Reformation! Reformation! Reformation!

No King But CHRIST!

• Book 3 Fall of a Bishop-Prince, and First Evangelical Beginning
  • Ch 1 - The Renaissance, the Reformation, The Middle Ages 1526
  • Ch 2 - Gospel at Geneva, and the Sack of Rome 1527
  • Ch 3 - Bishop Clings to Geneva, But The Canons Departs 1527
  • Ch 4 - Bishop-Prince Flees From Geneva 1527
  • Ch 5 - Excommunication of Geneva 1527-1528
  • Ch 6 - Knights of the Spoon League Against Geneva 1528
  • Ch 7 - Intrigues of the Duke and the Bishop 1528
  • Ch 8 - Death of Pontverre 1528-1529
  • Ch 9 - The Reformation Begins to Ferment In Geneva 1529-1530
  • Ch 10 - Movements in Geneva, And Bonivard, Prisoner to Chillon
  • Ch 11 - The Attack of 1530
  • Ch 12 - Geneva Reclaimed By the Bishop 1530-1531
  • Ch 13 - Danger to Which Geneva Is Exposed By Defeat of Cappel 1
  • Ch 14 - An Emperor and a Schoolmaster 1532
  • Ch 15 - The Pardon of Rome 1532

HISTORY

by J.H. Merle d’Aubigne

BOOK 3

FALL OF A BISHOP-PRINCE, AND FIRST EVANGELICAL BEGINNINGS IN GENEVA.

CHAPTER 1

THE RENAISSANCE, THE REFORMATION, THE MIDDLE AGES.

(1526.)

THE Reformation was necessary to christian society. The Renaissance, daughter alike of ancient and of modern Rome, was a movement of revival, and yet it carried with it a principle of death, so that wherever it was not transformed by heavenly forces, it fell away and became corrupted. The influence of the humanists — of such men as Erasmus, Sir Thomas More, and afterwards of Montaigne — was a balmy gale that shed its odors on the upper classes, but exerted no power over the lower ranks of the people. In the elegant compositions of the men of letters, there was nothing for the conscience, that divinely appointed force of the human race. The work of the Renaissance, had it stood alone, must of necessity, therefore. ‘have ended in failure and death. There are persons in these days who think otherwise: they believe that a new state of society would have arisen without the Reformation, and that political liberty would have renewed the world better than the Gospel. This is assuredly a great error. At that time liberty had scarcely any existence in Europe, and even had it existed, and the dominion of conscience not reappeared along with it, it is certain that, though powerful enough, perhaps, to destroy the old elements of order prevailing in society, it would have been unable to substitute any better elements in their place. If, even in the nineteenth century, we tremble sometimes when we hear the distant explosions of liberty, what must have been the feeling in the sixteenth? The men who are about to appear on the theater of the world were still immersed in disorder and barbarism. Everything betokened great virtues in the new generation, but also tumultuous passions; a divine heroism, but also gigantic crimes; a mighty energy, but at its side a languishing insensibility. A renewed society could not be constituted out of such elements. It wanted the divine breath to inspire high thoughts, and the hand of God to establish everywhere the providential order.

At the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, society was in a state of excitement. The world was in suspense, as when the statuary is about to create a work that shall be the object of universal admiration. The metal is melted, the mass flows from the furnace like glowing brass; but the-approaching lava alarms, and not without reason, the anxious spectators. At this period we witness struggles, insurrections, and reaction. The perfumed spirit of the Renaissance was unable to check the evil and to establish order and liberty. Society had appeared to grow young again under the breath of antiquity; but wherever a knowledge of the Gospel was not combined with the cultivation of letters, that purity, boldness, and elevation of youth, which at first had charmed contemporaries, disappeared. The melting was checked, the metal grew cold, and instead of the masterpiece that had been expected, there appeared the repulsive forms of servility, immorality, and superstition.

Was there any means of preventing so fatal a future? How, in the midst of the old society, which was crumbling to pieces, could a new one be formed, with any certain prospect of vitality? In religion only the coming age was to find its living force. If the conscience of man was awakened and sanctified by christianity, then and then only the world would stand.

Was it possible to look for this regenerating element in the society which was expiring? That would be to search among the dead for the principle of life. It was necessary to have recourse to the primitive sources of faith. The Gospel, more human than literature, more divine than philosophy, exerts an influence over man that these two things cannot possess. It goes down into the depths — that is, into the people — which the Renaissance had not done; it rises towards the high places — that is, towards heaven

— which philosophy cannot do. When the Gospel lifted up its voice in the days of the Reformation, the people listened. It spoke to them of God, sin, condemnation, pardon, everlasting life — in a word, of Christ. The human soul discovered that this was what it wanted; and was touched, captivated, and finally renewed. The movement was all the more powerful because the doctrine preached to the people had nothing to do with animosities, traditions, interests of race, dynasties, or courts. True, it got mixed up with these things afterwards; but in the beginning it was simply the voice of God upon earth. It circulated a purifying fire through corrupted society, and the new world was formed.

The old society, whose place was about to be occupied, did all in its power to resist the light. A terrible voice issued from the Vatican; a hand of iron executed its behests in many a country, and strangled the new life in its cradle. Spain, Italy, Austria, and France were the chief theaters of the deplorable tragedies, whose heroes were Philip II. and the Guises. But there were souls, we may even say nations, protected by the hand of God, who have been ever since like trees whose leaves never wither. ^fe309 Intelligent men, struck by their greatness, have been alarmed for the nations that are not watered by the same rivers. Against such a danger there is, however, a sure remedy; it is that all people should come and drink at those fountains of life which have given protestant nations ‘all the attributes of civilization and power.’ ^fe310 Or do they perchance imagine that by shutting their windows against the sun, the light will spread more widely?... A new era is beginning, and all lingering nations are now invited to the great renovation of which the Gospel is the divine and mighty organ.

In 1526 Geneva was in a position which permitted it to receive the new seed of the new society. The alliance with the cantons, by drawing that city nearer to Switzerland, facilitated the arrival of the intrepid husbandmen who brought with them the seeds of life. At Wittemberg, at Zurich, and even in the upper extremities of Lake Leman, in those beautiful valleys of the Rhone and the Alps which Farel had evangelized, the divine sun had poured down his first rays. When the Genevans made their alliance with the Swiss, they had only thought of finding a support to their national existence; but they had effected more: they had opened the gates of day, and were about to receive a light which, while securing their liberties, would guide their souls along the path of eternal life. The city was thus to acquire an influence of which none of its children had ever dreamt, and by the instrumentality of Calvin, one of the noblest spirits that ever lived, ‘she was about to become the rival of Rome,’ as an historian says (perhaps with a little exaggeration), ‘and wrest from her the dominion of half the christian world.’ ^fe311

If the alliance with the cantons opened Geneva on the side of Switzerland, it raised a wall of separation between that city and Savoy — which was not less necessary for the part she was called upon to play in the sixteenth century. The valley of the Leman was at that time dotted with chateaux, whose ruins may still be seen here and there. As invasion, pillage and murder formed part of social life in the middle ages, the nobles surrounded their houses with walls, and some even built their dwelling-places on the mountains. From Geneva might be descried the castle of Monnetier standing on immense perpendicular rocks on Mont Saleve...

J’aimais tes murs croulants, vieux moutier ruine!

Quel chatelain pensif to grava sur la porte? ^fe312

Further on, and near Thonon, on an isolated hill, shaded by luxuriant chestnut trees, stood the vast castle of Allinges, which is still a noble ruin, The lords of these places, energetic, rude, freebooting, and often cruel men, growing weary of their isolation and their idleness, would collect their followers, lower their drawbridges, rush into the high roads in search of adventures, and indulge in a life of raids and plunder, violence and murder.

The towns, with their traders and travelers, were especially the abhorrence of these gentlemen robbers. From the tenth century the Genevan travelers and foreign merchants, passing through Geneva with their goods, often fell a prey to the plundering vagabondage of the neighboring lords, This was not without important consequences for civilization and liberty. Seeing the nobles perpetually in insurrection against social order, the burghers learnt to revolt against despotism, murder, and robbery. Geneva received one of these lessons, and profited by it better than others. ^fe313

In all the castles of Genevois, Chablais, and the Pays de Vaud, it was said, in 1526, that the alliance of Geneva with the free Swiss cantons menaced the tights of Savoy, the temporal (and even the spiritual) power of the bishop, and Roman-catholicism. And hence the irritated nobles ruminated in their strongholds upon the means of destroying the union, or at least of neutralizing its effects. Francois de Ternier, seigneur of Pontverre, whose domains were situated between Mont Saleve and the Rhone, about a league from Geneva, thought of nothing else night or clay. A noble, upright, but violent man; a fanatical enemy of the burgher class, of liberty, and of the Reformation; and a representative of the middle ages, he swore to combat the Swiss alliance unto death, and he kept his oath. Owing to the energy of his character and the nobility of his house, Francois possessed great influence among his neighbors. One day after long meditation over his plans, he left his residence, attended by a few horsemen, and visited the neighboring castles. While seated at table with the knights, he made his apprehensions known to them, and conjured them to oppose the accursed alliance. He asked them whether it was for nothing that the privilege of bearing arms had been given to the nobles. ‘Let us make haste,’ he said, ‘and crush a new and daring power that. threatens to destroy’ our castles and our churches.’ he sounded the alarm everywhere; he reminded the nobles that they had a right to make war whenever they pleased; ^fe314 and forthwith many lords responded to his energetic appeals. They armed themselves, and, issuing from their strongholds, covered the district around Geneva like a cloud of locusts. Caring little for the political or religious ideas with which Pontverre was animated, they sought amusement, plunder, and the gratification of their hatred against the citizens. They were observed at a distance, with their mounted followers, on the high roads, and they were not idle. They allowed nobody to enter the city, and carried off property, provisions, and cattle. The peasants and the Genevan merchants, so disgracefully plundered, asked each other if the tottering episcopal throne was to be upheld by banditti… ‘If you return,’ said these noble highwaymen, ‘we will hang you up by the neck.’ Nor was that all: several nobles, whose castles were near the water, resorted to piracy on the lake: they pillaged the country-houses near the shore, imprisoned the men, insulted the women, and cut off all communication with Switzerland.

One difficulty, however, occurred to these noble robbers: they chanted to maltreat, without their knowing it, some of their own party, who were coming from German Switzerland. Having been much reproached for this, they took counsel on the road: ‘What must we do,’ they asked, ‘to distinguish the Genevans?’ They hit upon a curious shibboleth. As soon as they caught sight of any travelers in the distance, they spurred their horses, galloped up, and put some ordinary questions to the strangers, ‘examining in this way all who passed to and fro.’ If the travelers replied in French, the language of Geneva, the knightly highwaymen declared they were huguenots, and immediately carried them off, goods and all. If the victims complained, they were not listened to; and even when they came from the banks of the Loire and the Seine, they were taken and shut up in the nearest castle. Many messengers from France to the Swiss cantons, who spoke like the Genevails, were arrested in this way.

France, Berne, and Geneva complained bitterly; but the lords (for the most part Savoyards) took no notice of it. By chastising these burghers, they believed they were gaining heaven. They laughed among themselves at the universal complaints, and added sarcasm to cruelty. One day a Genevan deputy having appeared before Pontverre, to protest against such brigandage, the haughty noble replied coldly: ‘Tell those who sent you, that in a fortnight I will come and set fire to the four corners of your city.’ Another day, De la Fontaine, a retired syndic and mameluke, as he was riding along the high road, into a huguenot, and said to him: ‘Go and tell your friends that we are coming to Geneva shortly, and will throw all the citizens into the Rhone.’ As the Genevan walked away, the mameluke called him back: ‘Wait a moment,’ he said, and then continued maliciously: ‘No, I think it will be better to cut off their heads, in order to multiply the relics.’ This was an allusion to Berthelier’s bead, which had been solemnly buried. In the noisy banquets which these nobles gave each other in their chateau, they related their feats of arms: anecdotes akin to those just quoted followed each other amid roars of laughter: the subject was inexhaustible. The politicians, although more moderate in appearance, were not less decided. They meditated over the matter in cold blood. ‘I will enter Geneva sword in hand,’ said the Count of Genevois, the duke’s brother, ‘and will take away six score of the most rebellious patriots.’ ^fe315

Thus the middle ages seemed to be rising in defense of their rights. The temporal and spiritual authority of the bishop-prince was protected by bands of highwaymen. But while these powers, which pretended to be legitimate, employed robbery, violence, and murder, the friends of liberty prepared to defend themselves lawfully and to fight honorably, like regular troops. Besancon, Hugues, reelected captain-general three days after the alliance with the Swiss, gave the signal. Instantly the citizens began to practice the use of arms in the city; and in the country, where they were placed as outposts, they kept strict watch over all the movements of the gentlemen- robbers. Fearing that the latter, to crown their brigandage, would march against Geneva, the syndics had iron gratings put to all the windows in the city walls, built up three of the gates, placed a guard at the others, and stretched chains across every street. -At the same time they brought into the harbor all the boats that had escaped the piratical incursions of the nobles, placed a sentry on the belfry of St. Pierre, and ordered that the city should be lighted all the night long. This little people rose like one man, and all were ready to give their lives to protect their goods and trade, their wives and children, and to save their old liberties and their new aspirations. ^fe316

While thus resolute against their enemies in arms, the citizens showed moderation towards their disarmed foes. Some of those who were most exasperated, wishing to take their revenge, asked permission to forage, that is, to seize the property of the disloyal and fugitive mamelukes. ‘It is perfectly fair,’ they said, ‘for their treason and brigandage have reduced Geneva to extreme misery: we shall only get back what they have taken from us.’ But Hugues, the friend of order as well as of liberty, made answer: ‘Let us commence proceedings against the accused; let us condemn them in penalties more or less severe; but let us refrain from violence, even though we have the appearance of right in our favor.’ — ’The ducal faction,’ replied these hot-headed men, ‘not only plundered us, but conspired against the city, and took part in the tortures and murders inflicted upon the citizens.’ The syndics were not convinced, and the property of the offenders was respected; but after a rigorous investigation, they were deprived of the rights of citizenship. ^fe317

The Swiss cantons, discontented because the Genevans, who were in great straits, had not repaid the expenses incurred on their behalf, asked more for the mamelukes than the council granted: they demanded that they should all be allowed to return to the city. But to receive those who were making war against them, seemed impossible to the Genevans. They sent two good huguenots to Berne, Francois Favre and Baudichon de la Maison-Neuve, to make representations in this matter. The deputies were admitted to the great council on the 5th of June, 1526. De Lullins, the Saveyard governor, was also received on the same day, and in the duke’s name he made great complaints against Geneva. Favre, a quick, impatient, passionate man, replied in coarse terms. The Bernese firmly adhered to their resolution; and reprimanded the Genevan deputy, who candidly acknowledged his fault: ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I am too warm; but I answered rather as a private individual than as an ambassador.’ On returning to his inn, he thought that the payment of the sum claimed by the Bernese would settle everything, and the same day he wrote to the council of Geneva: ‘Your humble servant begs to inform you that you must send the money promised to my lords of Berne. Otherwise, let him fly from the city who can! Do you think you can promise and not be bound to keep your word? Find the money, or you are lost. I pray you warn my wife, that she may come to Lausanne. I am serving at my own expense, and yet I must pay for others also. Do not ruin a noble cause for such a trifle. If Berne is satisfied, we shall be all right with the mamelukes.’ ^fe318

Robber nobles were not the only supporters of the middle ages. That epoch has had its great men, but at the time of its fall it had ‘but sorry representatives. The knights of the highway had their companions in the intriguers of the city. Among the latter we may include Cartelier, who had played his part in the plots got up to deliver Geneva to Savoy. ^fe319 This man, who hated independence and the Reformation even more than Pontverre did, was, through the anger of the citizens and the avarice of the bishop, to suffer for the crimes of which his party was guilty. Being utterly devoid of shame, he went up and down the city as if he had nothing to fear, and when he chanced to meet the indignant glance of a huguenot, he braved the anger with which he was threatened by assuming an air of contempt and defiance. Rich, clever, but of low character, he had contrived to be made a citizen in order to indulge in the most perfidious intrigues. One day he was apprehended, notwithstanding his insolent airs, and put into prison. A thrill ran through all the city, as if the hand of God had been seen striking that great criminal. Amblarde, Berthelier’s widow, and his two children; John, Levrier’s brother; and a hundred citizens who had all just cause of complaint against the wretch, appeared before the council, and called for justice with cries and tears: ‘He has split the blood of our fathers, our brothers, and our husbands,’ said the excited crowd. ‘He wished to destroy our independence and subject us to the duke.’ Convicted of conspiring against the State, the wretch was condemned to death. The executioner, putting a rope round his neck, led him through the city, followed by an immense crowd. The indignant people were delighted when they saw the rich and powerful stranger reduced to such humiliation. Proud and pitiless, he had plotted to ruin the city, and now he was expiating his crimes. Things did not stop here: while moderate men desired to remain in the paths of justice, the more hot-headed of the party of independence derided him, says a chronicler, and some mischievous boys pelted him with mud. The unhappy man, whose fall had been so great, thus arrived at the place of execution, and the hangman prepared to perform his duty.

Cartelier had but a few minutes more to live, when the bishop’s steward was seen hurrying forward with letters of grace, commuting the capital punishment into a fine of six thousand golden crowns payable to the prelate and to the city, To spare the life of the wretched man might have been an act of mercy and equity, especially as his crimes were political; but the angry youths who surrounded the criminal ascribed the bishop’s clemency to his covetousness and to the hatred he bore the cause of independence. They desired the execution of the condemned man. Twice the hangman removed the rope, and twice these exasperated young men replaced it round Cartelier’s neck. They yielded at last, however, and were satisfied with having made the conspirator feel all the anguish of death. Cartelier was set at liberty. When the bishop was informed of what had happened, he became afraid, imagining his authority compromised and his power endangered. ‘It was for good reasons,’ he wrote to the syndics, ‘that I pardoned Cartelier; however, write and tell me if the people are inclined to revolt on account of this pardon.’ ^fe320 The people did not revolt, and the rich culprit, having paid the fine, retired quietly to Bourg in Bresse, whence he had come.

The bishop, who had first sentenced, then pardoned, and then repented of his pardon, was continually hesitating, and did not know what party, to side with. He was not devoted body and soul to the duke, like his predecessor. Placed between the Savoyards and the huguenots, he was at heart equally afraid of both, and by turns flung himself into the arms of opposite parties. He was like a stag between two packs of hounds, always afraid and panting. ‘I write angrily,’ he says in his letters: he was, indeed, always angry with one party or the other. Even the canons, his natural friends, and the members of his council aroused his fears, and not without cause; for these reverend persons had no confidence either in the bishop’s character or in the brigandage of the gentry of the neighborhood. Messieurs De Lutry, De Montrotier, De Lucinge, De St. Martin, and other canons said that the temporal: authority of the prelate was too weak to maintain order; that the sword of a secular prince was wanted, and at the bottom of their hearts they called for the duke. ‘Ah r said La Baume to Hugues, ‘the chapter is a poisoned body;’ he called the canons thieves and robbers: Ille fur et latro est, he said of one of them. The episcopal Office appeared a heavy burden to him; but it put him in a position to give good dinners to his friends, and that was one of the most important duties of his life.: I have wine for the winter,’ he wrote in a postscript to the letter in which he made these complaints, ‘and plenty to entertain you with.’ ^fe321 Such were his episcopal consolations.

CHAPTER 2

GOSPEL AT GENEVA, AND THE SACK OF ROME.

(JANUARY TO JUNE, 1527.)

THE bishop was about to have enemies more formidable than the duke and the League. The Reformation was approaching. There is a characteristic trait in the history of Geneva; the several surrounding countries were by turns to scatter the seeds of life in that city; in it was to be heard a concert of voices from France, Italy, and German Switzer. land. It was the last of these that began.

At the time when treason was expelled from the city in the person of Cartelier, the Gospel entered it in that of an honest Helvetian, one of the Bernese and Friburg deputies who went there in 1527 about the affairs of the alliance concluded in 1526. Friburg would not have permitted a heretic preacher to accompany the deputation; even Berne would not have desired it just yet; but one of the Bernese ambassadors, a pious layman, who was coming to give a valuable support to national independence, was to call the Genevese to spiritual-liberty. The lay members of the Church occupied in the time of the apostles, as is well known, a marked station in the religious community; ^fe322 but by degrees the dominion of the clergy had been substituted for evangelical liberty. One of the principal causes of this revolution was the inferiority of the laity; for many centuries ecclesiastics were the only educated men. But if this state of things should change, if the laity should attain to more knowledge and more energy than the clergy, a new revolution would he effected in an opposite direction. And this is really what happened in the sixteenth century. The christian layman who then arrived at Geneva was Thomas ab Hofen, a friend of Zwingle, whom we have already mentioned. ^fe323 In the year 1524 he had declared at Berne in favor of the Reformation. The Zurich doctor, hearing of his departure for the shores of Lake Leman, was rejoiced, for the piercing eye of his faith had fancied it could perceive a ray of evangelical c light breaking over those distant hills. He desired that the Genevans, now united to Switzerland, should find in her not only liberty but truth. ‘Undoubtedly,’ wrote Zwingle to the excellent Bernese, ‘undoubtedly this mission, maybe of extraordinary advantage to the citizens of Geneva, who have been so recently received into alliance with the cantons.’ ^fe324

Ab Hofen did not go to Geneva with the intention of reforming it; his mission was diplomatic; but he was one of that ‘chosen generation’ of whom St. Peter speaks — one of those christians who are always ready to ‘show forth the praises of Him who has called them to his marvelous light.’ ^fe325 As he entered the city, he said to himself that he would do with earnestness whatever work God might set before him, as his Zurich friend had prayed him. Simple-minded, moderate, and sensitive, Ab Hofen placed the kingdom of heaven ‘above the things of the earth; but he was subject to fits of melancholy, which occasionally made him faint-hearted. When he arrived at Geneva, he visited many citizens, attended the churches and the meetings of the people, and, having reflected upon everything, he thought to himself that there was much patriotism in the city, but unfortunately little christianity, and that religion was the weak side of Genevan emancipation. He was distressed, for he had expected better things. With a heart overflowing with sorrow he returned to his inn (17th January, 1527), and feeling the necessity of unburdening himself on the bosom of a friend, he sat down and wrote to the great reformer of Zurich: ‘The number of those who confess the doctrine of the Gospel must be increased.’ ^fe326 There were, therefore, at this time in Geneva christians who confessed salvation by Jesus Christ, and not by the ceremonies of the Church; but their number was not large.

Ab Hofen determined to do his best to remedy this evil. he had a loving heart and practical mind, and with indefatigable zeal took advantage of every moment of leisure spared him by his official duties. As soon, therefore, as a conference with the Geneva magistrates was ended, or a dispatch to the Bernese government finished, he laid aside his diplomatic character and began to visit the citizens, conversing with them, and telling them of what was going on at Zurich and preparing at Berne. Being received into the families of some of the principal huguenots, and seated with them round the hearth, at the severest portion of the year (January, 1527), he spoke to them of the Word of God, of its authority, superior (he said) to the pope’s, and of the salvation which it proclaimed. He taught them that in the Gospel God gives man full remission of his sins. These doctrines, unknown for so many ages, and subversive of the legal and ceremonial religion of Rome, Were heard at Geneva with astonishment and pleasure.

At first the priests received the evangelist magistrate rather favorably. The rank which he bore made him honorable in their eyes; and he, far from being rude towards them, like certain huguenots, was amiable and sympathizing. Some ecclesiastics, believing him to belong to their coterie, because he spoke of religion, did not conceal their uneasiness from him, and described to him, very innocently, the fine times when presents of bread, wine, oil, game, and tapers were plentiful in their kitchen, and when they used to) say, with a gracious tone to the believers who brought these donations in white napkins: Centuplum accipietis et vitam aeternam possidebitis. ^fe327 Then they added, with loud complaints: ‘Alas! the faithful bring us no more offerings, and people do not run so ardently after indulgences as they used to do.’ ^fe328

The Bernese envoy, inwardly delighted at these candid avowals, which he did not fail to transmit to Zwingle, apparently avoided all controversy, and continued to announce the simple Gospel. The citizens listened to him; they sought his company, and invited him to take a seat in their family circle, or in some huguenot assembly, and to speak of the noble things that were doing at Zurich. These successes encouraged him: his eyes sparkled, he accosted the citizens freely, and his words flowed copiously from his lips. ‘I will not cease proclaiming the Gospel,’ he wrote to Zwingle; ‘all my strength shall be devoted to it.’ ^fe329 Erelong the well-disposed men who had gathered round him were joined by other citizens, exclusively friends of liberty; they listened to him with interest; but when he began to blame certain excesses, and to require certain moral reforms, he met with coldness and even determined opposition from them, and they turned their backs on him. Ab Helen, although a man of zeal and piety, did not possess the faith which moves mountains; he returned dispirited to his inn, shut himself up in his room, and, heaving deep sighs, wrote all his trouble to Zwingle. The latter, who possessed a sure glance, saw that the opportunity was unique. To establish the Reformation at the two extremities of Switzerland, at Zurich and Geneva, appeared to him a most important work. Would not these two arms, as they drew together, drag all Switzerland with them, especially if the powerful Berne lent its support in the center? But he knew Ab Hofen, and fearing his dejection, he wrote to him: ‘Take care that the work so well begun is not stopped. While transacting the business of the republic, do not neglect the business of Jesus Christ. ^fe330 You will deserve well of the citizens of Geneva if you put in order not only their laws and their rights, but their souls also. ^fe331 Now what can put the soul in order except it be the Word and the teaching of Him who created the soul?’ ^fe332

Zwingle went further than this, and, in order to revive Ab Hofen’s fainting heart, made use of an argument to which the politician could not be insensible. The reformer of Zurich was the friend of liberty as well as of the Gospel, and he believed that a people could be governed in only one of two ways: either by the Bible or by the sword, by the fear of God or by the fear of man. In his opinion Geneva could protect her independence against the attacks of Savoy, France, and all foreign powers, only by submitting to the King of heaven. ‘O my dear Thomas,’ he wrote to his friend, ‘there is nothing I desire so much as to see the doctrine of the Gospel flourishing in that republic (Geneva). Wherever that doctrine triumphs, the boldness of tyrants is restrained.’ ^fe333 At the same time, not wishing to offend the Bernese deputy, Zwingle added: ‘If I write these things, it is not to awaken one who sleeps, but to encourage one who runs.’ ^fe334 He ended his letter with a fraternal salutation to the evangelical christians of Geneva: ‘Salute them all in my name,’ he said.

Ab Hofen was not insensible to this appeal; if he was as easily cast down, he was as easily lifted up. He therefore redoubled his zeal, and pressed Geneva to imitate Zurich and Berne; but he perceived that his evangelical exertions were appreciated by a very small number only, and regarded with coldness, and even with displeasure and contempt, by the majority of politicians. Citizens, who had at first given him the warmest welcome, scarcely saluted him when he met them, and if he went to any meeting his presence put a restraint upon the whole assembly. He soon encountered opposition of a more hostile nature; the priests eyed him angrily, and the confidence which some ecclesiastics had placed in him was succeeded by a violent hatred. The clergy proclaimed a general crusade against heresy; the canons put themselves at the head of the opposition; priests and monks filled the streets, going from house to house, and bade the citizens be on their guard against the evangelical addresses of the Bernese envoy. They cried down, abused, and anathematized the doctrines he taught, and made war against the New Testament wherever they found it. They encouraged one another, and frightened the women especially. According to their representations, the city would be ruined if it listened to the heretical diplomatize.

Ab Hofen now fell into a state of discouragement more serious than the former. ‘All my efforts are vain,’ he wrote to Zwingle; ‘there are about seven hundred clergymen in Geneva who do their utmost to prevent the Gospel from flourishing here. ^fe335 What can I do against such numbers? And yet a wide door is opened to the Word of God... The priests do not preach: and as they are unable to do so, they are satisfied with saying mass in Latin... Miserable nourishment for the poor people!.. If any preachers were to come here, proclaiming Christ with boldness, the doctrine of the pope would, I am sure, be soon overthrown.’ ^fe336

But such preachers did not appear. Convinced of his insufficiency, and continually repeating that true ministers, like Zwingle and Farel, were wanted in that city; finding that many of the Genevans desired to be liberated not only from the vexations of Savoy, the shuffling of the bishop, and the doctrines of the pope, but also from the laws of morality; struck with the evils he saw ready to burst upon Geneva, and which the Gospel alone could avert, — this simple-minded, pious, and sensitive man returned heartbroken to Berne. Had this disappointment ally effect upon his health? We cannot say; but he died not long affect, in the month of November, ‘as a christian ought to die,’ it was said. It was found after his departure that his exertions had not been useless, and that some Genevans at least had profited by his teaching: among their number were counted Besancon Hugues and Baudichon de la Maison-Neuve. Some astonishment may be felt at seeing these two names together, for they are those of the chiefs of two opposite parties; but there is nothing improbable about it, for Hugues must have been frequently brought into contact with Ab Helen, and it is not impossible that he listened to his religious conversation. Hugues was a serious man; he was, moreover, a statesman, and must have desired to know something about the religious opinions which seemed at that time likely to be adopted by the whole confederation; but his policy consisted in maintaining the rights of the bishop-prince on one side, and those of the citizens on the other; as for his religion, he was a catholic, and we do not see that he changed in either of those relations. What he might have been, if he had been living at the time when the Reformation was carried through, no one can say. De la Maison-Neuve, on the contrary, was a decided huguenot, and certainly needed the Gospel to moderate the ardor of his character. William de la Mouille, the bishop’s chamberlain and confidant, appears to have been the person who profited most by the teaching of the layman of Berne.

While the Gospel was entering Geneva, desolation was entering Rome. It is a singular circumstance, the meeting of these two cities in history: one so powerful and glorious, the other so small and obscure. That, however, is capable of explanation, the great things of the world have always come from great cities and great nations; but the great things of God have usually small beginnings. Conquerors must have treasures and armies; but evangelical christianity, which undertakes to change man, nations, and the whole human race, has need of the strength of God, and God affects little things. In the first century, he chose Jerusalem; in the middle ages, the Waldensian valleys; in the sixteenth century, Wittemberg and Geneva. ‘God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.’ ^fe337

In the month of May (1527) a rumor of startling importance suddenly spread through the world: ‘Rome has just been destroyed,’ said the people, ‘and there is no more pope.’ The troops of Charles V. had taken and sacked the pontifical city, and if the pope was still alive, he was in concealment and almost in prison. The servants of the Church, who were terrified at first, soon recovered their breath, and directly their alarm was dissipated, avarice and covetousness took its place. In the presence of the ruins of that ancient city, its friends thought only of dividing its spoils. The Bishop of Geneva, in particular, found himself surrounded by petitioners, who sought to be collated to the benefices hitherto held by clergymen resident in Rome. ‘They have all perished,’ he was told; ‘their benefices are vacant: give them to us.’ The bishop granted everything; and he even conferred on himself (Bonivard tells us) the priory of St. Jean-lez-Geneve, which belonged to a cardinal. Seldom had so many deaths made so many people happy. ^fe338 The sack of Rome had more important results for Geneva and the protestant nations. When they saw the ruins of that city, it appeared to them that the papacy had fallen with it. The huguenots never grew tired of listening to the wonderful news and of commenting upon it. Struck with the example set them by Charles V., they thought to themselves that ‘if the emperor had set aside the bishop and prince of Rome, they might well abandon the prince and bishop of Geneva.’ Their right to do so was far clearer. The pope-king had at least been elected at Rome, and in conformity with ancient custom; while the bishop-prince had not been elected at Geneva and by Genevans, in accordance with the ancient constitutions, but by a foreign and unlawful jurisdiction. The huguenots promised even to be more moderate than his catholic majesty. Finally, the acts which impelled them to turn Pierre de la Baume out of the city, were far more vexatious in their eyes than those which had induced Charles to expel Clement VII. from Rome. ‘Are we not much more oppressed by ecclesiastical tyranny,’ they said, ‘than by secular tyranny? Are we not forced to pay, always to pay, and is it not our money that makes the bishop’s pot boil?’ ^fe339 Further, the shameful conduct of many of the ecclesiastics seemed to them a sufficient motive for putting an end to their rule.

A scandal which occurred just at this time increased the desire felt by certain huguenots to withdraw themselves from the government of the monks and priests. On the 10th of May, certain inhabitants of St. Leger appeared before the council. For some time past their sleep had been disturbed by noises and shouting, in which the cordeliers, jacobins, and Other friars were concerned; and they desired to put an end to it. ‘Some disorderly women have settled in our quarter,’ they told the council, ‘and certain monks frequent their houses.’ ^fe340 ... ‘If you observe the monks going there at night-time,’ replied the council, ‘give information to the syndics and the captain-general. The watch will immediately go and take them.’ The citizens withdrew half satisfied with the answer, but fully determined to call the watch as soon as the disorder was renewed.

These scandals — an acknowledged thing at Rome — greatly exasperated the citizens of Geneva, and made the better disposed long for a reformation of faith and morals. They said that soldiers use their arms as their officers command them: that the monks and priests (they should have said all christians) ought also to use their lives as their chief orders them; and that if they make a contrary use of them, they enlist under the standard office and avow themselves its soldiers. The worthy citizens of Geneva could not make that separation between religion and morality, of which the greater part of the clergy set the example. In proportion as the Reformation made progress in the world, the opposition increased against a piety which consisted only in certain formulas, ceremonies, and practices, but was deprived of its true substance — living faith, sanctification, morality, and christian works. Christianity, by the separation which Rome had made between doctrines and morals, had become like one of those spoilt and useless tools that are thrown aside because they can no longer serve in the operation for which they were made. The reformers, by calling for a living, holy, active faith, were again to make christianity in modern times a powerful engine of light and morality, of liberty and life.

CHAPTER 3

THE BISHOP CLINGS TO GENEVA, BUT THE CANONS DEPART.

(SUMMER, 1527.)

THE sack of Rome had made a great sensation in catholic countries. Pierre de la Baume almost believed that the reign of popery had come to an end, and was much alarmed for himself. If a prince so powerful as the pope had succumbed, what would become of the Bishop of Geneva? The alliance with the cantons, and the Gospel which a Swiss magistrate had just been preaching, seemed to him the forerunners of his ruin. He had no lansquenets before him, like those who had compelled Clement VII. to flee, but he had huguenots, who, in his eyes, were more formidable still. Liberty seemed to be coming forth, like the sun, from the night of the middle ages; and the bishop thought the safest course would be to turn towards the rising orb, and to throw himself into the arms of the liberals, he had a strong preference for the Saveyard despotism; but, if his interests required it, he was ready to pay court to liberty. Other instances of this have been seen. The bishop, therefore, sanctioned the sequestration of the property of the mamelukes, and made Besancon Hugues a magnificent present. He conferred on him the perpetual fief of the fishery of the lake, the Rhone, and the Arve, reserving to himself (which showed the value of the gift) the right of redemption for two thousand great ducats of gold. ^fe341 All this was but a step towards the accomplishment of a strange design.

The bishop had taken it into his head that he would form an alliance with the Swiss, feeling convinced that they alone could protect him against the impetuosity of the huguenots and the tyranny of the Duke of Savoy. he therefore sent Robert Vandel to Friburg and Basle, to entreat these states to admit him into their citizenship. This move caused the greatest surprise among the Genevans. ‘What!’ said they, ‘is Monsignor turning huguenot?’ The Swiss rudely rejected the Romish prelate’s request. ‘We will not have the bishop for our fellow-citizen,’ they made answer, ‘and that for four reasons: first, he is fickle and changeable; second, he is not beloved in Geneva; third, he is imperialist and Burgundian; and fourth, he is a priest!’ The cantons did not mention the strongest reason. Friburg and Berne, allies of the city, could not be at the same time the allies of the bishop, for how could they have supported the rights of the Genevans against him? ^fe342

The bishop was not discouraged. At one time he felt his throne shaking beneath him, and, fearing that it would fall, he clung to liberty with all his might; at another, he fancied he could see the phantom of heresy approaching with slow but sure step, and erelong taking its seat on his throne... and the sight increased his fear. He therefore sent Besancon Hugues to Berne ⎯ a more influential diplomatist than Vandel ⎯ who was received with consideration in the aristocratic circles, but had to bear all kinds of reproach. The proud Bernese were indignant at his becoming the advocate of a person so little esteemed as the bishop. One day, in the presence of these energetic men who had witnessed so many struggles, as Hugues was warmly pleading the prelate’s cause, his listener suddenly turned away with horror, and, as if he had been waving aside with his hand some satanic vision, he said: ‘The name of the bishop is more hateful among us than that of the devil himself. This was enough for Hugues, who returned to Geneva greatly disheartened. Pierre de la Baume, a vain and frivolous priest, soon consoled himself for this discomfiture, laughing at the reproaches uttered against him. He amused himself with the objections of the Swiss, and was continually repeating to those about him: ‘What would you have?... How could the Helvetians receive me into their alliance? I am a priest and Burgundian!’... Thus, at one time trembling, at another laughing, the Bishop of Geneva was moving towards his ruin. ^ff1

For some time Charles III., Duke of Savoy, had been watching the prelate, and noting with vexation the interested and (in his opinion) culpable overtures he was making to the Genevans and the confederates. The news that the bishop had sent two envoys in succession to the Swiss put a climax to the prince’s anger. It is not sufficient for the citizens to desire to emancipate themselves; even the bishops, whom the dukes have always regarded as their agents, presume to tread in their footsteps. This deserves a terrible punishment. The duke conferred with his advisers on the nature of the lesson to be given the prelate. One of the most decided of Charles’s ministers proposed that he should be kidnapped; the motion was supported, and the resolution taken. In order to carry it into execution, it was necessary to gain some of the clergy about him. The callous were sounded, and many of them, already sold to the duke, promised their good offices. ‘The bishop is a great devotee of the Virgin,’ they said; ‘on Saturday, the day dedicated to St. Mary, he generally goes to hear mass at Our Lady of Grace, outside the city he rides on a mule in company with other members of the cloth. Now, as this church is separated from Savoy only by a bridge, the captain of his highness’s archers has simply to lie in ambush near the river to snap (happer) Monsignor. The priests and officers about him, being bribed or men of no courage, will run away. Let him be dragged hastily to the other side of the Arve, and, once in the territory of Savoy he can be put to death as a traitor. Everything was arranged by good Catholics, and the Archbishop of Turin probably had a share in it. The reformers never went to work in so off-hand a manner as regards bishops.

Thus war broke out between the two great enemies of Geneva. The Genevans knew not how to get rid of the prelate, and here was Charles, like another Alexander, cutting the Gordian knot. The bishop once carried off, one of the most formidable obstacles to independence, morality, religion, and civilization will be removed. So long as he is there, nothing that is good can be done in Geneva, and when he is no longer there, the city will become free. This, however, was not his highness’s plan: having ‘snapped up’ the duke, he expected to ‘snap up’ the city also. This was his scheme for taking Geneva. ‘As soon as the Savoyard archers have kidnapped the bishop, certain of his highness’s creatures will go to the belfry of Notre Dame and ring the great bell. All the bells of the adjoining villages will answer the signal; the nobles will rush sword in land from their castles, the country-people will take up their scythes or other weapons, and all will march to Geneva. The Genevans are hot and hasty; when they learn that the Savoyards have crossed the Arve and violated their territory, they will take up arms and march into the domains of Savoy to avenge the offense; but they will find Pontverre and all his friends there ready to meet them. In the midst of this agitation the duke will have a capital excuse for entering the city and taking possession of it. And when he is established there, he will cut off the heads of Hugues, the syndics, the councilors, M. de Bonmont, and many others. Finally, Geneva shall have a bishop who will occupy himself with refuting the heretics, and his highness will undertake to make the hot-headed republicans bow beneath the sword of the temporal power, and expel for ever from the city both reformers and Reformation.’ ^ff2 The duke, charmed with this plan, made immediate preparations for its execution. To prevent Pierre de la Baume from escaping into Burgundy, he posted soldiers in all the passes of the Jura, whilst his best captains were stationed round the city to carry out the ambuscade.

These various measures could not be taken without something creeping out. Geneva had friends in the villages, where an unusual agitation indicated the approaching execution of some act of treachery. On Thursday, the 11th of July, a man, making his way along by-paths, arrived from Savoy, and said to the people of Geneva: ‘Be on your guard!’ Two days later, Saturday the 18th, which was the day appointed for action, another man, crossing the bridge of Arve, came and told one of the syndics, between eight and nine in the morning, that some horse and foot soldiers had been secretly posted at Lancy, only half a league from the city. The syndics did not trouble themselves much about it; and the bishop, who was naturally a timid man, but whom these warnings had not reached, mounted his mule — it was the day when he went to make adoration to the Virgin — rode out to Our Lady’s, took his usual place, and the mass began. Charles’s soldiers were already advancing in the direction of the bridge, in order to seize the prelate directly he left the church. Some devout persons had, pity on him, and just as the priest had celebrated the mystery, a man, with troubled look, entered the building (whether he came from Geneva or Savoy is unknown), walked noiselessly to the place where the bishop was sitting, and whispered in his ear: ‘Monsignor, the archers of Savoy are preparing to clutch you (gripper).’ At these words the startled La Baume turned pale and trembled. He did not wait for the benediction; fear gave him wings; he got up, rushed hastily out of the church, and leaped upon his mule ‘without putting his foot in the stirrup, for he was a very nimble person,’ says Bonivard; then, using his heels for spurs, he struck the animal’s flanks, and galloped off full speed, shouting, at the top of his voice, to the guards as he passed: ‘Shut the gates!’ The prelate reached the city out of breath and all of a tremble.

ff3

The city was soon in commotion. Besancon Hugues, the captain-general, who was sincerely attached to La Baume, and strongly opposed to the usurpations of Savoy, had divined the duke’s plot, and, with his usual energy, began to pass through the streets, saying: ‘Close your shops, put up the chains, bolt the city gates, beat the drum, sound an alarm, and let every man take his arquebuse.’ Then, leaving the streets, Hugues went to St. Pierre’s, and, notwithstanding the opposition of the canons, accomplices in the conspiracy, he ordered the great bell to be rung. A rumor had already spread on the other side of the Arve that the plot had failed, and that the bishop had escaped on his mule. The men-at-arms of Savoy were disconcerted; the village bells were not rung, the nobles remained in their castles, the peasants in their fields. ‘Our scheme has got wind,’ said the Savoyard captains; ‘all the city is under arms; and we must wait for a better opportunity.’

The canons, though siding with the duke, had concealed their game, and employed certain creatures of Savoy to carry out the plot. These people were known; they became alarmed, and saw no other means of escaping death than by leaving the city. But all the gates were shut!... What of that: despair gave them courage. At the very moment when .the armed men of Savoy were retiring, Several persons were seen to run along the streets, jump into the ditches of St. Gervais, scale the palisades, and scamper away as fast as their legs could carry them. They were the traitors who had corresponded with the enemy outside.

As for La Baume, he had lost his presence of mind. Rejected by the Swiss, despised by the Genevans, persecuted by the duke, what should he do? If he could but escape to his benefices in Burgundy, where the people are so quiet and the wine is so good! — but, alas! all the passes of the Jura are occupied by Savoyard soldiers, he was in great distress. Not thinking himself safe in his palace, he had taken refuge in the house of one of his partisans when he returned on his mule from his visit to Our Lady’s. He expected that the duke would follow up his plan, would enter Geneva, and seek him throughout the city. Accordingly, he remained quiet in the most secret hiding-place of the house which had sheltered him. It was only when he was told that the Savoyard soldiers had really retired, that all was tranquil outside the city, and that even the huguenots did not think of laying hands on him, that he took courage, came out of his hiding-place, and returned to the palace. Nevertheless, he looked stealthily out of the window to see if the huguenots or the ducal soldiers were not coming to seize him even in his own house. The Genevans smiled at his terror; but everybody, the creatures of Charles excepted, was pleased at the failure of the duke’s treachery. Religious men saw the hand of Heaven in this deliverance. ‘They gave God thanks,’ says Balard. ^ff4

This attack, abortive as it was, had one important consequence; it delivered the city from the canons, and thus paved the way for the Reformation. These men were in Geneva the representatives and supporters of all kinds of religious and political tyranny. To save Catholicism, it would have been necessary for the clergy, and particularly for the canons, who were their leaders, to unite with the laity, and, while maintaining the Roman ceremonial, to demand the suppression of certain Episcopal privileges and ecclesiastical abuses. Some of the huguenot chiefs

— those who, like Hugues, loved the bishop, and those also who subsequently opposed Calvin’s reformation — would probably have entered with joy into this order of things. For the execution of such a plan, however, the priests ought to have been upright and free. But the absolute authority of the Church, which had enfeebled the vigor of the human mind, had specially degraded the priests. The clergy of Geneva had fallen too low to effect a transformation of Catholicism. Many of the canons and even of the cures could see nothing but the act of a revolutionist or even of a madman, in the bishop’s desire to ally himself with the Swiss, and had consequently entered into Charles’s scheme, which was so hateful to the Genevans.

The huguenots hastened to take advantage of it. If the ducal plot had not delivered them from the bishop, it must at least free them from the canons. These ecclesiastical dignitaries never quitted Geneva, while the bishop often absented himself to intrigue in Italy or to amuse himself in Burgundy. They were besides more bigoted and fanatical , than the worldly prelate, and therefore all the more dangerous. And then, if they desired to get rid of the bishop, was it not the wisest plan to begin with his council? Shortly after the famous alert, some Genevan liberal went to the palace and said to La Baume: ‘The canons, my lord, are the duke’s spies: so long as they remain in Geneva, Savoy will have one foot in the city.’ The poor bishop was too exasperated against the canons not to lend an ear to these words, and after ruining himself with the duke, he took steps to ruin himself with the clergy, and to throw overboard the most devoted friends of the Roman institutions. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘they intrigue (grabugent) against the Church!... Let them be arrested... It is they who wished to see me kidnapped... Let them be put in prison!’ The next morning the procurator-fiscal, with his sergeants, knocked at the doors of the most influential of the canons, Messieurs De la Madeleine, De Montrotier, De Salery, De Veigy, and others, arrested them, and, to the indescribable astonishment of the servants and neighbors of these reverend gentlemen, carried them off to prison. ^ff5

As soon as the gates were shut upon the canons, the bishop began to reflect on the daring act he had just achieved. Still flushed with anger, he did not repent, but he was uneasy, distressed, and amazed at his own courage. If the duke sought to kidnap him but the other day, what will this terrible prince do, now that he, La Baume, has boldly thrown his most devoted partisans into prison?... All Savoy will march against him. he sent for the captain-general, imparted to him all his fears; and Besancon Hugues, his most faithful friend, wishing to dissipate his alarm, placed watchmen on the tower of St. Pierre, on the walls, and at every gate. They had instructions to inform the commander-in-chief if a single horseman appeared on the horizon in the direction of Savoy.

La Baume began to breathe again; yet he was not entirely at his ease. He smiled to himself at the watch of Besancon Hugues. What can these few armed citizens do against the soldiers of the nephew of Francis I. and brother-in-law of Charles V.? The Duke of Savoy was prowling round him like a wild beast eager to devour him; the bishop thought that the bear of Berne alone could defend him. But alas! Berne would have nothing to do with him, because he was a priest and a Burgundian!... He turned all this over in his mind. He, so wary a politician, he whom the emperor employed in his negotiations — shall not he find some outlet, when it is a question of saving himself? On a sudden he hit upon a scheme for becoming an ally of Berne, in spite of Berne. He will get himself made a citizen of Geneva and, by virtue of the general co-citizenship, he will thus become the ally of the cantons. Delighted at this bright idea, he communicated it to his intimate friends, and, unwilling to lose a day, ordered the council-general to be convened for the morrow. ^ff6 On the next morning (15th of July) the bells of the cathedral rang out; the burgesses, girding on their swords, left their houses to attend the general council, and the bishop-prince, accompanied by his councilors and officers, appeared in the midst of the people, and sat down on the highest seat. Entirely absorbed by the strange ambition of becoming a plain burgess of the city in which he was a prince, he was profuse in salutations; and to the huguenots he was particularly gracious. ‘I recall,’ he said, ‘my protest against the alliance with the Swiss. I know how you cling to it; well!... I now approve of it; I am willing to give my adhesion to it; and, the more clearly to show my approval, I desire that I may be made a freeman of the city.’ Great was the astonishment of the people. A bishop made a citizen of Geneva! Such a thing had never been heard of. All the friends of independence, however, were favorable to the scheme. Some wished to gratify the bishop; others were pleased at anything that could separate him more completely from the duke; all agreed that if the bishop were made a citizen of Geneva, and united with their friends the confederates, great advantage would result to the city. If he begins with turning Swiss, who knows if he will not turn Protestant? The general council therefore granted his request.

Wishing to make him pay for his freedom, and not to lose an opportunity of recovering their liberties, the syndics begged him to transfer all civil suits to lay jurisdiction. Laymen judges in an ecclesiastical principality?... It was a great revolution, and three centuries and more were to pass away before a similar victory was gained in other states of that class. The bishop understood the great importance of such a request; he fancied he could already hear the endless appeals of the clergy who found themselves deprived of their honors and their profits; but at this time he was acting the part of a liberal pope, while the canons were playing the incorrigible cardinals. He said yes. It was an immense gain to the community, for interminable delays and crying abuses characterized the ecclesiastical tribunals at Geneva as well as at Rome.

The syndics, transported with joy, manifested all their gratitude to the prelate. They told him he had nothing to fear, either from the Genevans or even from the duke. Then turning to the people, they said: ‘Let every citizen draw his sword to defend Monsignor. If he should be attacked, we desire that, at the sound of the toscin, all the burgesses, and even the priests, should fly to arms.’ — ‘Yes, yes!’ shouted the citizens; ‘we will be always faith fill to him!’ A transformation seemed to have been effected in their hearts. They knew the great value of the sacrifice the bishop had made, and showed their thankfulness to him. Upon this, the bishop, ‘raising his right hand towards heaven, and placing his left on his breast (as was the custom of prelates),’ said: ‘I promise, on my faith, loyally to perform all that is required of a citizen, to prove myself a good prince, and never to separate, myself from you? The delighted people also raised their hands and exclaimed: ‘And we also, my lord, will preserve you from harm as we would our own heads!’ ^ff7 The poor prelate would have sacrificed still more to protect himself from Charles’s attacks, which filled him with indescribable terror.

It seemed as if this concession, by uniting the bishop and the Genevans more closely, ought to have put off the Reformation; but it was not so. In proportion as the Genevans obtained any concession, they desired more: accordingly, when the citizens had returned home or when they met at one another’s houses, they began to say that it was something to have obtained the civil judicature from the bishop, but that there were other restitutions still to be made. Some men asked by what right he held the temporal authority; and others — those who knew best what was passing at Zurich — desired to throw off the spiritual jurisdiction of the prelate in order to acknowledge only that of Holy Writ.

Opposition to ecclesiastical principalities began, then three centuries ago at Geneva. ‘The bishop grants us the civil jurisdiction,’ said Bonivard: ‘an act very damaging to himself, and very profitable to us... But... this is an opening to deprive him entirely of his authority. Neither La Baume nor the other bishops were lawfully elected, ‘that is to say by the clergy at the postulation of the people. They were thrust into the see by the pope... They are but tyrants set over us by other tyrants. We can therefore reject them without danger to our souls; and since they came in by the, caprice of arbitrary power, it is lawful for us to expel them by the free authority of the city. Geneva has never acknowledged other princes than those whom the people themselves elected.’ Some were astonished at Bonivard’s language; but the larger number listened to him with enthusiasm. The Catholics, growing more and more uneasy, anticipated great disasters. The edifice of popery, continually undermined in Geneva, was tottering; its pillars and buttresses were giving way; and the keystone of the arch, the Episcopal power itself, was on the point of crumbling to dust. Alas! catholic Geneva was a dismantled fortress. ^ff8

When the duke heard of the bishop’s concessions, he was seized with one of his fits of anger. And not without cause: by transferring the civil authority to a lay tribunal, La Baume had been guilty of a new offense against the duke; for it was in reality the jurisdiction of the vidame (that is to say, of the duke) which the bishop had thus ceded; and hence it was that he had been induced to do it so readily.

Charles had no need of this new grievance. When they learnt at the court of Turin that the canons had been put in prison by the prelate, there was a violent commotion; the friends and relatives of those reverend gentlemen made a great noise, and the duke resolved to send the most urgent remonstrances to the Genevans, reserving the right to have recourse to more energetic measures if words did not suffice. He commissioned M. de Jacob, his grand equerry, to go and set this little people to rights, and the ducal envoy arrived in Geneva about the middle of July. He carried his head very high, and behaved with great reserve, as if he had been injured: he had come with the intention of making that city, so small and yet so arrogant, feel how great is the power of a mighty prince. On the 20th of July, the Sire de Jacob being introduced before the council, haughtily represented to them, not that the reverend fathers imprisoned as criminals were innocent, but that they belonged to high families and were his highness’s subjects, and added that the duke consequently ordered them to be immediately set at liberty. ‘Otherwise,’ added the ambassador in an insolent tone, ‘my lord will see to it, as shall seem good to him.’ The tone and look of the ducal envoy explained his words, and every one felt that Charles III. would come and claim the canons at the head of his army. The embarrassed magistrates and prelate answered the envoy by throwing the blame upon one another. The former declared that they had not interfered in the matter, which concerned Monsignor of Geneva only; and the bishop, in his turn, laid all the blame on the people. ‘I was obliged to do so,’ he said, ‘to save the canons from being killed.’ Nevertheless, he showed himself merciful. The avoyer of Friburg, who had been delegated for this purpose by his council, added his entreaties to the ducal summons; and, pressed at once by Switzerland and Savoy, the bishop thought he could not resist. The arrest of the canons was in reality, on his part, an act of passion as much as of justice. ‘I release them,’ he said; ‘I pardon them. I leave vengeance to God.’

The canons quitted the place where they had been confined, bursting with anger and indignation. Having had time to reflect on what was passing in Geneva, on the impetuous current that was hurrying the citizens in a direction contrary to Rome, they had made up their minds to quit a city where they had been so unceremoniously thrown into the receptacle for criminals. De Montrotier, De Veigy, and their colleagues had hardly returned to their houses when they told everybody who would listen to them that they would leave Geneva and the Genevans to their miserable fate. This strange resolution immediately spread through the city, and excited the people greatly; it was important news, and they could hardly believe it. The canons of Geneva were a very exalted body in the opinion of catholicity. In order to be received among them, the candidate must show titles of nobility, or be a graduate in some famous university; and since the beginning of the century their number included members of the most illustrious families of Savoy — De Gramont, De la Foret, De Montfalcon, De Menthon, De la Motte, De Chatillon, De Croso, De Sablon, and others as noble as they. ^ff9

The canons kept their word. As soon as they had made the necessary arrangements for their departure, they mounted their mules or got into their carriages, and set off. The Genevans, standing at the doors of their houses in groups in the streets, watched these Roman dignitaries thus abandoning their homes, some with downcast heads, others with angry looks, who moved along sad and silent, and went out by the Savoy gate with hearts full of resentment against a city which they denounced as ungrateful and rebellious. Out of thirty-two, only seven or eight remained. ^ff10 The citizens, assembling in various places, were agitated with very different thoughts. The huguenots said to themselves that these high and reverend clerks, true cardinals, who supported the papacy much better than the bishop, would no longer be there to prevent the new generation from throwing off the shackles of the middle ages; that this unexpected exodus marked a great revolution; and that the old times were departing, and the Reformation beginning. On the other hand, the creatures of Rome felt a bitter pang, and flames of vengeance were kindled in their hearts.

Lastly, those citizens who were both good Genevans and good Catholics, were seized with fear and melancholy. ‘No more canons, erelong perhaps no more bishop!... Will Geneva, without its canons and bishops, be Geneva still? But the great voice, which drowned all the rest, was that of the partisans of progress, of liberty, of independence, and of reform, who desired to see political liberty developed among the community, and the Church directed by the Word of God and not by the bulls of the pope. Among them were Maison-Neuve, Bonivard, Porral, Bernard, Chautemps, and others. These men, the pioneers of modern times, felt little respect and no regret for the canons. They said to one another that these noble and lazy lords were pleased with Geneva so long as they could luxuriously enjoy the pleasures of life there; but that when the hour of combat came, they fled like cowards from the field of battle. The canons did fly in fact; they arrived at Annecy, where they settled. As for Geneva, they were never to enter it again.

CHAPTER 4

THE BISHOP-PRINCE FLEES FROM GENEVA.

(JULY AND AUGUST, 1527.)

FROM this time parties in Geneva took new forms and new names. There were not simply, as before, partisans of the foreign domination and Savoy, and those of independence and Switzerland: the latter were divided. Some, having Hugues and Balard as leaders, declared for the bishop; others, with Maison-Neuve and Porral at their head, declared for the people. They desired not only to repel the usurpations of Savoy, but also to see the fail of the temporal power of the bishop in Geneva. ‘Now,’ said Bonivard, ‘that the first division into mamelukes and huguenots has almost come to an end, we have the second — that of bishopers (evequains) and commoners (communiaires).’ These two parties had their men of sense and importance, and also their hot-headed adherents; as, for instance, De la Thoy on the side of the commoners, and Pecolat, the man of whom it would have been least expected, among the bishopers. A singular change had been effected in this former martyr of the bishop: the iester had joined the Episcopal band. Was it because he was at heart catholic and even superstitions (he had ascribed, it will be remembered, the healing of his tongue to the intervention of a saint), or because, being a thorough parasite, he preferred the well-covered tables of the bishopers? We know not. These noisy partisans, the vanguard of the two parties, were frequently quarreling. ‘They murmured, jeered, and made faces at each other.’

At the same time this new division ‘marked a step made in advance by this small people. Two great questions were raised, which sooner or later must rise up in every country. The first was political, and may be stated thus: ‘Must we accept a traditional dominion which has been established by trampling legitimate rights under foot?’ (This was the dominion of the bishop.) The second was religious, and may be expressed thus: ‘Which must we choose, popery or the Gospel?’ Many of the commoners, seeing the bishop and the duke disputing about Geneva, said that these two people were fighting for what belonged to neither of them, and that Geneva belonged to the Genevans. But there were politicians also among them, lawyers for the most part, who founded their pretensions on a legal basis. The bishops and princes of Geneva ought by right, as we have seen, to be elected at Geneva and not at Rome, by Genevans and not by Romans. The issue of the struggle was not doubtful. How could the bishop make head against magistrates and citizens relying on positive rights, and against the most powerful aspirations of liberty that were awaking in men’s hearts? How could the Roman doctrine escape the floods of the Reformation? Certain scandals helped to precipitate the catastrophe.

On the 12th of July some huguenots appeared before the council. ‘The priests of the Magdalen,’ they said, ‘keep an improper house, in which reside several disorderly women.’ There were among the Genevans, and particularly among the magistrates, men of good sense, who had the fear of God before their eyes and confidence in him in their hearts. These respectable laymen (and there may have been priests who thought the same) had a deep conviction that one of the great defects of the middle ages was the existence of popes, bishops, priests, and monks, who had separated religion from morality. The council attended to these complaints to a certain extent. They banished from Geneva the persons who made it their business to facilitate illicit intercourse, obliged the lewd women to live in a place assigned them, and severely remonstrated with the priests. ^ff11 The first breath of the Reformation in Geneva attacked immorality. It was not this affair, however, which gave the bishop his death, blow; it was a scandal occasioned by himself, and in his own house. ‘Halting justice’ was about to overtake the guilty man at last.

One day a report suddenly got abroad which put the whole city in commotion. ‘A young girl, of respectable family,’ said the crowd, ‘has just been carried off by the bishop’s people: we saw them dragging her to the palace.’ It was an electric spark that set the whole populace on fire. The palace gates had been immediately closed upon the victim, and the bishop’s servants threatened to repel with main force the persons who demanded her. ‘Does the bishop imagine,’ said some of the patriots, ‘that we will put up with his beatings as quietly as the folks of St. Claude do?’

It would seem that La Baume permitted such practices among the Burgundians, who did not complain of them. The girl’s mother, rushing into the street, had followed her as fast as possible, and had only stopped at the closed gates of the Episcopal palace. She paced round and round the building, roaring like a lioness deprived of her whelp. The citizens, crowding in front of the palace, exclaimed: ‘Ha! you are now throwing off the mask of holiness which you held up to deceive the simple. In your churches you kiss God’s feet, and in your life you daringly spit in his face!’ Many of them called for the bishop, summoning him to restore the young woman to her mother, and hammering violently at the gate.

The prelate, who was then at dinner, did not like to be disturbed in this. important business; being puzzled, moreover, as to the course which he ought to adopt, it appeared that the best thing he could do was to be deaf, He therefore answered his servants, who asked him for orders, ‘Do not open the door;’ and raising the glass to his lips, he went on with his repast. But his heart was beginning to tremble: the shouts grew louder, and every blow struck against the gate found an echo in the soul of the guilty priest. His servants who were looking stealthily out of the windows, having informed him that the magistrates had arrived, Pierre de la Baume left his chair, paler than death, and went to the window. There was a profound silence immediately, and the syndics made the prelate an earnest but very respectful speech. The bishop, terrified at the popular fury, replied: ‘Certainly, gentleman, you shall have the young woman... I only had her carried off for a harper, who asked me for her in return for his services.’ Monsignor had not carried off the girl in the violence of passion, but only to pay the wages of a musician! It was not more guilty, but it was more vile. The palace gates were opened, and the girl was restored to her mother. Michael Roset does not mention the harper, and leads us to believe that the bishop had taken her for himself. This scandalous abduction was the last act done in Geneva by the Roman bishops. ^ff12

From that moment the deposition of the bishop was signed, as it were, in the hearts of most of the citizens. ‘These, then, are the priest’s works,’ they said, ‘debauchery and violence!... Instead of purifying the manners of the people, they labor to corrupt them! Ha! ha! you bishopers, a fine religion is that of your bishop!’

Opposition to a corrupt government soon began to appear a duty to them. The right of resistance was one of the principles of that society in the middle ages, which some writers uphold as a model of servility. In the Great Charter of England, the king authorized his own subjects, in case he should violate any one of their liberties, ‘to pursue and molest him to the uttermost of their power, by seizing his castles, estates, possessions, and otherwise.’ In certain cases, the vassals could separate themselves entirely from their suzerain. Some vassals, it is true, might carry this principle too far, and claim to throw off the feudal authority whenever it pleased them; but the law made answer: ‘No, not unless there is reasonable cause.’ ^ff13 When freeing herself from the bishop-princes, who had so often violated the franchises and connived with the enemies of the city, Geneva thought she was acting with very reasonable cause, and not going beyond the bounds of legality. The ruin of the bishops and princes of Geneva, already prepared by their political misdeeds, was completed by their moral disorders.

But if the friends of law and morality desired to break by legal means the bonds which united them to the bishop-prince, other persons, the wits and brawlers, envenomed against his partisans, began to get up quarrels with the bishopers. One day ‘the young men of Geneva,’ returning from a shooting match, where, says the chronicler, they had ‘had many a shot at the pot’ (that is, had drunk deeply), determined to give a smart lesson to two of the bishop’s friends, Pecolat and Robert Vandel. The latter, at that time attached personally to Pierre de la Baume, afterwards became one of the most zealous patriots. ‘They are at St. Victor’s,’ somebody said; ‘let us go and fetch them.’ The party, headed by a drummer, went to the priory, where Bonivard told the ringleaders that the two bishopers and others were diverting themselves at Plainpalais. Just as the band arrived, the Episcopal were entering the city: one of the ‘sons of Geneva,’ catching sight of Pecolat and Vandel, exclaimed: ‘My lord, you have traitors among you there!’ The bishop spurred his mule and rode off: Pecolat drew his sword; his opponent, De la Thoy, did the same, and they began to cut at each other. The fray was so noisy that the guards in alarm shut the gates, when a few reasonable men parted the combatants. A more serious movement was accomplishing in the depths of men’s minds. Nothing but secularization and reformation could put an end to the almost universal discontent. ^ff14

The Duke of Savoy wished for another solution. His councilors represented to him that the bishop had lost his credit among the nobles and clergy, through his desire to ally himself with the Swiss; that he was ruined with the citizens by his unedifying mode of life; and that the moment had come for giving these restless people a stronger shepherd, who would cure them of their taste for political and religious liberty. In consequence of this, the duke summoned the Genevans, on the 30th of July, to recognize his claims, and his ambassadors added that, if the citizens refused, ‘Charles III. would come in person with an army, and then they would have to keep their city... if they could.’ The Genevans made answer: ‘We will suffer death rather’ The Bernese informed of the threats of Savoy, sent ambassadors to Chambery to admonish (admonester) the duke. ‘I have a grudge against the city,’ he said, ‘and against the bishop also, and I will do my pleasure upon him in defiance of all opposition.’ — ‘Keep a good look-out,’ said the Bernese ambassadors to the syndics, on their return, ‘for the duke is preparing to carry off the bishop and confiscate the liberties of the city.’ The bishop and the citizens were exceedingly agitated. Men, women, and children set to work: they cut down the trees round the walls, pulled down the houses, and leveled the gardens, while four gangs worked at the fortifications. ‘We would rather die defending our rights,’ said the Genevans, ‘than live in continual fear.’

ff15

It might have been imagined that the duke, by declaring war at the same time against the bishop and the city, would have brought them nearer each other; but the popular irritation against the bishop and clergy was only increased by it. The citizens said that all the misfortunes of Geneva proceeded from their having a bishop for a prince; and La Baume saw a conspirator in every Genevan. More than one bishop, the oppressor of the liberties of his people, had fallen during the middle ages under the blows of the indignant burgesses. For instance, the wretched Gaudri, bishop of Laon in the twelfth century, having trampled the rights of the citizens under foot, had been compelled to flee from their wrath, and hide himself in a cask in the Episcopal cellar. But, being discovered and dragged into the street, he was killed by the blow of an ax, and his body covered with stones and mud. ^ff16 If good Catholics had practiced such revenge upon their bishop, what would huguenots do?

La Baume had other fears besides. An intriguing woman, his cousin Madame de Besse, generally known as Madame de la Gruyere, being gained over by the duke, alarmed the bishop by insinuating that he was to be kidnapped, and that this time his mule would not save him. That lady had scarcely left the palace when the Bernese entered and said to the frightened bishop: ‘Make haste to go! for the duke is coming to take you.’ They may have said this with a mischievous intention, desiring to free the city from the bishop. La Baume had not a minute of repose afterwards. His servants, threatened by the huguenots, began to be afraid also, and thus increased their master’s alarm. He passed the day in anguish, and awoke in the night uttering cries of terror. At times he listened as if he heard the footsteps of the men coming to carry him off. He did not hesitate: his residence in the Episcopal city had become insupportable. He had too much sense not to see that the cause of his temporal principality was lost, and, to add to his misfortune, the only prince who could defend him was turning against him. Whatever the risk, he must depart. ‘Whereat the bishop was so vexed,’ says Bonivard, ‘that he meditated retiring from Geneva into Burgundy.’ He flattered himself that he would be quiet in the midst of his good vassals of St. Claude, and happy near his cellars of Arbois! ^ff17

It was, however, no easy thing to do. He would have to get out of Geneva, pass through the district of Gex, and cross the Jura mountains, all filled with armed men. Feeling the want of some one to help him, he determined to apply to Besancon Hugues. He invited him to come to the palace, but in the night, so that no one might see him. When Hugues got there, the wretched and guilty prelate squeezed his hand, and told him all his troubles. ‘I can no longer endure the wrong, violence, and tyranny which the duke does me,’ he Said. ‘I know that he is plotting to kidnap me and shut me up in one of his monasteries. On the other hand, I mistrust my own subjects, for they are aiming at my life. I am day and night in mortal torment. You alone ‘can get me out of the city, and I hope you will manage so that it shall not be talked of.’ Besancon Hugues was touched when he saw the man whom he recognized as his lord agitated and trembling before him. How could he re-time the alarmed priest the favor he so earnestly demanded?... He left the bishop, telling him that he would go and make preparations for a nocturnal flight. ^ff18

In the night of the 1st and 2nd of August, 1527, Hugues went secretly to the palace, accompanied by Michael Guillet, a leading mameluke. The prelate received his friends like liberating angels. They all three went down into the vaults, where La Baume ordered a private door to be opened which led into the street now called the Rue de la Fontaine. He had to go along this street to reach the lake; but might not some of these terrible huguenots stop him in his flight? He crept stealthily and in disguise out of the palace, put himself between his two defenders, and, a prey to singular alarm, went forward noiselessly. On arriving at the brink of the water, the fugitive and his two companions descried through the darkness the boatman whom Hugues had engaged. La Baume and Besancon entered the boat while Michael, Guillet returned to the city. The boatmen took their oars, and crossed the lake at the point where the Rhone flows out of it. La Baume looked all round him; but he could see nothing, could hear nothing but the dull sound of the oars. The danger however, was far from being passed. The right bank might be occupied by a band of his enemies... When the boat touched the shore, La Baume caught sight of two or three men with horses. They were friends. Hugues and the bishop got into their saddles without a moment’s loss, and galloped off in the direction of the Jura. The bishop had never better appreciated his good luck in being one of the best horsemen of his day; he drove the spurs into his steed, fancying at times that he heard the noise of Savoyard horses behind him. In this way the bishop and his companion rode on, all the night through, along byroads and in the midst of great dangers, for all the passes were guarded by men-at-arms. At last the day appeared. In proportion as they advanced, La Baume breathed more freely. After four-and-twenty hours of cruel fright, the travelers arrived at St. Claude. Pierre de la Baume was at the summit of happiness. ^ff19

The day after his departure, the news of the bishop’s flight suddenly became known in Geneva, where it caused a great sensation. ‘Alas!’ said the monks in their cloisters, ‘Monsignor, seeing the approaching tribulation, has got away by stealth across the lake.’ The patriots, on the contrary, collecting in groups in the public places, rejoiced to find themselves delivered by one act both from their bishop and their prince.

At the same time the Savoyard soldiers, posted round Geneva, were greatly annoyed; they had been on the watch night and day, and yet the bishop had slipped through their fingers. To avenge themselves, they swore to arrest Besancon Hugues on his return. The latter; making no stay at: St. Claude, reappeared next morning at daybreak in the district of Gex, when he soon noticed that gentlemen and soldiers were all joining in the chase after him. The bells were rung in the village steeples, the peasants were roused, and every one shouted: ‘Hie! hie! the traitor Besancon!’ It seemed impossible for him to escape. Having descended the mountain, he followed the by-roads through the plain, when suddenly a number of armed men fell upon him. Hugues had great courage, a stout sword, and a good horse; fording the water-courses, and galloping across the hills, he saved himself ‘as by a miracle,’ says his friend Balard. ^ff20

The Genevans were very uneasy about him, for they all loved him, The drums beat, the companies mustered under their officers, and they were about to march out with their arms to protect him, when suddenly he arrived, panting, exhausted, and wounded. They would have liked to speak to him, and, above all, to hear him; but Hugues, hardly shaking hands with his friends, rode straight to his own house and went to bed; he was completely knocked up. The syndics went to his room to investigate the circumstances of which he had to complain. But erelong the brave man recovered from his fatigue, and the city was full of joy. The bishop’s flight still further increased their cheerfulness: it snapped the bonds of which they were weary. ‘The hireling,’ they said, ‘leaveth the sheep, and fleeth, when he seeth the wolf coming.’ ^ff21 ‘Therefore,’ they added, ‘he is not the shepherd.’

CHAPTER 5

EXCOMMUNICATION OF GENEVA AND FUNERAL PROCESSION OF POPERY.

(AUGUST, 1527, TO FEBRUARY, 1528.)

THE Duke of Savoy was the wolf. When he heard of the bishop’s flight, his vexation was greater than can be imagined. He had told the Bernese: ‘I shall have Monsieur of Geneva at my will,’ ^ff22 and now the wily prelate had escaped him a second time. At first Charles III. lost all self-control. ‘I will go,’ he said, ‘and drag him across the Alps with a rope round his neck!’ After which he wrote to him: ‘I will make you the poorest priest in Savoy;’ and, proceeding to gratify his rage, he seized upon the abbeys of Suza and Pignerol, which belonged to La Baume. Gradually his anger cooled down; the duke’s counselors, knowing the bishop’s irresolute and timid character, said to their master: ‘He is of such a changeable disposition ^ff23 that it will be easy to bring him over again to the side of Savoy.’ The prince yielded to their advice, and sent Ducis, governor of the Chateau de l’Ile, to try to win him back. It appeared to the ducal counselors that Pierre de la Baume, having fled from Geneva, could never return thither, and would have no wish to do so’; and that the time had come when a negotiation, favorable in other respects to the prelate, might put the duke in possession of a city which he desired by every means to close against heresy and liberty.

The bishop, at that moment very dejected, was touched by the duke’s advances; he sent an agent to the prince, and peace seemed on the point of being concluded. But Charles had uttered a word that sounded in in the prelate’s ears. ‘The duke wishes me to subscribe myself his subject,’ he wrote to Hugues. ‘I think I know why... It is that he may afterwards lay hands on me.’ Nevertheless, the duke appeared to restrain himself. ‘I will give back all your benefices,’ he told the bishop, ‘if you contrive to annul the alliance between Geneva and Switzerland.’ La Baume consented to everything in order to recover his abbeys, whose confiscation made a large gap in his revenues. He did not care much about living at Geneva, but he wished to be at his ease in Burgundy. At this moment, as the duke and the Genevans left him at peace, he was luxuriously enjoying his repose. Instead of being always in the presence of huguenots and mamelukes, he walked calmly in his garden ‘among his pinks and gilly-flowers.’ ^ff24 He ordered some beautiful fur robes, lined with black satin, for the winter; he kept a good table, and said: ‘I am much better supplied with good wine here than we are at Geneva.’ ^ff25

The bishop having fled from his bishopric like a hireling, — the prince having: run away from his principality like a conspirator, — the citizens resolved to take measures for preserving order in the State, and to make the constitution at once stronger and more independent. The general council delegated to the three councils of Twenty-five, Sixty, and Two-Hundred the duty of carrying on the necessary business, except in such important affairs as required the convocation of the people. A secret council was also appointed, composed of the four syndics and of six of the most decided huguenots. A distinguished historian says that the Genevan constitution was then made democratic; ^ff26 another historian affirms, on the contrary, that the power of the people was weakened. ^ff27 We are of a different opinion from both. In proportion as Geneva threw off foreign usurpation, it would strengthen its internal constitution. Undoubtedly, this little nation desired to be free, and the Reformation was to preserve its liberties; there is a democracy in the Reform. Philosophy, which is satisfied with a small number of disciples, has never formed more than an intellectual aristocracy; but evangelical Christianity, which appeals to all classes, and particularly to the lowly, develops the understanding, awakens the conscience, and sanctifies the hearts of those who receive it, in this way spreading light, order, and peace all around, and forming a true democracy on earth, very different from that which does without Christ and without God. But Geneva, at that time surrounded by implacable enemies, required, as necessary to its existence, not only liberty, but order, power, and consequently authority.

The bishop had hardly disappeared from Geneva when the insignia of ducal power disappeared also. Eight years before this, Charles III. had caused the white cross of Savoy, carved in marble, to be placed on the Chateau de l’Ile, ‘at which the friends of liberty were much grieved.’ ⎯ ‘I have placed my arms in the middle of the city as a mark of sovereignty,’ he had said haughtily, ‘and have had them carved in hard stone. Let the people efface them if they dare!’ On the morning of the 6th of August (five days after the bishop’s flight), some people who were passing near the castle perceived to their great astonishment that the ducal arms had disappeared... A crowd soon gathered to the spot, and a lively discussion arose. Who did it? was the general question. ‘Oh!’ replied some, ‘the stone has accidentally fallen into the river;’ but although the water was clear, no one could see it. ‘It was you,’ said the duke’s partisans to the huguenots,’ and you have hidden it somewhere.’ Bonivard, who stood thoughtful in the midst of the crowd, said at last: ‘I know the culprit.’ — ‘Who is it? who is it?’ — ‘St. Peter,’ he replied. ‘As patron of Geneva, he is unwilling that a secular prince should have any ensign of authority in his city!’ This incident, the authors of which were never known, made a great impression, and the most serious persons exclaimed: ‘Truly, it is a visible sign, announcing to us a secret and mysterious decision of the Most High. What the hand of God hath thrown down, let not hand of man set up again!’ ^ff28

The Genevans wanted neither duke nor bishop; they went farther still, and being harassed by the court of Rome, they were going to show: that they did not care for the pope. They had hardly done talking of La Baume’s flight and of the Savoy escutcheon, when they were told strange news report was circulated that an excommunication and interdict had been pronounced against them, at the request of the mamelukes. This greatly excited such citizens as were still attached to the Roman worship. ‘What!’ said they; ‘the priests will be suspended from their functions, the people deprived of the benefit of the sacraments, divine worship, and consecrated burial... innocent and guilty will be involved in one common misery... But the energy of the huguenots, whom long combats had hardened like steel, was not to be weakened by this new attack. The most determined of them resolved to turn against Rome the measure plotted against Geneva. The council, being resolved to prevent the excommunication from being placarded in the streets, ^ff29 ordered ‘a strict watch to be kept at the bridge of Arve, about St. Victor and St. Leger,’ and that the gates should be shut early and opened late.’ This was not enough. Five days later (the 29th of December, 1527), the people lawfully assembled, caused the Golden Bull to be read aloud before them, which ordered that, with the exception of the emperor and the bishop, there should be no authority in Geneva. Then a daring proposition was made to the general council, namely, ‘that no metropolitan letters, and further still no apostolical letters (that is to say, no decrees emanating from the pope’s courts), should be executed by any priest or any citizen.’ — ‘Agreed, agreed? shouted everybody. It would seem that the vote was almost unanimous. In this way the bishop on the banks of the Tiber found men prepared to resist him on the obscure banks of the Leman.

This vote alarmed a few timid persons of a traditional tendency. Advocates of the status quo entreated the progressionists to restrain themselves; but the latter had no wish to do so. They answered that the Reformation was triumphing among the Swiss; that Zwingle, (Ecolampadius, and Haller were preaching with daily increasing success at Zurich, Basle, and Berne. They added that on the 7th of January, 1528, the famous discussion had begun in the last-named city, and that the Holy Scriptures had gained the victory; that the altars and images had been thrown down ‘with the consent of the people;’ that a spiritual worship had been substituted in their place, and that all, including children fourteen years old, had sworn to observe ‘the Lutheran law.’ The huguenots thought that if excommunication came to them from Rome, absolution would come to them from Berne, or rather from heaven.

The more light-hearted among them went further than this. For ages the Roman Church had accustomed its followers to unite masquerades with the most sacred recollections. In some cantons there had been great rejoicings over the abolition of the mass. Such a fire could not be kindled in Switzerland without scattering a few sparks over Geneva. Baudiction de la Maison-Neuve, a great enemy to superstition, an active and even turbulent man, and daring enough to attempt anything, resolved to organize a funeral procession of the papacy. He would attack Rome with the weapons that the Roman carnival supplied him, and would arrange a great procession. Whilst serious men were reading the epistle from heaven (the Gospel), which absolved them from the excommunication of its pretended vicar, the young and thoughtless were in great excitement; they dressed themselves in their houses in the strangest manner; they disguised themselves, some as priests, some as canons, and others as monks; they came out, met together, drew up in line, and soon began to march through the streets of the city. There were white friars, gray friars, and black friars, fat canons, and thin curates. One was begging, another chanting; here was one scourging himself, there another strutting solemnly along; here a man carrying a hair shirt, there a man, with a bottle. Some indulged in acts of outrageous buffoonery; others, the more completely to imitate the monks, went so far as to take liberties with the women who were looking on, and when some fat friar thus made any burlesque gesture, there was loud applause, and the crowd exclaimed: ‘That is not the worst they do.’ In truth the reality was more culpable than the burlesque. When they saw this tumultuous procession and heard the doleful chanting, mingled with noisy roars of laughter, every one said that popery was dying, and singing its De profundis, its burial anthem.

The priests took the jest in very bad part, and the procession was hardly over before they hurried, flushed with anger, to complain to the syndics of ‘the enmity raised against them by Baudichon and others.’ The syndics referred their complaint to the Episcopal council, and the latter severely reprimanded the offenders. But Mason-Neuve and his friends withdrew, fully convinced that the priests were in the wrong, and that the victory would ultimately be on their side. ^ff30

They were beginning in Geneva to estimate a papal excommunication at its proper value. No one knew more on this subject than Bonivard, and he instructed his best friends on this difficult text. Among the number was Francois Favre, a man of ardent character, prompt wit, and rather worldly manners, but a good citizen and determined huguenot. Favre was one day, on a famous occasion, to be at the head of Bonivard’s liberators. He went sometimes to the priory, where he often met Robert Vandel, a man of less decision than his two friends. Vandel, who still kept on good terms with the bishop, was at heart one of the most independent of men, and Bonivard had made him governor of the domain of St. Victor.

These Genevans and others continued the conversations that Bonivard had formerly had with Berthelier in the same room and at the same table. They spoke of Berne, of Geneva, of Switzerland, of the Reformation, and of excommunication. Bonivard found erelong a special opportunity of enlightening his two friends on the acts of the Romish priesthood.

There was no one in Geneva whom the papal party detested more than him. The ultramontanists could understand why lawyers and citizens opposed the clergy; but a prior!... His enemies, therefore, formed the project of seizing the estates of St. Victor, and of expelling Bonivard from the monastery. The huguenots, on hearing of this ardently espoused his cause, and the council gave him, for his protection (20th of January, 1528) six arquebuses and four pounds of gunpowder. These were hardly monastic weapons; but the impetuous Favre hastened to offer him his heart and his arm; and, to say the truth, Bonivard in case of need could have made very good use of an arquebuse. He had recourse, however, to other defenders; he resolved to go and plead his cause before the League. But this was not without danger, for the duke’s agents might seize him on the road, as he afterwards had the misfortune to know. Favre, ever ready to go where there was any risk to run, offered to accompany him to Berne. Vandel had to go as governor of St. Victor they set off Arriving at a village in the Pays de Vaud, the three huguenots dismounted and took a stroll while their horses were resting. Bonivard, as he was riding along, had noticed some large placards on the doors of the churches, and being curious to know what they were about, he went up to them, and immediately called his friends, Come here,’ he said; ‘here are some curious things — letters of excommunication;’ he was beginning to read them, when one of his companions cried out: ‘Stop! for as soon as you have read them, you will thereby be excommunicate!’ The worthy huguenot imagined that the best plan was to know nothing about such anathemas, and then to act as if the excommunication did not exist — which could not be done if they were read. Bonivard, a man of great good sense, profited by the opportunity to explain to his friends what these earthly excommunications were worth. ‘If you have done what is wrong,’ he told them, ‘God himself excommunicates you; but if you have acted rightly, the excommunication of priests can do you no harm. There is only one tribunal which has power over the conscience, and that is heaven. The pope and the devil hurt only those who are afraid of them. Do therefore what is right, and fear nothing. The bolts which they may hurl at you will be spent in the air.’ Then he added with a smile: ‘If the pope or the metropolitan of Vienne excommunicate you, pope Berthold of Berne will give you absolution.’ ^ff31 Bonivard’s words were repeated in Geneva, and the papal excommunications lost credit every day.

This became alarming: the Episcopal officers informed the bishop; but the latter, who was enjoying himself in his Burgundian benefices, put aside everything that might disturb his meals and his repose. It was not the same with the duke and his ministers. That prince was not content with coveting the prelate’s temporal power; looking upon La Baume as already dispossessed of his rights, he made himself bishop, nay almost pope, in his place. The cabinet of Turin thought that if the principles of civil liberty once combined with those of religious liberty, Geneva would attempt to reform Savoy by means of conversations, letters, books, and missionaries. Charles III. therefore sent a message to the council, which was read in the Two-Hundred on the 7th of February. ‘I hear,’ said the prince, ‘that the Lutheran sect is making way among you... Make haste to prevent the ravages of that pestilence, and, to that intent, send on the 17th two men empowered by you to hear some very important things concerning my authority in matters of faith.’

What would the Genevans answer? If a bishop is made prince, why should not a prince be made bishop? The confusion of the two provinces is a source of continual disturbance. Christianity cannot tolerate either Caesars who are popes, or popes who are Caesars; and yet ambition is always endeavoring to unite these two irreconcilable powers. The duke did not presume to abolish definitively the Episcopal power and confer it on himself; but he wished to take advantage of the bishop’s flight to acquire an influence which he would be able to retain when the Episcopal authority was restored. He spoke, therefore, like a Roman pontiff... of his authority in matters of faith.

‘Really,’ said the council, ‘we have had enough and too much even of one pope, and we do not care to have two — one at Rome and the other at our very gates.’ The citizens were so irritated at Charles’s singular claim, that they did not return an answer in the usual form. ‘We will not write to the duke,’ said the syndics; ‘we will delegate no one to him, seeing that we are not his subjects; but we will simply tell the bearer of this letter that we are going on very well, and that the duke, having no authority to correct us, ought to mind his own business.’ Such is the minute recorded in the council register for this day. As for La Baume, the poor prelate, who did not trouble himself much either about pope or Lutheranism, wrote the same day to the Genevans, that he permitted them ‘to eat milk-food during the coming Lent.’ This culinary permission was quite in his way, and it was the most important missive from the bishop at that time. ^ff32

When the episcopal council heard of the syndics’ answer, they were in great commotion. They thought it rude and unbecoming, and trembled lest Charles should confound them with these arrogant burgesses. They therefore sent M. de Veigy, one of the most eminent canons, to the duke, in order to pacify him. The reverend father set off, and while on the road, he feared at one moment Charles’s anger, and at another enjoyed in anticipation the courtesies which the ducal court could not fail to show him. But he had scarcely been presented to the duke, and made a profound bow, when Bishop du Bellay, standing at the left of his highness, and commissioned to be the interpreter of his sentiments, addressed him abruptly, and, calling him traitor and huguenot insulted him, just as De la Thoy might have done. But this abuse was nothing in comparison with Charles’s anger unable to restrain ‘himself, he burst out, and giving utterance to the terrible schemes he had formed against Geneva, declared he would reduce that impracticable city to ashes, and ended by saying: ‘If you do not come out of it, you will be burnt in it with all the rest.’ The poor canon endeavored to pacify his highness: ‘Ah, my lord,’ he said, ‘I shall not remain there all the canons now in the city are about to leave it!’ And yet De Veigy was fond of Geneva, and thought that to reside in Annecy would be terribly dull. Accordingly, on his return to the city, he forgot his terror and his promises, whereupon he received this short message from Charles III.: ‘Ordered, under pain of death, to quit Geneva in six days.’ — ‘He left on the 3d of March, and with great regret,’ adds Balard. ^ff33 Charles Wished to put the canons in a place of safety before he burnt the city.

CHAPTER 6

‘KNIGHTS OF THE SPOON LEAGUE AGAINST GENEVA AT THE CASTLE OF BURSINEL.

(MARCH, 1528.)

THE partisans of absolutism and the papacy rose up on every side against Geneva, as if the Reformation were already established there. It was not so, however. Although Geneva had come out of Romanism, it had not yet entered Reform it was still in those uncertain and barren places, that land of negations and disputes which lies between the two. A few persons only were beginning to see that, in order to separate really from the pope, it was necessary, as Haller and Zwingle said, to obey Jesus Christ. Bonivard, a keen critic, was indulging in his reflections, in his large armchair, at the priory of St. Victor, and carefully studying the singular aspect Geneva at that time presented. ‘A strange spectacle,’ he said; ‘everybody wishes to command, and no one will obey. From tyranny we have fallen into the opposite and worse vice of anarchy... There are as many tyrants as heads... which engenders confusion. Everybody wishes to make his own profit or private pleasure out of the common weal; profit tends to avarice; and pleasure consists in taking vengeance on him whom you hate. Men are killed, but they are not the real enemies of Geneva... If you wound a bear, he will not spring upon the man who wounded him, but will tear the first poles or the first tree in his way... And this, alas! is what they are doing among us. Having groaned under a tyrannical government, we have the love of license instead of the love of liberty. We must be apprentices before we can be masters, and break many strings before we can play upon the lute. The huguenots have driven out the tyrant, but have not driven out tyranny. It is not liberty to do whatever we desire, if we do not desire what is right. O pride! thou wilt be the ruin of General Pride has always envy for its follower; and when pride would mount too high, the old crone catches her by the tail and pulls her back, so that she falls and breaks her neck... The huguenot leagues are not sufficient; the Gospel must advance, in order that popery may recede.’ It is Bonivard himself who has transmitted these wise reflections. ^ff34

He was not the only person who entertained such thoughts. The affairs of the alliance often attracted Bernese to Geneva; and being convinced that the Reformation alone could save that city, they continued Ab Hofen’s work. Being admitted into private families, they spoke against human traditions and extolled the Scriptures. ‘God speaks to us of the Redeemer,’ they said, ‘and not of Lent.’ But the Friburgers, thrusting themselves into these evangelical conferences, exclaimed: ‘Obey the Church! If you separate from the Church, we will break off the alliance!’ ^ff35

The bishopers were with Friburg, the commoners with Berne. The latter were divided into three classes there were politicians, to whom religion was only a means of obtaining liberty; serious and peaceful men, who called for true piety (Bonivard mentions Boutelier as one of these); and, lastly, the enemies of the priests, who say the Reformation from a negative point of view, and regarded it essentially as a war against Roman superstitions. One day these sincere but impatient men said they could wait no longer and went out to St. Victor to invite the prior to put himself at their head. They rang at the gate of the monastery, and the janitor went and told Bonivard, who ordered them to be admitted: ‘We wish to put an end to all this papal ceremony,’ they told him; ‘we desire to drive out all its ministers, priests, and monks all that papistical rabble; and then we mean to invite the ministers of the Gospel, who will introduce a true christian reformation among us.’

The prior smiled as ‘he heard these words: ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, in a sarcastic tone, ‘I think your sentiments, very praiseworthy, and confess that all ecclesiastics’ (of whom I am one); have; great need to be reformed. But ought not those who wish to reform, others to begin by reforming themselves? If you love the Gospel, as you say you do, you will live according to the Gospel. But if you wish to reform us without reforming yourselves, it is evident that you are not moved by love for the Gospel, but by hatred against us. And why should you hate us! It is not because our manners are contrary to yours, but, because they are like them. Aristotle says in his Ethics,’ continued the learned prior, ‘and experience confirms the statement, that animals which eat off the same food naturally hate each other. Two horses do not agree at the same manger, nor two dogs over the same bone. It is the same with us. We are unchaste, and so are you. We are drunkards, and so are you. We are gamblers and blasphemers, and so are you. Why then should you be so opposed to us! We do not hinder you from indulging in your little pleasures; pray do the same by us. You desire to expel us, you say, and put Lutheran ministers in our place... Gentlemen, think well of what you are about you will not have had them two years before you will be sorry for it. These ministers will permit you to break the commandments of the pope, but they will forbid your breaking those of God. According to their doctrines, you must not gamble or indulge in debauchery, under severe penalty... Ah! how that would vex you!.. Therefore, gentlemen, you must do one of two things either leave us in our present condition; or, if you wish to reform us according to the Gospel, reform yourselves first.’

These remarks were not quite so reasonable as they appeared to be. It is the sick that have need of a physician, and as these ‘sons of Geneva’, wished to invite the ministers of the Gospel, in order to introduce a true christian reform, Bonivard should have encouraged them instead