Volume I Part 8 (2/2)
The Dominican friar stood forth at that moment the embodiment of the monastic spirit speaking defiance to the nascent reform. The church of the state, with its rich abbeys and priories, its glorious old cathedrals, and boundless possessions of lands and houses, was not to be resigned without a struggle so terrific as to shake the foundations of the throne itself. The germ of the Guises and the League, with Jacques Clement and Ravaillac, was already formed, and possessed a prodigious latent vitality.
[Sidenote: Briconnet's activity.]
Bishop Briconnet was himself active in promoting the evangelical work, preaching against the most flagrant abuses, and commending to the confidence of his flock the more eloquent preachers whom he had introduced. The incredible rumor even gained currency that the hot-headed prelate went through his diocese casting down the images and sparing no object of idolatrous wors.h.i.+p in the churches.[151] But, however improbable it may be that Briconnet ever engaged in any such iconoclastic demonstrations, it is a strong Roman Catholic partisan who has preserved the record of this significant warning given by the prelate to his flock, and elicited either by the consciousness of his own moral feebleness, or by a certain vague premonition of danger: ”Even should I, your bishop, change my speech and teaching, beware that you change not with me!”[152]
[Sidenote: Lefevre translates the New Testament.]
Under Briconnet's protection Jacques Lefevre a.s.sumed a task less restricted in its influence than preaching, in which he probably took a less active part than his coadjutors. The Bible was a closed book to the common people in France. The learned might familiarize themselves with its contents by a perusal of the Latin Vulgate; but readers acquainted with their mother tongue alone were reduced to the necessity of using a rude version wherein text and gloss were mingled in inextricable confusion, and the Scriptures were made to countenance the most absurd abuses.[153] The best furnished libraries rarely contained more than a few detached books of the Bible, and these intended for ornament rather than use.[154] Lefevre resolved, therefore, to apply himself to the translation of the Sacred Scriptures from the Latin Vulgate into the French language. In June, 1523, he published a version of the four gospels, and in the autumn of the same year he gave to the world the rest of the New Testament. Five years later he added a translation of the Old Testament. It was a magnificent undertaking, prompted by a fervent desire to promote the spiritual interests of his countrymen. In its execution, the inaccuracies incident to so novel an enterprise, and the comparative harshness of the style, can readily be forgiven. For, aside from its own merits, the version of Lefevre d'etaples formed the basis for the subsequent version of Robert Oliveta.n.u.s, itself the groundwork of many later translations.
[Sidenote: The translation eagerly bought.]
[Sidenote: Delight of Lefevre.]
Lefevre and his a.s.sociates had not erred in antic.i.p.ating remarkable results from the publication of the Scriptures in the language of the people. The copies of the New Testament no sooner left the press than they were eagerly bought. They penetrated into obscure hamlets to which no missionary of the ”new doctrines” could find access. By the wool-carders of Meaux the prize thus unexpectedly placed within reach was particularly valued. The liberality of Bishop Briconnet is said to have freely supplied copies to those who were too poor to afford the purchase-money. The prelate introduced the French Scriptures into the churches of Meaux, where the unparalleled innovation of reading the lessons in an intelligible tongue struck the people with amazement. ”You can scarcely imagine,” wrote the delighted Lefevre to a distant friend,[155] ”with what ardor G.o.d is moving the minds of the simple, in some places, to embrace His word since the books of the New Testament have been published in French, though you will justly lament that they have not been scattered more widely among the people. The attempt has been made to hinder the work, under cover of the authority of parliament; but our most generous king has become in this matter the defender of Christ's cause, declaring it to be his pleasure that his kingdom shall hear the word of G.o.d freely and without hinderance in the language which it understands. At present, throughout our entire diocese, on feast-days, and especially on Sunday, both the epistle and gospel are read to the people in the vernacular tongue, and the parish priest adds a word of exhortation to the epistle or gospel, or both, at his discretion.”
There did, indeed, seem to be amply sufficient ground for the ”exultation” expressed by the worthy Picard at the rapid progress of the Reformation throughout Europe and the flattering prospects offered in France itself.[156] Everything seemed for a time to promise success at Meaux. Bishop Briconnet received with delight the advice of the Swiss and German reformers. The letters of colampadius, from Basle, in particular so deeply impressed him, that he commissioned Gerard Roussel to read in the French language and explain the meaning of the Pauline Epistles every morning to a promiscuous gathering of persons of both s.e.xes, and chose out the most evangelical preachers to perform similar duty in all the more important places in his diocese.[157]
[Sidenote: Enmity of the Franciscans.]
[Sidenote: Weakness of Bishop Briconnet.]
But the bishop had excited the active enmity of a resolute and suspicious foe. In forbidding the Franciscan monks entrance to any pulpit within his jurisdiction, he had, even before the advent of Lefevre and the reformed teachers, incurred their violent animosity.[158] The new movement, while arousing their indignation, gave them the opportunity they coveted for invoking the power of the university and of parliament. At first the bishop was bold enough to denounce the doctors of the Sorbonne as Pharisees and false prophets,[159] while in his private correspondence he stigmatized the clergy as ”the estate _by the coldness of which all the others are frozen_,”[160] or even as ”_that which is the ruin of all the rest_.”[161] But, frightened by the incessant clamor and attacks of his enemies, he began gradually to waver, and presently lost all courage. In the end he yielded so far as to suffer to be published in his name official doc.u.ments which were intended to overturn from the foundation the very fabric he had been striving to rear. In one of these, a ”Synodal Decree” addressed to the faithful of his diocese, the bishop was made to condemn the books of Martin Luther, and to denounce Luther himself as one who was plotting the overthrow of ”the estate which _keeps all the rest in the path of duty_.”[162] Quite another description of the clergy this from either of the descriptions which he gave to Margaret of Angouleme! The other doc.u.ment was a letter to the clergy of his diocese, warning them against certain preachers ”brought in by himself to share his pastoral cares,” who, under cover of proclaiming the Gospel, had ”dared, in defiance of the evangelical truth, to preach that purgatory does not exist, and that, consequently, we must not pray for the dead, nor invoke the very holy Virgin Mary and the saints.”[163]
The precise time of Briconnet's pusillanimous defection, as marked by the publication of these pastoral letters, is involved in some obscurity; for a.s.suredly the date affixed to the transcripts that have come down to us conflicts too seriously with the well-known facts of history to be accepted as correct.[164]
Later Roman Catholic historians have a.s.serted that the act was a voluntary one; that Briconnet had never in reality sympathized with the religious views of reformers whom he had invited to Meaux simply because of his admiration for learning; that no sooner did he discover the heretical nature of their teachings than he removed them from the posts to which they had been a.s.signed; and that he spent the residue of his life in the vain endeavor to retrieve the fatal consequences of his mistake.[165] But this view is confirmed by nothing in the prelate's extant correspondence. Everywhere there is evidence that until his courage broke down, Briconnet was in full accord with the reformers.
His first step may possibly have been justified at the bar of conscience by the plausible suggestion that, since the anger of the Sorbonne had been directed specially against Meaux, the evangelical preachers could be more serviceable elsewhere. But, from the mere withdrawal of support to positive measures of repression, the transition was both natural and speedy.
[Sidenote: He is cited to appear before the Parliament.]
Unsatisfied by Bishop Briconnet's merely negative course, the Parliament of Paris at length cited him to appear and answer before a commission consisting of two of its own counsellors. The information thus obtained was next to be submitted to the judges delegated by the Pope, a tribunal of the inst.i.tution of which an account will be given in another chapter.[166] To this secret investigation Briconnet objected, and begged to be tried in open court by the entire body of parliament;[167]
but his pet.i.tion was rejected, and his examination proceeded before the inquisitorial commission. What measures were there taken to influence him is not known. To Martial Mazurier, lately an enthusiastic preacher of the ”Lutheran” doctrines, who had himself, through fear, receded from his advanced position, the doubtful honor is ascribed of having been prominent in exertions to overcome the prelate's lingering scruples.
However this may be, when Briconnet had given sufficient guarantees to satisfy the Sorbonne that no apprehension need be entertained of a repet.i.tion in Meaux of the dangerous experiment of the public instruction of the people in the Holy Scriptures, there was nothing to be gained by his condemnation. He was accordingly acquitted of all charge of heresy, although condemned to pay the sum of two hundred livres as the expense of bringing to trial the ”heretics” whom he had himself helped to make such.[168] Hereupon he is said to have returned to his diocese, and, having convened a synod, to have prohibited, as we have seen, the circulation of Luther's writings, reintroduced the ecclesiastical practices that had been condemned or discarded, and given to the persecution now set on foot his unequivocal sanction.[169]
[Sidenote: Dispersion of the reformed teachers.]
The teachers whom Briconnet had so cordially invited to a.s.sist him were compelled one by one to abandon Meaux. Among the earliest to leave was Farel.[170] His was no faint heart. If he gave up his activity in Brie, it was only to return to his native Dauphiny, where a young n.o.bleman, Anemond de Coct, and a preacher, Pierre de Sebeville, were among the leading men whose conversion was the fruit of his indefatigable exertions. After a visit to Guyenne, of which little is known, he pa.s.sed into German Switzerland, and labored successively in Basle, Strasbourg, and Montbeliard.[171]
[Sidenote: Annoyances of those who remain.]
Lefevre and Roussel were among the last to withdraw; but, beset with watchful enemies, they found their position neither safe nor comfortable. It was as difficult to maintain a semblance of friends.h.i.+p with an ecclesiastical system which they detested in their hearts, as to refuse their sympathy and support to the persecuted whose opinions they shared without possessing the courage necessary to suffer in attestation of the common faith. Busy informers at one time found evidence, more than warranting the suspicion that Roussel's ma.n.u.scripts had furnished the material of which scandalous placards defamatory of the Pope were framed.[172] A little later the proctor of the cathedral drew attention to the irregular conventicles held in the church itself, every Sunday and feast-day, after Roussel had preached. These ”combers, carders, and other persons of the same stamp, unlettered folk,”[173] brought with them books containing the Epistles of St. Paul, the Gospels, and the Psalms, in flagrant disregard of the prohibitions they had heard respecting the discussion of such topics as faith, the sacraments, the privileges of Rome, and the use of pictures in the churches. It was made the occasion of ”charitable rebuke” and then of formal complaint against Roussel by his fellow canons, that he failed to repeat the angelic salutation, according to the orthodox practice, after the exordium of his sermon. To the combined exhortations and threats of his accusers Roussel replied in the chapter that, if he had done wrong, it belonged to the bishop to reprove him, but that as to himself he esteemed the repet.i.tion of the Lord's Prayer quite as efficacious as the recital of the Ave Maria.[174]
[Sidenote: Lefevre and Roussel take refuge in Strasbourg.]
[Sidenote: Excessive caution of Roussel.]
At last danger thickened, and Lefevre and Roussel found themselves forced to leave Meaux (October, 1525), and sought refuge within the hospitable walls of Strasbourg; for the persecuting measures adopted by the regent, Louise de Savoie, and the Parliament of Paris, during the king's captivity, as we shall shortly see, had placed the lives of even such prudent reformers in peril.[175] In the free city on the banks of the Rhine, Lefevre met his pupil Farel, and in the midst of cordial greetings was reminded by him that the day of ”renovation” which he had long since predicted and desired had really come.[176] But the contrast between the two men had become sharply drawn. The fearless athlete, soon to measure his strength with no puny antagonists at Neufchatel, Lausanne, Geneva, and so many other places in French Switzerland, whose course was to be a succession of rough encounters, discovered that the master from whom he had received the impulse that shaped his entire life, shrank from sundering the last link binding him to the Roman church. And Gerard Roussel was even more timid. The elegant preacher, with fair prospects of preferment, could not bring himself openly to espouse the quarrel of oppressed truth. A mysticism investing his entire belief, and perverting his moral perceptions, led him to imagine that the heart might be kept pure in the midst of many external corruptions, and that the enlightened could wors.h.i.+p the Almighty acceptably in spite of superst.i.tious observances, which, while countenancing by apparent acquiescence, they rejected in their hearts. The excellence of the reformation already inaugurated at Strasbourg made a deep and very favorable impression upon Roussel. He wrote to Bishop Briconnet that the daily preaching of a pure doctrine, ”without dross or leaven of the Pharisees,”[177] the crowds of attentive hearers, the schools presided over by men as ill.u.s.trious for piety as for letters, and the careful provision for the poor, would delight his correspondent were he to see them. He did not dissemble his own great satisfaction that the monasteries had been changed into educational establishments, the pictures taken away from the churches, and every altar removed except one, on which the communion was celebrated, as nearly as possible, according to the plan of its inst.i.tution.[178] At the same time he renounced none of his excessive caution. His words were still those he had uttered when urged, a twelvemonth earlier, by Farel, colampadius, and Zwingle, to strike out boldly and by an open dispute on religion compel the attention of the thoughtless world. ”The flesh is weak! As my friends, Lefevre and others, urge, the convenient season has not yet come, the Gospel has not yet been scattered sufficiently far and wide. We must not a.s.sume the Lord's prerogative for sending laborers into the harvest, but leave the work to Him whose it is, and who can easily raise up a far richer harvest than that for whose safety we are solicitous!”[179]
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