History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century Volume III Part 68

[1044] In the library of the pastors at Neufchatel there is a letter from Sebville, in which the following pa.s.sage occurs: "Je te notifie que l'eveque de Meaux en Brie pres Paris, _c.u.m Jacobo Fabro Stapulensi_, depuis trois mois, en visitant l'eveche, ont brle actu toutes les images, reserve le crucifix, et sont personellement ajournes a Paris, a ce mois de Mars venant, pour repondre _coram suprema curia et universitate_." I am inclined to believe this fact authentic, although Sebville was not on the spot, and that neither Mezeray, Daniel, nor Maimbourg allude to it. These Romanist authors, who are very brief, might have had reasons for pa.s.sing it over in silence, considering the issue of the trial; and Sebville's report agrees in other respects with all the known facts. The matter is, however, doubtful.

[Sidenote: THE FACULTY OF PARIS.]

Be that as it may, Briconnet could not fail of being guilty in the eyes of the enemies of the Gospel. He had not only attacked the Church in general; he had grappled with the Sorbonne itself, that body whose supreme law was its own glory and preservation. Accordingly it was delighted on hearing of the examination inst.i.tuted against its adversary; and John Bochart, one of the most celebrated advocates of the times, supporting the charge against Briconnet before the parliament, cried out, elevating his voice: "Against the Faculty, neither the Bishop of Meaux nor any private individual may raise his head or open his mouth. Nor is the Faculty called upon to enter into discussion, to produce and set forth its reasons before the said bishop, who ought not to resist the wisdom of that holy society, which he should regard as aided of G.o.d."[1045]

[1045] Hist. de l'Univ. par Crevier, v. 204.

[Sidenote: ALARM OF THE BISHOP.]

In consequence of this requisition, the parliament issued a decree on the 3d October 1525, by which, after authorizing the arrest of all those who had been informed against, it ordered that the bishop should be interrogated by James Menager and Andrew Verjus, councillors of the court, touching the facts of which he was accused.[1046]

[1046] Maimbourg, Hist. du Calv. p. 14.

This decree of the parliament amazed the bishop. Briconnet, the amba.s.sador of two kings--Briconnet, a bishop and a prince, the friend of Louis XII. and Francis I.--to submit to an examination by two councillors of the court!......He who had hoped that G.o.d would kindle in the heart of the king, of his mother, and of his sister, a fire that would spread over the whole nation, now saw the nation turning against him to extinguish the flame which he had received from heaven.

The king is a prisoner, his mother is at the head of the enemies of the Gospel, and Margaret, alarmed at the misfortunes that burst upon France, dares not ward off the blows that are about to fall on her dearest friends, and directed first against that spiritual father who has so often consoled her; or, if she dares, she cannot. Quite recently she had written to Briconnet a letter full of pious outpourings: "Oh! that my poor, lifeless heart could feel some spark of love, with which I desire it were burnt to ashes."[1047] But now it was a question of literal burning. This mystic language was no longer in season; and whoever now desired to confess his faith, must brave the scaffold. The poor bishop, who had so earnestly hoped to see an evangelical reform gradually and gently making its way into every heart, was frightened, and trembled as he saw that he must now purchase it at the cost of his life. Never perhaps had this terrible thought occurred to him, and he recoiled from it in agony and affright.

[1047] MS. in the Royal Library (Paris) S. F. No. 337.

[Sidenote: APPEAL TO PARLIAMENT--TEMPTATION.]

Yet Briconnet had still one hope: if he were permitted to appear before the a.s.sembled chambers of parliament, as became a person of his rank, in that august and numerous court, he would be sure to find generous hearts responding to his appeal, and undertaking his defence.

He therefore entreated the court to grant him this favour; but his enemies had equally reckoned on the issue of such a hearing. Had they not seen Luther appearing before the German diet and shaking the most determined hearts? On the watch to remove every chance of safety, they exerted themselves to such effect that the parliament refused Briconnet this favour by a decree dated the 25th of October 1525, in confirmation of the one previously issued.[1048]

[1048] Maimbourg, Hist. du Calv. p. 15.

Here then was the Bishop of Meaux referred like the humblest priest to the jurisdiction of James Menager and Andrew Verjus. These two lawyers, docile instruments in the hands of the Sorbonne, would not be moved by those higher considerations to which the whole chamber might have been sensible; they were matter of fact men: had the bishop differed from that society, or had he not? This is all they desire to know. Briconnet's conviction was therefore secured.

[Sidenote: THE BISHOP FALLS AWAY.]

While the parliament was thus holding the sword over the head of the bishop, the monks, priests, and doctors were not idle; they saw that Briconnet's retractation would be of more service to them than his punishment. His death would only inflame the zeal of all those who held the same faith with him; but his apostacy would plunge them into the deepest discouragement. They went to work accordingly. They visited and entreated him, Martial Mazurier in particular endeavouring to make him fall, as he had done himself. There was no lack of arguments which might appear specious to Briconnet. Would he like to be deprived of his functions? Could he not, by remaining in the church, employ his influence with the king and the court to effect an incalculable amount of good? What would become of his old friends, when he was no longer in power? Might not his resistance compromise a reform, which, to be salutary and durable, should be carried out by the legitimate influence of the clergy? How many souls he would offend by resisting the Church; how many souls he would attract, on the contrary, by giving way!......They, like himself, were anxious for a reform. All is advancing insensibly; at the court and in the city and provinces, everything is moving forward......and would he in mere recklessness of heart destroy so fair a prospect!......After all, they did not call upon him to sacrifice his opinions, but only to submit to the established order of the Church. Was it well in him, when France was labouring under so many reverses, to stir up new confusions? "In the name of religion, of your country, of your friends, and of the Reformation itself, be persuaded," said they. By such sophisms are the n.o.blest causes ruined.

Yet every one of these considerations had its influence on the mind of the bishop. The tempter, who desired to make our Saviour fall in the wilderness, thus presented himself to Briconnet in specious colours, but instead of saying with his Master: "Get thee behind me, Satan!" he listened, welcomed, and pondered on these suggestions. From that hour his fidelity was at an end.

Briconnet had never embarked with his whole heart, like Luther or Farel, in the movement that was then regenerating the Church; there was in him a certain mystical tendency which weakens men's minds, and deprives them of that firmness and courage which proceed from faith alone based on the Word of G.o.d. The cross that he was called to take up that he might follow Christ was too heavy.[1049] Shaken, alarmed, stupified, and distracted,[1050] he stumbled against the stone which had been artfully placed in his path......he fell, and instead of throwing himself into the arms of Jesus, he threw himself into those of Mazurier,[1051] and by a shameful recantation sullied the glory of a n.o.ble faithfulness.[1052]

[1049] Crucis statim oblatae terrore perculsus. Bezae Icones.

[1050] Dementatus. Ibid.

[1051] Ut Episcopus etiam desisteret suis consiliis effecit. Launoi, regii Navarrae gymnasii hist. p. 621.

[1052] Nisi turpi palinodia gloriam hanc omnem ipse sibi invidisset.

Bezae Icones.

[Sidenote: CONSEQUENCES--RETRACTATION.]

Thus fell Briconnet, the friend of Lefevre and of Margaret; thus the earliest supporter of the Gospel in France denied the glad tidings of grace, in the guilty thought that if he remained faithful, he would lose his influence over the Church, the court, and France. But what was represented to him as the salvation of his country, perhaps became its ruin. What would have been the result if Briconnet had possessed the courage of Luther? If one of the first bishops of France, beloved by the king and by the people, had ascended the scaffold, and had, like the little ones of the world, sealed the truth of the Gospel by a bold confession and a christian death, would not France herself have been moved; and the blood of the bishop becoming, like that of Polycarp and Cyprian, the seed of the Church, might we not have seen that country, so ill.u.s.trious in many respects, emerging in the sixteenth century from that spiritual darkness with which it is still clouded?

Briconnet underwent a mere formal examination before James Menager and Andrew Verjus, who declared that he had sufficiently vindicated himself of the crime imputed to him. He was then subjected to penance, and a.s.sembled a synod in which he condemned Luther's books, retracted all that he had taught contrary to the doctrine of the Church, restored the invocation of saints, endeavoured to bring back those who had forsaken the Romish wors.h.i.+p, and wis.h.i.+ng to leave no doubt of his reconciliation with the pope and the Sorbonne, kept a solemn fast on the eve of Corpus Christi, and gave orders for pompous processions, in which he appeared personally, still further testifying his faith by his magnificence and by every kind of devout observance.[1053] In his will he commended his soul to the Virgin Mary and to the heavenly choir of paradise, and desired that after his death (which happened in 1533) twelve hundred ma.s.ses should be said for the repose of his soul.

[1053] Mezeray, ii. 981; Daniel, vi. 544; Moreri, art. Briconnet.

[Sidenote: BRIcONNET AND FENELON--LEFEVRE ACCUSED.]

The fall of Briconnet is perhaps the most memorable in the history of the Reformation. Nowhere else do we find a man so sincerely pious and so deeply engaged in the reform turning round so suddenly against it: yet we must clearly understand his character and his fall. Briconnet was, as regards Rome, what Lefevre was with respect to the Reformation. They were both persons of half-measures, properly belonging to neither party. The doctor of Etaples inclined towards the Word, while the Bishop of Meaux leaned to the hierarchy; and when these two men who touch each other were called upon to decide, the one ranged himself under the banner of Rome, and the other of Jesus Christ. We cannot, however, be sure that Briconnet was wholly untrue to the convictions of his faith; at no period after his recantation did the Romish doctors place entire confidence in him. But he acted, perhaps, as the Archbishop of Cambray afterwards did, and whom he resembled in many points; he thought he might submit outwardly to the pope, while remaining inwardly subject to his old convictions. Such weakness is incompatible with the principles of the Reformation.

Briconnet was one of the chiefs of the mystic or quietist school in France, and we know that one of its leading maxims has ever been to accommodate itself to the church in which it exists, whatever that church may be.

Briconnet's guilty fall went to the hearts of his old friends, and was the sad forerunner of those lamentable apostacies which the spirit of the world so often obtained in France in another age. The man who seemed to hold the reins of the Reformation in his hand was suddenly thrown from his seat; and the Reformation was thenceforward destined to pursue its course in France, without a human leader, without a chief, in humility and in obscurity. But the disciples of the Gospel raised their heads, and from that time looked with a firmer faith towards that heavenly Guide, whose faithfulness they knew could not be shaken.

[Sidenote: CONDEMNATION AND FLIGHT.]

The Sorbonne triumphed; this was a great stride towards the destruction of the Reform in France; and it was important to achieve another victory without delay. Lefevre stood next after Briconnet.

Accordingly Beda had immediately turned the attack against him, by publis.h.i.+ng a book against this ill.u.s.trious doctor, full of such gross calumnies, that Erasmus says, "even smiths and cobblers could have pointed them out." His fury was particularly excited by the doctrine of justification through faith, which Lefevre was the first to preach to Christendom in the sixteenth century. To this point Beda continually recurred, as an article which, according to him, overturned the Church. "What!" said he, "Lefevre affirms that whoever places his salvation in himself will surely perish; while the man that lays aside all strength of his own, and throws himself entirely into the arms of Jesus Christ, will be saved!......Oh, what heresy! to teach the inefficacy of meritorious works!......What a h.e.l.lish error!

what a deceitful snare of the devil! Let us oppose it with all our might!"[1054]

[1054] Perpendens perniciosissinam daemonis fallaciam.....Occurri quantum valui. Nat. Bedae Apolog. adv. Lutheranos, fol. 42.

That engine of persecution which produces either retractation or death, was immediately turned against the doctor of Etaples; and hopes were already entertained of seeing Lefevre share the fate of the poor wool-comber or of the ill.u.s.trious Briconnet. His accusation was soon drawn up; and a decree of the parliament (dated 28th August 1525) condemned nine propositions extracted from his commentaries on the Gospels, and placed his translation of the Scriptures in the list of prohibited books.[1055]

[1055] J. Lelong, Biblioth. sacree, 2d partie, p. 44.

This was only the prelude; and that the learned doctor knew. Upon the first symptoms of persecution, he had felt that, in the absence of Francis I., he must fall under the a.s.sault of his enemies, and that the moment was now come to obey the Lord's commandment: _When they persecute you in one city, flee ye into another_.[1056] Lefevre quitted Meaux, where, after the bishop's apostacy, he had drunk nothing but the cup of bitterness, and saw all his activity paralyzed; and as he withdrew from his persecutors, he shook the dust from off his feet against them, "not to call down evil upon them, but as a sign of the evils that were in store for them; for (says he in one place) just as this dust is shaken from off our feet, are they cast off from the face of the Lord."[1057]

[1056] Matthew x. 14, 23.

[1057] Quod excussi sunt a facie Domini sicut pulvis ille excussus est a pedibus. Faber in Ev. Matth. p. 40.

The persecutors had missed their victim; but they consoled themselves with the thought that France was at least delivered from the father of the heretics.

[Sidenote: LEFEVRE AT STRASBURG--FAREL AND LEFEVRE MEET.]

The fugitive Lefevre arrived at Strasburg under a borrowed name; there he immediately united with the friends of the Reformation; and what must have been his joy at hearing that Gospel publicly taught which he had been the first to bring forward in the Church! Lo, there was his faith! this was exactly what he had intended to teach! He seemed to have been born a second time to the christian life. Gerard Roussel, one of those evangelical men who, like the doctor of Etaples, did not attain complete emanc.i.p.ation, had also been compelled to quit France.

Together they followed the teaching of Capito and Bueer;[1058] they had frequent private conversations with these faithful doctors,[1059]

and a report was circulated that they had even been commissioned to do so by Margaret, the king's sister.[1060] But Lefevre was more occupied in contemplating the ways of G.o.d than with polemics. Casting his eyes over Christendom, filled with astonishment on beholding the great events that were taking place, moved with thankfulness, and his heart full of antic.i.p.ation, he fell on his knees and prayed the Lord "to perfect that which he saw then beginning."[1061]

[1058] Faber stapulensis et Gerardus Rufus, clam e Gallia profecti, Capitonem et Bucerum audierunt. Melch. Adam. Vita Capitonis, p. 90.

[1059] De omnibus doctrinae praecipuis locis c.u.m ipsis disseruerint.

Ibid.

[1060] Missi a Margaretha, regis Francisci sorore. Ibid.

[1061] Farel a tous seigneurs, peuples, et pasteurs.

One pleasure in particular awaited him in Strasburg; Farel his disciple, his son, from whom he had been separated by persecution for nearly three years, had arrived there before him. The aged doctor of the Sorbonne found in his young pupil a man in the vigour of life, a Christian in all the energy of faith. Farel affectionately clasped that wrinkled hand which had guided his first steps, and he experienced an indescribable joy at again meeting with his father in an evangelical city, and on seeing him surrounded with faithful men.

Together they listened to the pure instructions of ill.u.s.trious teachers; together they partook of the Lord's Supper in conformity with Christ's inst.i.tution; together they received touching proofs of the love of their brethren. "Do you remember," said Farel, "what you once observed to me when we were both sunk in darkness: William, G.o.d will renew the world, and you will see it!......Here is the beginning of what you then told me."--"Yes:" answered the pious old man, "G.o.d is renewing the world......My dear son, continue to preach boldly the holy Gospel of Jesus Christ."[1062]

[1062] Quod et pius senex fatebatur; meque hortabatur pergerem in annuntiatione sacri evangelii. Farel to Pellican. Hotting. H. L. vi.