light of this; "star" that attracted the
young Calvin to Orleans.
The science of jurisprudence now became his study. And one of the maxims to which he was
at times called to listen, as he sat on the benches of the class-room, enables us to
measure the progress which the theory of liberty had made in those days. "It is the
magistrate's duty," would "Peter of the Star" say to his scholars, "to
punish offenses against religion as well as crimes against the State."
"What!" he would exclaim, with the air of a man who was propounding an
incontrovertible truth, "What! shall we hang a thief who robs us of our purse, and
not burn a heretic who steals from us heaven!" So ill understood was then the
distinction between the civil and the spiritual jurisdictions, and the acts falling under
their respective cognisance. Under this code of jurisprudence were Calvin and that whole
generation of Frenchmen reared. It had passed in Christendom for a thousand years as
indisputably sound, serving as the cornerstone of the Inquisition, and yielding its
legitimate fruit in those baleful fires which mingled their lurid glare with the dawn of
the New Times. Under no other maxim was it then deemed possible for nations to flourish or
piety to be preserved; nor was it till a century and a half after Calvin's time that this
maxim was exploded, for of all fetters those are the hardest to be rent which have been
forged by what wears the guise of justice, and have been imposed to protect what professes
to be religion.
The future Reformer now sits at the feet of the famous jurist of Orleans, and, by the
study of the law, whets that wonderful intellect which in days to come was to unravel so
many mysteries, and dissolve the force of so many spells which had enchained the soul.
What manner of man, we ask, was Calvin at Orleans? He had parted company with the
schoolmen; he had bidden the Fathers of the Montaigu adieu, and he had turned his face, as
he believed, towards the high places of the world. Did his impressions of Divine things
pass away, or did the grandeurs of time dim to his eye those of eternity? No; but if his
seriousness did not disappear, his shyness somewhat did. His loving sympathies and rich
genialities of heart, like a secret gravitation for they were not much expressed in words
– drew companions around him, and his superiority of intellect gave him, without his
seeking it, the lead amongst them. His fellow-students were a noisy, pleasure-loving set,
and their revels and quarrels woke up, rather rudely at times, the echoes of the academic
hall, and broke in upon the quiet of the streets; but the high-souled honor and purity of
Calvin, untouched by soil or stain amidst the pastimes and Bacchanalian riots that went on
around him, joined to his lofty genius, made him the admiration of his comrades.
The nation of Picardy – for the students were classified into nations according to
the provinces they came from – elected the young Calvin as their proctor, and in this
capacity he was able, by his legal knowledge, to recover for his nation certain privileges
of which they had been deprived.
There have been more brilliant affairs than this triumph over the local authority who had
trenched upon academic rights, but it was noisily applauded by those for whom it was won,
and to the young victor this petty warfare was all earnest of greater battles to be fought
on a wider arena, and of prouder victories to be won over greater opponents. The future
Chancellor of the Kingdom of France – for no inferior position had Gerard Chauvin
elected for his son to fill – had taken his first step on the road which would most
surely conduct him to this high dignity. Step after step – to his genius how easy!
– would bring him to it; and there having passed life in honorable labor, he would
leave his name inscribed among those of the legislators and philosophers of France, while
his bust would adorn the Louvre, or the Hall of Justice, and his bones, inurned in marble,
would sleep in some cathedral aisle of Paris. Such was the prospect that opened out before
the eye of his father, and, it is possible, before his own also at this period of his
life. Very grand it was, but not nearly so grand as that which ended in a simple grave by
the Rhone, marked only by a pine-tree, with a name like the brightness of the firmament,
that needed no chiselled bust and no marble cenotaph to keep it in remembrance. Calvin
next went to Bourges. He was attracted to this city by the fame of Alciati of Milan, who
was lecturing on law in its university. The Italian loved a good table, and a well-filled
purse, but he had the gift of eloquence, and a rare genius for jurisprudence. "Andrew
Alciat," says Beza, "was esteemed the most learned and eloquent of all the
jurisconsults of his time."[3] The
eloquence of Alciati kindled anew Calvin's enthusiasm for the study of law. The hours were
then early; but Calvin, Beza informs us, sat up till midnight, and, on awakening in the
morning, spent an hour in bed recalling to memory what he had learned the evening
previous. At Bourges was another distinguished man, learned in a wisdom that Alciati knew
not, and whose prelections, if less brilliant, were more useful to the young student.
Melchior Wolmar, a German, taught the Greek of Homer, Demosthenes, or Sophocles, "but
less publicly," says Bungener, "though with small attempts at concealment, the
Greek of another book far mightier and more important."[4]
When Calvin arrived in Bourges he knew nothing of Greek. His Latinity he had
received at Paris from Mathurin Cordier, whose memory he ever most affectionately
cherished; but now he was to be initiated into the tongue of ancient Greece. This service
was rendered him by Melchior Wolmar,[5] who
had been a pupil of the celebrated Budaeus.
Calvin now had access to the Oracles of God in the very words in which inspired men had
written them – an indispensable qualification surely in one who was to be the first
great interpreter, in modern times, of the New Testament. He could more exactly know the
mind of the Spirit speaking in the Word, and more fully make known to men the glory of
Divine mysteries; said the commentaries of Calvin are perhaps unsurpassed to this day in
the combined qualities of clearness, accuracy, and depth. They were in a sort a second
giving of the Oracles of God to men. Their publication was as when, in the Apocalypse,
"the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of
his testament."
Before leaving Orleans his spiritual equipment for his great work had been completed. The
agony he had endured in Paris returned in part. He may have contracted from his law
studies some of the dross of earth, and he was sent back to the furnace for the last time.
Doubts regarding his salvation began again to agitate him; the "Church" rose up
again before him in all her huge fascination and enchantment. These were the very foes he
had already vanquished, and left dead, as he believed, on the battle-field.
Again they stood like menacing spectres in his path, and he had to recommence the fight,
and as at Paris, so again in Orleans he had to wage it in the sweat of his face, in the
sweat of his heart. "I am in a continual battle," he writes; "I am
assaulted and shaken, as when an armed man is forced by a violent blow to stagger a few
steps backward."[6] Grasping
once more the sword of the Spirit, he put his foes to flight, and when the conflict was
over Calvin found himself walking in a clearer light than he had ever before enjoyed; and
that light continued all the way even to his life's end. There gathered often around him
in after-days the darkness of outward trial, but nevermore was there darkness in his soul.
CHAPTER 9 Back to Top
CALVIN THE EVANGELIST, AND BERQUIN THE
MARTYR.
Calvin Abandons the Study of the Law – Goes to Bourges – Bourges under Margaret
of Navarre – Its Evangelisation already Commenced – The Citizens entreat Calvin
to become their Minister – He begins to act as an Evangelist in Bourges – The
Work extends to the Villages and Castles around – The Plottings of the Monks –
His Father's Death calls Calvin away – A Martyr, Louis de Berquin – His Youth
– His Conversion – His Zeal and Eloquence in Spreading the Gospel –
Imprisoned by the Sorbonnists – Set at Liberty by the King – Imprisoned a Second
and a Third Time – Set at Liberty – Erasmus' Counsel – Berquin Taxes the
Sorbonnists with Heresy – An Image of the Virgin Mutilated – Berquin consigned
to the Conciergerie – His Condemnation and Frightful Sentence – Efforts of
Budaeus – Berquin on his Way to the Stake – His Attire – His Noble
Behaviour – His Death.
EMERGING from the furnace "purified seven times,"
Calvin abandons the study of the law, casts behind him the great honors to which it
invited him, turns again to the Church – not her whose head is on the Seven Hills
– and puts his hand to the Gospel plough, never to take it away till death should
withdraw it. Quitting Orleans he goes to Bourges.
With Bourges two illustrious conquerors of former days had associated their names: Caesar
had laid it in ashes; Charlemagne had raised it up from its ruins; now a greater hero than
either enters it, to begin a career of conquests which these warriors might well have
envied, destined as they were to eclipse in true glory and far outlast any they had ever
achieved. It was here that Calvin made his first essay as an evangelist.
Bourges was situated in the province of Berry, and as Margaret, whom we have specially
mentioned in former chapters, as the disciple and correspondent of Briconnet and Lefevre,
had now become Queen of Navarre and Duchess of Berry, Bourges was under her immediate
jurisdiction. Prepared to protect in others the Gospel which she herself loved, Bourges
presented an opening for Protestantism which no other city in all France at that time did.
Under Margaret it became a center of the evangelisation. For some time previous no little
religious fermentation had been going on among its population.[1] The new doctrines had found their way thither; they were talked of
in its social gatherings; they had begun even to be heard in its pulpits; certain priests,
who had come to a knowledge of the truth, were preaching it with tolerable clearness to
congregations composed of lawyers, students, and citizens. It was at this crisis that
Calvin arrived at Bourges.
His fame had preceded him. The Protestants gathered round him and entreated him to become
their teacher. Calvin was averse to assume the office of the ministry. Not that he shrunk
from either the labors or the perils of the work, but because he cherished a deep sense of
the greatness of the function, and of his own unworthiness to fill it. "I have hardly
learned the Gospel myself," he would say, "and, lo! I am called to teach it to
others."
Not for some time did Calvin comply with these solicitations. His timidity, his sense of
responsibility, above all his love of study, held him back. He sought a hiding-place
where, safe from intrusion, he might continue the pursuit of that wisdom which it
delighted him with each studious day to gather and hive up, but his friends surprised him
in his concealment, and renewed their entreaties. At last he consented. "Wonderful it
is," he said, "that one of so lowly an origin should be exalted to so great a
dignity."[2]
But how unostentatious the opening of his career! The harvests of the earth spring
not in deeper silence than does this great evangelical harvest, which, beginning in the
ministry of Calvin, is destined to cover a world. Gliding along the street might be seen a
youth of slender figure and sallow features. He enters a door; he gathers round him the
family and, opening the Bible, he explains to them its message. His words distil as the
dew and as the tender rain on the grass. By-and-by the city becomes too narrow a sphere of
labor, and the young evangelist extends his efforts to the hamlets and towns around
Bourges.[3] One tells another of the
sweetness of this water, and every day the numbers increase of those who wish to drink of
it. The castle of the baron is opened as well as the cottage of the peasant, and a cordial
welcome is accorded the missionary in both. His doctrine is clear and beautiful, and as
refreshing to the soul as light to the eye after long darkness. And then the preacher is
so modest withal, so sweet in his address, so earnest in his work, and altogether so
unlike any other preacher the people had ever known! "Upon my word," said the
Lord of Lignieres to his wife, "Master John Calvin seems to me to preach better than
the monks, and he goes heartily to work too."[4]
The monks looked with but small favor on these doings. The doors open to the young
evangelist were shut against themselves. If they plotted to stop the work by casting the
workman into prison, in a town under Margaret's jurisdiction this was not so easy. The
design failed, if it was ever entertained, and the evangelist went on sowing the seed from
which in days to come a plentiful harvest was to spring. The Churches whose foundations
are now being laid by the instrumentality of Calvin will yield in future years not only
confessors of the truth, but martyrs for the stake.
In the midst of these labors Calvin received a letter from Noyon, his native town, saying
that his father was dead.[5] These
tidings stopped his work, but it is possible that they saved him from prison. He had
planted, but another must water; and so turning his face towards his birth-place, he quits
Bourges not again to return to it. But the work he had accomplished in it did not perish.
A venerable doctor, Michel Simon, came forward on Calvin's departure, and kept alive the
light in Bourges which the evangelist had kindled.
On his journey to Noyon, Calvin had to pass through Paris. It so happened that the capital
at that time (1529) was in a state of great excitement, another stake having just been
planted in it, whereat one of the noblest of the early martyrs of France was yielding up
his life. Providence so ordered it that the pile of the martyr and the visit of the
Reformer came together. God had chosen him as the champion by whom the character of his
martyrs was to be vindicated and their blood avenged on the Papacy, and therefore it was
necessary that he should come very near, if not actually stand beside their stake, and be
the eye-witness of the agonies, or rather the triumph, of their dying moments. Before
tracing farther the career of Calvin let us turn aside to the Place de Greve, and see
there "the most learned of the nobles of France" dying as a felon.
Louis de Berquin was descended of a noble family of Artois.[6] Unlike the knights of those days, who knew only to mount their
horse, to handle their sword, to follow the hounds, or to figure in a tournament, Berquin
delighted in reading and was devoted to study. Frank, courteous, and full of alms-deeds,
he was beloved by all. His morals were as pure as his manners were polished: he had now
reached the age of forty without calumny finding occasion to breathe upon him. He often
went to court., and was specially welcomed by a prince who delighted to see around him men
of intellectual accomplishments and tastes. Touching the religion of Rome, Berquin was
blameless, having kept himself pure from his youth up. "He was," says Crespin,
"a great follower of the Papistical constitutions, and a great hearer of masses and
sermons." All the Church's rites he strictly observed, all the Church's saints he
duly honored, and he crowned all his other virtues by holding Lutheranism in special
abhorrence.[7]
But it pleased God to open his eyes. His manly and straightforward character made
the maneuvers and intrigues of the Sorbonne specially detestable to him. Besides, it
chanced to him to have a dispute with one of its doctors on a scholastic subtlety, and he
opened his Bible to find in it proofs to fortify his position. Judge of his amazement when
he perceived there, not the doctrines of Rome, but the doctrines of Luther. His conversion
was thorough. His learning, his eloquence, and his influence were from that hour all at
the service of the Gospel. He labored to spread the truth among his tenantry in the
country, and among his acquaintances in the city and at the court. He panted to
communicate his convictions to all France. Many looked to him as the destined Reformer of
his native land; and certainly his position and gifts made him the most considerable
person at that time on the side of the Reform in France. "Berquin would have been a
second Luther," said Beza, "had he found in Francis I. a second Elector."[8]
The Sorbonne had not been unobservant; their alarm was great, and their anger was
in proportion to their alarm. "He is worse than Luther," they exclaimed. Armed
with the authority of Parliament the Sorbonne seized and imprisoned Berquin (1523). There
was nothing but a stake for the man whose courage they could not daunt, and whose
eloquence they could not silence, and all whose wit and learning were employed in laughing
at their ignorance and exposing their superstition. But the king, who loved him, set him
at liberty.
A second time the monks of the Sorbonne seized Berquin. A second time the king came to his
rescue, advising him to be more prudent in future; but such strong convictions as those of
Berquin could not be suppressed. A third time Berquin was seized, and the Sorbonnists
thought that this time they had made sure of their prey. The king was a prisoner at
Madrid: Duprat and Louisa of Savoy were all-powerful at Paris. But no: an order from
Francis I., dated 1st April, 1526, arrived, enjoining them to suspend proceedings till his
return; and so Berquin was again at liberty.
Berquin's courage and zeal grew in proportion as the plots of his enemies multiplied.
Erasmus, who was trying to swim between two streams, foreseeing how the unequal contest
must end, warned Berquin in these characteristic words: "Ask to be sent as ambassador
to some foreign country; go and travel in Germany. You know Beda and such as he – he
is a thousand-headed monster darting venom on every side. Your enemies are named legion.
Were your cause better than that of Jesus Christ, they will not let you go till they have
miserably destroyed you. Do not trust too much to the king's protection. At all events, do
not compromise me with the faculty of theology."[9]
Berquin did not listen to the counsel of the timid scholar. He resolved to stand no
longer on the defensive, but to attack. He extracted from the writings of Beda and his
colleagues twelve propositions, which he presented to the king, and which he charged with
being opposed to the Bible and, by consequence, heretical.[10]
The Sorbonnists were confounded. That they, the pillars of the Church, and the
lights of France, should be taxed with heresy by a Lutheran was past endurance. The king,
however, not sorry to have an opportunity of humbling these turbulent doctors, requested
them to disprove Berquin's allegations from Scripture. This might have been a hard task;
the affair was taking an ugly turn for the Sorbonne. Just at that time an image of the
Virgin, at the corner of one of the streets, was mutilated. It was a fortunate incident
for the priests. "These are the fruits of the doctrines of Berquin," it was
exclaimed; "all is about to be overthrown – religion, the laws, the throne
itself – by this Lutheran conspiracy." War to the knife was demanded against the
iconoclasts: the people and the monarch were frightened; and the issue was that Berquin
was apprehended (March, 1529) and consigned to the Conciergerie.[11]
A somewhat remarkable occurrence furnished Berquin's enemies with unexpected
advantage against him in the prosecution. No sooner was he within the walls of his prison
than the thought of his books and papers flashed across his mind. He saw the use his
persecutors would make of them, and he sat down and wrote instantly a note to a friend
begging him to destroy them. He gave the note to a domestic, who hid it under his clothes
and departed.[12]
The man, who was not a little superstitious, trembled at the thought of the message
which he carried, but all went well till he came to the Pont du Change, where, his
superstition getting the better of his courage, he swooned and fell before the image of
"Our Lady." The passers-by gathered round him, and, unbuttoning his doublet that
he might breathe the more freely, found the letter underneath. It was opened and read.
"He is a heretic," said they: "Our Lady has done it. It is a miracle."
The note was given to one of the bystanders, at whose house the monk then preaching the
Lent sermons was that day to dine, who, perceiving its importance, carried it to Berquin's
judges.[13] His
books were straightway seized and examined by the twelve commissioners appointed to try
him. On the 16th April, 1529, the trial was finished, and at noon Berquin was brought into
court, and had his sentence read to him. He was condemned to make a public abjuration in
the following manner: – He was to walk bare-headed, with a lighted taper in his hand,
to the Place de Greve, and there he was to see his books burned; from the Place de Greve
he was to pass to the front of the Church of Notre Dame, and there he was to do penance
"to God and his glorious mother, the Virgin." After that his tongue, "that
instrument of unrighteousness," was to be pierced; and, lastly, he was to be taken
back to prison, and shut up for life within four walls of stone, and to have neither books
to read, nor pen and ink to write.[14] Berquin,
stunned by the atrocity of the sentence, at first remained silent, but recovering in a few
minutes his composure, said, "I appeal to the king." This was his way of saying,
I refuse to abjure.
Among his twelve judges was the celebrated Hellenist, Budaeus, the intimate friend of
Berquin, and a secret favourer of the new doctrines. Budaeus hastened after him to the
prison, his object being to persuade him to make a recantation, and thereby save his life.
In no other way he knew could Berquin escape, for already a second sentence stood drafted
by his judges, consigning him to the stake should he refuse to do public penance. Budaeus
threw himself at Berquin's feet, and implored him with tears not to throw away his life,
but to reserve himself for the better times that were awaiting the Reformation in France.
This was the side on which to attack such a man. But the prisoner was inflexible. Again
and again Budaeus returned to the Conciergerie, and each time he renewed his importunities
with greater earnestness. He painted the grand opportunities the future would bring, and
did not hesitate to say that Berquin would incur no small guilt should he sacrifice
himself.[15]
The strong man began to bow. "The power of the Holy Ghost was extinguished in
him for a moment," says one. He gave his consent to appear in the court of the Palace
of Justice, and ask pardon of God and the king. Budaeus, overjoyed, hastened back to tell
the Sorbonne that Berquin was ready to withdraw his appeal and make his recantation. How
fared it the while with Berquin in the prison? His peace had forsaken him that same hour.
He looked up to God, but the act which aforetime had ever brought joy and strength into
his heart filled him with terror. This darkness was his true prison, and not the stone
walls that enclosed him. Could the Sorbonne deliver him from that prison, and was this the
sort of life that he was reserving for the Reformation? Verily he would do great things
with a soul lettered by fear and bound down by a sense of guilt! No, he could not live
thus. He could die – die a hundred times, but to appear before the Sorbonne and to
say of the Gospel, "I renounce it," and of the Savior, "I know him
not," that he could not do.[16] And
so when Budseus returned, there was an air in the face of the prisoner which told its own
tale before Berquin had had time to speak. He had weighed the two – recantation and
the stake; and he had chosen the better part – though Budaeus hardly deemed it so
– the stake.
The king, who it was possible might interpose at the last moment and save Berquin, was not
indeed in Paris at this moment, but he was no farther away than at Blois. The Sorbonne
must despatch their victim before a pardon could arrive from Blots.
A week's delay was craved in the execution of the sentence. "Not a day," said
Beda.[17] But the prisoner has appealed to
the royal prerogative. "Quick," responded his persecutors, "and let him be
put to death." That same day, April 22nd, 1529, at noon, was Berquin led forth to
die. The ominous news had already circulated through Paris, from every street came a
stream of spectators, and a dense crowd gathered and surged round the prison, waiting to
see Berquin led to execution. The clock struck the hour: the gates of the Conciergerie
were flung open with a crash, and the melancholy procession was seen to issue forth.
The passage of that procession through the streets was watched with looks of pity on the
part of some, of wonder and astonishment on the part of others. It amazed not a few to
find that the chief actor in that dismal tragedy was one of the first nobles of France.
But the most radiant face in all that great concourse of men was that of Berquin himself.
He was going – we had almost said to the stake, but of the stake he thought not
– he was going to the palace of the sky; and what though a wretched tumbril was
bearing him on his way? a better chariot – whose brightness it would have blinded the
beholder to look upon – stood waiting to carry him upward as soon as he had passed
through the fire; and what mattered it if those who knew not what he was going to, hooted
or pitied him as he passed along? how soon would the look of pity and the shout of
derision be forgotten in the presence of the "Blessed!"
The cart in which Berquin was placed moved forward at a slow pace. The crowd was great,
and the streets of the Paris of those days were narrow, but the rate of progress enabled
the multitude all the better to observe the way in which the martyr bore himself. As he
rode along, escorted by a band of 600 bowmen, the spectators said one to another, as they
marked the serenity of his looks and the triumph of his air, "He is like one who sits
in a temple and meditates on holy things."[18]
"And see," said they, "how bravely he is arrayed! He is liker one
who is going to a bridal banquet than one who is going to be burned." And, indeed, it
was so. Berquin had that morning dressed himself in his finest clothes. He wore no weeds;
sign of mourning or token of woe would have belied him, as if he bewailed his hard lot,
and grieved that his life should be given in the cause of the Gospel. He had attired
himself in pleasant and even gay apparel. A citizen of Paris, who wrote a journal of these
events, and who probably saw the martyr as he passed through the streets, tells us that
"he wore a cloak of velvet, a doublet of satin and damask, and golden hose."[19] This was goodly raiment for the
fire. "But am I not," said Berquin, "to be this day presented at court
– not that of Francis, but that of the Monarch of the Universe?"
Arrived at the Place de Greve, he alighted from the vehicle and stood beside the stake. He
now essayed to speak a few words to the vast assembly which he found gathered at the place
of execution. But the monks who stood near, dreading the effect on the multitude of what
he might say, gave the signal to their creatures, and instantly the shout of voices, and
the clash of arms, drowned the accents of the martyr. "Thus," says Felice,
"the Sorbonne of 1529 set the populace of 1793 the base example of stifling on the
scaffold the sacred words of the dying."[20]
What though the roll of drums drowned the last words of Berquin? It was his DEATH
that must speak. And it did speak: it spoke to all France; and this, the most eloquent and
powerful of all testimonies, no clamours could stifle.
The fire had done its work, and where a few minutes before stood the noble form of Berquin
there was now only a heap of ashes. In that heap lay entombed the Reformation in France
– so did both friend and foe deem. The Sorbonnists were overjoyed: the Protestants
were bowed down under a weight of sorrow. There was no sufficient reason for the
exultation of the one or the dejection of the other. Berquin's stake was to be, in some
good measure, to France what Ridley's was to England – a candle which, by God's
grace, would not be put out, but would shine through all that realm.[21]
CHAPTER 10 Back to Top
CALVIN AT PARIS, AND FRANCIS NEGOTIATING
WITH GERMANY AND ENGLAND.
The Death of the Martyr not the Death of the Cause – Calvin at Noyon – Preaches
at Pont l'Eveque – His Audience – How they take his Sermon – An Experiment
– Its Lessen – Calvin goes to Paris – Paris a Focus of Literary Light
– The Students at the University – Their Debates – Calvin to Polemics adds
Piety – He Evangelises in Paris – Powers of the World – Spain and France
kept Divided – How and Why – The Schmalkald League holds the Balance of Power
– Francis I. approaches the German Protestants – Failure of the Negotiation
– Francis turns to Henry VIII. – Interview between Francis and Henry at Boulogne
– Fetes – League between the Kings of France and England – Francis's Great
Error
BERQUIN, the peer of France, and, greater still, the humble
Christian and zealous evangelist, was no more. Many thought they saw in him that
assemblage of intellectual gifts and evangelical virtues which fitted him for being the
Reformer of his native land. However, it was not so to be. His light had shone brightly
but, alas! briefly; it was now extinguished. Of Berquin there remained only a heap of
ashes, over which the friends of Protestantism mourned, while its enemies exulted. But it
was the ashes of Berquin merely, not of his cause, that lay around the stake. When the
martyr went up in the chariot which, unseen by the crowd, waited to carry him to the sky,
his mantle fell on one who was standing near, and who may be said to have seen him as he
ascended. From the burning pile in the Place de Greve, the young evangelist of Bourges,
whose name, destined to fill Christendom in years to come, was then all but unknown, went
forth, endowed with a double portion of Berquin's spirit, to take up the work of him who
had just fallen, and to spread throughout France and the world that truth which lived when
Berquin died.
How Calvin came to be in Paris at this moment we have already explained. Tidings that his
father had died suddenly called him to Noyon. It cost him doubtless a wrench to sever
himself from the work of the Gospel which he was preaching, not in vain, in the capital of
Berry and the neighboring towns; still, he did not delay, but set out at once, taking
Paris in his way. The journey from Paris to Noyon was performed, we cannot but think, in
great weariness of heart. Behind him was the stake of Berquin, in whose ashes so many
hopes lay buried; before him was the home of his childhood, where no father now waited to
welcome him; while all round, in the horizon of France, the clouds were rolling up, and
giving but too certain augury that the Reformation was not to have so prosperous a career
in his native land as, happily, at that hour it was pursuing in the towns of Germany and
amid the hills of the Swiss. But God, he tells us, "comforted him by his Word."
Calvin had quitted Noyon a mere lad; he returns to it on the verge of manhood (1529),
bringing back to it the same pale face and burning eye which had marked him as a boy.
Within, what a mighty change! but that change his townsmen saw not, nor did even he
himself suspect its extent; for as yet he had not a thought of leaving the communion of
Rome. He would cleanse and rebuttress the old fabric, by proclaiming the truth within it.
But an experiment which he made on a small scale at Noyon helped doubtless to show him
that the tottering structure would but fall in pieces in his hands should he attempt
restoration merely.
The fame of the young scholar had reached even these northern parts of France, and the
friends and companions of his youth wanted to hear him preach. If a half-suspicion of
heresy had reached their ears along with the rumor of his great attainments, it only
whetted their eagerness to hear him.
The Church of Pont l'Eveque, where his ancestors had lived, was opened to him. When the
day came, quite a crowd, made up of his own and his father's acquaintances, and people
from the neighboring towns, filled the church, all eager to see and hear the cooper's
grandson. Calvin expounded to them the Scriptures.[1] The old doctrine was new under that roof and to those ears. The
different feelings awakened by the sermon in different minds could be plainly read on the
faces clustered so thickly around the pulpit. Some beamed with delight as do those of
thirsty men when they drink and are refreshed. This select number embraced the leading men
of the district, among whom were Nicholas Picot. On that day he tasted the true bread, and
never again turned to the husks of Rome. But the faces of the most part expressed either
indifference or anger. Instead of a salvation from sin, they much preferred what the
"Church" offered, a salvation in sin. And as regarded the priestly portion of
the audience, they divined but too surely to what the preacher's doctrine tended, the
overthrow namely of the "Church's" authority, and the utter drying-up of her
revenues.
Many a rich abbacy and broad acre, as well as ghostly assumption, would have to be
renounced if that doctrine should be embraced. Noyon had given a Reformer to Christendom,
but she refused to accept him for herself. The congregation at Pont l'Eveque was a fair
specimen of the universal Roman community, and the result of the sermon must have gone far
to convince the preacher that the first effect of the publication of the truth within the
pale of the "Church" would be, not the re-edification, but the demolition of the
old fabric, and that his ultimate aim must point to the rearing of a new edifice.
After a two months' stay Calvin quitted his native place. Noyon continued to watch the
career of her great citizen, but not with pride. In after-days, when Rome was trembling at
his name, and Protestant lands were pronouncing it with reverence, Noyon held it the
greatest blot upon her escutcheon that she had the misfortune to have given birth to him
who bore that name. Calvin had to choose anew his field of labor, and he at once decided
in favor of Paris. Thither accordingly he directed his steps.
France in those days had many capitals, but Paris took precedence of them all. Besides
being the seat of the court, and of the Sorbonne, and the center of influences which
sooner or later made themselves felt to the extremities of the country, Paris had just
become a great focus of literary light. Francis I., while snubbing the monks on the one
hand, and repelling the Protestants on the other, kneeled before the Renaissance, which
was in his eye the germ of all civilization and greatness. He knew the splendor it had
lent to the house of Medici, and he aspired to invest his court, his kingdom, and himself
with the same glory. Accordingly he invited a number of great scholars to his capital:
Budaeus was already there; and now followed Danes and Vatable, who were skilled, the
former in Greek and the latter in Hebrew,[2] the recovery of which formed by far the most precious of all the
fruits of the Renaissance. A false faith would have shunned such a spot: it was the very
fact of the light being there that made Calvin hasten to Paris with the Gospel.
A great fermentation, at that moment, existed among the students at the university. Their
study of the original tongues of the Bible had led them, in many instances, to the Bible
itself. Its simplicity and sublimity had charms for many who did not much relish its
holiness: and they drew from it an illumination of the intellect, even when they failed to
obtain from it a renovation of the heart. A little proud it may be of their skill in the
new learning, and not unwilling to display their polemical tact, they were ready for
battle with the champions of the old orthodoxy wherever they met them, whether in the
courts of the university or on the street. In fact, the capital was then ringing with a
warfare, partly literary, partly theological; and Calvin found he had done well, instead
of returning to Bourges and gathering up the broken thread of his labors, in coming to a
spot where the fields seemed rapidly ripening unto harvest.
And, indeed, in one prime quality, at all times essential to work like his, but never more
so than at the birth of Protestantism, Calvin excelled all others. In the beautiful union
of intellect and devotion which characterised him he stood alone. He was as skillful a
controversialist as any of the noisy polemics who were waging daily battle on the streets,
but he was something higher. He fed his intellect by daily prayer and daily perusal of the
Scriptures, and he was as devoted an evangelist as he was a skillful debater. He was even
more anxious to sow the seed of the Kingdom in the homes of the citizens of Paris, than he
was to win victories over the doctors of the Sorbonne. We see him passing along on the
shady side of the street. He drops in at a door. He emerges after awhile, passes onward,
enters another dwelling, where he makes another short stay, and thus he goes on, his
unobtrusiveness his shield, for no one follows his steps or suspects his errand. While
others are simply silencing opponents, Calvin is enlightening minds, and leaving traces in
the hearts of men that are imperishable. In this we behold the beginnings of a great work
– a work that is to endure and fill the earth, when all the achievements of
diplomacy, all the trophies of the battle-field, and all the honors of the school shall
have passed away and been forgotten.
Leaving the evangelist going his rounds in the streets and lanes of Paris, let us return
for a little to the public stage of the world, and note the doings of those who as the
possessors of thrones, or the leaders of armies, think that they are the masters of
mankind, and can mould at will the destinies of the world. They can plant or they can
pluck up the Reformation – so they believe. And true it is, emperors and warriors and
priests have a part assigned them which they are to do in this great work. The priests by
their scandals shook the hierarchy: the kings by their ambitions and passions pulled down
the Empire; thus, without the world owing thanks to either Pope or Kaiser, room was
prepared for a Kingdom that cannot be removed. The greatest monarchy of the day was Spain,
which had shot up into portentous growth just as the new times were about to appear. The
union of some, dozen of kingdoms under its scepter had given it measureless territory; the
discovery of America had endowed it with exhaustless wealth, and its success; in the field
had crowned its standards with the prestige of invincible power. At the head of this vast
Empire was a prince of equal sagacity and ambition, and who was by turns the ally and the
enemy of the Pope, yet ever the steady champion of the Papacy, with which he believed the
union of his Empire and the stability of his power were bound up. Charles V., first and
chiefly, the Protestants had cause to dread.
But a counterpoise had been provided. France, which was not very much less powerful than
Spain, was made to weigh upon the arm of Charles, in order to deaden the blow should he
strike at Protestantism. He did wish to strike at Protestantism, and sought craftily to
persuade Francis to hold back the while. In the spring of 1531 he sent his ambassador
Noircarmes to poison the ear of the King of France. Do you know what Lutheranism is? said
Noircarmes to Francis one day. It means, concisely, three things, he continued – the
first is the destruction of the family, the second is the destruction of property, and the
third is the destruction of the monarchy. Espouse this cause, said the Spanish ambassador,
in effect, and you "let in the deluge."[3] If Noircarmes had substituted "Communism" for
"Lutheranism," he might have been regarded as foretelling what France in these
latter days has verified.
And now we begin to see the good fruits reaped by Christendom from the disastrous battle
of Pavia. It came just in time to counteract the machinations of Charles with the French
monarch. The defeat of Francis on that field, and the dreary imprisonment in Madrid that
followed it, planted rivalries and dislikes between the two powerful crowns of France and
Spain, which kept apart two forces that if united would have crushed the Reformation.
Inspired by hatred and dread of the Emperor Charles, not only had the insinuations of his
ambassador the less power with Francis, but he cast his eyes around if haply he might
discover allies by whose help he might be able to withstand his powerful rival on the
other side of the Pyrenees. Francis resolved on making advances to the Protestant princes
of Germany. He was all the more strengthened in this design by the circumstance that these
princes, who saw a tempest gathering, had just formed themselves into a league of defense.
In March, 1531, the representatives of the Protestant States met at Schmalkald, in the
Electorate of Hesse, and, as we have elsewhere related, nine princes and eleven cities
entered into an alliance for six years "to resist all who should try to constrain
them to forsake the Word of God and the truth of Christ."
The smallest of all the political parties in Christendom, the position of the
Schmalkalders gave them an influence far beyond their numbers; they stood between the two
mighty States of France and Spain. The balance of power was in their hands, and, so far at
least, they could play off the crowns of Spain and France against one another.
Accordingly next year Francis sent an ambassador – it was his second attempt –
to negotiate an alliance with them. His first ambassador was a fool,[4] his second was a wise man, Du
Bellay,[5] brother
to the Archbishop of Paris, than whom there was no more accomplished man in all France.
Du Bellay did what diplomatists only sometimes do, brought heart as well as head to his
mission, for he wished nothing so much as to see his master and his kingdom of France cast
off the Pope, and displaying their colors alongside those of Protestant Germany, sail away
on the rising tide of Protestantism. Du Bellay told the princes that he had his master's
express command to offer them his assistance in their great enterprise, and was empowered
"to arrange with them about the share of the war expenses which his majesty was ready
to pay." This latter proposal revealed the cloven foot. What was uppermost in the
mind of the King of France was to avenge the defeat at Pavia; hence his eagerness for war.
The League of Schmalkald bound the German princes to stand on the defensive only; they
were not to strike unless Charles or some other should first strike at them. Luther raised
his powerful voice against the proposed alliance. He hated political entanglements,
mistrusted Francis, had a just horror of spilling blood, and he protested with all his
might that the Protestants must rest the triumph of their cause on spiritual and not on
carnal weapons; that the Gospel was not to be advanced by battles, and that the Almighty
did not need that the princes of earth should vote him succors in order to the effectual
completion of his all-wise and Divine plan. The issue was that the stipulation which Du
Bellay carried back to Paris could not serve the purposes of his master.
Repulsed on the side of Germany, the King of France turned now to England. This was a
quarter in which he was more likely to succeed. Here he had but one man to deal with,
Henry VIII. To Henry, Protestantism was a policy merely, not a faith. He had been crossed
in his matrimonial projects by the Pope, and so had his special quarrel with Clement VII.,
as Francis had his with Charles V. The French king sent a messenger across the Channel to
feel the pulse of his "good brother" of England, and the result was that an
interview was arranged between the two sovereigns – Henry crossing the sea with a
brilliant retinue, and Francis coming to meet him with a train not less courtly. Taking up
their quarters at the Abbot's Palace at Boulogne (October, 1532), the two monarchs
unbosomed to each other their grievances and displeasures, and concerted together a joint
plan for humiliating those against whom they bore a common grudge. While Francis and Henry
were closeted for hours on end, amusement was found for their courtiers. Balls,
masquerades, and other pastimes common in that age occupied that gay assemblage, and
helped to conceal the real business which was proceeding all the while in the royal
closet. That business eventually found issue in a league between the Kings of France and
England, in which they engaged to raise an army of 50,000 men, ostensibly to attack the
Turk; but in reality to begin a campaign against the emperor and the Pope.[6] Now, thought Francis, I shall
wipe out the disgrace of Pavia; and I, said Henry, shall chastise the insolence of
Clement. But both were doomed to disappointment. This league which looked so big, and
promised so much, came to nothing. Had this great army been assembled it would have shed
much blood, but it would have enlightened no consciences, nor won any victories for truth.
It might have humbled the Pope, it would have left the Papacy as strong as ever.
While Francis I. was looking so anxiously around him for allies, and deeming it a point of
wisdom to lean on the monarch who could bring the largest army into the field, there was
one power, the strength of which he missed seeing. That power had neither fleets nor
armies at its service, and so Francis shunned rather than courted its alliance. It was
fated, in his opinion, to go to the abyss, and should he be so imprudent as to link his
cause With it, it would drag him down into the same destruction with itself. This was a
natural but, for Francis, a tremendous mistake. The invisible forces are ever the
strongest, and these were all on the side of Protestantism. But it is the eye of faith
only that can see these. Francis looked with the eye of sense and could see nothing; and,
therefore, stood aloof from a cause which, as it seemed to him, had so few friends, and so
many and so powerful enemies. Francis and France lost more than Protestantism did.
CHAPTER 11 Back to Top
THE GOSPEL PREACHED IN PARIS – A
MARTYR.
Margaret of Navarre – Her Hopes – Resolves to have the Gospel Preached in France
– The City Churches not to be had – Opens a Private Chapel in the Louvre –
A Large and Brilliant Assembly convenes – The Preachers – Paris Penitent and
Reforming – Agitation in the Sorbonne – The Sorbonnists apply to the King –
The Monks occupy the Pulpits – They Threaten the King – Beda Banished –
Excitement in Paris – The Populace Remain with Rome – The Crisis of France
– The Dominican Friar, Laurent de la Croix – His Conversion – Preaches in
France – Apprehended and conducted to Paris – His Torture – His
Condemnation – His Behaviour at the Stake – France makes her Choice: she will
Abide with Rome.
LEAVING princes to intrigue for their own ends, under cover
of advancing religion, let us turn to the work itself, and mark how it advances by means
of instrumentalities far different from those which kings know to employ. This brings
before us, once more, a lady illustrious for her rank, and not less illustrious for her
piety – Margaret, the sister of the king, and now Queen of Navarre. She saw her
brother holding out his hand to the Protestants of Germany, and the King of England, and
permitted herself to believe that the hour had at last come when Francis and his kingdom
would place themselves on the path of the Reform, and that in the martyrdom of Berquin,
which had filled her soul with so profound a sorrow, she had seen the last blood that
would ever be sprit on the soil of France, and the last stake that would ever blaze in the
Place de Greve for the cause of the Gospel. Full of these hopes, her zeal and courage grew
stronger every day.
Reflecting that she stood near the throne, that thousands in all parts of Reformed
Christendom looked to her to stand between the oppressor and his victim, and that it
became her to avert, as far as was in her power, the guilt of innocent blood from her
house and the throne of her brother, she girded herself for the part which it became her
to act. The Gospel, said this princess, shall be preached in France, in the very capital,
nay, in the very bosom of the Roman Catholic Church. The moment was opportune. The
Carnival of 1533 was just ended. Balls and banquets had for weeks kept the court in a
whirl and Paris in continual excitement, and, wearied with this saturnalia, Francis had
gone to Picardy for repose. Margaret thus was mistress of the situation. She summoned
Roussel to her presence, and told him that he must proclaim the "great tidings"
to the population of Paris from its pulpits. The timid evangelist shook like aspen when
this command was laid upon him. He remonstrated: he painted the immense danger: he
acknowledged that it was right that the Gospel should be preached, but he was not the man;
let Margaret find some more intrepid evangelist. The queen, however, persisted. She issued
her orders that the churches of Paris should be opened to Roussel. But she had reckoned
without her host. The Sorbonne lifted its haughty head and commanded that the doors of the
churches should be kept closed. The queen and the Sorbonne were now in conflict, but the
latter carried the day. These Sorbonnists could be compared only to some of old, who
professed to be the door-keepers of the kingdom of heaven, but would neither go in
themselves, nor permit those that would to enter.
Margaret now bethought her of an expedient which enabled her to turn the flank of the
doctors. She was resolved to have the Gospel preached in the capital of France, and to
have it preached now; it might be the turning-point of its destiny, and surely it was a
likelier way to establish the Reform than that of diplomatists, who were seeking to do so
by leagues and battles, if the Sorbonnists were masters in the city, Margaret was mistress
in the palace. She accordingly extemporised a chapel in the Louvre, and told Roussel that
he must preach in it. This was a less formidable task than holding forth in the city
pulpits. The queen publicly announced that each day at a certain hour a sermon would be
preached under the royal roof, and that all would be welcome from the peer downwards. The
Parisians opened their eyes in wonder. Here was something till now unheard of – the
king's palace turned into a Lutheran conventicle! When the hour came a crowd of all ranks
was seen streaming in at the gates of the Louvre, climbing its staircase, and pressing on
through the antechambers to the saloon, where, around Roussel, sat the King and Queen of
Navarre, and many of the grandees of France. The preacher offered a short prayer, and then
read a portion of Scripture, which he expounded with clearness and great impressiveness.
The result bore testimony to the wisdom of Roussel and the power of the truth. A direct
assault on the Papacy would but have excited the combative faculties of his hearers, the
exposition of the truth awakened their consciences.
Every day saw a greater crowd gathering in the chapel. The saloon could no longer contain
the numbers that came, and antechambers and corridors had to be thrown open to give
enlarged space to the multitude. The assembly was as brilliant as it was numerous. Nobles,
lawyers, men of letters, and wealthy merchants were mingled in the stream of bourgeoisie
and artisans that each day, at the appointed hour, flowed in at the royal gates, and
devoutly listened under the gorgeous roof of the Louvre to preaching so unwonted. Verily,
he would have been a despondent man who, at that hour, would have doubted the triumph of
the good cause in France.
Margaret, emboldened by the success which had attended her experiment, returned to her
first idea, which was to get possession of the churches, turn out the monks, and for their
ribald harangues substitute the pure Gospel. She wrote to her brother, who was still
absent, and perhaps not ill-pleased to be so, making request to have the churches placed
at her disposal. Francis granted her wish to the extent of permitting her the use of two
of the city churches. He was willing to do Protestantism this service, being shrewd enough
to see that his negotiations with English and German Protestants would speed none the
worse, and that it might equally serve his purpose to terrify the Pope by the possible
instant defection of France from its "obedience" to the "Holy See."
One of the churches was situated in the quarter of St. Denis, and Margaret sent the
Augustine monk Courault to occupy it, around whom there daily assembled a large and deeply
impressed congregation gathered from the district. Berthaud, also an Augustine, occupied
the pulpit of the other church put by Francis at Margaret's disposal.[1] A fountain of living water had
the Queen of Navarre opened in this high place; inexpressible delight filled her soul as
she thought that soon this refreshing stream would overflow all France, and convert the
parched and weary land into a very garden. It was the season of Easter, and never had Lent
like this been kept in Paris. The city, which so lately had rung from one end to the other
with the wild joy and guilty mirth of the Carnival, was now not only penitent, but
evangelical. "The churches were filled," says the historian Crespin, "not
with formal auditors, but with men who received the glad tidings with great joy.
Drunkards had become sober, the idle industrious, the disorderly peaceful, and libertines
had grown chaste." Three centuries and more have rolled over Paris since then. Often,
in the course of that time, has that city been moved, excited, stricken, but never in such
sort as now. The same Spirit which, in the days of Noah's preaching, strove with the
antediluvians, then shut up, as in prison, under the doom of the coming deluge, unless
they repented, was manifestly striving, at this hour, with the men of Paris and of France,
shut up, as in a prison, under a sentence which doomed them, unless they escaped by the
door that Protestantism opened to them, to sink beneath the fiery billows of war and
revolution.
What, meanwhile, were the doctors of the Sorbonne about? Were they standing by with shut
mouths and folded arms, quietly looking on, when, as it must have seemed to them, the bark
of Peter was drifting to destruction? Did they slumber on their watch-tower, not caring
that France was becoming Lutheran? Far from it. They gave a few days to the hearing of the
report of their spies, and then they raised the alarm. A flood of heresy, like the flood
of waters that drowned the old world, was breaking in on France. They must stop it; but
with what? The stake. "Let us burn Roussel," said the fiery Beda, "as we
burned Berquin."[2] The
king was applied to for permission; for powerful as was the Sorbonne, it hardly dared drag
the preacher from the Queen of Navarre's side without a warrant from Francis. The king
would interfere neither for nor against.
They applied to the chancellor. The chancellor referred them to the archbishop, Du Bellay.
He too refused to move. There remained a fourth party to whom they now resolved to carry
their appeal the populace. If they could carry the population of Paris with them they
should yet be able to save Rome. With this object an agitation was commenced, in which
every priest and monk had to bear his part. They sent their preachers into the pulpits.
Shouting and gesticulating these men awoke, now the anger, now the horror of their
fanatical hearers, by the odious epithets and terrible denunciations which they hurled
against Lutheranism. They poured a host of mendicants into the houses of the citizens.
These, as instructed beforehand, while they filled their wallets, dropped seditious hints
that "the Pope was above the king," adding that if matters went on as they were
doing the crown would not long adorn the head of Francis.
Still further to move the people against the queen's preachers, processions were organized
in the streets. For nine days a crowd of penitents, with sackcloth on their loins and
ashes on their heads, were seen prostrate around the statue of St. James, loudly imploring
the good saint to stretch out his staff, and therewith smite to the dust the hydra that
was lifting up its abhorred head in France.
Nor did the doctors of the Sorbonne agitate in vain. The excitable populace were catching
fire. Fanatical crowds, uttering revolutionary cries, paraded the streets, and the Queen
of Navarre and her Protestant coadjutors, seeing the matter growing serious, sent to tell
the king the state of the capital.
The issue, in the first instance, was a heavy blow to the agitators. The king's pride had
been touched by the attack which the Romanists had made on the prerogative, and he ordered
that Beda, and the more inflammatory spirits who followed him, should be sent into
banishment.[3]
It was a trial of strength, not so much between Evangelism and Romanism as between
the court and the university, and the Sorbonne had to bow its proud head. But the
departure of Beda did not extinguish the agitation; the fire he had kindled continued to
burn after he was gone. Not in a day were the ignorance and fanaticism, which had been
ages a-growing, to be extirpated: fiery placards were posted on the houses; ribald ballads
were sung in the streets.
"To the stake! to the stake! the fire is their home; As God hath commanded, let
justice be done,"
was the refrain of one of these unpolished but cruel productions. Disputations, plots, and
rumors kept the city in a perpetual ferment. The Sorbonnists held daily councils; leaving
no stone unturned; they worked upon the minds of the leading members of the Parliament of
Paris, and by dint of persistency and union, they managed to rally to their standard all
the ignorant, the fanatical, and the selfish – that is, the bulk of the population of
the capital. The Protestant sermons were confirmed for some time; many conversions took
place, but the masses remained on the side of Rome.
This was the CRISIS of France – the day of its special visitation. More easily than
ever before or since might France have freed its soul from the yoke of Rome, and secured
for all coming time the glorious heritage of Protestant truth and liberty. This was, in
fact, its second day of visitation.
The first had occurred under Lefevre and Farel. That day had passed, and the golden
opportunity that came with it had been lost. A second now returned, for there in the midst
of Paris were the feet of them that "publish peace," and that preach "the
opening of the prison to them that are bound." What all auspicious and blessed
achievement if Margaret had been able to win the population of Paris to the Gospel! Paris
won, France would have followed. It needed but this to crown its many happy qualities, and
make France one of the most delightful lands on earth – a land full of all
terrestrial good things; ennobled, moreover, by genius, and great in art as in arms. But
Paris was deaf as adder to the voice of the charmer, and from that hour the destiny of
France was changed. A future of countless blessings was fatally transformed into a future
of countless woes. We behold woe on woe rising with the rising centuries, we had almost
said with the rising years. If for a moment its sun looks forth, lo! there comes another
tempest from the abyss, black as night, and bearing on its wings the fiery shower to
scorch the miserable land. The St. Bartholomew massacre and civil wars of the sixteenth
century, the dragonnades of the seventeenth, the revolution of the eighteenth, and the
communism of the nineteenth are but the more notable outbursts of that revolving storm
which for 300 years has darkened the heavens and devastated the land of France.
Paris had made its choice. And as in old time when men joined hands and entered into
covenant they ratified the transaction by sacrifice, Paris sealed its engagement to abide
by the Pope in the blood of a disciple of the Gospel. Had the Sorbonne been more
completely master of the situation, Roussel would have been selected as the sacrifice; but
he was too powerfully protected to permit the priests venturing on burning him, and a
humbler victim had to be found. A Dominican friar, known by the name of Laurent de la
Croix, had come to the knowledge of the Gospel in Paris.
Straightway he threw off his cowl and cloak and monkish name, and fled to Geneva, where
Farel received him, and more perfectly instructed him in the Reformed doctrines. To great
natural eloquence he now added a clear knowledge and a burning zeal. Silent he could not
remain, and Switzerland was the first scene of his evangelizing efforts. But the condition
of poor France began to lie heavy on his heart, and though he well knew the perils he must
brave, he could not restrain his yearnings to return and preach to his countrymen that
Savior so dear to himself. Crossing the frontier, and taking the name of Alexander, he
made his way to Lyons. Already Protestantism had its disciples in the city of Peter Waldo,
and these gave a warm welcome to the evangelist. He began to preach, and his power to move
the hearts of men was marvelous. In Lyons, the scene of Irenaeus' ministry, and the seat
of a Church whose martyrs were amongst the most renowned of the primitive age, it seemed
as if the Gospel, which here had lain a thousand years in its sepulcher, were rising from
the dead. Alexander preached every day, this hour in one quarter of the city and the next
in the opposite.[4] It
began to be manifest that some mysterious influence was acting on the population. The
agents of the priests were employed to scent it out; but it seemed as if the preacher,
whoever he was, to his other qualities added that of invisibility. His pursuers, in every
case, arrived to find the sermon ended, and the preacher gone, they knew not whither. This
success in baffling pursuit made his friends in time less careful. Alexander was
apprehended. Escorted by bowmen, and loaded with chains, he was sent to Paris.
The guard soon saw that the prisoner they had in charge was like no other that had ever
before been committed to their keeping. Before Paris was reached, the captain of the
company, as well as several of its members, had, as the result of their prisoner's
conversation with them, become converts to the Gospel. As he pursued his journey in bonds,
Alexander preached at the inns and villages where they halted for the night. At every
stage of the way he left behind him trophies of the Protestant faith.
The prisoner was comforted by the thought that his Master had turned the road to the stake
into a missionary progress, and if in a few days he should breathe his last amid the
flames, others would rise from his ashes to confess the truth when he could no longer
preach it.
Arrived in Paris, he was brought before the Parliament. The prisoner meekly yet
courageously confessed the Reformed faith. He was first cruelly tortured. Putting his
limbs in the boot, the executioners drove in the wedges with such blows that his left leg
was crushed. Alexander groaned aloud. "O God," he exclaimed, says Crespin,
"there is neither pity nor mercy in these men! Oh, that I may find both in
thee!" "Another blow," said the head executioner. The martyr seeing Budaeus
among the assessors, and turning on him a look of supplication, said, "Is there no
Gamaliel here to moderate the cruelty they are practicing on me?"[5]
Budaeus, great in the schools, but irresolute in the matters of the Gospel, fixing
an eye of pity on Alexander, said, "It is enough: his torture is too much:
forbear." His words took effect. "The executioners," says Crespin,
"lifted up the martyr, and carried him to his dungeon, a cripple."[6] He was condemned to be burned
alive. In the hope of daunting him, his sentence, contrary to the then usual practice, was
pronounced in his presence; but they who watched his face, instead of fear, saw a gleam of
joy shoot, at the instant, athwart it. He was next made to undergo the ceremony of
degradation. They shaved his crown, scraped his fingertips, and tore off his robe.
"If you speak a word," said they, "we will cut out your tongue;" for
about this time, according to the historian Crespin, this horrible barbarity began to be
practiced upon the confessors of the truth. Last of all they brought forth the rob de fol.
When Alexander saw himself about to be arrayed in this dress, he could not, says Crespin,
refrain from speaking. "O God," said he, "is there any higher honor than to
receive the livery which thy Son received in the house of Herod?"
The martyr was now attired for the fire. Unable to walk to the place of execution, for one
of his legs had been sorely mangled in the boot, they provided a cart, one usually
employed to convey away rubbish, and placed the martyr in it. As he passed along from the
Conciergerie to the Place Maubert he managed to stand up, and resting his hands on the
sides of the cart and leaning over, he preached to the crowds that thronged the streets,
commending to them the Savior for whom he was about to die, and exhorting them to flee
from the wrath to come. The smile which his sentence had kindled on his face had not yet
gone off it; nay, it appeared to glow and brighten the nearer he drew to the stake.
"He is going to be burned," said the onlookers, "and yet no one seems so,
happy as he."
Being come to the place of execution they lifted him out of the cart, placed him against
the stake, and bound him to it with chains. He begged, before they should kindle the pile,
that he might be permitted to say a few more last words to the people. Leave was given,
and breaking into an ecstasy he again extolled that Savior for whom he was now to lay down
his life, and again commended him to those around. The executioners, as they waited to do
their office, gazed with mingled wonder and fear on this strange criminal. The spectators,
among whom was a goodly number of monks, said, "Surely there is nothing worthy of
death in this man," and smiting on their breasts, and bewailing his fate, with
plenteous tears, exclaimed, " If this man is not saved, who of the sons of men can be
so?"[7] Well
might the martyr, as he saw them weeping, have said, "Weep not for me, but weep for
yourselves." A few sharp pangs, and to him would come joy for ever; but for them,
alas! and for their children, the cry of the blood of the martyr, and of thousands more
yet to be slain, was to be answered in a future dark with woes.
Now that we find ourselves 300 years from these events, and can look back on all that has
come and gone in Paris since, we can clearly see that the year 1533 was one of the grand
turning-points in the history of France. Between the stake of Berquin and the stake of
Alexander, there were three full years during which the winds of persecution were holden.
During at least two of these years the Gospel was freely and faithfully preached in the
capital; an influence from on High was plainly at work amongst the people. Five thousand
men and women daily passed in at the gates of the Louvre to listen to Roussel; and
numerous churches throughout the city were opened and filled with crowds that seemed to
thirst for the Water of Life. Many "felt the powers of the world to come." In
these events, Providence put it distinctly to the inhabitants of Paris, "Choose ye
this day whom ye shall serve. Will ye abide by the Papacy, or will ye cast in your lot
with the Reformation?" and the men of Paris as distinctly replied, when the period of
probation had come to an end, "We will abide by the Pope." The choice of Paris
was the choice of France. Scarcely were the flames of Alexander's pile extinguished, when
the sky of that country, which was kindling apace, as the friends of truth fondly thought,
with the glories of the opening day, because suddenly overcast, and clouds of threatening
blackness began to gather. In the spring of 1534 the churches of Paris were closed, the
sermons were suppressed, 300 Lutherans were swept off to prison, and soon thereafter the
burnings were resumed. But the ominous circumstance was that the persecutor was backed by
the populace. Queen Margaret's attempt to win over the population of the capital to the
Gospel had proved a failure, and the consequence was that the Sorbonne, with the help of
the popular suffrage, again set up the stake, and from that day to this the masses in
France have been on the side of Rome.
CHAPTER 12 Back to Top
CALVIN'S FLIGHT FROM PARIS.
Out of Paris comes the Reformer – The Contrasts of History – Calvin's Interview
with the Queen of Navarre – Nicholas Cop, Rector of the Sorbonne – An Inaugural
Discourse – Calvin Writes and Cop Delivers it – The Gospel in Disguise –
Rage of the Sorbonne – Cop flies to Basle – The Officers on their way to Arrest
Calvin – Calvin is let down by the Window – Escapes from Paris disguised as a
Vine-Dresser – Arrives in Angouleme – Received at the Mansion of Du Tillet
– Here projects the Institutes – Interview with Lefevre – Lefevre's
Prediction.
PEPIN of France was the first of the Gothic princes to appear
before the throne of St. Peter, and lay his kingdom at the feet of the Pope. As a reward
for this act of submission, the "Holy Father" bestowed upon him the proud title
– for so have the Kings of France accounted it – of "Eldest Son of the
Church." Throughout the thirteen centuries since, and amid much vicissitude of
fortune, France has striven to justify the distinction she bears by being the firmest
pillar of the Papal See. But, as D'Aubigne has observed, if Paris gave Pepin to the
Popedom, it is not less true that Paris gave Calvin to the Reformation. This is the fact,
although Calvin was not born in Paris. The little Noyon in Picardy had this honor, or
disgrace as it accounted it.[1] But
if Noyon was the scene of Calvin's first birth, Paris was the scene of his second birth,
and it was the latter that made him a Reformer. In estimating the influence of the two
men, the pen of Calvin may well be thrown into the scale against the sword of Pepin.
As the cradle of Moses was placed by the side of the throne of Pharaoh, the Church's great
oppressor, so the cradle of this second Moses was placed by the side of the chair of
Pepin, the "Eldest; Son of the Church," and the first of those vassal kings who
stood round the Papal throne; and from the court of France, as Moses from the court of
Egypt, Calvin went forth to rend the fetters of his brethren, and ring the knell of their
oppressor's power. The contrasts and resemblances of history are instructive as well as
striking. They shed a beautiful light upon the Providence of God. They show us that the
Great Ruler has fixed a time and a place for every event and for every man; that he sets
the good over against the evil, maintaining a nice and equitable poise among events, and
that while the laws of his working are eternal, the results are inexpressibly varied.
We have seen Calvin return to Paris in 1529. He was present in that city during those four
eventful years when the novel and stirring scenes we have narrated were taking place. How
was he occupied? He felt that to him the day of labor had not yet fully arrived; he must
prepare against its approach by reading, by study, and by prayer. In the noisy combats
with which the saloons, the halls of the Sorbonne, and even the very streets were then
resounding, Calvin cared but little to mingle. His ambition was to win victories which, if
less ostentatious, would be far more durable. Like his old teacher, Mathurin Cordier
– so wise in his honesty – he wished solidly to lay the foundations, and was not
content to rear structures which were sure to topple over with the first breeze. He
desired to baptise men for the stake, to make converts who would endure the fire.
Eschewing the knots of disputants in the streets, he entered the abodes of the citizens,
and winning attention by his very shyness, as well as by the clearness and sweetness of
his discourse, he talked with the family on the things that belonged to their peace. He
had converted a soul while his friends outside had but demolished a syllogism. Calvin was
the pioneer of all those who, since his day, have labored in the work of the recovery of
the lapsed masses.
However, the fame he shunned did, the more he fled from it, but the more pursue him. His
name was mentioned in the presence of the Queen of Navarre. Margaret must needs see the
young evangelist.[2] We
tremble as we see Calvin enter the Louvre to be presented at court. They who are in king's
houses wear "soft raiment," and learn to pursue middle courses. If Calvin is to
be all to the Church he must be nothing to kings and queens. All the more do we tremble at
the ordeal he is about to undergo when we reflect that, in combination with his sternness
of principle and uprightness of aim, there are in Calvin a tenderness of heart, and a
yearning, not for praise, but for sympathy, which may render him susceptible to the
blandishments and flatteries of a court. But God went with him to the palace. Calvin's
insight discovered even then, what afterwards became manifest to less penetrating
observers, that, while Margaret's piety was genuine, it was clouded nevertheless by
mysticism, and her opinions, though sound in the main, were too hesitating and halting to
compass a full Reformation of the Church.
On these accounts he was unable to fully identify himself with the cause of the Queen of
Navarre. Nevertheless, there were not a few points of similarity between the two which
excited a mutual admiration. There was in both a beautiful genius; there was in both a
lofty soul; there was in both a love of what is pure and noble; and especially there was
in both – what is the beginning and end of all piety – a deep heaven-begotten
reverence and love of the Savior. Margaret did not conceal her admiration of the young
scholar and evangelist. His eye so steadfast, yet so keen; his features so calm, yet so
expressive of energy; the wisdom of his utterances, and the air of serene strength that
breathed around him – betokening a power within, which, though enshrined in a
somewhat slender frame, was evidently awaiting a future of great achievements – won
the confidence of the queen.[3] Calvin
was in a fair way of becoming a frequent visitor at the palace, when an unexpected event
drove the young scholar from Paris, and averted the danger, if ever it had existed, of the
chief Reformer of Christendom becoming lost in the court chaplain.
That event fell out thus – Nicholas Cop, Rector of the Sorbonne, was the intimate
friend of Calvin. It was October, 1533, and the session of the university was to open on
the 1st of next month (All Saints' Day), when Cop was expected to grace the occasion with
an inaugural discourse. What an opportunity, thought Calvin, of having the Gospel preached
in the most public of all the pulpits of Christendom! He waited on his friend Cop and
broke to him his stratagem. But Cop felt unequal to the task of composing such an address
as would answer the end. It was finally agreed between the two friends that Calvin should
write, and that Cop should read the oration. It was a bold experiment, full of grave
risks, of which its devisers were not unaware, but they had made up their minds to the
dangerous venture.
The 1st of November arrived. It saw a brilliant assembly in the Church of the Mathurins
– professors, students, the elite of the learned men of Paris, a goodly muster of
Franciscans, some of whom more than half suspected Cop of a weakness for Lutheranism, and
a sprinkling of the friends of the new opinions, who had had a hint of what was to happen.
On a bench apart sat Calvin, with the air of one who had dropped in by the way. Cop rose,
and proceeded amid deep silence to pronounce an oration in praise of "Christian
Philosophy." But the philosophy which he extolled was not that which had been drawn
from the academies of Greece, but that diviner wisdom to reveal which to man the Immortal
had put on mortality. The key-note of the discourse was the "Grace of God," the
one sole fountain of man's renewal, pardon, and eternal life. The oration, although
Protestant in spirit, was very thoroughly academic. Its noble sentiments were clothed in
language clear, simple, yet majestic.[4]
Blank astonishment was portrayed on the faces of the most part of the audience at
the beginning of the oration. By-and-by a countenance here and there began to kindle with
delight. Others among the listeners were becoming uneasy on their seats. The monks knit
their brows, and shooting out fiery glances from beneath them, exchanged whispers with one
another. They saw through the thin disguise in which the rector was trying to veil the
Gospel. Spoken on "All Saints' Day," yet not a word about the saints did that
oration contain! It was a desecration of their festival; an act of treason against these
glorious intercessors; a blow struck at the foundations of Rome: so they judged, and
rightly. The assembly rose, and then the storm burst. Heresy had reached an astounding
pitch of audacity when it dared to rear its head in the very midst of the Sorbonne. It
must be struck down at once.
Cop was denounced to the Parliament, then the supreme judge and executioner of heretics.
Summoned to its bar, he resolved, strong in the integrity of his cause, and presuming not
a little on his position as head of the first university in Christendom, to obey the
citation. He was already on his way to the Palace of Justice, attired in his robes of
office, his beadles and apparitors preceding him, with their maces and gold-headed staves,
when a friend, pressing through the crowd, whispered into his ear that he was marching to
his death. Cop saw the danger of prosecuting further this duel between the Parliament and
the Sorbonne. He fled to Basle, and so escaped the fate already determined on for him.[5]
When Cop was gone, it began to be rumored that the author of the address, which had
set Parliament and the university in flames, was still in Paris, and that he was no other
than Calvin. Such a spirit was enough to set all Christendom on fire: he must be burned.
Already the lieutenant-criminal, Jean Morin, who for some time had had his eye on the
young evangelist,[6] was
on his way to apprehend him. Calvin, who deemed himself safe in his obscurity, was sitting
quietly in his room in the College of Fortret [7] when some of his comrades came running into his chamber, and urged
him to flee that instant. Scarcely had they spoken when a loud knocking was heard at the
outer gate. It was the officers. Now their heavy tramp was heard in the corridor. Another
moment and Calvin would be on his way to the Conciergerie, to come out of it only to the
stake. That would, indeed, have been a blow to the Reformation, and probably would have
changed the whole future of Christendom. But God interposed at this moment of peril. While
some of his friends held a parley with the officers at the door, others, seizing the
sheets on his bed, twisted them into a rope, fastened them in the window, and Calvin,
catching hold of them, let himself down into the street of the Bernardins.[8]
Dropped into the street, the fugitive traversed Paris with rapid steps, and soon
reached the suburbs. His first agitation subsiding, he began to think how he could
disguise himself, knowing that the officers of Morin would be on his track. Espying a
vine-dresser's cottage, and knowing the owner to be friendly to the Gospel, he entered,
and there arranged the plan of his flight. Doffing his own dress, he put on the coat of
the peasant, and, with a garden hoe on his shoulder he set out on his journey. He went
forth not knowing whither he went – the pioneer of hundreds of thousands who in
after-years were to flee from France, and to seek under other skies that liberty to
confess the Gospel which was denied them in their native land. To Calvin the
disappointment must have been as keen as it was sudden.
He had fondly hoped that the scene of his conversion would be the scene of his labors
also. He saw too, as he believed, the Gospel on the eve of triumphing in France. Was it
not preached in the churches of the capital, taught from some of the chairs of the
Sorbonne, and honored in the palace of the monarch? But God had arranged for both France
and Calvin a different future from that which the young evangelist pictured to himself.
The great kingdom of France was to harden its heart that God might glorify his power upon
it, and Calvin was to go into exile that he might prepare in solitude those great works by
which he was to instruct so many nations, and speak to the ages of the future.
Turning to the south, Calvin went on towards Orleans, but he did not stop there. He
pursued his way to Tours, but neither did he halt there. Going onwards still, he traveled
those great plains which the Loire and other streams water, so rich in meadows and tall
umbrageous trees, and which are so loved by the vine, forming then as they do at this day
the finest part of that fine country. After some weeks' wandering, he reached Angouleme,
the birth-place of Margaret of Navarre.[9] Here he directed his steps to the mansion of the Du Tillets, a
noble and wealthy family, high in office in the State, famed moreover for their love of
letters, and with one of whose members Calvin had formed an acquaintance in Paris. The
exile had not miscalculated. The young Du Tiller, the only one of the family then at home,
was delighted to resume in Angouleme the intercourse begun in Paris. The noble mansion
with all in it was at the service of Calvin.[10]
The mariner whose bark, pursued by furious winds, is suddenly lifted on the top of
some billow mightier than its fellows, floated in safety over the reef on which it seemed
about to be dashed, and safely landed in the harbor, is not more surprised or more
thankful than Calvin was when he found himself in this quiet and secure asylum. The exile
needed rest; he needed time for reading and meditation; he found both under this princely
and friendly roof. The library of the chateau was one of the finest of which France, or
perhaps any other country, in that age could boast, containing, it is said, some 4,000
volumes. Here he reposed, but was not idle. As Luther had been wafted away in the midst of
the tempest to rest awhile in the Wart-burg, so Calvin was made to sit down here and equip
himself for the conflicts that were about to open. Around him were the mighty dead, with
nothing to interrupt his converse with them. An occasional hour would he pass in communing
with his friend the young Louis du Tillet; but even this had to be redeemed. Nights
without sleep, and whole days during which he scarcely tasted food, would Calvin pass in
this library, so athirst was he for knowledge. It was here that Calvin projected his
Institutes, which D'Aubigne styles "the finest work of the Reformation." Not
that he wrote it here; but in this library he collected the materials, arranged the plan,
and it may be penned some of its passages. We shall have occasion to speak of this great
work afterwards; suffice it here to remark that it was composed on the model of those
apologies which the early Fathers presented to the Roman emperors on behalf of the
primitive martyrs.
Again were men dying at the stake for the Gospel. Calvin felt that it became him to raise
his voice in their defense; but how could he better vindicate them than by vindicating
their cause, and proving in the face of its enemies and of the whole world that it was the
cause of truth? But to plead such a cause before such an audience was no light matter. He
prepared himself by reading, by much meditation, and by earnest prayer; and then he spoke
in the Institutes with a voice that sounded through Europe, and the mighty reverberations
of which have come down the ages.
An opponent of the Reformation chancing to enter, in after-years, this famous library, and
knowing who had once occupied it, cast around him a look of anger, and exclaimed,
"This is the smithy where the modern Vulcan forged his bolts; here it was that he
wove the web of the Institutes, which we may call the Koran or Talmud of heresy."[11]
An episode of a touching kind varied the sojourn of Calvin at Angouleme. Lefevre
still survived, and was living at Nerac, near to Angouleme, enjoying the protection and
friendship of Margaret. Calvin, who yearned to see the man who had first opened the door
of France to the Reformation, set out to visit him. The aged doctor and the young Reformer
met for the first and last time. Calvin was charmed with the candor, the humility, the
zeal, and the loving spirit of Lefevre – lights that appeared to shine the brighter
in proportion as he in whom they dwelt drew towards the tomb. Lefevre, on his part, was
equally struck with the depth of intellect and range of view exhibited by Calvin. A
Reformer of loftier stature than any he had hitherto known stood before him. In truth, the
future, as sketched by the bold hand of Calvin, filled him with something like alarm.
Calvin's Reform went a good way beyond any that Lefevre had ever projected. The good
doctor of Etaples had never thought of discarding the Pope and hierarchy, but of
transforming them into Protestant pastors. He was for uniting the tyranny of the
infallibility with the liberty of the Bible. Calvin by this time had abandoned the idea of
Reforming Catholicism; his rule was the Word of God alone, and the hoped-for end a new
structure on Divine foundations. Nevertheless, the aged Lefevre grasping his hand, and
perhaps recalling to mind his own words to Farel, that God would send a deliverer, and
that they should see it, said, "Young man, you will be one day a powerful instrument
in the Lord's hand; God will make use of you to restore the kingdom of heaven in
France."[12]
CHAPTER 13 Back to Top
FIRST PROTESTANT ADMINISTRATION OF THE
LORD'S SUPPER IN FRANCE.
Calvin goes to Poictiers — Its Society — Calvin draws Disciples round him —
Re-unions — The Gardens of the Basses Treilles — The Abbot Ponthus —
Calvin's Grotto — First Dispensation of the Lord's Supper in France — Formation
of a Protestant Congregation — Home Mission Scheme for the Evangelisation of France
— The Three First Missionaries — Their Labors and Deaths — Calvin Leaves
Poictiers — The Church of Poictiers — Present State and Aspect of Poictiers.
CALVIN had been half-a-year at Angouleme, and now, the storm
having blown over, he quitted it and returned northward to Poictiers. The latter was then
a town of great importance. It was the seat of a flourishing university, and its citizens
numbered amongst them men eminent for their rank, their learning, or their professional
ability. Two leagues distant from the town is the battlefield where, in 1356, the Black
Prince met the armies of France under John of Valois, and won his famous victory. Here, in
the spring of 1534, we behold a humble soldier arriving to begin a battle which should
change the face of the world. In this district, too, in former times lived Abelard, and
the traces he had left behind him, though essentially skeptical, helped to prepare the way
for Calvin. Thin, pale, and singularly unobtrusive, yet the beauty of his genius and the
extent of his knowledge soon drew around the stranger a charmed circle of friends.
The Prior of Trois Moutiers, a friend of the Du Tillets, opened his door to the traveler.
The new opinions had already found some entrance into the learned society of Poictiers;
but with Calvin came a new and clearer light, which soon attracted a select circle of firm
friends.
The chief magistrate, Pierre de La Planche, became his friend, and at his house he was
accustomed to meet the distinguished men of the place, and under his roof, and sometimes
in the garden, the Basses Treilles, did Calvin expound to them the true nature of the
Gospel and the spiritual glory of the kingdom of heaven, thus drawing them away from idle
ceremonies and dead formulas, to living doctrines by which the heart is renewed and the
life fructified. Some contemned the words spoken to them, others received them with
meekness and joy. Among these converts was Ponthus, abbot of a Benedictine convent in the
neighborhood of Poictiers, and head of a patrician family.[1] Forsaking a brilliant position, he was the first abbot in France
who openly professed himself a disciple of the Reformed faith. Among his descendants there
have been some who gave their lives for the Gospel; and to this day the family continue
steadfastly on the side of Protestantism, adorning it by their piety not less than by
their rank.[2]
It was at Poictiers that the evangelisation of France began in a systematic way.
The school which Calvin here gathered round him comprehended persons in all conditions of
life — canons, lawyers, professors, counts, and tradesmen. They discoursed about
Divine mysteries as they walked together on the banks of the neighboring torrent, the
Clain, or as they assembled in the garden of the Basses Treilles, where, like the ancient
Platonists, they often held their re-unions. There, as the Papists have said, were the
first beginnings in France of Protestant conventicles and councils.[3] "As it was in a
garden," said the Roman Catholics of Poictiers, "that our first parents were
seduced, so are these men being enchanted by Calvin in the garden of the Basses
Treilles."[4]
By-and by it was thought prudent to discontinue these meetings in the Basses
Treilles, and to seek some more remote and solitary place of re-union. A deep and narrow
ravine, through which rolls the rivulet of the Clain, winds past Poictiers. Its rocks,
being of the limestone formation, abound in caves, and one of the roomiest of these, then
known as the "Cave of Benedict," but which from that day to this has borne the
name of "Calvin's Grotto," was selected as the scene of the future gatherings of
the converts.[5] It
was an hour's walk from the town. Dividing into groups, each company, by a different
route, found its way to the cave. Here prayer was offered and the Scriptures expounded,
the torrent rolling beneath, and the beetling rocks and waving trees concealing the
entrance. In this grotto, so far as the light of history serves, was the Lord's Supper
celebrated for the first time in France after the Protestant fashion.[6] On an appointed day the
disciples met here, and Calvin, having expounded the Word and offered prayer, handed round
the bread and cup, of which all partook, even as in the upper room at Jerusalem sixteen
centuries before. The place had none of the grandeurs of cathedral, but "the glory of
God and the Lamb" lent it beauty. No chant of priest, no swell of organ accompanied
the service, but the devotion of contrite hearts, in fellowship with Christ, was ascending
from that rocky chamber, and coming up before the throne in heaven.
Often since have the children of the Reformation assembled in the dens and caves, in the
forests, wildernesses, and mountains of France, to sing their psalm and celebrate their
worship; and He who disdains the gorgeous temple, which unholy rites defile, has been
present with them, turning the solitude of the low-browed cave into an august
presence-chamber, in which they have seen the glory and heard the voice of the Eternal.
Calvin now saw, as the fruit of his labors, a little Protestant congregation in Poictiers.
This did not content him; he desired to make this young Church a basis of evangelisation
for the surrounding provinces, and ultimately for the whole kingdom. One day in the little
assembly he said, "Is there any one here willing to go and give light to those whom
the Pope has blinded?"[7] Jean
Vernon, Philip Veron, and Albert Babinot stood up and offered themselves for this work.
Veron and Babinot, turning their steps to the south and west, scattered the good seed in
those fertile provinces and great cities which lie along the course of the Garonne. In
Toulouse and Bordeaux they made many disciples. Obeying Calvin's instructions they sought
to win the teachers of the youth, and in many cases they entirely succeeded; so that, as
we find the staunch Roman Catholic Raemond complaining, "the minister was hid under
the cloak of the magister," "the young were lost before they were aware of their
danger," and "many with only down on their chins were so incurably perverted,
that they preferred being roasted over a slow fire to renouncing their Calvinism."[8] Jean Vernon remained at
Poictiers, where he found an interesting field of labor among the students at the
university. It was ever the aim of Calvin to unite religion and science. He knew that when
these are divorced we have a race of fanatics on the one side, and of sceptics on the
other; therefore, of his little band, he commanded one to abide at the university seat;
and of the students not a few embraced the Reformed faith. These three missionaries,
combining prudence with activity, and escaping the vigilance of the priests, continued to
evangelise in France to their dying day. Veron and Babinot departed in peace; Vernon was
seized as he was crossing the Alps of Savoy, and burned at Chambery. This was the first
home-mission set agoing in modern times. After a stay of barely two months Calvin quitted
Poictiers, going on by way of Orleans and Paris to Noyon, his birth-place, which he
visited now for the last time.
But he did not leave Poictiers as he had found it. There was now within its walls a
Reformed Church, embracing many men distinguished by their learning, occupying positions
of influence, and ready to confess Christ, if need were amid the flames.[9]
It is deeply interesting to observe the condition at this day of a city around
which the visit of Calvin has thrown so great an interest, and whose Church, founded by
his hands, held no inconspicuous place among the Protestant Churches of France in the
early days of the Reformation.[10]
Poictiers, we dare say, like the city of Aosta in Italy, is in nowise proud of this
episode in its history, and would rather efface than perpetuate the traces of its
illustrious visitor; and, indeed, it has been very successful in doing so. We question
whether there be now a dozen persons in all Poictiers who know that the great chief of the
Reformation once honored it by his residence, and that there he laid the foundations of a
Protestant Church which afterwards gave martyrs to the Gospel. Poictiers is at this day a
most unexceptionably Roman Catholic city, and exhibits all the usual proofs and
concomitants of genuine Roman Catholicism in the dreariness and stagnation of its streets,
and the vacuity and ignorance to be read so plainly on the faces of its inhabitants. The
landscape around is doubtless the same as when Calvin went in and out at its gates. There
is the same clear, dry, balmy sky; there is the same winding and picturesque ravine, with
the rivulet watering its bottom, and its sides here terraced with vines, there overhung
with white limestone rocks, while cottages perched amid fruit-trees, and mills, their
wheels turned by the stream, are to be seen along its course. East and west of the town
lie outspread those plains on which the Black Prince, in the fourteenth century,
marshalled his bowmen, and where French and English blood flowed in commingled torrents,
and where, 200 years later, Calvin restored to its original simplicity that rite which
commemorates an infinitely greater victory than hero ever achieved on earth. Within its
old limits, unchanged since the times of Calvin, is the town itself. Here has Poicfiers
been sitting all this long while, nursing its orthodoxy till little besides is left it to
nurse.
Manufactures and commerce have left it; it has but a scanty portion of the corn and wine
which the plains around yield to others. Its churches and edifices have grown hoary and
tottering; the very chimes of its bells have a weird and drowsy sound; and its citizens,
silent, listless, and pensive, look as if they belonged to the fifteenth century, and had
no light to be seen moving about in the nineteenth.
In the center of Poictiers is a large quadrangular piazza, a fountain in the middle of it,
a clock-tower in one of its angles, and numerous narrow lanes running out from it in all
directions. These lanes are steep, winding, and ill-paved.
In one of these lanes, but a little way from the central piazza, is a venerable pile of
Gothic architecture, as old, at least, as the days of Calvin, and which may have served as
the college amongst whose professors and students he found his first disciples. Its
gables, turned to the street, show to the passer-by its rich oriels; and pleasant to the
eye is its garden of modest dimensions, with its bit of velvet sward, and its trees, old
and gnarled, but with life enough in their roots to send along their boughs, in spring, a
rush of rich massy foliage.
A little farther off from the Piazza, in another lane which attains the width of a street,
with an open space before it, stands the Cathedral, by much the most noticeable of all the
buildings of Poictiers. Its front is a vast unrolled scroll of history, or perhaps we
ought to say of biography. It is covered from top to bottom with sculptures, the subjects
extremely miscellaneous, and some of them not a little grotesque. The lives of numerous
Scripture heroes — patriarchs, warriors, and kings — are here depicted, being
chiselled in stone, while in the alternate rows come the effigies of saints, and Popes,
and great abbots; and, obtruding uncouthly among these venerable and dignified personages,
are monsters of a form and genus wholly unknown to the geologist. A rare sight must this
convention of ante-diluvians, of mediaeval Popes, and animals whose era it is impossible
to fix, have presented when in the prime of its stony existence. But the whole goodly
assemblage, under the influence of the weather, is slowly passing into oblivion, and will
by-and-by disappear, leaving only the bare weather-worn sand-stone, unless the chisel come
timeously to the rescue, and give the worthies that figure here a new lease of life.
Calvin must sometimes have crossed the threshold of this Cathedral and stood under this
roof. The interior is plain indeed, offering a striking contrast to the gorgeous
grotesqueness of the exterior. The walls, covered with simple whitewash, are garnished
with a few poor pictures, such as a few pence would buy at a print-seller's. The usual
nave and aisle are wanting, and a row of stone pillars, also covered with whitewash, run
along the center of the floor and support the roof of the edifice. It had been well if
Poictiers had continued steadfast in the doctrine taught it by the man who entered its
gates in the March of 1534. Its air at this hour would not have been so thick, nor its
streets so stagnant, nor its edifices so crumbling; in short, it would not have been lying
stranded now, dropped far astern in the world's onward march.
CHAPTER 14 Back to Top
CATHERINE DE MEDICI.
St. Paul — Calvin — Desire to Labor in Paris — Driven from this Field
— Francis I. Intrigues to Outmanoeuvre Charles V. — Offers the Hand of his
Second Son to the Pope's Niece — Joy of Clement VII. — The Marriage Agreed on
— Catherine de Medici — Rise of the House of Medici — Cosmo I. — His
Patronage of Letters and Scholars — Fiesole — Descendants of Cosmo —
Clement VII. — Birth of Catherine de Medici — Exposed to Danger — Lives to
Mount the Throne of France — Catherine as a Girl — Her Fascination — Her
Tastes — Her Morals — Her Love of Power; etc.
ST. PAUL when converted fondly hoped to abide at Jerusalem,
and from this renowned metropolis, where the Kings of Judah had reigned, where the
prophets of Jehovah and One greater than all prophets had spoken, he purposed to spread
abroad the light among his countrymen. But a new dispensation had commenced, and there
must be found for it a new center.
In Judaea, Paul would have had only the Synagogue for his audience, and his echoes would
have died away on the narrow shore of Palestine. He must speak where his voice would sound
throughout the world. He must carry the Gospel of his master through a sphere as wide as
that which the Greek philosophy had occupied, and subjugate by the power of the Cross
tribes as remote as those Rome had vanquished by the force of her arms.
And so, too, was it with one who has been styled the second Paul of the Christian
dispensation. The plan which Calvin had formed to himself of his life's labors, after his
conversion, had Paris and France as its center. Nearest his heart, and occupying the
foreground in all his visions of the future, was his native land. It needed but the Gospel
to make France the first of the nations, and its throne the mightiest in Europe.
And the footing the Gospel had already obtained in that land seemed to warrant these great
expectations. Had not the Gospel found martyrs in France, and was not this a pledge that
it would yet triumph, on the soil which their blood had watered? Had not the palace opened
its gates to welcome it? More wonderful still, it was forcing its way, despite the
prejudice and pride of ages, into the halls of the Sorbonne. The many men of letters which
France now contained were, with scarce an exception, favorable to the Reformation. The
monarch, it is true, had not yet decided; but Margaret, so sweet in disposition, so
sincere in her Protestant faith, would not be wanting in her influence with her brother,
and thus there was ground to hope that when Francis did decide his choice would be given
in behalf of Protestantism. So stood the matter then. Was it wonderful that Calvin should
so linger around Paris, and believe that he saw in it the field of his future labors? But
ever and anon, as he came back to it, and grasping the seed-basket, had begun again to
sow, the sky would darken, the winds would begin to howl, and he was forced to flee before
a new outburst of the tempest. At last he began to understand that it was not the great
kingdom of France, with its chivalrous monarch and its powerful armies, that God had
chosen to sustain the battle of the Reformation. A handful only of the French people had
the Reformation called to follow it, whose destined work was to glorify it on their own
soil by the heroism of the stake, and to help to sow it in others by the privations and
sacrifices of exile. But before speaking of Calvin's third and last flight from Paris, let
us turn to an incident big with the gravest consequences to France and Christendom.
The Pope, Spain, and France, the three visible puissances of the age, were by turns the
allies and the adversaries of one another. The King of France, who was constantly scheming
to recover by the arts of diplomacy those fair Italian provinces which he had lost upon
the battle-field, was now plotting against Charles of Spain. The emperor, on his way to
Augsburg, was at this moment closeted, as we have already related, with the Pope at
Bologna.[1] Francis,
who was not ignorant of these things, would frequently ask himself, "Who can tell
what evil may be brewing against France? I shall out-manoeuvre the crafty Charles; I shall
detach the Pope from the side of Spain, and secure him for ever to France;" —
for in those days the Pontiff, as a dynastic power, counted for more than he afterwards
did.
Francis thought that he had hit on a capital device for dealing a blow to his rival. What
was it? The Pope, Clement VII., of the House of Medici, had a niece, a little fairy girl
of fourteen; he would propose marriage between this girl and his second son, Henry, Duke
of Orleans. The Pope, he did not doubt, would grasp at the brilliant offer; for Clement,
he knew, was set on the aggrandisement of his family, and this marriage would place it
among the royal houses of Europe. But was Francis I. in earnest? Would the King of France
stoop to marry his son to the descendant of a merchant? Yes, Francis would digest the
mortification which this match might cause him for the sake of the solid advantages, as he
believed them to be, which it would bring with it. He would turn the flank of Charles, and
take his revenge for Pavia. Had Francis feared the God of hosts as much as he did the
emperor, and been willing to stoop as low for the Gospel as for the favor of the Pope,
happy had it been for both himself and his kingdom.
Clement, when the offer was made to him, could scarce believe it.[2] He was in doubt this moment; he
was in ecstasy the next. The emperor soon discovered the affair, and foreseeing its
consequences to himself, endeavored to persuade the Pope that the King of France was
insincere, and counselled him to beware of the snake in the grass. The ambassadors of the
French King, the Duke of Albany and the Cardinals Tournon and Gramont, protested that
their master was in earnest, and pushed on the business till at last they had finished it.
It was concluded that this girl, Catherine de Medici by name, should be linked with the
throne of France, and that the blood of the Valois and the Medici should henceforth be
mixed. The Pope strode through his palace halls, elate at the honor which had so
unexpectedly come to his house, and refused to enter the league which the emperor was
pressing him to form with him against Francis, and would have nothing to do with calling a
Council for which Charles was importuning him.[3] And the King of France, on his part, thought that if he had
stooped it had been to make a good bargain. He had stipulated that Catherine should bring
with her as her dowry, Parma, Florence, Pisa, Leghorn, Modena, Urbino, and Reggio, besides
the Duchy of Milan, and the Lordship of Genoa. This would leave little unrecovered of what
had been lost on the field of Pavia. The Pope promised all without the least hesitation.
To Clement it was all the same — much or little — for he had not the slightest
intention of fulfilling aught of all that he had undertaken.[4]
Let us visit the birth-place of this woman — the natal lair of this tigress.
Her cradle was placed in one of the most delicious of the Italian vales. Over that vale
was hung the balmiest of skies, and around it rose the loveliest of mountains, conspicuous
among which is the classic Fiesole. The Arno, meandering through it in broad pellucid
stream, waters it, and the olive and cypress clothe its bosom with a voluptuous
luxuriance. In this vale is the city of Florence, and here, in the fifteenth century,
lived Cosmo, the merchant. Cosmo was the founder of that house from which was sprung the
little bright-eyed girl who bore the name of Catherine de Medici — a name then
innocent and sweet as any other, but destined to gather a most unenviable notoriety around
it, till it has become one of the most terrific in history, the mention of which evokes
only images of tragedies and horrors.
With regard to her famous ancestor, Cosmo, he was a merchant, we have said, and his ships
visited the shores of Greece, the harbors of Egypt, and the towns on the sea-coast of
Syria. It was the morning of the Renaissance, and this Florentine merchant had caught its
spirit. He gave instructions to his sailing-masters, when they touched at the ports of the
Levant and Egypt, to make diligent inquiry after any ancient manuscripts that might still
survive, whether of the ancient pagan literature, or of the early Christian theology. His
wishes were carefully attended to; and when his ships returned to Pisa, the port of
Tuscany, they were laden with a double freight — the produce and fabrics of the
countries they had visited, and the works of learned men which had slumbered for ages in
the monasteries of Mount Athos, the convents of Lebanon, and in the cities and tombs of
the Nile. Thus it was that Cosmo prosecuted, with equal assiduity and success, commerce
and letters. By the first he laid the foundations of that princely house that long reigned
over the Florentine Republic; and by the second he contributed powerfully to the recovery
of the Greek and Hebrew languages, as they in their turn contributed to the outbreak of
evangelical light which so gloriously distinguished the century that followed that in
which Cosmo flourished. The sacred languages restored, and the Book of Heaven again
opened, the pale, chilly dawn of the Renaissance warmed and brightened into the day of
Christianity.
Another event contributed to this happy turn of affairs. Constantinople had just fallen,
and the scholars of the metropolis of the East, fleeing from the arms of the Turk, and
carrying with them their literary treasures, came to Italy, where they were warmly
welcomed by Cosmo, and entertained with princely hospitality in his villa on Fiesole. The
remains of that villa are still to be seen half-way between the base of the hill and the
Franciscan monastery that crowns its summit, looking down on the unrivalled dome of
Brunelleschi, which even in Cosmo's days adorned the beautiful city of Florence. The
terrace is still pointed out, bordered by stately cypresses, where Cosmo daily walked,
conversing with the illustrious exiles whom the triumph of barbarian arms had chased from
their native East, the delicious vale of the Arno spread out at their feet, with the
clustering towers of the city and the bounding hills in the nearer view, while the remoter
mountains, rising peak on peak in the azure distance, lent grandeur to the scene.[5] "In gardens," says
Hallam, "which Tully might have envied, with Ficino, Laudino, and Politian at his
side, he delighted his hours of leisure with the beautiful visions of the Platonic
philosophy, for which the summer stillness of an Italian sky appears the most congenial
accompaniment."
His talents, his probity, and his great wealth placed Cosmo at the head of Florence, and
gave him the government of the Duchy of Tuscany. His grandson Lorenzo — better known
as Lorenzo the Magnificent — succeeded him in his vast fortune, his literary and
aesthetic tastes, and his government of the duchy. Under Lorenzo the Medician family may
be said to have fully blossomed. Lorenzo had three sons — Giuliano, Pietro, and
Giovanni. The last (John) became Pope under the title of Leo X. He inherited his father's
taste for magnificence, and the Tuscan's love of pleasure. Under him the Vatican became
the gayest court in all Christendom, and Rome a scene of revelry and delights not
surpassed, if equalled, by any of the capitals of Europe. Leo's career has already come
before us. He was far from "seeing the day of Peter," but he lived to see
Luther's day, and went to the tomb as the morning-light of the Reformation was breaking
over the world, closing with his last breath the halcyon era of the Papacy. He was
succeeded in the chair of St. Peter, after the short Pontificate of Adrian of Utrecht, by
another member of the same family of Medici, Giulio, a son of the brother of Leo X., who
ascended the Papal throne under the title of Clement VII.
When Clement took possession of the Papal chair, he found a storm gathering round it. To
whatever quarter of the sky his eye was turned, there he saw lowering clouds portending
furious tempests in the future.
Luther was thundering in Germany; the Turk was marshalling his hordes and unfurling his
standards on the borders of Christendom; nearer home, at his own gates almost, Francis and
Charles were settling with the sword the question which of the two should be master of
that fair land which both meanwhile were laying waste. The infuriated Germans, now
scarcely amenable to discipline, were hanging like tempest on the brow of Alp, and
threatening to descend on Rome and make a spoil of all the wealth and art with which the
lavish Pontificate of Leo X. had enriched and beautified it.
To complete the unhappiness of the time the plague had broken out at Rome, and with pomps,
festivities, and wassail, which went on all the same, were mingled corpses, funerals, and
other gloomy insignia of the tomb. The disorders of Christendom had come to a head; all
men demanded a remedy, but no remedy was found, and mainly for this reason, that no one
understood that a cure to be effectual must begin with one's self. Men thought of
reforming the world, but leaving the men that composed it as they were.
The new Pope saw very plainly that the air was thick and the sky lowering, but having vast
confidence in his own consummate craft and knowledge of business, he set about, the task
of replacing the world upon its foundations. This onerous work resolved itself into four
divisions.
First, he had the abuses of his court and capital to correct; secondly, he had the poise
to maintain between Spain and France, taking care that neither Power became too strong for
him; thirdly, he had the Turk to drive out of Christendom; and fourthly, and mainly, he
had the Reformation to extinguish; and this last gave him more concern than all the rest.
His attention to business was unwearied; but labor as he might it would not all do. The
mischiefs of ages could not be cured in a day, even granting that Clement had known how to
cure them. But the storm did not come just yet; and Clement continued to toil and
intrigue, to threaten the Turk, cajole the kings, and anathematise Lutheranism to no other
effect than to have the advantage gained by the little triumph of to-day swept away by the
terrible disaster of the morrow.
That woman who was just stepping upon a scene where she was destined long and
conspicuously to figure, and where she was to leave as her memorials a throne dishonored
and a nation demoralised, here demands a brief notice. Catherine was the daughter of
Lorenzo II.,[6] the
grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who, as we have said, was the grandson of Cosmo I.,
or Cosmo il Vecchio, as he is styled at Florence, the founder of the greatness of the
family, and so honourably remembered as the patron of letters and the friend of scholars.
Her mother was Magdeleine de Boulogne, of the Royal House of France.[7] Her father survived her birth
only a few days; her mother, too, died while she was still a child, and thus the girl,
left an orphan, was taken under the care of her relative, Clement VII. An astrologer was
said to have foretold at her birth that the child would be the ruin of her house; and the
vaticination, as may well be believed, wrought her no good. She was but little cared for,
or rather she was put, on purpose, in the way of receiving harm. She is said to have been
placed in a basket, and hung outside the wall of a castle that was being besieged, in the
hope that a chance arrow might rid them of her, and along with her the calamity which her
continued existence was believed to portend. The missiles struck right and left, leaving
their indentations on the wall, but the basket was not hit, and the child it enclosed
lived on to occupy at a future day the throne of France.
When she comes before us, in connection with this marriage-scheme, Catherine de Medici was
a gift of fourteen, of diminutive stature, of sylph-like form, with a fiery light
streaming from her eyes. Bright, voluble, and passionate, she bounded from sport to sport,
filling the halls where she played with the chatter of her talk, and the peals of her
merriment. There was about her the power of a strange fascination, which all felt who came
near her, but the higher faculties which she displayed in after-life had not yet been
developed. These needed a wider stage and a loftier position for their display.
As she grew up it was seen that she possessed not a few of the good as well as the evil
qualities of the race from which she was sprung. She had a princely heart, and a large
understanding. To say that she was crafty, and astute, and greedy of power, and prudent,
patient, and plodding in her efforts to grasp it, is simply to say that she was a Medici.
She possessed, in no small degree, the literary and aesthetic tastes of her illustrious
ancestor, Cosmo I. She loved splendor as did her great-grandfather, Lorenzo the
Magnificent. She was as prodigal and lavish in her habits as Leo X.; and withal, as great
a lover of pleasure. She filled the Louvre with scandals, even as Leo had done the
Vatican, and from the court diffused a taint through the city, from which Paris has not
been cleansed to this day.
The penetration and business habits of her uncle — we style him so, but his birth
being suspicious, it is impossible to define his exact relationship — Clement VII.,
she inherited, and the pleasures in which she so freely indulged do not appear to have
dulled the one or interrupted the other.
Above all, she was noted for the truly Medician feature of an inordinate love of power.
Whoever occupied the throne, Catherine was the real ruler of France. Most of the
occurrences which made the reigns of her husband and sons so tragical, and blackened so
dismally that era of history, had their birth in her scheming brain. Not that she loved
blood for its own sake, as did some of the Roman Emperors, but her will must be done, and
whatever cause or person stood in her way must take the consequences by the dungeon or the
stake, by the poignard or the poison-cup.
CHAPTER 15 Back to Top
MARRIAGE OF HENRY OF FRANCE TO CATHERINE DE
MEDICI.
The Pope sets Sail — Coasts along to France — Meets Francis I. at Marseilles
— The Second Son of the King of France Married to Catherine de Medici — Her
Promised Dowry — The Marriage Festivities — Auguries — Clement's Return
Voyage — His Reflections — His Dream of a New Era — His Dream to be Read
Backwards — His Troubles — His Death — Catherine Enters France as Calvin is
Driven Out — Retrogression of Protestantism — Death and Catherine de Medici
— Death's Five Visits to the Palace — Each Visit Assists Catherine in her Ascent
to Power — Her Crimes — She Gains no Real Success.
THE marriage is to take place, and accordingly the Pope
embarks at Leghorn, and sets out for the port of Marseilles, where he is to meet the King
of France, and conclude the transaction. Popes have never loved ships, unless it were the
bark of St. Peter, nor cared to sail in any sea save the sea ecclesiastic; but Clement's
anxiety about the marriage overcame his revulsion to the waves. He sails along the coast
of Italy; he passes the Gulf of Spezzia; he rounds the bold headland of Monte Fino; Genoa
is passed; and now the shore of Nice, where the ridge of Apennine divides Italy from
France, is under his lee, and thus, wafted along over these classic waters by soft
breezes, he enters, in the beginning of October, 1533, the harbor of Marseilles. Catherine
did not accompany him. She tarried at Nice meanwhile, to be at hand when she should be
wanted. The interview between the Pontiff and the king terminated to the satisfaction of
both parties. Francis again stipulated that the bride should bring as outfit "three
rings," the Duchies of Urbino, Milan, and Genoa; and Clement had no difficulty in
promising everything, seeing he meant to perform nothing. All being arranged, the little
Tuscan beauty was now sent for; and amid the benedictions of the Pope, the congratulations
of the courtiers, the firing of cannon, ringing of bells, and rejoicings of the populace,
Catherine de Medici, all radiant with joy and sparkling with jewels, became the
daughter-in-law of Francis I., and wife of the Duke of Orleans, the future Henry II.
In the banquet-chamber in which sat Catherine de Medici as the bride of the future Henry
II. of France, well might there have been set a seat for the skeleton which the Egyptians
in ancient times were wont to introduce into their festal halls. Had that guest sat amid
the courtiers at Marseilles, glaring on them with empty sockets, and mingling his ghastly
grin with their gay merriment, all must have confessed that never had his presence been
more fitting, nor his augury more truly prophetic. Or if this was not clearly seen at the
moment, how plain did it become in after-years, when the bridal torches were exchanged for
martyr-fires, and the marriage-songs were turned into wailings, which ever and anon rung
through France, and each time with the emphasis of a deeper woe! But before that day
should fully come Clement was to sleep in marble; Francis too was to be borne to the royal
vaults of St. Denis, leaving as the curse of his house and kingdom the once lively
laughing little girl whose arrival he signalised with these vast rejoicings, and who was
yet too young to take much interest in court intrigue, or to feel that thirst for power
which was to awaken in her breast with such terrible strength in years to come.
The marriage festivities were at an end, and Pope Clement VII. turned his face toward his
own land. He had come as far as to see the utmost borders of the children of the
Reformation, and, like another Balaam, he had essayed to curse them. He had come doubly
armed: he grasped Catherine in the one hand, he held a bull of anathema in the other; the
first he engrafted on France, the second he hurled against the Lutherans, and having shot
this bolt, he betook him again to his galleys. A second time the winds were propitious. As
he sailed along over the blue sea, he could indulge his reveries undistracted by those
influences to which Popes, like other men, are liable on shipboard. He had taken a new
pledge of France that it should not play the part England was now playing. France was now
more than ever the eldest daughter of the Papacy. Clement, moreover, had fortifed himself
on the side of Spain. To the greatness of that Power he himself, above most men, had
contributed, when he acted as the secretary and adviser of his uncle Leo X.,[1] but its sovereigns becoming less
the champions and more the masters of the Papacy, Spain caused the Pope considerable
uneasiness. Now, however, it was less likely that the emperor would press for a Council,
the very idea of which was so terrible to the Pope, that he could scarce eat by day or
sleep by night. And so, as the coast of France sunk behind him and the headlands of Italy
rose on his prow, he thought of the new splendor with which he had invested his house and
name, and the happier days he was now likely to see in the Vatican.
Nevertheless, the horizon did not clear up: the storm still lowered above Rome. The last
year of Clement's life — for he was now drawing toward the grave — was the
unhappiest he had yet seen. Not one of all his fond anticipations was there that did not
misgive him. If the dreams of ordinary mortals are to be read backwards, much more —
as Clement and even Pontiffs in our own time have experienced — are the dreams of
Popes.
The emperor became more pressing for a Council than ever. The Protestants of Germany,
having formed a powerful league, had now a voice at the political council-table of
Christendom. Nay, with his own hands Clement had been rearing a rampart round them,
inasmuch as his alliance with Francis made Charles draw towards the Protestants, whose
friendship was now more necessary to him. Even the French king, now his ally, could not be
depended upon. Catherine's "three rings" the Pope had not made forthcoming, and
Francis threatened, if they were not speedily sent, to come and fetch them. To fill up
Clement's cup, already bitter enough and brimming over, as one would think, his two
nephews quarrelled about the sovereignty of Florence, and were fighting savagely with one
another. To whatever quarter Clement turned, he saw only present trouble and portents of
worse to come. It was hard to say whether he had most to dread from his enemies or from
his friends, from the heretical princes of Germany or front the most Christian King of
France and the most Catholic King of Spain.
Last of all, the Pope fell sick. It soon became apparent that his sickness was unto death,
and though but newly returned from a wedding, Clement had to set about the melancholy task
of preparing the ring and robe which are used at the funeral of a Pope. "Having
created thirty cardinals," says Platina, "and set his house in order, he died
the 25th September, 1534, between the eighteenth and nineteenth hour,[2] having lived sixty-six years and
three months, and held the Papacy ten years, ten months, and seven days. He was
buried," adds the historian, "in St. Peter's; but, in the Pontificate of Paul
III. (his successor), his body was transferred, along with the remains of Leo X., to the
Church of Minerva, and laid in a tomb of marble."[3] "Sorrow and secret anguish," says Soriano, brought him
to the grave. Ranke pronounces him "without doubt, the most ill-fated Pope that ever
sat on the Papal throne."[4]
Clement now reposed in marble in the Minerva, but the evil he had done was not
"interred with his bones;" his niece lived after him, and to her for a moment we
turn. There are beings whose presence seems to darken the light, and taint the very soil,
on which they tread. Of the number of these was Catherine de Medici. She was sunny as her
own Italy: but there lurked a curse beneath her gaieties and smiles. Wherever she had
passed, there was a blight. Around her all that was fair and virtuous and manly, as if
smitten by some mysterious and deadly influence, began to pine and die.
And, moreover, it is instructive to mark how nearly contemporaneous were the departure of
Calvin from France and the entrance into that country of Catherine de Medici. Scarcely had
the gates of Paris shut out the Reformer, when they were opened to admit the crafty
Italian woman. He who would have been the restorer and savior of his country was chased
from it, while she who was to inoculate it with vice, which first corrupted, and at last
sunk it into ruin, was welcomed to it with demonstrations of unbounded joy.
We trace a marked change in the destinies of France from the day that Catherine entered
it. Up till this time events seemed to favor the progress of Protestantism in that
country; but the admission of this woman was the virtual banishment of the Reformation,
for how could it, ever mount the throne with Catherine de Medici sitting upon its steps?
and unless the throne were won there was hardly a hope, in a country where the government
was so powerful, of the triumph of the Reformation in the conversion of the great body of
the nation.
True, the marriage of the king's second son with this orphan of the House of Medici did
not seem an event of the first consequence. Had it been the Dauphin whom she espoused, she
would have been on the fair way to the throne; but as the wife of Henry the likelihood was
that she never would be more than the Duchess of Orleans. Nor had Catherine yet given
unmistakable indication of those imperious passions inclining and fitting her for rule
that were lodged in her. No one could have foretold at that hour that the girl of fifteen
all radiant with smiles would become the woman of fifty dripping all over with blood. But
from the day that she put her hand into Henry's, all things wrought for her. Even Death,
as D'Aubigne has strikingly observed, seemed to be in covenant with this woman. To others
the "King of Terrors," to Catherine de Medici he was but the obsequious
attendant, who waited only till she should signify her pleasure, that he might strike
whomsoever she wished to have taken out of her path. How many a visit, during her long
occupancy, did the grim messenger pay to the Louvre! but not a visit did he make which did
not assist her in her ascent to power. He came a first time, and, lo! the Dauphin lay a
corpse, and Henry, Catherine's husband, became the immediate heir to the throne. He came a
second time, and now Francis I. breathes his last. Henry reigns in his father's stead, and
by his side sits the Florentine girl, now Queen of France. Death came a third time to the
Louvre, and now it is Henry II. that is struck down; but the blow, so far from
diminishing, enlarged the power of Catherine, for from this time she became, with a few
brief and exceptional intervals, the real ruler of France.
Her imbecile progeny sat upon the throne, but the astute mother governed the country.
Death came a fourth time to the palace, and now it is the weak-minded Francis II. who is
carried out a corpse, leaving his throne to his yet weaker-minded brother, Charles IX. If
her son, a mere puppet, wore the crown, Catherine with easy superiority directed the
government. Casting off the Guises, with whom till now she had been compelled to divide
her power, she stood up alone, the ruler of the land. Even when Death shifted the scenes
for the last time by the demise of Charles IX., it was not to abridge this woman's
influence. Under Henry III., as under all her other sons, it was the figure of Catherine
de Medici that was by far the most conspicuous and terrible in France. Possessing one of
those rare minds which reach maturity at an age when those of others begin to decay, it
was only now, during the reigns of her last two sons, that she showed all that was in her.
She discovered at this period of her career a shrewder penetration, a greater fertility of
resource, and a higher genius for governing men than she had yet exhibited, and
accordingly it was now that she adventured on her boldest schemes of policy, and that she
perpetrated the greatest of her crimes. But, notwithstanding all her talent and
wickedness, she gained no real success. The cause she espoused did not triumph eventually,
and that which she opposed she was not able to crush.
CHAPTER 16 Back to Top
MELANCTHON'S PLAN FOR UNITING WITTEMBERG
AND ROME.
The Laborers Scattered — The Cause Advances — The Dread it Inspires —
Calvin and Catherine — A Contrast — The Keys and the Fleur-de-Lis — The
Doublings of Francis — Agreement between Francis and Philip of Hesse at Bar-le-Duc
— Campaign — Wurtemberg Restored to Christopher — Francis I's Project for
Uniting Lutheranism and Romanism — Du Bellay's Negotiations with Bucer —
Melancthon Sketches a Basis of Union — Bucer and Hedio add their Opinion — The
Messenger Returns with the Paper to Paris — Sensation — Council at the Louvre
— Plan Discussed — An Evangelical Pope.
OF the evangelists who, but a dozen years before the period
at which we are now arrived, had proclaimed the truth in France, hardly one now survived,
or was laboring in that country. Some, like Lefevre, had gone to the grave by "the
way of all men." Others, like Berquin and Pavane, had passed to it by the cruel road
of the stake. Some there were, like Farel, who had been chased to foreign lands, there to
diffuse the light of which France was showing itself unworthy. Others, whose lot was
unhappier still, had apostatised from the Gospel, seduced by love of the world, or
repelled by the terrors of the stake. But if the earlier and lesser lights had nearly all
disappeared, their place was occupied by a greater; and, despite the swords that were
being unsheathed and the stakes that were being planted, it was becoming evident to all
men that the sun of truth was mounting into the horizon, and soon the whole firmament
would be filled with his light.
The movement caused much chagrin and torment to the great ones of the earth. They trembled
before a power which had neither war-horse nor battle-axe, but against which all their
force could avail nothing. They saw that mysterious power advancing from victory to
victory; they beheld it scattering the armies that stood up to oppose it, and recruiting
its adherents faster than the fire could consume them; and they could hardly help seeing
in this an augury of a day when that power would "possess the kingdom and dominion
and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven." This power was none other
than the CHRISTIANITY of the first ages, smitten by the sword of the pagan emperors,
wounded in yet more deadly fashion by the superstition of Rome, but now risen from the
dead, and therefore mighty works did show forth themselves in it.
The two chiefs of the great drama which was now opening in France had just stepped upon
the stage — Calvin and Catherine de Medici. The one was taken from an obscure town in
the north of France; the other came from a city already glorified by the renown of its men
of letters, and the state and power of its princes. The former was the grandson of a
cooper; the latter was of the lineage of the princely House of Tuscany. Catherine was
placed in the Louvre, with the resources of a kingdom at her command; Calvin was removed
outside of France altogether, where, in a small town hidden among the hills of the Swiss,
he might stand and fight his great battle. But as yet Catherine had not reached the
throne, nor was Calvin at Geneva. Death had to open the way that the first might ascend to
power, and years of wandering and peril had yet to be gone through before the latter
should enter the friendly gates of the capital of the Genevese.
We return for a moment to Marseilles. Catheline de Medici had placed her cold hand in that
of Henry of Valois, and by the act a new link had been forged which was to bind together,
more firmly than ever, the two countries of Italy and France. The. Keys and the
Fleur-de-lis were united for better for worse. The rejoicings and festivities were now at
an end. The crowd of princes and courtiers, of prelates and monks, of liveried attendants
and men-at-arms, which for weeks had crowded the streets of Marseilles, and kept it night
and day in a stir, had dispersed; and Francis and Clement, mutually satisfied, were on
their way back, each to his own land. The winds slept, the uneasy Gulf of Lyons was still
till the Pontiff's galley had passed; and as he sailed away over that glassy sea, Clement
felt that now the tiara sat firmer on his head than before, and that he might reckon on
happier days in the Vatican. Alas, how little could he forecast the actual future! What
awaited him at Rome was a shroud and a grave.
Francis I., equally overjoyed, but equally mistaken, amused himself, on his journey to
Paris, with visions of the future, arrayed in colors of equal brilliancy. He had not
patience till he should arrive at the Louvre before making a beginning with these grand
projects. He halted at Avignon, that old city on the banks of the Rhone, which had so
often opened its gates to receive the Popes when Rome had cast them out. Here he assembled
his council, and startled its members by breaking to them his purpose of forming a league
with the Protestants of Germany.[1] Fresh
from the embraces of Clement, this was the last thing his courtiers had expected to hear
from their master. Yet Francis I. was in earnest. One hand had he given to Rome, the other
would he give to the Reformation: he would be on both sides at once.[2] This was very characteristic of
this monarch; — divided in his heart — unstable in all his ways —
continually oscillating — but sure to settle on the wrong side in the end, and to
reap, as the fruit of all his doublings, only disgrace to himself and destruction to his
kingdom.
The King of France was, in sooth, at this moment playing a double game — a political
league and a religious reform. Of the two projects the last was the more chimerical, for
Francis aimed at nothing less than to unite Rome and the Reformation. What a strange
moment to inaugurate these schemes, when Europe was still ringing with the echoes of the
bull in which the German heretics had been cursed, and which had been issued by the man
with whom Francis had been closeted these many days past! And not less strange the spot
chosen for the concoction of these projects, a city which was a second Rome, the very dust
of which was redolent of the footprints of the Popes, and whose streets and palaces
recalled the memories of the pride, the luxury, and the disorders of the Papal court.
The key of the policy of Francis was his desire to humble his dreaded rival, Charles V.
Hence his approach to the Pope, on the one hand, and to the Protestant princes, on the
other. For the Papacy he did not greatly care; for Lutheranism he cared still less: his
own ascendency was the object he sought.
The political project came first and sped best. An excellent opportunity for broaching it
presented itself just at this time. Charles V. had carried away by force of arms the young
Duke of Wurtemberg. And not only had he stolen the duke; he had stolen his duchy too, and
annexed it to the dominions of the House of Austria.[3] Francis thought that to strike for the young duke, despoiled of
his ancestral dominions, would be dealing a blow at Charles V., while he would appear to
be doing only a chivalrous act. It would, moreover, vastly please the German princes, and
smooth his approaches to them. If his recent doings at Marseilles had rendered him an
object of suspicion, his espousal of the quarrel of the Duke of Wurtemberg would be a
counter-stroke which would put him all right with the princes. An incident which had just
fallen out was in the line of these reasonings, and helped to decide Francis.
The young Duke Christopher had managed to escape from the emperor in a way which we have
narrated in its proper place. He remained for some time in hiding, and was believed to be
dead; but in November, 1532, he issued a manifesto claiming restoration of his ancestral
dominions. The claim was joyfully responded to by the Protestants of Germany, as well as
by his own subjects of Wurtemberg. This was the opening which now presented itself to the
King of France, ever ready to ride post from Rome to Germany, and back again with even
greater speed and heartier good-will from Germany to Rome.
A Diet was assembling at Augsburg, to discuss the question of the restoration of the
States of Wurtemberg to their rightful sovereign. The representatives of Ferdinand were to
appear before that Diet, to uphold the cause of Austria. Francis I. sent Du Bellay as his
ambassador, with instructions quietly, yet decidedly, to throw the influence of France
into the opposite scale.[4] Du
Bellay zealously carried out the instructions of his master. He pleaded the cause of Duke
Christopher so powerfully before the Diet, that it decided in favor of his restoration to
Wurtemberg. But the ambassadors of Austria stood firm; if Wurtemberg was to be reft from
their master, and carried over to the Protestant side, it must be by force of arms.
Philip, Landgave of Hesse, met Francis I. at Bar-le-Duc, near the western frontier of
Germany, and there arranged the terms for a campaign on behalf of the young Duke
Christopher. The landgrave was to supply the soldiers, and the King of France, was to
furnish — though secretly, for he did not wish his hand to be seen — the
requisite money.[5] All
three had a different aim, though uniting in a common action. Philip of Hesse hoped to
strengthen Protestantism by enlarging its territorial area. Du Bellay hoped to make the
coming war the wedge that was to separate Francis from the Pope, and rend the Ultramontane
yoke from the neck of his country. Francis was simply pursuing what had been his one
policy since the battle of Pavia, the humiliation of Charles V., which he hoped to effect,
in this case, by kindling a war between the German princes and the emperor.
There was another party having interest; this party now stepped upon the scene. Luther and
Melancthon were the representatives of Protestantism as a religion, as the princes were
the representatives of it as a policy. To make war for the Gospel was to them the object
of their utmost alarm and abhorrence. They exerted all their rhetoric to dissuade the
Protestant princes from drawing the sword. But it was in vain. The war was precipitately
entered upon by Philip. A battle was fought. The German Protestants were victorious; the
Austrian army was beaten, and Wurtemberg, restored to Duke Christopher, was transferred to
the political side of Protestantism.[6]
The political project of Francis I. had prospered. He had wrested Wurtemberg from
Ferdinand, and through the sides of Austria had hurt the pride of his rival Charles V.
This success tempted him to try his hand at the second project, the religious one. To
mould opinions might not be so easy as to move armies, but the Lutheran fit was upon
Francis just now, and he would try. The Reformation which the French king meditated
consisted only in a few changes on the surface; these he thought would bring back the
Protestants, and heal the broken unity of Rome. He by no means wished to injure the Pope,
much less to establish a religion that would necessitate a reform of his own life, or that
of his courtiers. The first step was to sound Melancthon, and Bucer, and Hedio, as to the
amount of change that would satisfy them. It was significant that Luther was not
approached. It was Lutheranism with Luther left out that was now entering into
negotiations with Rome. It does not seem to have struck those who were active in setting
this affair on foot, that the man who had created the first Lutheranism could create a
second, provided the first fell back into the old gulf of Romanism.
Meanwhile, however, the project gave promise of prospering. Du Bellay, in his way back
from Augsburg, had an interview with Bucer at Strasburg; and, with true diplomatic tact,
hinted to the pacific theologian that really it was not worth his while to labor at
uniting the Zwinglians and the Lutherans. Here was something more worthy of him, a
reconcilement of Protestantism and Romanism. The moment this great affair was mentioned to
Bucer, other unions seemed little in his eyes. Though he should reconcile Luther and
Zwingle, the great rent would still remain; but Rome and the Reformation reconciled, all
would be healed, and the source closed of innumerable, strifes and wars in Christendom.
Bucer, being one of those who have more faith in the potency of persons than of
principles, was overjoyed; if so powerful a monarch as Francis and so able a statesman as
Du Bellay had put their shoulders to this work, it must needs, he thought, progress.
A special messenger was dispatched to Melancthon (July, 1534) touching this affair. The
deputy found the great doctor bowed to the earth under an apprehension of the evils
gathering over Christendom. There, first of all, was the division in the Protestant camp;
and there, too, was the cloud of war gathering over Europe, and every hour growing bigger
and blacker. The project looked to Melancthon like a reprieve to a world doomed to
dissolution. The man from whom it came had been in recent and confidential intercourse
with the Pope; and who could tell but that Clement VII. was expressing his wishes and
hopes through the King of France? Even if it were not so, were there not here the
"grand monarchs," the Kings of France and England, on the side of union?
Melancthon took his pen, sat down, and sketched the basis of the one Catholic Church of
the future. In this labor he strove to be loyal to his convictions of truth. His plan, in
brief, was to leave untouched the hierarchy of Rome, to preserve all her ceremonies of
worship, and to reform her errors of doctrine. This, he admitted, was not all that could
be wished, but it was a beginning, and more would follow.[7] Finishing the paper, he gave it to the messenger, who set off with
it to Francis.
On his way to Paris the courier halted at Strasburg, and requested Bucer also to put on
paper what he thought ought to form a basis of union between the two Churches. Bucer's
plan agreed in the main with that of Melancthon. The truth was the essential thing; let us
restore that at the foundation, and we shall soon see it refashioning the superstructure.
So said Bucer. There was another Reformer of name in Strasburg — Hedio, a meek but
firm man; him also the messenger of Francis requested to give his master his views in
writing. Hedio complied; and with these three documents the messenger resumed his journey
to Paris.
On his arrival in the capital the papers were instantly laid before the king. There was no
small sensation in Paris; a great event was about to happen.
Protestantism had spoken its last word. Its ultimatum lay on the king's table. How
anxiously was the opening of these important papers, which were to disclose the complexion
of the future, waited for! Were Rome and Wittemberg about to join hands? Was a new Church,
neither Romanist nor Protestant, but Reformed and eclectic, about to gather once more
within its bosom all the peoples of Christendom, hushing angry controversies, and
obliterating the lines of contending sects in one happy concord? Or was the division
between the two Churches to be henceforward wider than ever, and were the disputes that
could not be adjusted in the conference-hall to be carried to the bloody field, and the
blazing stake?. Such were the questions that men asked themselves with reference to the
three documents which the royal messenger had brought back with him from Germany. In the
midst of many fears, hope predominated.
The king summoned a council at the Louvre to discuss the programme of Melancthon and his
two fellow-Reformers. Gathered round the council-table in the palace were men of various
professions, ranks, and aims. There sat the Archbishop of Paris and other prelates; there
sat Du Bellay and a few statesmen; and there, too, sat doctors of the Sorbonne and men of
letters. Some sincerely wished a Reformation of religion; others, including the king, made
the Reform simply a stalking-horse for the advancement of their own interests.
The papers were opened and read. All around the table, were pleased and offended by turns.
The color came into the king's face when he found the Reformers commencing by stating that
"a true faith in Christ" was a main requisite for such a union as was now sought
to be attained. But when, farther on, the Pope's deposing power was thrown overboard, the
monarch was appeased. Prominence was given to the "doctrine of the justification of
sinners," nor was the council displeased when this was ascribed not to "good
works," nor the "rites of priests," but to the "righteousness and
blood of Christ;" for had not the schoolmen used similar language? The question of
the Sacrament was a crucial one. "There is a real presence of Christ in the
Eucharist," said the Reformers, without defining the nature or manner of that
presence; but they added, it is "faith," not the "priest," that gives
communion with Christ in the Lord's Supper. The bishops frowned; they saw at a glance that
if the opus operatum were denied, their power was undermined, and the "Church"
betrayed. On neither side could there be surrender on this point.
The king had looked forward with some uneasiness to the question of the Church's
government. He knew that the Reformers held the doctrine of the "priesthood of all
believers;" this, he thought, was fatal to order. But, replied the Reformers, the
Gospel-church is a "kingdom of priests," and in a kingdom there must be officers
and laws; the function of priesthood is inherent in all, but the exercise of it appertains
only to those chosen and appointed thereto. The king was reassured; but now it was the
turn of the Protestants at the council-board to feel alarm; for Melancthon and his
fellow-Reformers were willing to go so far on the point of Church government as to retain
the hierarchy. True, its personnel was to undergo a transformation. All its members from
its head downwards were to become Reformed. The Pope was to be retained, but how greatly
changed from his former self! He was to hold the primacy of rank, but not the primacy of
power, and after this he would hardly account his tiara worth wearing. Here, said the
Protestants, is the weak point of the scheme. A Reformed Pope! that indeed will be
something new! When Melancthon put this into his scheme of Reform, said they, he must have
left the domain of possibilities and strayed into the region of Utopia.
To these greater reforms a few minor ones were appended. Prayers to the saints were to be
abolished, although their festivals were still to be observed; priests were to be allowed
to marry, but only celibates would be eligible as bishops; the monasteries were to be
converted into schools; the cup was to be restored to the laity; private masses were to be
abolished; in confession it was not to be obligatory to enumerate all sins; and, in fine,
a conference of pious men, including laymen, was to meet and frame a constitution for the
Church, according to the Word of God.[8]
CHAPTER 17 Back to Top
PLAN OF FRANCIS I. FOR COMBINING
LUTHERANISM AND ROMANISM.
End of Conference — Francis I, takes the Matter into his own Hand — Concocts a
New Basis of Union — Sends Copies to Germany, to the Sorbonne and the Vatican —
Amazement of the Protestants — Alarm of the Sorbonnists — They send a Deputation
to the King — What they Say of Lutheranism — Indignation at the Vatican —
These Projects of Union utterly Chimerical — Excuse of the Protestants of the
Sixteenth Century — Their Stand-point Different from Ours — Storms that have
Shaken the World, but Cleared the Air.
The conference was now over. The king was not displeased;[1] the Protestants were hopeful;
but the bishops were cold. At heart they wished to have done with these negotiations; for
their instincts surely told them that if this matter went on it could have but one ending,
and that was the subversion of their Church. But the king, for the moment, was on the side
of the Reform. He would put himself at its head, and guide it to such a goal as would
surround his throne with a new glory. He would heal the schism, preserve Catholicism, curb
the fanaticism of Luther, punish the hypocrisy of the monks, repress the assumptions of
the Pope, and humble the pride of the emperor. To do all this would be to place himself
without a rival in Europe. The King of France now took the matter more than ever into his
own hands.
Francis now proceeded to sketch out what virtually was a new basis of union for
Christendom. He thought, doubtless, that he knew the spirit of the new times, and the
influences stirring in the world at large, better than did the theologians of Wittemberg
and Strasburg; that a throne was a better point of observation than a closet, and that he
could produce something broader and more catholic than Melancthon, which would hit the
mark.
Summoning a commission round him,[2] he
sat down, and making the papers of the three theologians the groundwork, retrenching here,
enlarging there, and expunging some articles wholly,[3] the king and his councillors produced a new basis of union or
fusion, different to some extent from the former.
The king, although not aspiring like Henry of England to the repute of a theologian, was
doubtless not a little proud of his handiwork. He sent copies of it to Germany, to the
Sorbonne, and even to the Pope,[4] requesting
these several parties to consider the matter, and report their judgment upon it to the
king. To the German theologians it caused no small irritation; they recognized in the
king's paper little but a caricature of their sentiments.[5] In the Sorbonne the message of Francis awakened consternation. The
doctors saw Lutheranism coming in like a torrent, while the king was holding open the
gates of France.[6] We
can imagine the amazement and indignation which would follow the reading of the king's
paper in the Vatican. Modified, it yet retained the essential ideas of Melancthon's plan,
in that it disowned the saints, denied the opus operatum, and left the Papal tiara shorn
of nearly all its authority and grandeur. What a cruel blow would this have been to
Clement VII., aggravated, as he would have felt it, by the fact that it was dealt by the
same hand which had so lately grasped his in friendship at Marseilles! But before the
document reached Rome, Clement had passed from this scene of agitation, and was now
resting in the quiet grave. This portentous paper from the eldest son of the Papacy was
reserved to greet his successor, Paul III., on his accession to the Papal chair, and to
give him betimes a taste of the anxieties and vexations inseparable from a seat which
fascinates and dazzles all save the man who occupies it. But we return to the Sorbonnists.
The royal missive had alarmed the doctors beyond measure. They saw France about to commit
itself to the same downward road on which England had already entered. This was no time to
sit still. They went to the Louvre and held a theological disputation with the king's
ministers. Their position was not improved thereby. If argument had failed them they would
try what threats could do. Did not the king know that Lutheranism was the enemy of all law
and order? that wherever it came it cast down dignities and powers, and trampled them in
the dust? If the altar was overturned, assuredly the throne would not be left standing.
They thought that they had found the opening in the king's armor. But Francis had the good
sense to look at great facts as seen in contemporaneous history. Had law and order
perished in Germany? nay, did not the Protestants of that country reverence and obey their
princes more profoundly than ever? Was anarchy triumphant in England? Francis saw no one
warring with kings and undermining their authority save the Pope, who had deposed his
Brother of England, and was not unlikely to do the same office for himself one of these
days. Sorbonnists saw that neither was this the right tack. Must France then be lost to
the Papacy? There did seem at the moment some likelihood of such disaster, as they
accounted it, taking place. The year 1534 was drawing to a close, with Francis still
holding by his purpose, when an unhappy incident occurred, all unexpectedly, which fatally
changed the king's course, and turned him from the road on which he seemed about to enter.
Of that event, with all the tragic consequences that followed it, we shall have occasion
afterwards to speak.
As regards this union, or rather fusion, there is no need to express any sorrow over its
failure, and to regret that so fair an opportunity of banishing the iron age of
controversy and war, and bringing in the golden age of concord and peace, should have been
lost. Had this compromise been accomplished, it would certainly have repressed, for a
decade or two, the more flagrant of the abuses and scandals and tyrannies of the Papacy,
but it would also have stifled, perhaps extinguished, those mighty renovating forces which
had begun to act with such marked and beneficial effect. Christendom would have lost
infinitely more than all it could have gained: it would have gained a brief respite; it
would have lost a real and permanent Reformation. What was the plan projected? The
Reformation was to bring its "doctrine," and Rome was to bring its
"hierarchy," to form the Church of the future. But if the new wine had been
poured into the old bottle, would not the bottle have burst? or if the wine were too
diluted to rend the bottle, would it not speedily have become as acrid and poisonous as
the old wine? "Justification by faith," set in the old glosses, circumscribed by
the old definitions, and manipulated by the old hierarchy, would a second time, and at no
distant date, have been transformed into "Justification by works," and where
then would Protestantism have been? But we are not to judge of the men who advocated this
scheme by ourselves. They occupied a very different standpoint from ours. We have the
lessons of three most eventful centuries, which were necessarily hidden and veiled from
them; and the utter contrariety of these two systems, in their originating principles, and
in their whole course since their birth, and by consequence the utter utopianism of
attempting their reconcilement, could be seen not otherwise than as the progression of
events and of centuries furnished the gradual but convincing demonstration of it. Besides,
the Council of Trent had not yet met; the hard and fast line of distinction between the
two Churches had not then been drawn; in especial, that double-partition-wall of anathemas
and stakes, which has since been set up between them, did not then exist; moreover, the
circumstances of the Reformers at that early hour of the movement were wholly
unprecedented; no wonder that their vision was distracted and their judgment at fault. The
two systems were as yet, but slowly drawing away the one from the other, and beginning to
stand apart, and neither had as yet taken up that distinct and separate ground, which
presents them to us clearly and sharply as systems that in their first principles —
in their roots and fibres — are antagonistic, so that the attempt to harmonise them
is simply to try to change the nature and essence of things.
Besides, it required a far greater than the ordinary amount of courage to accept the
tremendous responsibility of maintaining Protestantism. The bravery that would have
sufficed for ten heroes of the ordinary type would scarcely have made, at that hour, one
courageous Protestant. It began now to be seen that the movement, if it was to go forward,
would entail on all parties — on those who opposed as well as on those who aided it
— tremendous sacrifices and sufferings. It was this prospect that dismayed
Melancthon. He saw that every hour the spirits of men were becoming more embittered; that
the kingdoms were falling apart; that the cruel sword was about to sited the blood of man;
in short, that the world was coming to an end. In truth, the old world was, and
Melancthon, his eye dimmed for the moment by the "smoke and vapor" of that which
was perishing, could not clearly see the new world that was rising to take its place. To
save the world, Melancthon would have put the Reformation into what would have been its
grave. Had Melancthon had his choice, he would have pronounced for the calm — the
mephitic stillness in which Christendom was rotting, rather than the hurricane with its
noise and overturnings. Happily for us who live in this age, the great scholar had not the
matter in his choice. It was the tempest that came: but if it shook the world by its
thunders, and swept it by its hurricanes, it has left behind it a purer air, a clearer
sky, and a fresher earth.
CHAPTER 18 Back to Top
FIRST DISCIPLES OF THE GOSPEL IN PARIS.
Calvin now the Center of the Movement — Shall he enter Priest's Orders? — Hazard
of a Wrong Choice — He walks by Faith — Visits Noyon — Renounces all his
Preferments in the Romish Church — Sells his Patrimonial Inheritance — Goes to
Paris — Meets Servetus — His Opinions — Challenges Calvin to a Controversy
— Servetus does not Keep his Challenge — State of things at Paris — Beda
— More Ferocious than ever — The Times Uncertain — Disciples in Paris
— Bartholemew Millon — His Deformity — Conversion — Zeal for the
Gospel — Du Bourg, the Draper — Valeton, of Nantes — Le Compte —
Giulio Camillo — Poille, the Bricklayer — Other Disciples — Pantheists
— Calvin's Forecastings — Calvin quits Paris and goes to Strasburg.
WE return to Calvin, now and henceforward the true center of
the Reformation. Wherever he is, whether in the library of Du Tillet, conversing with the
mighty dead, and forging, not improbably, the bolts he was to hurl against Rome in future
years, or in the limestone cave on the banks of the rivulet of the Clain; dispensing the
Lord's Supper to the first Protestants of Poictiers, as its Divine Founder had, fifteen
centuries before, dispensed it to the first disciples of Christianity, there it is that
the light of the new day is breaking.
Calvin had come to another most eventful epoch of his life. The future Reformer again
stood at "the parting of the ways." A wrong decision at this moment would have
wrecked all his future prospects, and changed the whole history of the Reformation.
We left Calvin setting out from Poictiers in the end of April, 1534, attended by the young
Canon Du Tillet, whose soul cleaved to the Reformer, and who did not discover till two
years afterwards, when he began to come in sight of the stake, that something stronger
than even the most devoted love to Calvin was necessary to enable him to cleave to the
Gospel which Calvin preached. Calvin would be twenty-five on the 10th of July. This is the
age at which, according to the canons, one who has passed his novitiate in the Church must
take the first orders of priesthood. Calvin had not yet done so, he had not formally
broken with Rome, but now he must take up his position decidedly within or decidedly
without the Church. At an early age the initiatory mark of servitude to the Pope had been
impressed upon his person. His head had been shorn. The custom, which is a very ancient
one, is borrowed from the temples of paganism. The priests of Isis and Serapis, Jerome
informs us, officiated in their sanctuaries with shorn crowns, as do the priests of Rome
at this day. Calvin must now renew his vow and consummate the obedience to which he was
viewed as having pledged himself was performed upon himself when the rite of tonsure was
performed upon him. He must now throw off the fetter entirely, or be bound yet more
tightly, and become the servant of the Pope, most probably for ever.
His heart had left the Church of Rome, and any subjection he might now promise could be
feigned only, not real. Yet there were not wanting friends who counselled him to remain in
outward communion with Rome. Is it not, we can imagine these counsellors saying to the
young cure, is it not the Reformation of the Church which is your grand aim? Well, here is
the way to compass it. Dissemble the change within; remain in outward conformity with the
Church; push on from dignity to dignity, from a curacy to a mitre, from a mitre to the
purple, and from the purple to the tiara; what post is it to which your genius may not
aspire? and once seated in the Papal chair, who or what can hinder you from reforming the
Church?
The reasoning was specious, and thousands in Calvin's circumstances have listened to
similar persuasion, and have been undone. So doubtless reasoned Caraffa, who, as a simple
priest, was a frequenter of the evangelical re-unions in Chaija at Naples, but who, when
he became Paul IV., restored the Inquisition, and kindled, alas! numerous stakes at Rome.
Those who, listening to such counsel, have adopted this policy, have either never attained
the dignities for which they stifled the convictions of duty, or they found that with
loftier position had come stronger entanglements, that honors and gold were even greater
hindrances than obscurity and poverty, and that if they had now the power they had not the
heart to set on foot the Reformation they once burned to accomplish.
Calvin, eschewing the path of expediency, and walking by faith, found the right road. He
refused to touch the gold or wear the honors of the Church whose creed he no longer
believed. "Not one, but a hundred benefices would I give up," he said,
"rather than make myself the Pope's vassal."[1] Even the hope of one day becoming generalissimo of the Pope's
army, and carrying over his whole force to the camp of the enemy in the day of battle,
could not tempt him to remain in the Papal ranks. He arrived in Noyon in the beginning of
May. On May 4th, 1534, in presence of the officials, ecclesiastical and legal, he resigned
his Chaplaincy of La Gesine, and his Cursoy of Pont l'Eveque, and thus he severed the last
link that bound him to the Papacy, and by the sale of his paternal inheritance at the same
time,[2] he broke the last tie to his
birth-place.
Calvin, "his bonds loosened," was now more the servant of Christ than ever. In
the sale of his patrimony he had "forgotten his father's house," and he was
ready to go anywhere — to the stake should his Master order him. He longed to plant
the standard of the cross in the capital of a great country, and hard by the gates of a
university which for centuries had been a fountain of knowledge. Accordingly, he turned
his steps to Paris, where he was about to make a brief but memorable stay, and then leave
it nevermore to return.
It was during this visit to Paris that Calvin met, for the first time, a man whom he was
destined to meet a second time, of which second meeting we shall have something to say
afterwards. The person who now crossed Calvin's path was Servetus. Michael Servetus was a
Spaniard, of the same age exactly as Calvin,[3] endowed with a penetrating intellect, highly imaginative genius,
and a strongly speculative turn of mind. Soaring above both Romanism and Protestantism, he
aimed at substituting a system of his own creation, the corner-stone of which was simple
Theism. He aimed his stroke at the very heart of Christianity, the doctrine of the
Trinity.[4]
Confident in his system, and not less in his ability, he had for some years been
leading the life of a knight-errant, having wandered into Switzerland, and some parts of
Germany, in quest of opposers with whom he might do battle.[5] Having heard of the young doctor of Noyon, he came to Paris, and
threw down the gage to him.[6] Calvin
felt that should he decline the challenge of Servetus, the act would be interpreted into a
confession that Protestantism rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, and so was corrupt at
the core. It concerned the Reformers to show that Protestantism was not a thing that tore
up Christianity by the roots under pretense of removing the abuses that had grown up
around it. This consideration weighed with Calvin in accepting, as he now did, Servetus'
challenge. The day, the hour, the place — a house in the suburb of St. Antoine —
were all agreed upon.
Calvin was punctual to the engagement; but Servetus — why, was never known — did
not appear.[7] "We
shall not forget," says Bungener, "when the time comes, the position into which
the Spanish theologian had just thrutst the leaders of the Reformation, and Calvin in
particular. By selecting him for his adversary on the question of the Trinity, upon which
no variance existed between Romanism and the Reformation, he, in a measure, constituted
him the guardian of that doctrine, and rendered him responsible for it before all
Christendom. It was this responsibility which nineteen years afterwards kindled the pile
of Servetus.' [8]
Let us mark the state of Paris at the time of Calvin's visit. We have already had a
glimpse into the interior of the palace, and seen what was going on there. Francis I. was
trying to act two parts at once, to be "the eldest son of the Church," and the
armed knight of the Reformation. He had gone in person to Marseilles to fetch the Pope's
niece to the Louvre, he had sent William du Bellay to negotiate with the German
Protestants; not that he cared for the doctrines, but that he needed the arms of the
Lutherans. And, as if the King of France had really loved the Gospel, there was now a
conference sitting in the Louvre concocting a scheme of Reform. Councils not a few had
labored to effect a Reformation of the Church in its head and members; but not one of them
had succeeded. It will indeed be strange, we can hear men saying, if what Pisa, and
Constance, and Basle failed to give to the world, should at last proceed from the Louvre.
There were persons who really thought that this would happen. But Reformations are not
things that have their birth in royal cabinets, or emerge upon the world kern princely
gates. It is in closets where, on bended knee, the page of Scripture is searched with
tears and groans for the way of life, that these move. ments have their commencement. From
the court let us turn to the people.
We have already narrated the sudden turn of the tide in Paris in the end of 1533. During
the king's absence at Marseilles the fiery Beda was recalled from exile. His banishment
had but inflamed his wrath against the Protestants, and he set to work more vigorously
than ever to effect their suppression, and purge Paris from their defilement. The
preachers were forbidden the pulpits, and some three hundred Lutherans were thrown into
the Conciergerie. Not content with these violent proceedings, the Parliament, in the
beginning of 1534, at the instigation of Beda, passed a law announcing death by burning
against those who should be convicted of holding the new opinions on the testimony of two
witnesses.[9] It
was hard to say on whom this penalty might fall. It might drag to the stake Margaret's
chaplain, Roussel; it might strike down the learned men in the university — the
lights of France — whom the king had assembled round him from other lands. But what
mattered it if Lutheranism was extinguished? Beda was clamoring for a holocaust.
Nevertheless, despite all this violence the evangelisation was not stopped. The disciples
held meetings in their own houses, and by-and-by when the king returned, and it was found
that he had thrown off the Romish fit with the air of Marseilles, the Protestants became
bolder, and invited their neighbors and acquaintances to their reunions. Such was the
state in which Calvin found matters when he returned to Paris, most probably in the
beginning of June, 1534. There was for the moment a calm. Protestant conferences were
proceeding at the Louvre; Beda could not provide a victim for the stake, and the Sorbonne
was compelled meanwhile to be tolerant. The times, however, were very uncertain; the sky
at any moment might become overcast, and grow black with tempest.
Calvin, on entering Paris, turned into the Rue St. Denis, and presented himself at the
door of a worthy tradesman, La Forge by name, who was equally marked by his sterling sense
and his genuine piety. This was not the first time that Calvin had lived under this roof,
and now a warm welcome waited his return. But his host, well knowing what was uppermost in
his heart, cautioned him against any open attempt at evangelising. All, indeed, was quiet
for the moment, but the enemies of the Gospel were not asleep; there were keen eyes
watching the disciples, and if left unmolested it was only on the condition that they kept
silence and remained in the background. To Calvin silence was agony, but he must respect
the condition, however hard he felt it, for any infraction of it would be tantamount to
setting up his own stake. Opportunities of usefulness, however, were not wanting. He
exhorted those who assembled at the house of La Forge, and he visited in their own
dwellings the persons named to him as the friends of the Gospel in Paris.
The evangelist showed much zeal and diligence in the work of visitation. It was not the
mansions of the rich to which he was led; nor was it men of rank and title to whom he was
introduced; he met those whose hands were roughened and whose brows were furrowed by hard
labor; for it was now as at the beginning of Christianity, "not many mighty, not many
noble are called, but God hath chosen the poor of this world." It is all the better
that it is so, for Churches like States must be based upon the people. Not far from the
sign of the "Pelican," at which La Forge lived, in the same Rue St. Denis, is a
shoe-maker's shop, which let us enter. A miserable-looking hunchback greets our eyes. The
dwarfed, deformed, paralysed figure excites our compassion. His hands and tongue remain to
him; his other limbs are withered, and their power gone. The name of this poor creature is
Bartholomew Millon. Bartholomew had not always been the pitiably misshapen object we now
behold him. He was formerly one of the most handsome men in all Paris, and with the gifts
of person he possessed also those of the mind.[10] But he had led a youth of boisterous dissipation. No gratification
which his senses craved did he deny himself. Gay in disposition and impetuous in temper,
he was the ring-leader of his companions, and was at all times equally ready to deal a
blow with his powerful arm, or let fly a sarcasm with his sharp tongue.
But a beneficent Hand, in the guise of disaster, arrested Bartholomew in the midst of his
mad career. Falling one day, he broke his ribs, and neglecting the needful remedies, his
body shrunk into itself, and shrivelled up. The stately form was now bent, the legs became
paralysed, and on the face of the cripple grim peevishness took the place of manly beauty.
He could no longer mingle in the holiday spirit or the street brawl. He sat enchained, day
after day, in his shop, presenting to all who visited it the rueful spectacle of a poor
deformed paralytic. His powers of mind, however, had escaped the blight which fell upon
his body. His wit was as sharp as ever, and it may be a little sharper, misfortune having
soured his temper. The Protestants were especially the butt of his ridicule. One day, a
Lutheran happening to pass before his shop, the bile of Millon was excited, and he
forthwith let fly at him a volley of insults and scoffs. Turning round to see whence the
abuse proceeded, the eye of the passer- by lighted on the pitiful object who had assailed
him. Touched with compassion, he went up to him and said, "Poor man, don't you see
that God has bent your body in this way in order to straighten your soul?[11] and giving him a New Testament,
he bade him read it, and tell him at an after-day what he thought of it.
The words of the stranger touched the heart of the paralytic: Millon opened the book, and
began to read. Arrested by its beauty and majesty, "he continued at it," says
Crespin, "night and day." He now saw that his soul was even more deformed than
his body. But the Bible had revealed to him a great Physician, and, believing in his power
to heal, the man whose limbs were withered, but whose heart was now smitten, cast himself
down before that gracious One. The Savior had pity upon him. His soul was
"straightened." The malignity and spite which had blackened and deformed it were
cast out. "The wolf had become a lamb."[12] He turned his shop into a conventicle, and was never weary of
commending to others that Savior who had pardoned sins so great and healed diseases so
inveterate as his.
The gibe and the scoff were forgotten; only words of loving-kindness and instruction now
fell from him. Still chained to his seat he gathered round him the young, and taught them
to read. He exerted his skill in art to minister to the poor; and his powers of persuasion
he employed day after day to the reclaiming of those whom his former example had
corrupted, and the edification of such as he had scoffed at aforetime. He had a fine
voice, and many came from all parts of Paris to hear him sing Marot's Psalms. "In
short," says Crespin, "his room was a true school of piety, day and night,
re-echoing with the glory of the Lord."
Let us visit another of these disciples, so humble in station, yet so grand in character.
Such men are the foundation-stones of a kingdom's greatness. We have not far to go. At the
entrance of the same Rue was a large shop in which John du Bourg carried on, under the
sign of the "Black Horse,"[13] the trade of a draper. Du Bourg, who was a man of substance, was
very independent in his opinions, and liked to examine and judge of all things for
himself. He had imbibed the Reformed sentiments, although he had not associated much with
the Protestants. He had gone, as his habit of mind was, directly to the Scriptures, and
drawn thence his knowledge of the truth. That water was all the sweeter to him, that he
had drunk it fresh from the fountain. He did not hoard his treasure. He was a merchant,
but not one of all his wares did it so delight him to vend as this. "This fire,"
said his relations, "will soon go out like a blaze of tow." They were mistaken.
The priests scowled, his customers fell off, but, says the old chronicler, "neither
money nor kindred could ever turn him aside from the truth."[14]
It consoled Du Bourg to see others, who had drunk at the same spring, drawing
around him. His shop was frequently visited by Peter Valeton, a receiver of Nantes.[15] Valeton came often to Paris, the
two chief attractions being the pleasure of conversing with Du Bourg, and the chance of
picking up some writing or other of the Reformers. He might be seen in the quarter of the
booksellers, searching their collections; and, having found what he wanted, he would
eagerly buy it, carry it home under his cloak, and locking the door of his apartment, he
would begin eagerly to read. His literary wares were deposited at the bottom of a large
chest, the key of which he carried always on his person.[16] He was timid as yet, but he became more courageous afterwards.
Another member of this little Protestant band was Le Compte, a disciple as well as
fellow-townsman of the doctor of Etaples, Lefevre. He had a knowledge of Hebrew, and to
his power of reading the Scriptures in the original, he added a talent for exposition,
which made him in no small measure useful in building up the little Church. The membership
of that Church was farther diversified by the presence of a dark-visaged man, of
considerable fame, but around whom there seemed ever to hover an air of mystery. This was
Giulio Camillo, a native of Italy, whoin Francis I. had invited to Paris. The Italian made
trial of all knowledge, and he had dipped, amongst other studies, into the cabalistic
science; and hence, it may be, the look of mystery which he wore, and which struck awe
into those who approached him. Hearing of the new opinions, on his arrival in France, he
must needs know what they were. He joined himself to the Protestants, and professed to
love their doctrine; but it is to be feared that he was drawn to the Gospel as to any
other new thing, for when the time came when it was nccessary to bear stronger testimony
to it than by words, Camillo was not found amongst its confessors.
Humbler in rank than any of the foregoing was Henry Poille, also a member of the infant
Church of Paris. Poille was a bricklayer, from the neighborhood of Meaux. Around him there
hung no veil, for he had not meddled with the dark sciences; it was enough, he accounted
it, to know the Gospel. He could not bring to it what lie did not possess, riches and
renown; but he brought it something that recommended it even more, an undivided heart, and
a steadfast courage; and when the day of trial came, and others fled with their learning
and their titles, and left the Gospel to shift for itself, Poille stood firmly by it. He
had learned the truth from Briconnet; but, following a Greater as his Captain, when the
bishop went back, the bricklayer went forward, though he saw before him in the near
distance the lurid gleam of the stake.
Besides these humble men the Gospel had made not a few converts in the ranks above them.
Even in the Parliament there were senators who had embraced at heart that very Lutheranism
against which that body had now recorded the punishment of death; but the fear of an irate
priesthood restrained them from the open confession of it. Nay, even of the priests and
monks there were some who had been won by the Gospel, and who loved the Savior. Professors
in the university, teachers in the schools, lawyers, merchants, tradesmen — in short,
men of every rank, and of all professions — swelled the number of those who had
abjured the faith of Rome and ranged themselves, more or less openly, on the side of the
Reformation. But the most part now gathered round the Protestant standard were from the
humbler classes. Their contemporaries knew them not, at least till they saw them at the
stake, and learned, with some little wonder and surprise, what heroic though misguided
men, as they thought them, had been living amongst them unknown; and, as regards
ourselves, we should never have heard their names, or learned aught of their history, but
for the light which the Gospel sheds upon them. It was that alone which brought these
humble men into view, and made them the heirs of an immortality of fame even on earth; for
so long as the Church shall exist, and her martyr-records continue to be read, their
names, and the services they did, will be mentioned with honor.
Living at the house of La Forge, such were the men with whom Calvin came into almost daily
contact. But not these only: others of a different stamp, whose inspiration and sentiments
were drawn from another source than the Scriptures, did the future Reformer occasionally
meet at the table of his host. The avowal of pantheistic and atheistic doctrines would, at
times, drop from the mouths of these suspicious-looking strangers, and startle Calvin not
a little. It seemed strange that the still dawn of the evangelic day should be deformed by
these lurid flashes; yet so it was.[17]
The sure forecast of Calvin divined the storms with which the future of Christendom
was pregnant, unless the Gospel should anticipate and prevent their outburst. We have
already said that from the days of Abelard the seeds of communistic pantheism had begun to
be scattered in Europe, and more especially in France. Dining the cold and darkness of the
centuries that followed Abelard's time, these seeds had lain silently in the frozen soil,
but now the warm spring-time of the sixteenth century was bringing them above the surface.
The tares were springing up as well as the wheat. The quick eye of Calvin detected, at
that early stage, the difference between the two growths, and the different fruits that
posterity would gather from them. He heard men who had stolen to La Forge's table under
color of being favorers of the new age, avow it as their belief that all things were God
— themselves, the universe, all was God — and he heard them on that dismal
ground claim an equally dismal immunity from all accountability for their actions, however
wicked.[18] From
that time Calvin set himself to resist these frightful doctrines, not less energetically
than the errors of Rome. He felt that there was no salvation for Christendom save by the
Gospel; and he toiled yet more earnestly to erect this great and only breakwater. If,
unhappily, others would not permit him, and if as a consequence the deluge has broken in,
and some countries have been partially overflowed, and others wholly so, it is not Calvin
who is to blame.
In the meantime Calvin quitted Paris, probably in the end of July, 1534. It is possible
that he felt the air thick with impending tempest. But it was not fear that made him
depart; his spirit was weighed down, for almost every door of labor was closed meanwhile;
he could not evangelise, save at the risk of a stake, and yet he had no leisure to read
and meditate from the numbers of persons who were desirous to see and converse with him.
He resolved to leave France and go to Germany, where he hoped to find "some shady
nook,"[19] in
which he might enjoy the quiet denied him in the capital of his native land. Setting out
on horseback, accompanied by Du Tillet, the two travelers reached Strasburg in safety. His
departure was of God; for hardly was he gone when the sky of France was overcast, and
tempest came. Had Calvin been in Paris when the storm burst, he would most certainly have
been numbered among its victims. But it was not the will of God that his career should end
at this time and in this fashion.
Humbler men were taken who could not, even had their lives been spared, have effected
great things for the Reformation. Calvin, who was to spread the light over the earth, was
left. He served the cause of the Gospel by living, they by dying.
CHAPTER 19 Back to Top
THE NIGHT OF THE PLACARDS.
Inconstancy of Francis — Two Parties in the young French Church: the Temporisers and
the Scripturalists — The Policy advocated by each — Their Differences submitted
to Farel — The Judgment of the Swiss Pastors — The Placard — Terrific
Denunciation of the Mass — Return of the Messenger — Shall the Placards be
Published? — Two Opinions — Majority for Publication — The Kingdom
Placarded in One Night — The Morning — Surprise and Horror — Placard on the
Door of the Royal Bed-chamber — Wrath of the King.
WE stand now on the threshold of an era of martyrdoms.
Francis I. had not hitherto been able to come to a decision on the important question of
religion. This hour he turned to the Reformation in the hope that, should he put himself
at its head, it would raise him to the supremacy of Europe; the next he turned away in
disgust, offended by the holiness of the Gospel, or alarmed at the independence of the
Reform. But an incident was about to take place, destined to put an end to the royal
vacillation.
There were two parties in the young Church of France; the one was styled the Temporisers,
the other the Scripturalists. Both parties were sincerely devoted to the Scriptural Reform
of their native land, but in seeking to promote that great end the one party was more
disposed to fix its eyes on men in power, and follow as they might lead, than the other
thought it either dutiful or safe. The monarch, said the first party, is growing every day
more favorable to the Reformation; he is at no pains to conceal the contempt he
entertains, on the one hand, for the monks, and the favor he bears, on the other, to men
of letters and progress. Is not his minister, Du Bellay, negotiating a league with the
Protestants of Germany, and have not these negotiations already borne fruit in the
restoration of Duke Christopher to his dominions, and in an accession of political
strength to the Reform? Besides, what do we see in the Louvre? Councils assembling under
the presidency of the king to discuss the question of the union of Christendom. Let us
leave this great affair in hands so well able to guide it to a prosperous issue. We shall
but spoil all by obtruding our counsel, or obstinately insisting on having our own way.
The other party in the young Protestant Church were but little disposed to shape their
policy by the wishes and maxims of the court. They did not believe that a monarch so
dissolute in his manners, and so inconstant in his humors, would labor sincerely and
steadfastly for a Reform of religion. To embrace the Pope this hour and the German
Protestants the next, to consign a Romanist to the Conciergerie to-day and burn a Lutheran
to-morrow, was no proof of impartiality, but of levity and passion. They built no hopes on
the conferences at the Louvre. The attempt to unite the Reformation and the Pope could end
only in the destruction of the Gospel.
The years were gliding away; the Reformation of France tarried; they would wait no longer
on man. A policy bolder in tone, and more thoroughly based on principle, alone could lead,
they thought, to the overthrow of the Papacy in France.
Divided among themselves, it was natural that the Protestants should turn their eyes
outside of France for counsel that would unite them. Among the Reformers easily
accessible, there was no name that carried with it more authority than that of Farel. He
was a Frenchman; he understood, it was to be supposed, the situation better than any
other, and he could not but feel the deepest interest in a work which he himself, along
with Lefevre, had commenced. To Farel they resolved to submit the question that divided
them.
They found a humble Christian, Feret by name, willing to be their messenger.[1] He departed, and arriving in
Switzerland, now the scene of Farel's labors, he found himself in a new world. In all the
towns and villages the altars were being demolished, the idols cast down, and the Reformed
worship was in course of being set up. How different the air, the messenger could not but
remark, within the summits of the Jura, from that within the walls of Paris. It required
no great forecast to tell what the answer of the Swiss Reformers would be. They assembled,
heard the messenger, and gave their voices that the Protestants of France should halt no
longer; that they should boldly advance; and that they should notify their forward
movement by a vigorous blow at that which was the citadel of the Papal Empire of bondage
— the root of that evil tree that overshadowed Christendom — the mass.
But the bolt had to be forged in Switzerland. It was to take the form of a tract or
placard denunciatory of that institution which it was proposed by this one terrible blow
to lay in the dust. But who shall write it? Farel has been commonly credited with the
authorship; and the trenchant eloquence and burning scorn which breathe in the placard,
Farel alone, it has been supposed, could have communicated to it.[2] It was no logical thesis, no
dogmatic refutation; it was a torrent of scathing fire; a thunderburst, terrific and
grand, resembling one of those tempests that gather in awful darkness on the summits of
those mountains amid which the document was written, and finally explode in flashes which
irradiate the whole heavens, and in volleys of sound which shake the plains over which the
awful reverberations are rolled.
The paper was headed, "True Articles on the horrible, great, and intolerable Abuses
of the Popish Mass; invented in direct opposition to the Holy Supper of our Lord and only
Mediator and Savior Jesus Christ." It begins by taking "heaven and earth to
witness against the mass, because the world is and will be by it totally desolated,
ruined, lost, and undone, seeing that in it our Lord is outrageously blasphemed, and the
people blinded and led astray." After citing the testimony of Scripture, the belief
of the Fathers, and the evidence of the senses against the dogma, the author goes on to
assail with merciless and, judged by modern taste, coarse sarcasm the ceremonies which
accompany its celebration.
"What mean all these games?" he asks; "you play around your god of dough,
toying with him like a cat with a mouse. You break him into three pieces... and then you
put on a piteous look, as if you were very sorrowful; you beat your breasts... you call
him the Lamb of God, and pray to him for peace. St. John showed Jesus Christ ever present,
ever living, living all in one — an adorable truth! but you show your wafer divided
into pieces, and then you eat it, calling for something to drink."
The writer asks "these cope-wearers" where they find "this big word
TRANSUBSTANTION?" Certainly, he says, not in the Bible. The inspired writers
"called the bread and wine, bread and wine." "St. Paul does not say, Eat
the body of Jesus Christ; but, Eat this bread." "Yes, kindle your faggots,"
but let it be for the true profaners of the body of Christ, for those who place it in a
bit of dough, "the food it may be of spiders or of mice." And what, the writer
asks, has the fruit of the mass been? "By it:" he answers, "the preaching
of the Gospel is prevented. The time is occupied with bell-ringing, howling, chanting,
empty ceremonies, candles, incense, disguises, and all manner of conjuration. And the poor
world, looked upon as a lamb or as a sheep, is miserably deceived, cajoled, led astray
— what do I say? — bitten, gnawed, and devoured as if by ravening wolves."
The author winds up with a torrent of invective directed against Popes, cardinals,
bishops, and monks, thus: — "Truth is wanting to them, truth terrifies them, and
by truth will their reign be destroyed for ever."
Written in Switzerland, where every sight and sound — the snowy peak, the gushing
torrent, the majestic lake — speak of liberty and inspire courageous thoughts, and
with the crash of the falling altars of an idolatrous faith in the ears of the writer,
these words did not seem too bold, nor the denunciations too fierce. But the author who
wrote, and the other pastors who approved, did not sufficiently consider that this
terrible manifesto was not to be published in Switzerland, but in France, where a powerful
court and a haughty priesthood were united to combat the Reformation. It might have been
foreseen that a publication breathing a defiance so fierce, and a hatred so mortal, could
have but one of two results: it would carry the convictions of men by storm, and make the
nation abhor and renounce the abomination it painted in colors so frightful, and
stigmatized in words so burning, or if it failed in this — and the likelihood was
that it would fail — it must needs evoke such a tempest of wrath as would go near to
sweep the Protestant Church from the soil of France altogether.
The document was printed in two forms, with a view to its being universally circulated.
There were placards to be posted up on the walls of towns, and on the posts along the
highway, and there were small slips to be scattered in the streets. This light was not to
be put under a bushel; it was to flash the same day all over France. The bales of printed
matter were ready, and Feret now set out on his return. As he held his quiet way through
the lovely mountains of the Jura, which look down with an air so tranquil on the fertile
plains of Burgundy, no one could have suspected what a tempest traveled with him. He
seemed the dove of peace, not the petrel of storm. He arrived in Paris without question
from any one.
Immediately on his arrival the members of the little Church were convened; the paper was
opened and read; but the assembly was divided. There were Christians present who were not
lacking in courage — nay, were ready to go to the stake — but who, nevertheless,
shrunk from the responsibility of publishing a fulmination like this. France was not
Switzerland, and what might be listened to with acquiescence beyond the Jura, might, when
read at the foot of the throne of Francis I., bring on such a convulsion as would shake
the nation, and bury the Reformed Church in its own ruins. Gentler words, they thought,
would go deeper.
But the majority were not of this mind. They were impatient of delay. France was lagging
behind Germany, Switzerland, and other countries. Moreover, they feared the councils now
proceeding at the Louvre. They had as their object, they knew, to unite the Pope and the
Reformation, and they were in haste to launch this bolt, "forged on Farel's
anvil," before so unhallowed a union should be consummated. In this assembly now met
to deliberate about the placard were Du Bourg and Millon, and most of the disciples whom
we have mentioned in our former chapter. These gave their voices that the paper should be
published, and in this resolution the majority concurred.
The next step was to make arrangements to secure, if possible, that this manifesto should
meet the eye of every man in France. The kingdom was divided into districts, and persons
were told off who were to undertake the hazardous work of posting up, each in the quarter
assigned him, this placard — the blast, it was hoped, before which the walls of the
Papal Jericho in France would fall. A night was selected; for clearly the work could be
done only under cover of the darkness, and equally clear was it that it must be done in
one and the same night all over France. The night fixed on was that of the 24th October,
1534. [3]
The eventful night came. Before the morning should break, this trumpet must be
blown all over France. As soon as the dusk had deepened into something like darkness the
distributors sallied forth; and gliding noiselessly from street to street, and from lane
to lane, they posted up the terrible placards. They displayed them on the walls of the
Louvre, at the gates of the Sorbonne, and on the doors of the churches. What was being
done in Paris was at the same instant being transacted in all the chief towns — nay,
even in the rural parts and highways of the kingdom. France had suddenly become like the
roll of the prophet. An invisible finger had, from side to side, covered it with a
terrible writing — with prophetic denunciations of woe and ruin unless it repented in
sackcloth and turned from the mass.
When morning broke, men awoke in city and village, and came forth at the doors of their
houses to see this mysterious placard staring them in the face. Little groups began to
gather round each paper. These groups speedily swelled into crowds, comprising every
class, lay and cleric. A few read with approbation, the most with amazement, some with
horror. The paper appeared to them an outpouring of blasphemous sentiment, and they
trembled lest it should draw down upon the people of France some sudden and terrible
stroke. Others were transported with rage, seeing in it an open defiance to the Church,
and an expression of measureless contempt at all that was held sacred by the nation.
Frightful rumors began to circulate among the masses. The Lutherans, it was said, had
concocted a terrible conspiracy, they were going to set fire to the churches, and burn and
massacre every one.[4] The
priests, though professing of course horror at the placards, were in reality not greatly
displeased at what had occurred. For some time they had been waiting for a pretext to deal
a blow at the Protestant cause, and now a weapon such as they wished for had been put into
their hands.
The king at the time was living at the Castle of Amboise. At an early hour Montmorency and
the Cardinal de Tournon knocked at his closet door to tell him of the dreadful event of
the night. As they were about to enter their eye caught sight of a paper posted up on the
door of the royal cabinet. It was the placard put there by some indiscreet Protestant, or,
as is more generally supposed, by some hostile hand. Montmorency and Tournon tore it down,
and carried it in to the king.[5] The
king grasped the paper. Its heading, and the audacity shown in posting it on the door of
his private apartment, so agitated Francis that he was unable to read it. He handed it
again to his courtiers, who read it to him. He stood pallid and speechless a little while;
but at length his wrath found vent in terrible words: "Let all be seized, and let
Lutheranism be totally exterminated!"[6]
CHAPTER 20 Back to Top
MARTYRS AND EXILES.
Plan of Morin. — The Betrayer — Procession of Corpus Christi — Terror of
Paris — Imprisonment of the Protestants — Atrocious Designs attributed to them
— Nemesis — Sentence of the Disciples — Execution of Bartholomew Millon
— Burning of Du Bourg — Death of Poille — His Tortures — General
Terror — Flight of Numbers — Refugees of Rank — Queen of Navarre — Her
Preachers — All Ranks Flee — What France might have been, had she retained these
Men — Prodigious Folly.
NOW it was that the storm burst. The king wrote summoning the
Parliament to meet, and execute strict justice: in the affair, he further commanded his
lieutenant-criminal, Jean Morin, to use expedition in discovering and bringing to justice
all in any way suspected of having been concerned in the business.[1] Morin, a man of profligate life,
audacious, a thorough hater of the Protestants, and skilfill in laying traps to catch
them, needed not the increase of pay which the king promised him to stimulate his zeal. A
few moments thought and he saw how the thing was to be done. He knew the man whose office
it was to convene the Protestants when a reunion was to be held, and he had this man, who
was a sheath-maker by trade, instantly apprehended and brought before him. The
lieutenant-criminal told the poor sheath-maker he was perfectly aware that he knew every
Lutheran in Paris, and that he must make ready and conduct him to their doors. The man
shrunk from the baseness demanded of him. Morin coolly bade an attendant prepare a
scaffold, and turning to his prisoner gave him his choice of being burned alive, or of
pointing out to him the abodes of his brethren. Terrified by the horrible threat, which
was about to be put in instant execution, the poor man became the betrayer.[2] The lieutenant-criminal now
hoped at one throw of his net to enclose all the Lutherans in Paris.
Under pretense of doing expiation for the affront which had been put upon the "Holy
Sacrament," Morin arranged a procession of the Corpus Christi.[3] The houses in the line of the
procession were draped in black, and with slow and solemn pace friar and priest passed
along bearing the Host, followed by a crowd of incense-bearers and hymning choristers. The
excitement thus awakened favored the plans of the lieutenant-criminal. He glided through
the streets, attended by his serjeants and officers. The traitor walked before him. When
he came opposite the door of any of his former brethren the sheath-maker stopped and,
without saying a word, made a sign. The officers entered the house, and the family were
dragged forth and led away manacled. Alas, what a cruel as well as infamous task had this
man imposed upon himself! Had he been walking to the scaffold, his joy would have grown at
every step. As it was, every new door he stopped at, and every fresh victim that swelled
the procession which he headed, bowed lower his head in shame, and augmented that pallor
of the face which told of the deep remorse preying at his heart.
Onwards went the procession, visiting all the quarters of Paris, the crowd of onlookers
continually increasing, as did also the mournful train of victims which Morin and the
traitor, as they passed along, gathered up for the stake. The tidings that the
lieutenant-criminal was abroad spread over the city like wild-fire. "Morin made all
the city quake."[4] This
was the first day of the "Reign of Terror." Anguish of spirit preceded the march
of Morin and his agents; for no one could tell at whose door he might stop. Men of letters
trembled as well as the Protestants. If fear marched before Morin, lamentation and cries
of woe echoed in his rear.
The disciples we have already spoken of — Du Bourg, the merchant; Bartholomew Millon,
the paralytic; Valeton, who was ever inquiring after the writings of the Reformers;
Poille, the bricklayer — and others of higher rank, among whom were Roussel and
Courault and Berthaud, the Queen of Navarre's preachers, were all taken in the net of the
lieutenant-criminal, and drafted off to prison. Morin made no distinction among those
suspected: his rage fell equally on those who had opposed and on those who had favored the
posting up of the placards. Persons of both sexes, and of various nationalities, were
indeed among the multitude now lodged in prison, to be, as the lieutenant-criminal
designed, at no distant day produced on the scaffold, a holocaust to the offended manes of
Rome. 359
The Parliament. the Sorbonne, and the priests were resolved to turn the crisis to the
utmost advantage. They must put an end to the king's communings with German and English
heretics; they must stamp out Lutheranism in Paris; a rare chance had the untoward zeal of
the converts thrown into their power for doing so. They must take care that the king's
anger did not cool; they must not be sparing in the matter of stakes; every scaffold would
be a holy altar, every victim a grateful sacrifice, to purify a land doubly polluted by
the blasphemous placard. Above all, they must maintain the popular indignation at a white
heat. The most alarming rumors began to circulate through Paris. To the Lutherans were
attributed the most atrocious designs. They had conspired, it was said, to fire all the
public buildings, and massacre all the Catholics. They were accused of seeking to compass
the death of the king, the overthrow of the monarchy, and the destruction of society
itself. They meant to leave France a desert. So it was whispered, and these terrible
rumors were greedily listened to, and the mob shouted, "Death, death to the
heretics!"[5]
With reference to these charges that were now industriously circulated against the
Protestants of Paris, there was not a Lutheran who ever meditated such wickedness as this.
Not a fragment of proof of such designs has ever been produced. Well; three hundred years
pass away, and Protestantism is all but suppressed in France. What happens? Is the nation
tranquil, and the throne stable? On the contrary, from out the darkness there stands up a
terrible society, which boldly avows it as its mission to inflict on France those same
atrocious designs which the disciples of the Gospel had been falsely accused of
entertaining. The bugbear of that day, conjured up by hypocrisy and bigotry, has become
the menace of ours. We have seen the throne overturned, the blood of nobles and priests
shed like water, the public monuments sinking in ashes, the incendiary's torch and the
assassin's sword carrying terror from end to end of France, and society saved only by the
assertion of the soberer sense of the people.
The several stages of the awful drama we are narrating followed each other in quick
succession. On the 10th November, just a fortnight after their apprehension, were Millon,
Du Bourg, Poille, and the rest brought forth and presented before their judges. For them
there could be no other sentence than death, and that death could come in no other form
than the terrible one of burning. Nor had they long to wait. Three short days and then the
executions began! The scaffolds were distributed over all the quarters of Paris, and the
burnings followed on successive days, the design being to spread the terror of heresy by
spreading the executions. The advantage however, in the end, remained with the Gospel. All
Paris was enabled to see what kind of men the new opinions could produce. There is no
pulpit like the martyr's pile. The serene joy that lighted up the faces of these men as
they passed along, in their wretched tumbril, to the place of execution, their heroism as
they stood amid the bitter flames, their meek forgiveness of injuries, transformed, in
instances not a few, anger into pity, and hate into love, and pleaded with resistless
eloquence in behalf of the Gospel.
Of this little band, the first to tread the road from the prison to the stake, and from
the stake to the crown, was Bartholomew Millon. The persecutor, in selecting the poor
paralytic for the first victim, hoped perhaps to throw an air of derision over the martyrs
and their cause. It was as if he had said, Here is a specimen of the miserable creatures
who are disturbing the nation by their new opinions: men as deformed in body as in mind.
But he had miscalculated. The dwarfed and distorted form of Millon but brought out in bold
relief his magnanimity of soul, The turnkey, when he entered his cell, lifted him up in
his arms and placed him in the tumbril. On his way to the place of execution he passed his
father's door. He bade adieu with a smile to his earthly abode, as one who felt himself
standing at the threshold of his heavenly home. A slow fire awaited him at the Greve, and
the officer in command bade the fire be lowered still more, but he bore the lingering
tortures of this mode of death with a courage so admirable that the Gospel had no reason
to be ashamed of its martyr. None but words of peace dropped from his lips. Even the
enemies who stood around his pile could not withhold their admiration of his constancy.[6]
The following day the wealthy tradesman Du Bourg was brought forth to undergo the
same dreadful death. He was known to be a man of decision; and his persecutors set
themselves all the more to contrive how they might shake his steadfastness by multiplying
the humiliations and tortures to which they doomed him before permitting him to taste of
death and depart. The tumbril that bore him was stopped at Notre Dame, and there he was
made a gazing-stock to the multitude, as he stood in front of the cathedral, with taper in
hand, and a rope round his neck. He was next taken to the Rue St. Denis, in which his own
house was situated, and there his hand was cut off — the hand which had been busy on
that night of bold but imprudent enterprise. He was finally taken to the Halles and burned
alive. Du Bourg in death as in life was still the man of courage; he shrunk from neither
the shame nor the suffering, but was "steadfast unto the end."[7]
Three days passed; it was now the 18th November, and on this day Poille, the
bricklayer, was to die. His stake was set up in the Faubourg St. Antoine, in front of the
Church of St. Catherine; for it was the inhabitants of this quarter of Paris who were next
to be taught to what a dreadful end heresy brings men, and yet with what a glorious hope
and unconquerable courage it has the power to inspire them. Poille had learned the Gospel
from Bishop Briconnet, but while the master had scandalised it by his weakness, the
disciple was to glorify it by his steadfastness. He wore an air of triumph as he alighted
from his cart at the place of execution. Cruel, very cruel was his treatment at the stake.
"My Lord Jesus Christ," he said, "reigns in heaven, and I am ready to fight
for him to the last drop of my blood." "This confession of truth at the moment
of punishment," says D'Aubigne, quoting Crespin's description of the martyr's last
moments, "exasperated the executioners. 'Wait a bit,' they said, 'we will stop your
prating.' They sprang upon him, opened his mouth, caught hold of his tongue, and bored a
hole through it; they then, with refined cruelty, made a slit in his cheek, through which
they drew the tongue, and fastened it with an iron pin. Some cries were heard from the
crowd at this most horrible spectacle; they proceeded from the humble Christians who had
come to help the poor bricklayer with their compassionate looks, Poille spoke no more, but
his eye still announced the peace; he enjoyed. He was burnt alive."[8]
For some time each succeeding day had its victim. Of these sufferers there were
some whose only crime was that they had printed and sold Luther's writings; it was not
clear that they had embraced his sentiments; their persecutors deemed them well deserving
of the stake for simply having had a hand in circulating them. This indiscriminate
vengeance, which dragged to a common pile the Protestants and all on whom the mere
suspicion of Protestantism had fallen, spread a general terror in Paris.
Those who had been seen at the Protestant sermons, those who had indulged in a jest at the
expense of the monks, but especially those who, in heart, although not confessing it with
the mouth, had abandoned Rome and turned to the Gospel, felt as if the eye of the
lieutenant-criminal was upon them, and that, at any moment, his step might be heard on
their threshold.
Paris was no longer .a place for them; every day and every hour they tarried there, it was
at the peril of being burned alive. Accordingly, they rose up and fled. It was bitter to
leave home and country and all the delights of life, and go forth into exile, but it was
less bitter than to surrender their hope of an endless life in the better country; for at
no less a cost could they escape a stake in France.
A few days made numerous blanks in the society of Paris. Each blank represented a convert
to the Gospel. When men began to look around them and count these gaps, they were amazed
to think how many of those among whom they had been living, and with whom they had come
into daily contact, were Lutherans, but wholly unknown in that character till this affair
brought them to light. Merchants vanished suddenly from their places of business;
tradesmen disappeared from their workshops; clerks were missing from the countinghouse;
students assembled at the usual hour, but the professor's chair was empty; their teacher,
not waiting to bid his pupils adieu, had gone forth, and was hastening towards some more
friendly land.
The bands of fugitives now hurrying by various routes, and in various disguises, to the
frontiers of the kingdom, embraced all ranks and all occupations. The Lords of Roygnac and
Roberval, of Fleuri, in Briere, were among those who were now fleeing their country and
the wrath of their sovereign. Men in government offices, and others high at court and near
the person of the king, made the first disclosure, by a hasty flight, that they had
embraced the Gospel, and that they preferred it to place and emolument. Among these last
was the privy purse-bearer of the king. Every hour brought a new surprise to both the
friends and the foes of the Gospel. The latter hated it yet more than ever as a mysterious
thing, possessing some extraordinary power over the minds of men. They saw with a sort of
terror the numbers it had already captivated, and they had uneasy misgivings as to
whereunto this affair would grow.
Margaret wept, but the fear in which she stood of her brother made her conceal her tears.
Her three preachers — Roussel, Berthaud, and Courault — had been thrown into
prison. Should she make supplication for them? Her enemies, she knew, were laboring to
inflame the king against her, and bring her to the block. The Constable Montmorency, says
Brant"me, told the king that he "must begin at his court and his nearest
relations," pointing at the Queen of Navarre, "if he had a mind to extirpate the
heretics out of his kingdom."[9] Any
indiscretion or over-zeal, therefore, might prove fatal to her. Nevertheless, she resolved
on braving the king's wrath, if haply she might rescue her friends from the stake. Bigotry
had not quite quenched Francis's love for his sister; the lives of her preachers were
given her at her request; but, with the exception of one of the three, their services to
the Protestant cause ended with the day on which they were let out of prison. Roussel
retired to his abbey at Clairac; Berthand resumed his frock and his beads, and died in the
cloister; Courault contrived to make his escape, and turning his steps toward Switzerland,
he reached Basle, became minister at Orbe, and finally was a fellow-laborer with Calvin at
Geneva.
Meanwhile another, and yet another, rose up and fled, till the band of self-confessed and
self-expatriated disciples of the Gospel swelled to be between 400 and 500. Goldsmiths,
engravers, notably printers and bookbinders, men of all crafts, lawyers, teachers of
youth, and even monks and priests were crowding the roads and by-ways of France, fleeing
from the persecutor. Some went to Strasburg; some to Basle; and a few placed the Alps
between them and their native land. Among these fugitives there is one who deserves
special mention — Mathurin Cordier, the venerable schoolmaster, who was the first to
detect, and who so largely helped to develop, the wonderful genius of Calvin. Million and
Du Bourg and Poille we have seen also depart; but their flight was by another road than
that which these fugitives were now treading in weariness and hunger and fear. They had
gone whither the persecutor could not follow them.
The men who were now fleeing from France were the first to tread a path which was to be
trodden again and again by hundreds of thousands of their countrymen in years to come.
During the following two centuries and a half these scenes were renewed at short
intervals. Scarcely was there a generation of Frenchmen during that long period that did
not witness the disciples of the Gospel fleeing before the insane fury of the persecutor,
and carrying with them the intelligence, the arts, the industry, the order, in which, as a
rule, they pre-eminently excelled, to enrich the lands in which they found an asylum. And
in proportion as they replenished other countries with these good gifts did they empty
their own of them. If all that was now driven away had been retained in France; if, during
these 300 years, the industrial skill of the exiles had been cultivating her soil; if,
during these 300 years, their artistic bent had been improving her manufactures; if,
during these 300 years, their creative genius and analytic power had been enriching her
literature and cultivating her science; if their wisdom had been guiding her councils,
their bravery fighting her battles, their equity framing her laws, and the religion of the
Bible strengthening the intellect and governing the conscience of her people, what a glory
would at this day have encompassed France! What a great, prosperous, and happy country
— a pattern to the nations — would she have been! But a blind and inexorable
bigotry chased from her soil every teacher of virtue, every champion of order, every
honest defender of the throne; it said to the men who would have made their country a
"renown and glory" in the earth, Choose which you will have, a stake or exile?
At last the ruin of the State was complete; there remained no more conscience to be
proscribed; no more religion to be dragged to the stake; no more patriotism to be chased
into banishment; revolution now entered the morally devastated land, bringing in its train
scaffolds and massacres, and once more crowding the roads, and flooding the frontiers of
France with herds of miserable exiles; only there was a change of victims.
CHAPTER 21 Back to Top
OTHER AND MORE DREADFUL MARTYRDOMS.
A Great Purgation Resolved on — Preparations — Procession — The Four
Mendicants — Relics: the Head of St. Louis; the True Cross, etc. — Living
Dignitaries — The Host — The King on Foot — His Penitence — Of what
Sins does he Repent? — The Queen — Ambassadors, Nobles, etc. — Homage of
the Citizens — High Mass in Notre Dame — Speech of the King — The Oath of
the King — Return of Procession — Apparatus of Torture — Martyrdom of
Nicholas Valeton — More Scaffolds and Victims — The King and People's
Satisfaction — An Ominous Day in the Calendar of France — The 21st of January.
AS yet we have seen only the beginning of the tragedy; its
more awful scenes are to follow. Numerous stakes had already been planted in Paris, but
these did not slake the vengeance of the persecutor; more victims must be immolated if
expiation was to be done for the affront offered to Heaven in the matter of the placards,
and more blood shed if the land was to be cleansed from the frightful pollution it had
undergone. Such was the talk which the priests held in presence of the king.[1] They reminded him that this was
a crisis in France, that he was the eldest son of the Church, that this title it became
him to preserve unsullied, and transmit with honor to his posterity, and they urged him to
proceed with all due rigour in the performance of those bloody rites by which his throne
and kingdom were to be purged. Francis I was but too willing to obey. A grand procession,
which was to be graced by bloody interludes, was arranged, and the day on which it was to
come off was the 21st of January, 1535. The horrors which will make this day famous to all
time were not the doings of the king alone; they were not less the acts of the nation
which by its constituted representatives countenanced the ceremonial and put its hand to
its cruel and sanguinary work.
The day fixed on arrived. Great crowds from the country began to pour into Paris. In the
city great preparations had been made for the spectacle. The houses along the line of
march were hung with mourning drapery, and altars rose at intervals where the Host might
repose as it was being borne along to its final resting-place on the high altar of Notre
Dame. A throng of sight-seers filled the streets. Not only was every inch of the pavement
occupied by human beings, but every door-step had its little group, every window its
cluster of faces; even the roofs were black with on-lookers, perched on the beams or
hanging on by the chimneys. "There was not," says Simon Fontaine, a chronicler
of that day, and a doctor of the Sorbonne, "the smallest piece of wood or stone,
jutting out of the walls, on which a spectator was not perched, provided there was but
room enough, and one might have fancied the streets were paved with human heads."[2] Though it was day, a lighted
taper was stuck in the front of every house "to do reverence to the blessed Sacrament
and the holy relics.[3]
At the early hour of six the procession marshalled at the Louvre. First came the
banners and crosses of the several parishes; next appeared the citizens, walking two and
two, and bearing torches in their hands. The four Mendicant orders followed; the Dominican
in his white woollen gown and black cloak; the Franciscan in his gown of coarse brown
cloth, half-shod feet, and truncated cowl covering his shorn head; the Capuchin in his
funnel-shaped cowl, and patched brown cloak, girded with a white three-knotted rope; and
the Augustine with a little round hat on his shaven head, and wide black gown girded on
the loins with a broad sash. After the monks walked the priests and canons of the city.
The next part of the procession evoked, in no ordinary degree, the interest and the awe of
the spectators. On no former occasion had so many relics been paraded on the streets of
Paris.[4] In the van of the procession was
carried the head of St. Louis, the patron saint of France. There followed a bit of the
true cross, the real crown of thorns, one of the nails, the swaddling clothes in which
Christ lay, the purple robe in which he was attired, the towel with which he girded
himself at the last supper, and the spear-head that pierced his side. Many saints of
former times had sent each a bit of himself to grace the procession, and nourish the
devotion of the on-lookers — some an arm, some a tooth, some a finger, and others one
of the many heads which, as it would seem, each had worn in his lifetime. This goodly
array of saintly relics was closed by the shrine of Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris,
borne by the corporation of butchers, who had prepared themselves for this holy work by
the purification of a three days' fast.[5]
After the dead members of the Church, whose relics were enshrined in silver and
gold, came a crowd of living dignitaries, in their robes and the insignia of their
ecclesiastical rank. Cardinal and abbot, archbishop and bishop were there, in the glory of
scarlet hat and purple gown, of cope and mitre and crozier. Now came the heart of this
grand show, the Host; and in it the spectators saw One mightier than any dead saint or
living dignitary in all that great procession. The Host was carried by the Bishop of Paris
under a magnificent canopy, the four pillars of which were supported by four princes of
the blood — the three sons of the king, and the Duke of Vend'me.
After the Host walked the king. The severe plainness of his dress was in marked and
studied contrast to the magnificence of the robes in which the ecclesiastics that preceded
and the civic functionaries that followed him were arrayed. Francis I. on that day wore no
crown, nor robe of state, nor was he borne along in chariot or litter. He appeared walking
on foot, his head uncovered, his eyes cast on the ground, and in his hand a lighted taper.[6] The king was there in the
character of a penitent. He was the chief mourner in that great national act of
humiliation and repentance. He mourned with head bowed and eyes cast down, but with heart
unbroken.
For what did Francis I., monarch of France, do penance? For the debaucheries that defiled
his palace? for the righteous blood that stained the streets of his capital? for the
violated oaths by which he had attempted to overreach those who trusted him at home, and
those who were transacting with him abroad? No; these were venial offenses; they were not
worth a thought on the part of the monarch. The King of France did penance for the all but
inexpiable crime of his Protestant subjects in daring to attack the mass, and publish in
the face of all France their Protest against its blasphemy and idolatry.
The end of the procession was not yet; it still swept on; at slow pace, and in mournful
silence, save when some penitential chant rose upon the air. Behind the king walked the
queen; she was followed by all the members of the court, by the ambassadors of foreign
sovereigns, by the nobles of the realm, by the members of Parliament in their scarlet
robes, by judges, officers, and the guilds of the various trades, each with the symbol of
penitence in his hand, a lighted candle. The military guard could with difficulty keep
open the way for the procession through the dense crowd, which pressed forward to touch
some holy relic or kiss some image of saint. They lined the whole route taken by the
processionists, and did homage on bended knee to the Host as it passed them.[7]
The long procession rolled in at the gates of Notre Dame. The Host, which had been
carried thither with so much solemnity, was placed on the high altar; and a solemn mass
proceeded in the presence of perhaps a more brilliant assemblage than had ever before been
gathered into even the great national temple of France. When the ceremony was concluded
the king returned to the bishop's palace, where he dined. After dinner he adjourned with
the whole assembly to the great hall, where he ascended a throne which had been fitted up
for the occasion. It was understood that the king was to pronounce an oration, and the
assembly kept silence, eager to hear what so august a speaker, on so great an occasion,
would say.
The king presented himself to his subjects with a sorrowful countenance; nor is it
necessary to suppose that that sorrow was feigned. The affair of the placards threatened
to embroil him with both friend and foe; it had crossed his political projects; and we can
believe, moreover, that it had shocked his feelings and beliefs as a Roman Catholic; for
there is little ground to think that Francis had begun to love the Gospel, and the looks
of sadness in which he showed himself to his subjects were not wholly counterfeited.
The speech which Francis I. delivered on this occasion — and several reports of it
have come down to us — was touching and eloquent. He dwelt on the many favors
Providence had conferred on France; her enemies had felt the weight of her sword; her
friends had had good cause to rejoice in her alliance; even when punished for her faults
great mercy had been mingled with the chastisement; above all, what an honor that France
should have been enabled to persevere these long centuries in the path of the Holy
Catholic faith, and had so nobly worn her glorious title the "Most Christian."
But now, continued the king, she that has been preserved hitherto from straying so little,
seems on the point of a fatal plunge into heresy; her soil has begun to produce monsters;
"God has been attacked in the Holy Sacrament," France has been dishonored in the
eyes of other nations, and the cloud of the Divine displeasure is darkening over her.
"Oh, the crime, the blasphemy, the day of sorrow and disgrace! Oh, that it had never
dawned upon us!"
These moving words drew tears from nearly all present, says the chronicler who reports the
scene, and who was probably an eye-witness of it.[8] Sobs and sighs burst from the assembly. After a pause the king
resumed: "What a disgrace it will be if we do not extirpate these wicked creatures!
If you know any person infected by this perverse sect, be he your parent, brother, cousin,
or connection, give information against him. By concealing his misdeeds you will be
partakers of that pestilent faction." The assembly, says the chronicle, gave numerous
signs of assent.
"I give thanks to God," he resumed, "that the greatest, the most learned,
and undoubtedly the majority of my subjects, and especially in this good city of Paris,
are full of zeal for the Catholic religion." Then, says the chronicle, you might have
seen the faces of the spectators change in appearance, and give signs of joy; acclamations
prevented the sighs, and sighs choked the acclamations. "I warn you," continued
the king, "that I will have the said errors expelled and driven from my kingdom, and
will excuse no one." Then he exclaimed, says our historian, with extreme anger,
"As true, Messieurs, as I am your king, if I knew one of my own limbs spotted or
infected with this detestable rottenness, I would give it you to cut off. . . . And
farther, if I saw one of my children defiled by it, I would not spare him... I would
deliver him up myself, and would sacrifice, him to God."[9]
The king was so agitated that he was unable to proceed; he burst into tears. The
assembly wept with him. The Bishop of Paris and the provost of the merchants now
approached the monarch, and kneeling before him swore, the first in the name of the
clergy, and the second in that of the citizens, to make war against heresy.
"Thereupon all the spectators exclaimed, with voices broken by sobbing, 'We will live
and die for the Catholic religion!'"[10]
Having sworn this oath in Notre Dame — the roof under which, nearly three centuries
after, the Goddess of Reason sat enthroned — the assembly reformed and set forth to
begin the war that very hour. Their zeal for the "faith" was inflamed to the
utmost; but they were all the better prepared to witness the dreadful sights that awaited
them. A terrible programme had been sketched out; horrors were to mark every step of the
way back to the Louvre, but Francis and his courtiers were to gaze with pitiless eye and
heart on these horrors.
The procession in returning made a circuit by the Church of Genevieve, where now stands
the Pantheon. At short distances scaffolds had been erected on which certain Protestant
Christians were to be burned alive, and it was arranged that the faggots should be lighted
at the moment the king approached, and that the procession should halt to witness the
execution.
The men set apart to death were first to undergo prolonged and excruciating tortures, and
for this end a most ingenious but cruel apparatus had been devised, which let us describe.
First rose an upright beam, firmly planted in the ground; to that another beam was
attached crosswise, and worked by a pulley and string. The martyr was fastened to one end
of the movable beam by his hands, which were tied behind his back, and then he was raised
in the air. He was next let down into the slow fire underneath. After a minute or two's
broiling he was raised again, and a second time let drop into the fire; and thus was he
raised and lowered till the ropes that fastened him to the pole were consumed, and he fell
amid the burning coals, where he lay till he gave up the ghost.[11] "The custom in France," says Sleidan,[12] describing these cruel
tragedies; "is to put malefactors to death in the afternoon; where first silence is
cried, and then the crimes for which they suffer are repeated aloud. But when any one is
executed for Lutheranism, as they call it — that is, if any person hath disputed for
justification by faith, not by works, that the saints are not to be invocated, that Christ
is the only Priest and Intercessor for mankind; or if a man has happened to eat flesh upon
forbidden days; not a syllable of all this is published, but in general they cry that he
hath renounced God Almighty . . . and violated the decrees of our common mother, Holy
Church. This aggravating way makes the vulgar believe such persons the most profligate
wretches under the cope of heaven; insomuch that when they are broiling in the flame, it
is usual for the people to storm at them, cursing them in the height of their torments, as
if they were not worthy to tread upon the earth."
The first to be brought forth was Nicholas Valeton, the Christian whom we have already
mentioned as frequently to be seen searching the innermost recesses and nooks of the
booksellers' shops in quest of the writings of the Reformers. The priests offered him a
pardon provided he would recant. "My faith," he replied, "has a confidence
in God, which will resist all the powers of hell.[13] He was dealt with as we have already described; tied to the beam,
he was alternately raised in the air and lowered into the flames, till the cords giving
way, there came an end to his agonies.
Other two martyrs were brought forward, and three times, was this cruel sport enacted, the
king and all the members of the procession standing by the while, and feasting their eyes
on the torments of the sufferers. The King of France, like the Roman tyrant, wished that
his victims should feel themselves die.
This was on the road between the Church of Genevieve and the Louvre. The scene of this
tragedy, therefore, could not be very far from the spot where, somewhat more than 250
years after, the scaffold was set up for Louis XVI., and 2,800 other victims of the
Revolution. The spectacles of the day were not yet closed. On the line of march the
lieutenant-criminal had prepared other scaffolds, where the cruel apparatus of death stood
waiting its prey; and before the procession reached the Louvre, there were more halts,
more victims, more expiations; and when Francis I. re-entered his palace and reviewed his
day's work, he was well pleased to think that he had made propitiation for the affront
offered to God in the Sacrament, and that the cloud of vengeance which had lowered above
his throne and his kingdom was rolled away. The priests declared that the triumph of the
Church in France was now for ever secured; and if any there were among the spectators whom
these cruel deaths had touched with pity, by neither word nor sign dared they avow it. The
populace of the capital were overjoyed; they had tasted of blood and were not soon to
forego their relish for it,[14] nor
to care much in after-times at whose expense they gratified it.
As there are events so like to one another in their outward guise that they seem to be the
same repeated, so there are days that appear to return over again, inasmuch as they come
laden with the same good or evil fortune to which they had as it were been consecrated.
Every nation has such days.
The 21st of January is a noted and ominous day in the calendar of France. Twice has that
day summoned up spectacles of horror; twice has it seen deeds enacted which have made
France and the world shudder; and twice has it inaugurated an era of woes and tragedies
which stand without a parallel in history. The first 21st of January is that whose tragic
scenes we have just described, and which opened an era that ran on till the close of the
eighteenth century, during which the disciples of the Gospel in France were pining in
dungeons and in the galleys, were enduring captivity and famine, were expiring amid the
flames or dying on the field of battle.
The second notable 21st of January came round in 1793. This day had, too, its procession
through the streets of Paris; again the king was the chief figure; again there were tumult
and shouting; again there was heard the cry for more victims; again there were black
scaffolds; and again the scenes of the day were closed by horrid executions; Louis XVI.,
struggling hand to hand with his jailers and executioners was dragged forward to the
block, and there held down by main force till the axe had fallen, and his dissevered head
rolled on the scaffold.
Have we not witnessed a third dismal 21st of January in France? It is the winter of
1870-71. Four months has Paris suffered siege; the famine is sore in the city; the food of
man has disappeared from her luxurious tables; her inhabitants ravenously devour unclean
and abominable things — the vermin of the sewers, the putrid carcasses of the
streets. Within the city, the inhabitants are pining away with cold and hunger and
disease; without, the sword of a victorious foe awaits them. Paris will rouse herself, and
break through the circle of fire and steel that hems her in. The attempt is made, but
fails. Her soldiers are driven back before the victorious German, and again are cooped up
within her miserable walls. On the 21st of January, 1871, it was resolved to capitulate to
the conqueror.[15]
CHAPTER 22 Back to Top
BASLE AND THE "INSTITUTES."
Glory of the Sufferers — Francis I. again turns to the German Protestants — They
Shrink back — His Doublings — New Persecuting Edicts — Departure of the
Queen of Navarre from Paris — New Day to Bearn — Calvin — Strasburg —
Calvin arrives there — Bucer, Capito, etc. — Calvin Dislikes their Narrowness
— Goes on to Basle — Basle — Its Situation and Environs — Soothing
Effect on Calvin's Mind — His Interview with Erasmus — Erasmus "Lays the
Egg" — Terrified at what Comes of it — Draws back — Calvin's
Enthusiasm — Erasmus' Prophecy — Catherine Klein — First Sketch of the
Institutes—What led Calvin to undertake the Work — Its Sublimity, but
Onerousness.
WE described in our last chapter the explosion that followed
the publication of the manifesto against the mass. In one and the same night it was
placarded over great part of France, and when the morning broke, and men came forth and
read it, there were consternation and anger throughout the kingdom. It proclaimed only the
truth, but it was truth before its time in France. It was a bolt flung at the mass and its
believers, which might silence and crush them, but if it failed to do this it would rouse
them into fury, and provoke a terrible retaliation. It did the latter. The throne and the
whole kingdom had been polluted; the Holy Sacrament blasphemed; the land was in danger of
being smitten with terrible woes, and so a public atonement was decreed for the public
offense which had been offered. Not otherwise, it pleased the king, his prelates, and his
nobles to think, could France escape the wrath of the Most High.
The terrible rites of the day of expiation we have already chronicled. Was the God that
France worshipped some inexorable and remorseless deity, seeing she propitiated him with
human sacrifices? The tapers carried that day by the penitents who swept in long
procession through the streets of the capital, blended their lights with the lurid glare
of the fires in which the Lutherans were burned; and the loud chant of priest and
chorister rose amid no cries and sobs from the victims. These noble men, who were now
dragged to the burning pile, uttered no cry; they shed no tear; that were a weakness that
would, have stained the glory of their sacrifice. They stood with majestic mien at the
stake, and looked with calmness on the tortures their enemies had prepared for them, nor
did they blanch when the flames blazed up around them. The sacrifice of old, when led to
the altar, was crowned with garlands. So it was with these martyrs. They came to the altar
to offer up their lives crowned with the garlands of joy and praise. Their faith, their
courage, their reliance on God when suffering in His cause, their vivid anticipations of
future glory, were the white robes in which they dressed themselves when they ascended the
altar to die. France, let us hope, will not always be ignorant of her true heroes. These
have shed around her a renown purer and brighter, a hundred times, than all the glory she
has earned on the battle-field from the days of Francis I. to those of the last Napoleon.
Hardly had Francis I. concluded his penitential procession when he again turned to the
Protestant princes of Germany, and attempted to resume negotiations with them. They not
unnaturally asked of him an explanation of his recent proceedings. Why so anxious to court
the favor of the Protestants of Germany when he was burning the Protestants of France?
Were there two true faiths in the world, the creed of Rome on the west of the Rhine, and
the religion of Wittenberg on the east of that river? But the king was ready with his
excuse, and his excuse was that of almost all persecutors of every age. The king had not
been burning Lutherans, but executing traitors. If those he had put to death had imbibed
Reformed sentiments, it was not for their religion, but for their sedition that they had
been punished. Such was the excuse which Francis gave to the German princes in his letter
of the 15th of February. "To stop this plague of disloyalty from spreading, he
punished its originators severely, as his ancestors had also done in like cases."[1] He even attempted to induce
Melanchthon to take up his abode in Paris, where he would have received him with honor,
and burned him a few months afterwards. But these untruths and doublings availed Francis
little. Luther had no faith in princes, least of all had he faith in Francis I.
Melanchthon, anxious as he was to promote conciliation, yet refused to enter a city on the
streets of which the ashes of the fires in which the disciples of Christ had been burned
were not yet cold. And the Protestant princes, though desirous of strengthening their
political defences, nevertheless shrank back from a hand which they saw was red with the
blood of their brethren. The situation in France began to be materially altered. The
king's disposition had undergone a change for the worse; a gloomy determination to crush
heresy had taken possession of him, and was clouding his better qualities.
The men of letters who had shed a lustre upon his court and realm were beginning to
withdraw. They were terrified by the stakes which they saw around them, not knowing but
that their turn might come next. The monks were again looking up, which augured no good
for the interests of learning.
Not content with the executions of the terrible 21st of January, the king continued to
issue edicts against the sect of "Lutherans still swarming in the realm;" he
wrote to the provincial parliaments, exhorting them to furnish money and prisons for the
extirpation [2] of
heresy; lastly, he indited an ordinance declaring printing abolished all over France,
under pain of the gallows.[3] That
so barbarous a decree should have come from a prince who gloried in being the leader of
the literary movements of his age, would not have been credible had it not been narrated
by historians of name. It is one among a hundred proofs that literary culture is no
security against the spirit of persecution.
Of those who now withdrew from Paris was Margaret of Valois, the king's sister. We have
seen the hopes that she long and ardently cherished that her brother would be won to the
Reformation; but now that Francis I. had cast the die, and sealed his choice by the awful
deeds of blood we have narrated, Margaret, abandoning all hope, quitted Paris, where even
the palace could hardly protect her from the stake, and retired to her own kingdom of
Bearn. Her departure, and that of the exiles who had preceded her, if it was the beginning
of that social and industrial decadence which ever since has gone on, amid many deceitful
appearances, in France, was the dawn of a new day to Bearn. Her court became the asylum of
the persecuted. Many refugee families transported their industry and their fortune to her
provinces, and the prosperity which had taken a long adieu of France, began to enrich her
little kingdom. Soon a new face appeared upon the state of the Bearnais. The laws were
reformed, schools were opened, many branches of industry were imported and very
successfully cultivated, and, in short, the foundations were now laid of that remarkable
prosperity which made the little kingdom in the Pyrenees resemble an oasis amid the desert
which France and Spain were now beginning to become. When Margaret went to her grave, in
1549, she left a greater to succeed her in the government of the little territory which
had so rapidly risen from rudeness to wealth and civilisation. Her daughter, Jeanne
d'Albret, is one of the most illustrious women in history.
We return to Calvin, in the track of whose footsteps it is that the great movement, set
for the rising of one kingdom and the fall of another, is to be sought. He now begins to
be by very much the chief figure of his age. Francis I. with his court, Charles V. with
his armies, are powers more imposing but less real than Calvin. They pass across the stage
with a great noise, but half-a-century afterwards, when we come to examine the traces they
have left behind them, it is with difficulty that we can discover them; other kings and
other armies are busy effacing them, and imprinting their own in their room. It is
Calvin's work that endures and goes forward with the ages. We have seen him, a little
before the bursting of the storm, leave Paris, nevermore to enter its gates.
Setting out in the direction of Germany, and travelling on horseback, he arrived in due
course at Strasburg. Its name, "the City of the Highways," sufficiently
indicates its position, and the part it was expected to play in the then system of Europe.
Strongly fortified, it stood like a mailed warrior at the point where the great roads of
Northern Europe intersected one another. It was the capital of Alsace, which was an
independent territory, thrown in as it were, in the interests of peace, between Eastern
and Western Europe, and therefore its fortifications were on purpose of prodigious
strength. As kings were rushing at one another, now pushing eastward from France into
Germany, and now rushing across the Rhine from Germany into France, eager to give battle
and redden the earth with blood, this man in armor — the City of the Highways, namely
— who stood right in their path compelled them to halt, until their anger should
somewhat subside, and peace might be maintained.
A yet more friendly office did Strasburg discharge to the persecuted children of the
Reformation. Being a free city, it offered asylum to the exiles from surrounding
countries. Its magistrates were liberal; its citizens intelligent; its college was already
famous; the strong walls and firm gates that would have resisted the tempests of war had
yielded to the Gospel, and the Reformation had found entrance into Strasburg at an early
period. Bucer, Capito, and Hedio, whom we have already met with, were living here at the
time of Calvin's visit, and the pleasure of seeing them, and conversing with them, had no
small share in inducing the Reformer to turn his steps in the direction of this city.
In one respect he was not disappointed. He much relished the piety and the learning of
these men, and they in turn were much impressed with the seriousness and greatness of
character of their young visitor. But in another respect he was disappointed in them.
Their views of Divine truth lacked depth and comprehensiveness, and their scheme of
Reformation was, in the same proportion, narrow and defective. The path which they loved,
a middle way between Wittenberg and Rome, was a path which Calvin did not, or would not,
understand. To him there were only two faiths, a true and a false, and to him there could
be but two paths, and the attempt to make a third between the two was, in his judgment, to
keep open the road back to Rome. All the greater minds of the Reformation were with Calvin
on this point. Those only who stood in the second class among the Reformers gave way to
the dream of reconciling Rome and the Gospel: a circumstance which we must attribute not
to the greater charity of the latter, but to their incapacity to comprehend either the
system of Rome or the system of the Gospel in all the amplitude that belongs to each.
Calvin grew weary of hearing, day after day, plans propounded which, at the best, could
have but patched and soldered a hopelessly rotten system, but would have accomplished no
Reformation, and so, after a sojourn of a few months, he took his departure from
Strasburg, and began his search for the "quiet nook"[4] where he might give himself to the study of what he felt must,
under the Spirit, be his great instructor the Bible. The impression was growing upon him,
and his experience at Strasburg had deepened that impression, that it was not from others
that he was to learn the Divine plan; he must himself search it out in the Holy Oracles;
he must go aside with God, like Moses on the mount, and there he would be shown the
fashion of that temple which he was to build in Christendom.
Following the course of the Rhine, Calvin went on to Basle. Basle is the gate of
Switzerland as one comes from Germany, and being a frontier town, situated upon one of the
then great highways of Europe, it enjoyed a large measure of prosperity. The Huguenot
traveler, Misson, who visited it somewhat more than a century after the time of which we
speak, says of it: "The largest, fairest, richest city now reckoned to be in
Switzerland."[5] Its
situation is pleasant, and may even in some respects be styled romantic. Its chief feature
is the Rhine, even here within sight, if one may so speak, of the mountains where it was
born: a broad, majestic river, sweeping past the town with rapid flow,[6] or rather dividing it into two
unequal parts, the Little Basle lying on the side towards Germany, and joined to the Great
Basle by a long wooden bridge, now changed into one of stone. Crowning the western bank of
the Rhine, in the form of a half-moon, are the buildings of the city, conspicuous among
which are the fine towers of the Minster. Looking from the esplanade of the Cathedral
one's eye lights on the waters of the river, on the fresh and beautiful valleys through
which it rolls; on the gentle hills of the Black Forest beyond, sprinkled with dark pines,
and agreeably relieved by the sunny glades on which their shadows fall; while a short walk
to the south of the town brings the tops of the Jura upon the horizon, telling the
traveler that he has reached the threshold of a region of mountainous grandeur. "They
have a custom which is become a law," says the traveler to whom we have referred
above, speaking of Basle, "and which is singular and very commendable; 'tis that
whoever passes through Basle, and declares himself to be poor, they give him victuals
— I think, for two or three days; and some other relief, if he speaks Latin." [7]
Much as the scene presents itself to the tourist of to-day, would it appear to
Calvin more than three centuries ago. There was the stream rolling its
"milk-white" floods to the sea, nor was he ignorant of the fact that it had
borne on its current the ashes of Huss and Jerome, to bury them grandly in the ocean.
There was the long wooden bridge that spans the Rhine, with the crescent-like line of
buildings drawn along the brow of the opposite bank. There were the Minster towers,
beneath whose shadow Oecolampadius, already dismissed from labor, was resting in the sleep
of the tomb.[8] There
were the emerald valleys, enclosing the town with a carpet of the softest green; there
were the sunny glades, and the tall dark pines on the eastern hills; and in the south were
the azure tops of the Jura peering over the landscape. A scene like this, so finely
blending quietude and sublimity, must have had a soothing influence on a mind like
Calvin's; it must have appeared to him the very retreat he had so long sought for, and
fain would he be to turn aside for awhile here and rest. Much troubled was the world
around; the passions of men were raising frightful tempests in it; armies and battles and
stakes made it by no means a pleasant dwelling-place; but these quiet valleys and those
distant peaks spoke of peace, and so the exile, weary of foot, and yet more weary of heart
— for his brethren were being led as sheep to the slaughter — very unobtrusively
but very thankfully entered within those gates to which Providence had led him, and where
he was to compose a work which still keeps its place at the head of the Reformation
literature — the Institutes.
On his way from Strasburg to Basle, Calvin had an interview with a very remarkable man.
The person whom he now met had rendered to the Gospel no small service in the first days
of the Reformation, and he might have rendered it ten times more had his courage been
equal to his genius, and his piety as profound as his scholarship. We refer to Erasmus,
the great scholar of the sixteenth century. He was at this time living at Freiburg, in
Brisgau — the progress, or as Erasmus deemed it, the excesses of the Reformed faith
having frightened him into leaving Basle, where he had passed so many years, keeping court
like a prince, and receiving all the statesmen and scholars who chanced to visit that
city. Erasmus' great service to the Reformation was his publication of the New Testament
in the year 1516. [9] The
fountain sealed all through the Dark Ages was anew opened, and the impulse even to the
cause of pure Christianity thereby was greater than we at this day can well imagine. This
was the service of Erasmus. "He laid the egg," it has been said, "of the
Reformation."
The great scholar, in his early and better days, had seen with unfeigned joy the light of
letters breaking over Europe. He hated the monks with his whole soul, and lashed their
ignorance and vice with the unsparing rigor of his satire; but now he was almost seventy,
he had hardly more than another year to live,[10] and the timidity of age was creeping over him. He had never been
remarkable for courage; he always took care not to come within wind of a stake, but now he
was more careful than ever not to put himself in the way of harm. He had hailed the
Reformation less for the spiritual blessings which it brought in its train than for the
literary elegances and social ameliorations which it shed around it.
Besides, the Pope had been approaching him on his weak side. Paul III. fully understood
the importance of enlisting the pen of Erasmus on behalf of Rome. The battle was waxing
hotter every day, and the pen was playing a part in the conflict which was not second to
even that of the sword. A cardinal's hat was the brilliant prize which the Pope dangled
before the scholar. Erasmus had the good sense not to accept, but the flattery implied in
the offer had so far gained its end that it had left Erasmus not very zealous in the
Reformed cause, if indeed he had ever been so. Could the conflict have been confined to
the schools, with nothing more precious than ink shed in it, and nothing more weighty than
a little literary reputation lost by it, the scholar of Rotterdam would have continued to
play the champion on the Protestant side. But when he saw monarchs girding on the sword,
nations beginning to be convulsed — things he had not reckoned on when he gave the
first touch to the movement by the publication of his New Testament — and especially
when he saw confessors treading the bitter path of martyrdom, it needed on the part of
Erasmus a deeper sense of the value of the Gospel and a higher faith in God than, we fear,
he possessed, to stand courageously on the side of the Reformation.
How unlike the two men who now stood face to face! Both were on the side of progress, but
each sought it on a different line, and each had pictured to himself a different future.
Erasmus was the embodiment of the Renaissance, the other was the herald of a more glorious
day. In the first the light of the Renaissance, which promised so much, had already begun
to wane — sprung of the earth, it was returning to the earth; but where Erasmus
stopped, there Calvin found his starting-point. While the shadows of the departing day
darkened the face of the sage of Rotterdam, Calvin's shone with the brightness of the
morning. After a few interrogatories, to which Erasmus replied hesitatingly, Calvin freely
gave vent to the convictions that filled his soul.[11] Nothing, he believed, but a radical reform could save Christendom.
He would have no bolstering up of an edifice rotten to its foundations. He would sweep it
away to its last stone, and he would go to the quarry whence were dug the materials
wherewith the Christian Church was fashioned in the first age, and he would anew draw
forth the stones necessary for its reconstruction.
Erasmus shrank back as if he saw the toppling ruin about to fall upon him and crush him.
"I see a great tempest about to arise in the Church — against the Church,"[12] exclaimed the scholar, in whose
ear Calvin's voice sounded as the first hoarse notes of the coming storm. How much.
Erasmus misjudged! The Renaissance — calm, classic, and conservative as it seemed
— was in truth the tempest. The pagan principles it scattered in the soft of
Christendom, helped largely to unchain those furious winds that broke out two centuries
after. The interview now suddenly closed.
Pursuing his journey, with his inseparable companion, the young Canon Du Tillet, the two
travelers at length reached Basle. Crossing the long bridge, and climbing the opposite
acclivity, they entered the city. It was the seat of a university founded, as we have
already said, in 1459, by Pope Pius II., who gave it all the privileges of that of
Bologna. It had scholars, divines, and some famous printers. But Calvin did not present
himself at their door. The purpose for which he had come to Basle required that he should
remain unknown, he wished to have perfect unbroken quietude for study. Accordingly he
turned into a back street where, he knew, lived a pious woman in humble condition,
Catherine Klein, who received the disciples of the Gospel when forced to seek asylum, and
he took up his abode in her lowly dwelling.
The penetration of this good woman very soon discovered the many high qualities of the
thin pale-faced stranger whom she had received under her roof. When Calvin had fulfilled
his career, and his name and doctrine were spreading over the earth, she was wont to
dilate with evident pleasure in his devotion to study, on the beauty of his life, and the
charms of his genius. He seldom went out,[13] and when he did so it was to steal away across the Rhine, and
wander among the pines on the eastern hill, whence he could gaze on the city and its
environing valleys, and the majestic river whose "eternal" flow formed the link
between the everlasting hills of its birth-place, and the great ocean where was its final
goal — nay, between the successive generations which had flourished upon its banks:,
from the first barbarian races which had drunk its waters, to the learned men who were
filling the pulpits, occupying the university chairs, or working the printing-presses of
the city below him.
Calvin had found at last his "obscure corner," and he jealously preserved his
incognito. (Ecolampadius, the first Reformed Pastor of Basle, was now, as we have said, in
his grave; but Oswald Myconius, the friend of Zwingli, had taken his place as President of
the Church. In him Calvin knew he would find a congenial spirit. There was another man
living at Basle at that time, whose fame as a scholar had reached the Reformer —
Symon Grynaeus. Grynaeus was the schoolfellow of Melanchthon, and when Erasmus quitted
Basle he was invited to take his place at the university, which he filled with a renown
second only to that of his great predecessor. He was as remarkable for his honesty and the
sweetness of his disposition:as for his learning. Calvin sought and enjoyed the society of
these men before leaving Basle, but meanwhile, inflexibly bent on the great ends for which
he had come hither, he forbore making their acquaintance. Intercourse with the world and
its business sharpens the observing powers, and breeds dexterity; but the soul that is to
grow from day to day and from year to year, and at last embody its matured and
concentrated strength in some great work, must dwell in solitude. It was here, in this
seclusion and retreat, that Calvin sketched the first outline of a work which was to be
not merely the basis of his own life-work, but the corner-stone of the Reformed Temple,
and which from year to year he was to develop and perfect, according to the measure of the
increase of his own knowledge and light, and leave to succeeding generations as the
grandest, of his and of his age's achievements.
The Institutes first sprang into form in the following manner: While Calvin was pursuing
his studies in his retirement at Basle, dreadful tidings reached the banks of the Rhine.
The placard, the outbursts of royal wrath, the cruel torturings and bumlings that
followed, were all carried by report to Basle. First came tidings of the individual
martyrs; scarcely had the first messenger given in his tale, when another — escaped
from prison or from the stake, and who could say, as of old, "I only am left to tell
thee" — arrived with yet more dreadful tidings of the wholesale barbarities
which had signalised the terrible 21st of January in Paris. The news plunged Calvin into
profound sorrow. He could but too vividly realize the awful scenes, the tidings of which
so wrung his heart with anguish. It was but yesterday that he had trodden the streets in
which they were enacted. He knew the men who had endured these cruel deaths. They were his
brethren. He had lived in their houses; he had sat at their tables. How often had he held
sweet converse with them on the things of God! He knew them to be men of whom the world
was not worthy; and yet they were accounted as the off-scouring of all things, and as
sheep appointed to the slaughter were killed all day long. Could he be silent when his
brethren were being condemned and drawn to death? And yet what could he do?
The arm of the king he could not stay. He could not go in person and plead their cause,
for that would be to set up his own stake. He had a pen, and he would employ it in
vindicating his brethren in the face of Christendom. But in what way should he best do
this? He could vindicate these martyrs effectually not otherwise than by vindicating their
cause. It was the Reformation that was being vilified, condemned, burned in the persons of
these men; it was this, therefore, that he must vindicate. It was not merely a few stakes
in Paris, but the martyrs of the Gospel in all lands that he would cover with his aegis.
The task that Calvin now set for himself was sublime, but onerous. He would make it plain
to all that the, faith which was being branded as heresy, and for professing which men
were being burned alive, was no cunningly devised system of man, but the Old Gospel; and
that so far from being an enemy of kings, and a subverter of law and order, which it was
accused of being, it was the very salt of society — a bulwark to the throne and a
protection to law; and being drawn from the Bible, it opened to man the gates of a moral
purification in this life, and of a perfect and endless felicity in the next. This was
what Calvin accomplished in his Christianae Religionus Institutio.
CHAPTER 23 Back to Top
THE "INSTITUTES."
Calvin Discards the Aristotelian Method — How a True Science of Astronomy is Formed
— Calvin Proceeds in the same way in Constructing his Theology — Induction
— Christ Himself sets the Example of the Inductive Method — Calvin goes to the
Field of Scripture — His Pioneers — The Schoolmen — Melanchthon —
Zwingli — The Augsburg Confession — Calvin's System more Complete — Two
Tremendous Facts — First Edition of the Institutes — Successive Editions —
The Creed its Model — Enumeration of its Principal Themes-God the Sole Fountain of
all things — Christ the One Source of Redemption and Salvation — The Spirit the
One Agent in the Application of Redemption — The Church — Her Worship and
Government.
We shall now proceed to the consideration of that work which
has exercised so vast an influence on the great movement we are narrating, and which all
will admit, even though they may dissent from some of its' teachings, to be, in point of
logical compactness, and constructive comprehensive genius, truly grand. It is not of a
kind that discloses its solidity and gigantic proportions to the casual or passing glance.
It must be leisurely contemplated. In the case of some kingly mountain, whose feet are
planted in the depths but whose top is lost in the light of heaven, we must remove to a
distance, and when the little hills which had seemed to overtop it when we stood at its
base have sunk below the horizon, then it is that the true monarch stands out before us in
un-approached and unchallenged supremacy. So with the Institutes of the Christian
Religion. No such production had emanated from the theological intellect since the times
of the great Father of the West — Augustine.
During the four centuries that preceded Calvin, there had been no lack of theories and
systems. The schoolmen had toiled to put the world in possession of truth; but their
theology was simply abstraction piled upon abstraction, and the more elaborately they
speculated the farther they strayed. Their systems had no basis in fact: they had no root
in the revelation of God; they were a speculation, not knowledge.
Luther and Calvin struck out a new path in theological discovery. They discarded the
Aristotelian method as a vicious one, though the fashionable and, indeed, the only one
until their time, and they adopted the Baconian method, though Bacon had not yet been born
to give his name to his system. Calvin saw the folly of retiring into the dark closet of
one's own mind, as the schoolmen did, and out of such materials as they were able to
create, fashioning a theology. Taking his stand upon the open field of revelation, he
essayed to glean those God-created and Heaven-revealed truths which lie there, and he
proceeded to build them up into a system of knowledge which should have power to enlighten
the intellect and to sanctify the hearts of the men of the sixteenth century. Calvin's
first question was not, "Who am I?" but "Who is God?" He looked at God
from the stand-point of the human conscience, with the torch of the Bible in his hand. God
was to him the beginning of knowledge. The heathen sage said, "Know thyself."
But a higher Authority had said, "The fear," that is the knowledge, "of the
Lord is the beginning of wisdom." It is in the light that all things are seen.
"God is light."
In chemistry, in botany, in astronomy, he is the best philosopher who most carefully
studies nature, most industriously collects facts, and most skilfully arranges them into a
system or science. Not otherwise can the laws of the material universe, and the mutual
relations of the bodies that compose it, be discovered. We must proceed in theology just
as we proceed in natural science. He is the best theologian who most carefully studies
Scripture, who most accurately brings out the meaning of its individual statements or
truths, and who so classifies these as to exhibit that whole scheme of doctrine that is
contained in the Bible. Not otherwise than by induction can we arrive at a true science:
not otherwise than by induction can we come into possession of a true theology. The
botanist, instead of shutting himself up in his closet, goes forth into the field and
collects into classes the flora spread profusely, and without apparent order, over plain
and mountain, grouping plant with plant, each according to its kind, till not one is left,
and then his science of botany is perfected.
The astronomer, instead of descending into some dark cave, turns his telescope to the
heavens, watches the motions of its orbs, and by means of the bodies that are seen, he
deduces the laws and forces that are unseen, and thus order springs up before his eye, and
the system off the universe unveils itself to him. What the flora of the field are to the
botanist, what the stars of the firmament are to the astronomer, the truths scattered over
the pages of the Bible are to the theologian. The Master Himself has given us the hint
that it is the inductive method which we are to follow in our search after Divine truth;
nay, He has herein gone before us and set us the example, for beginning at Moses and the
prophets, He expounded to His disciples "in all the Scriptures the things concerning
Himself." It was to these pages that Calvin turned. He searched them through and
through, he laid all the parts of the Word of God under contribution: its histories and
dramas, its Psalms and prophecies, its Gospels and Epistles. With profound submission of
mind he accepted whatever he found taught there; and having collected his materials, he
proceeded with the severest logic, and in the exercise of a marvellous constructive
genius, to frame his system — to erect the temple. To use the beautiful simile of
D'Aubigne, "He went to the Gospel springs, and there collecting into a golden cup the
pure and living waters of Divine revelation, presented them to the nations to quench their
thirst."[1]
We have said that Calvin was the first to open this path, but the statement is not
to be taken literally and absolutely. He had several pioneers in this road; but none of
them had trodden it with so firm a step, or left it so thoroughly open for men to follow,
as Calvin did. By far the greatest of his pioneers was Augustine. But even the City of
God, however splendid as a dissertation, is yet as a system much inferior to the
Institutes, in completeness as well as in logical power. After Augustine there comes a
long and dreary interval, during which no attempt was made to classify and systematize the
truths of revelation. The attempt of Johannes Damascenus, in the eighth century, is a very
defective performance, Not more successful were the efforts of the schoolmen. The most
notable of these were the four books of Sentences by Peter Lombard, and the Summa of
Thomas Aquinas, but both are defective and erroneous. In perusing the theological
productions of that age, we become painfully sensible of strength wasted, owing to the
adoption of an entirely false method of interpreting the Word of God — a method
which, we ought to say, was a forsaking rather than an interpreting of the Scriptures; for
in the schoolmen we have a body of ingenious and laborious men, who have withdrawn
themselves from the light of the Bible into the dark chamber of their own minds, and are
weaving systems of theology out of their brains and the traditions of their Church, in
which errors are much more plentiful than truths, and which possess no power to pacify the
conscience, or to purify the life.
When we reach the age of the Reformation the true light again greets our eyes. Luther was
no systematiser on a great scale; Melanchthon made a more considerable essay in that
direction. His Loci Communes, or Common Places, published in 1521, were a prodigious
advance on the systems of the schoolmen. They are quickened by the new life, but yet their
mold is essentially mediaeval, and is too rigid and unbending to permit a free display of
the piety of the author. The Commentarius de Vera et Falsa Religione, or Commentary on the
True and False Religion, of Zwingli, published in 1525, is freed from the scholastic
method of Melanchthon's performance, but is still defective as a formal system of
theology. The Confession of Augsburg (1530) is more systematic and complete than any of
the foregoing, but still simply a confession of faith, and not such an exhibition of
Divine Truth as the Church required. It remained for Calvin to give it this. The Intitutes
of the Christian Religion was a confession of faith,[2] a system of exegesis, a body of polemics and apologetics, and an
exhibition of the rich practical effects which flow from Christianity — it was all
four in one. Calvin takes his reader by the hand and conducts him round the entire
territory of truth; he shows him the strength and grandeur of its central citadel —
namely, its God-given doctrines; the height and solidity of its ramparts; the gates by
which it is approached; the order that reigns within; the glory of the Lamb revealed in
the Word that illuminates it with continual day; the River of Life by which it was watered
that is, the Holy Spirit; this, he exclaims, is the "City of the Living God,"
this is the "Heavenly Jerusalem ;" decay or overthrow never can befall it, for
it is built upon the foundation of prophets and apostles, Jesus Christ Himself being the
chief corner-stone. Into this city "there entereth nothing that defileth, or maketh a
lie," and the "nations of them that are saved shall walk in the light
thereof."
That Calvin's survey of the field of supernatural truth as contained in the Bible was
complete; that his classification of its individual facts was perfect; that his deductions
and conclusions were in all cases sound, and that his system was without error, Calvin
himself did not maintain, and it would ill become even the greatest admirer of that
guarded, qualified, and balanced Calvinism which the Reformer taught — not that
caricature of it which some of his followers have presented, a Calvinism which disjoins
the means from the end, which destroys the freedom of man and abolishes his
accountability; which is fatalism, in short, and is no more like the Calvinism of Calvin
than Mahommedanism is like Christianity — it would ill become any one, we say, to
challenge for Calvin's system an immunity from error which he himself did not challenge
for it. He found himself, in pursuing his investigations in the field of Scripture,
standing face to face with two tremendous facts — God's sovereignty and man's
freedom; both he believed to be facts; he maintained the last as firmly as the first; he
confessed that he could not reconcile the two, he left this and all other mysteries
connected with supernatural truth to be solved by the deeper researches and the growing
light of the ages to come, if it were meant that they should ever find their solution on
earth.
This work was adopted by the Reformed Church, and after some years published in most of
the languages of Christendom. The clearness and strength of its; logic; the simplicity and
beauty of ifs exposition; the candour of its conclusions; the fullness of its doctrinal
statements, and not less the warm spiritual life that throbbed under its deductions, now
bursting out in rich practical exhortation, and now soaring into a vein of lofty
speculation, made the Church feel that no book like this had the Reformation given her
heretofore; and she accepted it, as at once a confession of her faith, an answer to all
charges whether from the Roman camp or from the infidel one, and her justification alike
before those now living and the ages to come, against the violence with which the
persecutor was seeking to overwhelm her.
The first edition of the Institutes contained only six chapters. During all his life after
he continued to elaborate and perfect the work. Edition after edition continued to issue
from the press. These were published in Latin, but afterwards rendered into French, and
translated into all the tongues of Europe. "During twenty-four years," says
Bungener, "the book increased in every edition, not as an edifice to which additions
are made, but as a tree which develops itself naturally, freely, and without the
compromise of its unity for a moment."[3] It is noteworthy that the publication of the work fell on the
mid-year of the Reformer's life. Twenty-seven years had he been preparing for writing it,
and twenty-seven years did he survive to expand and perfect it; nevertheless, not one of
its statements or doctrines did he essentially alter or modify. It came, too, at the right
time as regards the Reformation.[4]
We shall briefly examine the order and scope of the book. It proposes two great
ends, the knowledge of God and the knowledge of man. It employs the first to attain the
second. "The whole sum of wisdom," said the author at the outset, "is that
by knowing God each of us knows himself also."[5] If man was made in the image of God, then surely the true way to
know what our moral and spiritual powers are, or ought to be, what are the relations in
which we stand to God, and what the service of love and obedience we owe him, is not to
study the dim and now defaced image, but to turn our eye upon the undimmed and glorious
Original — the Being in whose likeness man was created.
The image of God, it is argued, imprinted upon our own souls would have sufficed to reveal
him to us if we had not fallen. But sin has defaced that image. Nevertheless, we are not
left in darkness, for God has graciously given us a second revelation of himself in his
Word. Grasping that torch, and holding it aloft, Calvin proceeds on his way, and bids all
who would know the eternal mysteries follow that shining light. Thus it was that the
all-sufficiency and supreme and sole authority of the Scriptures took a leading place in
the system of the Reformer.
The order of the work is simplicity itself. It is borrowed from the Apostles' Creed, whose
four cardinal doctrines furnish the Reformer with the argument of the four books in which
he finally arranged the Institutes.
In regard to Church government, the means which the Reformer adopted for putting an end to all existing corruptions and abuses, and preventing their recurrence, are well summed up by Dr. Cunningham. He sought to attain this end —
CHAPTER 24 Back to Top
CALVIN ON PREDESTINATION AND ELECTION.
Calvin's Views on the Affirmative Side — God as the Author of all things Ordains all
that is to come to pass — The Means equally with the End comprehended in the Decree
— As Sovereign, God Executes all that comes to pass — Calvin's Views on the
Negative Side — Man a Free Agent — Man an Accountable Being — Calvin
maintained side by side God's Eternal Ordination and Man's Freedom of Action — Cannot
Reconcile the Two — Liberty and Necessity — Tremendous Difficulties confessed to
Attach to Both Theories — Explanations — Locke and Sir William Hamilton —
Growth of the Institutes.
WE have reserved till now our brief statement of Calvin's
views on the subject of predestination and election — the shroud, in the eyes of
some, in which he has wrapped up his theology; the rock, in the view of others, on which
he has planted it. Our business as historians is neither to impugn nor to defend, but
simply to narrate; to state, with all the clearness, fairness, and brevity possible, what
Calvin held and taught on this great point. The absolute sovereignty of God was Calvin's
cornerstone. As the Author and Ruler of his own universe, he held that God must proceed in
his government of his creatures according to a definite plan; that that plan he had formed
unalterably and unchangeably from everlasting; that it embraced not merely the grander
issues of Providence, but the whole array of means by which these issues are reached; that
this plan God fully carries out in time; and that, though formed according to the good
pleasure of his will, it is based on reasons infinitely wise and righteous, although these
have not been made known to us. Such was Calvin's first and fundamental position.
This larger and wider form of the question, to which is given the name of predestination,
embraces and disposes of the minor one, namely, election. If God from everlasting
pre-ordained the whole history and ultimate fate of all his creatures, it follows that he
pre-ordained the destiny of each individual. Calvin taught, as Augustine had done before
him, that out of a race all equally guilty and condemned, God had elected some to
everlasting life, and that this decree of the election of some to life, implied the
reprobation of the rest to death, but that their own sin and not God's decree was the
reason of their perishing. The Reformer further was careful to teach that the election of
some to life did not proceed on God's fore-knowledge of their faith and good works, but
that, on the contrary, their election was the efficient cause of their faith and holiness.
These doctrines the Reformer embraced because it appeared to him that they were the
doctrines taught in the Scriptures on the point in question; that they were proclaimed in
the facts of history; and that they were logically and inevitably deducible from the idea
of the supremacy, the omnipotence, and intelligence of God. Any other scheme appeared to
him inconsistent with these attributes of the Deity, and, in fact, a dethroning of God as
the Sovereign of the universe which he had called into existence, and an abandonment of
its affairs to blind chance.
Such was the positive or affirmative side of Calvin's views. We shall now briefly consider
the negative side, in order to see his whole mind on the question. The Reformer abhorred
and repudiated the idea that God was the Author of sin, and he denied that any such
inference could be legitimately drawn from his doctrine of predestination. He denied, too,
with the same emphasis, that any constraint or force was put by the decree upon the will
of man, or any restraint upon his actions; but that, on the contrary, all men enjoyed that
spontaneity of will and freedom of action which are essential to moral accountability. He
repudiated, moreover, the charge of fatalism which has sometimes been brought against his
doctrine, maintaining that inasmuch as the means were fore-ordained as well as the end,
his teaching had just the opposite effect, and instead of relaxing it tended to brace the
soul, to give it a more vigorous temper; and certainly the qualities of perseverance and
indomitable energy which were so conspicuously shown in Calvin's own life, and which have
generally characterised those communities who have embraced his scheme of doctrine, go far
to bear out the Reformer in this particular, and to show that the belief in predestination
inspires with courage, prompts to activity and effort, and mightily sustains hope.
The Reformer was of opinion that he saw in the history of the world a proof that the
belief in pre-destination — that predestination, namely, which links the means with
the end, and arranges that the one shall be reached only through the other — is to
make the person feel that he is working alongside a Power that cannot be baffled; that he
is pursuing the same ends which that Power is prosecuting, and that, therefore, he must
and shall finally be crowned with victory. This had, he thought, been exemplified equally
in nations and in individuals.
Calvin was by no means insensible to the tremendous difficulties that environ the whole
subject. The depth as well as range of his intellectual and moral vision gave him a fuller
and clearer view than perhaps the majority of his opponents have had of these great
difficulties. But these attach, not to one side of the question, but to both; and Calvin
judged that he could not escape them, nor even diminish them by one iota, by shifting his
position. The absolute fore-knowledge of God called up all these difficulties equally with
his absolute pre-ordination; nay, they beset the question of God's executing all things in
time quite as much as the question of his decreeing all things from eternity. Most of all
do these difficulties present themselves in connection with what is but another form of
the same question, namely, the existence of moral evil. That is all awful reality. Why
should God, all-powerful and all-holy, have created man, foreseeing that he would sin and
be lost? why not have created him, if he created him at all, without the possibility of
sinning? or why should not God cut short in the cradle that existence which if allowed to
develop will, he foresees, issue in wrong and injury to others, and in the ruin of the
person himself? Is there any one, whether on the Calvinistic or on the Arminian side, who
can give a satisfactory answer to these questions?
Calvin freely admitted that he could not reconcile God's absolute sovereignty with man's
free will; but he felt himself obliged to admit and believe both; both accordingly he
maintained; though it was not in his power, nor, he believed, in the power of any man, to
establish a harmony between them. What he aimed at was to proceed in this solemn path as
far as the lights of revelation and reason could conduct him; and when their guidance
failed, when he came to the thick darkness, and stood in the presence of mysteries that
refused to unveil themselves to him, reverently to bow down and adore.[1]
We judged it essential to give this brief account of the theology of the
Institutes. The book was the chest that contained the vital forces of the Reformation. It
may be likened to the living spirits that animated the wheels in the prophet's vision. The
leagues, battles, and majestic movements of that age all proceeded from this center of
power — these arcana of celestial forces. It is emphatically the Reformation. The
book, we have said, as it first saw the light in Basle in 1536 was small (pp. 514); it
consisted of but six chapters, and was a sketch in outline of the fundamental principles
of the Christian faith. The work grew into unity and strength, grandeur and completeness,
by the patient and persevering touches of the author, and when completed it consisted of
four books and eighty-four chapters. But as in the acorn is wrapped up all that is
afterwards evolved in the full-grown oak, so in the first small edition of the Institutes
were contained all the great principles which we now possess, fully developed and
demonstrated, in the last and completed edition of 1559.
CHAPTER 25 Back to Top
CALVIN'S APPEAL TO FRANCIS I.
Enthusiasm evoked by the appearance of the Institutes—Marshals the Reformed into One
Host — Beauty of the Style of the Institutes—Opinions expressed on it by
Scaliger, Sir William Hamilton, Principal Cunningham, M. Nisard — The Institutes an
Apology for the Reformed — In scathing Indignation comparable to Tacitus —
Home-thrusts — He Addresses the King of France — Pleads for his Brethren —
They Suffer for the Gospel — Cannot Abandon it — Offer themselves to Death
— A Warning — Grandeur of the Appeal — Did Francis ever Read this Appeal?
THUS did a strong arm uplift before the eyes of all Europe,
and throw loose upon the winds, a banner round which the children of the Reformation might
rally. Its appearance at that hour greatly inspirited them. It showed them that they had a
righteous cause, an energetic and courageous leader, and that they were no longer a mere
multitude, but a marshalled host, whose appointed march was over a terrible battle-field,
but to whom there was also appointed a triumph worthy of their cause and of the kingly
spirit who had arisen to lead them. "Spreading," says Felice, "widely in
the schools, in the castles of the gentry, the homes of the citizens, and the workshops of
the common people, the Institutes became the most powerful of preachers."[1]
The style of the work was not less fitted to arrest attention than the contents. It
seemed as if produced for the occasion. In flexibility, transparency, and power, it was
akin to the beauty of the truths that were entrusted to it, and of which it was made the
vehicle. Yet Calvin had not thought of style. The great doctrines he was enunciating
engrossed him entirely; and the free and majestic march of his thoughts summoned up words
of fitting simplicity and grandeur, and without conscious effort on his part marshalled
them in the most effective order, and arranged them in the most harmonious periods. In
giving France a religion, Calvin at the same time gave France a language.
Men who have had but little sympathy with his theology have been loud in their praises of
his genius. Scaliger said of him, three hundred years ago, "Calvin is alone among
theologians; there is no ancient to compare with him." Sir William Hamilton in our
own day has indorsed this judgment.
"Looking merely to his learning and ability," said this distinguished
metaphysician, "Calvin was superior to all modern, perhaps to all ancient, divines.
Succeeding ages have certainly not exhibited his equal." Dr. Cunningham, a most
competent judge, says: "The Institutes of Calvin is the most important work in the
history of theological science ..... It may be said to occupy, in the science of theology,
the place which it requires both the Novum Organum of Bacon and the Principia of Newton to
fill up in physical science."[2] "Less
learned," says Paul Lacroix of his style, "elaborate, and ornate than that of
Rabelais, but more ready, flexible, and skillful in expressing all the shades of thought
and feeling. Less ingenious, agreeable, and rich than that of Amyot, but keener and more
imposing.
Less highly coloured and engaging than that of Montaigne, but more concise and serious and
more French.[3] Another
French writer of our day, who does not belong to the Protestant Church, but who is a
profound thinker, has characterised the Institutes as "the first work in the French
tongue which offers a methodical plan, well-arranged matter, and exact composition.
Calvin," he says, "not only perfected the language by enriching it, he created a
peculiar form of language, the most conformable to the genius of our country." And of
Calvin himself he says: "He treats every question of Christian philosophy as a great
writer. He equals the most sublime in his grand thoughts upon God, the expression of which
was equalled but not surpassed by Bossuet."[4]
A scheme of doctrine, a code of government, a plan of Church organisation, the
Institutes was at the same time an apology, a defense of the persecuted, an appeal to the
conscience of the persecutor. It was dedicated to Francis I.[5] But the dedication did not run in the usual form. Calvin did not
approach the monarch to bow and gloze, to recount his virtues and extol his greatness, he
spoke as it becomes one to speak who pleads for the innocent condemned at unrighteous
tribunals, and for truth overborne by bloody violence. His dedication was a noble, most
affecting and thrilling intercession for his brethren in France, many of whom were at that
moment languishing in prison or perishing at the stake.
With a nobler indignation than even that which burns on the pages of Tacitus, and in a
style scarcely inferior in its rapid and scathing power to that of the renowned historian,
does Calvin proceed to refute, rapidly yet conclusively, the leading charges which had
been advanced against the disciples of the Reformation, and to denounce the terrible array
of banishments, proscriptions, fines, dungeons, torturing, and blazing piles, with which
it was sought to root them out.[6] "Your
doctrine is new," it was said. "Yes," Calvin makes answer, "for those
to whom the Gospel is new." "By what miracle do you confirm it?" it had
been asked. Calvin, glancing contemptuously at the sort of miracles which the priests
sometimes employed to confirm the Romish doctrine, replies, "By those miracles which
in the early age so abundantly attested the divinity of the Gospel — the holy lives
of its disciples." "You contradict the Fathers," it had been farther urged.
The Reformer twits his accusers with "adoring the slips and errors" of the
Fathers; but "when they speak well they either do not hear, or they misinterpret or
corrupt what they say." That is a very extraordinary way of showing respect for the
Fathers. "Despise the Fathers!" "Why, the Fathers are our best
friends." He was a Father, Epiphanius, who said that it was an abomination to set up
an image in a Christian temple. He was a Father, Pope Gelasius, who maintained that the
bread and wine remain unchanged in the Eucharist. He was a Father, Augustine, who affirmed
that it was rash to assert any doctrine which did not rest on the clear testimony of
Scripture. But the Fathers come faster than Calvin can receive their evidence, and so a
crowd of names are thrown into the margin, who all with "one heart and one
mouth" execrated and condemned "the sophistical reasonings and scholastic
wranglings" with which the Word of God had been made void.[7]
Turning round on his accusers and waxing a little warm, Calvin demands who they are
who "make war with such savage cruelty in behalf of the mass, of purgatory, of
pilgrimages, and of similar follies," and why it is that they display a zeal in
behalf of these things which they have never shown for the Gospel? "Why?" he
replies, "but because their God is their belly, and their religion the kitchen."[8] —a rejoinder of which it is
easier to condemn the coarseness than to impugn the truth.
If their cause were unjust, or if their lives had been wicked, they refused not to die;
but the Reformer complains that the most atrocious calumnies had been poured into the ears
of the king to make their tenets appear odious, and their persons hateful. "They
plotted," it was said, "to pluck the scepter from his hand, to overturn his
tribunals, to abolish all laws, to make a spoil of lordships and heritages, to remove all
the landmarks of order, and to plunge all peoples and states in war, anarchy, and
ruin."[9] Had
the accusation been true, Calvin would have been dumb; he would have been covered with
shame and confusion before the king. But raising his head, he says, "I turn to you,
Sire . . Is it possible that we, from whom a seditious word was never heard when we lived
under you, should plot the subversion of kingdoms? And, what is more, who now, after being
expelled from our houses, cease not nevertheless to pray to God for your prosperity, and
that of your kingdom." As regards their cause, so defamed by enemies, it was simply
the Gospel of Jesus Christ. their only crime was that they believed the Gospel. They who
were maintaining it were a poor, despicable people — nay, if the king liked it,
"the scum of the earth;" but though its confessors were weak, the cause was
great; "it is exalted far above all the power and glory of the world; for it is not
ours, but that of the living God and his Christ, whom God has made King to rule from sea
to sea, and from the rivers unto the ends of the earth." he had not come before the
king to beg toleration for that cause — the men of those days could no more conceive
of a government tolerating two opposing religions than of a judge deciding in favor of two
rival claimants — what Calvin demanded was that their cause should receive that
submission which is the right of truth; that the king should embrace, not tolerate.
But if this may not be, Calvin says in effect, if injustice shall still be meted out to
us, be it known unto you, O king, that we will not abandon the truth, or bow down to the
gods that Rome has set up. As sheep appointed unto the slaughter, we shall take meekly
whatever sufferings you are pleased to inflict upon us. We offer our persons to your
prisons, our limbs to your racks, our necks to your axes, and our bodies to your fires;
but know that there is One in whose sight our blood is precious, and in shedding it you
are removing the firmest defenders of your throne and of your laws, and preparing for your
house and realm a terrible overthrow.
The years will quickly revolve; the cup will be filled up; and then — but let us
quote the very words in which the young Reformer closes this appeal to the great monarch:
"I have set before you the iniquity of our calumniators. I have desired to soften
your heart to the end that you would give our cause: a hearing. I hope we shall be able to
regain your favor, if you should be pleased to read without anger this confession, which
is our defense before your Majesty. But if malevolent persons stop your ears; if the
accused have not an opportunity of defending themselves; if impetuous furies, unrestrained
by your order, still exercise their cruelty by imprisonments and by scourging, by
tortures, mutilation, and the stake .... verily, as sheep given up to slaughter, we shall
be reduced to the last extremity. Yet even then we shall possess our souls in patience,
and shall wait for the strong hand of the Lord. Doubtless, it will be stretched forth in
due season. It will appear armed to deliver the poor from their afflictions, and to punish
the despisers who are now making merry so boldly.
"May the Lord, the King of kings, establish your throne in righteousness and your
seat in equity."[10]
In penning this appeal Calvin occupied one of the sublimest positions in all
history. He stood at a great bar — the throne of France. He pleaded before a vast
assembly — all Christendom; nay, all ages; and as regards the cause which he
sustained at this august bar, and in presence of this immense concourse of nations and
ages, it was the greatest in the world, inasmuch as it was that of the Gospel and of the
rights of conscience. With what feelings, one naturally asks, did Francis I. read this
appeal? Or rather did he read it at all? It is commonly thought that he did not. His heart
hardened by pleasure, and his ears preoccupied with evil counsellors, this cry of a
suffering Church could find no audience; it swept past the throne of France, and mounted
to the throne of heaven.
But before the "strong arm" to which Calvin had alluded should be
"stretched forth" more than two centuries were to pass away. These martyrs had
to wait till "their brethren" also should be slain as they had been. But
meanwhile there were given unto them the "white robes" of this triumphant
vindication; for scarcely were their ashes cold when this eloquent and touching appeal was
pleading for them in many of the tongues of Europe, thrilling every heart with the story
of their wrongs, and inspiring thousands and tens of thousands to brave the tyrant's fury,
and at the risk of torture and death to confess the Gospel. This was their "first
resurrection." What they had sown in weakness at the stake rose in power in the
Institutes. Calvin, gathering as it were all their martyr-piles into one blazing torch,
and holding it aloft, made the splendor of their cause and of their names to shine from
the east even unto the west of Christendom.
The publication of the Institutes placed Calvin in the van of the Reformed hosts, he was
henceforward the recognised chief of the Reformation. His retreat was now known, and this
city on the edge of the Black Forest, on the banks of the Rhine, could no longer afford
him the privacy he sought. Men from every country were beginning to seek him out, and
gather round him. Rising up, he hastily quitted Basle, and crossing "Italy's snowy
wall" (by what route is not known), and holding on his way across the plain of
Lombardy till he reached the banks of the Po, he found an asylum at the court of Renee,
daughter of Louis XII. of France, and Duchess of Ferrara, who, like Margaret of Valois,
had opened her heart to the doctrines of the Reformation. Calvin disappears for awhile
from the scene.
FOOTNOTES
VOLUME SECOND
BOOK THIRTEENTH
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 1
[1] Fleury, Hist. Eccles., tom. 15., pp. 87, 88; Paris, 1742. 1060
[2] Mezeray, tom. 4.
[3] "I will destroy the name of Babylon." (Thauni, Hist., lib. 1., p. 11; ed. Aurel, 1626.)
[4] Platina, Vit. de Pont. Jul. II., p. 259. Fleury, Hist. Eccles., tom. 25., p. 203.
[5] Mezeray, tom. 4., p. 457.
[6] Fleury, Hist. Eccles., tom. 25., p. 204.
[7] Guicciardini, lib. 11., p. 395. Laval., vol. 1., p. 10.
[8] Beza, Hist. des Eglises Reformers au Royaume de France, tom. 1.,p. 1, Lille, 1841.
[9] History of the Protestants of Prance, by G. D. Felice, D.D.; vol. 1., p. 2; Lond., 1853.
[10] D'Aubigne, vol. 3., p. 339.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 2
[1] D'Aubigne, vol. 3., pp. 339 — 344.
[2] Felice, Hist. of Protestants of France, vol. 1., p. 3.
[3] Farel, GaIeoto. D'Aubigne, vol. 3., p. 345.
[4] Beza, Icones.
[5] Felice, vol. 1., pp. 1, 2.
[6] Beza, Hist. des Eglises Reformees, tom. 1., p. 4.
[7] Beza, tom. 1., p. 3.
[8] Baptista Mantuan, a Carmelite, wrote thus on Rome: "Vivere qui sancte cupiris, discedite Roma. Omnia cum liceant, non licet esse bonum" — that is, "Good and virtuous men, make haste and get out of Rome, for here virtue is the one thing ye cannot practice: all else ye may do."
[9] Fe1ice, vol. 1., p. 4.
[10] MS. Bibl. Royale. Paris — ex D'Aubigne, vol. 3., p. 353,
[11] Laval., vol. 1., p. 22.
[12] Ben, tom. 1., p. 2.
[13] Guizot, Hist. of France, vol. 3., p. 2; Lond., 1874.
[14] Brantome, Vie des Femmes IIustres, p. 341.
[15] Fe1ice, vol. 1., p. 6. The correspondence between Margaret and Briconnet is still preserved in MS. in the Royal Library at Paris. The MS., which is a copy, bears this inscription — Lettres des Marguerite, Reine de Navarre, and is also marked Supplement Francais. No. 337, fol.1. It is a volume containing not less than 800 pp.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 3
[1] Beza, tom. 1., p. 1.
[2] D'Aubigne, vol. 3., p. 337.
[3] Fe1ice, vol. 1., p. 5.
[4] Beza, tom. 1., p. 4.
[5] Acres des Martyrs, p. 182 — a chronicler of the fifteenth century, quoted by D'Aubigne, vol. 3., p. 378.
[6] Felice, vol. 1., p. 5.
[7] Acres des Martyrs, p. 182 — D'Aubigne, vol. 3., p. 379.
[8] Laval. vol. 1., p. 22.
[9] Felice, vol. 1., p. 6.
[10] D'Aubigne, vol. 3., p. 379.
[11] Felice, vol. 1., p. 6.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 4
[1] The only known copy of this work is in the Royal Library of Stuttgart.
[2] Guizot, Hist. of France, vol. 3., p. 170; Lond., 1874.
[3] Bayle, Dictionnarie, art, Marot, notes N, O, P.
[4] Apelogic pour les Reformateurs, etc., tom. 1., p, 129; Rotterdam, 1683.
[5] M'Crie, Life of John Knox. vol. 1., p, 378; Edin., 1831.
[6] Filice, vol. 1., p. 8.
[7] Sismondi, Hist. de Francais, 16. 387. Guizot, Hist. of France, vol. 3., pp. 193, 194.
[8] Felice, vol. 1., p. 9.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Galliard, Hist. de Francois I.
[11] Laval., vol. 1., p. 8., Dedication.
[12] Ibid., vol. 1., p. 22.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 5
[1] Felice, vol. 1., p. 17.
[2] Crespin, Martyrol., p. 102. D'Aubigne, Hist. Reform. under Calvin, vol. 1., pp. 573, 574.
[3] Felice, vol. 1., p. 11.
[4] Beza, tom. 1., p. 4.
[5] Crespin, Acres des Martyrs, p. 183.
[6] Beza, tom. 1., p. 4. Laval., vol. 1., p. 23. Fe1ice, vol. 1., p. 10. Guizot, vol. 3., p. 196.
[7] Beza, Icones. Laval., vol. 1., p. 23. Guizot, vol. 3., p. 196
[8] Psalm 115:4-9
[9] Laval. vol. 1. p. 38.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 6
[1] Johannis Calvin Vita a Theodora Beza; Geneva, 1575. (No paging.)
[2] "La famille Cauvin etait d'origine normande; le grand-pere du Reformateur habitait Pont l'Eveque; il etait tonnelier." Ferdinand Rossignol, Les Protestants Illustres; Paris, 1862. M. Rossignol adds in a foot-note: "Chauvin — dans le dialecte Picard on prononqait Cauvin — le Reformateur signa les oeuvres latines Calvinus, et, faisant passer cette orthographe dans le franqais, se nomma lui-meme Calvin."
[3] "Ego qui natura subrusticus, umbram et otium semper amavi," says he of himself in his Epistle to the Reader in his Commentarey on the Psalms. (Calvini Opp., vol 3.; Amsterdam, 1667)
[4] "Ac primo quidem quum superstitionibus Papatus magis pertinaciter addictus essem" (I was at first more obstinately attached than any one to Papal superstions). — Calvini Opp., vol. 3.
[5] Beza, Vita Calvini.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] France had a cardinal who was only sixteen, Odel de Chatillon, brother of the famous admiral. Portugal had one of only twelve; and Leo X., who nominated him, had himself been created Archbishop of Aix at five years of age.
[9] Desmay, Vie de Calvin, p. 31.
[10] Ann. de Noyon, p. 1160.
[11] Beza, Vita Calvini.
[12] Florimond de Raemond, History of the Rise, Progress, and Decline of the Heresy of his Age.
[13] Bungener, Life of Calvin, p. 13; Edin. 1863.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 7
[1] Beza, Vita Calvini.
[2] Calvini Opusc., p. 125.
[3] Calvini Opusc., p. 125.
[4] Ibid.: "Non sine gemitu ac lacrymis."
[5] D'Aubigne, Reform. in. Europe, bk. 2., chap. 7.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 8
[1] Desmay says that it was at Orleans, and Raemond that it was at Bourges, that Calvin first acquired a taste for heresy. Both are mistaken: Calvin brought that taste with him to the old city of Aurelian.
[2] He became afterwards President of the Parliament of Paris. "He was accounted," says Beza, "the most subtle jurisconsult of all the doctors." (Hist. des Eglises Reformees, tom. 1., p. 6.)
[3] Beza, Hist. des Eglises Ref., tom. 1., p. 6.
[4] Bungener, Life of Calvin, p. 18.
[5] Beza, Vita Calvini. Laval., Hist. Reform in France, vol. 1., p. 25. Beza, Hist. des Eglises Ref., tom. 1., p. 6.
[6] Calvin, Instit., lib. 3., cap. 2.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 9
[1] Laval., Hist. Reform. in France, vol. 1., p. 24.
[2] "Me Deus ab obscuris tenuibusque principiis extractum, hoc tam honorifico munere dignatus est, ut Evangelii praeco essem ac minister." (Comment. in Lib. Psalm. — Calvini Opp., vol. 3., Epist. ad Lect.; ed. Amsterdam, 1667.)
[3] Beza, Hist. des Eglises Ref., tom. 1., p. 7.
[4] Beza, Hist. des Eglises Ref., tom. 1., p. 7. Galliard, Hist. de Francois I., tom. 7., p. 3; Paris, 1769.
[5] Beza, Vita Calvini. Beza speaks of Gerard Chauvin's death as sudden — "repentina mors."
[6] Beza, Hist. des Eglises Ref., tom. 1., p. 5.
[7] Crespin, Hist. des Mart., p. 96. Felice, vol. 1., p. 2.
[8] Beza, Icones.
[9] Erasmi Epp., tom. 2., p. 1206.
[10] Felice, vol. 1., p. 14.
[11] D'Aubigne, Reform. under Calvin, vol. 2., p. 47.
[12] Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris, p. 381 — quoted by D'Aubigne.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Felice, vol. 1., p. 15. Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris, p. 382.
[15] Crespin, Hist. des Mart.
[16] "At ego mortem subere, quam veritatis damnationem, vel tacitus approbare velim." (Beza, Icones.)
[17] Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris, p. 383 — quoted by D'Aubigne.
[18] Erasmi Epp., p. 1277.
[19] Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris. p. 384.
[20] Felice, Hist. of Prot., vol. 1., p. 16.
[21] Beza relates that Dr. Merlin, then Penitentiary of Paris, who had accompanied Berquin to the stake and saw him die, confessed before all the people that for a hundred years there had not died a better Christian than Berquin. The same historian also relates that on the night following his martyrdom (St. Martin's Eve) the wheat was smitten with hoar-frost, and there followed therefrom famine and plague in France. (Hist. des Eglises. Ref., tom. 1., p. 5.)
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 10
[1] Beza, Vita Calvini.
[2] Beza, Hist. des Eglises Ref., tom. 1., p. 4. Laval., Hist. Reform. in France, vol 1., p. 18.
[3] Seckendorf, lib. 3., sec. 1; additio 1.
[4] D'Aubigne, Reform. in Europe, bk. 2., chap. 19.
[5] Ibid., bk. 2., chap. 21.
[6] Herbert, Life of Henry VIII., p. 366. Du Bellay, Memoires, pp. 171 — 174. Brantome, Memoires, tom. 1., p. 235 — quoted by D'Aubigne, Reform. in Europe, bk. 2., pp. 137 — 140.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 11
[1] Laval., Hist. Reform., vol. 1., p. 28.
[2] D'Aubigne, Hist. Reform. in Europe, vol. 2., p. 159.
[3] Laval., Hist. Reform., vol. 1., p. 29.
[4] Fromant, Actes et Gestes de Geneve, p. 74. D'Aubigne, Hist. Reform. in Europe, bk. 2., chap. 32.
[5] Crespin, Martyrologie, fol. 107.
[6] Ibid.
[7] "Quibus omnibus ita confectis rebus, erant, vel monachi, qui dicerent, Si hic salvus non esset, neminem salvum fore mortalem. Alii vero discedentes percutiebant pectus, discebantque gravem illi factam injuriam." (Acta Martyrum, ann. 1560, 4., p. 62 et seq. — ex Gerdesio, tom. 4., p. 86.)
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 12
[1] It is a curious fact that during the lifetime of Calvin a conflagration broke out in his native town of Noyon, and destroyed the entire quarter in which the house he was born in was situated, the house itself excepted, which remained uninjured in the midst of the vast gap the flames had created.
[2] Beza, Vita Calvini.
[3] Ibid., p. 14. See also Calvini Opp.
[4] This discourse was discovered some years ago by Dr. Bonnet in the Library of Geneva, where it is still preserved. It was first given to the public by Dr. D'Aubigne, in his History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin. (See vol. 2., bk. 2., chap. 30.)
[5] Beza, Vita Calvini.
[6] Maimbourg, Hist. du Calvinisme, p. 58.
[7] Gaillard, Hist. de Francois, tom., 1., livr. 4. p. 274.
[8] D'Au'bigne, Hist. Reform. in Europe, vol. 2., p. 279. Felice, Hist. Prot. in France, vol. 1., p. 35.
[9] Beza. Vita Calvini.
[10] Felice, Hist. Prot. In France, vol. 1., p. 35.
[11] Flor. Raemond, Hist. Heres., vol. 2., p. 246 — ex D'Aubigne, Hist. Reform. in Europe, vol. 3., p. 12.
[12] Beza, Vita Calvini. Lefevre is said to have expressed in his last days bitter regret for not having more openly professed the truth. See Bulletin de la Soc. de l'Hist. Prot. Fr. 11. 215.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 13
[1] Beza, Hist. des Eglises Ref., vol. 1., p. 63. Flor. Raemond, Hist. Heres., vol. 7., p. 919.
[2] The late Count Alexander de St. George, for many years President of the Evangelical Society of Geneva, was a lineal descendant of Abbot Ponthus. (D'Aubigne.)
[3] "In horto illo primum Calvinisticum celebratum fuit concilium in Gallia." (Flor. Raemond, Hist. Heres., vol. 2., p. 252.)
[4] D'Aubigne, vol. 3., p. 59.
[5] Lievre, Hist. du Protestantisme du Poitou, vol. 1., p. 23. Flor. Raemond, Hist. Heres., vol. 2., p. 253. D'Aubigne, vol. 3., p. 61.
[6] "In locis illis secretis prima Calvinistea Coena celebrata fuit." (Flor. Raemond, Hist. Heres., vol. 2., p. 253.) "Raemond declares," says D'Aubigne, "that he had spared no pains to trace out all Calvin's career in France," but the historian adds "that this has not prevented him from occasionally seasoning his narrative with abuse and calumny."
[7] Flor. Raemond, Hist. Heres. vol. 2., p. 253.
[8] Ibid., vol. 2., chap. 9.
[9] This is attested by the Lettre de Ste. Marthe a Calvin, found by Jules Bonnet in the Library at Gotha (MSS. No. 401).
[10] In the autumn of 1869 the author passed along the great valley of the Loire on his way to Spain, visiting the places where Calvin had sojourned, and more especially Poictiers.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 14
[1] Pallavicino, Istoria, etc., lib. 3., cap. 12, p. 224; Napoli, 1757.
[2] Sleidan, Hist. Reform., bk. 9., p. 169.
[3] Pallavicino, Istoria, etc., lib. 3., cap. 12. Ranke, Hist. of the Popes, bk. 1., chap. 3.
[4] Du Bellay, Memoires, p. 278; quoted by D'Aubigne, Hist. Reform. in Europe, vol. 2., pp. 198, 199. The secret articles of this treaty are in the Bibliotheque Imperiale at Paris (MSS., Bethune, No. 8,541, fol. 36. D'Aubigne).
[5] The author describes the landscape around Fiesole as he himself has noted it on repeated visits.
[6] Those of our readers who have visited Florence, and seen the statue of this Lorenzo, the father of Catherine, in the gorgeous mausoleum of the Medici in the Church of San Lorenzo, cannot but have been struck with the air of meditation and thought which it wears.
[7] Sleidan, Hist. Reform., bk. 9., pp. 163, 169.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 15
[1] "Cardinal Medici was always on the side of the emperor," says Ranke. (Hist. of the Popes, vol. 1., p. 76.)
[2] The Romans, in the time of Clement and even to our own age, reckoned their day from one of the afternoon to the same hour next day, and, of course, went on numbering up to the twenty-fourth hour.
[3] Platina, Hist. Sommi Pontifici, p. 269; Venetia, 1500.
[4] Ranke, Hist. of the Popes, vol. 1., p. 97; Bohn's ed.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 16
[1] D'Aubigne, Hist. Reform. In Europe, 2. 285.
[2] Du Bellay, Memoires, p. 206.
[3] Robertson, Hist. Charles V., bk., 5., p. 184; Edin., 1829.
[4] Du Bellay, Memoires, p. 210.
[5] Robertson, bk. 5., p. 184. D'Aubigne, vol. 2., p. 301.
[6] Sleidan, Hist. Reform., bk. 9., pp. 172, 173; Lond., 1689. Robertson, Hist. Charles V., bk. 5., p. 184.
[7] D'Aubigne vol. 2., pp. 347 — 350.
[8] Gerdesius, Hist. Evang. Renov., tom. 4., p. 124.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 17
[1] Gerdesius, Hist. Evang. Renov., tom. 4., p. 124.
[2] Ibid.
[3] "Non integri, verum mutilati," says Gerdesius of the king's edition of the articles.
[4] Gerdesius, tom. 4., p. 124.
[5] Gerdesius, tom. 4., p 125.
[6] D'Aubigne, vol. 2., p. 379.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 18
[1] Calvini Opusc., p. 90. D'Aubigne, vol. 3., p. 76.
[2] Desmay, Vie de Calvini Heresiarque, pp. 48, 49. Le Vasseur, Annal. de Noyon, pp. 1161 — 1168. D'AuBigne, vol. 3., p. 78.
[3] Henricus Ab. Allwoerden, Historia Michaelis Serveti, pp. 4, 5; Helmstadt, 1727.
[4] Beza, Hist. Eglises Rgf., tom. 1, p. 9.
[5] Allwoerden, Hist. Michaelis Serveti, pp. 9, 29.
[6] Ibid., p. 35.
[7] Beza, Vita Calvini, and Hist. Eglises Ref., tom. 1, p. 9.
[8] Bungener, Calvin: his Life, etc., p. 34; Edin., 1863.
[9] Bucer to Blaarer. Strasburg MS., quoted by D'Aubigne, Hist. Reform. in Europe, vol. 2, p. 308.
[10] Crespin, Martyrol., fol. 112. Beza, Hist. Eglises Ref., tom. 1, p. 13. D'Aubigne, vol 3, p. 83.
[11] Crespln, Martyrol., fol. 113.
[12] D'Aubigne, vol. 3, p. 85.
[13] Beza, Hist. Eglises Ref., tom. 1, p. 13.
[14] Crespin, Martyrol., fol. 113, verso.
[15] Beza, Hist. Eglises Ref., tom. 1, p. 13.
[16] D'Aubigne, vol. 3, p. 87.
[17] Calvin makes special mention of Coppin from Lille, and Quentin from Hainault, who brought to the advocacy of their cause an ignorance that did not suffer them to doubt, and an impudence that would not permit them to blush. These pioneers of communism liked good living better than hard work; they made their bread by talking, as monks by singing, though that talk had neither, says Calvin, "rhyme nor reason" in it, but was uttered oracularly, and captivated the simple. (Calvini Opp., tom. 8, p. 376; Amstel, 1637.)
[18] Inst. Adv. Libertin., cap. 15,16. Calvini Opp., tom. 8, p. 386.
[19] "Relicta patria, in Germaniam concessi, ut in obscuro aliquo angulo abditus, quiete diu negata fruerer." (Calvini Opp., tom.3, Praef. ad Psalmos; Amstel. ed.)
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 19
[1] Felice, Hist. Prot. France, vol. 1, p. 27.
[2] Crespin, the martyrologist, and Florimond Raemond, the Popish historian, attribute the authorship of the placard to Farel. The latter, however, gives it as the common report: — "Famoso libello a Farelo, ut creditur, composito," are his words. (Hist. Heres., livr. 7, cap. 5, Lat. ed.) Bungener says the author "has never been known." (Calvin, p. 35; Edin., 1863.) Herminjard (Correspondance des Reformateurs, 3, 225) believes him to have been Antoine de Marcourt.
[3] According to the Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris, p. 440. Fontaine in his Histoire Catholique gives the 18th October. See D'Aubigne, vol. 3, p. 114.
[4] Felice, Hist. Prof. France, vol. 1, p. 28.
[5] Corp. Ref., 2, p. 856.
[6] Crespin, Mart. Beza, Hist. Ref. Eglises, tom. 1, p. 10.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 20
[1] Laval., Hist. Reform. France, vol 1, p. 30. Beza, Hist. Reform. Eglises, tom. 1, p. 10.
[2] Beza, Hist. Reform. Eglises, tom. 1, p. 10.
[3] Journal d'un Bourg., p. 44. D'Aubigne, vol. 3, p. 129.
[4] Crespin, Martyrol, fol. 112.
[5] Calvini Opp. Felice, Hist. Prot. France, vol. 1, p. 28.
[6] Crespin, Martyrol., 43.
[7] Journ. d'un Bourg., p. 445, D'Aubigne vol. 4, p. 142.
[8] Crespin, Martyrol., fol. 113, verso. D'Aubigne, 3, 143.
[9] Laval., Hist. Reform. France, vol. 1, p. 31.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 21
[1] Chronique du Roi Francois I, p. 113, quoted by D'Aubigne, vol. 3, p. 149.
[2] Fe1ice, vol. 1, p. 29.
[3] Chronique du Roi Francois I., p. 114.
[4] Felice, vol. 1, p. 30.
[5] Felice, vol. 1, p. 30. D'Aubigne, vol. 3, pp. 152-154.
[6] Garnier, Hist. de France, 24, p. 556. D'Aubigne, vol. 3, p. 154.
[7] This procession has been described by several French chroniclers — among others, Florimond Raemond, Hist. Heres., 2:229; Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris; Fontaine, Hist. Catholique; Maimbourg; and the Chronique du Roi Francois I.
[8] Chronique du Roi Francois I.
[9] Ibid., p. 125.
[10] D'Aubigne, vol. 3, p. 161.
[11] Sleidan, bk. 9, p. 175.
[12] Ibid., bk. 9, p. 178
[13] Crespin, Martyrol.
[14] D'Aubigne, vol. 3, p. 165.
[15] The German forces shortly afterwards left the land, and with marvellous rapidity, under the skilled guidance of the illustrious Thiers, the gallant nation recovered its position among the countries of Europe.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 22
[1] Sleidan, bk. 9, p. 179.
[2] Bulletin de la Societe de la Histoire du Protestantisme, Francois L, p. 828 — D'Aubigne, vol. 3, p. 167.
[3] Sismondi, Hist. des Francois, 16, p. 455.
[4] "Ut in obscuro aliquo angulo abditus quiete diu negata fruerer." (Praefatio ad Psalmos-Calvini Opp.)
[5] Misson, A New Voyage to Italy, vol. 2, part 2, p. 493.
[6] The watermen when they descended the Rhine weekly sold their boats at Strasburg and returned on foot, the strength of the current not permitting them to row their craft against it. (Fynes Moryson, Travels, part 1, bk. 1, ch. 2; fol.; Lond., 1617.)
[7] Misson, New Voyage, vol. 2, part 2, p. 502.
[8] The tomb of (Ecolampadius is to be seen in the Cathedral, with the following epitaph, according to Misson: — "D. Joh. Oecolampadius, professione theologus; trium linguarum peritissimus; auctor Evangelicm doctrinse in hac urbe primus; et templi hujus verus episcopus; ut doctrina, sic vitse sanctimoniâ pollentissimus, sub breve saxum hoc reconditus est. Anno salutis ob. 21 November, 1531. Aet. 49." (Dr. John (Ecolampadius, by profession a divine; most skillful in three languages; first author of the Reformed religion in this city, and true bishop of this church; as in doctrine so in sanctity of life most excellent, is laid under this short stone. He died in the year of our Lord, 21st November, 1531, aged forty-nine years.)
[9] See ante, vol. 1, bk. 8, ch. 5, p. 428.
[10] Erasmus died in 1536; he was buried in the Cathedral of Basle, and his epitaph, on a pillar before the choir, indicates his age by the single term septaeagenarius, about seventy. The exact time of his birth is unknown.
[11] The interview has been related by a chronicler of the same century — Flor. Remond, Hist. Heres., 2, p. 251.
[12] Ibid.
[13] "Cum incognitus Basileae laterem." (Preface to Comment on Psalms.)
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 23
[1] D'Aubigne, vol. 3, p. 203.
[2] Pro Confessione Fidei offertur, says the title-page of the first edition of the Institutes, now before us, dated Basileae1536.
[3] Calvin: his Life, his Labours, and his Writings, p. 43.
[4] The following valuable note was communicated to the Author by the late Mr. David Laing, LL.D. Than Mr. Laing's there is no higher authority upon the subject to which it refers, and his note may be regarded as setting finally at rest the hitherto vexed question touching the publication of the Institutes: — "It is now a long while ago, when I was asked by Dr. McCrie, senior, to ascertain in what year the first edition appeared of Calvin's Institutes. At the time, although no perfect copy of the 1536 volume was accessible, the conclusion I came to was that the work first appeared in a small volume, pp. 519, with the title Christianae Religionis Institutio, etc. Joanne Calvino, Autore. Basileae, MDXXXVI. At the end of the vohme are added the names of the printers at Basle and the date — 'Mense Martio, Anno 1536.' During the many subsequent years, with inquiries at various great public libraries, both at home and abroad, I have not been able to find anything to make me change this opinion, or to imagine that an earlier edition in French had ever existed. In the dedication there is a variation in the date between the French and Latin copies, apparently accidental. In the Latin it is dated 'Basileae, X Calendas Septembres [1535] — that is, August 23, 1535 — while in the French translation by the author, in his last revised translation of 1559, the date is given 'De Basle, le premier jour d'Aoust, mil cinq cens trente cinq.'
"I have subsequently obtained a perfect copy, and have seen two or three others. The former possessor of my copy has a note written perhaps a century ago, as to its great rarity: — ' Editio ista albis corvis rarior, princeps sine dubio, quidquid dicat P. Baylius, cujus exemplaria ita sunt rarissima, ut ipsa Bibliotheca Genevensis careat integro qui ipse asservatur ibidem tantum mutilum.' [This edition, rarer than a white crow, is without doubt the first. Instances of it, as P. Bayle says, are so very rare, that in the Library of Geneva even there is not a perfect copy; the one there preserved is mutilated.] "I may add, the copy in the Library at Geneva is mutilated, the noble dedication to Francis the First having been cut out. The first enlarged edition is the one at Strasburg, 'Argenterati,' 1539, folio. Some copies have the pseudonym 'Auctore Alcuino.'
"The earliest edition of this French version has neither place nor date, but was published between 1540 and 1543; and in a subsequent edition printed at Geneva, 1553, 4to, the title reads, Institution de la Religion Chrestienne: composee en Latin par Jean Calvin, et translatee en Francois par luymesme, et encores de nouveau reveue et augmentee. This seems conclusive that the work was originally written in Latin, dated 1535, published 1536, and afterwards translated by the author."
[5] "Vera hominis sapientia sita est in cognitione Dei Creatoris et Redemptoris." (Calvini Opp., vol. 9.)
[6] Cunningham, The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation, p. 342; Edin., 1862.
[7] Cunningham, Reformers and Theol. of Reform., p. 343.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 24
[1] This difficulty has been equally felt and acknowledged by writers on the doctrine of Philosophical Necessity. For instance, we find Locke (vol. 3, p. 487; fol. ed., 1751) saying, "I cannot have a clearer perception of anything than that I am free, yet I cannot make freedom in man consistent with omniscience and omnipotence in God, though I am as fully persuaded of both as of any truth I most firmly assent to." Locke in philosophy was a necessitarian. Sir William Hamilton, a libertarian, expresses similar views on this question: "How, therefore, I repeat, moral liberty is possible in man or God, we are utterly unable speculatively to understand. But, practically, the fact that we are free is given to us in the consciousness of an uncompromising law of duty, in the consciousness of our moral accountability." "Liberty is thus shown to be inconceivable, but not more than its contradictory necessity; yet, though inconceivable, liberty is shown also not to be impossible." (Discussions, pp. 624, 630.)
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK THIRTEENTH- CHAPTER 25
[1] Fe1ice, Hist. Prof. France, vol. 1, p. 36.
[2] Cunningham, Reformers and Theol. of Reform., p. 295.
[3] Paul Lacroix-Bungener, Calvin, p. 57.
[4] M. Nisard, Hist. of French Lit.
[5] "Potontissimo Illustrissimoque Monarchae, Francisco, Francorum Regi Christianissimo, Principi suo, Joannes Calvinus, pacem ac salutem in Christo precatur." (Praefatio ad Regem Galliae—Calvini Opp., vol. 9.)
[6] Praefatio ad Regem Galliae.
[7] Praefatio ad Regem Galliae.
[8] "Cur? Nisi quia illis Deus venter est, culina religio."(Praefatio ad Regem Galiae.)
[