Volume I Part 12 (2/2)

In reply to another inquiry made by the regent at the same time, the Sorbonne enters into greater detail. If any one complains that he is unjustly accused of favoring the heresy that has recently appeared, let him clear himself by following St. Paul's example, who, when brought to the knowledge of the truth, instantly undertook the defence of what he had ignorantly persecuted. Rumors that some persons in high places are friendly to the spread of the new errors have gained lamentable currency, both at home and abroad. They have obtained confirmation from the praise lately lavished by ”some great personages” upon the doctrine of Luther, and the blame poured upon its opponents. The execution of the king's order for the burning of Luther's books has been singularly delayed. Worst of all have been the obstacles placed in the way of the pious efforts of the prelates, either without the consent of the king, or by him ill-advised--for example, in the proceedings of the Bishop of Paris against Louis de Berquin. Similar impediments have been interposed to prevent the condemnation by parliament and university of the printed works of this same Berquin and of Lefevre d'etaples; while, as if to make the affair still more scandalous, two treatises lately written in refutation of Luther's doctrines have been seized in the name of the king and by his authority.[238]

[Sidenote: Wide circulation of Luther's works.]

Such were the complaints of the theological faculty, such the means suggested for the destruction of the new leaven that was already beginning to a.s.sert its mission to permeate society. There were certainly sufficient grounds for apprehension. The works of Luther, as we have before seen, had early been translated into French, and a contemporary writer confirms the statement that they had already been widely disseminated.[239] An order of parliament, referred to in its communication to the regent, had indeed been published, to the sound of the trumpet, throughout the city of Paris (August 3, 1521), strictly commanding all booksellers, printers, and others that might have copies in their possession, to give them up within the s.p.a.ce of eight days, on pain of imprisonment and fine.[240] But even this measure failed to accomplish the desired result. The Reformation was silently extending its influence, as some significant events sufficiently proved.

[Sidenote: Lambert, the first French monk to embrace the Reformation.]

At Avignon, copies of several of the writings of Martin Luther fell into the hands of Francois Lambert, son of a former private secretary of the papal legate entrusted with the government of the Comtat Venaissin. He was a man of vivid imagination, keen religious sensibilities, and marked oratorical powers. He had at the age of fifteen been so deeply impressed by the saintly appearance of the Franciscans as to seek admission to their monastery as a novice. No sooner did he a.s.sume, a year later (1503), the irrevocable vows that const.i.tuted him a monk, than his disenchantment began. According to his own account, the quarrelsome and debauched friars no longer felt any of the solicitude they had previously entertained lest the knowledge of their excesses should deter him from embracing a ”religious” life. A few years later Lambert became a preacher, and having, through a somewhat careful study of the Holy Scriptures, embraced more evangelical views than were held by most of his order, began to deliver discourses as well received by the people as they were hated by his fellow-monks. Great was the outcry against him when he openly denounced the misdeeds of a worthless vender of papal indulgences; still greater when copies of Luther's treatises were found in his possession. The books were seized, sealed, condemned, and burned, although scarcely a glance had been vouchsafed at their contents. It was enough for the monkish judges to cry: ”They are heretical! They are heretical!” ”Nevertheless,” exclaims honest Lambert, kindling with indignation at the remembrance of the scene, ”I confidently a.s.sert that those same books of Luther contain more of pure theology than all the writings of all the monks that have lived since the creation of the world.”[241]

[Sidenote: He is also the first to renounce celibacy.]

Lambert had made full trial of the monastic life. He had even immured himself for some time in a Carthusian retreat, but found its inmates in no respect superior to the Franciscans. At last an opportunity for escape offered. In 1522, when a score of years had pa.s.sed since he entered upon his novitiate, he was despatched with letters to the general of his order. Instead of fulfilling his commission, he traversed Switzerland, and made his way to Wittemberg, where he satisfied the desire he had long entertained, of meeting the great reformer to whose works he owed his own spiritual enlightenment. Full of zeal for the propagation of the doctrines he had embraced, Lambert, not long after (1524), established himself at Metz as a favorable point from which France might be influenced. But the commotion excited by his opponents--perhaps, also, his own lack of prudence--compelled him within a fortnight to flee to Strasbourg.[242] Here, more secure, but scarcely more judicious, he busied himself with sending over the French borders numbers of tracts composed or translated by himself, and addressing to Francis and the chief persons of his court appeals which, doubtless, rarely if ever reached their eyes.[243] In another field of labor, to which the Landgrave of Hesse called him, Francois Lambert performed services far more important than any he was permitted to render his native land. As the first French monk to throw aside his habit--above all, as the first to renounce celibacy and defend in a published treatise the step he had taken (1523), no French reformer, even among those of far greater abilities and wider influence, was regarded by the adherents of the Roman Catholic Church with so intense a dislike.[244]

The firm hold which the Reformation was gaining on the population of several places of great importance, close upon the eastern frontiers of the kingdom, was a portent of evil in the eyes of the Sorbonne; for Metz, St. Hippolyte, and Montbeliard, all destined to be absorbed in the growing territories of France, were already bound to it by close ties of commercial intercourse.

[Sidenote: Jean Chatellain, of Metz.]

In Metz the powerful appeals of an Augustinian monk, Jean Chatellain, had powerfully moved the ma.s.ses. He was as eloquent as he was learned, as commanding in appearance as fearless in the expression of his belief.[245] The attempt to molest him would have proved a very dangerous one for the clergy of Metz to make; for the enthusiasm of the laity in his support knew no bounds, and the churchmen prudently avoided giving it an occasion for manifestation. But, no sooner had Chatellain been induced on some pretext to leave the safe protection of the walls, than a friar of his own order and monastery betrayed him to the bishop.[246] He was hurriedly taken to Nommeny, and thence to Vic for trial and execution. In vain did the Inquisitor of the Faith strive to shake his constancy. His judges were forced to liken their incorrigible prisoner to the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear. As ”a preacher of false doctrines,” an ”apostate” and a ”liar toward G.o.d Almighty,” they declared him excommunicated and deprived of whatever ecclesiastical benefices he might hold. The faithful compiler of the French martyrology gives in accurate, but painful, detail the successive steps by which Chatellain was stripped of the various prerogatives conferred upon him in ordination. I shall not repeat the story of sacred vessels placed in his hands only to be hastily s.n.a.t.c.hed from them, of the sc.r.a.ping of his fingers supposed to remove the grace of consecration, of chasuble and stole indignantly taken away--in short, of all the petty devices of a malice at which the mind wearies and the heart sickens. It was perhaps a fitting sequel to the ceremony that the degrading bishop should hand his victim over to the representative of the secular arm to be put to death, with a hypocritical recommendation to mercy: ”Lord Judge, we entreat you as affectionately as we can, as well by the love of G.o.d, as from pity and compa.s.sion, and out of respect for our prayers, that you do this wretched man no injury tending to death or the mutilation of his body.”[247] The prayer was granted--according to the intent of the pet.i.tioner. On the twelfth of January, 1525, Chatellain was led to the place of execution, as cheerful in demeanor, the witnesses said, as if walking to a feast. At the stake he knelt and offered a short prayer, then met his horrible sentence with a constancy that won many converts to the faith for which he had suffered. At the news of the fate of their admired teacher, the citizens of Metz could not contain their rage. A tumultuous scene ensued, in which it was well that the ecclesiastics--there were more than nine hundred within the walls[248]--escaped with no greater injury at the hands of the angry populace than some pa.s.sing insults. John Vedast, an evangelical teacher, was at that time in confinement, reserved for a similar doom to that of Chatellain. He was liberated by the people, who, in a body membering several thousand men, visited his prison and enabled him to escape to a safe refuge. It was not until a strong detachment of troops had been thrown into the city that the burgesses were reduced to submission.[249]

”None the less,” admits a Roman Catholic historian, ”did Lutheranism spread over the entire district of Metz.”[250]

[Sidenote: Tragic end of Wolfgang Schuch.]

At St. Hippolyte, a town near the Swiss frontier, dependent upon the Duke of Lorraine, similar success and a similarly tragic end were the results of the zealous labors of Wolfgang Schuch, a priest of German extraction. The ”good duke” Antoine, having been led to confound the peaceable disciples of Schuch with the revolted peasants, whose ravages had excited widespread alarm throughout Germany, publicly proclaimed his intention of visiting the town that harbored them with fire and sword.

To propitiate him by removing his misapprehension, Schuch wrote to the duke a singularly touching letter containing a candid exposition of the religion he professed;[251] but finding that his missive had been of no avail, he resolved to immolate himself in behalf of his flock. At Nancy, the capital of the duchy, whither he had gone to dissuade Antoine from executing his savage threats, he was thrown into a loathsome dungeon, while the University of Paris was consulted respecting the soundness of thirty-one propositions extracted from his writings by the Inquisitor of Lorraine. On the nineteenth of August, 1525--the theologians of the Sorbonne having some months before reported unfavorably upon the theses submitted to them--Wolfgang Schuch was consigned to the flames.[252]

[Sidenote: Farel at Montbeliard.]

Less sanguinary results attended the Reformation at Montbeliard, where the indefatigable Farel was the chief actor. One of those highly dramatic incidents, in which the checkered life of this remarkable man abounds, is said to have preceded his withdrawal from the city.

Happening, on St. Anthony's day, to meet, upon a bridge spanning a narrow stream in the neighborhood, a solemn procession headed by priests chanting the praises of the saint whose effigy they bore aloft, Farel was seized with an uncontrollable desire to arrest the impious service.

s.n.a.t.c.hing the image from the hands of ecclesiastics who were little prepared for so sudden an onslaught, he indignantly cried, ”Wretched idolaters, will you never forsake your idolatry?” At the same instant he threw the saint into the water, before the astonished devotees had time to interfere. Had not some one just then opportunely raised the shout, ”The saint is drowning,” it might have gone hard with the fearless iconoclast.[253]

The Reformation was thus gaining a foothold in the bishopric of Metz, in the duchy of Lorraine, and the county of Montbeliard--districts as yet independent of France, in which country they were subsequently merged.

But, if suffered to be victorious at these important points, it might readily cross the borders and spread with irresistible force to the contiguous parts of Francis's dominions. Nearer home, the reformatory movement at Meaux, though abandoned by the bishop who had fostered its first development, was not wholly suppressed. In Lyons and Gren.o.ble, Friar Aime Maigret had preached such evangelical sermons--in French to the people and in Latin to the Parliament of Dauphiny--that he had been sent to Paris to be examined by the Sorbonne. The primate and his council had seen with solicitude that from the ashes of Waldo and the Poor Men of Lyons ”very many new shoots were springing up,”[254] and called for some signal act of severity to repress the growing evil.

[Sidenote: Pierre Caroli lectures on the Psalms.]

In Paris itself the Sorbonne found reason for alarm. The sympathy of Margaret of Angouleme with the friends of progress was recognized. It had already availed for the deliverance of Louis de Berquin, whose remarkable history will find a place in the next chapter. Nor did the redoubted syndic of the theological faculty, Beda, or Bedier, reign without a rival in the academic halls. Pierre Caroli, one of the doctors invited by Briconnet to Meaux, a clever wrangler, and never better pleased than when involved in controversy, albeit a man of shallow religious convictions and signal instability, wearied out by his counter-plots the ill.u.s.trious heresy-hunter. When forbidden to preach, Caroli opened a course of lectures upon the Psalms in the College de Cambray. Having then been interdicted from continuing his prelections, he made the modest request to be permitted to finish the exposition of the 22d Psalm, which he had begun. This being refused, the disputatious doctor posted the following notice on the doors of the college: ”Pierre Caroli, wis.h.i.+ng to conform to the orders of the sacred faculty, ceases to teach. He will resume his lectures (when it shall please G.o.d) where he left off, at the verse, 'They pierced my hands and my feet.'”[255]

[Sidenote: The Heptameron of the Queen of Navarre.]

I have reserved for this place a few remarks respecting the _Heptameron_ of Margaret of Angouleme, which seem required by the disputed character or this singular work. I have spoken at length of the virtues of the Queen of Navarre, and I may here add a statement of my strong conviction that the accusation is altogether groundless which ascribes a sinister meaning to the strong expressions of sisterly affection so frequent in her correspondence with Francis the First (see M. Genin, Supplement a la notice sur Marg. d'Angouleme, prefixed to the second volume of the Letters).

Nor do I make any account of the vague statement of that mendacious libertine, Brantome, who doubtless imagined himself to be paying the Queen of Navarre the most delicate compliment, when he said, that ”of gallantry she knew more than her daily bread.”

But, whatever the purity of Margaret's own private life, the fact which cannot be overlooked is that a book of a decidedly immoral tendency was composed and published under her name. Her most sincere admirers would hail with gratification any satisfactory evidence that the Heptameron was written by another hand.

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