Volume I Part 26 (1/2)

[Footnote 430: ”Plusieurs gros personnages, qui secrettement les recelent, supportent et favorisent en leurs fausses doctrines, leur aydans et subvenans de leurs biens, de lieux, et de places secrettes et occultes, esquelles ils retirent leurs sectateurs, pour les instruire esdites erreurs et infections.” Ibid., xii. 677.]

[Footnote 431: ”Attendu que tels erreurs et fausses doctrines contiennent en soy crime de leze majeste divine et humaine, sedition du peuple, et perturbation de nostre estat et repos public.” Ibid., xii.

680.]

[Footnote 432: ”Mais tantost et incontinent qu'ils en seront advertis, les reveler a justice, et de tout leur pouvoir aider a les extirper, _comme un chacun doit courir a esteindre le feu public_.” Ibid., xii.

680.]

[Footnote 433: President Louis Caillaud to the chancellor (Antoine Du Bourg), Oct. 22, 1538. Musee des archives nationales; Doc.u.ments orig.

exposes dans l'Hotel Soubise (Paris, 1872), 347.]

[Footnote 434: Among others, two ”Lutherans,” otherwise unknown to us, whose execution a young German student, Eustathius de k.n.o.belsdorf, witnessed on the Place Maubert, and described in a letter to George Ca.s.sander, professor at Bruges, like himself a Roman Catholic. One of the ”Lutherans,” a beardless youth of scarcely twenty years, the son of a shoemaker, after having his tongue cut out and his head smeared with sulphur, far from showing marks of terror, signified, by a motion to the executioner, his perfect willingness to meet death. ”I doubt, my dear Ca.s.sander,” writes De k.n.o.belsdorf, ”whether those celebrated philosophers, who have written so many books on the contempt of death, would have endured so cruel tortures with such constancy. So far did this youth seem to be raised above what is of man.” Letter of July 10, 1542. Translated in Bulletin, vi. (1858), 420-423; and Baum, Theodor Beza, i. 52-55.]

[Footnote 435: ”En sorte que la justice, punition, correction, et demonstration en soit faite telle et si griefve, que ce puisse estre perpetuel exemple a tous autres.”]

[Footnote 436: Isambert, Recueil des anciennes lois francaises, xii.

785-787.]

[Footnote 437: ”Lui a dit qu'il voulait qu'aucun sacramentaire ne fut admis a abjurer, ains fut puni de mort.” Reg. secr. du Parl. de Bordeaux, July 7, 1543, Boscheron des Portes, i. 47, 48.]

[Footnote 438: ”Conspirateurs occultes contre la prosperite de nostre estat, dependant princ.i.p.alement et en bonne partie de la conservation de l'integrite de la foy catholique en nostredit royaume, rebelles et desobeyssans a nous et a nostre justice.” Recueil des anc. lois francaises, xii. 819.]

[Footnote 439: Ibid., xii. 820.]

[Footnote 440: The preamble of the royal letters giving execution to the Twenty-five Articles of the Sorbonne mentions as a moving cause ”plusieurs scandales et schismes par cy devant intervenus, et mesmement en cest advent de Noel dernier pa.s.se, par le moyen et a l'occasion de contentions, contradictions et altercations de certain predicateurs preschans et publians divers et contraires doctrines.” Recueil des anc.

lois francaises, xii. 820.]

[Footnote 441: Recueil des anc. lois franc., xii. 821-825. Among other recommendations appended to the articles, was the following somewhat interesting one, designed to correct the irreverence of the age: ”Quand il vient a propos d'alleguer le nom des saincts apostres et evangelistes ou saincts docteurs, qu'ils _n'ayent a les nommer par leurs norm simplement_, sans aucune preface d'honneur, _comme ont accoustume dire, 'Paul,' 'Jacques,' 'Mathieu,' 'Pierre,' 'Hierosme,' 'Augustin_,' etc. Et ne leur doit estre grief adjouster et preposer le nom de 'sainct,' en disant, 'sainct Pierre,' 'sainct Paul,' etc.!”]

[Footnote 442: Ibid., xii. 820. In answer to these Articles, Calvin wrote his ”Antidote aux articles de la faculte Sorbonique de Paris.”]

[Footnote 443: Ory, Oriz, or Oritz, as his name was indifferently written, was a prominent character in subsequent scenes of blood, and was, as we may hereafter see, the agent employed by Henry II. to cajole, or frighten his aunt, Renee, and bring her back into the bosom of the Roman Church. The letters-patent giving this personage, who is styled ”doctor of theology and prior of the preaching friars (Dominicans) of Paris,” authority to exercise the functions of inquisitor of the faith throughout the kingdom, in place of Valentin Lievin, deceased, are of May 30, 1536, Recueil des anc. lois fr., xii. 503. Similar letters were issued April 10, 1540. His confirmation by Henry II., June 22, 1550, ibid., xiii. 173.]

[Footnote 444: Histoire ecclesiastique, i. 13. It is, in fact, an interesting circ.u.mstance that Rocheli, or Rochetti, the deputy inquisitor referred to in the text, not long after became a convert to Protestantism, and applied himself to preaching the doctrines he had once labored to overturn.]

[Footnote 445: The first, ent.i.tled ”Epistolae duae; prima de fugiendis impiorum illicitis sacris et puritate Christianae religionis; secunda de Christiani hominis officio in sacerdotiis papalis ecclesiae vel administrandis vel abjiciendis,” 1537. The second, ”Contre la secte fantastique et furieuse des Libertins qui se disent spirituels,” 1544.

The latter, from its pointed reference to Quintin and Pocquet, two notorious leaders, seems to have given offence to Margaret of Navarre, by whom they had been harbored in ignorance of their true character. A letter written to the queen by Calvin immediately upon learning this, April 28, 1545 (Bonnet, Lettres francaises, i. 111-117), is at once one of the best examples of his nervous French style, and a fine ill.u.s.tration of manly courage tempered with respect for a princess who had deserved well of Protestantism. A single sentence admirably portrays his att.i.tude toward the formidable sect which had so devastated the Low Countries and had now entered France in the persons of two of its worst apostles--a sect regarded by him as more pernicious and execrable than any previously existing: ”Un chien abaye, s'il voit qu'on a.s.saille son maistre; je seroys bien lasche, si en voyant la verite de Dieu ainsi a.s.saillie, je faisoys du muet sans sonner mot.”]

[Footnote 446: ”A exhorte et prie la cour de vouloir faire punir et bruler les vrais heretiques,” etc. Reg. du Parl., May 24, 1543, Boscheron des Portes, Hist. du parlement de Bordeaux, i. 63.]

[Footnote 447: ”Reclame son privilege de fille de France ecrit dans un livre qui est a Saint Denis, de faire ouvrir les prisons,” etc. Ibid., _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 448: The text of this singular doc.u.ment, dated Rheims, Sept.

8, 1543, is in Gerdes., Hist. Reform., iv. (Monumenta) 107-109. When the ”Instructions” fell into the hands of Charles V., he naturally tried to make capital of a paper so little calculated to please Roman Catholics, emanating from a son of the ”Most Christian king.” And Francis thought himself compelled to clear himself from the charge of lukewarmness in the faith, if not of actual heretical bias, by exercising fresh severities upon the devoted Protestants of his own dominions.]

CHAPTER VII.