Volume I Part 31 (2/2)

[Sidenote: Marshal Vieilleville refuses to profit by confiscation.]

Yet the publication of the Edict of Chateaubriand was the signal for the renewal of the severity of the persecution. Every day, says the historian De Thou, persons were burned at Paris on account of religion.

Cardinal Tournon and Diana of Poitiers, he tells us, shared in the opprobrium of being the instigators of these atrocities. With the latter it was less fanaticism than a desire to augment the proceeds of the confiscation of the property of condemned heretics which she had lately secured for herself, and was employing to make up the ransom of her two sons-in-law, now prisoners of war.[578] Very few of the courtiers of Henry's court had a spark of the magnanimity that fired the breast of the Marshal de Vieilleville. The name of this n.o.bleman had, unknown to him, been inserted in a royal patent giving to him and others, who desired to s.h.i.+eld themselves behind his honorable name, the confiscated goods of all condemned usurers and Lutherans in Guyenne and five other provinces of Southern France. When the doc.u.ment was placed in his hands, and he was a.s.sured that it would yield to each of the six patentees twenty thousand crowns within four months, the marshal exclaimed: ”And here we stand registered in the courts of parliament as devourers of the people!... Besides that, for twenty thousand crowns to incur individually the curses of a countless number of women and children that will die in the poor-house in consequence of the forfeiture of the lives and property of their husbands and fathers, by fair means or foul--this would be to plunge ourselves into perdition at too cheap a rate!” So saying, Vieilleville drove his dagger through his own name in the patent, and others, through shame, following his example, the doc.u.ment was torn to pieces.[579]

[Sidenote: The ”Five Scholars of Lausanne.”]

Of the considerable number of those upon whom the ”very rigorous procedures” laid down by the Edict of Chateaubriand were executed in almost all parts of France, according to the historian of the reformed churches,[580] the ”_Five Scholars of Lausanne_” deserve particular mention. Natives of different points in France, these young men, with others, had enjoyed in the distinguished school inst.i.tuted in the chief city of the Pays de Vaud, under the protection of the Bernese, the instructions of Theodore Beza and other prominent reformed theologians.

Their names were: Martial Alba, a native of Montauban; Pierre ecrivain, of Boulogne, in Gascony; Bernard Seguin, of La Reolle, in Bazadois; Charles Favre, of Blanzac; and Pierre Naviheres, of Limoges. A short time before Easter, 1552, these young men, who had reached different stages in their course of study,[581] conceived it to be their duty to return to their native land, whence the most pressing calls for additional laborers qualified to instruct others were daily coming to Switzerland. Their plan was cordially endorsed by Beza, before whom it was first laid by one of their number who had been an inmate of his home, and then by the Church of Lausanne; for it evidenced the purity and sincerity of their zeal. Provided with cordial letters from Lausanne, as well as from Geneva, through which they pa.s.sed, they started each for his native city, intending to labor first of all for the conversion of their own kindred and neighbors. But a different field, and a shorter term of service than they had antic.i.p.ated, were in store for them. At Lyons, having accepted the invitation of a fellow-traveller to visit him at his country-seat, they were surprised on the first of May, 1552, by the provost and his guards, and, although they had committed no violation of the king's edicts by proclaiming the doctrines they believed, were hurried to the archiepiscopal prison, and confined in separate dungeons. From their prayers for divine a.s.sistance they were soon summoned to appear singly before the ”official”--the ecclesiastical judge to whom the archbishop deputed his judicial functions.[582] The answers to the interrogatories, of which they transmitted to their friends a record, it has been truly said, put to shame the lukewarmness of our days by their courage, and amaze us by the presence of mind and the wonderful acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures they display.[583] He who will peruse them in the worm-eaten pages of the ”Actiones Martyrum,” in which their letters were collected by the pious zeal of a contemporary, cannot doubt the proficiency these youthful prisoners had attained, both in sacred and in human letters, at the feet of the renowned Beza. Their unanswerable defence, however, only secured their more speedy condemnation as heretics. On the thirteenth of May they were sentenced to the flames; but an appeal which they made from the sentence of the ecclesiastical judge, on the plea that it contravened the laws of France, secured delay until their case could be laid before parliament. Months elapsed. Tidings of the danger that overhung the young students of Lausanne reached Beza and Calvin, and called forth their warm sympathy.[584]

[Sidenote: Unavailing intercessions.]

The best efforts of Beza and Viret were put forth in their behalf. A long succession of attempts to secure their release on the part of the canton of Berne individually, and of the four Protestant cantons of Switzerland collectively, was the result. One letter to Henry received a highly encouraging reply. An emba.s.sy from Zurich, sent when the king's word had not been kept, was haughtily informed that Henry expected the cantons to trouble him no further with the matter, and to avoid interfering with the domestic affairs of his country, as he himself abstained from intermeddling with theirs.[585] Subsequent letters and emba.s.sies to the monarch, intercessions with Cardinal de Tournon, Archbishop of Lyons, who would appear to have given a.s.surances which he never intended to fulfil, and all the other steps dictated by Christian affection, were similarly fruitless. In fact, nothing protracted the term of the imprisonment of the ”Five Scholars” but the need in which Henry felt himself to be of retaining the alliance and support of Berne.

Yet when, as a final appeal, that powerful canton begged the life of its ”stipendiaries” as a ”purely royal and liberal gift, which it would esteem as great and precious as if his Majesty had presented it an inestimable sum of silver or gold,” other political motives prevented him from yielding to its entreaties. The fear lest his compliance might furnish the emperor and Pope, against whom he was contending, with a handle for impugning his devotion to the church, was more powerful than his desire to conciliate the Bernese. The Parliament of Paris decreed that the death of the ”Five” by fire should take place on the sixteenth of May, 1553, and the king refused to interpose his pardon.[586]

Their mission to France had not, however, been in vain. It is no hyperbole of the historian of the reformed churches, when he likens their cells to five _pulpits_, from which the Word of G.o.d resounded through the entire city and much farther.[587] The results of their heroic fort.i.tude, and of the wide dissemination of copies of the confession of their Christian faith, were easily traced in the conversion of many within and without the prison; while the memory of their joyful constancy on their way to the place of execution--which rather resembled a triumphal than an ignominious procession--and in the flames, was embalmed in the heart of many a spectator.[588]

[Sidenote: Activity of the canton of Berne.]

The Bernese were not discouraged by the ill-success of their intercessions. Three times in the early part of the succeeding year (1554) they begged, but with no better results, for the release of Paris Panier, a man learned in the civil law.[589] With equal earnestness they took the part of the persecuted reformers against the violence of their enemies on many successive occasions. It was all in vain. The libertine king, who saw no merit in the purity of life of the professors of the ”new doctrines,” and no mark of Antichrist in the profligacy of Paul the Third or of Julius the Third, but viewed with horror the permission granted by the latter to the faithful of Paris to eat eggs, b.u.t.ter and cheese during Lent,[590] maintained his more than papal orthodoxy, and stifled the promptings of a heart by nature not averse to pity.

[Sidenote: Progress in Normandy.]

More than three years had pa.s.sed away since the publication of the Edict of Chateaubriand, but none of the fruits which its authors had predicted were visible. The number of the reformed brought to trial, and especially of those condemned to the flames, gradually diminished, whilst it was notorious that the opponents of the dominant church were rapidly multiplying. In some provinces--in Normandy, for example--their placards were mysteriously posted on the walls, and their songs deriding the Franciscan monks were sung in the dark lanes of the cities. Once they had ventured to interrupt the discourse of a preacher on the topic of purgatory, by loud expressions of dissent; but when on the next day the subject was resumed, numbers of hearers left the church with cries of ”_au fol, au fol_,” and forced those who would have arrested them in the name of the Cardinal Archbishop of Rouen, to seek refuge from a shower of stones in an adjoining monastery.[591]

[Sidenote: Proposal to establish the Spanish Inquisition.]

The zealous friends of the church, as well as those who were enriched by confiscations, represented to the king that this state of things arose from the fact that the higher magistrates, themselves tainted with heresy, connived at its spread, and that the ”presidial” judges abstained from employing the powers conferred by the edict, through fear of compromising themselves with the sovereign courts. Nor could ecclesiastical courts accomplish much, since the secular judges, to whom an appeal was open, found means to clear the guilty. They insisted that the only remedy was the introduction of the _Inquisition_ in the form in which it had proved so efficacious in Spain and Italy. This, it was said, could be attained by taking away the appeal that had hitherto been allowed from the decisions of the church courts, and compelling the nearest secular court to enforce their sentences. It was, furthermore, proposed to confiscate, for the king's benefit, all the property of fugitives, disregarding the claims even of those who had purchased from them without collusion.[592]

[Sidenote: Opposition of parliament.]

In secret sessions held at the house of Bertrand, keeper of the seals, at which were present several of the presidents of parliament known to be least friendly to the Reformation, the necessary legislation was matured at the instance of the Cardinal of Lorraine.[593] But, when the edicts establis.h.i.+ng the Spanish inquisition were submitted, by order of the king, to the Parliament of Paris, it soon became evident that not even the intrigues of the presidents who were favorable to them could secure their registration. In the hope of better success, the edicts were for the time withdrawn, and submitted, a few months later, to the part of parliament that held its sessions in summer,[594] accompanied by royal letters strictly enjoining their reception (lettres de jussion).

Twice the _gens du roi_ were heard in favor of the new system, pleading its necessity, the utility of enlarging the jurisdiction of the church courts, especially in the case of apostatizing monks and fanatical preachers, and the fact that parliament itself had testified that it was not averse to an inquisition--not only by recording the edicts of St.

Louis and Philip the Fair, but also by two recent registrations of the powers of the Inquisitor of the Faith, Matthieu Ory.[595] After many delays and a prolonged discussion, parliament decided by a large majority that it could not comply with the king's commands, and would indicate to his Majesty other means of eradicating heresy more consistent with the spirit of Christianity.[596]

The president, Seguier, and a counsellor (Adrien du Drac) were deputed to justify before the monarch the course taken by parliament. The royal court was at this time at Villers-Cotterets, not far from Soissons, and the commissioners were informed on their arrival that Henry, displeased and scandalized at the delays of parliament, had begun to suspect it of being badly advised respecting religion and the obedience due to the church. He had said ”that, if twelve judges were necessary to try Lutherans, they could not be found among the members of that body.” The deputies were warned that they must expect to hear harsh words from the king's lips. Admitted, on the twenty-second of October, into Henry's presence, President Seguier delivered before the Duke of Guise, Constable Montmorency, Marshal St. Andre, and other dignitaries civil and ecclesiastical, an address full of n.o.ble sentiments.[597]

[Sidenote: Speech of President Seguier in opposition.]

”Parliament,” said Seguier, ”consists of one hundred and sixty members, who, for ability and conscientious discharge of duty, cannot be matched.

I know not any of the number to be alienated from the true faith.

Indeed, no greater misfortune could befall the judicature, than that the supreme court should forfeit the confidence of the monarch by whom its members were appointed. It is not from personal fear that we oppose the introduction of the Inquisition. An inquisition, when well administered, may not, perhaps, always be injurious. Yet Trajan, an excellent emperor, abolished it as against the early Christians, persecuted as the 'Lutherans' now are; and he preferred to depend upon the declarations of those who revealed themselves, rather than to foster the spread of the curse of informers and sow fear and distrust in families. But it is as _magistrates_ that we dread, or rather abhor, the establishment of a b.l.o.o.d.y tribunal, before which denunciation takes the place of proof, where the accused is deprived of the natural means of defence, and where no judicial forms are observed. We allege nothing of which we cannot furnish recent examples. Many of those whom the agents of the Inquisition had condemned have appealed to parliament. In revising these procedures, we found them so full of absurdities and follies, that, if charity forbids our suspecting those who already discharge this function among us of dishonesty and malice, it permits and even bids us deplore their ignorance and presumption. Yet it is to such judges that you are asked, Sire, to deliver over your faithful subjects, bound hand and foot, by removing the resource of appeal.”

Is it politic, the orator proceeded to ask, for the king to introduce an edict standing in direct contradiction to that by which he has given to his own courts exclusive jurisdiction in the trial of the laity and simple clerks, and thus initiate a conflict of laws? Or has the monarch--by whose authority, as supreme head of justice, the decisions of parliament are rendered, whose name stands at the beginning, and whose seal is affixed to the termination of every writ--the right to cut off an appeal to himself, which his subjects, by reason of their paying tribute, can justly claim in return? Rather let the sovereign remedy be applied. In order to put an end to heresy, let the pattern of the primitive church be observed, which was established not by sword or by fire, but which, on the contrary, resisted both sword and fire through long years of persecution. Yet it endured, and even grew, by the doctrine and exemplary life of good prelates and pastors, residing in their charges. At present the prelates are non-residents, and the people hunger for the Word of G.o.d. Now, it is every man's duty to believe the Holy Scriptures, and to bear testimony to his belief by good works.

Whoever refuses to believe them, and accuses others of being ”Lutherans,” is more of a heretic than the ”Lutherans” themselves.[598]

The remonstrance of parliament, said Seguier, in fine, is in the interest of the poor people and of the courtiers themselves, whom others more needy will seek to strip of their possessions by means of the Inquisition and a brace of false witnesses.[599]

The speech was listened to with attention by Henry, and its close was applauded by his courtiers, who appreciated the truth of the warning conveyed. Two days later the king informed the deputies that he had determined to take the matter into further consideration; and, after their return, not only Henry, but also Guise and Montmorency, sent letters to parliament in which the mission of Seguier and Du Drac was referred to in complimentary terms.[600]

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