Volume I Part 33 (1/2)
One of them was an advocate in parliament; both were elders of the reformed church. Five days later a physician and a solicitor met the same fate, but endured greater sufferings, as the wind blew the flames from beneath them, prolonging their torture; and these were quickly followed by two students at Paris, both of them from the southern part of the realm (on the twenty-third of October).[639]
[Sidenote: Intercession of the Swiss cantons and others.]
[Sidenote: Calvin's interest.]
Meanwhile the wretched prisoners were not deserted by their brethren.
Their innocence of the dreadful crimes laid to their charge was maintained in pamphlets, which showed that these accusations were but repet.i.tions of slanders invented by the heathen to overwhelm the early Christians. Their doctrinal orthodoxy was proved by citations from the early church fathers.[640] The Protestants of Paris found means to introduce a long remonstrance into the very chamber of the king.
Unfortunately, it had as little influence upon him as similar productions had had with his predecessor. In Switzerland and in a portion of Germany the tidings made a deep impression. Less than two weeks after the blow had been struck at the small community of Parisian Protestants, Calvin wrote the first of a series of letters calculated to sustain their drooping courage, and suggested some of the wise ends Providence might have in view in permitting so severe a discipline.[641]
Meantime he applied himself vigorously to arouse in their behalf an effective intervention. ”My good brethren,” he wrote to the people of Lausanne, ”though all the rest should not suffice to move the hearts of those brethren to whom an appeal is made, yet this emergency admits of no delay. It can scarcely be but that, amid so many tortures, first one and then another be involved in them, until the number of sufferers become an infinite one. In short, the whole kingdom will be in flames.
The question no longer is how to satisfy the desire of the poor brethren, but, if we have a single spark of humanity within us, to succor them in such extremity.... Though money be not promptly obtained elsewhere, yet shall I make such efforts, should I be obliged to pledge my head and my feet, that it be forthcoming here.”[642]
Beza, with his a.s.sociates, Carmel, Farel, and Bude, at the same time, by Calvin's request, took active steps to induce the Protestant cantons and princes to intercede with Henry, and their exertions were not in vain.[643] It was the object of the reformers to enlist the intervention of those Protestant powers, in particular, whose alliance and a.s.sistance might be deemed indispensable by the French king in his present straits.[644] The four ”evangelical” Swiss cantons, encouraged by the success of a recent mission in behalf of the Waldenses of Piedmont, sent to Paris a deputation, whose appearance was greeted by the Protestants with the utmost joy. The amba.s.sadors, however, allowed themselves to be cajoled and deceived by the Cardinal of Lorraine, to whom they had the imprudence to intrust their pet.i.tion. In reply to their address to the king, they were told (on the fifth of November), in the name of his Majesty, that he invited the confederates in future to trouble themselves no further with the internal affairs of his kingdom, especially in matters of religion, since he was resolved to follow in the steps of his predecessors.[645] Discouraged by this rebuff, they did not even attempt to press the matter upon the king's notice, or by a personal interview endeavor to mitigate his anger against their brethren. It had been better never to have engaged in the intercession than support it so weakly.[646] The German princes could not be induced to give to the affair the consideration it merited; but a letter of the Count Palatine seems to have somewhat diminished the violence of the persecution.[647]
[Sidenote: Constancy of most of the prisoners.]
The constancy of the victims, by disconcerting the plans of their enemies, doubtless contributed much to the temporary lull. No one attracted in this respect greater attention than the most ill.u.s.trious person among the prisoners--the daughter of the Seigneur de Rambouillet and wife of De Rentigny, standard-bearer of the Duke of Guise--who resolutely rejected the pardon, based on a renunciation of her faith, which her father and husband brought her from the king, and urged her with tears to accept.[648] Others, who, on account of their youth, were expected to be but poor advocates of their doctrinal views, proved more than a match for their examiners. The course was finally adopted of distributing the prisoners, about one hundred in number, in various monastic establishments, whose inmates might win them back to the Roman Catholic Church, whether by argument or by harsher means. The judges could thus rid themselves of the irksome task of lighting new fires, and the energies of the religious orders were put to some account. But the result hardly met the expectations formed. If a few Protestants obtained their liberty, and incurred the censures of their brethren, by unworthy confessions of principle,[649] many more were allowed to escape by the monks, who soon had reason to desire ”that their cloisters might be purged of such pests, through fear lest the contagion should spread farther,” and found it ”burdensome to support without compensation so large a number of needy persons.”[650]
[Sidenote: Controversial pamphlets.]
While the Protestants were thus demonstrating, by the fort.i.tude with which they encountered severe suffering and even death, the sincerity of their convictions and the purity of their lives, their enemies were unremitting in exertions to aggravate the odium in which they were held by the people. An inquisitor and doctor of the Sorbonne, the notorious De Mouchy, or Demochares, as he called himself, wrote a pamphlet to prove them heretics by the decisions of the doctors. A bishop found the signs of the true church in the _bells_ at the sound of which the Catholics a.s.sembled, and marks of Antichrist in the _pistols_ and _arquebuses_ whose discharge was said to be the signal for the gathering of the heretics. A third controversialist went so far as to accuse the Protestants not only of impurity, but of denying the divinity of Christ, the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, and even the existence of G.o.d.[651]
[Sidenote: Capture of Calais, January, 1558.]
Meanwhile, public affairs a.s.sumed a more encouraging aspect. Francis of Guise, recalled from Italy, where his ill-success had been the salvation of the poor Waldenses in their Alpine valleys,[652] had a.s.sumed command of a large force, consisting partly of the troops he had taken to Italy, partly of n.o.blemen and gentlemen that flocked to his standard in answer to the king's summons for the defence of the French capital. With this army he succeeded in capturing, in the beginning of January, 1558, the city of Calais, for two hundred years an English possession.[653] The achievement was not a difficult one. The fortifications had been suffered to go to ruin, and the small garrison was utterly insufficient to resist the force unexpectedly sent against it.[654] But the success raised still higher the pride of the Guises.
[Sidenote: Registry of the inquisition edict.]
[Sidenote: Antoine of Navarre, Conde, and other princes favor the Reformation.]
The auspicious moment was seized by the Cardinal of Lorraine to induce Henry, on the ninth of January, to hold in parliament a _lit de justice_, and compel the court to register in his presence the obnoxious edict of the previous year, establis.h.i.+ng the _inquisition_.[655] But the engine which had been esteemed both by Pope and king the only sure means of repressing heresy, failed of its end. New churches arose; those that previously existed rapidly grew.[656] The Reformation, also, now, for the first time, was openly avowed by men of the first rank in the kingdom. Its opponents were filled with dismay upon beholding Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre, his brother Louis, Prince of Conde, and Francois d'Andelot, brother of Admiral Coligny, at the head of the hitherto despised ”Lutherans.” Antoine de Bourbon-Vendome was, next to the reigning monarch and his children, the first prince of the blood.
Since his marriage with Jeanne d'Albret--in consequence of which he became t.i.tular King of Navarre--he had resided for much of the time in the city of Pan, where his more ill.u.s.trious son, Henry the Fourth, was born. Here he had attended the preaching of Protestant ministers. On his return to court, not long after the capture of Calais, he took the decided step of frequenting the gatherings of the Parisian Protestants.
Subsequently he rescued a prominent minister--Antoine de Chandieu--from the Chatelet, in which he was imprisoned, by going in person and claiming him as a member of his household.[657] Well would it have been for France had the Navarrese king always displayed the same courage.
Conde and D'Andelot were scarcely less valuable accessions to the ranks of the Protestants.
[Sidenote: Emba.s.sy from the Protestant Electors of Germany.]
Other causes contributed to delay the full execution of the plan of the Inquisition. A united emba.s.sy from the three Protestant Electors of Germany--the Count Palatine, the Duke of Saxony, and the Marquis of Brandenburg--and from the Dukes of Deux Ponts and Wurtemberg, bearing a powerful appeal to Henry in behalf of his persecuted subjects, arrived in Paris.[658] Such n.o.ble and influential pet.i.tioners could not be dismissed--especially at a time when their a.s.sistance was indispensable--without a gracious reply;[659] and, in order that the German princes might not have occasion to accuse Henry of too flagrant bad faith, the persecution was allowed for a short time to abate.
[Sidenote: Psalm-singing on the Pre aux Clercs.]
An incident of an apparently trivial character, which happened at Paris not long after, proved very clearly that the severities inflicted on some of those connected with the meeting in the Rue St. Jacques had utterly failed of accomplis.h.i.+ng their object. On the southern side of the Seine, opposite the Louvre, there stretched, just outside of the city walls, a large open s.p.a.ce--the public grounds of the university, known as the _Pre aux Clercs_.[660] This spot was the favorite promenade of the higher cla.s.ses of the Parisians. It happened that, on a certain afternoon in May,[661] a few voices in the crowd began to sing one of the psalms which Clement Marot and Theodore de Beze had translated into French. At the sound the walks and games were forsaken. The tune was quickly caught up, and soon the vast concourse joining in the words, either through sympathy or through love of novelty, the curious were attracted from all quarters to listen to so strange an entertainment.
For many successive evenings the same performance was repeated. The numbers increased, it was said, to five or six thousand. Many of the chief personages of the kingdom were to be seen among those who took part. The King and Queen of Navarre were particularly noticed because of the pleasure they manifested. By the inmates of the neighboring College of the Sorbonne the demonstration was interpreted as an open avowal of heresy. The use of the French language in devotional singing was calculated to throw contempt upon the time-honored usage of performing divine service in the Latin tongue.[662] To the king, at this time absent from the city, the psalm-singing was represented as a beginning of sedition, which must be suppressed lest it should lead to the destruction at once of his faith and of his authority. Henry, too ready a listener to such suggestions, ordered the irregularity to cease; and the Protestant ministers and elders of Paris, desirous of giving an example of obedience to the civil power in things indifferent, enjoined on their members to desist from singing the psalms elsewhere than in their own homes.[663]
[Sidenote: Conference of Cardinals Lorraine and Granvelle.]
The visit of the Dowager d.u.c.h.ess of Lorraine, who was permitted to meet her son upon the borders of France, afforded a good opportunity for an informal discussion of the terms of the peace that was to put an end to a war of which both parties were equally tired. There, in the fortress of Peronne, the Cardinal of Lorraine held a conference with Antoine Perrenot, Cardinal of Granvelle; and a friends.h.i.+p was cemented between the former and the Spanish court boding no good for the quiet of France or the stability of the throne.
[Sidenote: D'Andelot, Coligny's younger brother, denounced.]