Volume I Part 61 (2/2)
[Sidenote: Premature delight of the queen mother.]
[Sidenote: The article rejected by the prelates.]
[Sidenote: Their demand.]
Although the article itself was to be kept secret until submitted to the prelates, the tidings that a harmonious result had been reached rapidly flew through the court and was carried to Catharine herself. Beza and Montluc were summoned into her presence. In the excess of her joy at the prospect of the peaceful solution of a difficult problem, and of an issue of the colloquy which would greatly conduce to her glory and the firmer establishment of her rule, Catharine even cordially embraced the reformer, and bade him go on in the good way he and his companions had entered. Beza, not blind to the difficulties that still beset their path, replied that their highest desires were for truth and peace, but that a good beginning only had been made.[1167] The Cardinal of Lorraine, after reading the article, expressed the belief that the prelates of Poissy would be pleased,[1168] and for his own part seemed to regard the Protestants as having surrendered the entire ground of controversy to the Roman Catholics.[1169] But both queen and cardinal were soon undeceived. The a.s.sembled prelates rejected the modified article with scorn, treating with insult the deputies that brought it, as having betrayed their cause and played into the hands of the reformers.[1170] Under these circ.u.mstances a continuation of the conference would have been absurd. The Roman Catholic deputies, despairing of any good fruits from their efforts at conciliation, never returned; and the last vestige of the colloquy, on which such brilliant antic.i.p.ations had been based, vanished into thin air.[1171] The prelates themselves continued to sit for a few days. A committee of three bishops and sundry doctors of the Sorbonne, to whom the article agreed upon by the Roman Catholic and Huguenot delegates was submitted for examination, p.r.o.nounced it (on the sixth of October) to be incomplete, dangerous, and heretical. Three days later the prelates published a formal condemnation of it, offered a definition which they declared to be orthodox, and called upon the king to require Beza and his companions either to sign this new formula, or to consult the public peace by leaving France altogether. A long series of canons, in which the question of church discipline was touched lightly, and that of doctrine not at all--the paltry result of more than two months of sufficiently animated,[1172] if not very harmonious discussion--was at the same time given to the world.[1173]
[Sidenote: Catharine's financial success.]
From a political point of view, the a.s.sembly of the prelates at Poissy had not been unprofitable to the government. Alarmed by the radical projects of the wholesale confiscation of ecclesiastical property which had found no little favor with the other orders at Pontoise, equally alarmed by the possibility of being compelled to enter into a full and fair discussion with the champions of the Protestant doctrines, the wealthy dignitaries of the Gallican Church brought themselves, not without a severe struggle, to purchase exemption from these perils by a pecuniary concession which delighted the perplexed financiers of France.
They pledged themselves to pay, by semi-annual instalments, the entire sum needed for the redemption of the royal domain which had been alienated to satisfy the public creditors.[1174] But in return they demanded important equivalents. The first item was that the severe ”Edict of July” should be made perpetual and irrevocable. This request Catharine and the council denied. To declare that odious law, which it had never been possible to carry into execution in several provinces of France, a part of the fundamental const.i.tution, would be a gratuitous insult to the Huguenots, and would precipitate the country instantly into the abyss upon the verge of which it was already hanging.
[Sidenote: Order for the rest.i.tution of the churches.]
The other demands of the bishops it seemed more practicable to grant.
They required that Charles should by solemn edict order the instantaneous rest.i.tution of the churches seized by the Huguenots. In spite of the earnest protest of Beza,[1175] the government (on the eighteenth of October) complied with the request.[1176] Within twenty-four hours after the receipt of this edict, all persons who had taken possession of churches were commanded, on penalty of death as rebels and felons, to vacate them, restoring whatever valuables they had removed, and replacing the images and crosses they had destroyed. At the same time the prohibition of the use of insulting language and acts was renewed, and both parties were bidden to place their arms in the hands of the local magistrates.[1177] Thus, to use Beza's language, was Christ betrayed, but at a much dearer price than that for which he was, centuries ago, sold by Judas--for sixteen millions of francs instead of the thirty pieces of silver.[1178] Having, by extorting the Edict of Rest.i.tution, succeeded in paving the way for renewed commotions, soon to culminate in open and widespread war, the prelates adjourned, with mingled satisfaction and disgust, toward the end of October, 1561.[1179]
[Sidenote: Arrival of five German delegates.]
The conference of Poissy had scarcely been definitely abandoned when five German Protestants appeared upon the scene. Three of these--Andrea, Beuerlin, and Balthasar Bidembach--had been sent by the Duke of Wurtemberg; the others--Bouquin and Dilher--by the Elector Palatine.
Early in the summer, the King of Navarre, anxious to strengthen himself by enlisting in his favor the Protestant princes of Germany, had expressed to them the desire, in which Catharine coincided, that some theologians--learned and pious men, and inclined to peace--should be sent from beyond the Rhine to take part in the adjustment of the religious questions at the Colloquy of Poissy. The Protestant electors, the Landgrave of Hesse, and the Duke of Wurtemberg, were unable, however, to agree on the instructions to be given to the envoys. While the duke, devotedly attached to the doctrines of Luther, was bent upon strongly recommending the adoption of the Augsburg Confession, the other princes could not acquiesce in his plan. The landgrave refused to throw additional difficulties in the way of the reformed churches of France, just emerging from a period of relentless persecution, and seeking for the public recognition of the right to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d, for which so many martyrs had cheerfully laid down their lives. The Elector of Saxony distrusted the sincerity of the intentions of the French court. As for the Count Palatine, he himself had embraced the reformed theology, and could not be expected to urge the Huguenots to give up their own well-digested confession for one which they considered far inferior to it in all respects.[1180] And so it happened that, in consequence of a diversity of sentiment regarding both doctrine and policy, there was no general deputation sent to France, and the delegates of the two princes who complied with the invitation arrived at Paris after the colloquy--too late to do any harm, if not soon enough to do much good.
They were courteously received by the court. The Wurtembergers, in particular, were allowed frequent opportunities of explaining the merits of the Lutheran doctrine of the Lord's Supper. Before their return into Germany, they were distinctly informed by Navarre that, while he recommended a closer union between the two branches of the Protestant Church, his own views accorded with those of the adherents of the Augsburg Confession; and that his only reason for delaying to subscribe to it was a fear lest this step might interfere with the execution of the union he desired to effect.[1181]
[Sidenote: Why the colloquy proved a failure.]
The Colloquy of Poissy had proved, so far as the objects contemplated by its originators were concerned, a complete failure. Instead of drawing the Roman Catholic and the reformed churches together, it had only widened the breach separating them. Instead of exhibiting in a clearer light the common ground on which a union might be practicable, it had rendered patent to all the antagonism which could not be cloaked by ambiguous phrases and incomplete statements of doctrine. It is certainly worth while to inquire into some of the causes of a result so unexpected to a great number of intelligent men, who had framed their antic.i.p.ations upon no superficial view of the subject.
[Sidenote: Catharine's crude notion of a conference.]
The crude notions of the court respecting the character which such a conference ought to a.s.sume must be regarded as one of these causes.
Catharine, while extending the most gracious invitations to foreign Protestants, was herself apparently undecided how to treat the Huguenots when they should make their appearance. Even if we grant that her explanations of the object of the projected colloquy, referred to on a preceding page,[1182] received their coloring from the fact that she was supplying her amba.s.sador in Germany with plausible representations wherewith to appease such irritated bigots as feared that the French queen intended to propose a grave discussion of the religious question upon its own merits, yet the entire course of the conference exhibits her inability to comprehend the nature of a fair debate of the matters in dispute. The Huguenot ministers and delegates were obliged to pet.i.tion that the prelates should not be permitted to act as their judges, and afterward to remind her of the promise she had given them to this effect. Even after the point had been nominally accorded, the most important questions respecting the conference were decided in the council, where _five_ cardinals and _three_ bishops had seats.[1183]
Under these circ.u.mstances it is not astonis.h.i.+ng that Lorraine a.s.sumed a tone of superiority which his relation to the debate by no means warranted.
[Sidenote: Character of the prelates.]
Besides this, the character of the a.s.sembly of prelates itself precluded the possibility of an adjustment. With the exception of six or seven, so insignificant were these ecclesiastical dignitaries individually, that, as a modern historian has well remarked, not one distinguished himself sufficiently to be named by any of the writers who treat of the conference. They were, generally, the younger sons of the most distinguished families in France, and had entered the church not from devotion, but in consequence of an immemorial custom which consigned to the episcopal dignity or to a rich abbacy the youth whom an elder brother debarred from entertaining the hope of succeeding to his father's dignities and possessions. Few of them had ever seen their dioceses save on some great festival; none possessed the literary or theological training necessary to qualify them for coping with the master-minds among the Protestants. Accordingly, each bishop had to come to Poissy with one or more ”theologians,” doctors of the Sorbonne, to whose better judgment and superior learning he was content to defer on every disputed point. There was little probability that a body thus const.i.tuted would consent to enter into a candid consideration of the differences separating the Roman Catholic and Protestant worlds.[1184]
[Sidenote: Influence of the papal legate.]
[Sidenote: The despondent nuncio, Viterbo.]
But the single event said by an eye-witness and actor in these scenes to have conduced more than any other to destroy all hope of agreement, was the arrival at court of the papal legate, Ippolito D'Este, Cardinal of Ferrara.[1185] Pope Pius IV. had long been watching the affairs of France with deep solicitude. If his legates, Tournon and Lorraine, had failed to alarm him by their reports of the progress of the ”new doctrines,” he could not but be troubled by the accounts which came from his nuncio in France, Sebastiano Gualtieri, Bishop of Viterbo.
Gualtieri, an experienced diplomatist, learned, eloquent--and not wanting in cunning,[1186] if we may believe his successor in office--had proved himself unequal to the duties of his present position, by giving way to extreme despondency. In the gay capital of France he led a wretched life, in constant dread of future disaster, and ceaselessly uttering lugubrious prognostications. To the Pope he announced that religious matters in France were desperate; everything was rus.h.i.+ng to ruin with ever-increasing velocity. The queen mother was unsound in the faith, although, from motives of policy, she dissembled her true sentiments. She favored a preacher, one Bouteiller, who was equally unsound; and she refused to dismiss him when admonished of her error. He begged the pontiff to recall him, so that he might not witness the funeral obsequies of the unhappy kingdom.[1187]
[Sidenote: Anxiety of Pope Pius IV.]
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