|
|
Index page
History of the Reformation in the Time of Calvin Vol 1
Book 2 - France. Favorable Times
BOOK 2
FRANCE. FAVORABLE TIMES.
CHAPTER 1
A MAN OF THE PEOPLE AND A QUEEN.
(1522-1526.)
T
Reformation was concerned both with God and man: its aim was to restore the paths by which God and man unite, by which the Creator enters again into the creature. This path, opened by Jesus Christ with power, had been blocked up in ages of superstition. The Reformation cleared the road, and reopened the door.
We willingly acknowledge that the middle ages had not ignored the wonderful work of redemption: truth was then covered with a veil rather than destroyed, and if the noxious weeds be plucked up with which the field had gradually been filled, the primitive soil is laid bare. Take away the worship paid to the Virgin, the saints, and the host; take away meritorious, magical, and supererogatory works, and other errors besides, and we arrive at simple faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. It is not the same when we come to the manner in which God enters again into man. Roman catholicism had gone astray in this respect; there were a few mystics in her fold who pretended to tread this mysterious way; but their heated imaginations misled them, while in the place of this inward worship the Roman doctors substituted certain ecclesiastical formalities mechanically executed. The only means of recovering this royal road was to return to the apostolical times and seek for it in the Gospel. Three acts are necessary to unite man again with God. Religion penetrates into man by the depths of his conscience; thence it rises to the height of his knowledge, and finally pervades the activity of his whole life.
The conscience of man had been seared not only by the sin which clings to our nature, but also by the indulgences and mortifications imposed by the Church. It required to be vivified by faith in the atoning blood of Christ.
Tradition, scholasticism, papal infallibility, mingling their confused questions and numerous superstitions with the natural darkness of the heart, man’s understanding had been completely obscured. It needed to be enlightened by the torch of God’s word.
A society of priests, exercising absolute dominion, had enslaved christendom. For this theocratic and clerical society it was necessary to substitute a living society of the children of God.
With Luther began the awakening of the human conscience. Terrified at the sin he discovered in himself, he found no other means of peace but faith in the grace of Christ Jesus. This starting-point of the German reformer was also that of every Reformation.
To Zwingle belongs in an especial manner the work of the understanding. The first want of the Swiss reformer was to know God. He inquired into the false and the true, the reason of faith. Formed by the study of the Greek classics, he had the gift of understanding and interpreting Scripture, and as soon as he reached Zurich he began his career as a reformer by explaining the New Testament.
Calvin perfected the third work necessary for the Reformation. His characteristic is not, as the world imagines, the teaching of the doctrines to which he has given his name; his great idea was to unite all believers into one body, having the same life, and acting under the same Chief. The Reform was essentially, in his eyes, the renovation of the individual, of the human mind, of christendom. To the Church of Rome, powerful as a government, but otherwise enslaved and dead, he wished to oppose a regenerated Church whose members bad found through faith the liberty of the children of God, and which should be not only a pillar of truth, but a principle of moral purification for all the human race. He conceived the bold design of forming for these modern times a society in which the individual liberty and equality of its members should be combined with adhesion to an immutable truth, because it came from God, and to a holy and strict, but freely accepted law. An energetic effort towards moral perfection was one of the devices written on his standard. Not only did he conceive the grand idea we have pointed out; he realised it. He gave movement and life to that enlightened and sanctified society which was the object of his noble desires. And now wherever churches are founded on the twofold basis of truth and morality — even should they be at the antipodes — we may affirm that Calvin’s sublime idea is extended and carried out.
It resulted from the very nature of this society that the democratic element would be introduced into the nations where it was established. By the very act of giving truth and morality to the members of this body, he gave them liberty. All were called to search for light in the Bible; all were to be taught immediately of God, and not by priests only; all were called to give to others the truth they had found. ‘Each one of you,’ said Calvin, ‘is consecrated to Christ, in order that you may be associated with him in his kingdom, and be partakers of his priesthood.’ fc23 How could the citizens of this spiritual republic be thought otherwise than worthy to have a share in its government? The fifteenth chapter of the Acts ( <441501> Acts 15) shows us the brethren united with the apostles and elders in the proceedings of the Church, and such is the order that Calvin desired to reestablish. We have already pointed out some of the reasons by virtue of which constitutional liberty was introduced into the bosom of the nations who received the Reform of Geneva. To these must be added the reason just mentioned.
Disunited from each other, the three great principles of Luther, Zwingle, and Calvin would have been insufficient. Faith, if it had not possessed for its foundation the knowledge of the Word of God, would have easily degenerated into a mystical enthusiasm. The abstract authority of Scripture, separated from a living faith, would have ended in a dead orthodoxy; and the social principle, deprived of these two foundations, would have succeeded only in raising one of those artificial edifices in the air which fall down as soon as built.
God, by giving in the sixteenth century a man who to the lively faith of Luther and the scriptural understanding of Zwingle joined an organising faculty and a creative mind, gave the complete reformer. If Luther laid the foundations, if Zwingle and others built the walls, Calvin completed the temple of God.
We shall have to see how this doctor arrived at a knowledge of the truth; we shall have to study his labors and his struggles until the moment when, quitting for ever a country whose soil trembled under his feet and threatened to swallow him up, he went to plant upon a lowly Alpine hill that standard around which he meditated rallying the scattered members of Jesus Christ. But we must first see what was the state of France at the time when the reformer was brought to the Gospel.
The history of the Reformation in France, prior to the establishment of Calvin at Geneva, is divided into two parts: the first includes the favorable times, the second the unfavorable. We confess that the favorable times were occasionally the reverse, and that the unfavorable times were often favorable; and yet we believe that, generally speaking, this distinction may be justified. This subject has been frequently treated of; we shall, however, have to describe some phases of the French Reformation which have not always been set forth by those who have written its history.
Two persons, a man and a woman, whose social position and character, present the most striking contrasts, labored with particular zeal to propagate the Gospel in France at the epoch of the Reformation.
The woman appears first. She is the most beautiful and intelligent, the wittiest, most amiable and influential, and, with the exception of her daughter, the greatest of her age. Sister, mother of kings, herself a queen, grandmother of the monarch whom France (right or wrong) has extolled the most, namely, Henry IV., she lived much in the great world, in great ceremonials, with great personages, among the magnificence of the Louvre, St. Germain, and Fontainebleau. This woman is Margaret of Angouleme, Duchess of Alencon, Queen of Navarre, and sister of Francis I.
The man who appears next (he was younger than her by seventeen years) contrasts with all these grandeurs by the lowness of his origin. He is a man of the people, a Picardin; his grandfather was a cooper at Pont l’Eveque; his father was secretary to the bishop, and, in the day of his greatest influence in the world, he apprenticed his own brother Anthony to a bookbinder. Simple, frugal, poor, of a disposition ‘rather morose and bashful’ fc24 — such is the humble veil that hides the greatness of his genius and the strength of his will. This man is Calvin.
This man and this woman, so opposite as regards their condition in the world, resemble each other in their principal features. They both possess faith in the great truths of the Gospel; they love Jesus Christ; they have the same zeal for spreading with unwearied activity the truths so dear to them; they have the same compassion for the miserable, and especially for the victims of religious persecution. But while the man sometimes presumes upon his manly strength, the woman truly belongs to the weaker sex. She possesses indeed a moral virtue which resists the seductions of the age; she keeps herself pure in the midst of a depraved court; but she has also that weakness which disposes one to be too indulgent, and permits herself to be led away by certain peculiarities of contemporary society. We see her writing tales whose origin may be explained and even justified, since their object was to unveil the immorality of priests and monks, but they are nevertheless a lamentable tribute paid to the spirit of her age. While Calvin sets up against the papacy a forehead harder than adamant, Margaret, even in the days of her greatest zeal, is careful not to break with Rome. At last she yields, outwardly at least, to the sovereign commands of her brother, the persevering hostility of the court, clergy, and parliament, and though cherishing in her heart faith in the Savior who has redeemed her, conceals that faith under the cloak of Romish devotion; while Calvin propagates the Gospel, in opposition to the powers of the world, saying: ‘Such as the warfare is, such are the arms. If our warfare is spiritual, we ought to be furnished with spiritual armor. fc25 Margaret doubtless says the same thing; but she is the king’s sister, summoned to his council, accustomed to diplomacy, respected by foreign princes; she hopes that a union with the evangelical rulers of Germany may hasten on the Reformation of France. Finally, while Calvin desires truth in the Church above all things, Margaret clings to the preservation of its unity, and thus becomes the noble representative of a system still lauded by some protestants — to reform the Church without breaking it up: a specious system, impossible to be realised. And yet this illustrious lady, in spite of her errors, plays a great part in the history of the Reformation: she was respected by the most pious reformers. An impartial historian should brave hostile prejudices, and assign her the place which is her due.
Let us enter upon the French Reformation, at the moment when, after great but isolated preparations, it is beginning to occupy a place in the affairs of the nation. fc26
The defeat at Pavia had plunged France into mourning. There was not a house where they did not weep for a son, a husband, or a father; and the whole kingdom was plunged in sorrow at seeing its king a prisoner. The recoil of this great disaster had not long to be waited for. ‘The gods chastise us: let us fall upon the Christians,’ said the Romans of the first centuries; the persecuting spirit of Rome woke up in France. ‘It is our tenderness towards the Lutherans that has drawn upon us the vengeance of heaven,’ said the zealous catholics, who conceived the idea of appeasing heaven by hecatombs.
The great news of Pavia which saddened all France was received in Spain with transports of joy. At the time when the battle was fought, the young emperor was in Castile, anxiously expecting news from Italy. On the 10th of March, 1525, he was discussing, in one of the halls of the palace at Madrid, the advantages of Francis I. and the critical situation of the imperial army. fc27 ‘We shall conquer,’ Pescara had written to him, ‘or else we shall die.’ At this moment a courier from Lombardy appeared at the gate of the palace: he was introduced immediately. ‘Sire,’ said he, bending the knee before the emperor in the midst of his court, ‘the French army is annihilated, and the King of France in your Majesty’s hands;’ Charles, startled by the unexpected news, stood pale and motionless; it seemed as if the blood stagnated in his veins. For some moments he did not utter a word, and all around him, affected like himself, looked at him in silence. At last the ambitious prince said slowly, as if speaking to himself: ‘The King of France is my prisoner... I have won the battle.’ Then, without a word to any one, he entered his bed-room and fell on his knees before an image of the Virgin, to whom he gave thanks for the victory. He meditated before this image on the great exploits to which he now thought himself called. To become the master of Europe, to reestablish everywhere the tottering catholicism, to take Constantinople, and even to recover Jerusalem — such was the task which Charles prayed the Virgin to put him in a condition to carry through. If these ambitious projects had been realized, the revival of learning would have been compromised, the Reformation ruined, the new ideas rooted out, and the whole world would have bowed helplessly beneath two swords — that of the emperor first, and then that of the pope. At length Charles rose from his knees; he read the humble letters of the King of France, gave orders for processions to be made, and attended mass next day with every mark of the greatest devotion. fc28
All christendom thought as this potentate did: a shudder ran through Europe, and every man said to himself as he bent his head: ‘Behold the master whom the fates assign us!’ At Naples a devout voice was heard to exclaim: ‘Thou hast laid the world at his feet!’
It has been said that if in our day a king should be made prisoner, the heir to the throne or a regent would succeed to all his rights; but in the sixteenth century, omnipotence dwelt in the monarch’s person, and from the depths of his dungeon he could bind his country by the most disastrous treaties. fc29 Charles V. determined to profit by this state of things. He assembled his council. The cruel Duke of Alva eloquently conjured him not to release his rival until he had deprived him of all power to injure him. ‘In whom is insolence more natural,’ he said, ‘in whom is fickleness more instinctive than in the French? What can we expect from a king of France?... Invincible emperor, do not miss the opportunity of increasing the authority of the empire, not for your own glory, but for the service of God.’ fc30 Charles V. appeared to yield to the duke’s advice, but it was advice according to his own heart; and while repeating that a christian prince ought not to triumph in his victory over another, he resolved to crush his rival. M. de Beaurain, viceroy of Naples, Lannoy, and the Constable of Bourbon, so detested by Francis I., waited all three upon the royal captive.
Francis had overplayed the part of a suppliant, a character so new for him. ‘Instead of a useless prisoner,’ he had written to Charles, ‘set at liberty a king who will be your slave for ever.’ Charles proposed to him a dismemberment of France on three sides. The Constable of Bourbon was to have Provence and Dauphiny, and these provinces, united with the Bourbonaais which he possessed already, were to be raised into an independent kingdom. The king of England was to have Normandy and Guienne; and the emperor would be satisfied with French Flanders, Picardy, and Burgundy... When he heard these monstrous propositions, Francis uttered a cry and caught up his sword, which his attendants took from his hands. Turning towards the envoys he said: ‘I would rather die in prison than consent to such demands.’ Thinking that he could make better terms with the emperor, he soon after embarked at Genoa and sailed to Spain. The delighted Charles gave up to him the palace of Madrid, and employed every means to constrain him to accept his disastrous conditions. fc31 Who will succeed in baffling the emperor’s pernicious designs? A woman, Margaret of Valois, undertook the task. fc32 The statesmen of her age considered her the best head in Europe; the friends of the Reformation respected her as their mother. Her dearest wish was to substitute a living christianity for the dead forms of popery, and she hoped to prevail upon her brother, ‘the father of letters,’ to labor with her in this admirable work. It was not in France only that she desired the triumph of the Gospel, but in Germany, England, Italy, and even Spain. As Charles’ projects would ruin all that she loved — the king, France, and the Gospel — she feared not to go and beard the lion even in his den.
The duchess as she entered Spain felt her heart deeply agitated. The very day she had heard of the battle of Pavia, she had courageously taken this heavy cross upon her shoulders; but at times she fainted under the burden. Impatient to reach her brother, burning with desire to save him, fearing lest she should find him dying, trembling lest the persecutors should take advantage of her absence to crush the Gospel and religious liberty in France, she found no rest but at the feet of the Savior. Many evangelical men wept and prayed with her; they sought to raise her drooping courage under the great trial which threatened to weigh her down, and bore a noble testimony to her piety. ‘There are various stations in the christian life,’ said one of these reformers, Capito. ‘You have now entered upon that commonly called the Way of the Cross. fc33 ... Despising the theology of men, you desire to know only Jesus Christ and Him crucified.’ fc34
Margaret crossing in her litter (September, 1525) the plains of Catalonia, Arragon, and Castile, exclaimed:
I cast my eyes around, I look and look in vain... The loved one cometh not; And on my knees again I pray unceasing to my God To heal the king — to spare the rod.
The loved one cometh not... Tears on my eyelids sit: Then to this virgin page My sorrows I commit: — Such is to wretched me Each day of misery. fc35
She sometimes fancied that she could see in the distance a messenger riding hastily from Madrid and bringing her news of her brother... But alas! her imagination had deceived her, no one appeared. She then wrote:
O Lord, awake, arise! And let thine eyes in mercy fall Upon the king — upon us all.
Once or twice a day she halted at some inn on the road to Madrid, but it was not to eat. ‘I have supped only once since my departure from Aigues-Mortes,’ she said. fc36 As soon as she entered the wretched Chamber, she began to write to her brother at the table or on her knees. ‘Nothing to do you service,’ she wrote: ‘nothing, even to casting the ashes of my bones to the wind, will be strange or painful to me; but rather consolation, repose, and honor.’ fc37
The defeat of Pavia and the excessive demands of Charles V. had given the king such shocks that he had fallen seriously ill; the emperor had therefore gone to Madrid to be near him. On Wednesday, September 19, 1525, Margaret arrived in that capital. Charles received her surrounded by a numerous court, and respectfully approaching her, this politic and phlegmatic prince kissed her on the forehead and offered her his hand. Margaret, followed by the noble dames and lords of France who had accompanied her, and wearing a plain dress of black velvet without any ornament, passed between two lines of admiring courtiers. The emperor conducted her as far as the door of her brother’s apartments, and then withdrew.
Margaret rushed in; but alas! what aid she find? a dying man, pale, worn, helpless. Francis was on the brink of the grave, and his attendants seemed to be waiting for his last breath. The duchess approached the bed softly, so as not to be heard by the sick man; unobserved she fixed on him a look of the tenderest solicitude, and her soul, strengthened by an unwavering faith, did not hesitate; she believed in her brother’s cure, she had prayed so fervently. She seemed to hear in the depths of her heart an answer from God to her prayers; and while all around the prince, who was almost a corpse, bowed their heads in dark despair, Margaret raised hers with hope towards heaven.
Prudent, skillful, decided, active, a Martha as well as a Mary, she established herself at once in the king’s chamber, and took the supreme direction. ‘If she had not come he would have died,’ said Brantome. fc38 ‘I know my brother’s temperament,’ she said, ‘better than the doctors.’ In spite of their resistance, she had the treatment changed; then she sat down at the patient’s bedside, and left him no more. While the king slept, she prayed; when he awoke, she spoke to him in encouraging language The faith of the sister gradually dispelled the brother’s dejection. She spoke to him of the love of Christ; she proposed to him to commemorate his atoning death by celebrating the holy eucharist. Francis consented. He had hardly communicated when he appeared to wake up as if from a deep sleep: he sat up in his bed, fixed his eyes on his sister, and said: ‘God will heal me body and soul.’ Margaret in great emotion answered: ‘Yes, God will raise you up again and make you free.’ From that hour the king gradually recovered his strength, and he would often say: ‘But for her, I was a dead man.’ fc39
Margaret, seeing her brother restored to life, thought only of restoring him to liberty. She departed for Toledo, where Charles V. was staying; the seneschal and seneschaless of Poitou, the Bishop of Senlis, the Archbishop of Embrun, the president De Selves, and several other nobles, accompanied her. What a journey! Will she succeed in touching her brother’s gaoler, or will she fail? This question was continually before her mind. Hope, fear, indignation moved her by turns; at every step her agitation increased. The emperor went out courteously to meet her; he helped her to descend from her litter, and had his first conversation with her in the Alcazar, that old and magnificent palace of the Moorish kings. Charles V. was determined to take advantage of his victory. Notwithstanding the outward marks of politeness, exacted by the etiquette of courts, he wrapped himself up in imperturbable dignity, and was cold, nay almost harsh. Margaret, seeing that her brother’s conqueror kept the foot upon his neck, and was determined not to remove it, could no longer contain herself. ‘She broke out into great anger:’ fc40 like a lioness robbed of her cubs, full of majesty and fury, she startled the cold and formal Charles, says Brantome. Yet he restrained himself, preserved his icy mien, made no answer to the duchess, and busying himself with showing her the honors due to her rank, he conducted her, accompanied by the Archbishop of Toledo and several Spanish noblemen, to the palace of Don Diego de Mendoza, which had been prepared for her.
Alone in her chamber the princess gave free vent to her tears; she wrote to Francis: ‘I found him very cold.’ fc41 She reminded him that the King of heaven ‘has placed on his throne an ensign of grace; that we have no reason to fear the majesty of heaven will reject us; and that he stretches out his hand to us, even before we seek for it.’ And being thus strengthened, she prepared for the solemn sitting at which she was to plead her brother’s cause. She quitted the palace with emotion to appear before the council extraordinary, at which the emperor and his ministers sat with all the grandeur and pride of Castile. Margaret was not intimidated, and though she could not perceive the least mark of interest on the severe and motionless faces of her judges, ‘she was triumphant in speaking and pleading.’ But she returned bowed down with sorrow: the immovable severity of the emperor and of his councillors dismayed her. ‘The thing is worsened,’ she said, ‘far more than I had imagined.’ fc42
The Duchess of Alencon, firmer than her brother, would not agree to the cession of Burgundy. The emperor replied with irritation: ‘It is my patrimonial estate — I still bear the name and the arms.’ The duchess, confounded by Charles’s harshness, threw herself into the arms of God. ‘When men fail, God does not forget,’ she said. She clung to the rock; ‘she leant,’ says Erasmus, ‘upon the unchangeable rock which is called Christ.’
fc43
She soon regained her courage, asked for another audience, returned to the attack, and her agitated soul spoke with new eloquence to the emperor and his ministers. Never had the Escurial or the Alcazar seen a petitioner so ardent and so persevering. She returned to her apartments in alternations of sorrow and joy. ‘Sometimes I get a kind word,’ she wrote, ‘and then suddenly all is changed. I have to deal with the greatest of dissemblers.’ fc44 This beautiful and eloquent ambassadress filled the Spaniards with admiration. They talked at court of nothing but the sister of Francis I.
Letters received in France and Germany from Madrid and Toledo extolled her sweetness, energy, and virtues. The scholars of Europe felt their love and respect for her increase, and were proud of a princess whom they looked upon as their Maecenas. What charmed them was something more than that inquiring spirit which had led Margaret in her earliest years towards literature and divinity, and had made her learn Latin and Hebrew; fc45 Erasmus enthusiastically exclaimed when he heard of the wonders she was doing in Spain: ‘How can we help loving, in God, such a heroine, such an amazon?’ fc46 The courage with which the Duchess of Alencon had gone to Spain to save her brother led some christians to imagine that she would display the same heroism in delivering the Church from her long captivity.
|
CHAPTER 2
MARGARET SAVES THE EVANGELICALS
AND THE KING.
(1525-1526.)
THE captive Francis was not Margaret’s only sorrow. If her brother was a prisoner to the emperor, her brethren in the faith were prisoners to her mother. The parliament of Paris having issued a decree against the Lutherans, and the pope having on the 17th of March invested with apostolical authority the councillors authorised to proceed against them, fc47 the persecutors set vigorously to work. The regent Louisa of Savoy, mother of Francis I. and of Margaret, inquired of the Sorbonne: ‘By what means the damnable doctrine of Luther could be extirpated?’ The fanatic Beda, syndic of that corporation, enchanted with such a demand, replied without hesitation on the part of the Faculties: ‘It must be punished with the utmost severity.’ Accordingly Louisa published letters-patent, ‘to extinguish the damnable heresy of Luther.’ fc48
France began to seek in persecution an atonement for the faults which had led to the defeat of Pavia. Many evangelical christians were either seized or banished. Marot, valet-de-chambre to the Duchess of Alencon, the best poet of his age, who never spared the priests, and translated the Psalms of David into verse, was arrested; Lefevre, Roussel, and others had to flee; Caroli and Mazurier recanted the faith they had professed. fc49 ‘Alas!’ said Roussel, ‘no one can confess Jesus any longer except at the risk of his life.’ fc50 — ‘It is the hour of triumph,’ fc51 proudly said Beda and the men of the Roman party. A blow more grevous still was about to reach Margaret.
A gentleman, a friend of Erasmus, of letters, and especially of Scripture, who had free access to the court of the duchess, and with whom that princess loved to converse about the Gospel and the new times — Berquin had been arrested on a charge of heresy; then set at liberty in 1523 by the intercession of Margaret and the king’s orders. Leaving Paris, he had gone to his native province of Artois. A man of upright heart, generous soul, and intrepid zeal, ‘in whom you could see depicted the marks of a great mind,’ says the chronicler, he worthily represented by his character that nobility of France, and especially of Artois, so distinguished at all times by its devotedness and valor. Happy in the liberty which God had given him, Berquin had sworn to consecrate it to him, and was zealously propagating in the cottages on his estate the doctrine of salvation by Christ alone. fc52 The ancient country of the Atrebates, wonderfully fertile as regards the fruits of the earth, was equally fertile as regards the seed from heaven. Berquin attacked the priesthood such as Rome had made it. He said: ‘You will often meet with these words in Holy Scripture: ‘honorable marriage, undefiled bed, but of celibacy you will not find a syllable.’ Another time he said: ‘I have not yet known a monastery which was not infected with hatred and dissension.’ Such language, repeated in the refectories and long galleries of the convents, filled the monks with anger against this noble friend of learning. But he did not stop there: ‘We must teach the Lord’s flock,’ he said, ‘to pray with understanding, that they may no longer be content to gabble with their lips like ducks with their bills, without comprehending what they say.’ — ‘He is attacking us,’ said the chaplains. Berquin did not, however, always indulge in this caustic humor; he was a pious christian, and desired to see a holy and living unity succeed the parties that divided the Roman Church. He said: ‘We ought not to hear these words among christians; I am of the Sorbonne, I am of Luther; or, I am a Grey-friar, or Dominican, or Bernardite... Would it be too much then to say: I am a christian?... Jesus who came for us all ought not to be divided by us.’ fc53
But this language aroused still greater hatred. The priests and nobles, who were firmly attached to ancient usages, rose up against him; they attacked him in the parishes and chateaux, and even went to him and strove to detach him from the new ideas which alarmed them. ‘Stop!’, they said with a sincerity which we cannot doubt, ‘stop, or it is all over with the Roman hierarchy.’ Berquin smiled, but moderated his language; he sought to make men understand that God loves those whom he calls to believe in Jesus Christ, and applied himself ‘to scattering the divine seed’ with unwearied courage. With the Testament in his hand, he perambulated the neighborhood of Abbeville, the banks of the Somme, the towns, manors, and fields of Artois and Picardy, filling them with the Word of God.
These districts were in the see of Amiens, and every day some noble, priest, or peasant went to the palace and reported some evangelical speech or act of this christian gentleman. The bishop, his vicars and canons met and consulted together. On a sudden the bishop started for Paris, eager to get rid of the evangelist who was creating a disturbance throughout the north of France. He waited upon the archbishop and the doctors of the Sorbonne; he described to them the heretical exertions of the gentleman, the irritation of the priests, and the scandal of the faithful. The Sorbonne assembled and went to work: unable to seize Berquin, they seized his books, examined them, and ‘after the manner of spiders sucked from them certain articles,’ says Crespin, ‘to make poison and bring about the death of a person who, with integrity and simplicity of mind was endeavoring to advance the doctrine of God.’ fc54 Beda especially took a violent part against the evangelist. This suspicious and arbitrary doctor, a thorough inquisitor, who possessed a remarkable talent for discovering in a book everything that could ruin a man by the help of forced interpretations, was seen poring night and day over Berquin’s volumes. He read in them: ‘The Virgin Mary is improperly invoked instead of the Holy Ghost.’ — ‘Point against the accused,’ said Beda. — He continued: ‘There are no grounds for calling her a treasury of grace, our hope, our life: qualities which belong essentially to our Savior alone.’ — Confirmation! — ‘Faith alone justifies.’ — Deadly heresy! — ‘Neither the gates of hell, nor Satan, nor sin can do anything against him who has faith in God.’ — What insolence! fc55 Beda made his report: ‘Of a truth,’ said his colleagues, ‘that is enough to bring any man to the stake.’
Berquin’s death being decided upon, the Sorbonne applied to the parliament, who raised no objections in the matter. A man was put to death in those times for an offensive passage in his writings; it was the censorship of a period just emerging from the barbarism of the middle ages. Demailly, an officer of the court, started for Abbeville, proceeded to the gentleman’s estate, and arrested him in the name of the law. His vassals, who were devoted to him, murmured and would have risen to defend him; but Berquin thought himself strong in his right; he remembered besides these words of the Son of God: ‘Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain;’ he entreated his friends to let him depart, and was taken to the prison of the Conciergerie, which he entered with a firm countenance and unbending head. fc56
This sad news which reached the Duchess of Alencon in Spain moved her deeply, and while she was hurrying from Madrid to Toledo, Alcala, and Guadalaxara, soliciting everybody, ‘plotting’ her brother’s marriage with the sister of Charles V., and thus paving the way to the reconciliation of the two potentates, she resolved to save her brethren exiled or imprisoned for the Gospel. She applied to the king, attacking him on his better side. Francis I., Brantome tells us, was called the father of letters. He had sought for learned men all over Europe and collected a fine library at Fontainebleau. fc57 ‘What!’ said his sister to him, ‘you are founding a college at Paris intended to receive the enlightened men of foreign countries; and at this very time illustrious French scholars, Lefevre of Etaples and others, are compelled to seek an asylum out of the kingdom... You wish to be a propagator of learning, while musty hypocrites, black, white, and grey, are endeavoring to stifle it at home.’ fc58 Margaret was not content to love with word and tongue; she showed her love by her works. The thought of the poor starving exiles, who knew not where to lay their heads, haunted her in the magnificent palaces of Spain; she distributed four thousand gold pieces among them, says one of the enemies of the Reformation. fc59
She did more: she undertook to win over her brother to the Gospel, and endeavored, she tells us, to rekindle the true fire in his heart; but alas! that fire had never burnt there. Touched, however, by an affection so lively and so pure, by a devotedness so complete, which would have gone, if necessary, even to the sacrifice of her life, Francis, desirous of giving Margaret a token of his gratitude, commanded the parliament to adjourn until his return all proceedings against the evangelicals. ‘I intend,’ he added, ‘to give the men of letters special marks of my favor.’ These words greatly astonished the Sorbonne and the parliament, the city and the court. They looked at each other with an uneasy air; grief, they said, had affected the king’s judgment. ‘Accordingly they paid no great attention to his letter, and on the 24th of November, 1525, twelve days after its receipt, orders were given to the bishop to supply the money necessary for the prosecution of the heretics.’ fc60 Margaret had no time to sympathise any longer with the fate of her friends. Charles V., who spoke with admiration of this princess, thought, not without reason, that she encouraged the king to resist him; he proposed, therefore, to make her a prisoner, as soon as her safe-conduct had expired. It appears that it was Montmorency who, being warned of the emperor’s intention by the secret agents of the regent, gave information to the duchess. Her task in Spain seemed finished; it was from France now that the emperor must be worked upon. Indeed, Francis, disgusted with the claims of that prince, had signed his abdication and given it to his sister. The French Government with this document in their hands might give a new force to their demands. Margaret quitted Madrid, and on the 19th of November she was at Alcala. fc61 But as she fled, she looked behind and asked herself continually how she could save Francis from the ‘purgatory of Spain.’ Yet the safe-conduct was about to expire, the fatal moment had arrived; the alguazils of Charles were close at hand. Getting on horseback at six in the morning, the duchess made a four days’ journey in one, and reentered France just one hour before the termination of the truce.
Everything changed at Madrid. Charles, alarmed at the abdication of Francis, softened by the approaching marriage of this monarch with his sister, obtaining in fine the main part of his demands, consented to restore the King of France to liberty. It was Burgundy that had delayed the arrangement. The king was not more inclined than the duchess to detach this important province from France; the only difference between the brother and the sister was, that the religion of the one looked upon oaths as sacred, while the religion of the other made no account of breaking them; and this Francis soon showed. On the 14th of January, 1526, some of his courtiers, officers, and domestics gathered round their master for all act which in their simplicity they called sacred. The king swore in their presence that he would not keep one of the articles which Charles wished to force upon him. When that was done Francis bound himself an hour after by an oath, with his hand upon the Scriptures, to do what Charles demanded. According to the tenor of the treaty, he renounced all claim to Italy; surrendered Burgundy to the emperor, to whom it was stated to belong; restored Provence, which Charles ceded to the Constable of Bourbon; and thus France was laid prostrate. fc62 The treaty was
319 communicated to the pope: ‘Excellent,’ he said, after reading it; ‘provided the king does not observe it.’ That was a point on which Clement and Francis were in perfect accord. fc63
Margaret had no hand in this disgraceful trick; her only thought had been to save the king and the evangelicals.
CHAPTER 3
WILL THE REFORMATION CROSS THE RHINE?
(1525-1526)
MARGARET, who returned from Spain full of hope in her brother’s deliverance, was determined to do all in her power for the triumph of the Gospel. While the men of the ultramontane party, calling to mind the defeat of Pavia, demanded that heaven should be appeased by persecutions, Margaret thought, on the contrary, that humiliated France ought to turn towards Jesus Christ, in order to obtain from him a glorious deliverance.
But would Francis tread in his sister’s steps? History presents few characters more inconsistent than the character of this prince. He yielded at one time to Margaret, at another to the Sorbonne. He imprisoned and set free, he riveted the chains and broke them. All his actions were contradictory; all his projects seem to exclude each other: on his bright side, he was the father of letters; on his dark side, the enemy of all liberty, especially of that which the Gospel gives; and he passed with ease from one of these characters to the other. Yet the influence which Margaret exercised over him in favor of the reformed seemed strongest during the eight or nine years that followed his captivity; Francis showed himself not unfavorable to the evangelicals during this period, except at times when irritated by certain excesses. Like a capricious and fiery steed, he sometimes felt a fly stinging him, when he would rear and throw his rider; but he soon grew calm and resumed his quiet pace. Accordingly many persons thought during the years 1525-1534 that the country of St. Bernard and Waldo would not remain behind Germany, Switzerland, and England. If the Reform had been completed, France would have been saved from the abominations of the Valois, the despotism of the Bourbons, and the enslaving superstitions of the popes.
Nine years before, the Reformation had begun in Germany: would it not cross the Rhine?... Strasburg is the main bridge by which German ideas enter France, and French ideas make their way into Germany. Many have already passed, both good and bad, from the right bank to the left and from the left to the right; and will still pass as long as the Rhine continues to flow. In 1521 the movement had been very active. There had been an invasion at Strasburg of the doctrines and writings of Luther: his name was in every-mouth. His noble conduct at the diet of Worms had enraptured Germany, and the news spread in every direction. Men repeated his words, they devoured his writings. Zell, priest of St. Lawrence and episcopal penitentiary, was one of the first awakened. He began to seek truth in the Scriptures, to preach that man is saved by grace; and his sermons made an immense impression.
A nobleman of this city, Count Sigismond of Haute-Flamme (in German Hohenlohe) a friend and ally of the duchess, who called him her good cousin, was touched with Luther’s heroism and the preaching of Zell. His conscience was aroused; he endeavored to live according to the will of God; and feeling within him the sin that prevented it, he experienced the need of a Savior, and found one in Jesus Christ. Sigismond was not one of those nobles, rather numerous then, who spoke in secret of the Savior, but, before the world, seemed not to know him; Lambert of Avignon fc64 admired his frankness and his courage. fc65 Although a dignitary of the Church and dean of the great chapter, the count labored to spread evangelical truth around him, and conceived at the same time a great idea. Finding himself placed between the two countries and speaking both languages, he resolved to set himself the task of bringing into France the great principles of the reformation. As soon as he received any new work of Luther’s, he had it translated into French and printed, and forwarded it to the king’ sister. fc66 He did more than that; he wrote to Luther, begging him to send a letter to the duchess, or even compose some work calculated to encourage her in her holy undertakings. fc67 The count, who knew Margaret’s spirit and piety, and her influence over the king, doubted not that she was the door by which the new ideas which were to renovate the world, would penetrate into France. He composed and published himself a work entitled the Book of the Cross, in which he set forth the death of Christ as the essence of the Gospel.
Sigismond’s labors with the priests and nobles around him were not crowned with success. The monks especially looked at him with astonishment, and replied that they would take good care not to change the easy life they were leading. Lambert, who had a keen eye, perceived this, and said to the count with a smile: ‘You will not succeed; these folks are afraid of damaging their wallets, their kitchens, their stables, and their bellies.’ fc68
But he succeeded better with Margaret. He had no sooner heard of the defeat at Pavia than he wrote her a letter full of sympathy: ‘May God reward you,’ she answered, ‘for the kindness you have done us in visiting with such tender love the mother and the daughter, both poor afflicted widows! You show that you are not only a cousin according to flesh and blood, but also according to the spirit. We have resolved to follow your advice so far as the Father of all men is propitious to us.’ fc69 Sigismond wrote again to the duchess while she was in Spain; and when he heard of her return to France, manifested a desire to go to Paris to advance the work of the Reformation. He was at the same time full of confidence in Margaret’s zeal ‘You think me more advanced than I am,’ she replied; ‘but I hope that He who, in despite of my unworthiness, inspires you with this opinion of me, will deign also to perfect his work in me.’ fc70
The Duchess of Alencon did not however desire, as we have said, a reformation like that of Luther of Calvin. She wished to see in the Church a sincere, and living piety, preserving at the same time the bishops and the hierarchy. To change the inside, but to leave the outside standing — such was her system. If they left the Church, two evils would in her opinion result which she wished to avoid; first, it would excite an insurmountable opposition; and second, it would create divisions, and lead to the rupture of unity. She hoped to attain her ends by a union between France and Germany. If Germany excited France, if France moderated Germany, would they not attain to a universal Reformation of the Church? She had not drawn up her plan beforehand, but circumstances gradually led her to this idea, which was not her own only, but that of her brother’s most influential advisers, and which was sometimes that of her brother himself. Would she succeed?... Truth is proud and will not walk in concert with error. Besides, Rome is proud also, and, if this system had prevailed, she would no doubt have profited by the moderation of the reformers to maintain all her abuses.
The great event which Margaret was waiting for magnified her hopes. Whenever Francis I. passed the Pyrenees, it would be in her eyes like the sun rising in the gates of the east to inundate our hemisphere with its light. Margaret doubted not that her brother would immediately gather round him all the friends of the Gospel, like planets round the orb of day. ‘Come in the middle of April,’ she wrote to Hohenlohe, who was in her eyes a star of the first magnitude; ‘you will find all your friends assembled... The spirit, which by a living faith unites you to your only Chief (Jesus Christ), will make you diligently communicate your assistance to all who need it, especially to those who are united to you in spirit and in faith. As soon as the king returns to France, he will send to them and seek them in his turn.’ Margaret imagined herself already at the court of France, with the count at her side, and around her the exiles, the prisoners, the doctors... What an effect this mass of light would have upon the French! All the ice of scholastic catholicism would melt before the rays of the sun. ‘There will indeed be some trouble at first,’ she said; ‘but the Word of truth will be heard... God is God. He is what he is, not less invisible than incomprehensible. His glory and his victory are spiritual. He is conqueror when the world thinks him conquered.’ fc71
The king was still a prisoner; the regent and Duprat, who were opposed to the Reformation, wielded supreme power; the priests, seeing the importance of the moment, united all their efforts to combat the evangelical influences, and obtained a brilliant triumph. On Monday, the 5th of February, 1526, a month before the return of Francis I., the sound of the trumpet was heard in all the public places of Paris, and a little later in those of Sens, Orleans, Auxerre, Meaux, Tours, Bourges, Angers, Poitiers, Troyes, Lyons, and Macon, and ‘in all the bailiwicks, seneschallies, provestries, viscounties, and estates of the realm.’ When the trumpet ceased, the herald cried by order of parliament: ‘All persons are forbidden to put up to sale or translate from Latin into French the epistles of St. Paul, the Apocalypse, and other books. Henceforward no printer shall print any of the books of Luther. No one shall speak of the ordinances of the Church or of images, otherwise than holy Church ordains All books of the Holy Bible, translated into French, shall be given up by those who possess them, and carried within a week to the clerks of the court. All prelates, priests, and their curates shall forbid their parishioners to have the least doubt of the Catholic faith.’ fc72 Translations, books, explanations, and even doubts were prohibited.
This proclamation afflicted Margaret very seriously. Will her brother ratify these fierce monastic prohibitions, or will he cooperate in the victory of truth? Will he permit the Reformation to pass from Germany into France? One circumstance filled the Duchess of Alencon with hope: the king declared in favor of Berquin. It will be recollected that this gentleman had been imprisoned in the Conciergerie. Three monks, his judges, entered his prison, and reproached him with having said that ‘the gates of hell can do nothing against him who has faith.’ This notion of a salvation entirely independent of priests exasperated the clergy. — ‘Yes,’ answered Berquin, ‘when the eternal Son of God receives the sinner who believes in his death and makes him a child of God, this divine adoption cannot be forfeited.’ The monks, however, could see nothing but a culpable enthusiasm in this joyful confidence. Berquin sent Erasmus the propositions censured by his judges. ‘I find nothing impious in them,’ replied the prince of the schools.
The Sorbonne did not think the same. The prior of the Carthusians, the prior of the Celestines, monks of all colors, ‘imps of antichrist,’ says the chronicler, ‘gave help to the band of the Sorbonne in order to destroy by numbers the firmness of Berquin.’ — ‘Your books will be burnt,’ said the pope’s delegates to the accused, ‘you will make an apology, and then only will you escape. But if you refuse what is demanded of you, you will be led to the stake.’ — ‘I will not yield a single point,’ he answered. Whereupon the Sorbonnists, the Carthusians, and the Celestines exclaimed: ‘Then it is all over with you!’ Berquin waited calmly for the fulfillment of these threats.
When the Duchess of Alencon heard of all this, she immediately wrote to her brother, and fell at her mother’s knees, Louisa of Savoy was not inaccessible to compassions in the solemn hour that was to decide her son’s liberty. That princess was one of those profane characters who think little of God in ordinary times, but cry to him when the sea in its rage is about to swallow them up. Shut in her closet with Margaret, she prayed with her that God would restore the king to France. The duchess, full of charity and a woman of great tact, took advantage of one of these momerits to attempt to soften her mother in favor of Berquin. She succeeded: the regent was seized with a sudden zeal, and ordered the pope’s delegates to suspend matters until after the king’s return. fc73
The delegates, in great surprise, read the letter over and over again: it seemed very strange to them. They deliberated upon it, and, thinking themselves of more consequence than this woman, quietly pursued their work. The haughty and resolute Louisa of Savoy, having heard of their insolence, was exasperated beyond measure, and ordered a second letter to be written to the pontiff’s agents, fc74 who contented themselves with saying, ‘Non possumus,’ and made the more haste, for fear their victim should escape them. The king’s mother, still more irritated, applied to the parliament, who held Berquin in respect, and who said boldly that the whole thing was nothing but a monkish conspiracy. At this the members of the Roman party made a still greater disturbance. Many of them (we must acknowledge) thought they were doing the public a service. ‘Erasmus is an apostate,’ they said, ‘and Berquin is his follower. fc75 ... Their opinions are heretical, schismatic, scandalous... We must burn Erasmus’s books... and Berquin with them.’ fc76
But Margaret did not lose courage. She recollected that the widow in the Gospel had obtained her request by her importunity. She entreated her mother, she wrote to her brother: ‘If you do not interfere, Berquin is a dead man.’ fc77 Francis I. yielded to her prayer, and wrote to the first president that he, the king, would make him answerable for Berquin’s life if he dared to condemn him. The president stopped all proceedings; the monks hung their heads, and Beda and his friends, says the chronicler, ‘were nigh bursting with vexation.’ fc78
Yet·Margaret did not hide from herself that she had still a hard struggle before her, which would require strength and perseverance. She felt the need of support to bring to a successful, end in France a transformation similar to that which was then renewing Germany. The Count of Hohenlohe, at Strasburg, was not enough: she wanted at her side a staff that would enable her to bear with her brother’s rebukes. God appeared willing to give her what she wished.
There was at court a prince, young, lively, witty, handsome, brave and gay, though somewhat harsh at times: he had already gone through surprising adventures, and, what was no small recommendation in Margaret’s eyes, had been the companion of Francis in the field and in prison. He was Henry d’Albret, King of Navarre — king by right if not in fact — and at that time twenty-four years old. Community of misfortune had united Francis and Henry in close friendship, and young d’Albret soon conceived a deep affection for his friend’s sister. Henry loved learning, possessed great vivacity of temper, and spoke with facility and even with eloquence. It was a pleasnt thing to hear him gracefully narrating to the court circles the manner in which he had escaped from the fort of Pizzighitone, where he had been confined after the battle of Pavia. ‘In vain,’ he said, ‘did I offer the emperor a large ransom; he was deaf. Determined to escape from my goalers, I bribed two of my guards; I procured a rope-ladder, and Vivis and I — (Vivis was his page) — let ourselves down from the window during the night. My room was at a great height, situated in the main tower above the moat. But, resolved to sacrifice my life rather than the states of my fathers, I put on the clothes of one of my attendants, who took my place in my bed. I opened the window; it was a dark night; I glided slowly down the high walls; I reached the ground, crossed the ditches, quitted the castle of Pavia, and, by God’s help, managed so well that I got to St. Just on Christmas Eve’ (1525). fc79
Henry d’Albret, having thus escaped from his enemies, hastened to Lyons, where he found Madame, and where Margaret arrived soon after, on her return from Spain. Smitten with her beauty, wit, and grace, the King of Navarre courted her hand. Everything about him charmed all who saw him; but Margaret’s hand was not easy to be obtained. She had been first asked in marriage for the youthful Charles, King of Spain; and such a union, if it had been carried out, might not perhaps have been without influence upon the destinies of Europe. But the age of the monarch (he was then but eight years old) had caused the negotiation to fail, and the sister of the King of France married the Duke of Alencon, a prince of the blood, but a man without understanding, amiability, or courage. Chief cause of the disasters of Pavia, he had fled from the field of battle and died of shame.
Margaret at first did not accept the homage of the young King of Navarre. She was not to find in him all the support she needed; but that was not the only motive of her refusal; she could not think of marriage so long as her brother was a prisoner. Henry was not discouraged; he did all he could to please the duchess, and, knowing her attachment for the Gospel, he never failed, when present in the council, to take up the defense of the pious men whom Cardinal Duprat wished to put to death. This intervention was not a mere idle task. The persecution became such, that Margaret withdrawing from the attentions of the prince, thought only of the dangers to which the humble christians were exposed whose faith she shared.
We shall see that the pope and the Sorbonne had more influence in France than the regent and the king.
CHAPTER 4
DEATH OF THE MARTYRS;
RETURN OF THE KING.
(1526.)
AT the very moment when the duchess, the Count of Hohenlohe, and others were indulging in the sweetest hopes, the darkest future opened before their eyes. Margaret had dreamt of a new day, illumined by the brightest sunshine, but all of a sudden the clouds gathered, the light was obscured, the winds rose, and the tempest burst forth.
There was a young man about twenty-eight years of age, a licentiate of laws, William Joubert by name, whom his father, king’s advocate at La Rochelle, had sent to Paris to study the practice of the courts. Notwithstanding the prohibition of the parliament, William, who was of a serious disposition, ventured to inquire into the catholic faith. Conceiving doubts about it, he said in the presence of some friends, that ‘neither Genevieve nor even Mary could save him, but the Son of God alone.’ Shortly after the issuing of the proclamation, the licentiate was thrown into prison. The alarmed father immediately hurried to Paris: his son, his hope... a heretic! and on the point of being burnt! He gave himself no rest: he went from one judge to another: ‘Ask what you please,’ said the unhappy father: ‘I am ready to give any money to save his life.’ fc80 Vainly did he repeat his entreaties day after day; on Saturday, February 17, 1526, the executioner came to fetch William; he helped him to get into the tumbrel, and led him to the front of Notre Dame: ‘Beg Our Lady’s pardon,’ he said. He next took him to the front of St. Genevieve’s church: ‘Ask pardon of St. Genevieve.’ The Rocheller was firm in his faith, and would ask pardon of none but God. He was then taken to the Place Maubert, where the people, seeing his youth and handsome appearance, deeply commiserated his fate; but the tender souls received but rough treatment from the guards. ‘Do not pity him,’ they said: ‘he has spoken evil of Our Lady and the saints in paradise, and holds to the doctrine of Luther.’ The hangman then took up his instruments, approached William, made him open his mouth, and pierced his tongue. He then strangled him and afterwards burnt his body. The poor father returned alone to Rochelle. But the parliament was not satisfied with one victim; ere-long it made an assault upon the inhabitants of a city which the enemies of the Gospel detested in an especial manner.
A well-educated young man of Meaux had come to Paris; he had translated ‘certain books’ from Latin into French: he took Luther’s part and spoke out boldly: ‘We need not take holy water to wash away our sins,’ he said; ‘the blood of Christ alone can cleanse us from them. We need not pray for the dead, for immediately after death their souls are either in paradise or in hell; there is no purgatory; I do not believe in it.’ fc81 ‘Ah!’ said the angry monks, ‘we see how it is; Meaux is thoroughly infected with false doctrines; one Falry, fc82 a priest, with some others, is the cause of these perversions.’ The young man was denounced to the parliament. ‘If you do not recant, you will be burned,’ they said. The poor youth was terrified; he was afraid of death. They led him to the front of the cathedral of Notre Dame; there he mounted a ladder, bareheaded, with lighted taper in his hand, and cried out for: ‘Pardon of God and of Our Lady!’ Then the priests put in his hands the books he had translated; he read them ‘every word’ (the titles doubtless), and afterwards pronounced them to be false and damnable. The books were burnt before his face; and as for him, ‘he was taken to the Celestines’ prison and put upon bread and water.’
He was not the only man of his native city who had to make expiation for the zeal with which he had received the Reform. A fuller, also a native of Meaux, who followed like him the ‘sect of Luther,’ suffered a similar punishment about the same time. fc83 ‘This Lutherean,’ said the burghers of Paris, ‘has the presumption to say that the Virgin and the saints have no power, and such like nonsense.’
Picardy next furnished its tribute. Picardy in the north and Dauphiny in the south were the two provinces of France best prepared to receive the Gospel. During the fifteenth century many Picardins, as the story ran, went to Vaudery. Seated round the fire during the long nights, simple catholics used to tell one another how these Vaudois (Waldenses) met in horrible assembly in solitary places, where they found tables spread with numerous and dainty viands. These poor christians loved indeed to meet together from districts often very remote. They went to the rendezvous by night and along by-roads. The most learned of them used to recite some passages of Scripture, after which they conversed together and prayed. But such humble conventicles were ridiculously travestied. ‘Do you know what they do to get there,’ said the people, ‘so that the officers may not stop them? The devil has given them a certain ointment, and when they want to go to Vaudery, they smear a little stick with it. As soon as they get astride it, they are carried up through the air, and arrive at their sabbath without meeting anybody. In the midst of them sits a goat with a monkey’s tail: this is Satan, who receives their adoration!’... These stupid stories were not peculiar to the people: they were circulated particularly by the monks. It was thus that the inquisitor Jean de Broussart spoke in 1460 from a pulpit erected in the great square at Arras. An immense multitude surrounded him; a scaffold was erected in front of the pulpit, and a number of men and women, kneeling and wearing caps with the figure of the devil painted on them, awaited their punishment. Perhaps the faith of these poor people was mingled with error. But be that as it may, they were all burnt alive after the sermon. fc84
A young student, who already held a living, though not yet in priest’s orders, had believed in the Gospel, and had boldly declared that there was no other savior but Jesus Christ, and that the Virgin Mary had no more power than other saints fc85 This youthful cleric of Therouanne in Picardy had been imprisoned in 1525, and terrified by the punishment. On Christmas-eve, with a lighted torch in his hand and stripped to his shirt, he had ‘asked pardon of God and of Mary before the church of Notre Dame.’ In consideration of his ‘very great penitence,’ it was thought sufficient to confine him for seven years on bread and water in the prison of St. Martin des Champs. Alone in his dungeon, the scholar heard the voice of God in the depths of his heart; he began to weep hot tears, and ‘forthwith,’ says the chronicler, ‘he returned to his folly.’ Whenever a monk entered his prison, the young cleric proclaimed the Gospel to him; the monks were astonished at such raving; all the convent was in a ferment and confusion. Dr. Merlin, the grand penitentiary, went to the prisoner in person, preached to him, advised and entreated him, but all to no effect. By order of the court, the young evangelist ‘was burnt at the Greve in Paris,’ and others underwent the same punishment. Such was the method employed in that cruel age to force the doctrine of the Church back into the hearts of those who rejected it: they made use of scourges to beat them, and cords to strangle them.
It was not only in Paris that severity was used against the Lutherans: the same was done in the provinces. Young Pierre Toussaint, prebendary of Metz, who had taken refuge at Basle after the death of Leclerc, fc86 having regained his courage, returned to France and proclaimed the Gospel. His enemies seized him, and gave him up to the Abbot of St. Antoine. This abbot, a well-known character, was a violent, cruel, and merciless man. fc87 Neither Toussaint’s youth, nor his candor, nor his weak health could touch him; he threw his victim into a horrible dungeon full of stagnant water and other filth, fc88 where the young evangelist could hardly stand. With his back against the wall, and his feet on the only spot in the dungeon which the water did not reach, stifled by the poisonous vapors emitted around him, the young man remembered the cheerful house of his uncle the Dean of Metz and the magnificent palace of the Cardinal of Lorraine, where he had been received so kindly while he still believed in the pope. What a contrast now! Toussaint’s health declined, his cheeks grew pale and his trembling legs could hardly support him. Alas! where were those days when still a child he ran joyously round the room riding on a stick, fc89 and when his mother seriously uttered this prophecy: ‘Antichrist will soon come and destroy all who are converted.’ The wretched Toussaint thought the moment had arrived... His imagination became excited, he fancied he saw the terrible antichrist foretold by his mother, seizing him and dragging him to punishment; he screamed aloud, and was near dying of fright. fc90 He interested every one who saw him; he was so mild; harmless as a new-born child, they said, so that the cruel abbot knew not how to justify his death. He thought that if he had Toussaint’s books and papers, he could find an excuse for burning him. One day the monks came to the wretched young man, took him out of the unwholesome pit, and led him into the abbot’s room. ‘Write to your host at Basle,’ said the latter; ‘tell him that you want your books to amuse your leisure, and beg him to send them to you.’ Toussaint, who understood the meaning of this order, hesitated. The abbot gave utterance to terrible threats. The affrighted Toussaint wrote the letter, and was sent back to his pestilential den.
Thus the very moment when the evangelical christians were hoping to have some relief was marked by an increase of severity. The Reform — Margaret was its representative at that time in the eyes of many — the afflicted Reform saw her children around her, some put to death, others in chains, all threatened with the fatal blow. The sister of Francis I., heartbroken and despairing, would have shielded with her body those whom the sword appeared ready to strike; but her exertions seemed useless.
Suddenly a cry of joy was heard, which, uttered in the Pyrenees, was reechoed even to Calais. The Sun (for thus, it will be remembered, Margaret called her brother) appeared in the south to reanimate the kingdom of France. On the 21st of March Francis quitted Spain, crossed the Bidassoa, and once more set his foot on French ground. He had recovered his spirits; an overflowing current of life had returned to every part of his existence. It seemed that, delivered from a prison, he was the master of the world. He mounted an Arab horse, and, waving his cap and plume in the air, exclaimed as he galloped along the road to St. Jean de Luz: ‘Once more I am a king!’ Thence he proceeded to Bayonne, where his court awaited him, with a great number of his subjects who had not been permitted to approach nearer to the frontier.
Nowhere was the joy so great as with Margaret and the friends of the Gospel. Some of them determined to go and meet the king and petition him on behalf of the exiles and the prisoners, feeling persuaded that he would put himself at the head of the party which the detested Charles V. was persecuting. These most pious Gauls, as Zwingle calls them, fc91 petitioned the monarch; Margaret uttered a cry in favor of the miserable; fc92 but Francis, though full of regard for his sister, could not hide a secret irritation against Luther and the Lutherans. His profane character, his sensual temperament, made him hate the evangelicals, and policy demanded great reserve.
Margaret had never ceased to entertain in her heart a hope of seeing the Count of Hohenlohe come to Paris and labor at spreading the Gospel in France. Sigismond, a man of the world and at the same time a man of God, an evangelical christian and yet a church dignitary, knowing Germany well, and considered at the court of France as belonging to it, appeared to the Duchess of Alencon the fittest instrument to work among the French that transformation equally demanded by the wants of the age and the Word of God. One day she took courage and presented her request to her brother: Francis did not receive her petition favorably. He knew Hohenlohe well, and thought his evangelical principles exaggerated; besides, if any change were to be made in France, the king meant to carry it out alone. He did not, however, open his heart entirely to his sister: he simply gave her to understand that the time was not yet come. If the count came to Paris; if he gathered round him all the friends of the Gospel; if he preached at court, in the churches, in the open air perhaps, what would the emperor say, and what the pope? — ‘Not yet,’ said the king.
The Duchess of Alencon, bitterly disappointed, could hardly make up her mind to communicate this sad news to the count. Yet it must be done. ‘The desire I have to see you is increased by what I hear of your virtue and of the perseverance of the divine grace in you. But... my dear cousin, all your friends have arrived at the conclusion that, for certain reasons, it is not yet time for you to come here. As soon as we have done something, with God’s grace, I will let you know.’
Hohenlohe was distressed at this delay, and Margaret endeavored to comfort him. ‘Ere long,’ she said, ‘the Almighty will do us the grace to perfect what he has done us the grace to begin. You will then be consoled in this company, where you are present though absent in body. May the peace of our Lord, which passeth all understanding, and which the world knoweth not, be given to your heart so abundantly that no cross can afflict
it!’ fc93
At the same time she increased her importunity with her brother; she conjured the king to inaugurate a new era; she once more urged the propriety of inviting the count. ‘I do not care for that man,’ answered Francis sharply. He cared for him, however, when he wanted him. There is a letter from the king ‘to his very dear and beloved cousin of Hohenlohe,’ in which he tells him that, desiring to raise a large army, and knowing ‘his loyalty and valor, his nearness of lineage, love, and charity,’ he begs him most affectionately to raise three thousand foot-soldiers. fc94 But where the Gospel was concerned, it was quite another matter. To put an end to his sister’s solicitation, Francis replied to her one day: ‘Do you wish, then, for my sons to remain in Spain?’ He had given them as hostages to the emperor. Margaret was silent: she had not a word to say where the fate of her nephews was concerned. She wrote to the count: ‘I cannot tell you, my friend, all the vexation I suffer: the king would not see you willingly; the reason is the liberation of his children, which he cares for quite as much as for his own.’ She added; ‘I am of good courage towards you, rather on account of our fraternal affection than by the perishable ties of flesh and blood. For the other birth, the second delivery — there lies true and perfect union.’ The Count of Hohenlohe, Luther’s disciple, did not come to France.
This refusal was not the only grief which Francis caused his sister. The love of the King of Navarre had grown stronger, and she began to return it. But the king opposed her following the inclination of her heart. Margaret, thwarted in all her wishes, drinking of the bitter cup, revolting sometimes against the despotic will to which she was forced to bend, and feeling the wounds of sin in her heart, retired to her closet and laid bare her sorrows to Christ.
O thou, my priest, my advocate, my king, On whom depends my life — my everything; O Lord, who first didst drain the bitter cup of woe And know’st its poison (if man e’er did know), These thorns how sharp, these wounds of sin how deep — Savior, friend, king, oh! plead my cause, I pray: Speak, help, and save me, lest I fall away. fc95
The religious poems of Margaret, which are deficient neither in grace, sensibility, nor affection, belong (it must not be forgotten) to the early productions of the French muse; and what particularly leads us to quote them is that they express the christian sentiments of this princess. This is the period at which it seems to us that Margaret’s christianity was purest. At an earlier date, at the time of her connection with Briconnet, her faith was clouded with the vapors of mysticism. At a later date, when the fierce will of Francis I. alarmed her tender and shrinking soul, a veil of catholicism appeared to cover the purity of her faith. But from 1526 to 1532 Margaret was herself. The evidences of the piety of the evangelical christians of this period are so few, that we could not permit ourselves to suppress those we find in the writings of the king’s sister.
The Duchess of Alencon resorted to poetry to divert her thoughts; and it was now, I think, that she wrote her poem of the Prisoner. She loved to recall the time when the King of Navarre had been captured along with Francis I.; she transported herself to the days immediately following the battle of Pavia; she imagined she could hear young Henry d’Albret expressing his confidence in God, and exclaiming from the lofty tower of Pizzighitone:
Vainly the winds o’er the ocean blow, Scattering the ships as they proudly go; But not a leaf of the wood can they shake, Until at the sound of thy voice they awake.
The captive, after describing in a mournful strain the sorrows of his prison, laid before Christ the sorrow which sprang from a feeling of his sins:
Not one hell but many million I’ve deserved for my rebellion. But my sin in thee was scourged, And my guilt in thee was purged. fc96
The noble prisoner does not seek the salvation of God for himself alone; he earnestly desires that the Gospel may be brought to that Italy where he is a captive — one of the earliest aspirations for Italian reformation.
Can you tell why from your home — Home so peaceful — you were torn? ‘T was that over stream and mountain The precious treasure should be borne By thee, in thy vessel frail, To God’s elect fc97 ...
On a sudden the prisoner remembers his friend; he believes in his tender commiseration and thus invokes him:
O Francis, my king, of my soul the best part, Thou model of friendship, so dear to my heart, A Jonathan, Orestes, and Pollux in one, As thou seest me in sorrow and anguish cast down, My Achates, my brother, oh! what sayest thou? fc98
But Henry d’Albret called Francis I. his Jonathan to no purpose; Jonathan would not give him his sister. The king had other thoughts. During his
captivity the emperor had demanded Margaret’s hand of the regent. fc99 But Francis, whom they were going to unite, contrary to his wishes, to Charles’s sister, thought that one marriage with the house of Austria was enough, and hoping that Henry VIII. might aid him in taking vengeance on Charles, was seized with a strong liking for him. ‘If my body is the emperor’s prisoner,’ he said, ‘my heart is a prisoner to the King of England!’ fc100 He gained over Cardinal Wolsey, who told his master that there was not in all Europe a woman worthier of the crown of England than Margaret of France. fc101 But the christian heart of the Duchess of Alencon revolted at the idea of taking the place of Catharine of Arragon, whose virtues she honored; fc102 and Henry VIII. himself soon entered on a different course. It was necessary to give up the design of placing Margaret on the throne of England by the side of Henry Tudor... a fortunate thing for the princess, but a misfortune perhaps for the kingdom over which she would have reigned.
Yet the Duchess of Alencon did not see all her prayers refused. On leaving his prison, the sight of Francis I. was confused. By degrees he saw more clearly into the state of things in Europe, and took a few steps towards that religious liberty which Margaret had so ardently desired of him. It would even seem that, guided by his sister, he rose to considerations of a loftier range.
CHAPTER 5
DELIVERY OF THE CAPTIVES
AND RETURN OF THE EXILES.
(1526.)
THERE was an instinctive feeling in christendom that up to this time its society had been but fragmentary, a great disorder, an immense chaos. fc103 It felt an earnest want of that social unity, of that supreme order, and of that all-ruling idea which the papacy had not been able to give. By proclaiming a new creation, the Reformation was about to accomplish this task. The isolation of nations was to cease; all would touch each other; reciprocal influences would multiply from generation to generation... The Reformation prepared the way for the great unity in the midst of the world.
Evangelical christians felt a consciousness, indistinct perhaps, though deep, of this new movement in human affairs, and many would have wished that France should not yield to Germany or England the privilege of marching in the van of the new order of things. They said that since the emperor had put himself at the head of the enemies of the Reformation, the king ought to place himself in the front rank of its defenders. The Duchess of Alencon in particular was constantly soliciting the king, and praying him to recall to France the men who would bring into it the true light. But Francis received her proposals coldly, sometimes rudely, and cut short every attempt to answer; still the duchess was indefatigable, and when the king shut the door against her, ‘she got in through the keyhole.’ At last Francis, who loved his sister, esteemed learning, and despised the monks, yielded to her pressing entreaties, and above all to the new ideas and the exigencies of his political plans. The gates of the prisons were opened.
Berquin was still a prisoner, sorrowful but comforted by his faith, unable to see clearly into the future, but immovable in his loyalty to the Gospel.
The king determined to save him from ‘the claws of Beda’s faction.’ ‘I will not suffer the person or the goods of this gentleman to be injured,’ he said to the parliament on the 1st of April; ‘I will inquire into the matter myself.’ The officers sent by the king took the christian captive from his prison, and, though still keeping watch over him, placed him in a commodious chamber. Berquin immediately set about forming plans for the triumph of truth.
Clement Marot had paid dearly for the privilege of being Margaret’s secretary; he was in prison, and consoled himself by composing his little poems. Margaret obtained his full release, and Marot hastened to his friends, exclaiming in a transport of joy:
In narrow cell without a cause, Shut up in foul despite of laws By wicked men, the king’s decree In this New Year has set me free. fc104
Michael of Aranda, who, in 1524, had preached the Gospel with such power at Lyons, had been removed from Margaret, whose almoner he was. She sent for him and imparted to him her plan for introducing the Gospel into the Catholic Church of France, by renewing without destroying it. ‘I have procured your nomination to the bishopric of Trois-Chateaux in Dauphiny,’ fc105 she said. ‘Go, and evangelise your diocese.’ He accepted; the truth had already been scattered in Dauphiny by Farel and others. Did Aranda share Margaret’s views, or had ambition anything to do with his acceptance? It is hard to say.
A fourth victim of the persecution was soon saved. The young prebendary of Metz, the amiable Pierre Toussaint, was still in the frightful den into which the abbot of St. Antoine had thrust him. His host at Basle had not sent the books which the treacherous priest had constrained him to write for; no doubt the worthy citizen, knowing in whose hands his friend was lying, had foreseen the danger to which their receipt would expose him. Several evangelical christians of France, Switzerland, and Lorraine, particularly the merchant Vaugris, had successively interceded in his favor, but to no purpose. Finding all their exertions useless, they applied at last to Margaret, who warmly pleaded the cause of the young evangelist before the king. In July, 1526, the order for his release arrived. The officers charged with this pleasing task descended to the gloomy dungeon selected by the abbot of St. Antoine, and rescued the lamb from the fangs of that wild beast. Toussaint, thin, weak, pale as a faded flower, came out slowly from his fearful den. His weakened eyes could hardly support the light of day, and he knew not where to go. At first he went to some old acquaintances; but they were all afraid of harboring a heretic escaped from the scaffold. The young prebendary did not possess Berquin’s energy; he was one of those sensitive and delicate natures that need a support, and he found himself in the world, in the free air, almost as much alone as in his dungeon. ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘God our heavenly Father, who has fixed bounds to the wrath of man which it cannot pass, has delivered me in a wonderful manner from the hands of the tyrants; but alas! what will become of me? The world is mad and spurns the rising Gospel of Jesus Christ.’ fc106 A few timid but well-meaning friends said to him: ‘the Duchess of Alencon alone can protect you; there is no asylum for you but at her court. Make application to a princess who welcomes with so much generosity all the friends of learning and of the Gospel, and profit by your residence to investigate closely the wind that blows in those elevated regions.’ Toussaint did what they told him; he began his journey, and, despite his natural timidity, arrived at Paris, where we shall meet with him again.
More important deliverances still were in preparation: Strasburg was to rejoice. There was no city out of France where the king’s return had been hailed with so much enthusiasm. Many evangelical christians had sought refuge there from the cruelties of Duprat, and were sighing for the moment that would restore them to their country. Among the number of the refugees was the famous Cornelius Agrippa. His reputation was not unblemished; a book on the ‘Vanity of Science’ does him little credit; but he seems at this time to have been occupied with the Gospel. Having received a letter from the excellent Papillon, who told him how favorable the king appeared to the new light, Agrippa, who, surrounded by pious men, took their tone and tuned his voice in harmony with theirs, exclaimed: ‘All the Church of the saints with us, hearing of the triumphs of the Word at the court and in the most part of France, rejoiced with exceeding great joy. fc107 I bless the Lord for the glory with which the Word is crowned among you. Would to God that we were permitted, as well as you, to return to France!’ Another country was equally attractive to this scholar: ‘Write to me what they are doing at Geneva... tell me if the Word is loved there, and if they care for learning.’ fc108
Men more decided than Cornelius Agrippa were to be found at Strasburg. During all the winter the hospitable house of Capito had often witnessed the meetings of those christians who had raised highest the standard of the Gospel in France. There assembled the aged Lefevre, the first translator of the Bible, who had escaped the stake only by flight; the pious Roussel, Vedastes; Simon, and Farel who had arrived from Montbeliard. These friends of the Reformation concealed themselves under assumed names: Lefevre passed as Anthony Peregrin; Roussel as Tolnin; but they were known by everybody, even by the children in the street. fc109 They often met Bucer, Zell, and the Count of Hohenlohe, and edified one another. Margaret undertook to bring them all back to France. The court was then in the south; the king was at Cognac, his birthplace, where he often resided; the duchess (his mother and sister) at Angouleme. One day when they met, Margaret entreated her brother to put an end to the cruel exile of her friends: Francis granted everything.
What joy! the aged Lefevre, the fervent Roussel, are recalled with honor, says Erasmus. fc110 The Strasburgers embraced them with tears; the old man felt happy that he was going to die in the country where he was born. He immediately took the road to France in company with Roussel; others followed them; all believed that the new times were come. In their meetings the evangelicals called to mind these words of the prophet:
The ransomed of the Lord shalt return and come to Zion with
songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy
and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
( <233510> Isaiah 35:10)
Lefevre and Roussel hastened to their protectress. Margaret received them kindly, lodged them in the castle of Angouleme, where she was born, on that smiling hill which she loved so much, near that ‘softly flowing’ Charente, as she describes it. Lefevre and Roussel had many precious conversations with her. They loved to speak of their life at Strasburg, of the new views they had found there, and of the brotherly communion they had enjoyed. ‘We were there,’ they said, ‘with William Farel, Michael of Aranda, Francis Lambert, John Vedastes, the Chevalier d’Esch, and many other evangelicals... scattered members of a torn body, but one in Christ Jesus. We carefully put out of sight all that might interrupt the harmony between brethren; the peace that we tasted, far from being without savor, like that of the world, was perfumed with the sweet odor of God’s service.’
This meeting at Strasburg had borne fruit. The energetic Farel, the learned Lefevre, the spiritual Roussel, gifted with such opposite natures, had reacted upon each other. Farel had become more gentle, Roussel more strong; contact with iron had given an unusual hardness to a metal by nature inclined to be soft. The sermons they heard, their frequent conversations, the trials of exile, and the consolation of the Spirit of God, had tempered the souls which had been not a little discouraged by persecution. Roussel had taken advantage of his leisure to study Hebrew, and the Word of God had acquired a sovereign importance in his eyes. Struck by the virtues of which the early christians had given an example, he had found that we must seek for the secret of their lives in the history of the primitive Church, in the inspired Scripture of God. ‘The purity of religion will never be restored,’ he used to say, ‘unless we drink at the springs which the Holy Ghost has given us.’ fc111
It was not enough for the refugees to have returned; their christian activity must be employed to the advantage of France. At the beginning of June, Roussel went to Blois. Margaret wished to make this city — the favorite residence of the Valois, and notorious for the crimes perpetrated there in after years — a refuge for the persecuted, a caravanserai for the saints, a stronghold of the Gospel. On the 29th of June Lefevre also went there. fc112 The king intrusted him with the education of his third son and the care of the castle library. Chapelain, physician to the Duchess of Angouleme, and Cop, another doctor, of whom we shall see more hereafter, were also in that city; and all of them, filled with gratitude towards Francis I., were contriving the means of imparting ‘something of christianity to the Most Christian King’ fc113 — which was, in truth, very necessary.
Thus things were advancing. It seemed as if learning and the Gospel had returned with the king from banishment. Macrin, whose name Zwingle placed side by side with that of Berquin, was set at liberty. fc114 Cornelius Agrippa returned to Lyons. Sprung from an ancient family of Cologne, he had served seven years in the imperial army; he then became a great savant (and not a great magician, as was supposed), doctor of theology, law, and medicine. He published a book on Marriage and against celibacy, which excited much clamor. Agrippa was astonished at this, and not without reason. ‘What!’ he exclaimed, ‘the tales of Boccaccio, the jests of Poggio, the adulteries of Euryalus and Lucretia, the loves of Tristan and of Lancelot, are read greedily, even by young girls fc115 ... and yet they cry out against my book on Marriage!’ — This explains an incident in history; the youthful readers of Boccaccio became the famous ‘squadron’ of Catherine de’ Medici, by whose means that impure woman obtained so many victories over the lords of the court.
When men heard of these deliverances, they thought that Francis I., seeing Charles V. at the head of the Roman party, would certainly put himself at the head of the evangelical cause, and that the two champions would decide on the battle-field the great controversy of the age. ‘The king,’ wrote the excellent Capito to the energetic Zwingle, ‘is favorable to the Word of God.’ fc116 Margaret already saw the Holy Ghost reviving in France the one, holy, and universal Church. She resolved to hasten on these happy times, and, leaving Angouleme and Blois in the month of July, arrived in Paris.
Toussaint was waiting for her. Having reached the capital under an assumed name, the young evangelist at first kept himself in concealment. On hearing of the arrival of the sister of Francis, he asked permission to see her in private; and the princess, as was her custom, received him with great kindness. What a contrast for this poor man, just rescued from the cruel talons of the abbot of St. Antoine, to find himself in the palace of St. Germain, where Margaret’s person, her urbanity, wit, lively piety, indefatigable zeal, love of letters, and elegance, charmed all who came near her! Toussaint, like the poet, was never tired of admiring
A sweetness living in her beauteous face Which does the fairest of her sex eclipse, A lively wit, of learning ample store, And over all a captivating grace, Whether she speaks, or silent are her lips. fc117
One thing, however, charmed Toussaint still more: it was the true piety which he found in Margaret. She treated him with the kindness of a christian woman, and soon put him at his ease. ‘The most illustrious Duchess of Alencon,’ he wrote, ‘has received me with as much kindness as if I had been a prince or the person who was dearest to her. fc118 I hope,’ he added, ‘that the Gospel of Christ will soon reign in France,’ fc119 The duchess, on her part, touched with the faith of the young evangelist, invited him to come again and see her the next day. He went and he went again; he had long and frequent conversations with Margaret on the means of propagating the Gospel everywhere. fc120 ‘God, by the light of his Word,’ he said, ‘must illumine the world, and by the breath of his Spirit must transform all hearts. The Gospel alone, Madame, will bring into regular order all that is confused’ — ‘It is the only thing that I desire,’ replied Margaret. fc121 She believed in the victory of truth; it seemed to her that the men of light could not be conquered by the men of darkness. The new life was about to rise like the tide, and ere long cover with its wide waves the and landes of France. Margaret espied tongues of fire, she heard eloquent voices, she felt swelling hearts throbbing around her. Everything was stirring in that new and mysterious world which enraptured her imagination. It was to inaugurate this new era, so full of light, of faith, of liberty, that her brother had been delivered from the prisons of Charles V. ‘Ah!’ she said to Toussaint in their evangelical conversations, ‘it is not only myself that desires the triumph of the Gospel; even the king wishes for it. fc122 And, believe me, our mother (Louisa of Savoy!) will not oppose our efforts. fc123 The king,’ she protested to the young man, ‘is coming to Paris to secure the progress of the Gospel — if, at least, the war does not prevent him.’ fc124 Noble illusions! Certain ideas on this subject, in accord with his policy, were running, no doubt, in the king’s mind; but at that time Francis was thinking of nothing but compensating himself for the privations of captivity by indulging in gallantry.
The young prebendary of Metz was under the spell: he indulged in the greatest hopes, and joyfully hailed the new firmament in which Margaret would shine as one of the brightest stars. He wrote to Oecolampadius: ‘This illustrious princess is so taught of God, and so familiar with Holy Scripture, that no one can ever separate her from Jesus Christ.’ fc125 Some have asked whether this prediction was verified. Margaret of Navarre, terrified by her brother’s threats, certainly made a lamentable concession in after years, and this is proved by a letter Calvin addressed to her; but she was, nevertheless, a tree planted by the rivers of water. The storm broke off a few branches: still the roots were deep, and the tree did not perish.
Toussaint often found the halls of the palace of St. Germain filled with the most distinguished personages of the kingdom, eager to present their homage to the sister of Francis I. Side by side with ambassadors and nobles dressed in the most costly garments, and soldiers with their glittering arms, were cardinals robed in scarlet and ermine, bishops with their satin copes, ecclesiastics of every order, with long gowns and tonsured heads. fc126 These clerics, all desirous of attaining to the highest offices of the Church, approached the illustrious princess, spoke to her of the Gospel, of Christ, of inextinguishable love; and Toussaint listened with astonishment to such strange court language. His former patron, the Cardinal of Lorraine, archbishop of Rheims and of Lyons, whom we must not confound with his infamous nephew, one of the butchers of the St. Bartholomew massacre, gave the young prebendary a most affable reception, never ceasing to repeat that he loved the Gospel extremely... Margaret, who permitted herself to be easily persuaded, took the religious prattle of this troop of flatterers for sound piety, and inspired the young christian with her own blind confidence.
Yet the latter sometimes asked himself whether all these fine speeches were not mere court compliments. One day he heard Briconnet, Bishop of Meaux, in whom the most credulous still placed some hope, rank the Roman Church very high and the Word of God very low: ‘Hypocritical priest!’ said Toussaint aside, ‘you desire more to please men than to please God!’ If these sycophant priests chanced to meet with any noble scoffers or atheists, in some apartment far from that of the princess or on the terrace of St. Germain, they fearlessly threw aside the mask, and turned into ridicule the evangelical faith they had cried up before the sister of Francis I. When they had obtained the benefices they coveted, they changed sides; they were the foremost in attacking the Lutherans; fc127 and if they observed any evangelicals coming, they turned their backs upon them. Then would Toussaint exclaim: ‘Alas! they speak well of Jesus Christ with those who speak well of him; but with those who blaspheme, they blaspheme also.’ fc128 Lefevre and Roussel having come to Paris from Blois, about the end of July, 1526, the young and impetuous Toussaint, full of respect for them, hastened to tell them of his vexations, and demanded that they should unmask these hypocrites and boldly preach the Gospel in the midst of that perverse court. ‘Patience,’ said the two scholars, both rather temporising in disposition, and whom the air of the court had perhaps already weakened, ‘patience! do not let us spoil anything; the time is not yet come.’ fc129 Then Toussaint, upright, generous, and full of affection, burst into tears. ‘I cannot restrain my tears,’ he said. fc130 ‘Yes; be wise after your fashion; wait, put off, dissemble as much as you please; you will acknowledge, however, at last, that it is impossible to preach the Gospel without bearing the cross. fc131 The banner of divine mercy is now raised, the gate of the kingdom of heaven is open. God does not mean us to receive his summons with supineness. We must make haste, for fear the opportunity should escape us and the door be shut.’
Toussaint, grieved and oppressed by the tone of the court, told all his sorrows to the reformer of Basle: ‘Dear Oecolampadius,’ he said, ‘when I think that the king and the duchess are as well disposed as possible to promote the Gospel of Christ, and when I see at the same time those who are called to labor the foremost at this excellent work having continual recourse to delay, I cannot restrain my grief. What would not you do in Germany, if the emperor and his brother Ferdinand looked favorably on your efforts?’ Toussaint did not hide from Margaret herself how his hopes had been disappointed. ‘Lefevre,’ he said, ‘is wanting in courage; may God strengthen and support him!’ The duchess did all she could to keep the young evangelist at her court; she sought for men who, while having a christian heart and a christian life, would not, however, break with the Church; she accordingly offered the ex-prebendary great advantages, but begging him at the same time to be moderate. Toussaint, a man of susceptible and somewhat hard character, haughtily repelled these advances. He was stifled at the court; the air he breathed there made him sick; admiration had yielded to disgust. ‘I despise these magnificent offers,’ he said, ‘I detest the court more than any one has done. fc132 Farewell to the court... it is the most dangerous of harlots.’ fc133 Margaret conjured him at least not to quit France, and sent him to one of her friends, Madame de Contraigues, who, abounding in charity for the persecuted evangelists, received them in her chateau of Malesherbes in the Orleanais. Before leaving, the young Metzer, foreseeing that a terrible struggle was approaching, recommended the friends he left behind him to pray to God that France would show herself worthy of the Word. fc134 He then departed, praying the Lord to send to this people the teacher, the apostle, who, being himself a model of truth and devotedness, would lead it in the new paths of life.
CHAPTER 6
WHO WILL BE THE REFORMER OF FRANCE?
(1526.)
MANY evangelical christians thought as Toussaint did. They felt that France had need of a reformer, but could see no one who answered to their ideal. A man of God was wanted, who, possessing the fundamental truths of the Gospel, could set them forth in their living harmony; who, while exalting the divine essence of christianity, could present it in its relations to human nature; who was fitted not only to establish sound doctrine, but also by God’s grace to shed abroad a new life in the Church; a servant of God, full of courage, full of activity, as skillful in governing as in leading. A Paul was wanted, but where could he be found?
Would it be Lefevre? He had taught plainly the doctrine of justification by faith, even before Luther; this we have stated elsewhere, fc135 and many have repeated it since. It is a truth gained to history. But Lefevre was old and courted repose; pious but timid, a scholar of the closet rather than the reformer of a people.
Would it be Roussel? Possessing an impressionable and wavering heart, he longed for the good, but did not always dare to do it. He preached frequently at the duchess’s court before the most distinguished men of the kingdom; but he did not proclaim the whole counsel of God. He knew it, he was angry with himself, and yet he was continually falling into the same error. ‘Alas!’ he wrote to Farel, ‘there are many evangelical truths one half of which I am obliged to conceal. If the Lord does not rekindle my zeal by his presence, I shall be very inferior to what I ought to be.’ fc136 The pious but weak Roussel was just the man the duchess required — fitted to advance christian life without touching the institutions of the Church. Sometimes, however, dissatisfied with his position, and longing to preach the Gospel without any respect to persons, he wished to go to Italy... and then he felt again into temporising. fc137 The most decided christians saw his incompetence. In their eyes the men around the Duchess of Alencon who stopped halfway were incapable of reforming France. It needed, they thought, a man of simple soul, intrepid heart, and powerful eloquence, who, walking with a firm foot, would give a new impulse to the work too feebly commenced by Lefevre and his friends; and then these christians, going to the other extreme, thought of Farel. At that time this reformer was the greatest light of France. What love he had for Jesus Christ! What eloquence in preaching! What boldness in pressing onwards and surmounting obstacles! What perseverance in the midst of dangers! But neither Francis nor Margaret would have anything to do with him: they were afraid of him. When the king recalled the other exiles, Farel was left behind. He was then at Strasburg with one foot on the frontier, waiting the order for his return, but the order did not come. The court had no taste for his aggressive preaching and his heroic firmness; they wished for a softened and a perfumed Gospel in France. The noble Dauphinese, when he saw all his friends returning to their country while he remained alone in exile, was overwhelmed with sorrow and cried to God in his distress.
Roussel understood Margaret’s fears; Farel, he knew, was not a courtier, and would never agree with the duchess. Yet, knowing the value of such a servant of God, the noble and pious Roussel tried whether they could not profit in some other way by his great activity, and if there was not some province that could be opened to his mighty labors. ‘I will obtain the means of providing for all your wants,’ he wrote to him on the 27th of August from the castle of Amboise, ‘until the Lord gives you at last an entrance and brings you to us.’ fc138 That was also Farel’s earnest desire; he was not then thinking of Switzerland; his country possessed all his love; his eyes were turned night and day towards those gates of France so obstinately closed against him; he went up to them and knocked. They still remained shut, and returning disheartened he exclaimed: ‘Oh! if the Lord would but open a way for me to return and labor in France!’ On a sudden the dearest of his wishes seemed about to be realized.
One day, when there was a grand reception at court, the two sons of Prince Robert de la Marche came to pay their respects to the king’s sister. Since the eighth century La Marche had formed a principality, which afterwards became an appanage of the Armagnacs and Bourbons. fc139 The Gospel had found its way there. Margaret, who possessed in a high degree the spirit of proselytism, said to Roussel, indicating with her eyes those whose conversion she desired: ‘Speak to those two young princes; seize, I pray, this opportunity of advancing the cause of Jesus Christ.’ — ‘I will do so,’ replied the chaplain eagerly. Approaching the young noblemen, Roussel began to converse about the Gospel. De Saucy and De Giminetz (for such were their names) showed no signs of astonishment, but listened with the liveliest interest. The evangelist grew bolder, and explained his wishes to them freely. fc140 ‘It is not for yourselves alone,’ he said, ‘that God has given you life, but for the good of the members of Jesus Christ. It is not enough for you to embrace Christ as your Savior; you must communicate the same grace to your subjects.’ fc141 Roussel warmed at the idea of seeing the Gospel preached among the green pastures which the Vienne, the Creuse, and the Cher bathe with their waters; through Gueret, Bellac, and the ancient territory of the Lemovices and Bituriges. The two young princes on their part listened attentively to the reformer, and gave the fullest assent to his words. fc142 Margaret’s chaplain made another step; he thought he had found what he was seeking for the zealous Farel; and when the sons of Robert de la Marche told him they felt too weak for the task set before them, he said: ‘I know but one man fitted for such a great work; it is William Farel; Christ has given him an extraordinary talent for making known the riches of his glory. Invite him.’ The proposition delighted the young princes. ‘We desire it still more than you,’ they said; ‘our father, and we will open our arms to him. He shall be to us as a son, a brother, and a father. fc143 Let him fear nothing: he shall live with us. Yes, in our own palace. All whom he will meet there are friends of Jesus Christ. Our physician, Master Henry, a truly christian man; the son of the late Count Francis; the lord of Chateau-Rouge, and his children, and many others, will rejoice at his arrival. We ourselves,’ they added, ‘will be there to receive him. Only bid him make haste; let him come before next Lent.’
— I promise you he shall,’ replied Roussel. The two princes undertook to set up a printing establishment in order that Farel might by means of the press circulate evangelical truth, not only in La Marche, but throughout the kingdom. Roussel wrote immediately to his friend; Toussaint added his entreaties to those of the chaplain. ‘Never has any news caused me more joy,’ he said: ‘hasten thither as fast as you can.’ fc144 The young princes of La Marche were not the only nobles of the court whom the Duchess of Alencon’s influence attracted into the paths of the Gospel. Margaret was not one of ‘those who cry aloud,’ says a christian of her time, ‘but of those whose every word is accompanied with teaching and imbued with gentleness.’ Her eye was always on the watch to discover souls whom she could attract to her Master. Lords, ladies, and damsels of distinction, men of letters, of the robe, of the sword, and even of the Church, heard, either from her lips, or from those of Roussel or of some other of her friends, the Word of life. The nobility entertained a secret but very old dislike to the priests, who had so often infringed their privileges; and they would have liked nothing better than to be emancipated from their yoke. Margaret feared that the young nobles would be only half converted — that there would be no renewal of the heart and life in them; and the history of the wars of religion shows but too p |
