Volume I Part 37 (1/2)

[Footnote 585: It was in view of this response of the king that Bullinger wrote to Calvin: ”He lives that delivered His people from Egypt; He lives who brought back the captivity from Babylon; He lives who defended His church against Caesars, kings, and profligate princes.

Verily we must needs pa.s.s through many afflictions into the kingdom of G.o.d. But _woe to those who touch the apple of G.o.d's eye_!” See Calvin's Letters (Eng. trans.), ii. 349, note.]

[Footnote 586: Prof. Baum has graphically described the unsuccessful intercession of the Swiss cantons in his Theodor Beza, i. 177-179.]

[Footnote 587: Histoire eccles. des egl. ref., i. 57.]

[Footnote 588: Ibid., _ubi supra_; Crespin, Actiones et Mon., fols.

185-217 (also in Galerie Chretienne, i. 268-330); De Thou, ii. 180, 181.

The description of the closing scenes of the lives of the Five Scholars of Lausanne is among the most touching pa.s.sages in the French martyrology, but the limits of this history do not admit of its insertion (see Baum, i. 179-181, and Soldan, i. 236-238). Their progress to the place of execution was marked by the recital of psalms, the benediction, ”The G.o.d of peace, that brought again from the dead, etc.,”

and the Apostles' creed; and, after mutual embraces and farewells, their last words, as their naked bodies, smeared with grease and sulphur, hung side by side over the flames, were: ”Be of good courage, brethren, be of good courage!”]

[Footnote 589: Beza to Bullinger, Dec. 24, 1553, and May 8, 1554; Baum, Theodor Beza, i. 431, 438.]

[Footnote 590: The bull of Julius the Third sanctioning the use of these proscribed articles of food--at whose instigation it was given is uncertain--was regarded by the Parliament of Paris as allowing a ”scandalous relaxation” of morals, and the keeper of the seals gave orders, by cry of the herald, that all booksellers and printers be forbidden to sell copies of it (Feb. 7, 1553). But this was not sufficient, since the bull was afterward publicly burned by order of Henry the Second and the parliament. Reg. of Parliament, in Felibien, Hist. de Paris, iv. 763; see also ibid., ii. 1033.]

[Footnote 591: Floquet, Hist. du parlement de Normandie, ii. 258-260.]

[Footnote 592: Garnier, Hist. de France, xxvii. 49, etc., whose account of the attempted introduction of the Spanish Inquisition into France is the most correct and comprehensive.]

[Footnote 593: Ibid., _ubi supra_; De Thou, ii. 375. The edict establis.h.i.+ng the Spanish inquisition is not contained in any collection of laws, as it was never formally registered. Dulaure (Hist. de Paris, iv. 133, 134) gives, apparently from the Reg. criminels du parl., registre cote 101, au 20 mai 1555, an extract from it: ”Que les inquisiteurs de la foi et juges ecclesiastiques peuvent librement proceder a la punition des heretiques, tant clercs que lacs, jusqu'a sentence definitive inclusivement; que les accuses qui, avant cette sentence, appelleront comme d'abus resteront toujours prisonniers, et leur appel sera porte au parlement. Mais, non.o.bstant cet appel, si l'accuse est declare heretique par les inquisiteurs, et pour ne pas r.e.t.a.r.der son chatiment, il sera livre au bras seculier.” (Soldan, from Lamothe-Langon, iii. 458, reads _exclusivement_, which must be wrong, if, indeed, the whole be not a mere paraphrase, which I suspect.)]

[Footnote 594: By the advice of the Cardinal of Lorraine, the Parliament of Paris had been divided into two sections, holding their sessions each for six months, and each vested with the powers of the entire body. This change went into effect July 2, 1554, and lasted three years. It was made ostensibly to relieve the judges and expedite business, but really in the interest of despotism, to diminish the authority of the undivided court sitting throughout the year. De Thou, ii. 246, 247.]

[Footnote 595: The post of Inquisitor-General of the Faith in France, having his seat at Toulouse, had, as we have already seen, long existed.

It was filled in 1536 by friar Vidal de Becanis (the letters patent appointing whom are given in the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot.

fr., i. (1853), 358). He was succeeded by Louis de Rochetti, who left the Roman Catholic Church, and was burned alive at Toulouse, Sept. 10, 1538. Afterward Becanis was reinstated (Ibid., _ubi supra_). A circular letter of this inquisitor-general, accompanying a list of heretical and prohibited works, is given, Ibid., i. 362, 363, 437, etc.]

[Footnote 596: Garnier, Hist. de France, xxvii. 49-54.]

[Footnote 597: The date, Oct. 16th, usually given (by De Thou, Garnier, etc.) for this harangue is incorrect. The publication of the valuable ”Memoires-journaux du Duc de Guise,” which Messrs. Michaud and Poujoulat (1851) have brought out of their obscurity, affords us the advantage of reading the account of the deputation and speech of Seguier in the words of his own report, from the Registers of Parliament (pp. 246-249). From this we learn that Seguier and Du Drac left Paris on Sat.u.r.day, Oct.

19th, reached Villera-Cotterets on Monday the 21st, and had an audience on Tuesday the 22d.]

[Footnote 598: ”Qu'il falloit croire l'Escriture et rendre tesmoignage de sa creance par bonnes uvres, et qui ne la veut croire et accuse les autres estre lutheriens, est plus heretique que les mesmes lutheriens.” Memoires de Guise, 248.]

[Footnote 599: Memoires de Guise, 246-249; Gamier, xxvii. 55-70; De Thou, liv. xvi., ii. 375-377.]

[Footnote 600: Mem. de Guise, 249, 250.]

[Footnote 601: According to Claude Haton (p. 38), a part of the emigrants were, by the king's permission, drawn from the prisons of Paris and Rouen. Nor does the pious curate see anything incongruous in the attempt to employ the released criminals in converting the barbarians to the true faith. However, although Villegagnon was a native of Provins, where Haton long resided, the curate's authority is not always to be received with perfect a.s.surance.]

[Footnote 602: The reconciliation between the statements of the text (in which I have followed the unimpeachable authority of the Hist. eccles.

des eglises reformees) and the a.s.sertion of the equally authoritative life of Coligny by Francis Hotman (Latin ed., 1575, p. 18, Eng. tr. of D. D. Scott, p. 70). that Coligny's ”love for true religion and vital G.o.dliness, and his desire to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d aright,” dated from the time of his captivity after the fall of St. Quentin (1557), and the opportunity he then enjoyed for reading the Holy Scriptures, is to be found probably in the view that, having previously been convinced of the truth of the reformed doctrines, he was not brought until then to their bold confession and courageous espousal--acts so perilous in themselves and so fatal to his ambition and to his love of ease. Respecting Villegagnon's promise to establish the ”sincere wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d” in his new colony, see the rare and interesting ”Historia navigationis in Braziliam, quae et America dicitur. Qua describitur autoris navigatio, quaeque in mari vidit memoriae prodenda: Villegagnonis in America gesta, etc. A Joanne Lerio, Burgundo, etc., 1586.” Jean l'Hery or Lery was a young man of twenty-two, who accompanied the ministers and skilled workmen whom Villegagnon invited to Brazil, partly from pious motives, partly, as he tells us, from curiosity to see the new world (page 6).

Despite his sufferings, the adventurous author, in later years, longed for a return to the wilderness, where among the savages better faith prevailed than in civilized France: ”Ita enim apud nos fides nulla superest, resque adeo nostra tota _Italica_ facta est,” etc. (page 301).]

[Footnote 603: Jean Lery, _ubi supra_, 4-6.]

[Footnote 604: What Villegagnon actually believed was an enigma to Lery, for the vice-admiral rejected both transubstantiation and consubstantiation, and yet maintained a _real_ presence. Lery, 58, 54.

Cointas had at first solemnly abjured Roman Catholicism, and applied for admission to the Reformed Church. Ibid., 46.]