Volume I Part 37 (2/2)
[Footnote 605: Lery himself is in doubt respecting the exact occasion of the change in Villegagnon's conduct. Some of the colonists were fully persuaded ”inde id accidisse, quod a Cardinali Lotharingo, aliisque qui ad eum e Gallia scripserunt ... graviter fuisset reprehensus, quod a Catholica Romanensi Ecclesia descivisset: hisque literis eum ita perterritum fuisse, ut sententiam repente mutaverit.” Others believed him guilty of premeditated treachery: ”Post meum tamen reditum accepi Villagagnonem c.u.m Card. Lotharingo consilium jam inivisse, antequam e Gallia excederet, de vera Religione simulanda, ut facilius auctoritate Colignii maris praefecti abuterentur,” etc. Hist. navig. in Brasiliam, 62, 63.]
[Footnote 606: The Protestants were bearers of a Bellerophontic letter, addressed to the magistrates of whatever French port they might enter, intended to compa.s.s their destruction as heretics and rebels. They made the harbor of Hennebon, in Brittany, whose Protestant officers disclosed the secret plan and welcomed the half-famished fugitives. Lery, 304-330; Hist. eccles., i. 102; La Place, Commentaires de l'estat de la rel. et republ., 25.]
[Footnote 607: De Thou, ii. 381-384; Hist. eccles., 100-102; Lery, 339 _et pa.s.sim_; La Place, _ubi supra_. ”Clarissimi, erudissimique viri D.
Nicolai Villagagnonis, equitis Rhodii, adversus novitium Calvini ...
dogma de sacramento Eucharistiae, opuscula tria, Coloniae, 1563.” In the preface of the first of these treatises, Villegagnon denies the reports of his fickleness and cruelty as slanders of the returning Protestants, and defends his conduct in throwing the three _monks_ into the sea. In a dedication to Constable Montmorency (dated 1560) he clears himself from the charge of atheism brought against him because he expelled the ministers ”on discovering the vanity of their religion.” There are subjoined Richier's articles, etc.]
[Footnote 608: Hist. eccles., i. 61.]
[Footnote 609: Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 61-63.]
[Footnote 610: Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 63-71.]
[Footnote 611: ”In Gallia pergunt ecclesiae zelo plane mirabili.
_Parisienses_ novum ministrum petunt, quern brevi, ut spero, missuri sumus.” Beza to Bullinger, Jan. 1, 1556 (Baum, i. 450).]
[Footnote 612: Beza to Bullinger, Feb. 12, 1556 (Ib., i. 453). The curate of Meriot deplores the progress of the Reformation during this year. ”L'heresie prenoit secretement pied en France.... Mais ah! le malheur advint tel que la plus part des grands juges de la court de parlement, comme presidens et conseillers, furent et estoient intoxiquez et empoisonnez de ladite heresie lutherienne et calvinienne, et qui pis est de la moytie, se trouva finallement des evesques qui estoient tous plains et couvers de ceste mauldite farinne. Et pour ce que le roy tenoit le main forte pour faire pugnir de la peine du feu les coulpables, y en avait mille a sa suitte et en la ville de Paris, _lesquelz faisoient bonne mine et meschant jeu_, feignoient d'estre vrays catholiques, et en leur secret et consciences estoient parfaictz hereticques.” Mem. de Claude Haton, 27.]
[Footnote 613: The execution of the ”Five from Geneva” at Chambery, in Savoy--then, as now again, a part of France--and the violent persecution in the neighborhood of Angers, are well known (Crespin, fols. 283-321; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 68, 69). The inclination to resist force by force, manifested by some Protestants in Anjou, was promptly discouraged by Calvin; letter of April 19, 1556 (Lettres franc., ii.
90). The number and names of the martyrs will probably never be ascertained. ”N'estoit quasi moys de l'an qu'on n'en bruslast a Paris, a Meaux et a Troie en Champagne deux ou trois, en aulcun moy plus de douze. Et si pour cela les aultres ne cessoient de poursuivre leur entreprinse de mettre en avant leur faulce religion.” Mem. de Cl. Haton, 48. The Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., vii. (1858) 14, extracts from the registers of the Parliament of Toulouse, June 11, 1556, the sentence of a victim hitherto unknown--one Blondel. He had dared to protest against the impiety of the procession of the ”Fete-Dieu,” or ”Corpus Christi,” by singing ”a profane hymn of Clement Marot.” Parliament turned aside from the procession, and in the sacristy of the church of St. Stephen rapidly tried him, and ordered him to be burned the same day at the stake in a public square, as a ”reparation of the injury done to the holy faith.” Certainly a church dedicated to the Christian protomartyr was not the most appropriate place for drawing up such a decree!]
[Footnote 614: De Thou, ii. 404.]
[Footnote 615: De Thou, ii. 412-416.]
[Footnote 616: The papal letter sent by the hands of Caraffa to Henry (together with a sword and hat solemnly blessed by Paul himself) is reprinted in Cimber et Danjou, Archives curieuses, iii. 425, 426.]
[Footnote 617: De Thou, ii. 417.]
[Footnote 618: A letter of Henry himself to M. de Selve, his amba.s.sador at Rome, gives us the fact of the effort and of its failure: ”Voyant les heresies et faulces doctrines, qui a mon tres grand regret, ennuy et desplaisir, pullulent en mes royaume et pays de mon obeissance, j'avoys despieca advise, selon les advis _que le cardinal Caraffe estant dernierement pardeca m'en a donne de la part de nostre Saint-Pere, de mettre sus et introduire l'inquisition_ selon la forme de droict, pour estre le vray moien d'extirper la racine de telles erreurs, pugnir et corriger ceulx qui lea font et commettent avec leurs imitateurs, toutes fois pour ce que en cela se sont trouvez quelques difficultez, alleguant ceulx des estats de mon royaume, lesquels ne veulent recevoir, approuver, ne observer la dicte inquisition, les troubles, divisions et aultres inconveniens qu'elle pourroit apporter avec soy, et mesmes, en ce temps de guerre, il m'a semble pour le mieulx de y parvenir par aultre voye,” etc. Memoires de Guise, p. 338. The letter is inaccurately given in Sismondi, Hist. des Francais, xviii. 623. See Dulaure, H. de Paris, iv. 135.]
[Footnote 619: ”Comme celluy qui ne desire autre chose en ce monde, que veoir mon peuple nect et exempt d'une telle dangereuse peste et vermyne que sont lesdictes heresies et faulces et reprouvees doctrines.” Henry to De Selve, _ubi supra_.]
[Footnote 620: Sismondi, Hist. des Francais, xviii. 62.]
[Footnote 621: Sir Wm. Pickering to Council, Melun, Sept. 4, 1551, State Paper Office MSS. Patrick Fraser Tytler, Reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, i. 420.]
[Footnote 622: Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 72.]
[Footnote 623: See the declaration of Henry, in Preuves des Libertez de l'egl. gallicane, part iii. 174.]
[Footnote 624: Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 72, 73.]
[Footnote 625: ”Hoc quidem tibi possum pro comperto affirmare regnum Dei tantum nunc progressum _in decem minimum Galliae urbibus ac Lutetiae praesertim_ facere ut magni nescio quid Dominus illic moliri aperte videatur.” Beza to Bullinger, March 27, 1557, Baum, Theodor Beza, i.
461.]
[Footnote 626: At Autun, in Sept., 1556. Hist. eccles., i. 70. No wonder that the example set by the judges of Autun ”served greatly to instruct others!”]
[Footnote 627: Recueil gen. des anc. lois fr., xiii. 494-497. The respective jurisdictions of the clerical and lay judges remained the same. An article, however, was appended declaring that in future the confiscated property of condemned heretics should no more inure to the crown, or be granted to private individuals, but should be applied to charitable purposes. What a feeble barrier this provision proved to the cupidity of the courtiers, long glutted with the spoils of ”Lutherans”--real or pretended--the case of Philippine de Luns showed very clearly, some two or three months later.]
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