A History of the Reformation Volume II Part 7

CHAPTER IV.

THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE.[161]

-- 1. _Marguerite d'Angouleme and the "group of Meaux."_

Perhaps no one so thoroughly represents the sentiments which inspired the beginnings of the movement for Reformation in France as Marguerite d'Angouleme,[162] the sister of King Francis I. A study of her letters and of her writings--the latter being for the most part in verse--is almost essential for a true knowledge of the aspirations of the n.o.blest minds of her generation. Not that she possessed creative energy or was herself a thinker of any originality, but her soul, like some clear sensitive mirror, received and reflected the most tremulous throb of the intellectual and religious movements around her. She had, like many ladies of that age, devoted herself to the New Learning. She had mastered Latin, Italian, and Spanish in her girlhood, and later she acquired Greek and even Hebrew, in order to study the Scriptures in their original tongues. In her the French Renaissance of the end of the fifteenth was prolonged throughout the first half of the sixteenth century. She was all sentiment and affection, full of that gentle courage which soft feminine enthusiasm gives, and to her brother and more masculine mother (Louise of Savoy)[163] she was a being to be protected against the consequences of her own tender daring.

Contemporary writers of all parties, save the more bitter defenders of the prevalent Scholastic Theology, have something good to say about the pure, bright, ecstatic Queen of Navarre. One calls her the "violet in the royal garden," and says that she unconsciously gathered around her all the better spirits in France, as the wild thyme attracts the bees.

Marsiglio Ficino had taught her to drink from the well of Christian Platonism;[164] and this mysticism, which had little to do with dogma, which allied itself naturally with the poetical sides of philosophy and morals which suggested great if indefinite thoughts about G.o.d,--_le Tout_, _le Seul Necessaire_, _la Seule Bonte_,--the human soul and the intimate union between the two, was perhaps the abiding part of her ever-enlarging religious experience. Nicholas of Cusa, who tried to combine the old Scholastic with the new thoughts of the Renaissance, taught her much which she never unlearnt. She studied the Holy Scriptures carefully for herself, and was never weary of discussing with others the meaning of pa.s.sages which seemed to be difficult. She listened eagerly to the preaching of Lefevre and Roussel, and carried on a long private correspondence with Briconnet, being pa.s.sionately desirous, she said, to learn "the way of salvation."[165] Both Luther and Calvin made a strong impression upon her, but their schemes of theology never attracted nor subjugated her intelligence. Her sympathies were drawn forth by their disdain of Scholastic Theology, by their denial of the supernatural powers of the priesthood, by their proclamation of the power and of the love of G.o.d, and by their conception that faith unites man with G.o.d--by all in their teaching which would a.s.similate with the Christian mysticism to which she had given herself with all her soul. When her religious poems are studied, it will be found that she dwells on the infinite power of G.o.d, the mystical absorption of the human life within the divine, and praises pa.s.sionately self-sacrifice and disdain of all earthly pleasures. She extols the Lord as the one and only Saviour and Intercessor. She contrasts, as Luther was accustomed to do, the Law which searches, tries, and punishes, with the Gospel which pardons the sinner for the sake of Christ and of the work which He finished on the Cross. She looks forward with eager hope to a world redeemed and regenerated through the Evangel of Jesus Christ. She insists on justification by faith, on the impossibility of salvation by works, on predestination in the sense of absolute dependence on G.o.d in the last resort. Works are good, but no one is saved by works; salvation comes by grace, and "is the gift of the Most High G.o.d." She calls the Virgin the most blessed among women, because she had been chosen to be the mother of the "Sovereign Saviour," but refused her any higher place; and in her devotions she introduced an invocation of Our Lord instead of the _Salve Regina_. This way of thinking about the Blessed Virgin, combined with her indifference to the Saints and to the Ma.s.s, and her undisguised contempt for the more superst.i.tious ecclesiastical ceremonies, were the chief reasons for the strong attacks made on Marguerite by the Faculty of Theology (the Sorbonne) of Paris. She cannot be called a Protestant, but she had broken completely with mediaeval modes of religious life and thought.

Marguerite's letters contain such graphic glimpses, that it is possible to see her daily life, whether at Bourges, where she held her Court as the d.u.c.h.ess of Alencon, or at Nerac, where she dwelt as the Queen of Navarre. Every hour was occupied, and was lived in the midst of company.

Her _Contes_ and her poetry were for the most part written in her litter when she was travelling from one place to another. Her "Household" was large even for the times. No less than one hundred and two persons--ladies, secretaries, almoners, physicians, etc.--made her Court; and frequently many visitors also were present. The whole "Household," with the visitors, met together every forenoon in one of the halls of the Palace, a room "well-paved and hung with tapestry," and there the Princess commonly proposed some text of Scripture for discussion. It was generally a pa.s.sage which seemed obscure to Marguerite; for example, "The meek shall inherit the earth." All were invited to make suggestions about its meaning. The hostess was learned, and no one scrupled to quote the Scriptures in their original languages, or to adduce the opinions of such earlier Fathers as Augustine, Jerome, Chrysostom, or the Gregories. If it surprises us to find one or other of the twenty _valets de chambre_, who were not menials and were privileged to be present, familiar with theology, and able to quote Greek and even Hebrew, it must not be forgotten that Marguerite's _valets de chambre_ included distinguished Humanists and Reformers, to whom she extended the protective privilege of being enrolled in her "Household." When the weather permitted, the whole company went for a stroll in the park after the discussion, and then seated themselves near a "pleasant fountain" on the turf, "so soft and delicate that they needed neither carpet nor cus.h.i.+ons."[166] There one of the ladies-in-waiting (thirty _dames_ or _demoiselles_ belonged to the "Household") read aloud a tale from the _Heptameron_, not forgetting the improving conversation which concludes each story. This gave rise to an animated talk, after which they returned to the Palace. In the evening the "Household" a.s.sembled again in a hall, fitted as a simple theatre, to witness one of the Comedies or Pastorals which the Queen delighted to write, and in which, through a medium as strange as the _Contes_, she inculcated her mystical Christianity, and gave expression to her longings for a reformation in the Church and society. Her Court was the precursor of the _salons_ which in a later age exercised such a powerful influence on French political, literary, and social life.

Marguerite is chiefly remembered as the author of the _Heptameron_, which modern sentiment cannot help regarding as a collection of scandalous, not to say licentious, tales. The incongruity, as it appears to us, of making such tales the vehicle of moral and even of evangelical instruction, causes us frequently to forget the conversations which follow the stories--conversations which generally inculcate moral truths, and sometimes wander round the evangelical thought that man's salvation and all the fruits of holy living rest on the finished work of Christ, the only Saviour. "_Voila, Mesdames, comme la foy du bon Comte ne fut vaincue par signes ne par miracles exterieurs, sachant tres bien que nous n'avons qu'un Sauveur, lequel en disant Consummatum est, a monstre qu'il ne laissoit point a un autre successeur pour faire notre salut._"[167] So different was the sentiment of the sixteenth from that of the twentieth century, that Jeanne d'Albret, puritan as she undoubtedly was, took pains that a scrupulously exact edition of her mother's _Contes_ should be printed and published, for all to read and profit by.

The Reformers with whom Marguerite was chiefly a.s.sociated were called the "group of Meaux." Guillaume Briconnet,[168] Bishop of Meaux, who earnestly desired reform but dreaded revolution, had gathered round him a band of scholars whose idea was a reformation of the Church by the Church, in the Church, and with the Church. They were the heirs of the aspirations of the great conciliar leaders of the fifteenth century, such as Gerson, deeply religious men, who longed for a genuine revival of faith and love. They hoped to reconcile the great truths of Christian dogma with the New Learning, and at once to enlarge the sphere of Christian intelligence, and to impregnate Humanism with Christian morality.

The man who inspired the movement and defined its aims--"to preach Christ from the sources"--was Jacques Lefevre d'etaples (Stapulensis).[169] He had been a distinguished Humanist, and in 1507 had resolved to consecrate his learning to a study of the Holy Scriptures. The first fruit of this resolve was a new Latin translation of the Epistles of St. Paul (1512), in which a revised version of the Vulgate was published along with the traditional text. In his notes he antic.i.p.ated two of Luther's ideas--that works have no merit apart from the grace of G.o.d, and that while there is a Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Supper, there is no transubstantiation. The Reformers of Meaux believed that the Holy Scriptures should be in the hands of the Christian people, and Lefevre took Jean de Rely's version of the Bible,--itself a revision of an old thirteenth century French translation,--revised it, published the Gospels in June 1523, and the whole of the New Testament before the end of the year. The Old Testament followed in 1525. The book was eagerly welcomed by Marguerite, and became widely known and read throughout France. The Princess was able to write to Briconnet that her brother and mother were interested in the spread of the Holy Scriptures, and in the hope of a reform of the Church.[170]

Neither Lefevre nor Briconnet was the man to lead a Reformation. The Bishop was timid, and feared the "tumult"; and Lefevre, like Marguerite, was a Christian mystic,[171] with all the mystic's dislike to change in outward and fixed inst.i.tutions. More radical ideas were entering France from without. The name of Luther was known as early as 1518, and by 1520, contemporary letters tell us that his books were selling by the hundred, and that all thinking men were studying his opinions.[172] The ideas of Zwingli were also known, and appeared more acceptable to the advanced thinkers in France. Some members of the group of Meaux began to reconsider their position. The Pope's Bull excommunicating Luther in 1520, the result of the Diet of Worms in 1521, and the declaration of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris (the Sorbonne) against the opinions of Luther, and their vindication of the authority of Aristotle and Scholastic Theology made it apparent that even modest reforms would not be tolerated by the Church as it then existed. The _Parlement_ of Paris (August 1521) ordered Luther's books to be given up.[173]

Lefevre did not falter. He remained what he had been--a man on the threshold of a new era who refused to enter it. One of his fellow-preachers retracted his opinions, and began to write against his leader. The young and fiery Guillaume Farel boldly adopted the views of the Swiss Reformers. Briconnet temporised. He forbade the preaching of Lutheran doctrine within his diocese, and the circulation of the Reformer's writings; but he continued to protect Lefevre, and remained true to his teaching.[174]

The energetic action of the Sorbonne and of the _Parlement_ of Paris showed the obstacles which lay in the path of a peaceful Reformation.

The library of Louis de Berquin was seized and condemned (June 16th, 1523), and several of his books burnt in front of Notre Dame by the order of _Parlement_ (August 8th). Berquin himself was saved by the interposition of the King.[175] In March 1525, Jean Leclerc, a wool-carder, was whipt and branded in Paris; and six months later was burnt at Metz for alleged outrages on objects of reverence. The Government had to come to some decision about the religious question.

Marguerite could write that her mother and her brother were "more than ever well disposed towards the reformation of the Church";[176] but neither of them had her strong religious sentiment, and policy rather than conviction invariably swayed their action. The Reformation promoted by Lefevre and believed in by Marguerite was at once too moderate and too exacting for Francis I. It could never be a basis for an alliance with the growing Protestantism of Germany, and it demanded a purity of individual life ill-suited either with the personal habits of the King or with the manners of the French Court. It is therefore not to be wondered that the policy of the Government of Francis I. wavered between a negligent protection and a stern repression of the French Reformers.

-- 2. _Attempts to repress the Movement for Reform._

The years 1523-26 were full of troubles for France. The Italian war had been unsuccessful. Provence had been invaded. Francis I. had been totally defeated and taken prisoner at Pavia. Dangers of various kinds within France had also confronted the Government. Bands of marauders--_les aventuriers_[177]--had pillaged numerous districts; and so many conflagrations had taken place that people believed they were caused by emissaries of the public enemies of France. Louise of Savoy, the Queen-Mother, and Regent during her son's captivity in Madrid, had found it necessary to conciliate the formidable powers of the _Parlement_ of Paris and of the Sorbonne. Measures were taken to suppress the printing of Lutheran and heretical books, and the _Parlement_ appointed a commission to discover, try, and punish heretics. The result was a somewhat ineffective persecution.[178] The preachers of Meaux had to take refuge in Stra.s.sburg, and Lefevre's translation of the Scriptures was publicly burnt.

When the King returned from his imprisonment at Madrid (March 1525), he seemed to take the side of the Reformers. The Meaux preachers came back to France, and Lefevre himself was made the tutor to the King's youngest son. In 1528-29 the great French Council of Sens met to consider the state of the Church. It reaffirmed most of the mediaeval positions, and, in opposition to the teachings of Protestants, declared the unity, infallibility, and visibility of the Church, the authority of Councils, the right of the Church to make canonical regulations, fasts, the celibacy of priests, the seven sacraments, the Ma.s.s, purgatory, the veneration of saints, the wors.h.i.+p of images, and the Scholastic doctrines of free will and faith and works. It called on civil rulers to execute the censures of the Church on heretics and schismatics. It also published a series of reforms necessary--most of which were already contained in the canon law.

While the Council was sitting, the Romanists of France were startled with the news that a statue of the Blessed Virgin had been beheaded and otherwise mutilated. It was the first manifestation of the revolutionary spirit of the Reformation in France. The King was furious. He caused a new statue to be made in silver, and gave his sanction to the renewal of the persecutions (May 31st, 1528). Four years later his policy altered.

He desired alliances with the English and German Protestants; one of the Reformers of Meaux preached in the Louvre during Lent (1533), and some doctors of the Sorbonne, who accused the King and Queen of Navarre of heresy, were banished from Paris. In spite of the ferment caused by the Evangelical address of Nicolas Cop, and the flight of Cop and of Calvin, the real author of the address, the King still seemed to favour reform.

Evangelical sermons were again preached in the Louvre, and the King spoke of a conference on the state of religion within France.

The affair of the _Placards_ caused another storm. On the morning of Oct. 18th, 1534, the citizens of Paris found that broadsides or _placards_, attacking in very strong language the ceremony of the Ma.s.s, had been affixed to the walls of the princ.i.p.al streets. These _placards_ affirmed that the sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross was perfect and unique, and therefore could never be repeated; that it was sheer idolatry to say that the corporeal presence of Christ was enclosed within the wafer, "a man of twenty or thirty years in a morsel of paste"; that transubstantiation was a gross error; that the Ma.s.s had been perverted from its true meaning, which is to be a memorial of the sacrifice and death of our Lord; and that the solemn ceremony had become a time "of bell-ringings, shoutings, singing, waving of lamps and swinging of incense pots, after the fas.h.i.+on of sorcerers." The violence of language was extreme. "The Pope and all his vermin of cardinals, of bishops, of priests, of monks and other hypocrites, sayers of the Ma.s.s, and all those who consent thereto," were liars and blasphemers. The author of this broadside was a certain Antoine Marcourt, who had fled from France and taken refuge in Neuchatel. The audacity of the men who had posted the _placards_ in Paris and in other towns,--Orleans, Blois, Amboise,--and had even fixed one on the door of the King's bedchamber, helped to rouse the Romanists to frenzy. The _Parlement_ and the University demanded loudly that extreme measures should be taken to crush the heretics;[179] and everywhere expiatory processions were formed to protest against the sacrilege. The King himself and the great n.o.bles of the Court took part in one in January,[180] and during that month more than thirty-five Lutherans were arrested, tried, and burnt.

Several well-known Frenchmen (seventy-three at least), among them Clement Marot and Mathurin Cordier, fled the country, and their possessions were confiscated.

After this outburst of persecution the King's policy again changed. He was once more anxious for an alliance with the Protestants of Germany.

An amnesty was proclaimed for all save the "Sacramentarians," _i.e._ the followers of Zwingli. A few of the exiled Frenchmen returned, among them Clement Marot. The Chancellor of France, Antoine du Bourg, went the length of inviting the German theologians to come to France for the purpose of sharing in a religious conference, and adhered to his proposal in spite of the protests of the Sorbonne. But nothing came of it. The German Protestant theologians refused to risk themselves on French soil; and the exiled Frenchmen mistrusted the King and his Chancellor. The amnesty, however, deserves remark, because it called forth the letter of Calvin to Francis I. which forms the "dedication" or preface to his _Christian Inst.i.tution_.

The work of repression was resumed with increased severity. Royal edicts and mandates urging the extirpation of heresy followed each other in rapid succession--Edict to the _Parlement_ of Toulouse (Dec. 16th, 1538), to the _Parlements_ of Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Rouen (June 24th, 1539); a general edict issued from Fontainebleau (June 1st, 1540); an edict to the _Parlement_ of Toulouse (Aug. 29th, 1542); _mandats_ to the _Parlements_ of Paris, Bordeaux, Dijon, Gren.o.ble, and Rouen (Aug. 30th, 1542). The general Edict of Fontainebleau was one of exceptional severity. It was intended to introduce a more summary procedure in heresy trials, and enjoined officials to proceed against all persons tainted with heresy, even against ecclesiastics or those who had the "benefit of clergy"; the right of appeal was denied to those suspected; negligent judges were threatened with the King's displeasure; and the ecclesiastical courts were urged to show greater zeal, and to take advantage of the powers given to the civil courts. "Every loyal subject," the edict said, "must denounce heretics, and employ all means to root them out, just as all men are bound to run to help to extinguish a public conflagration." This edict, slightly modified by the _Parlement_ of Paris (July 1543) by enlarging the powers of the ecclesiastical courts, remained in force in France for the nine following years. Yet in spite of its thoroughness, succeeding edicts and _mandats_ declare that heresy was making rapid progress in France.

The Sorbonne and the _Parlements_ (especially those of Paris and Aix) urged on the persecution of the "Lutherans." The former drafted a series of twenty-five articles (a refutation of the 1541 edition of Calvin's _Inst.i.tution_), which were meant to a.s.sert concisely the dogma of the Church, and to deny whatever the Reformers taught prejudicial to the doctrines and practices of the mediaeval Church. These articles were approved by the King and his Privy Council, who ordered them to be published throughout the whole kingdom, and gave instructions to deal with all who preached or taught anything contrary or repugnant to them.

This ordinance was at once registered by the _Parlement_ of Paris. Thus all the powers of the realm committed themselves to a struggle to extirpate the Reformed teaching, and were armed with a test which was at once clear and comprehensive. Not content with this, the Sorbonne began a list of prohibited books (1542-43)--a list containing the works of Calvin, Luther, Melanchthon, Clement Marot, and the translations of scripture edited by Robert Estienne, and the _Parlement_ issued a severe ordinance against all Protestant propaganda by means of printing or the selling of books (July 1542).

These various ordinances for the extirpation of heresy were applied promptly and rigorously, and the fires of persecution were soon kindled all over France. The _place_ Maubert was the scene of the martyrdoms in Paris. There were no great _auto-da-fes_, but continual mention is made of burning two or three martyrs at once. Two acts of persecution cast a dark stain on the last years of Francis I.--the slaughter of the Waldenses of the Durance in 1545, and the martyrdom of the "fourteen of Meaux."

A portion of Provence, skirting the Durance where that river is about to flow into the Rhone, had been almost depopulated in the fourteenth century, and the landowners had invited peasants from the Alps to settle within their territories. The incomers were Waldenses; their religion was guaranteed protection, and their industry and thrift soon covered the desolate region with fertile farms. When the Reformation movement had established itself in Germany and Switzerland, these villagers were greatly interested. They drew up a brief statement of what they believed, and sent it to the leading Reformers, accompanied by a number of questions on matters of religion. They received long answers from Bucer and from Oecolampadius, and, having met in conference (Sept. 1532) at Angrogne in Piedmont, they drafted a simple confession of faith based on the replies of the Reformers to their questions. It was natural that they should view the progress of the Reformation within France with interest, and that they should contribute 500 crowns to defray the expense of printing a new translation of the Scriptures into French by Robert Olivetan. Freedom to practise their religion had been granted for two centuries to the inhabitants of the thirty Waldensian villages, and they conceived that in exhibiting their sympathy with French Protestantism they were acting within their ancient rights. Jean de Roma, Inquisitor for Provence, thought otherwise. In 1532 he began to exhort the villagers to abjure their opinions; and, finding his entreaties without effect, he set on foot a severe persecution. The Waldenses appealed to the King, who sent a commission to inquire into the matter, with the result that Jean de Roma was compelled to flee the country.

The persecution was renewed in 1535 by the Archbishop and _Parlement_ of Aix, who cited seventeen of the people of Merindol, one of the villages, before them on a charge of heresy. When they failed to appear, the _Parlement_ published (Nov. 18th, 1540) the celebrated _Arret de Merindol_, which sentenced the seventeen to be burnt at the stake. The Waldenses again appealed to the King, who pardoned the seventeen on the condition that they should abjure their heresy within three months (Feb.

8th, 1541). There was a second appeal to the King, who again protected the Waldenses; but during the later months of 1541 the _Parlement_ of Aix sent to His Majesty the false information that the people of Merindol were in open insurrection, and were threatening to sack the town of Ma.r.s.eilles. Upon this, Francis, urged thereto by Cardinal de Tournon, recalled his protection, and ordered all the Waldenses to be exterminated (Jan. 1st, 1545). An army was stealthily organised, and during seven weeks of slaughter, amid all the accompaniments of treachery and brutality, twenty-two of the thirty Waldensian villages were utterly destroyed, between three and four thousand men and women were slain, and seven hundred men sent to the galleys. Those who escaped took refuge in Switzerland.[181]

The persecution at Meaux (1546) was more limited in extent, but was accompanied by such tortures that it formed a fitting introduction to the severities of the reign of Henri II.

The Reformed at Meaux had organised themselves into a congregation modelled on that of the French refugees in Stra.s.sburg. They had chosen Pierre Leclerc to be their pastor, and one of their number, etienne Mangin, gave his house for the meetings of the congregation. The authorities heard of the meetings, and on Sept 8th, 1546, a sudden visit was made to the house, and sixty-one persons were arrested and brought before the _Parlement_ of Paris. Their special crime was that they had engaged in the celebration of the Lord's Supper. The sentence of the Court declared that the Bishop of Meaux had shown culpable negligence in permitting such meetings; that the evidence indicated that there were numbers of "Lutherans" and heretics in Meaux besides those brought before it, and that all such were to be sought out; that all books in the town which concerned the Christian religion were to be deposited in the record-office within eight days; that special sermons were to be delivered and expiatory processions organised; and that the house of etienne Mangin was to be razed to the ground, and a chapel in honour of the Holy Sacrament erected on the site. It condemned fourteen of the accused to be burnt alive, after having suffered the severest tortures which the law permitted; five to be hung up by the armpits to witness the execution, and then to be scourged and imprisoned; others to witness the execution with cords round their necks and with their heads bare, to ask pardon for their crime, to take part in an expiatory procession, and to listen to a sermon on the adoration due to the Body of Christ present in the Holy Sacrament. A few, mostly women, were acquitted.[182]

Francis I. died in March 1547. The persistent persecution which had marked the later years of his reign had done little or nothing to quench the growing Protestantism of France. It had only succeeded in driving it beneath the surface.

Henry II. never indulged in the vacillating policy of his father. From the beginning of his reign he set himself resolutely to combat the Reformation. His favourite councillors--his all-powerful mistress, Diane of Poitiers; his chief Minister, the Constable Montmorency, in high repute for his skill in the arts of war and of government; the Guises, a great family, originally belonging to Lorraine, who had risen to power in France--were all strong supporters of the Roman Catholic religion, and resolute to destroy the growing Protestantism of France. The declared policy of the King was to slay the Reformation by attacking it through every form of legal suppression that could be devised.

-- 3. _Change in the Character of the Movement for Reform._

The task was harder than it had been during the reign of Francis. In spite of the persecutions, the adherents of the new faith had gone on increasing in a wonderful way. Many of the priests and monks had been converted to Evangelical doctrines. They taught them secretly and openly; and they could expose in a telling way the corruptions of the Church, having known them from the inside. Schoolmasters, if one may judge from the _arrets_ of the _Parlements_, were continually blamed for dissuading their pupils from going to Ma.s.s, and for corrupting the youth by instructing them in the "false and pernicious doctrines of Geneva."

Many Colleges were named as seed-beds of the Reformation--Angers, Bourges, Fontenay, La Roch.e.l.le, Loudun, Niort, Nimes, and Poitiers. The theatre itself became an agent for reform when the corruptions of the Church and the morals of the clergy were attacked in popular plays. The refugees in Stra.s.sburg, Geneva, and Lausanne spared no pains to send the Evangelical doctrines to their countrymen. Ardent young Frenchmen, trained abroad, took their lives in their hand, and crept quietly through the length and breadth of France. They met converts and inquirers in solitary suburbs, in cellars of houses, on highways, and by the rivers. The records of the ecclesiastical police enable us to trace the spread of the Reformation along the great roads and waterways of France. The missioners changed their names frequently to elude observation. Some, with a daring beyond their fellows, did not hesitate to visit the towns and preach almost openly to the people. The propaganda carried on by colporteurs was scarcely less successful. These were usually young men trained at Geneva or Stra.s.sburg. They carried their books in a pack on their backs, and hawked them in village and town, describing their contents, and making little sermons for the listeners. Among the notices of seizures we find such t.i.tles as the following:--_Les Colloques_ of Erasmus, _La Fontaine de Vie_ (a selection of scriptural pa.s.sages translated into French), the _Livre de vraye et parfaicte oraison_ (a translation of extracts from Luther's writings), the _Cinquante-deux psaumes_, the _Catechisme de Geneve, Prieres ecclesiastiques avec la maniere d'administrer les sacrements_, an _Alphabet chretien_ and an _Instruction chretienne pour les pet.i.ts enfants_. No edicts against printing books which had not been submitted to the ecclesiastical authorities were able to put an end to this secret colportage.

In these several ways the Evangelical faith was spread abroad, and before the death of Francis there was not a district in France with the single exception of Brittany which had not its secret Protestants, while many parts of the country swarmed with them.

-- 4. _Calvin and his Influence in France._

The Reformation in France had been rapidly changing its character since 1536, the year in which Lefevre died, and in which Calvin's _Christian Inst.i.tution_ was published. It was no longer a Christian mysticism supplemented by a careful study of the Scriptures; it had advanced beyond the stage of individual followers of Luther or Zwingli; it had become united, presenting a solid phalanx to its foes; it had rallied round a manifesto which was at once a completed scheme of doctrine, a prescribed mode of wors.h.i.+p, and a code of morals; it had found a leader who was both a master and a commander-in-chief. The publication of the _Christian Inst.i.tution_ had effected this. The young man whom the Town Council of Geneva could speak of as "a certain Frenchman" (_Gallus quidam_) soon took a foremost place among the leaders of the whole Reformation movement, and moulded in his plastic hands the Reformation in France.

Calvin's early life and his work in Geneva have already been described; but his special influence on France must not pa.s.s unnoticed.[183] He had an extraordinary power over his co-religionists in his native land.[184]

He was a Frenchman--one of themselves; no foreigner speaking an unfamiliar tongue; no enemy of the Fatherland to follow whom might seem to be unpatriotic. It is true that his fixed abode lay beyond the confines of France; but distance, which gave him freedom of action, made him the more esteemed. He was the apostle who wrote "to all that be in France, beloved of G.o.d, called to be saints."

While still a student, Calvin had shown that he possessed, besides a marvellous memory, an acute and penetrating intellect, with a great faculty for a.s.similating ideas and modes of thought; but he lacked what may be called artistic imagination,[185] and neither poetry nor art seemed to strike any responsive chord in his soul. His conduct was always straightforward, irreproachable, and dignified; he was by education and breeding, if not by descent, the polished French gentleman, and was most at home with men and women of n.o.ble birth. His character was serious, with little playfulness, little vivacity, but with a wonderful power of sympathy. He was reserved, somewhat shy, slow to make intimate friends, but once made the friends.h.i.+ps lasted for life.

At all periods of age, boy, student, man of letters, leader of a great party, he seems to have been a centre of attraction and of deferential trust. The effect of this mysterious charm was felt by others besides those of his own age. His professor, Mathurin Cordier, became his devoted disciple. Melanchthon wished that he might die with his head on Calvin's breast. Luther, in spite of his suspicion of everything that came from Switzerland, was won to love and trust him. And Knox, the most rugged and independent of men, acknowledged Calvin as his master, consulted him in every doubt and difficulty, and on all occasions save one meekly followed his counsels. He loved children, and had them at his house for Christmas trees; but (and this is characteristically French) always addressed them with ceremonious politeness, as if they were grown men and women deserving as much consideration as himself. It was this trait that captivated de Beze when he was a boy of twelve.

Calvin was a democrat intellectually and by silent principle. This appears almost everywhere in his private writings, and was noted by such a keen observer as Tavannes. It was never more unconsciously displayed than in the preface or dedication of the _Christian Inst.i.tution_.

"This preface, instead of pleading with the King on behalf of the Reformation, places the movement right before him, and makes him see it. Its tone throughout firm and dignified, calm and stately when Calvin addresses Francis I. directly, more bitter and sarcastic when he is speaking of theologians, _la pensee et la forme du style toutes vibrantes du ton biblique_, the very simplicity and perfect frankness of the address, give the impression of one who is speaking on equal terms with his peer. All suggest the Christian democrat without a trace of the revolutionary."[186]

The source of his power--logic impregnated by the pa.s.sion of conviction--is so peculiarly French that perhaps only his countrymen can fully understand and appreciate it, and they have not been slow to do so.

All these characteristic traits appealed to them. His pa.s.sion for equality, as strong as the Apostle Paul's, compelled him to take his followers into his confidence, to make them apprehend what he knew to the innermost thoughts of his heart. It forced him to exhibit the reasons for his faith to all who cared to know them, to arrange them in a logical order which would appeal to their understanding, and his pa.s.sion of conviction a.s.sured him and them that what he taught was the very truth of G.o.d. Then he was a very great writer,[187] one of the founders of modern French prose, the most exquisite literary medium that exists, a man made to arrest the attention of the people. He wrote all his important works in French for his countrymen, as well as in Latin for the learned world. His language and style were fresh, clear, and simple; without affected elegance or pedantic display of erudition; full of vigour and verve; here, caustic wit which attracted; there, eloquence which spoke to the hearts of his readers because it throbbed with burning pa.s.sion and strong emotion.

It is unlikely that all his disciples in France appreciated his doctrinal system in its details. The _Christian Inst.i.tution_ appealed to them as the strongest protest yet made against the abuses and scandals of the Roman Church, as containing a code of duties owed to G.o.d and man, as exhibiting an ideal of life pure and lofty, as promising everlasting blessedness for the called and chosen and faithful. "It satisfied at one and the same time the intellects which demanded logical proof and the souls which had need of enthusiasm."

It has been remarked that Calvin's theology was less original and effective than his legislation or policy.[188] The statement seems to overlook the peculiar service which was rendered to the Reformation movement by the _Inst.i.tution_. The Reformation was a rebellion against the external authority of the mediaeval Church; but every revolt, even that against the most flagrant abuses and the most corrupt rule, carries in it seeds of evil which must be slain if any real progress is to be made. For it instinctively tends to sweep away all restraints--those that are good and necessary as well as those that are bad and harmful.

The leaders of every movement for reform have a harder battle to fight against the revolutionaries in their following than against their avowed opponents. At the root of the Reformation of the sixteenth century lay an appeal from man to G.o.d--from the priest, granting or withholding absolution in the confessional, to G.o.d making the sinner, who turns from his sins and has faith in the person and work of Christ, know in his heart that he is pardoned; from the decision of Popes and Councils to the decrees of G.o.d revealed in His Holy Word. This appeal was in the nature of the case from the seen to the unseen, and therein lay the difficulty; for unless this unseen could be made visible to the eye of the intelligence to such a degree that the restraining authority which it possessed could impress itself on the will, there was risk of its proving to be no restraining authority whatsoever, and of men fancying that they had been left to be a law unto themselves. What the _Christian Inst.i.tution_ did for the sixteenth century was to make the unseen government and authority of G.o.d, to which all must bow, as visible to the intellectual eye of faith as the mechanism of the mediaeval Church had been to the eye of sense. It proclaimed that the basis of all Christian faith was the Word of G.o.d revealed in the Holy Scriptures; it taught the absolute dependence of all things on G.o.d Himself immediately and directly; it declared that the sin of man was such that, apart from the working of the free grace of G.o.d, there could be neither pardon nor amendment, nor salvation; and it wove all these thoughts into a logical unity which revealed to the intellectual eye of its generation the "House of G.o.d not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." Men as they gazed saw that they were in the immediate presence of the authority of G.o.d Himself, directly responsible to Him; that they could test "the Pope's House" by this divine archetype; that it was their duty to reform all human inst.i.tutions, ecclesiastical or political, in order to bring them into harmony with the divine vision. It made men know that to separate themselves from the visible mediaeval Church was neither to step outside the sphere of the purpose of G.o.d making for their redemption, nor to free themselves from the duties which G.o.d requires of man.