Volume I Part 24 (1/2)

Such was the man who was called to take the reins of the spiritual direction, not only of a single small city, but of a large body of earnest thinkers throughout France, and even to distant parts of Christendom--a man of stern and uncompromising devotion to that system which he believed to be truth; of slender imagination, but of a memory prodigious in its grasp, of an understanding wonderfully acute, and of a power of exposition and expression unsurpa.s.sed by that possessed by any writer among his contemporaries. His const.i.tution, naturally weak, had been still further enfeebled by excessive application to study. In his letters there are frequent references to the interruptions occasioned by violent pains in his head, often compelling him to stop many times in the writing of a single letter.[421] His strength was taxed to the utmost by the unremitting toil incident to his multifarious occupations. The very recital of his labors fills us with amazement. He preached twice every Sunday, besides frequent sermons on other days. He lectured three times a week on theology. He made addresses in the consistory, and delivered a lecture every Friday in the conference on the Scriptures known as the ”Congregation.” To these public burdens must be added others imposed upon him by his wide reputation. From all parts of the Protestant world, but especially from every spot in France where the Reformation had gained a foothold, the opinion of Calvin was eagerly sought on various points of doctrine and ecclesiastical practice. To Geneva, and especially to Calvin, the obscure and persecuted adherents of the same faith, not less than the most ill.u.s.trious of the Protestant n.o.bility, looked for counsel and direction. Under his guidance that system was adopted for supplying France with ministers of the Gospel which led the Venetian amba.s.sador, near the end of the great reformer's life, to describe Geneva as the mine from which the ore of heresy was extracted.[422] How faithfully he discharged the trust committed to him is sufficiently attested by a voluminous correspondence, some portions of which have escaped the wreck of time; while the steady advance of the doctrines he advocated is an enduring monument to the zeal and sagacity of his exertions.

[Sidenote: Meets with bitter opposition,]

[Sidenote: but obtains the support of the people.]

In his arduous undertaking, however, Calvin had to encounter no little opposition in the very city of Geneva. It was this, even more than bodily infirmity, that bore severely upon his spirits, and robbed him of the rest demanded alike by his overtaxed body and mind. His advocacy of strenuous discipline procured him relentless enemies among the Genevese of the ”Libertine” party. Those were stormy times for Calvin, when, in derision of the student, legislator, and theologian, deafening salutes were fired by night before his doors, and when the dogs were set upon him in the streets.[423] But, when we read of the violent antagonism elicited by the publication of the severe provisions of the ”Ordinances,” regulating even the minor details of the life of a Genevese citizen, it must not be forgotten that the unpopular system, although devised by Calvin, was not imposed by him upon unwilling subjects, but established by a free and decisive vote of the people, in the exercise of its sovereignty, and influenced to its adoption by the same considerations that had determined Calvin himself in devising it.[424]

[Sidenote: An estimate of Calvin by etienne Pasquier.]

Such a man could not fail to secure the respect of his opponents, and the undisguised admiration of all who could regard his character and work with some degree of impartiality. Among the most virtuous of his contemporaries was the excellent etienne Pasquier, who described him as he appeared in the eyes of men of culture--men who, without forsaking the Roman Catholic Church, were stanch friends of reform and of progress. ”He was a man,” says Pasquier, ”that wrote equally well in Latin and in French, and to whom our French tongue is greatly indebted for having enriched it with an infinite number of fine touches. It were my wish that it had been for a better subject. He was a man, moreover, marvellously versed and nurtured in the books of the Holy Scriptures, and such that, had he directed his mind in the right way, he might have ranked with the most ill.u.s.trious doctors of the church. And, in the midst of his books and his studies, he was possessed of the most active zeal for the progress of his sect. We sometimes saw our prisons overflowing with poor, misled people, whom he unceasingly exhorted, consoled, and comforted by his letters; and there were never lacking messengers to whom the doors were open, in spite of any exertions of the jailers to the contrary. Such were the methods by which he gained over step by step a part of our France.”[425]

[Sidenote: Continued persecution.]

[Sidenote: The tongues of the victims cut out, and records burned.]

The flames of the persecution kindled by the publication of the placards continued to burn. From Paris, where Laurent de la Croix fell a victim to the rage of the priests, the conflagration spread to Essarts, in Poitou, where a simple girl was consigned to the fire for reproving a Franciscan monk; and to Macon, where an unlearned peasant underwent a like punishment, amazing his judges by the familiarity he displayed with the Bible. Agen, in Guyenne, and Beaune, in Burgundy, witnessed similar scenes of atrocious cruelty; while at Nonnay, Andre Berthelin was burned alive, because, when wending his way to the great fair of Lyons, he refused to kneel down before one of the many pictures or images set up by the roadside for popular adoration. At Rouen, four brave reformers were thrown into a tumbril, reeking with filth, to be drawn to the place of execution, one of them exclaiming with radiant countenance: ”Truly, as says the apostle, we are the offscouring of the earth, and we now stink in the nostrils of the men of the world. But let us rejoice, for the savor of our death will be a sweet savor unto G.o.d, and will profit our brethren.”[426] But the details of these executions are too horrible and too similar to find a place here. Nor, indeed, would it be possible to frame a complete statement of the case of each of the constant sufferers; for, from this time forward, it became a favorite practice with those who presided over these b.l.o.o.d.y a.s.sizes to cut out the tongues of their victims, lest their eloquent appeals should shake the confidence of the spectators in the established faith, and afterward to throw the official record of the trial of Protestants into the fire that consumed their bodies, in order to prevent its furnis.h.i.+ng edifying material for the martyrology.[427]

[Sidenote: Failure of persecution.]

But, as usual, persecution failed utterly of accomplis.h.i.+ng what had been expected of it. For a brief moment, indeed, Francis flattered himself that exemplary punishments had purged his kingdom of the professors of the hated doctrines.[428] But, in the course of a few years, he discovered that, in spite of continued severities, the ”new faith” had so spread--partly by means of persons suffered to return, in virtue of the royal declaration of Coucy (on the sixteenth of July, 1535), and partly through the teachings of others who lay concealed during the first violence of the storm--that he had good reason to fear that the last errors were worse than the first.[429] What rendered the matter still more serious was the favor shown to the heretics by persons of high rank and influence.[430]

[Sidenote: Edict of Fontainebleau cuts off appeal, June 1, 1540.]

With the view of employing still more rigid means for the detection and punishment of the offenders, a fresh edict was published from Fontainebleau, on the first of June, 1540. In this long and sanguinary doc.u.ment the monarch--or the Cardinal of Tournon, who enjoyed the credit of a princ.i.p.al part in its preparation--enjoined upon the officers of all the royal courts, whether judges of parliament, seneschals, or bailiffs, to inst.i.tute proceedings concurrently against all persons tainted with heresy. No appeal was to be permitted to delay their action. The examination of the suspected took precedence of all other cases. Tribunals of inferior jurisdiction were instructed to send prisoners for heresy, together with the record of their examination, to the sovereign courts of parliament, there to be tried in the ”Chambre criminelle.” The appeal to the ”Grand' chambre,” customarily allowed to persons claiming immunity on account of order or station, was expressly cut off, so as to render the course of justice more expeditious.

Negligent judges were threatened with suspension and removal from office. The high va.s.sals of the crown were ordered to lend to the royal courts their counsel and a.s.sistance, and to surrender to them all offenders as guilty of sedition and disturbance of the public peace--crimes of which the king claimed exclusive cognizance.

Ecclesiastics were exhorted to show equal diligence in the prosecution of culprits that were in orders. In short, every servant of the king was bidden to abstain from harboring or favoring the ”Lutherans,” since the errors and false doctrines the latter disseminated, it was said, contained within them the crime of treason against G.o.d and the king, as well as of sedition and riot.[431] Every loyal subject must, therefore, denounce the heretics and employ all means to extirpate them, just as all men are bound to run to help in extinguis.h.i.+ng a public conflagration.[432]

[Sidenote: Exceptional fairness of President Caillaud.]

The last injunction was not altogether unnecessary. Even among the judges of parliament there were fair-minded persons not inclined to condemn accused men or books on mere report. The amba.s.sador of Henry the Eighth having, in 1538, denounced an English translation of the Holy Scriptures that was in press at Paris, the chancellor commissioned President Caillaud to investigate the case. The latter, finding that the printer's excuse was the scarcity of paper in England, quietly set about a comparison of the suspected version with accessible French translations. He said nothing to doctors of theology or royal prosecuting officers. ”It seemed to me,” he reported, ”quite unnecessary to give the matter such notoriety. Moreover, I mistrusted that, without further investigation, without even looking into it, they would have condemned the English translation for the sole reason that it is in that tongue. For I have seen them sustain that the Holy Scriptures ought not to be translated into the French language or any other vernacular tongue. Nevertheless, the Bible in French was printed in this city so long ago as in 1529, and again this present year, and is for sale by the most wealthy printers. For my part I have seen no prohibition either by the church or by the secular authority, although I once heard some decretal alleged in condemnation.” Unfortunately such judges as Louis Caillaud were rare--men that would take the pains to obtain the services of a person acquainted with the English language to translate aloud a Bible suspected of heretical teachings, while themselves testing its accuracy by scanning versions made from the Vulgate and the Hebrew original![433]

[Sidenote: Royal letters from Lyons, Aug. 30, 1542.]

Two years more had scarcely pa.s.sed before fresh legislation against the Protestants demonstrated the impotence of all measures thus far resorted to. The interval had certainly been improved by their enemies, for the stake had its victims to boast of.[434] And yet the new religious body had its ministers and its secret conventicles, with an ever increasing number of adherents. Accordingly, on the thirtieth of August, 1542, Francis, then at Lyons, addressed new letters patent to the various parliaments, enjoining new vigilance and activity. Previous edicts had not borne all the fruit expected from them; for there was still a bad seed of error and d.a.m.nable doctrines--so wrote the king--growing and multiplying from day to day. So exemplary a punishment must, therefore, be inflicted, as might forever terrify offenders.[435] The king even threatened delinquent prelates with seizure of their temporalities, in case they failed to exercise due diligence in so important a matter.[436]

[Sidenote: Audacity of the ”Lutherans” of Bordeaux.]

[Sidenote: Francis I. and the Sacramentarians.]

King, bishops and parliaments were terribly in earnest. All were agreed that Protestantism must and should be crushed, however little they harmonized as to the reasons of its increase or the method of suppressing it. The Archbishop of Bordeaux denounced to the parliament of that city the growing audacity of the ”Lutherans” of his diocese, who had even dared to preach their doctrines publicly. He accounted for this disorder by the fact that the prosecution and exemplary punishment of heretics had ceased to be the uniform rule; as if the experience of the past score of years had not demonstrated the futility of attempting to compel religious uniformity by the fear of human tribunals and ignominious death. He therefore begged the parliament to spare neither him nor his brother prelates in the matter of defraying the expense of bringing ”Lutherans” to trial and death. The secular judges were of the same mind with the prelates, and both took new courage from a declaration of Francis himself, which the archbishop had recently heard with his own ears at Angouleme. In the presence of Cardinal Tournon and others, the king had a.s.sured him that ”_he desired that no sacramentarian should be permitted to abjure, but that all such heretics should be remorselessly put to death_!”[437] By such pitiless measures did Francis still think to establish his unimpeachable loyalty to the doctrine of transubstantiation.

[Sidenote: Royal ordinance of Paris, July 23, 1543.]

But, as ill success continued to attend every attempt to crush the Reformation in France, it was necessary to find some plausible explanation of the failure. The ecclesiastical counsellors of the king alleged that they discovered it in the recent edicts themselves, which they represented as derogating from the efficiency of both prelates and inquisitors of the faith. To meet this new objection, Francis complaisantly published another ordinance (on the twenty-third of July, 1543), carefully defining the respective provinces of the lay and clerical judges. Prelates and inquisitors were authorized to proceed, in accordance with canon law, to obtain information alike against clergymen and laymen, in case of suspected heresy, and the secular judges were strictly enjoined to afford them all needed a.s.sistance in execution of their writs of summons and arrest. But all persons guilty of open heresy, and not actually in holy orders, must be given over, together with the doc.u.ments relating to their offences, to the royal judges and to the courts of parliament, and by them tried as seditious disturbers of the peace and tranquillity of the commonwealth and of the king's subjects, secret conspirators against the prosperity of his estate, and rebels against his authority and laws.[438] In order, however, to secure to the ecclesiastical tribunals their full control over clergymen, it was provided that any churchman condemned to banishment, or any other punishment short of death, should immediately after the ”amende honorable,” and before execution of sentence, be remitted to his spiritual superiors to undergo deprivation of office, and such other penalties as canon law might prescribe.[439]

[Sidenote: Heresy to be punished as sedition.]

[Sidenote: Repression proves a failure.]

But the succession of edicts, each surpa.s.sing the last in severity, had not rendered the path of the judges, whether lay or ghostly, altogether easy. There were found prisoners, accused of holding and teaching heretical doctrines, well skilled in holy lore, however ignorant of the casuistry of the schools, who made good their a.s.sertion that they could give a warrant for all their distinctive tenets from the Sacred Scriptures. Their arguments were so cogent, their citations were so apposite, that the auditors who had come with the expectation of witnessing the confusion of a heretic, often departed absorbed in serious consideration of a system that had so much the appearance of truth when defended by a simple man in jeopardy of his life, and when fortified by the authority of the Bible. More learned reformers had appealed successfully to the Fathers to whose teachings the church avowed its implicit obedience. It was clear that some standard of orthodoxy must be established. For, if St. Augustine or St. Cyprian might be brought up to prove the errors of the priests, what was it but allowing the reformers to place the Roman Church at the bar, even in the very courts of justice? Might not the most damaging losses be expected to flow from such trials?