Volume I Part 9 (1/2)
Such were the paltry evasions of cowardly souls, to excuse themselves for the neglect of admitted duty. We cannot wonder at the burning words of condemnation which this pusillanimity called forth from the pen of brave Pierre Toussain. ”I have spoken to Lefevre and Roussel,” he wrote some months later, ”but certainly Lefevre has not a particle of courage.
May G.o.d confirm and strengthen him! Let them be as wise as they please, let them wait, procrastinate, and dissemble; the Gospel will never be preached without the _cross_! When I see these things, when I see the mind of the king, the mind of the d.u.c.h.ess [Margaret of Angouleme] as favorable as possible to the advancement of the Gospel of Christ, and those who ought to forward this matter, according to the grace given them, obstructing their design, I cannot refrain from tears. They say, indeed: 'It is not yet time, the hour has not come!' And yet we have here no day or hour. _What would not you do had you the Emperor and Ferdinand favoring your attempts?_ Entreat G.o.d, therefore, in behalf of France, that she may at length be worthy of His word.”[180]
The remainder of the task imposed on the weak Bishop of Meaux and his new allies, the monks of St. Francis, proved a more difficult undertaking. The shepherds had been dispersed, but the flock refused to forsake the fold. From the nouris.h.i.+ng food they had discovered in the Word of G.o.d, they could not be induced to return to the husks offered to them in meaningless ceremonies, celebrated in an unknown tongue by men of impure lives. The Gospels in French remained more attractive than the legendary, even after the bishop had abandoned the champions.h.i.+p of the incipient reformation. Briconnet's own expressed wish was granted: if he had ”changed his speech and teaching,” the common people, at least, had not changed with him.
[Sidenote: The wool-carder, Jean Leclerc, tears down a papal bull.]
[Sidenote: His barbarous sentence.]
Among the first fruits of the Reformation in Meaux was a wool-carder, Jean Leclerc, into whose hands had fallen one of Lefevre's French Testaments. He was a man of strong convictions and invincible resolution. A bull, issued by Clement the Seventh in connection with the approaching jubilee, had been posted on the doors of the cathedral (December, 1524). It offered indulgence, and enjoined prayers, fasting, and partaking of the Communion, in order to obtain from heaven the restoration of peace between princes of Christendom. Leclerc secretly tore the bull down, subst.i.tuting for it a placard in which the Roman pontiff figured as veritable Antichrist. Diligent search was at once inst.i.tuted for the perpetrator of this offence, and for the author of the subsequent mutilation of the prayers to the Virgin hung up in various parts of the same edifice. A truculent order was also issued in the bishop's name, threatening all persons that might conceal their knowledge of the culprits with public excommunication, every Sunday and feast-day, ”with ringing of bells and with candles lighted and then extinguished and thrown upon the earth, _in token of eternal malediction_.”[181] Leclerc was discovered, and taken to Paris for trial. The barbarous sentence of parliament was, that he be whipped in Paris by the common executioner on three successive days, then transferred to Meaux to receive the like punishment, and finally branded on the forehead with a red-hot iron, before being banished forever from the kingdom.[182]
The cruel prescription was followed out to the letter (March, 1525). A superst.i.tious mult.i.tude flocked together to see and gloat over the condign punishment of a heretic, and gave no word of encouragement and support. But, as the iron was leaving on Leclerc's brow the ignominious imprint of the _fleur-de-lis_,[183] a single voice suddenly broke in upon the silence. It was that of his aged mother, who, after an involuntary cry of anguish, quickly recovered herself and shouted, ”Hail Jesus Christ and his standard-bearers!”[184] Although many heard her words, so deep was the impression, that no attempt was made to lay hands upon her.[185]
[Sidenote: He is burned alive at Metz.]
From Meaux, Leclerc, forced to leave his home, retired first to Rosoy, and thence to Metz.[186] Here, while supporting himself by working at his humble trade, he lost none of his missionary spirit. Not content with communicating a knowledge of the doctrines of the Reformation to all with whom he conversed, his impatient zeal led him to a new and startling protest against the prevalent, and, in his view, idolatrous wors.h.i.+p of images. Learning that on a certain day a solemn procession was to be made to a shrine situated a few miles out of the city gates, he went to the spot under cover of night, and hurled the sacred images from their places. On the morrow the horrified wors.h.i.+ppers found the objects of their devotion prostrated and mutilated, and their rage knew no bounds. It was not long before the wool-carder was apprehended. His religious sentiments were no secret, and he had been seen returning from the scene of his nocturnal exploit. He promptly acknowledged his guilt, and was rescued from the infuriated populace only to undergo a more terrible doom at the hands of the public executioner (July 22, 1525).
His right hand was cut off at the wrist, his arms, his nose, his breast were cruelly torn with pincers; but no cry of anguish escaped the lips of Leclerc. The sentence provided still further that, before his body should be consigned to the flames, his head be encircled with a red-hot band of iron. As the fervent metal slowly ate its way toward his very brain, the bystanders with amazement heard the dying man calmly repeat the words of Holy Writ: ”Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands.” He had not completed the Psalmist's terrific denunciation of the crime and folly of image-wors.h.i.+p when his voice was stifled by the fire and smoke of the pyre into which his impatient tormentors had hastily thrown him. If not actually the first martyr of the French Reformation, as has commonly been supposed, Jean Leclerc deserves, at least, to rank among the most constant and unswerving of its early apostles.[187]
[Sidenote: Jacques Pauvan.]
The poor wool-carder of Meaux was succeeded by more ill.u.s.trious victims.
One was of the number of the teachers who had been attracted to Bishop Briconnet's diocese by the prospect of contributing to the progress of a purer doctrine. Jacques Pauvan[188] was a studious youth who had come from Boulogne, in Picardy, to perfect his education in the university, and had subsequently abandoned a career in which he bade fair to obtain distinction, in order to a.s.sist his admired teacher, Lefevre, at Meaux.
He was an outspoken man, and disguised his opinions on no point of the prevailing controversy. He a.s.serted that purgatory had no existence, and that G.o.d had no vicar. He repudiated excessive reliance on the doctors of the church. He indignantly rejected the customary salutation to the Virgin Mary, ”Hail Queen, Mother of mercy!” He denied the propriety of offering candles to the saints. He maintained that baptism was only a sign, that holy water was _nothing_, that papal bulls and indulgences were an imposture of the devil, and that the ma.s.s was not only of no avail for the remission of sins, but utterly unprofitable to the hearer, while the Word of G.o.d was all-sufficient.[189]
Pauvan was put under arrest, and his theses, together with the defence of their contents which one Matthieu Saunier was so bold as to write, were submitted to the Sorbonne. Its condemnation was not long withheld.
”A work,” said the Paris theologians, ”containing propositions extracted and compiled from the pernicious errors of the Waldenses, Wickliffites, Bohemians, and Lutherans, being impious, scandalous, schismatic, and wholly alien from the Christian doctrine, ought publicly to be consigned to the flames in the diocese of Meaux, whence it emanated. And Jacques Pauvan and Matthieu Saunier should, by all judicial means, be compelled to make a public recantation.”[190]
Even strong men have their moments of weakness. Pauvan was no exception to the rule. Besides the terrors of the stake, the persuasions of Martial Mazurier came in to shake his constancy. This latter, a doctor of theology, had at one time been so carried away with the desire of innovation as to hurl down a statue of their patron saint standing at the door of the monastery of the Franciscans. He had now, as we have already seen, become the favorite instrument in effecting abjurations similar to his own. His suggestions prevailed over Pauvan's convictions.[191] The young scholar consented to obey the Sorbonne's demand. The faculty's judgment had been p.r.o.nounced on the ninth of December, 1525; a fortnight later, on the morrow of Christmas day--a favorite time for striking displays of this kind--Pauvan publicly retracted his ”errors,” and made the usual ”amende honorable,” clad only in a s.h.i.+rt, and holding a lighted taper in his hand.[192]
[Sidenote: He is burned on the Place de Greve.]
If Pauvan's submission secured him any peace, it was a short-lived peace. Tortured by conscience, he soon betrayed his mental anguish by sighs and groans. Again he was drawn from the prison, where he had been confined since his abjuration,[193] and subjected to new interrogatories. With the opportunity to vindicate his convictions, his courage and cheerfulness returned. As a relapsed heretic, no fate could be in store for him but death at the stake, and this he courageously met on the _Place de Greve_.[194] But the holocaust was inauspicious for those who with this victim hoped to annihilate the ”new doctrines.”
Before mounting the huge pyre heaped up to receive him, Pauvan was thoughtlessly permitted to speak; and so persuasive were his words that it was an enemy's exclamation that ”it had been better to have cost the church a million of gold, than that Pauvan had been suffered to speak to the people.”[195]
[Sidenote: The hermit of Livry.]
Scarcely more encouraging to the advocates of persecution was the scene in the area in front of Notre-Dame de Paris, when, at the sound of the great cathedral bell, an immense crowd was gathered to witness the execution of an obscure person, known to us only as ”the hermit of Livry”--a hamlet on the road to Meaux. With such unshaken fort.i.tude did he encounter the flames, that the astonished spectators were confidently a.s.sured by their spiritual advisers that he was one of the d.a.m.ned who was being led to the fires of h.e.l.l.[196]
[Sidenote: Bishop Briconnet becomes the jailer of the ”Lutherans.”]
Where less rigor was deemed necessary, the penalty for having embraced the reformed tenets was reduced to imprisonment for a term of years, often with bread and water for the only food and drink. The place of confinement was sometimes a monastery, at other times the ”_prisons of Monseigneur the Bishop of Meaux_.”[197] Thus Briconnet enjoyed the rare and exquisite privilege of acting as jailer of unfortunates instructed by himself in the doctrines for the profession of which they now suffered! Meantime their companions having escaped detection, although deprived of the advantage of public wors.h.i.+p, continued for years to a.s.semble for mutual encouragement and edification, as they had opportunity, in private houses, in retired valleys or caverns, or in thickets and woods. Their minister was that person of their own number who was seen to be the best versed in the Holy Scriptures. After he had discharged his functions in the humble service, by a simple address of instruction or exhortation, the entire company with one voice supplicated the Almighty for His blessing, and returned to their homes with fervent hopes for the speedy conversion of France to the Gospel.[198] Thus matters stood for about a score of years, until a fresh attempt was made to const.i.tute a reformed church at Meaux, the signal, as will appear in the sequel, for a fresh storm of persecution.
[Sidenote: Lefevre's subsequent history.]
A few words here seem necessary respecting the subsequent fortunes of the venerable teacher whose name at this point fades from the history of the French Reformation. The action of parliament (August 28, 1525), in condemning, at the instigation of the syndic of the theological faculty, nine propositions extracted from his commentary on the Gospels, and in forbidding the circulation of his translation of the Holy Scriptures, had given Lefevre d'etaples due warning of danger. We have already seen that a few weeks later (October, 1525) he had taken refuge in Strasbourg under the pseudonym of Antonius Peregrinus. But the _incognito_ of so distinguished a stranger could not be long maintained, and before many days the very boys in the streets knew him by his true name.[199]
Meantime the Sorbonne, in his absence, proceeded to censure a large number of propositions drawn from another of Lefevre's works. Shortly after a letter was received from Francis the First, written in his captivity at Madrid, and enjoining the court to suspend its vexatious persecution of a man ”of such great and good renown, and of so holy a life,” until the king's return. The refractory judges, however, neglected to obey the order, and continued the proceedings inst.i.tuted against Lefevre.[200]
[Sidenote: Lefevre and the Nuncio Aleander.]
When, however, Francis succeeded in regaining his liberty, a year later, he not only recalled Lefevre and his companion, Roussel, from exile, but conferred upon the former the honorable appointment of tutor to his two daughters and his third and favorite son, subsequently known as Charles, Duke of Orleans.[201] This post, while it enabled him to continue the prosecution of his biblical studies, also gave him the opportunity of instilling into the minds of his pupils some views favorable to the Reformation.[202] A little later Margaret of Angouleme secured for Lefevre the position of librarian of the royal collection of books at Blois; but, as even here he was subjected to much annoyance from his enemies, Margaret, now Queen of Navarre, sought and obtained from her brother permission to take the old scholar with her to Nerac, in Gascony.[203] Here, in the ordinary residence of his patron, and treated by the King of Navarre with marked consideration, Lefevre d'etaples was at last safe from molestation. The papal party did not, indeed, despair of gaining him over. The Nuncio Aleander, in a singular letter exhumed not long since from the Vatican records, expressed himself strongly in favor of putting forth the effort. Lefevre's ”few errors” had at first appeared to be of great moment, because published at a time when to correct or change the most insignificant syllable, or a faulty rendering, in the ancient translations of the Holy Scriptures approved by the church, was an unheard-of innovation. But, now that more important questions had come up to arrest attention, the mere matter of retranslation, without introducing unsound doctrine, seemed to be a thing of little or no consequence.[204] Let Lefevre but leave the heretical company which he kept, and let him make _the least bit of a retraction_ respecting some few pa.s.sages in his works, and the whole affair would at once be arranged.[205]