Volume I Part 11 (2/2)

[Footnote 206: This incident has been rejected as apocryphal by Bayle, and, after him, by Tabaraud (in the Biographie universelle), as well as more recently by Haag (France protestante). It has rested until now on the unsupported testimony of Hubert Thomas, secretary of the Elector Palatine, Frederick II., whom he accompanied on a visit to Charles V. in Spain. On his return the Elector fell sick at Paris, where he received frequent visits from the King and Queen of Navarre. It was on one of these occasions that Margaret related to him this story, in the hearing of the secretary. (It is reproduced in Jurieu, Histoire du Calvinisme, etc., Rotterdam, 1683, pt. i. 70.) Bayle objected that it was incredible that the reformers should have failed to allude to so striking and suggestive an occurrence. The objection has been scattered to the winds.

With singular good fortune, M. Jules Bonnet has discovered among the hidden treasures of the Geneva Library an original memorandum in Farel's own handwriting, prefixed to a letter he had received from Michel d'Arande, fully confirming the discredited statements. ”Jacobus Faber Stapulensis noster laborans morbo quo decessit, per aliquot dies ita perterritus fuit judicio Dei, ut actum de se vociferaret, dicens se aeternum periisse, quod veritatem Dei non aperte professus fuerit, idque dies noctesque vociferando querebatur. Et c.u.m a Gerardo Rufo admoneretur ut bono esset animo, Christo quoque fideret, is respondit: 'Nos d.a.m.nati sumus, veritatem celavimus quam profiteri et testari debebamus.'

Horrendum erat tam pium senem ita angi animo et tanto horrore judicii Dei concuti; licet tandem liberatus bene sperare cperit ac perrexerit de Christo.” Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., etc., xi. 215; Herminjard, iii. 400.]

[Footnote 207: ”Quo tandem ex hoc profundo limo, in quo non est substantia, eripi queam.” Michel d'Arande to Farel (1536 or 1537), Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. franc., _ubi supra_; Herminjard, iii. 399, etc.]

[Footnote 208: Speaking of Roussel's as yet inedited MS., ”Familiere exposition du symbole et de l'oraison dominicale,” Professor C. Schmidt, than whom no one has better studied the mysticism of the sixteenth century, remarks that the basis of the work is the doctrine of justification by faith, the sole authority invoked is that of the Scriptures, the only head of the church is Jesus Christ, the perfect church is the invisible church, the visible church is recognized by the preaching of the Gospel in its purity, and by the administration of the _two_ sacraments as originally inst.i.tuted. He adds that the doctrines of the Lord's Supper and of predestination are expounded in a thoroughly Calvinistic manner. See Professor S.'s excellent monograph, ”Le mysticisme quietiste en France au debut de la reformation sous Francois premier,” read before the Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., Bulletin, vi.

449, etc.]

[Footnote 209: Historia de ortu, progressu et ruina haereseon hujus saeculi (Col. 1614), lib. vii. c. 3, p. 392.]

[Footnote 210: _E. g._, Tabaraud, Biographie univ., art. Roussel.]

[Footnote 211: Haag, France protestante, art. Gerard Roussel; Gaillard, Hist. de Francois premier, vi. 418; Flor. de Raemond, _ubi supra_.]

CHAPTER III.

FRANCIS I. AND MARGARET OF ANGOULEME--EARLY REFORMATORY MOVEMENTS AND STRUGGLES.

[Sidenote: Francis I. and his sister.]

[Sidenote: The portrait of the king.]

Francis the First and his sister, Margaret of Angouleme, were destined to exercise so important an influence in shaping the history of the French Reformation during the first half of the sixteenth century, that a glance at their personal history and character seems indispensable.

Francis Was in his twenty-first year when, by the extinction of the elder line of the house of Orleans, the crown came to him as the nearest heir of Louis the Twelfth.[212] He was tall, but well proportioned, of a fair complexion, with a body capable of enduring without difficulty great exposure and fatigue. In an extant portrait, taken five years later, he is delineated with long hair and scanty beard. The drooping lids give to his eyes a languid expression, while the length of his nose, which earned him the sobriquet of ”le roi au long nez,” redeems his physiognomy from any approach to heaviness.[213] On the other hand, the Venetian Marino Cavalli, writing shortly before the close of his reign, eulogizes the personal appearance of Francis, at that time more than fifty years old. His mien was so right royal, we are a.s.sured, that even a foreigner, never having seen him before, would single him out from any company and instinctively exclaim, ”This is the king!” No ruler of the day surpa.s.sed him in gravity and n.o.bility of bearing. Well did he deserve to succeed that long line of monarchs upon each of whom the sacred oil, applied at his coronation in the cathedral of Rheims, had conferred the marvellous property of healing the king's-evil by a simple touch.[214]

[Sidenote: His character and tastes.]

At his accession, the lively imagination of Francis, fed upon the romances of chivalry that const.i.tuted his favorite reading, called up the picture of a brilliant future, wherein gallant deeds in arms should place him among the most renowned knights of Christendom. The ideal character he proposed for himself involving a certain regard for his word, Francis's mind revolted from imitating the plebeian duplicity of his wily predecessor, Louis the Eleventh--a king who enjoyed the undesirable reputation of never having made a promise which he intended in good faith to keep. The memory of the disingenuous manner in which Louis, by winking at the opposition of the Parliament of Paris, had suffered the revocation of the Pragmatic Sanction to fail, in spite of his own solemn engagements to carry it into execution, was, undoubtedly, one of the leading motives inducing the young prince, at the very beginning of his reign, to adopt the arbitrary measures already spoken of in a preceding chapter, respecting the papal concordat. Not for half his kingdom, he repeatedly declared, would he break the pledge he had given his Holiness. It is not difficult, however, to reconcile the pertinacity of Francis, on this occasion, with the frequent and well authenticated instances of bad faith in his dealings with other monarchs.

If his literary abilities were slender and his acquirements meagre, this king had at least the faculty of appreciating excellence in others. The scholars and wits whom, as we have seen, he succeeded in gathering about him, repaid his munificence with lavish praise, couched in all manner of verse, and in every language employed in the civilized world. Even later historians have not hesitated to rate him much higher than his very moderate abilities would seem to warrant.[215] The portrait drawn by the biographer of his imperial rival is, perhaps, full as advantageous as a regard for truth will permit us to accept. ”Francis,” says Robertson, ”notwithstanding the many errors conspicuous in his foreign policy and domestic administration, was nevertheless humane, beneficent, generous.

He possessed dignity without pride, affability free from meanness, and courtesy exempt from deceit. All who had access to him, and no man of merit was ever denied that privilege, respected and loved him.

Captivated with his personal qualities, his subjects forgot his defects as a monarch, and, admiring him as the most accomplished and amiable gentleman in his dominions, they hardly murmured at acts of maladministration, which, in a prince of less engaging dispositions, would have seemed unpardonable.”[216]

[Sidenote: Contrast between Francis I. and Charles V.]

Two monarchs could scarcely be more dissimilar than were Francis and the Emperor Charles. ”So great is the difference between these two princes,”

says the Venetian Giustiniano, ”that, as her most serene majesty the Queen of Navarre, the king's sister, remarked to me when talking on the subject, one of the two must needs be created anew by G.o.d after the pattern of the other, before they could agree. For, whilst the most Christian king is reluctant to a.s.sume the burden of great thoughts or undertakings, and devotes himself much to the chase or to his own pleasures, the emperor never thinks of anything but business and aggrandizement; and, whereas the most Christian king is simple, open, and very liberal, and quite sufficiently inclined to defer to the judgment and counsel of others, the emperor is reserved, parsimonious, and obstinate in his opinions, governing by himself, rather than through any one else.”[217]

This diversity of temperament and disposition had ample scope for manifestation during the protracted wars waged by the two monarchs with each other. Fit representative of the race to which he belonged, Francis was bold, adventurous, and almost resistless in the impetuosity of a first a.s.sault. But he soon tired of his undertakings, and relinquished to the cooler and more calculating Charles the solid fruits of victory.[218]

[Sidenote: Francis's religious convictions.]

Of the possession of deep religious convictions I do not know that Francis has left any satisfactory evidence. That he was not strongly attached to the Roman church, that he thoroughly despised the ignorant monks, whose dissolute lives he well knew, that he had no extraordinary esteem for the Pope, all this is clear enough from many incidents of his life. It would even appear that, at one or two points, he might have been pleased to witness such a reformation of the church as could be effected without disturbing the existing order. To this he was the more inclined, that he found almost all the men distinguished for their learning arrayed on the side of the ”new doctrines,” as they were styled, while the pretorian legion of the papacy was headed by the opponents of letters.

[Sidenote: His fear of innovation.]

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