He set out from Paris on the 16th of March, 1270, having left Queen Margaret, whom he would not allow to accompany him further, in the tower of the Castle at Vincennes. He was weak in health and almost ill, but quite content; and probably out of all those who accompanied him he alone had no anxious forebodings. Again he was to embark from Aiguesmortes. No definite plan for the expedition had yet been decided upon. Should they go first to Egypt, to Palestine, to Constantinople, or to Tunis? Were there any means of transport on which they could rely? There had been negotiations on the subject with the Venetians and the Genoese, but nothing was definitely settled. It was a haphazard expedition, in which men put their trust in Providence, and forgot that Divine Providence does not dispense with human foresight. Louis arrived at Aiguesmortes in the middle of May, and found neither Crusaders nor vessels; all the preparations were made slowly, imperfectly, and without order; every one relied too much upon the King, who relied too much upon everyone. At length, on the 2d of July, 1270, the expedition set sail, and actually left Aiguesmortes before any person knew, or the King had told any one, where it was going. Not until he reached Sardinia, after four days' delay at Cagliari, did Louis declare to the leaders of the crusade, who had assembled on board his vessel the Montjoie, that he was on his way to Tunis, where their Christian work was to begin.
On the 17th of July, the fleet arrived before Tunis; and the admiral, Florent de Varennes, without orders from the King, probably even in opposition to instructions which showed less impatience, took immediate possession of the port and of some Tunisian vessels, which offered no resistance. He sent word to the King 'that it was only necessary to support him, and that the disembarkation of the army could take place in perfect safety.' War was thus commenced against the Mussulman prince who had so recently been expected very shortly to become a Christian. Fifteen days later, after several combats devoid of result between the Crusaders and the army of Tunis, all this improvidence, delay, and, to call things by their right name, political and military incapacity, had rapidly brought its inevitable consequences. The reinforcements which his brother Charles, King of Sicily, had promised to Louis, had not arrived; there was a lack of provisions; the intense heat of an African summer caused a pestilence which spread so rapidly that before long there was no time to bury the dead, they were thrown one on the other into the trench which surrounded the camp, and before long the whole camp was infected.
On the 3d of August Louis was attacked by the prevailing fever, and was obliged to keep his bed within his tent. He asked news of his son, Jean Tristan, Count of Nevers, who had fallen ill before him, for he had not been told of the death of the young prince, who had expired on board the vessel to which he had been carried in the hope that the sea-air might be beneficial to him. Jean Tristan and the Princess Isabella were the dearest of all his children; Louis joined his hands when he heard of his death, and sought some relief for his sorrow in silence and prayer. He became rapidly worse, and sent for his son and successor, Prince Philip, took from his Breviary the 'Instructions' which he had written for him in French with his own hand, gave them to him, and exhorted him to observe them scrupulously. He also asked for his daughter Isabella. 'She had been adorned by the most saintly demeanour from her very infancy, and in this the King had taken great delight,' although she had refused to become a nun, which he had wished. She fell weeping at the foot of his bed, and he gave to her husband, Thibault, King of Navarre, some written counsel which he had prepared for her; then he called her to his side and gave into her own hands a paper, which he charged her to deliver to her youngest sister, the Princess Agnes, wife of the Duke of Burgundy. 'Most dear daughter,' he said, 'lay this to heart; many persons go to bed full of vain and sinful thought, and in the morning are found dead. The true way of loving God is to love Him with our whole heart, and He well deserves our love, for He first loved us.' He was too weak to say more.
On the 24th of August, after he had thus taken leave of his children, he was informed that envoys from the Emperor Michael Palseologus had landed at the Cape of Carthage; they were commissioned by their master to beg for the intervention of the King with his brother Charles, King of Sicily, to induce him to refrain from making war on the recently reestablished empire of Greece. Louis made a last effort to receive them in his tent in the presence of some of the members of his council, who were most uneasy at the fatigue he was undergoing. 'I promise you, if I live,' he said to the envoys, 'to do that which the Emperor requires of me; meanwhile I exhort you to have patience, and to be of good courage.'
This was his last political act and his final anxiety in the affairs of this world; after this he was absorbed in pious thought and prayer, in reveries concerning his own duties and spiritual experiences, or those interests of Christianity which had been so dear to him all his life. He repeated his usual prayers in a low tone; he was heard to murmur, 'Grant us, we pray Thee, O Lord, to despise for love of Thee the prosperity of this world, and not to fear its reverses.' And also, 'O Lord God, have mercy upon this people who remain here, and lead them back to their own land. Let them not fall into the hands of their enemies, and let them never be forced to deny Thy name.'
On the night of the 24th of August he started up several times in his bed and called out, 'Jerusalem! Jerusalem! we will go to Jerusalem!' At last he ceased to speak, although he showed that he was in full possession of his faculties, and in sympathy with and conscious of the friends who surrounded him, and the priests who brought him religious consolation; by his desire he received extreme unction at the foot of his bed, extended upon a coarse sack covered with ashes, and with the cross before him. On Monday, the 25th of August, 1270, about three o'clock in the afternoon, he expired peacefully. His last words were, 'Father, after the example of the Divine Master, into Thy hands I commit my spirit.'
The world has seen more profound politicians on the throne, greater generals, men of more mighty and brilliant intellect, princes who have exercised a more powerful influence over later generations and events subsequent to their own time; but it has never seen such a king as this St. Louis, never seen a man possessing sovereign power and yet not contracting the vices and passions which attend it, displaying upon the throne in such a high degree every human virtue purified and ennobled by Christian faith. St. Louis did not give any new or permanent impulse to his age; he did not strongly influence the nature or the development of civilization in France; whilst he endeavoured to reform the gravest abuses of the feudal system by the introduction of justice and public order, he did not endeavour to abolish it either by the substitution of a pure monarchy, or by setting class against class in order to raise the royal authority high above all. He was neither an egotist nor a scheming diplomatist; he was, in all sincerity, in harmony with his age and sympathetic alike with the faith, the institutions, the customs, and the tastes of France in the thirteenth century. And yet, both in the thirteenth century and in later times, St. Louis stands apart as a man of profoundly original character, an isolated figure without any peer among his contemporaries or his successors; so far as it was possible in the Middle Ages, he was an ideal man, king, and Christian.
It is reported that in the seventeenth century, during the brilliant reign of Louis XIV. Montecuculli, on learning the death of his illustrious rival, Turenne, said to his officers, 'A man has died to-day who did honour to mankind.' St. Louis did honour to France, to royalty, to humanity, and to Christianity. This was the feeling of his contemporaries, and after six centuries it is still confirmed by the judgment of the historian.
I have shown his sympathy with his age, and his superiority to it; nevertheless he was not free from its great defects. St. Louis was a Christian, and yet he did not recognise the rights of conscience; he was a king, and by his blind infatuation for the Crusades he imposed useless dangers, miseries, and sacrifices upon his people for a fruitless enterprise. It is not my intention to discuss here the leading idea and general influence of the Crusades; originally they were without doubt the spontaneous and universal impulse of Christian Europe towards a noble, disinterested, and moral aim, worthy alike of men's enthusiasm and their devotion. The attacks of Islamism had for a long time compelled Christianity to occupy a defensive position, which was both humiliating and full of peril, and the crusade was an aggressive reaction. As to results, I think that the Crusades have had many that are valuable; and if we take a comprehensive view of events and centuries, we shall see that they rather aided than impeded or changed European civilization. But in the last half of the thirteenth century all the good that they could do had been accomplished, and they had lost that character of spontaneous and general impulse which had been at once their strength and their excuse; people of all classes were beginning to be doubtful and tired of them; not only the Sire de Joinville, but many burgesses and country people had ceased to be attracted by the enterprise or to believe in its success. By his blind infatuation, St. Louis did more than any other man of that period to incur the responsibility of prolonging a movement which was more and more inexpedient and ill-timed, because day by day it became less spontaneous and more impossible of success.
On another subject, of even greater importance than the Crusades, St. Louis was quite as much in error, although his personal responsibility was less because he obeyed the prevailing and emphatic belief of his time with a sincere conviction of its truth. This was the employment of compulsion in matters of religion, and the prohibition by the State of all opinions condemned by the Church.
The war waged against religious liberty has been for many centuries the great crime of Christian society, and the cause not only of most grievous wrongs, but of all the most formidable reactions to which Christianity has been exposed. We see the culminating point of this most dangerous theory in the thirteenth century, when it was enforced by legislation as well as upheld by the Church. The confused code which bears the name of 'Etablissements' or Statutes of St. Louis, and which contains many ordinances belonging to periods both preceding and subsequent to his reign, explicitly condemns to death all heretics, and commands the civil governors to carry out the sentence of the bishops on this point. St. Louis himself asked Pope Alexander IV., in 1255, to extend the Inquisition (which was already established in the ancient domains of the Counts of Toulouse on account of the Albigenses) to the whole kingdom and to place the power which it gave in the hands of the Franciscans and Dominicans. It is true that the bishops were to be consulted before the inquisitors could condemn a heretic to death, but this was more an act of courtesy to the episcopacy than an effectual guarantee for the liberty of the subject; indeed, with the feelings entertained by St. Louis on this subject, liberty, or to speak more correctly, the merest shadow of justice, had reason to hope for more from the church than from the throne.
The extreme rigour of St. Louis against what he called 'that vile oath,' blasphemy (a crime which is indefinite enough except in name), gives perhaps the most striking indication of the state of people's minds, and especially of the King's mind on this subject. Every blasphemer was branded on the lips with a red hot iron. 'One day the King caused a burgess of Paris to be branded in this manner. Violent murmurs arose in the city, and reached the King's ears. He answered by declaring that he would consent to be branded on his own lips and to keep the disgrace of the mark all his life, if only the vice of blasphemy could be banished from his kingdom.' Some time afterwards, when he was executing a work of great public utility, he received numerous expressions of gratitude from the owners of property in Paris. 'I expect a greater recompense from the Lord,' he said, 'for the maledictions which I received after branding that blasphemer, than for the benedictions which I now receive on account of this act of public utility.'
Of all human errors, the most popular are the most dangerous, for they are the most contagious, and those from which the noblest natures find it most difficult to keep themselves free. It is impossible to observe without alarm the aberrations of reason and moral rectitude into which men who were in other respects enlightened and virtuous have been dragged by the leading ideas of their generation. And this alarm is very greatly increased when we discover what iniquity, what suffering, what public and private calamity have been the result of deviations from right which were tolerated by the noblest spirits of the age. On the question of religious liberty, St. Louis is a striking example of the degree to which an upright judgment and scrupulous conscience may be led astray if it falls under the dominion of a popular feeling or idea. In all times of great intellectual fermentation he stands as a solemn warning to those men who prize independence of thought as well as of action, and to whom nothing is so dear as justice and truth.
[Footnote 53: Not marked in text; probably related to the quotation 'I expect a greater recompense …': Faure, vol. ii. p. 300; Joinville, chap, cxxxviii.]
Great events and great men impose a difficult and painful task upon those who wish to understand them thoroughly, and to appreciate their worth. They form the stage upon which all the difficult and striking complications of good and evil, truth and error, virtue and vice, noble and base passions, valuable results and fatal consequences are displayed. They represent the noble impulses and also the disastrous failures, the grandeur, but at the same time the imperfection of human nature and human destiny; and we cannot, therefore, contemplate them without sadness and perplexity.
In modern times, the French Revolution as an event, and the Emperor Napoleon I. as a man, have furnished and continue to furnish us with the absorbing interest of watching such a drama. I say, 'continue to furnish,' for, clearly, so far as either the French revolution or Napoleon is concerned, the drama is not ended, the final catastrophe of the plot is not yet known. In the great stream of events it is the final issue which decides as to the value of the source. There is a reckoning to be held with all great events and all great men,—a balance to be struck between what they have cost humanity, and that for which humanity is indebted to them; but this final account is not closed until late. Is there any one in the present day, who, even with a full knowledge of events, would venture to pass a final judgment on the French revolution and the Emperor Napoleon? Is there any one who could apportion their due share of esteem and reprobation to the great fact and the great man of this century, and whose judgment would be received with general and lasting assent? Could any one decide without hesitation to what extent their influence has been for good or for evil?
The answer to this question is in the hands of the generations to come. It is our successors who determine by a final analysis the good and evil in the works of their precursors; in this they will be guided by the impressions which they themselves receive from these actions, as well as by the principles and examples which have been bequeathed to them. One after the other the generations are called upon to take up their inheritance; one after the other they enter into their work, guided by their own light, their own liberty, and their own responsibility. It is for them to distinguish truth from falsehood, justice from injustice, that which is useful from that which is injurious, the practicable from the chimerical, and, according to right and reason, to accept or reject or modify the decisions and actions of their predecessors. It is only after these prolonged investigations by the intelligence and experience of mankind that the true worth of great events and great men can be determined, and history can pass sentence upon their claims to the gratitude or censure of the human race.
I do not intend, from any considerations of prudence, to take refuge in this obscurity of the future, or to keep back my thoughts and observe silence as to my hopes and fears. In one of the brightest moments of our epoch, forty years ago, when I recommenced my course of lectures on Modern History at the Sorbonne, I expressed my conviction that the youthful generation to which I addressed myself might, without too much self-confidence, use the words which Homer attributes to Sthenelus:—'We thank Heaven that we are better than our forefathers.'
In recent meditations on the union of Christianity and Liberty, and the difficulties which our recollections of the French revolution seem to oppose to the realization of this union, I said, 'Severity is necessary, but justice is due to different periods and to a different state of society. We have learnt as much morality and reason within the last century as we have forgotten, as much and more. Society in France has attained its actual condition by efforts more or less apparent and more or less rapid, but efforts which have never been altogether suspended, in spite of many interruptions and great vicissitudes. France has freed herself in turns from the feudal system, from the selfish ambitions and claims of the great nobles, from the predominance of court influence, and from the despotism, improvidence, and extravagance of absolute power. She has desired national unity, civil equality, and political liberty from the earliest period of her existence. All her great politicians, and the whole nation, in its unconscious but irresistible tendency, have aimed at and desired the same ends. The revolution of 1789 was the most violent and serious explosion of this unceasing national effort. Was it a fatal termination or a fruitful crisis? France then thought that she obtained a great victory, not only for herself, but for all humanity. Did she deceive herself? Have we walked for so many centuries in a good or an evil path, towards success or deception? Are we still making progress, or has our decline already commenced? Many eminent and honest thinkers hold very different opinions on this subject, and some of them utter dark and alarming prophecies, whilst others continue to chant songs of triumph.
'I have some right to say that no one has felt the crimes, faults, errors, and follies of word and deed which blazed out in the French revolution, more keenly than I have done. I have never hesitated to express what I thought of them; and my frankness on this subject may perhaps explain the heat of some of the controversies which I have had to sustain in my political career; my views irritated the prejudices and wounded the self-love of very many. I retract nothing,—neither sentiments nor language,— on that sad phase of our contemporary history.' [Footnote 54]
[Footnote 54: Meditations sur la Religion chrétienne dans ses Rapports avee l'État actuel des Sociétés et des Esprits, 1868, pp. 15-18.]
But, in spite of the many bitter recollections and painful mistakes of that time, I still retain my confidence that this age and my country have more to hope than to fear from the criticism of the future, and that the beneficial results of the French revolution, both for France and the whole world, will far exceed the errors into which it was the means of plunging them and the evils it has inflicted. I am not however at all astonished at the uncertainty and doubt to which this prolonged crisis has given rise; error and evil are still so prominent that the final issue cannot but appear uncertain; and the perils of the good cause —the cause of liberty, morality, and good sense—are still so great that it is impossible to look upon the question as decided, and to rest with confidence in the prospect of future success.
The religious reform which was the revolution of the sixteenth century has already been submitted to the test of time, and of great social and intellectual perils. It brought with it much suffering to the human race, it gave rise to great errors and great crimes, and was developed amidst cruel wars and the most deplorable troubles and disturbances. These facts, which we learn both from its partisans and opponents, cannot be contested, and they form the account which history lays to the charge of the event. But as the Roman Cornelia could point to her sons, so, after three centuries of trial, the Reformation of the sixteenth century can show the nations among which it has prevailed, and which have been formed under its influence—England, Holland, North Germany, the Scandinavian States, the United States of America—calling attention to their moral and social condition, their attitude with regard to reverence for right and reason, and their position so far as success and worldly prosperity are concerned. These, also, are well-known and definite facts. I do not hesitate to affirm that the revolution of the sixteenth century has nothing to fear from the investigations of the nineteenth: the children are an honour to their mother.
There are many different causes for the general and final success of this movement, but I wish now to point to only one of them. The Reformation of the sixteenth century was essentially and from the very first a religious reform; politics occupied a secondary position; they were necessary means, but not its chief aim. It was begun in the name of Christianity and from an impulse given by religion; liberty was only called in as a weapon to help faith. The strength of the movement was derived from its influence on the inner life of the soul, for both leaders and followers were much more engrossed by the future and eternal state of man than by his temporal condition. The reform of the sixteenth century embraced the whole man and his destiny: first his moral state in himself and before God, then his social condition among his fellows. This is the peculiar and great characteristic of the movement, the principal source of the good which it has done, and we must therefore place it by the side of the price which it has cost.
According to the decree of history and the verdict of Bossuet, two men, Luther and Calvin, were the most mighty in their influence and the truest representatives of that great movement and of that period. Luther marched at the head of German religious reform; Calvin took the lead in France. Both these men were at the same time successful innovators, profound theologians, clever politicians, eloquent orators, and great writers. Both were exposed to many attacks and much persecution; both gained great admiration and devotion; and they both struggled greatly, suffered greatly, and greatly triumphed. Not one of the conditions which give a man power in his lifetime, and make his name great in history, was wanting to either of them. They bore, during their lifetime, the whole weight of responsibility which is attached to power and greatness, and for three centuries history has connected it with their names.
The time has come, I think, when we ought to understand them aright, and appreciate them justly, and I wish to make this possible as regards Calvin. It is no part of my design to recount his whole history, and to follow him step by step throughout his stormy career. It is the man himself, the moral and intellectual being, his own thoughts and his own desires, that I wish to study and to depict.
John Calvin was born at Noyon in Picardy, on the 10th of July, 1509. He belonged to a family which had originally consisted of simple mechanics, and had only just entered the rank of burgesses. His grandfather was a cooper at Pont-l'Evêque in Normandy; his father, Gerard Chauvin or Cauvin, settled, at some time and from some motives now unknown, at Noyon, where he was a notary in the ecclesiastical court and secretary to the bishop, Charles de Hangest, who treated him with kindness. No ambition is more disinterested than that of a father, but it is none the less keen, and the desire of Gerard Cauvin's heart was that his children should continue to climb the social ladder, of which he was already standing on the first step. At that time the Church offered an opening to all, and a means by which the very lowest might possibly rise very high. The pious wishes of Jeanne Lefranc, wife of Gerard Cauvin, were in harmony with the more worldly desires of her husband: they devoted their two eldest sons, Charles and John Calvin, to the Church.
The great difference in the life and character of these two young men, who followed the same path from the very first, is a sign of the times and of the opposing currents which influenced society.
The elder of the two brothers, Charles Calvin, became a priest, and died in 1536, one of the chaplains of St. Mary's church at Noyon; 'but,' an almost contemporary chronicler says, 'he was easily led astray by the errors which abounded in those-days, for he loved the path of liberty, and despised the Church. He uttered blasphemous opinions concerning the sacraments. In spite of many remonstrances he remained shameless, like a man plunged into the depths of iniquity, and persisted in his faults. In 1534 the chapter found it necessary to lament for him as a hopeless and lost soul. He showed himself reprobate in everything, and took care to manifest his indifference to the remedies offered to him for the salvation of his soul. He lifted himself up against God himself, and blasphemed the holy sacrament of the altar. At length, in 1536, he was very ill, and as he had forsaken God, so also at his deathbed did God abandon him as a lost soul. He refused to receive the holy sacraments; on which occasion his body was placed between the four pillars of a gibbet in the place of execution at Noyon.'
One of the modern biographers of John Calvin has concluded from these facts that Charles died a Protestant; but this is a great mistake. Evidently Charles Calvin lived and died a dissolute man and an unbeliever, and at the same time remained chaplain of the Catholic Church in his native town. The sixteenth century abounds in similar instances.
At this very time, from 1534 to 1536, whilst Charles was leading a licentious life and dying miserably at Noyon, John left his native land in order that he might openly profess and promulgate his austere faith. At Basle he published the first edition of his 'Institutes of the Christian Religion,' the most solid body of doctrine which the reformed Church possesses. After having wandered for some months in Italy to make proselytes, he established himself at Geneva, in order to organize both the reformed Church and reformed society, and to carry on that fierce struggle with libertines and sceptics in which his life was so rapidly consumed.
The family of the Calvins presents a true picture of the period; in the sixteenth century the same thing was going on everywhere, unbelievers and fervent Christians, libertines and men of the most austere lives, were springing up and living side by side. Two contrary winds were blowing over Europe at that period, one carrying with it scepticism and licentiousness, while the other breathed only Christian faith and the severest morality. One of these arose chiefly from the revival of the ancient literature and philosophy of Greece and Rome; the other sprang from the struggles made in the Church itself and in its Councils to arrive at a reform which was at the same time greatly desired and fiercely opposed.
These two impulses and these two paths give a special character to the whole of the sixteenth century. It was at the same time the fascinated worshipper of pagan antiquity and the fervent apostle of Christian reform; it was full of impulse and of doubt, of unbridled licence and of rigorous puritanism, fruitful alike in learned sceptics and pious reformers, bold in making use of the fact of liberty without admitting it in principle; it was, in short, the age which produced Erasmus and Luther in Germany, and Montaigne and Calvin in France.
The education of Calvin bore the impress of this fluctuation between opposing tendencies and temptations. He was brought up at first by the liberality of the Church, and for its service; at the age of twelve he was nominated to a chapel at Noyon, called the chapel of La Gésine, and went to Paris from 1523 to 1527, to study classics and philosophy in the colleges of La Marche and Montaigu, where he obtained well-deserved distinction by his zeal and assiduity. 'He spoke little,' says a chronicle, 'and only on serious and weighty matters; he was not given to much company, but spent his time alone.' His seriousness, and possibly his severity, had already impressed his fellow-students, who nicknamed him 'The Accusative Case.' The report of his success reached Noyon, and procured for him the post of curé at Marteville, and two years after at Pont-l'Evêque, although he had only received the tonsure, and never took any further steps towards becoming a priest. He himself says that he was 'at that time more attached than any one to the Papal superstitions,' and he scrupulously fulfilled the duties of his position. He sometimes preached at Pont-l'Evéque, to which place he was very glad to have been appointed; 'joyous and proud,' according to one of his biographers, 'that a single essay should have made him a curé.'
The native place of his family seems to have cherished all recollections connected with Calvin. Thirty years after his death, Cardinal Alexander de Medicis, legate of Pope Clement VIII., and at a later period himself pope under the title of Leo XI., was on his way to Vervins, to assist in framing the treaty between France and Spain; he passed near Pont-l'Evêque, and there stopped his whole retinue, 'got down from his litter, and went on foot to see the cottage in which he had been told that John Calvin was born.'
Calvin did not long follow the course prescribed by the Church. 'My father,' he says, 'saw that the study of the law generally enriched those who pursued it, and this hope made him suddenly change his mind with regard to me. And thus it happened that being withdrawn from the study of philosophy in order to learn the law, I compelled myself to work faithfully, so as to obey my father's will. But, all the while, God in his secret providence made me finally turn my head in another direction.'
I am inclined to think that his father's will was not the only, and possibly not even the principal, guiding motive in Calvin's resolution. From the age of fourteen, when he began his studies in the college of La Marche, at Paris, he had been a pupil of the learned professor Mathurin Cordier, or Corderius, who was afterwards placed by him at the head of the College of Geneva. Robert Olivétan, afterwards one of the translators of the Bible, was a fellow-countryman and relative of whom he saw much when he was at Noyon. These two men were well acquainted with the labours of Luther, and were themselves following the current of the new ideas; and, doubtless, if they had not attracted Calvin towards these ideas, they had at least prepared him to receive them. Be that, however, as it may, in accordance with his father's wish and his own inclination, he abandoned the Church in 1529, and went first to Orleans and then to Bourges to study law. At these two universities there were celebrated professors who taught, not only jurisprudence, but the various branches of history, philosophy and philology, which are cognate to that science. Calvin met there Pierre de l'Estoile, Petrus Stella, a learned and subtle jurist, who was afterwards President of the Court of Inquiries in the 'Parlement' of Paris; Alciati of Milan, who had been appointed by Francis I. as the most learned doctor of the time in Roman law, and also as one of the most elegant scholars in ancient literature; and Melchior Wolmar, the German, a learned Greek scholar, who read Homer and Demosthenes with his pupils, and who also read with them—but not quite so openly—the Bible. From the earliest times the French jurists had been adversaries, rather than partisans, of the Romish Church, and after the revival of pagan literature the more learned among them frequently prided themselves upon displaying great independence and freedom of thought. The three professors of Orleans and Bourges became the revered masters of Calvin, and Calvin was the favourite pupil of his masters. But he was not long a pupil. 'He profited so greatly in so short a time,' says Beza, 'that he was not considered as a student, but as one of the learned doctors,' and he was often called upon to take the place of his masters in the professorial chair. But neither law nor learning, nor any of the sciences taught by these professors, could satisfy Calvin's soul or his intellect. In speaking of himself at this time, he says:—'My conscience was very far from being in a condition of certain peace. Every time that I looked down into myself or lifted my heart up to God, such a supreme horror took possession of me that there was no purification or expiation which could have cured me; and the more closely I considered my own nature, so much the more was my conscience goaded with fierce stings, so that there remained no other comfort except to deceive myself by forgetting myself. But God, who took pity upon me, conquered my heart and subdued it to docility by a sudden conversion. … Having then received some taste and knowledge of true piety, so great a desire was incontinently kindled in me to profit by it, that although I did not entirely renounce all other studies, yet I paid but little attention to them. … Before the year was at an end, all those who were yearning for the true doctrine began to look towards me as a teacher, although I myself had only just begun to learn. … Being of a shy and solitary nature, I have always loved retirement and tranquillity; I began therefore to seek out some hiding-place, and some means of withdrawing myself from my fellows; but, so far from attaining my desire, it seemed, on the contrary, as if every retreat I chose in a remote spot was at once converted into a public school. In short, although it has always been my chief desire to live in private without being known, yet God has led me hither and thither, and turned me in so many directions by different changes, that he never left me at peace in any place, until, in spite of my own desires, he made me come forward, and brought me into public life.'
All uncertainty had disappeared and anxiety for himself had been removed; Calvin recognised his mission and entered on his vocation with great ardour. In 1531 or 1532, after three years of study he gave up the law, as he had given up the Established Church; he left Bourges, returned to Noyon, resigned his curé at Pont-l'Evêque and his chapel of LaGésine in 1534, sold the small property he inherited on the death of his father, and thenceforward devoted himself entirely to the work of religious reform; a reform which was then in its infancy, and was fiercely opposed. No resolve was ever taken more spontaneously, more conscientiously, or involved a more full and free self-sacrifice and such singleness of aim in the desire to serve, at all costs, the cause which he looked upon as the cause of the highest truth and the law of God.
He took up his abode at Paris with Etienne de la Forge, a wealthy merchant, and an ardent partisan of the Reformation, 'whose memory,' says Calvin, 'ought to be venerated by the faithful as that of a martyred saint of Christ.' He was, in fact, burnt at the stake a few years later. At his house the faithful reformers, who were already fiercely persecuted, were in the habit of meeting in secret. Calvin frequently addressed these meetings; he spoke with a confidence which carried conviction to his hearers, and almost always ended his discourses with the words: 'If God be for us, who can be against us?' His indefatigable activity and already wide-spread influence soon attracted the attention of enemies as well as friends. 'In the midst of his books and studies, he was,' says Etienne Pasquier, 'of such a restless nature, that he must still be doing the very utmost to promote the advancement of his sect. Our prisons were sometimes crowded with poor misguided men, whom he exhorted, consoled, and strengthened unceasingly by his letters; he never failed to find messengers to whom the prison doors were open in spite of all the efforts of the jailers to keep them out. This was his method of proceeding at first, and it was by such means that little by little he won over part of our France.'
Nevertheless, Calvin still remembered that not long previously he had himself been a Catholic, and at this time he showed a consideration for the institutions and members of his ancient Church, and a moderation both of judgment and language, which gave way, only too soon, to violence and invective. On the 29th of June, 1531, he wrote from Paris to Francis Daniel, one of his fellow-students at Orleans, as follows:—
'I went to the monastery on Sunday to see the nuns, and, according to your wish, to fix the day on which your sister should take the vows. They informed me that, at a meeting held by the sisters, in accordance with a solemn custom, she and some of her companions had been already authorized to take the vows. I sounded your sister's heart, that I might learn if she accepted this yoke meekly, and if her neck had not been broken rather than bent to it. I exhorted her to confide freely in me all that was passing in her soul. I have never seen any one more ready and resolute, and it would be impossible to accomplish her desire too soon. Every time that she heard her vow spoken of one would have said that she was playing with dolls. It was no part of my mission to try and turn her aside from this feeling, but I urged her in a few words not to go beyond her strength, not to expect anything rashly from herself, but to place her whole trust in God, in whom we live and move and have our being.'
A few years later Calvin would not have undertaken such a mission; or, if he had, he would not have acquitted himself with so much delicacy and reserve. His first published work was an appeal for mercy—or, to use the language of the eighteenth century, for toleration—on behalf of the reformers, who were persecuted, banished, imprisoned, and led to the stake. He put forth his protest humbly, in the shape of a commentary on Seneca's treatise, 'De Clementia' (On Mercy); so humbly that many of his biographers, and among others the new editors of his complete works, have considered that he did not intend to defend the persecuted reformers, and that his commentary on Seneca's treatise was simply the work of a moral philosopher and a philologist. It is true that Calvin does not once speak of the reformers and the hardships which they endured, throughout the work; he does not make a single allusion to them which can be laid hold of. Still, I am not the less convinced that, by this publication, he hoped to serve the cause of his brethren, and that, if reform had been triumphant and powerful, his commentary on Seneca's treatise would never have appeared. The very title of the book, and the circumstances under which it was published, are much stronger proofs in favour of this assertion than the doubts concerning it, which would arise from Calvin's reserve of language. The dedication of the work to Charles de Hangest, the Bishop of Noyon, his former patron, confirms me in this opinion. So long as prudence was possible, Calvin was prudent, and anxious to conciliate the established authorities. Very respectfully he placed a eulogy of clemency under the eyes of a Catholic prelate whom he knew to be well-disposed towards himself, and who would, as he hoped, use his valuable influence on behalf of the proscribed reformers.
The Bishop of Noyon was not the only person of whom Calvin thought and to whom he spoke at this time with an almost affectionate deference. On the 4th of April, 1532, he wrote to Erasmus, to whom he sent his book, and reminded him in the most flattering terms of his own recent labours on the works of Seneca, addressing him as 'the honour and the chief delight of the world of letters.' He did not then foresee that three years later, when his friend Bucer introduced him to Erasmus at Basle, after talking to him for some little time, Erasmus would say to Bucer, in a low tone, 'I see rising up within the Church a great scourge against the Church.'
At the same time that Calvin was anxious to conciliate persons of importance he took great pains to secure publicity and success for his book. On the 22d April, 1532, he wrote to his friend Francis Daniel, at Orleans, 'The die is cast: my commentaries on Seneca's treatise "De CLementia" have appeared; but they are printed at my own expense and have cost me more money than you will believe. I am now trying to gather a little of it in again. If you wish to help me in that way I will send you a hundred copies, or as many as you think it well to take. Meanwhile accept the copy which I send you, and do not think that I impose any law upon you in this matter, for I wish you to feel perfectly free in all your dealings with me.'
Calvin was not slow in recognising that in the presence of questions and passions which agitated men's minds more violently from day to day, prudence and conciliation were of very little use, and that, whether for defence or attack, it was necessary to have recourse to more powerful weapons. He was one of those who do not rush to the fore-front of every struggle, but who, at the same time, will not make any sacrifice of their own belief or opinion to avoid a contest, and who enter into it heart and soul when once it becomes inevitable. Before long an incident occurred which gave rise to this necessity. Calvin was very intimate with Nicholas Cop, rector of the University of Paris, who in virtue of his position was to deliver a discourse on All Saints' day, in 1533, at the church of the Mathurins. Calvin offered to compose the sermon, and 'constructed a very different kind of oration,' says Beza, 'from the ordinary one, for he spoke of religious matters with great freedom, and in a liberal tone of which the Sorbonne and the "Parlement" did not at all approve; so much so that the "Parlement" sent to seek Nicholas Cop, and he set out to go to them with his attendants; being warned, however, that they intended to imprison him, he did not go to the palace, but turned back and fled from the kingdom, going to Basle, the native place of his father, William Cop, physician to the king, and a man of great renown.' [Footnote 55] Calvin also was accused, and Jean Morin, the judge in criminal causes, went to his rooms and examined all his papers, with the intention of arresting him. Calvin had been warned, however; he 'escaped by the window, took refuge in the Faubourg St. Victor, at the dwelling of a vine-dresser, changed his clothes,' and left Paris, scarcely knowing whither he was going.
[Footnote 55: Beza, Histoire des Églises réformées de France, vol. i. p. 14, and Histoire de la Vie et de la Mort de Calvin, 1657, p. 14.]