Three months after the First Peace of Kappel, Zwingli was summoned to the Marburg Colloquy, and the Reformation in Switzerland became inevitably connected with the wider sphere of German ecclesiastical politics. It may be well, however, to reserve this until later, and finish the internal history of the Swiss movement.
The First Peace of Kappel was only a truce, and left both parties irritated with each other. The friction was increased when the Protestants discovered that the Romanist cantons would not admit free preaching within their territories. They also shrewdly suspected that, despite the tearing and burning of the documents, the understanding with Austria was still maintained. An event occurred which seemed to justify their suspicions. An Italian condottiere, Giovanni Giacomo de’ Medici, had seized and held (1525-31) the strong position called the Rocco di Musso on the Lake of Como, and from this stronghold he dominated the whole lake. This ruffian had murdered Martin Paul and his son, envoys from the Graubünden to Milan, and had crossed the lake and harried the fertile valley of the Adda, known as the Val Tellina, which was then within the territories of the Graubünden (Grisons). The Swiss Confederacy were bound to defend their neighbours; but when appeal was made, the Romanist cantons refused, and the hand of Austria was seen behind the refusal. Besides, at the Federal Diets the Romanist cantons had refused to listen to any complaints of persecutions for religion within their lands. At a meeting between Zurich and her allies, it was resolved that the Romanist cantons should be compelled to abolish the system of foreign pensions, and permit free preaching within their territories. Zurich was for open war, but the advice of Bern prevailed. It was resolved that if the Romanist cantons would not agree to these proposals, Zurich and her allies should prevent wine, wheat, salt, and iron from passing through their territories to the Forest cantons. The result was that the Forest cantons declared war, invaded Zurich while that canton was unprepared, fought and won the battle of Kappel, at which Zwingli was slain. He had accompanied the little army of Zurich as its chaplain. The victory of the Romanists produced a Second Peace of Kappel which reversed the conditions of the first. War indemnities were exacted from most of the Protestant cantons. It was settled that each canton was to be left free to manage its own religious affairs; that the Christian Civic League was to be dissolved; and a number of particular provisions were made which practically secured the rights of Romanist without corresponding advantages to Protestant minorities. The territories of Zurich were left untouched, but the city was compelled by the charter of Kappel to grant rights to her rural districts. She bound herself to consult them in all important matters, and particularly not to make war or peace without their consent.
As a result of this ruinous defeat, and of the death of Zwingli which accompanied it, Zurich lost her place as the leading Protestant canton, and the guidance of the Reformation movement fell more and more into the hands of Geneva, which was an ally but not a member of the Confederation. Another and more important permanent result of this Second Peace of Kappel was that it was seen in Switzerland as in Germany that while the Reformation could not be destroyed, it could not win for itself the whole country, and that Roman Catholics and Protestants must divide the cantons and endeavour to live peaceably side by side.
The history of the Reformation in Switzerland after the death of Zwingli is so linked with the wider history of the movement in Germany and in Geneva, that it can scarcely be spoken about separately. It is also intimately related to the differences which separated Zwingli from Luther in the doctrine of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.
In the Bern Disputation of 1528, the fourth thesis said “it cannot be proved from the Scripture that the Body and Blood of Christ are substantially and corporeally received in the Eucharist,”[38] and the statement became a distinctive watchword of the early Swiss Reformation. This thesis, a negative one, was perhaps the earliest official statement of a bold attempt to get rid of the priestly miracle in the Mass, which was the strongest theoretical and practical obstacle to the acceptance of the fundamental Protestant thought of the spiritual priesthood of all believers. The question had been seriously exercising the attention of all the leading theologians of the Reformation, and this very trenchant way of dismissing it had suggested itself simultaneously to theologians in the Low Countries, in the district of the Upper Rhine, and in many of the imperial cities. It had been proclaimed in all its naked simplicity by Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadt, the theologian of the German democracy; but it was Zwingli who worked at the subject carefully, and who had produced a reasonable if somewhat defective theory based on a rather shallow exegesis, in which the words of our Lord, “This is My Body,” were declared to mean nothing but “This signifies My Body.” Luther, always disposed to think harshly of anything that came from Carlstadt, inclined to exaggerate his influence with the German Protestant democracy, believing with his whole heart that in the Sacrament of the Holy Supper the elements Bread and Wine were more than the bare signs of the Body and Blood of the Lord, was vehemently moved to find such views concerning a central doctrine of Christianity spreading through his beloved Germany. He never paused to ask whether the opinions he saw adopted with eagerness in most of the imperial cities were really different from those of Carlstadt (for that is one of the sad facts in this deplorable controversy). He simply denounced them, and stormed against Zwingli, whose name was spread abroad as their author and propagator. Nürnberg was almost the only great city that remained faithful to him. It was the only city also which was governed by the ancient patriciate, and in which the democracy had little or no power. When van Hoen and Karl Stadt in the Netherlands, Hedio at Mainz, Conrad Sam at Ulm, when the preachers of Augsburg, Strassburg, Frankfurt, Reutlingen, and other cities accepted and taught Zwingli’s doctrine of the Eucharist, Luther and his immediate circle saw a great deal more than a simple division in doctrine. It was something more than the meaning of the Holy Supper or the exegesis of a difficult text which rent Protestantism in two, and made Luther and Zwingli appear as the leaders of opposing parties in a movement where union was a supreme necessity after the decision at Speyer in 1529. The theological question was complicated by social and political ideas, which, if not acknowledged openly, were at least in the minds of the leaders who took sides in the dispute. On the one side were men whom Luther held to be in part responsible for the Peasants’ War, who were the acknowledged leaders of that democracy which he had learnt to distrust if not to fear, who still wished to link the Reformation to vast political schemes, all of which tended to weaken the imperial power by means of French and other alliances, and who only added to their other iniquities a theological theory which, he honestly believed, would take away from believers their comforting assurance of union with their Lord in the Sacrament of the Holy Supper.
The real theological difference after all did not amount to so much as is generally said. Zwingli’s doctrine of the Holy Supper was not the crude theory of Carlstadt; and Luther might have seen this if he had only fairly examined it. The opposed views were, in fact, complementary, and the pronounced ideas of each were implicitly, though not expressly, held by the other. Luther and Zwingli approached the subject from two different points of view, and in debate they neither understood nor were exactly facing each other.
The whole Christian Church, during all the centuries, has found three great ideas embodied in the Sacrament of the Holy Supper, and all three have express reference to the death of the Saviour on the Cross for His people. The thoughts are Proclamation, Commemoration, and Participation or Communion. In the Supper, believers proclaim the death and what it means; they commemorate the Sacrifice; and they partake in or have communion with the crucified Christ, who is also the Risen Saviour. The mediæval Church had insisted that this sacramental union with Christ was in the hands of the priesthood to give or to withhold. Duly ordained priests, and they alone, could bring the worshippers into such a relation with Christ as would make the Sacramental participation a possible thing: and out of this claim had grown the mediæval theory of Transubstantiation. It had also divided the Sacrament of the Supper into two distinct rites (the phrase is not too strong)—the Mass and the Eucharist—the one connecting itself instinctively with the commemoration and the other with the participation.
Protestants united in denying the special priestly miracle needed to bring Christ and His people together in the Sacrament; but it is easy to see that they might approach the subject by the two separate paths of Mass or Eucharist. Zwingli took the one road and Luther happened on the other.
Zwingli believed that the mediæval Church had displaced the scriptural thought of commemoration, and put the non-scriptural idea of repetition in its place. For the mediæval priest claimed that in virtue of the miraculous power given in ordination, he could really change the bread and wine into the actual physical Body of Jesus, and, when this was done, that he could reproduce over again the agony of the Cross by crushing it with his teeth. This idea seemed to Zwingli to be utterly profane; it dishonoured the One great Sacrifice; it was unscriptural; it depended on a priestly gift of working a miracle which did not exist. Then he believed that the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel forbade all thought that spiritual benefits could come from a mere partaking with the mouth. It was the atonement worked out by Christ’s death that was appropriated and commemorated in the Holy Supper; and the atonement is always received by faith. Thus the two principal thoughts in the theory of Zwingli are, that the mediæval doctrine must be purified by changing the idea of repetition of the death of Christ for commemoration of that death, and the thought of manducating with the teeth for that of faith which is the faculty by which spiritual benefits are received. But Zwingli believed that a living faith always brought with it the presence of Christ, for there can be no true faith without actual spiritual contact with the Saviour. Therefore Zwingli held that there was a Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Supper; but a spiritual presence brought by the faith of the believing communicant and not by the elements of Bread and Wine, which were only the signs representing a Body which was corporeally absent. The defect of this theory is that it does not make the Presence of Christ in the Sacrament in any way depend on the ordinance; there is no sacramental presence other than what there is in any act of faith. It was not until Zwingli had elaborated his theory that he sought for and found an explanation of the words of our Lord, and taught that This is My Body, must mean This signifies My Body. His theory was entirely different from that of Carlstadt, with which Luther always identified it.
Luther approached the whole subject by a different path. What repelled him in the mediæval doctrine of the Holy Supper was the way in which he believed it to trample on the spiritual priesthood of all believers. He protested against Transubstantiation and private Masses, because they were the most flagrant instances of that contempt. When he first preached on the subject (1519) it was to demand the “cup” for the laity, and he makes use of an expression in his sermon which reveals how his thoughts were tending. He says that in the Sacrament of the Holy Supper “the communicant is so united to Christ and His saints, that Christ’s life and sufferings and the lives and sufferings of the saints become his.” No one held more strongly than Luther that the Atonement was made by our Lord, and by Him alone. Therefore he cannot be thinking of the Atonement when he speaks of union with the lives and the sufferings of the saints. He believes that the main thing in the Sacrament is that it gives such a companionship with Jesus as His disciples and saints have had. There was, of course, a reference to the death of Christ and to the Atonement, for apart from that death no companionship is possible; but the reference is indirect, and through the thought of the fellowship. In the Sacrament we touch Christ as His disciples might have touched Him when He lived on earth, and as His glorified saints touch Him now. This reference, therefore, clearly shows that Luther saw in the Sacrament of the Supper the presence of the glorified Body of our Lord, and that the primary use of the Sacrament was to bring the communicant into contact with that glorified Body. This required a presence (and Luther thought a presence extended in space) of the glorified Body of Christ in the Sacrament in order that the communicant might be in actual contact with it. But communion with the Living Christ implies the appropriation of the death of Christ, and of the Atonement won by His death. Thus the reference to the Crucified Christ which Zwingli reaches directly, Luther attains indirectly; and the reference to the Living Risen Christ which Zwingli reaches indirectly, Luther attains directly. Luther avoided the need of a priestly miracle to bring the Body extended in space into immediate connection with the elements Bread and Wine, by introducing a scholastic theory of what is meant by presence in Space. A body may be present in Space, said the Schoolmen, in two ways: it may be present in such a way that it excludes from the space it occupies any other body, or it may be present occupying the same space with another body. The Glorified Body of Christ can be present in the latter manner. It was so when our Lord after His Resurrection appeared suddenly among His disciples in a room when the doors were shut; for then at some moment of time it must have occupied the same space as a portion of the walls or of the door. Christ’s glorified Body can therefore be naturally in the elements without any special miracle, for it is ubiquitous. It is in the table at which I write, said Luther; in the stone which I hurl through the air. It is in the elements in the Holy Supper in a perfectly natural way, and needs no priestly miracle to bring it there. This natural presence of the Body of Christ in the elements in the Supper is changed into a Sacramental Presence by the promise of God, which is attached to the reverent and believing partaking of the Holy Supper.
These were the two theories which ostensibly divided the Protestants in 1529 into two parties, the one of which was led by Zwingli and the other by Luther. They were not so antagonistic that they could not be reconciled. Each theologian held implicitly what the other declared explicitly. Zwingli placed the relation to the Death of Christ in the foreground, but implicitly admitted the relation to the Risen Christ—going back to the view held in the Early Church. Luther put fellowship with the Risen Christ in the foreground, but admitted the reference to the Crucified Christ—accepting the mediæval way of looking at the matter. The one had recourse to a very shallow exegesis to help him, and the other to a scholastic theory of space; and naturally, but unfortunately, when controversy arose, the disputant attacked the weakest part of his opponent’s theory—Luther, Zwingli’s exegesis; and Zwingli, Luther’s scholastic theory of spatial presence.
The attempt to bring about an understanding between Luther and Zwingli, made by Philip of Hesse, the confidant of Zwingli, and in sympathy with the Swiss Reformer’s schemes of political combination, has already been mentioned, and its failure related.[39] It need not be discussed again. But for the history of the Reformation in Switzerland it is necessary to say something about the further progress of this Sacramental controversy. Calvin gradually won over the Swiss Protestants to his views; and his theory, which at one time seemed about to unite the divided Protestants, must be alluded to.
Calvin began his study of the doctrine of the Sacrament of the Holy Supper independently of both Luther and Zwingli. His position as the theologian of Switzerland, and his friendship with his colleague William Farel, who was a Zwinglian, made him adapt his theory to Zwinglian language; but he borrowed nothing from the Reformer of Zurich. He was quite willing to accept Zwingli’s exegesis so far as the words went; but he gave another and altogether different meaning to Zwingli’s phrase, This signifies My Body. He was willing to call the “elements” signs of the Body and Blood of the Lord; but while Zwingli called them signs which represent (signa representativa) what was absent, Calvin insisted on calling them signs which exhibit (signa exhibitiva) what was present—a distinction which is continually forgotten in describing his relation to the theories of Zwingli, and one which enabled him to convince Luther that he held that there was a Real Presence of Christ’s Body in the Sacrament of the Holy Supper. To describe minutely Calvin’s doctrine of the Holy Supper would require more space than can be given here, and a brief statement of the central thoughts is alone possible. His aim in common with all the Reformers was to construct a doctrine of the Sacrament of the Supper which would be at once scriptural, free from superstition and from the crass materialist associations which had gathered round the theory of transubstantiation, and which would clearly conserve the great Reformation proclamation of the spiritual priesthood of all believers. He went back to the mediæval idea of transubstantiation, and asked whether it gave a true conception of what was meant by substance. He decided that it did not, and believed that the root thought in substance was not dimensions in space, but power. The substance of a body consists in its power, active and passive, and the presence of the substance of anything consists in the immediate application of that power.[40] When Luther and Zwingli had spoken of the substance of the Body of Christ, they had always in their mind the thought of something extended in space; and the one affirmed while the other denied that this Body of Christ, something extended in space, could be and was present in the Sacrament of the Supper. Calvin’s conception of substance enabled him to say that wherever anything acts there it is. He denied the crude “substantial” presence which Luther insisted on; and in this he sided with Zwingli. But he affirmed a real because active presence, and in this he sided with Luther.
Calvin’s view had been accepted definitely by Melanchthon, and somewhat indefinitely by Luther. The imperial cities, led by Strassburg, which was under the influence of Bucer, who had thought out for himself a doctrine not unlike that of Calvin, had been included in the Wittenberg Concord (May 1536); but Luther would have nothing to do with the Swiss. As it was vain to hope that Switzerland would be included in any Lutheran alliance, Calvin set himself to produce dogmatic harmony in Switzerland. In conjunction with Bullinger, Zwingli’s son-in-law and successor in Zurich, he drafted the Consensus of Zurich (Consensus Tigurinus) in 1549.[41] The document is Calvinist in theology and largely Zwinglian in language. It was accepted with some difficulty in Basel and in Bern, and heartily in Biel, Schaffhausen, Mühlhausen, and St. Gallen. It ended dogmatic disputes in Protestant Switzerland, which was thus united under the one creed.
This does not mean any increase of Protestantism within Switzerland. The Romanist cantons drew more closely together. Cardinal Carlo Borromeo of Milan took a deep interest in the Counter-Reformation in Switzerland. He introduced the Jesuits into Luzern and the Forest cantons, and after his death these cantons formed a league which included Luzern, Uri, Schwyz, Zug, Unterwalden, Freiburg, and Solothurn (1586). This League (the Borromean League) pledged its members to maintain the Roman Catholic faith. The lines of demarcation between Protestant and Romanist cantons in Switzerland practically survive to the present day.
Geneva, which was to be the citadel of the Reformed faith in Europe, had a history which prepared it for the part it was destined to play.
The ancient constitution of the town, solemnly promulgated in 1387, recognised three different authorities within its walls: the Bishop, who was the sovereign or “Prince” of the city; the Count, who had possession of the citadel; and the Free Burghers. The first act of the Bishop on his nomination was to go to the Church of St. Peter and swear on the Missal that he would maintain the civic rights. The House of Savoy had succeeded to the countship of Geneva, and they were represented within the town by a viceroy, who was called the Count or Vidomne. He was the supreme justiciary. The citizens were democratically organised. They met once a year in a recognised civic assembly to elect four Syndics to be their rulers and representatives. It was the Syndics who in their official capacity heard the oaths of the Bishop and of the Vidomne to uphold the rights and privileges of the town. They kept order within the walls from sunrise to sunset.
These three separate authorities were frequently in conflict, and in the triangular duel the citizens and the Bishop were generally in alliance against the House of Savoy and its viceroy. The consequence was that few mediæval cities under ecclesiastical rule were more loyal than Geneva was to its Bishop, so long as he respected the people’s rights and stood by them against their feudal lords when they attempted oppression.
In the years succeeding 1444 the hereditary loyalty to their bishops had to stand severe tests. Count Amadeus VIII. of Savoy, one of the most remarkable men of the fifteenth century,—he ascended the papal throne and resigned the Pontificate to become a hermit,—used his pontifical power to possess himself of the bishopric. From that date onwards the Bishop of Geneva was almost always a member of the House of Savoy, and the rights of the citizens were for the most part disregarded. The bishopric became an appanage of Savoy, and boys (one of ten years of age, another of seventeen) and bastards ruled from the episcopal chair.
After long endurance a party formed itself among the townspeople vowed to restore the old rights of the city. They called themselves, or were named by others, the Eidguenots (Eidgenossen); while the partisans of the Bishop and of the House of Savoy were termed Mamelukes, because, it was said, they had forsaken Christianity.
In their difficulties the Genevans turned to the Swiss cantons nearest them and asked to be allied with Freiburg and Bern. Freiburg consented, and an alliance was made in 1519; but Bern, an aristocratic republic, was unwilling to meddle in the struggle of a democracy in a town outside the Swiss Confederacy. The citizens of Bern, more sympathetic than their rulers, compelled them to make alliance with Geneva in 1526,—very half-heartedly on the part of the Bernese Council.
The Swiss cantons, Bern especially, could not in their own interest see the patriotic party in Geneva wholly crushed, and the “gate of Western Switzerland” left completely in possession of the House of Savoy. Therefore, when the Bishop assembled an army for the purpose of effectually crushing all opposition within the town, Bern and Freiburg collected their forces and routed the troops of Savoy. But the allies, instead of using to the full the advantage they had gained, were content with a compromise by which the Bishop remained the lord of Geneva, while the rights of the Vidomne were greatly curtailed, and the privileges of the townsmen were to be respected (Oct. 19th, 1530).
From this date onwards Geneva was governed by what was called le Petit Conseil, and was generally spoken of as the Council; then a Council of Two Hundred, framed on the model of those of Freiburg and Bern; lastly, by the Conseil General, or assembly of the citizens. All important transactions were first submitted to and deliberated on by the Petit Conseil, which handed them on with their opinion of what ought to be done to the Council of the Two Hundred. No change of situation—for example, the adoption of the Reformation—was finally adopted until submitted to the General Council of all the burghers.
It is possible that had there seemed to be any immediate prospects that Geneva would join the Reformation, Bern would have aided the patriots more effectually. Bern was the great Protestant Power in Western Switzerland. Its uniform policy, since 1528, had been to constitute itself the protector of towns and districts where a majority of the inhabitants were anxious to take the side of the Reformation and were hindered by their overlords. It made alliances with the towns in the territories of the Bishop of Basel, and enabled them to assert their independence. In May (23rd) 1532 it warned the Duke of Savoy that if he thought of persecuting the inhabitants of Payerne because of their religion, it would make their cause its own, and declared that its alliance with the town was much more ancient than any existing between Bern and the Duke.[43] But the case of Geneva was different. Signs, indeed, were not lacking that many of the people were inclined to the Reformation.[44] It is more than probable that some of the members of the Councils were longing for a religious reform. But however much in earnest the reformers might be, they were in a minority, and it was no part of the policy of Bern to interfere without due call in the internal administration of the city; still less to see the rise of a strong and independent Roman Catholic city-republic on its own western border.
Suddenly, in the middle of 1532, Geneva was thrown into a state of violent religious commotion. Pope Clement VII. had published an Indulgence within the city on the usual conditions. On the morning of June 9th, the citizens found posted up on all the doors of the churches great printed placards, announcing that “plenary pardon would be granted to every one for all their sins on the one condition of repentance, and a living faith in the promises of Jesus Christ.” The city was moved to its depths. Priests rushed to tear the placards down. “Lutherans” interfered. Tumults ensued; and one of the canons of the cathedral, Pierre Werly, was wounded in the arm.[45]
The Romanists, both inside and outside the town, were inclined to believe that the affair meant more than it really did. Freiburg had been very suspicious of the influence of the great Protestant canton of Bern, perhaps not without reason. In March (7th) 1532, the deputies of Geneva had been blamed by the inhabitants of Freiburg for being inclined to Lutheranism, and it is more than likely that the Evangelicals of Geneva had some private dealings with the Council of Bern, and had been told that the times were not ripe for any open action on the part of the Protestant canton. The affair of the placards, witnessing as it did the increased strength of the Evangelical party, reawakened suspicions and intensified alarms. A deputy from Freiburg appeared before the Council of Geneva, complaining of the placards,[46] and of the distribution of heretical literature in the city of Geneva (June 24th). The Papal Nuncio wrote from Chambéry (July 8th), asking if it were true, as was publicly reported, that the Lutheran heresy was openly professed and taught in the houses, churches, and even in the schools of Geneva.[47] The letter of the Nuncio was dismissed with a careless answer; but Freiburg had to be contented. Two extracts from the Register of the Council quoted by Herminjard show their anxiety to satisfy Freiburg and yet bear evidence of a very moderate zeal for the Romanist religion. They decided (June 29th) that no schoolmaster was to be allowed to preach in the town unless specially licensed by the vicar or the Syndics; and (June 30th) they resolved to request the vicar to see that the Gospel and the Epistle of the day were read “truthfully without being mixed up with fables and other inventions of men”; they added that they meant to live as their fathers, without any innovations.[48]
The excitement had not died down when Farel arrived in the city in the autumn of 1532. He preached quietly in houses; but his coming was known, and led to some tumults. He and his companions, Saunier and Olivétan, were seized and sent out of the city. The Reformation had begun, and, in spite of many hindrances, was destined to be successful.
The conversion of Geneva to the Reformed faith was the crown of a work which had been promoted by the canton of Bern ever since its Council had decided, in 1528, to adopt the Reformation. Bern itself belonged to German-speaking Switzerland, but it had extensive possessions in the French-speaking districts. It was the only State strong enough to confront the Dukes of Savoy, and was looked upon as a natural protector against that House and other feudal principalities. Its position may be seen in its relations to the Pays de Vaud. The Pays de Vaud consisted of a confederacy of towns and small feudal estates owning fealty to the House of Savoy. The nobles, the towns, and in some instances the clergy, sent deputies to a Diet which met at Moudon under the presidency of the “governor and bailli de Vaud,” who represented the Duke of Savoy. A large portion of the country had broken away from Savoy at different periods during the fifteenth century. Lausanne and eight other smaller towns and districts formed the patrimony of the Prince-Bishop of Lausanne. The cantons of Freiburg and Bern ruled jointly over Orbe, Grandson, and Morat. Bern had become the sole ruler over what were called the four commanderies of Aigle, Ormonts, Ollon, and Bex. These four commanderies were outlying portions of Bern, and were entirely under the rule of its Council. When Bern had accepted the Reformation, it naturally wished its dependencies to follow its example; and its policy was always directed to induce other portions of the Pays de Vaud to become Protestant also. Farel, the Apostle of French-speaking Switzerland, might almost be called an agent of the Council of Bern.
Its method of work may be best seen by taking the examples of Aigle and Lausanne, the one its own possession and the other belonging to the Prince-Bishop, who was its political ruler.
William Farel, once a member of the “group of Meaux,” whom we have already seen active at the Disputation in Bern in the beginning of 1528, had settled at Aigle in 1526, probably by the middle of November.[49] He did so, he says in his memoir to the Council of Bern—
“With the intention of opening a school to instruct the youth in virtue and learning, and in order to procure for myself the necessities of life. Received at once with brotherly good-will by some of the burghers of the place, I was asked by them to preach the Word of God before the Governor, who was then at Bern, had returned. I acceded to their request. But as soon as the Governor returned I asked his permission to keep the school, and by acquaintances also asked him to permit me to preach. The Governor acceded to their request, but on condition that I preached nothing but the pure simple clear Word of God according to the Old and New Testament, without any addition contrary to the Word, and without attacking the Holy Sacraments.... I promised to conform myself to the will of the Governor, and declared myself ready to submit to any punishment he pleased to inflict upon me if I disobeyed his orders or acted in any way recognised to be contrary to the Word of God.”[50]
This was the beginning of a work which gradually spread over French-speaking Switzerland.
The Bishop of Sion, within whose diocese Aigle was situated, published an order forbidding all wandering preachers who had not his episcopal licence from preaching within the confines of his diocese; and this appears to have been used against Farel. Some representation must have been made to the Council of Bern, who indignantly declared that no one was permitted to publish citations, excommunications, interdicts, ne autres fanfares within their territories; but at the same time ordered Farel to cease preaching, because he had never been ordained a priest (February 22nd, 1527).[51] The interdict did not last very long; for a minute of Council (March 8th) says, “Farel is permitted to preach at Aigle until the Coadjutor sends another capable priest.”[52] Troubles arose from priests and monks, but upon the whole the Council of Bern supported him; and Haller and others wrote from Bern privately, beseeching him to persevere.[53] He remained, and the number of those who accepted the Evangelical faith under his ministry increased gradually until they appear to have been the majority of the people.[54] He confessed himself that what hindered him most was his denunciation of the prevailing immoralities. At the Disputation in Bern, Farel was recognised to be one of the ablest theologians present, and to have contributed in no small degree to the success of the conference. The Council of Bern saw in him the instrument best fitted for the evangelisation of their French-speaking population. He returned to Aigle under the protection of the Council, who sent a herald with him to ensure that he should be treated with all respect, and gave him besides an “open letter,” ordering their officials to render him all assistance everywhere within their four commanderies.[55] He was recognised to be the evangelist of the Council of Bern. This did not prevent occasional disturbances, riots promoted by priests and monks, who set the bells a-ringing to drown the preacher’s voice, and sometimes procured men to beat drums at the doors of the churches in which he was preaching. His success, however, was so great, that when the commissioners of Bern visited their four commanderies they found that three of them were ready by a majority of votes to adopt the Reformation (March 2nd, 1528). The adoption of the Reformation was signified by the removal of altars and images, and by the abolition of the Mass.
In the parishes where a majority of the people declared for the Reformation, the Council of Bern issued instructions about the order of public worship and other ecclesiastical rites. Thus we find them intimating to their Governor at Aigle that they expected the people to observe the same form of Baptism, of the Table of the Lord, and of the celebration of marriage, as was in use at Bern (April 25th, 1528).[56] The Bern Liturgy, obligatory in all the German-speaking districts of the canton, was not imposed on the Romance Churches until 1552. Then, in July (1528), the Governor is informed that—
“My Lords have resolved to allow to the preachers Farel and Simon ‘pour leur prébende’ two hundred florins of Savoy annually, and a house with a court, and a kitchen garden. But if they prefer to have the old revenues of the parish cures ... my Lords are willing. If, on the contrary, they take the two hundred florins, you are to sell the ecclesiastical goods, and you are to collect the hundredths and the tithes, and out of all you are to pay the two hundred florins annually.”[57]
The pastors preferred to take the place of the Romanist incumbents, and there is accordingly another minute sent to the Castellan, syndic, and parishioners of Aigle, ordering Farel to be placed in possession of the ecclesiastical possessions of the parish, “seeing that it is reasonable that the pastor should have his portion of the fruits of the sheep.”[58]
The history of Aigle was repeated over and over again in other parts of western Switzerland. In the bailiwicks which Bern and Freiburg ruled jointly, Bern insisted on freedom of preaching, and on the right of the people to choose whether they would remain Romanists or become Protestants. Commissioners from the two cantons presided when the votes were given.
Farel was too valuable to be left as pastor of a small district like Aigle. We find him making wide preaching tours, always protected by Bern when protection was possible. It was the rooted belief of the Protestants that a public Disputation on matters of religion in presence of the people, the speakers using the language understood by the crowd, always resulted in spreading the Reformation; and Bern continually tried to get such conferences in towns where the authorities were Romanist. Their first interference in the ecclesiastical affairs of Lausanne was of this kind. It seems that some of the priests of Lausanne had accused Farel of being a heretic; whereupon the Council of Bern demanded that Farel should be heard before the Bishop of Lausanne’s tribunal, in order to prove that he was no heretic. The claim led to a long correspondence. The Bishop continually refused; while the Council and citizens seemed inclined to grant the request. Farel could not get a hearing before the episcopal tribunal, but he visited the town, and on the second occasion was permitted by the Council to preach to the people. This occurred again and again; and the result was that the town became Protestant and disowned the authority of the Bishop. Bern assisted the inhabitants to drive the Bishop away, and to become a free municipality and Protestant.
Gradually Farel had become the leader of an organised band of missioners, who devoted themselves to the evangelisation of western or French-speaking Switzerland.[59] They had been carefully selected—young men for the most part well educated, of unbounded courage, willing to face all the risks of their dangerous work, daunted by no threat or peril, taking their lives in their hand. They were the forerunners of the young preachers, teachers, and colporteurs whom Calvin trained later in Geneva and sent forth by the hundred to evangelise France and the Low Countries. They were all picked men. No one was admitted to the little band without being well warned of the hazardous work before him, and some who were ready to take all the risks were rejected because the leader was not sure that they had the necessary powers of endurance.[60] These preachers were under the protection of the canton of Bern, whose authorities were resolute to maintain the freedom to preach the Word of God; but they continually went where the Bernese had no power to assist them; nor could the protection of that powerful canton aid them in sudden emergencies when bitter Romanist partisans, infuriated by the invectives with which the preachers lashed the abuses of the Roman religion, or wrathful at their very presence, stirred up the mob against them. When their correspondence and that of their opponents—a correspondence collected and carefully edited by M. Herminjard—is read, it can be seen that they could always count on a certain amount of sympathy from the people of the towns and villages where they preached, but that the authorities were for the most part hostile. If Bern insisted on their protection, Freiburg was as active in opposing them, and lost no opportunity of urging the local authorities to harass them in every way, to silence their preaching, and if possible to expel them from their territories.
Such men had the defects of their qualities. Their zeal often outran their discretion. When Farel and Froment, the most daring and devoted of his band, were preaching at a village in the vale of Villingen, a priest began to chant the Mass beside them. As the priest elevated the Host, Froment seized it and, turning towards the people, said, “This is not the God to adore; He is in the Heaven in the glory of the Father, not in the hands of the priests as you believe, and as they teach.” There was a riot, of course, but the preachers escaped. Next day, however, as they were passing a solitary place, they were assailed by a crowd of men and women, stoned and beaten with clubs, then hurried away to a neighbouring castle whose chatelaine had instigated the attack. There they were thrust violently into the chapel, and the crowd tried to make Farel prostrate himself before an image of the Blessed Virgin. He resisted, admonishing them to adore the one God in spirit and in truth, not dumb images without sense or power. The crowd beat him to the effusion of blood, and the two preachers were dragged to a vault, where they were imprisoned until rescued by the authorities of Neuchâtel.[61]
These preachers were all Frenchmen or French-Swiss. They had the hot Celtic blood in their veins, and their hearers were their kith and kin—prompt to act, impetuous when their passions were stirred. Scenes occurred at their preaching which we seldom hear of among slower Germans, who generally waited until their authorities led. In western Switzerland the audiences were eager to get rid of the idolatries denounced. At Grandson, the people rushed to the church of the Cordeliers, and tore down the altars and images, while the crosses, altars, and images of the parish church were also destroyed.[62] Similar tumults took place at Orbe; and the authorities at Bern, who desired to see liberty for both Protestants and Romanists, had occasion to rebuke the zealous preachers.
But the dangers which the missioners ran were not always of their own provoking. Sometimes a crowd of women invaded the churches in which they preached, interrupted the services with shoutings, hustled and beat the preachers; sometimes when they addressed the people in the market-place the preachers and their audience were assailed with showers of stones; sometimes Farel and his companions were laid wait for and maltreated.[63] M. de Watteville, sent down by the authorities of Bern to report on disturbances, wrote to the Council of Bern that the faces of the preachers were so torn that it looked as if they had been fighting with cats, and that on one occasion the alarm-bell had been sounded against them, as was the custom for a wolf-hunt.[64]
No dangers daunted the missioners, and soon the whole of the outlying districts of Bern, Neuchâtel, Soleure, and other French-speaking portions of Switzerland declared for the Reformation. The cantonal authorities frequently sent down commissioners to ascertain the wishes of the people; and when the majority of the inhabitants voted for the Evangelical religion, the church, parsonage, and stipend were given to a Protestant pastor. Many of Farel’s missioners were temporarily settled in these village churches; but they were for the most part better fitted for pioneer work than for a settled pastorate. In January (9-14th) 1532, a synod of these Protestant pastors was held at Bern to deliberate on some uniform ways of exercising their ministry to prevent disorders arising from individual caprice. Two hundred and thirty ministers were present, and Bucer was brought from Strassburg to give them guidance. His advice was greatly appreciated and followed by the delegates of the churches and the Council of Bern. The Synod in the end issued an elaborate ordinance, which included a lengthy exposition of doctrine.[65]
It was after this consolidation of the Reformation in Bern and its outlying provinces that Farel found himself free to turn his attention to Geneva. He had evidently been thinking for months about the possibility of evangelising the town. He had little fear of the people themselves, and he wrote to Zwingli (Oct. 1st, 1531) that were it not for the dread of Freiburg, he believed that the Genevese would welcome the Gospel.[66] The affair of the “placards” seems to have decided him to begin his mission in the city. When he was driven out he was far from abandoning the enterprise. He turned to Froment, his most trusted assistant, and sent him into Geneva.
Antoine Froment, who has the honour along with Farel of being the Reformer of Geneva, was born at Tries, near Grenoble, about 1510. He was therefore, like Farel, a native of Dauphiné. Like him, also, he had gone to Paris for his education, and had become acquainted with Lefèvre, who seems to have introduced him to Marguerite d’Angoulême, the Queen of Navarre,[67] as he received from her a prebend in a canonry on one of her estates. How he came to Switzerland is unknown. Once there and introduced to Farel, he became his most daring and enthusiastic disciple, and Farel prized him above all the others. They were Paul and Timothy. It was natural that Farel should entrust him with the difficult and dangerous task of preaching the Gospel in Geneva.
Farel’s seizure and expulsion made it necessary to proceed with caution. Froment entered Geneva (Nov. 3rd, 1532), and began his work by intimating by public advertisement (placard) that he was ready to teach any one who wished to learn to read and write the French language, and that he would charge no fees if his pupils were not able to profit by his instructions. Scholars came.[68] He managed to mingle Evangelical instruction with his lessons,—“every day one or two sermons from the Holy Scripture,” he says,—and soon made many converts, especially among the wives of influential citizens. Towards the end of 1532, the monks of one of the convents in Geneva had brought to the city a Dominican, Christopher Bocquet, to be their Advent preacher. His sermons seem to have been largely Evangelical, and had the effect of inducing many of the citizens to attend Froment’s discourses in the hall where he kept his school.[69] This provoked threats on the part of the Romanists, and strongly worded sermons from the priests and Romanist orators. One citizen, convicted of having spoken disrespectfully of the Mass, was banished, and forbidden to return on pain of death. On this the Evangelicals of the town appealed to Bern. Their letter was promptly answered by a demand on the part of the Council of that canton that the Evangelicals must be left in peace, and if attacked publicly must be allowed to answer in as public a fashion.[70] When their letter was read in the Council of Geneva, it provoked some protests from the more ardently Romanist members, and the priests stirred up part of the population to riotous proceedings, in which the lives of the Evangelicals were threatened. The Syndics and Council had difficulty in preventing conflicts in the streets. They published a decree (March 30th, 1533), in which they practically proclaimed liberty of conscience, but forbade all insulting expressions, all attacks on the Sacraments or on the ecclesiastical fasts and ceremonies, and again ordered preachers to say nothing which could not be proved from Holy Scripture.[71]
The numbers of the Evangelicals increased daily; they became bolder, and on the 10th of April they met in a garden, under the presidency of Guérin Muète, a hosier, for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. This became known to the Romanists, and there was a renewal of the threats against the Evangelicals, which came to a head in the riot of the 5th of May—a riot which had important consequences.[72] It seems that while several citizens, known to belong to the Evangelical party, were walking in the square before the Cathedral of St. Peter, they were attacked by a band of armed priests, and three of them were severely wounded. The leader of the band, a turbulent priest named Pierre Werly, who belonged to an old family of Freiburg, and was a canon in the cathedral, followed by five or six others, rushed down to the broad street Molard, with loud shouts. Werly was armed with one of the huge Swiss swords. He and his companions attacked the Evangelicals; there was a sharp, short fight; several persons were wounded severely, and Werly, “the captain of the priests,” was slain.[73] The affair made a great noise. The Romanists at once proclaimed Werly a martyr, and honoured him with a pompous funeral. Freiburg insisted that all the Evangelicals who happened to be in the Molard should be arrested; and it was said that preparations were being made for a massacre of all the followers of the Reformation. In their extremity they again appealed to Bern, whose authorities again interfered for their protection.
During these troublesome times the position of the Council of Geneva was one of great difficulty. The Prince-Bishop of Geneva, Pierre de la Baume, was still nominally sovereign, secular as well as ecclesiastical ruler. His secular powers had been greatly curtailed, how much it is difficult to say, but certainly to the extent that the criminal administration of the city and the territory subject to it was in the hands of the Council and Syndics. Freiburg, one of the two protecting cantons, insisted that all the ecclesiastical authority was still in the hands of the Bishop, to be administered in his absence by his vicar.[74] The Councils, although they had passed decrees (June 30th, 1532, and March 30th, 1533) which had distinctly to do with ecclesiastical matters, acknowledged for the most part that the ecclesiastical jurisdiction did not belong to them. But the whole of the inhabitants were not contented with this diminution of the episcopal authority. Turbulent priests and the yet more violent canons,[75] the great body of monks and nuns, wished, and intrigued for the restoration of the rule of the Bishop and of the House of Savoy. The beginnings of a movement for Reformation had increased the difficulties of the Council; it brought a third party into the town. The Evangelicals were all strongly opposed to the rule of the Bishop and Savoy, and they were fast growing in strength; a powerful minority of Roman Catholics were no less strongly in favour of a return to the old condition. The majority of the Roman Catholic citizens, opposed to the Bishop as a secular ruler, had no desire for the triumph of the Reformation. As time went on, it was seen that these moderate Romanists had to choose between a return of the old disorderly rule of the Bishop, or to acquiesce in the ecclesiastical as well as the secular superiority of the Council, pressed by the Protestant canton of Bern. The Savoyard party evidently believed that their hatred of the Reformation would be stronger than their dislike to the Savoyard and episcopal rule—a mistaken belief, as events were to show.
The policy of Bern, wherever its influence prevailed in western Switzerland, was exerted to secure toleration for all Evangelicals, and to procure, if possible, a public discussion on matters of religion between the Romanists and leading Reformers. They pressed this over and over again on their allies of Geneva. As early as April 1533, they had insisted that a monk who had offered to refute Farel should be kept to his word, and that the Council of Geneva should arrange for a Public Disputation.[76] Towards the close of the year an event occurred which gave them a pretext for decisive interference.
Guy Furbiti, a renowned Roman Catholic preacher, a learned theologian, a doctor of the Sorbonne, had been brought to Geneva to be Advent preacher. He used the occasion to denounce vigorously the doctrines of the Evangelicals, supporting his statements, as he afterwards confessed, not from Scripture, but from the Decretals and from the writings of Thomas Aquinas. He ended his sermon (Dec. 2nd) with the words: “Where are those fine preachers of the fireside, who say the opposite? If they showed themselves here one could speak to them. Ha! ha! they are well to hide themselves in corners to deceive poor women and others who know nothing.”
After the sermon, either in church or in the square before the cathedral, Froment cried to the crowd, “Hear me! I am ready to give my life, and my body to be burned, to maintain that what that man has said is nothing but falsehood and the words of Antichrist.” There was a great commotion. Some shouted, “To the fire with him! to the fire!” and tried to seize him. The chronicler nun, Jeanne de Jussie, proud of her sex, relates that “les femmes comme enragées sortirent après, de grande furie, luy jettant force pierres.”[77] He escaped from them. But Alexandre Canus was banished, and forbidden to return under pain of death; and Froment was hunted from house to house, until he found a hiding-place in a hay-loft. Furbiti had permitted himself to attack with strong invectives the authorities of Bern, and the Evangelicals of Geneva in their appeal for protection sent extracts from the sermons.[78] Bern had at last the opportunity for which its Council had long waited.
They wrote a dignified letter (Dec. 17th, 1533) to the Council of Geneva, in which they complained that the Genevese, their allies, had hitherto paid little attention to their requests for a favourable treatment of the Evangelicals; that they had expelled from the town “nostre serviteur maistre Guillaume Farel”; not content with that, they had recently misused their “servants” Froment and Alexandre for protesting against the sermons of a Jacobin monk (Furbiti) who “preached only lies, errors, and blasphemies against God, the faith, and ourselves, wounding our honour, calling us Jews, Turks, and dogs”; that the banishment of Alexandre and the hunting of Froment touched them (the Council of Bern), and that they would not suffer it. They demanded the immediate arrest of the “caffard”[79] (Furbiti); and they said they were about to send an embassy to Geneva to vindicate publicly the honour of God and their own.[80]
As the Council of Bern meant to enforce a Public Disputation, they sent Farel to Geneva. He reached the city on the evening of December 20th.
The letter was read to the Council of Geneva upon Dec. 21st, and they at once gave orders to the vicar to prevent Furbiti leaving the town. But the vicar, who had resolved to try his strength against Bern, refused, and actually published two mandates (Dec. 31st, 1533, and Jan. 1st, 1534) denouncing the Genevese Syndics, forbidding any of the citizens to read the Holy Scriptures, and ordering all copies of translations of the Bible, whether in German or in French, to be seized and burnt.[81] The dispute between Syndics and vicar was signalised by riots promoted by the extreme Romanist party. The Council, anxious not to proceed to extremities, contented themselves with placing a guard to watch Furbiti; and the monk was attended continually, even when he went to and from the church, by a guard of three halberdiers.
The Bernese embassy arrived on the 4th of January, and had prolonged audience of the Council of Geneva on the 5th and 7th. They insisted on a fair treatment for the Evangelical party, which meant freedom of conscience and the right of public worship, and they demanded that Furbiti should be compelled to justify his charges against the Evangelicals in the presence of learned men who could speak for the Council of Bern. The Genevan authorities had no wish to break irrevocably with their Bishop, nor to coerce the ecclesiastical authorities; they pleaded that Furbiti was not under their jurisdiction, and they referred the Bernese deputies to the Bishop or his vicar. “We have been ordered to apply to you,” said the deputies from Bern. “Your answer makes us see that you seek delay, and that you are not treating us fairly; that you think little of the honour of the Council of Bern. Here is the treaty of alliance (they produced the document), and we are about to tear off the seals.” This was the formal way among the Swiss of cancelling a treaty. The Councillors of Geneva then proposed that they should compel the monk to appear before them and the deputies of Bern, when explanations might be demanded from him. The deputies accepted the offer, but on condition that there should be a conference between the monk (Furbiti) and theologians sent from Bern (Farel and Viret). Next day Furbiti was taken from the episcopal palace and placed in the town’s prison (Jan. 8th), and on the morrow (Jan. 9th) he was brought before the Council. There he refused to plead before secular judges. The Council of Geneva tried in vain to induce the vicar to nominate an ecclesiastical delegate who was to sit in the Council and be present at the conference. Their negotiations with the vicar, carried on for some days, were in vain. Then they attempted to induce the Bernese to depart from their conditions. The Council of Bern was immovable. It insisted on the immediate payment by the Genevese of the debt due to Bern for the war of deliverance and for the punishment of Furbiti (Jan. 25th, 1534). Driven to the wall, the Council of Geneva resolved to override the ecclesiastical authority of the Bishop and his vicar. Furbiti was compelled to appear before the Council and the deputies of Bern, and to answer to Farel and Viret on Jan. 27th and Feb. 3rd (1534). On the afternoon of the latter day the partisans of the Bishop got up another riot, in which one of them poniarded an Evangelical, Nicolas Bergier. This riot seems to have exhausted the patience of the peaceable citizens of Geneva, whether Romanists or Evangelicals. A band of about five hundred assembled armed before the Town Hall, informed the Council that they would no longer tolerate riots caused by turbulent priests, and that they were ready to support civic authority and put down lawlessness with a strong hand. The Council thereupon acted energetically. That night the murderer, Claude Pennet, who had hid himself in the belfry of the cathedral, was dragged from his place of concealment, tried next day, and hanged on the day following (Feb. 5th). The houses of the principal rioters were searched, and letters discovered proving a plot to seize the town and deliver it into the hands of the Bishop. Pierre de la Baume had gone the length of nominating a member of the Council of Freiburg, M. Pavillard, to act as his deputy in secular affairs, and ordering him to massacre the Evangelicals within the city.
When the excitement had somewhat died down, the deputies of Bern pressed for a renewal of the proceedings against Furbiti. The monk was again brought before the Council, and confronted by Farel and Viret. He was forced to confess that he could not prove his assertions from the Holy Scriptures, but had based them on the Decretals and the writings of Thomas Aquinas, admitting that he had transgressed the regulations of the Council of Geneva. He promised that, if allowed to preach on the following Sunday (Feb. 15th), he would make public reparation to the Council of Bern. When Sunday came he refused to keep his promise, and was sent back to prison.[82]
Meanwhile the Evangelical community in Geneva was growing, and taking organised form. One of the most prominent of the Genevan Evangelicals, Jean Baudichon de la Maisonneuve, prepared a hall by removing a partition between two rooms in his magnificent house, situated in that part of the city which was the cradle of the Reformation in Geneva. There Farel, Viret, and Froment preached to three or four hundred persons; and there the first baptism according to the Reformed rite was celebrated in Geneva (Feb. 22nd, 1533). The audiences soon increased beyond the capacity of the hall, and the Evangelicals, protected by the presence of the Bernese deputies, took possession of the large audience hall or church of the Convent of the Cordeliers in the same street (March 1st). The deputies from Bern frequently asked the Council of Geneva to grant the use of one of the churches of the town for the Evangelicals, but were continually answered that the Council had not the power, but that they would not object if the Evangelicals found a suitable place. This indirect authorisation enabled them to meet in the convent church, which held between four and five thousand people, and which was frequently filled. Thus the little band increased. Farel preached for the first time in St. Peter’s on the 8th of August 1535. Services were held in other houses also.[83]
The Bishop of Geneva, foiled in his attempt to regain possession of the town by well-planned riots, united himself with the Duke of Savoy to conquer the city by force of arms. Their combined forces advanced against Geneva; they overran the country, seized and pillaged the country houses of the citizens, and subjected the town itself to a close investment. The war was a grievous matter for the city, but it furthered the Reformation. The Bishop had leagued himself with the old enemy of Geneva; the priests, the monks, the nuns were eager for his success; he compelled patriotic Roman Catholics to choose between their religion and their country. It was also a means of displaying the heroism of the Protestant pastors. Farel and Froment were high-spirited Frenchmen, who scoffed at any danger lying in the path of duty. They had braved a thousand perils in their missionary work. Viret was not less courageous. The three worked on the fortifications with the citizens; they shared the watches of the defenders; they encouraged the citizens by word and deed. The Genevese were prepared for any sacrifices to preserve their liberties. Four faubourgs, which formed a second town almost as large as the first, were ordered to be demolished to strengthen the defence. The city was reduced to great straits, and the citizens of Bern seemed to be deaf to their cries for help.