Farel and Calvin accordingly went to the Synod at Lausanne, and were parties to the decision arrived at, which was to accept the usages of Bern—that all baptisms should be celebrated at stone fonts placed at the entrance of the churches; that unleavened bread should be used at the Holy Supper; and that four religious festivals should be observed annually, Christmas, New Year’s Day, the Annunciation, and the Day of Ascension—with the stipulation that Bern should warn its officials not to be too hard on poor persons for working on these festival days.[130]
When the Council of Bern had got its ecclesiastical proposals duly adopted by the representatives of the various Churches interested, its Council wrote (April 15th) to the Council and to the ministers of Geneva asking them to confer together and arrange that the Church of Geneva should adopt these usages—the magistrates of Bern having evidently no knowledge of the hasty resolution of the Genevan Council already mentioned. The letter was discussed at a meeting of Council (April 19th, 1538), and several minutes, all relating to ecclesiastical matters, were passed. It was needless to come to any resolution about the Bern usages; they had been adopted already. The letter from Bern was to be shown to Farel and Calvin, and the preachers were to be asked and were to answer, yea or nay, would they at once introduce the Bern ceremonies? The preachers said that the usages could not be introduced at once. The third Genevan preacher, Elie Coraut, had spoken disrespectfully of the Council in the city, and was forbidden to preach, upon threat of imprisonment, until he had been examined about his words.[131] Lastly, it was resolved that the Holy Supper should be celebrated at once according to the Bern rites; and that if Farel and Calvin refused, the Council was to engage other preachers who would obey their orders.[132]
Coraut, the blind preacher, preached as usual (April 20th). He was at once arrested and imprisoned. In the afternoon, Farel and Calvin, accompanied by several of the most eminent citizens of Geneva, appeared before the Council to protest against Coraut’s imprisonment, and to demand his release—Farel speaking with his usual daring vehemence, and reminding the magistrates that but for his work in the city they would not be in the position they occupied. The request was refused, and the Council took advantage of the presence of the preachers to ask them whether they would at once introduce the Bern usages. They replied that they had no objection to the ceremonies, and would be glad to use them in worship provided they were properly adopted,[133] but not on a simple order from the Council. Farel and Calvin were then forbidden to preach. Next day the two pastors preached as usual—Calvin in St. Peter’s and Farel in St. Gervaise. The Council met to consider this act of disobedience. Some were for sending the preachers to prison at once; but it was resolved to summon the Council of the Two Hundred on the morrow (April 22nd) and the General Council on the 24th. The letters of Bern (March 5th, March 20th, April 15th) were read, and the Two Hundred resolved that they would “live according to the ceremonies of Bern.” What then was to be done with Calvin and Farel? Were they to be sent to the town’s prison? No! Better to wait till the Council secured other preachers (it had been trying to do so and had failed), and then dismiss them. The General Council then met;[134] resolved to “live according to the ceremonies of Bern,” and to banish the three preachers from the town, giving them three days to collect their effects.[135] Calvin and Farel were sent into exile, and the magistrates made haste to seize the furniture which had been given them when they were settled as preachers.
Calvin long remembered the threats and dangers of these April days and nights. He was insulted in the streets. Bullies threatened to “throw him into the Rhone.” Crowds of the baser sort gathered round his house. They sang ribald and obscene songs under his windows. They fired shots at night, more than fifty one night, before his door—“more than enough to astonish a poor scholar, timid as I am, and as I confess I have always been.”[136] It was the memory of these days that made him loathe the very thought of returning to Geneva.
The two Reformers, Calvin and Farel, left the town at once, determined to lay their case before the Council of Bern, and also before the Synod of Swiss Churches which was about to meet at Zurich (April 28th, 1538). The Councillors of Bern were both shocked and scandalised at the treatment the preachers had received from the Council of Geneva, and felt it all the more that their proposal of conformity had served as the occasion. They wrote at once to Geneva (April 27th), begging the Council to undo what they had done; to remember that their proposal for uniformity had never been meant to serve as occasion for compulsion in matters which were after all indifferent.[137] Bern might be masterful, but it was almost always courteous. The secular authority might be the motive force in all ecclesiastical matters, but it was to be exercised through the machinery of the Church. The authorities of Bern had been careful to establish an ecclesiastical Court, the Consistory, of two pastors and three Councillors, who dealt with all ecclesiastical details. It encouraged the meeting of Synods all over its territories. Its proposals for uniformity had been addressed to both the pastors and the Council of Geneva, and had spoken of mutual consultation. They had no desire to seem even remotely responsible for the bludgeoning of the Genevan ministers. The Council of Geneva answered with a mixture of servility and veiled insolence[138] (April 30th). Nothing could be made of them.
From Bern, Farel and Calvin went to Zurich, and there addressed a memorandum to a Synod, which included representatives from Zurich, Bern, Basel, Schaffhausen, St. Gallen, Mühlhausen, Biel (Bienne), and the two banished ministers from Geneva. It was one of those General Assemblies which in Calvin’s eyes represented the Church Catholic, to which all particular Churches owed deference, if not simple obedience. The Genevan pastors presented their statement with a proud humility. They were willing to accept the ceremonies of Bern, matters in themselves indifferent, but which might be useful in the sense of showing the harmony prevailing among the Reformed Churches; but they must be received by the Church of Geneva, and not imposed upon it by the mere fiat of the secular authority. They were quite willing to expound them to the people of Geneva and recommend them. But if they were to return to Geneva, they must be allowed to defend themselves against their calumniators; and their programme for the organisation of the Church of Geneva, which had already been accepted but had not been put in practice (January 16th, 1537),[139] must be introduced. It consisted of the following:—the establishment of an ecclesiastical discipline, that the Holy Supper might not be profaned; the division of the city into parishes, that each minister might be acquainted with his own flock; an increase in the number of ministers for the town; regular ordination of pastors by the laying on of hands; more frequent celebration of the Holy Supper, according to the practice of the primitive Church.[140] They confessed that perhaps they had been too severe; on this personal matter they were willing to be guided.[141] They listened with humility to the exhortations of some of the members of the Synod, who prayed them to use more gentleness in dealing with an undisciplined people. But on the question of principle and on the rights of the Church set over against the State, they were firm. It was probably the first time that the Erastians of eastern Switzerland had listened to such High Church doctrine; but they accepted it and made it their own for the time being at least. The Synod decided to write to the Council of Geneva and ask them to have patience with their preachers and receive them back again; and they asked the deputies from Bern to charge themselves with the affair, and do their best to see Farel and Calvin reinstated in Geneva.
The deputies of Bern accepted the commission, and the Geneva pastors went back to Bern to await the arrival of the Bern deputies from Zurich. They waited, full of anxiety, for nearly fourteen days. Then the Bern Council were ready to fulfil the request of the Synod.[142] Deputies were appointed, and, accompanied by Farel and Calvin, set out for Geneva. The two pastors waited on the frontier at Noyon or at Genthod while the deputies of Bern went on to Geneva. They had an audience of the Council (May 23rd), were told that the Council could not revoke what all three Councils had voted. The Council of the Two Hundred refused to recall the pastors. The Council General (May 26th) by a unanimous vote repeated the sentence of exile, and forbade the three pastors (Farel, Calvin, and Coraut) to set foot on Genevan territory.
Driven from Geneva, Calvin would fain have betaken himself to a quiet student life; but he was too well known and too much valued to be left in the obscurity he longed for. Strassburg claimed him to minister to the French refugees who had settled within its protecting walls. He was invited to attend the Protestant conference at Frankfurt; he was present at the union conferences at Hagenau, at Worms, and at Regensburg. There he met the more celebrated German Protestant divines, who welcomed him as they had done no one else from Switzerland. Calvin put himself right with them theologically by signing at once and without solicitation the Augsburg Confession, and aided thereby the feeling of union among all Protestants. He kindled in the breast of Melanchthon one of those romantic friendships which the frail Frenchman, with the pallid face, black hair, and piercing eyes, seemed to evoke so easily. Luther himself appreciated his theology even on his jealously guarded theory of the Sacrament of the Holy Supper.
Meanwhile things were not going well in Geneva. Outwardly, there was not much difference. Pastors ministered in the churches of the town, and the ordinary and ecclesiastical life went on as usual. The magistrates enforced the Articles; they condemned the Anabaptists, the Papists, all infringements of the sumptuary and disciplinary laws of the town. They compelled every householder to go to church. Still the old life seemed to be gone. The Council and the Syndics treated the new pastors as their servants, compelled them to render strict obedience to all their decisions in ecclesiastical matters, and considered religion as a political affair. It is undoubted that the morals of the town became worse,—so bad that the pastors of Bern wrote a letter of expostulation to the pastors in Geneva,[143]—and the Lord’s Supper seems to have been neglected. The contests between parties within the city became almost scandalous, and the independent existence of Geneva was threatened.[144]
At the elections the Syndics failed to secure their re-election. Men of more moderate views were chosen, and from this date (Feb. 1539) the idea began to be mooted that Geneva must ask Calvin to return. Private overtures were made to him, but he refused. Then came letters from the Council, begging him to come back and state his terms. He kept silence. Lausanne and Neuchâtel joined their entreaties to those of Geneva. Calvin was not to be persuaded. His private letters reveal his whole mind. He shuddered at returning to the turbulent city. He was not sure that he was fit to take charge of the Church in Geneva. He was in peace at Strassburg, minister to a congregation of his own countrymen; and the pastoral tie once formed was not to be lightly broken; yet there was an undercurrent drawing him to the place where he first began the ministry of the Word. At length he wrote to the Council of Geneva, putting all his difficulties and his longings before them—neither accepting nor refusing. His immediate duty called him to the conference at Worms.
The people of Geneva were not discouraged. On the 19th October, the Council of the Two Hundred placed on their register a declaration that every means must be taken to secure the services of “Maystre Johan Calvinus,” and on the 22nd a worthy burgher and member of the Council of the Two Hundred, Louis Dufour, was despatched to Strassburg with a letter from both the civic Councils, begging Calvin to return to his “old place” (prestine plache), “seeing our people desire you greatly,” and promising that they would do what they could to content him.[145] Dufour got to Strassburg only to find that Calvin had gone to Worms. He presented his letters to the Council of the town, who sent them on by an express (eques celeri cursu)[146] to Calvin (Nov. 6th, 1540). Far from being uplifted at the genuine desire to receive him back again to Geneva, Calvin was terribly distressed. He took counsel with his friends at Worms, and could scarcely place the case before them for his sobs.[147] The intolerable pain he had at the thought of going back to Geneva on the one hand, and the idea that Bucer might after all be right when he declared that Calvin’s duty to the Church Universal clearly pointed to his return,[148] overmastered him completely. His friends, respecting his sufferings, advised him to postpone all decision until again in Strassburg. Others who were not near him kept urging him. Farel thundered at him (consterné par tes foudres).[149] The pastors of Zurich wrote (April 5th 1541):
“You know that Geneva lies on the confines of France, of Italy, and of Germany, and that there is great hope that the Gospel may spread from it to the neighbouring cities, and thus enlarge the ramparts (les boulevards) of the kingdom of Christ.—You know that the Apostle selected metropolitan cities for his preaching centres, that the Gospel might be spread throughout the surrounding towns.”[150]
Calvin was overcome. He consented to return to Geneva, and entered the city still suffering from his repugnance to undertake work he was not at all sure that he was fitted to do. Historians speak of a triumphal entry. There may have been, though nothing could have been more distasteful to Calvin at any time, and eminently so on this occasion, with the feelings he had. Contemporary documents are silent. There is only the minute of the Council, as formal as minutes usually are, relating that “Maystre Johan Calvin, ministre evangelique,” is again in charge of the Church in Geneva (Sept. 13th, 1541).[151]
Calvin was in Geneva for the second time, dragged there both times unwillingly, his dream of a quiet scholar’s life completely shattered. The work that lay before him proved to be almost as hard as he had foreseen it would be. The common idea that from this second entry Calvin was master within the city, is quite erroneous. Fourteen years were spent in a hard struggle (1541-55); and if the remaining nine years of his life can be called his period of triumph over opponents (1555-64), it must be remembered that he was never able to see his ideas of an ecclesiastical organisation wholly carried out in the city of his adoption. One must go to the Protestant Church of France to see Calvin’s idea completely realised.[152]
On the day of his entry into Geneva (Sept. 13th, 1541) the Council resolved that a Constitution should be given to the Church of the city, and a committee was formed, consisting of Calvin, his colleagues in the ministry, and six members of the Council, to prepare the draft. The work was completed in twenty days, and ready for presentation. On September 16th, however, it had been resolved that the draft when prepared should be submitted for revision to the Smaller Council, to the Council of Sixty, and finally to the Council of Two Hundred. The old opposition at once manifested itself within these Councils. There seem to have been alterations, and at the last moment Calvin thought that the Constitution would be made worthless for the purpose of discipline and orderly ecclesiastical rule. In the end, however, the drafted ordinances were adopted unanimously by the Council of Two Hundred without serious alteration. The result was the famous Ecclesiastical Ordinances of Geneva in their first form. They did not assume their final form until 1561.[153]
When these Ordinances of 1541 are compared with the principles of ecclesiastical government laid down in the Institutio, with the Articles of 1537, and with the Ordinances of 1561, it can be seen that Calvin must have sacrificed a great deal in order to content the magistrates of Geneva.
He had contended for the self-government of the Church, especially in matters of discipline; the principle runs all through the chapters of the fourth book of the Institutio. The Ordinances give a certain show of autonomy, and yet the whole authority really rests with the Councils. The discipline was exercised by the Consistory or session of Elders (Anciens); but this Consistory was chosen by the Smaller Council on the advice of the ministers, and was to include two members of the Smaller Council, four from the Council of Sixty, and six from the Council of Two Hundred, and when they had been chosen they were to be presented to the Council of Two Hundred for approval. When the Consistory met, one of the four Syndics sat as president, holding his baton, the insignia of his magisterial office, in his hand, which, as the revised Ordinances of 1561 very truly said, “had more the appearance of civil authority than of spiritual rule.” The revised Ordinances forbade the president to carry his baton when he presided in The Consistory, in order to render obedience to the distinction which is “clearly shown in Holy Scripture to exist between the magistrate’s sword and authority and the superintendence which ought to be in the Church”; but the obedience to Holy Scripture does not seem to have gone further than laying aside the baton for the time. It appears also that the rule of consulting the ministers in the appointments made to the Consistory was not unfrequently omitted, and that it was to all intents and purposes simply a committee of the Councils, and anything but submissive to the pastors.[154] The Consistory had no power to inflict civil punishments on delinquents. It could only admonish and warn. When it deemed that chastisements were necessary, it had to report to the Council, who sentenced. This was also done in order to maintain the separation between the civil and ecclesiastical power; but, in fact, it was a committee of the Council that reported to the Council, and the distinction was really illusory. This state of matters was quite repugnant to Calvin’s cherished idea, not only as laid down in the Institution, but as seen at work in the Constitution of the French Protestant Church, which was mainly his authorship. “The magnificent, noble, and honourable Lords” of the Council (such was their title) of this small town of 13,000 inhabitants deferred in words to the teachings of Calvin about the distinction between the civil and the spiritual powers, but in fact they retained the whole power of rule or discipline in their own hands; and we ought to see in the disciplinary powers and punishments of the Consistory of Geneva, not an exhibition of the working of a Church organised on the principles of Calvin, but the ordinary procedure of the Town Council of a mediæval city. Their petty punishments and their minute interference with private life are only special instances of what was common to all municipal rule in the sixteenth century.
Through that century we find a protest against the mediæval intrusion of the ecclesiastical power into the realm of civil authority, with the inevitable reaction which made the ecclesiastical a mere department of national or civic administration. Zurich under Zwingli, although it is usually taken as the extreme type of this Erastian policy, as it came to be called later, went no further than Bern, Strassburg, or other places. The Council of Geneva had legal precedent when they insisted that the supreme ecclesiastical power belonged to them. The city had been an ecclesiastical principality, ruled in civil as well as in ecclesiastical things by its Bishop, and the Council were legally the inheritors of the Bishop’s authority. This meant, among other things, that the old laws against heresy, unless specially repealed, remained on the Statute Book, and errors in doctrine were reckoned to be of the nature of treasonable things; and this made heresies, or variations in religious opinion from what the Statute Book had declared to be the official view of truth, liable to civil pains and penalties.
“Castellio’s doubts as to the canonicity of the Song of Songs and as to the received interpretation of Christ’s descent into Hades, Bolsec’s criticism of predestination, Gryet’s suspected scepticism and possession of infidel books, Servetus’ rationalism and anti-Trinitarian creed, were all opinions judged to be criminal.... The heretic may be a man of irreproachable character; but if heresy be treason against the State,”[155]
he was a criminal, and had to be punished for the crime on the Statute Book. To say that Calvin burnt Servetus, as is continually done, is to make one man responsible for a state of things which had lasted in western Europe ever since the Emperor Theodosius declared that all men were out of law who did not accept the Nicene Creed in the form issued by Damasus of Rome. On the other hand, to release Calvin from his share in that tragedy and crime by denying that he sat among the judges of the heretic, or to allege that Servetus was slain because he conspired against the liberties of the city, is equally unreasonable. Calvin certainly believed that the execution of the anti-Trinitarian was right. The Protestants of France and of Switzerland in 1903 (Nov. 1st) erected what they called a monument expiatoire to the victim of sixteenth century religious persecution, and placed on it an inscription in which they acknowledged their debt to the great Reformer, and at the same time condemned his error,—surely the right attitude to assume.[156]
Calvin did three things for Geneva, all of which went far beyond its walls. He gave its Church a trained and tested ministry, its homes an educated people who could give a reason for their faith, and to the whole city an heroic soul which enabled the little town to stand forth as the Citadel and City of Refuge for the oppressed Protestants of Europe.
The earlier preachers of the Reformed faith had been stray scholars, converted priests and monks, pious artisans, and such like. They were for the most part heroic men who did their work nobly. But some of them had no real vocation for the position into which they had thrust themselves. They had been prompted by such ignoble motives as discontent with their condition, the desire to marry or to make legitimate irregular connections,[157] or dislike to all authority and wholesome restraints. They had brought neither change of heart nor of conduct into their new surroundings, and had become a source of danger and scandal to the small Protestant communities.
The first part of the Ordinances was meant to put an end to such a condition of things, and aimed at giving the Reformed Church a ministry more efficient than the old priesthood, without claiming any specially priestly character. The ministers were to be men who believed that they were called by the voice of God speaking to the individual soul, and this belief in a divine vocation was to be tested and tried in a threefold way—by a searching examination, by a call from their fellow-men in the Church, and by a solemn institution to office.
The examination, which is expressly stated to be the most important, was conducted by those who were already in the office of the ministry. It concerned, first, the knowledge which the candidate had of Holy Scripture, and of his ability to make use of it for the edification of the people; and, second, his walk and conversation in so far as they witnessed to his power to be an example as well as a teacher. The candidate was then presented to the Smaller Council. He was next required to preach before the people, who were invited to say whether his ministrations were likely to be for edification. These three tests passed, he was then to be solemnly set apart by the laying on of the hands of ministers, according to the usage of the ancient Church. His examination and testing did not end with his ordination. All the ministers of the city were commanded to meet once a week for the discussion of the Scriptures, and at these meetings it was the duty of every one, even the least important, to bring forward any cause of complaint he believed to exist against any of his brethren, whether of doctrine, or of morals, or of inefficient discharge of the duties entrusted to his care. The pastors who worked in the villages were ordered to attend as often as they could, and none of them were permitted to be absent beyond one month. If the meeting of ministers failed to agree on any matter brought before them, they were enjoined to call in the Elders to assist them; and a final appeal was always allowed to the Signory, or civil authority. The same rigid supervision was extended to the whole people, and in the visitations for this purpose Elders were always associated with ministers.[158] Every member of the little republic, surrounded by so many and powerful enemies, was meant to be a soldier trained for spiritual as for temporal warfare. Calvin added a spiritual side to the military training which preserved the independence of the little mediæval city republics.
He was unwearied in his exertions to make Geneva an enlightened town. His educational policy adopted by the Councils was stated in a series of famous regulations for the management of the schools and College of the city.[159] He sought out and presented to the Council the most noted scholars he could attract to Geneva. Mathurin Cordier, the ablest preceptor that France had produced in his generation; Beza, its most illustrious Humanist; Castellio and Saunier, were all teachers in the city. The fame of its schools attracted almost as many as persecution drove to take refuge within its walls. The religious instruction of the young was carefully attended to. Calvin’s earlier Catechism was revised, and made more suitable for the young; and the children were so well grounded that it became a common saying that a boy of Geneva could give an answer for his faith as ably as a “doctor of the Sorbonne.” But what Geneva excelled in was its training for the ministry and other learned professions. Men with the passion of learning in their blood came from all lands—from Italy, Spain, England, Scotland, even from Russia, and, above all, from France. Pastors educated in Geneva, taught by the most distinguished scholars of the day, who had gained the art of ruling others in having learned how to command themselves, went forth from its schools to become the ministers of the struggling Protestants in the Netherlands, in England, in Scotland, in the Rhine Provinces, and, above all, in France. They were wise, indefatigable, fearless, ready to give their lives for their work, extorting praise from unwilling mouths, as modest, saintly, “with the name of Jesus ever on their lips” and His Spirit in their hearts. What they did for France and other countries must be told elsewhere.
The once disorderly city, a prey to its own internal factions, became the citadel of the Reformation, defying the threats of Romanist France and Savoy, and opening its gates to the persecuted of all lands. It continued to be so for generations, and the victims of the dragonnades of Louis XIV. received the welcome and protection accorded to the sufferers under the Valois in the sixteenth century. What it did for them may be best told in the words of a refugee:
“On the next day, a Sunday, we reached a small village on a hill about a league from Geneva, from which we could see that city with a joy which could only be compared to the gladness with which the Israelites beheld the Land of Canaan. It was midday when we reached the village, and so great was our eagerness to be as soon as possible within the city which we looked on as our Jerusalem, that we did not wish to stay even for food. But our conductor informed us that on the Sunday the gates of Geneva were never opened until after divine service, that is, until after four o’clock. We had therefore to remain in the village until about that hour, when we mounted our horses again. When we drew near to the town we saw a large number of people coming out. Our guide was surprised, and the more so when, arriving at the Plain-Palais, a quarter of a league from the town, we saw coming to meet us, three carriages escorted by halberdiers and followed by an immense crowd of people of both sexes and of every age. As soon as we were seen, a servant of the Magistracy approached us and prayed us to dismount to salute respectfully ‘Their Excellencies of Geneva,’ who had come to meet us and to bid us welcome. We obeyed. The three carriages having drawn near, there alighted from each a magistrate and a minister, who embraced us with tears of joy and with praises of our constancy and endurance far greater than we merited.... Their Excellencies then permitted the people to approach, and there followed a spectacle more touching than imagination could picture. Several of the inhabitants of Geneva had relatives suffering in the French galleys (from which we had been delivered), and these good people did not know whether any of them might be among our company. So one heard a confused noise, ‘My son so and so, my husband, my brother, are you there?’ One can imagine what embracings welcomed any of our troop who could answer. All this crowd of people threw itself on our necks with inexpressible transports of joy, praising and magnifying the Lord for the manifestation of His grace in our favour; and when Their Excellencies asked us to get on horseback again to enter the city, we were scarcely able to obey, so impossible did it seem to detach ourselves from the arms of these pious and zealous brethren, who seemed afraid to lose sight of us. At last we remounted and followed Their Excellencies, who conducted us into the city as in triumph. A magnificent building had been erected in Geneva to lodge citizens who had fallen into poverty. It had just been finished and furnished, and no one had yet lived in it. Their Excellencies thought it could have no better dedication than to serve as our habitation. They conducted us there, and we were soon on foot in a spacious court. The crowd of people rushed in after us. Those who had found relatives in our company begged Their Excellencies to permit them to take them to their houses—a request willingly granted. M. Bosquet, one of us, had a mother and two sisters in Geneva, and they had come to claim him. As he was my intimate friend, he begged Their Excellencies to permit him to take me along with him, and they willingly granted his request. Fired by this example, all the burghers, men and women, asked Their Excellencies to allow them the same favour of lodging these dear brethren in their own houses. Their Excellencies having permitted some to do this, a holy jealousy took possession of the others, who lamented and bewailed themselves, saying that they could not be looked on as good and loyal citizens if they were refused the same favour; so Their Excellencies had to give way, and not one of us was left in the Maison Française, for so they had called the magnificent building.”[160]
The narrative is that of a Protestant condemned to the galleys under Louis XIV.; but it may serve as a picture of how Geneva acted in the sixteenth century when the small city of 13,000 souls received and protected nearly 6000 refugees driven from many different lands for their religion.
Perhaps no one so thoroughly represents the sentiments which inspired the beginnings of the movement for Reformation in France as Marguerite d’Angoulême,[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 noblest 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 God,—le Tout, le Seul Nécessaire, la Seule Bonté,—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 passages which seemed to be difficult. She listened eagerly to the preaching of Lefèvre and Roussel, and carried on a long private correspondence with Briçonnet, being passionately 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 God, and by their conception that faith unites man with God—by all in their teaching which would assimilate 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 God, the mystical absorption of the human life within the divine, and praises passionately 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 God 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 God.” 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 Mass, and her undisguised contempt for the more superstitious 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 mediæval 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 Duchess of Alençon, or at Nérac, 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 passage 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 cushions.”[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” assembled 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. “Voilà, Mesdames, comme la foy du bon Comte ne fut vaincue par signes ne par miracles extérieurs, sachant très bien que nous n’avons qu’un Sauveur, lequel en disant Consummatum est, a monstré qu’il ne laissoit point à 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 associated were called the “group of Meaux.” Guillaume Briçonnet,[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 Lefèvre d’Étaples (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 anticipated two of Luther’s ideas—that works have no merit apart from the grace of God, 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 Lefèvre took Jean de Rély’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 Briçonnet 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 Lefèvre nor Briçonnet was the man to lead a Reformation. The Bishop was timid, and feared the “tumult”; and Lefèvre, like Marguerite, was a Christian mystic,[171] with all the mystic’s dislike to change in outward and fixed institutions. 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]
Lefèvre 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. Briçonnet temporised. He forbade the preaching of Lutheran doctrine within his diocese, and the circulation of the Reformer’s writings; but he continued to protect Lefèvre, 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 Lefèvre 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.
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 Strassburg, and Lefèvre’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 Lefèvre 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 mediæval 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 Mass, purgatory, the veneration of saints, the worship 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 Mass, had been affixed to the walls of the principal 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 Mass 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 fashion 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 Mass, 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 Neuchâtel. The audacity of the men who had posted the placards in Paris and in other towns,—Orléans, 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 nobles 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 Institution.
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, Grenoble, 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 Institution), which were meant to assert concisely the dogma of the Church, and to deny whatever the Reformers taught prejudicial to the doctrines and practices of the mediæval 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-fés, 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 Olivétan. 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 Arrêt 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 Marseilles. 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 Strassburg. They had chosen Pierre Leclerc to be their pastor, and one of their number, Étienne 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 Étienne 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.