history, though a separate work, may be considered as a second series of the History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century. Two elements are found combined in this narrative, more intimately than in the events detailed in the preceding work. These two elements are political liberty and evangelical liberty.
The author, when writing this work, often thought of the United States of America, in whose existence this two-fold element seemed more particularly embodied. When going over the struggles which were encountered for liberty at Geneva, when tracing the principles which, though so true, were at that period so little understood in Europe, but which were even then loudly proclaimed in this small State; when recounting the instances of unalterable attachment to right, to national institutions and to law, of which the Genevese gave so many proofs, and the heroic devotion with which the citizens made every sacrifice, even that of life itself, for the independence of their country; the author felt that some pious, but unenlightened men, might perhaps say that such subjects ought not to be treated at length in these volumes. But he comforted himself with the thought, that Christian men in different countries, friends of independence and of truth, would understand the intimate union that exists between liberty and the Gospel.
The author asks himself whether this work will be received with any interest in America, or whether the anxieties that now pre-occupy the minds of the citizens, are not too absorbing to leave room for sympathy with the story of the olden times. He, however, hopes that the history of the struggles of a heroic republic in past ages, may prove some relief to the anxieties of the present.
If any thing in the publication of his former work was calculated to rejoice the heart of the author, it is the cordial manner in which its appearance was hailed by the Anglo-Saxon race in general, and especially in the United States. Letters received from the solitary shores of some great inland lake or from some distant region of the great continent of America, have given him the most precious reward that an author can have — the assurance that, by the blessing of God, his writings have not only excited some passing interest in the breasts of his readers, but that they have been the means by which some souls have received the light which lighteneth unto the perfect day.
There is a circumstance connected with the present publication which has also given satisfaction to the author; it is made with his consent and concurrence, and in consequence of an arrangement with the editor. A foreign author can not find in the United States the same advantages that he meets with in England, in France, and in other parts of the Continent, where all literary property is protected by law. It is, nevertheless, only justice to recognize (even where the law does not), that literary works are the property of their authors, acquired by an intellectual labor more toilsome than that of the husbandman. “By the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread,” is applicable to a writer as well as to the sons of toil. It is a satisfaction for an author to know that his writings will be transmitted to a distant nation by virtue of an honorable commercial arrangement This the author has found in his dealings with Messrs. Carter & Brothers; and he puts it to the honor of the American nation, that these editions published by the Messrs. Carter, from which alone he derives some advantage, will be purchased by the citizens of the United States, and that they will not countenance the pirated editions that other booksellers may issue, without his consent.
MERLE D’AUBIGNE.
PREFACE
AT the conclusion of the preface to the first volume of the History of the Reformation, the author wrote, ‘This work will consist of four volumes, or at the most five, which will appear successively.’ These five volumes have appeared. In them are described the heroic times of Luther, and the effects produced in Germany and other countries by the characteristic doctrine of that reformer — justification by faith. They present a picture of that great epoch which contained in the germ the revival of christianity in the last three centuries. The author has thus completed the task he had assigned himself; but there still remained another.
The times of Luther were followed by those of Calvin. He, like his great predecessor, undertook to search the Scriptures, and in them he found the same truth and the same life; but a different character distinguishes his work.
The renovation of the individual, of the Church, and of the human race, is his theme. If the Holy Ghost kindles the lamp of truth in man, it is (according to Calvin) ‘to the end that the entire man should be transformed.’ — ‘In the kingdom of Christ,’ he says, ‘it is only the new man that flourishes and has any vigor, and whom we ought to take into account.’ This renovation is, at the same time, an enfranchisement; and we might assign, as a motto to the reformation accomplished by Calvin, as well as to apostolical christianity itself, these words of Jesus Christ: The truth shall make you free. ( <430832> John 8:32.)
When the gods of the nations fell, when the Father which is in heaven manifested Himself to the world in the Gospel, adopting as His children those who received into their hearts the glad tidings of reconciliation with God, all these men became brethren, and this fraternity created liberty. From that time a mighty transformation went on gradually, in individuals, in families, and in society itself. Slavery disappeared, without wars or revolutions.
Unhappily, the sun which had for some time gladdened the eyes of the people, became obscured; the liberty of the children of God was lost; new human ordinances appeared to bind men’s consciences and chill their hearts. The reformation of the sixteenth century restored to the human race what the middle ages had stolen from them; it delivered them from the traditions, laws, and despotism of the papacy; it put an end to the minority and tutelage in which Rome claimed to keep mankind for ever; and by calling upon man to establish his faith not on the word of a priest, but on the infallible Word of God, and by announcing to every one free access to the Father through the new and saving way — Christ Jesus, it proclaimed and brought about the hour of christian manhood.
An explanation is, however, necessary. There are philosophers in our days who regard Christ as simply the apostle of political liberty. These men should learn that, if they desire liberty outwardly, they must first possess it inwardly. To hope to enjoy the first without the second is to run after a chimera.
The greatest and most dangerous of despotisms is that beneath which the depraved inclination of human nature, the deadly influence of the world, namely, sin, miserably subjects the human conscience. There are, no doubt, many countries, especially among those which the sun of christianity has not yet illumined, that are without civil liberty, and that groan under the arbitrary rule of powerful masters. But, in order to become free outwardly, men must first succeed in being free inwardly. In the human heart there is a vast country to be delivered from slavery — abysses which man cannot cross alone, heights he cannot climb unaided, fortresses he cannot take, armies he cannot put to flight. In order to conquer in this moral battle, man must unite with One stronger than himself — with the Son of God.
If there is any one, in the present state of society, who is fatigued with the struggle and grieved at finding himself always overcome by evil, and who desires to breathe the light pure air of the upper regions of liberty — let him come to the Gospel; let him seek for union with the Savior, and in his Holy Spirit he will find a power by which he will be able to gain the greatest of victories.
We are aware that there are men, and good men too, who are frightened at the word ‘liberty;’ but these estimable persons are quite wrong. Christ is a deliverer. The Son, He said; shall make you free. Would they wish to change Him into a tyrant?
There are also, as we well know, some intelligent men, but enemies of the Gospel, who, seeing a long and lamentable procession of despotic acts pass before them in the history of the Church, place them unceremoniously to the account of christianity. Let them undeceive themselves: the oppression that revolts them may be pagan, jewish, papal, or worldly... but it is not christian. Whenever christianity reappears in the world, with its spirit, faith, and primitive life, it brings men deliverance and peace.
The liberty which the Truth brings is not for individuals only: it affects the whole of society. Calvin’s work of renovation, in particular, which was doubtless first of all an internal work, was afterwards destined to exercise a great influence over nations. Luther transformed princes into heroes of the faith, and we have described with admiration their triumphs at Augsburg and elsewhere. The reformation of Calvin was addressed particularly to the people, among whom it raised up martyrs until the time came when it was to send forth the spiritual conquerors of the world. For three centuries it has been producing, in the social condition of the nations that have received it, transformations unknown to former times. And still at this very day, and now perhaps more than ever, it imparts to the men who accept it a spirit of power which makes them chosen instruments, fitted to propagate truth, morality, and civilisation to the ends of the earth.
The idea of the present work is not a new one: it dates more than forty years back. A writer, from whom the author differs on important points, but whose name is dear to all who know the simple beauty of his character, and have read with care his works on the History of the Church and the History of Dogmas, which have placed him in the foremost rank among the ecclesiastical historians of our day — the learned Neander — speaking with the author at Berlin in 1818, pressed him to undertake a History of the Reformation of Calvin. The author answered that he desired first to describe that of Luther; but that he intended to sketch successively two pictures so similar and yet so different.
The History of the Reformation in Europe in the time of Calvin naturally begins with Geneva.
The Reformation of Geneva opens with the fall of a bishop-prince. This is its characteristic; and if we passed over in silence the heroic struggles which led to his fall, we should expose ourselves to just reproaches on the part of enlightened men.
It is possible that this event, which we are called upon to describe (the end of an ecclesiastical state), may give rise to comparisons with the present times; but we have not gone out of our way for them. The great question, which occupies Europe at this moment, also occupied Geneva at the beginning of the sixteenth century. But that portion of our history was written before these late exciting years, during which the important and complex question of the maintenance or the fall of the temporal power of the popes has come before, and is continually coming before, sovereigns and their people. The historian, while relating the facts of the sixteenth century, had no other prepossessions than those which the story itself called up.
These prepossessions were quite natural. Descended from the huguenots of France, whom persecution drove from their country in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the author had become attached to that hospitable city which received his forefathers, and in which they found a new home. The huguenots of Geneva captivated his attention. The decision, the sacrifices, the perseverance, and the heroism, with which the Genevans defended their threatened liberty, moved him profoundly. The independence of a city, acquired by so much courage and by so many privations, perils, and sufferings, is, without doubt, a sacred thing in the eyes of all; and no one should attempt to rob her of it. It may be that this history contains lessons for the people, of which he did not always think as he was writing it. May he be permitted to point out one?
The political emancipation of Geneva differs from many modern revolutions in the fact that we find admirably combined therein the two elements which make the movements of nations salutary; that is to say, order and liberty. Nations have been seen in our days rising in the name of liberty, and entirely forgetting right. It was not so in Geneva. For some time the Genevans persevered in defending the established order of things; and it was only when they had seen, during a long course of years, their prince-bishops leaguing themselves with the enemies of the state, conniving at usurpations, and indulging in acts contrary to the charters of their ancestors, that they accepted the divorce, and substituted a new state of things for the old one, or rather returned to an antecedent state. We find them always quoting the ancient libertates, franchesioe, immunitates, usus, consuetudines civitatis Gebennensis, first digested into a code in 1387, while their origin is stated in the document itself to be of much greater antiquity. The author (as will be seen) is a friend of liberty; but justice, morality, and order are, in his opinion, quite as necessary to the prosperity of nations. On that point he agrees with that distinguished writer on modern civilization, M. Guizot, though he may differ from him on others.
In writing this history we have had recourse to the original documents, and in particular to some important manuscripts; the manuscript registers of the Council of Geneva, the manuscript histories of Syndic Roset and Syndic Gautier, the manuscript of the Mamelus (Mamelukes), and many letters and remarkable papers preserved in the Archives of Geneva. We have also studied in the library of Berne some manuscripts of which historians have hitherto made little or no use; a few of these have been indicated in the notes, others will be mentioned hereafter. Besides these original sources, we have profited by writings and documents of great interest belonging to the sixteenth century, and recently published by learned Genevese archaeologists, particularly by MM. Galiffe, Grenus, Revillod, E. Mallet, Chaponiere, and Fick. We have also made great use of the memoirs of the Society of History and Archaeology of Geneva.
With regard to France, the author has consulted various documents of the sixteenth century, little or altogether unknown, especially in what concerns the relations of the French government with the German protestants. He has profited also by several manuscripts, and by their means has been able to learn a few facts connected with the early part of Calvin’s life, which have not hitherto been published. These facts are partly derived from the Latin letters of the reformer, which have not yet been printed either in French or Latin, and which are contained in the excellent collection which Dr. Jules Bonnet intends giving to the world, if such a work should receive from the Christian public the encouragement which the labor, disinterestedness, and zeal of its learned editor deserve.
The author having habitual recourse to the French documents of the sixteenth century, has often introduced their most characteristic passages into his text. The work of the historian is neither a work of the imagination, like that of the poet, nor a mere conversation about times gone by, as some writers of our day appear to imagine. History is a faithful description of past events; and when the historian can relate them by making use of the language of those who took part in them, he is more certain of describing them just as they were.
But the reproduction of contemporary documents is not the only business of the historian. He must do more than exhume from the sepulcher in which they are sleeping the relics of men and things of times past, that he may exhibit them in the light of day. We value highly such a work and those who perform it, for it is a necessary one; and yet we do not think it sufficient. Dry bones do not faithfully represent the men of other days. They did not live as skeletons, but as beings full of life and activity. The historian is not simply a resurrectionist: he needs — strange but necessary ambition — a power that can restore the dead to life.
Certain modern historians have successfully accomplished this task. The author, unable to follow them, and compelled to present his readers with a simple and unassuming chronicle, feels bound to express his admiration for those who have thus been able to revive the buried past. He firmly believes that, if a history should have truth, it should also have life. The events of past times did not resemble, in the days when they occurred, those grand museums of Rome, Naples, Paris, and London, in whose galleries we behold long rows of marble statues, mummies, and tombs. There were then living beings who thought, felt, spoke, acted, and struggled. The picture, whatever history may be able to do, will always have less of life than the reality.
When an historian comes across a speech of one of the actors in the great drama of human affairs, he ought to lay hold of it, as if it were a pearl, and weave it into his tapestry, in order to relieve the duller colors and give more solidity and brilliancy. Whether the speech be met with in the letters or writings of the actor himself, or in those of the chroniclers, is a matter of no importance: he should take it wherever he finds it. The history which exhibits men thinking, feeling, and acting as they did in their lifetime, is of far higher value than those purely intellectual compositions in which the actors are deprived of speech and even of life.
The author, having given his opinion in favor of this better and higher historical method, is compelled to express a regret:
Le precepte est aise, mais l’art est difficile.
And as he looks at his work, he has to repeat with sorrow the Confession of the poet of antiquity: Deteriora sequor!
This work is not a biography of Calvin, as some may imagine. The name of that great reformer appears, indeed, on the title-page, and we shall feel a pleasure, whenever the opportunity occurs, in endeavoring to restore the true colors to that figure so strangely misunderstood in our days. We known that, in so doing, we shall shock certain deeply-rooted prejudices, and shall offend those who accept without examination, in this respect, the fables of Romish writers. Tacitus indeed assures us that malignity has a false show of liberty: Malignitati falsa species libertatis inest; that history is listened to with more favor when she slanders and disparages: Obtrectatio et livor pronis auribus accipiuntur. But what historian could entertain the culpable ambition of pleasing at the expense of truth? Moreover, we believe that, if our age still labors under great errors with respect to many men and things, it is more competent than those which went before, to hear the truth, to examine, appreciate, and accept it.
We repeat, however, that it is not a history of Calvin, but of the reformation in Europe in the time of that reformer, which we desire to narrate. Other volumes are already far advanced, and we hope to publish two more in the ensuing year. But may we be permitted, in conclusion, to transcribe here a passage of Holy Scripture that has often occurred to our mind in executing a new work? It is this:
Ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It
is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth
away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live and
do this or that. ( <590414> James 4:14, 15.)
Eaux Vives, Geneva.
CONTENTS
OF THE FIRST VOLUME
BOOK 1
GENEVA AND THE FIRST HUGUENOTS
CHAPTER 1
THE REFORMATION AND MODERN LIBERTY
Ancient Times
Three Movements in Geneva — Importance of the Political Element — Causes of this Importance — Liberty in Protestant Nations — Influence of Calvin — Low Countries, Scotland, France, England, United States — Liberty and Licence — The Sixteenth Century — Servetus and Calvin — The Study of great things in small — Three Sources of Modern Liberty: Roman, Germanic, Christian — Three Strata of the Soil
CHAPTER 2
FIRST USURPATIONS AND FIRST STRUGGLES
Middle ages
Three Powers opposed to the Genevan Liberties — The Counts of Geneva — The Bishop-princes — Danger of the Temporal Power of Bishops — The Dukes of Savoy — They covet Geneva — Peter of Savoy gets possession of the Castle — His Successes and Failures — Amadeus V. seizes the second Castle — Makes himself Vidame — Confirms the Liberties of Geneva — Amadeus VIII. begs Geneva of the Pope — The Pope deprives Geneva of the Election of its Bishop —
A Duke and Pope makes himself Bishop — Struggle between a Son
and a Mother — Irregularities of Philip Lackland — The Father runs
away from the Son — Stratagem of the Mother to save her Treasures
— The Son appears before the Father — Singular Visit — Fair of Geneva transferred to Lyons — A Reforming Bishop at Geneva — Savoy prepares to strike a final Blow — God breathes over Men — Renovating Principle in Geneva
CHAPTER 3
A BISHOP SENT BY THE POPE TO ROB GENEVA OF ITS INDEPENDENCE
(1553.)
Death of the Bishop, Agitation of the People — Talk of the Citizens
- —
- De Bonmont chosen Bishop by popular Acclamation — The Duke and the Bastard of Savoy — Agreement between these Princes — Union with Savoy desired by the Pope — The Bargain concluded at Rome — The Swiss are deceived — Murmurs of the Genevans — The Servile Party yields, the Free Men protest — Entrance of the Bishop-prince into Geneva — He takes the Oath in order to break it — Tampers with Berthelier and De Benmont — Balls and Banquets to corrupt the Youth — Savoyards at Geneva
- —
- A Young Rake — Immorality
CHAPTER 4
OPPOSITION TO THE DESIGNS OF THE DUKE! THE POPE, AND THE BISHOP
(1513-1515.)
Complaints of the Licentiousness of the Priests — Corruption in the Convents — Unavailing Representations of the Magistrates —
Arrival of Bonivard at Geneva — His Wit and Good-humor — Death of his Uncle; the Culverins — Besancon Hugues appears — Character of Charles III — Marriage of Julian and Philiberta — A Bull gives Geneva to Savoy — Indignation and Protest of the Citizens — Sadness in Geneva — Contrary Decision of the Cardinals — Charles’s new Scheme
CHAPTER 5
BERTHELLER AND THE YOUTH OF GENEVA AROUSED BY THE BISHOP’S VIOLENCE
(1515-1517.)
Vandel and his four Sons — The Bishop kidnaps the Father — Emotion of the Sons and of the People — Berthelier tears up his Chatelain’s Commission — Address to the Bishop, who runs away
— Miracles of a Monk — Fetes and Debauchery — Berthelier’s School of Liberty — Sarcasms and Redress of Wrongs — No Liberty without Morality
CHAPTER 6
THE OPPOSING PARTIES PREPARE FOR BATTLE
(1516-1517.)
A Thief pardoned by the Bishops — The Duke’s Anger — The Ducal Envoys sup at St. Victor’s — La Val d’Isere tries to gain Bonivard, and fails — The Envoys and the Bishop take to flight — The Duke and the Bishop plot together — Bonivard and Berthelier combine — Characters of Bonivard, Berthelier, and Calvin — A gloomy Omen
CHAPTER 7
ASSEMBLY, AGITATION, AND JOKE OF THE PATRIOTS
(1516-1517.)
A few Patriots meet together — Assembly at the Molard — The Oath of the Patriots — Supper at Mugnier’s and the Momon — Bonivard’s Witticism — Death of Messire Gros’ Mule — Berthelier proposes a Practical Joke — The Mule’s Skin put Up to Auction — The Duke comes to Geneva — Seyssel tries to divide the Genevans
— Plot of the Duke and the Bishop
Index
