MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW.

CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
[1500–1547.]

The sixteenth century has been rightly called the era of the Renaissance. Then learning and religion revived; the fine arts received a fresh development. Then a new spirit breathed upon the nations, and the people began to feel that they were intended to be something better than hewers of wood and drawers of water—mere beasts of burden or tribute-paying machines for the use of their lords. The great Reform movement had been preparing from afar. Had Constantinople never fallen, had Eastern learning not been driven to seek an asylum in the West, the religious revolution might have been retarded; it could not have been prevented. In the hour when Guttenberg printed the first sheet of his Bible the spiritual despotism of Rome began to totter. It was a strange period of excitement, when Vasco de Gama made his way to India round the Cape of Storms, and when Columbus returned triumphant from the discovery of a new world. A spirit of restlessness and scepticism pervaded all Europe. Monks in their cloisters, hermits in their cells, barons in their castles, lawyers in their courts, priests in their rural parsonages, all felt it alike. Princes on the throne doubted the infallibility of the Church, or drove the Holy Father from his capital. There seemed to be nothing sacred against the attacks of the wits and scholars of the day. Rabelais, under the mask of his cynical buffoonery, made the clergy a laughing-stock. Erasmus, with a satire as keen as Voltaire’s, assailed the most prominent abuses of the Church. Ulrich von Hutten, in his “Epistles of Obscure Men,” attacked the same abuses, with less polished weapons but in a more popular style. But if the iconoclasts of the sixteenth century had used no other arms than wit and satire, and done no more than brand the vicious lives and extortionate practices of the clergy, they would never have reformed the world. The doctrines of the Church had degenerated into an empty formalism leaving the heart untouched, the life unchanged. On a sudden, as if by mutual arrangement, a new race of preachers sprang up in Europe. Lefevre in France, Zuingle in Switzerland, Tyndale in England, and Luther in Germany, all taught the same doctrine. In each country the Reformation assumed a peculiar form, though preserving the same general characteristics; and just in the proportion as Protestantism has yielded to, and in its turn moulded these characteristics, it has survived and flourished to the present time. If the Reform was almost crushed out in France, it was because it took too little account of national character. And yet the French Reformation was exclusively of native growth. Lefevre and his disciple Farel began to preach, some years before Luther, that great doctrine of justification by faith which was the foundation-stone of the new Church.

There are men who still deny the necessity of the great religious revolution of the sixteenth century, and contend that a slight reform in discipline, such as a pious pope would have conceded, was all that the Church required. But if such a reform had been possible, would it have been lasting? We have seen within these few years how little that singular phenomenon, a liberal pope, can do—how impotent he is when the clergy are opposed to him. It is very probable that if the Church had seriously undertaken to reform itself, the great disruption never would have taken place; for, as Ranke says, “Even the Protestants severed themselves slowly and reluctantly from the communion of the Church.”[2] France was fully prepared for a religious reform. The king had made his court the most learned centre in Europe; for among the many noble qualities possessed by Francis I., not the least of them was the patronage he extended to artists and men of letters. The great painters Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto, and Rosso were invited from Italy to adorn his palaces with their magic pencils. Lascaris, a learned Greek, was commissioned to form the king’s library at Fontainebleau. Under the advice of the learned Budæus the college of France was established for the study of the Greek and Hebrew languages. This great intellectual movement, especially the study of Hebrew, “which turned Christians into Jews,”[3] so terrified that guardian of orthodoxy, the theological college of the Sorbonne, that

So wrote Marot, adding that they proved the truth of the old proverb, “Learning has for enemy no creature but a dunce.”

The Church of France was no worse than many other portions of the Roman fold. So long as the people themselves were ignorant, the ignorance of the priesthood did not trouble them; but immediately their own eyes were opened, they became conscious of the deficiencies of their pastors. And it would have been well for them had ignorance been the worst failing of the clergy: they were vicious also. A contemporary manuscript tells us that “many are so ignorant that they can not interpret what is said in the course of divine service, and are unable to read or write; so negligent that they have left off preaching altogether.... They take delight in worldly pleasures, and spend the greater part of the day in taverns, drinking, gambling, and toying with women, and keep a truande in their houses.”[4] How the priests abused the simple confidence of their flocks is evident from the pious frauds they practiced, particularly in the matter of relics. Of one instance of this tampering with the religious feelings of the people, it was said, “that either the Virgin Mary must have had two mothers, or her mother must have had two heads.” A feather from the angel Gabriel’s wing, or a bottle of Egyptian darkness, were silly but harmless deceptions; but there were others which to name is impossible.[5]

In the field thus prepared for the truth, the new doctrines spread rapidly, one great help to their diffusion being the use of the French language, while the orthodox clergy stuck so obstinately to their Latin, that Antony de Mouchi, surnamed Demochares, felt it necessary to apologize for using the vernacular in a work he had written in answer to a Huguenot pamphlet.[6] At first the converts were more numerous among the educated and high-born, than among the low and unlettered multitude. They early received the baptism of fire. In 1524, while Francis I. was in captivity at Madrid, the Parliament of Paris revived an edict of Louis XII. concerning blasphemy, and nominated a commission to try Lutherans and other heretics. In the following year, a brief of Clement VII. ratified this encroachment on the rights of the Church, approving of the commissioners or inquisitors appointed, permitting them to enter upon their duties “with apostolical authority,” and ordering them to try their prisoners “without noise and without form of judgment, as is the custom in such cases.”[7] This bull, besides condemning heretics to be punished in body and goods, forbade all persons to supply them with corn, wine, oil, or other merchandise, under pain of being treated as accomplices. That this bull was something more than an empty threat, is evident from a letter written by Clement to congratulate the Parliament of Paris on the way in which they had carried it out, adding “that the new errors were as opposed to the State as to the Church.” We need not stop to show that the kingdom which has always put itself forward as the champion of Popery, both in the East and in the West, is that in which the Church and the State have suffered more from revolution than any Protestant country.

One of the first victims in Paris was Jacques Pavannes, who procured a temporary respite by recanting. Although young in years, he afterward showed a firmness and faith that would have become a veteran warrior of Christ. Withdrawing his recantation, he was condemned to suffer by fire, and when at the stake he spoke with such unction that a doctor of the Sorbonne declared “it would have been better for the Church to have paid a million of money than have allowed Pavannes to address the people.” (1525). A more illustrious victim was Louis de Berquin, scion of a noble family of Artois: by his scholarship and wit—he was of the Erasmian school—he had mortally offended the monks and (if the expression be allowable) the old fogyism of the Sorbonne. The king and his sister, Margaret of Valois, had saved him two or three times; but at last he was caught in the toils, and his trial was hurried on so that Francis should not have the opportunity of interfering. (1529). Fourteen victims of less note suffered not long after; but ideas are not to be burned out at the stake or stifled in prisons, and it soon became evident that the new doctrines were spreading wider and wider every day. “The smoke of these sacrifices,” says Mezeray, “had got into people’s heads.”

The followers of the new creed had but one friend at court, and this was Margaret of Valois, the king’s sister, a pious tender-hearted woman, who had interposed more than once to rescue the victims of the Sorbonne and of Rome. She was not a Protestant, and shrank from any rupture with Catholicism. She would have liked to see the old and the new Church united, each yielding something to the other. The age, however, was not one for compromises. Day by day the lines of demarkation became more strongly marked, especially after the publication of Calvin’s “Institutes of the Christian Religion” (1535), which became at once the text-book and the charter of the evangelicals in France. Calvin was a thorough-going reformer. To adopt a familiar distinction, while Luther rejected nothing that was not condemned by Scripture, Calvin accepted nothing that was not directly countenanced by it. Luther’s system was, probably, the wiser, as it did not break directly with the past; but either principle carried to extremes is faulty. Looking at the subsequent history of Protestantism in France, we can see how (under the Calvinistic form) it excited an antagonism never felt in Germany; it seemed to aim at deposing the king as well as the pope. And it is doubtful whether such a cold undecorated form of religion is suited to the warm and impulsive temperament of the Celtic race which forms the lowest stratum of the French population.

In France it was long before the Reformation reached the lower classes—the masses, as it is the fashion to call them; the rural gentry, the men of education, the well-to-do tradesmen, artists, and “all who from their callings possessed any elevation of mind,” were the first converts.[8] They were naturally opposed by the clergy and the lawyers, for corporate bodies are always great enemies to change.

Francis I. appears to have seen the desirability of a reform in the Church, not so much from religious as from political motives. He hated the monks, and was thwarted by the Sorbonne; he read the Holy Scriptures with his sister Margaret, and took the extraordinary step of inviting Melanchthon to France in order to arrange some compromise by which Popery and Protestantism might be united. It was a vain dream, even if the king were sincere, which is exceedingly doubtful. He might at one time have pleaded that the persecutions were carried on without his knowledge and even in defiance of him; but on 21st January, 1535, he took an active part in the burning of six unfortunate “Lutherans.” In this case his pride had been hurt by some rude and indefensible proceedings of the Reformed party;[9] but he could be equally unfeeling and unscrupulous from mere political expediency. In the same month of January, 1535, he issued a royal edict commanding the instant extirpation of heresy in every form; all who aided or harbored heretics, or did not inform against them, were to be punished as principals; and informers were to receive one-fourth part of the confiscation and fines—a sure mode of procuring victims. This decree was modified in June, when Francis was coquetting with the Protestant princes of Germany; but the pains and penalties were only remitted to such as abjured their faith and returned to the bosom of the Church. On 1st June, 1540, appeared the famous edict of Fontainebleau, confirming all previous edicts, and ordering the strictest search to be made for heretics; and, as if its provisions were not harsh enough, letters patent were issued at the end of October, 1542, enjoining every parliament in the kingdom to “execute prompt and rigorous judgment,” so that the new heresy might be destroyed root and branch. No time was lost in carrying out these dreadful instructions. Among the victims of this renewed persecution was one Delavoye, who being told that a warrant was out against him, and that the officers were on their way to seize him, refused to hide himself as his friends advised. “Hirelings and false prophets may do so,” he said; “but following the example of St. Paul, ‘I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die for the name of the Lord Jesus.’” Another sufferer, Constantine by name, was taken to execution in a scavenger’s cart. In allusion to this he said, “Truly hath the apostle declared, ‘We are as the filth of the earth, and the offscouring of all things.’ We stink in the nostrils of the men of this world; but let us rejoice, for the savor of our death will be acceptable to God and serviceable to the Church.”

A German residing in Paris in the summer of 1542 wrote to a friend an account of the execution of two heretics which he had witnessed. In his letter we learn how sympathy for the victims tended to make converts. One of them was a smooth-cheeked youth under twenty years of age, the son of a shoe-maker; the other, a man with a long white beard, stooping under the burden of fourscore years. The young man had spoken contemptuously of images, comparing them to the gods of the heathen; the old man had protested against prayers to the saints, and had declared that all Christians were priests. Both were condemned to suffer at the same stake for their “Lutheranism,” as it was called. As the youth refused to retract, he was to have his tongue cut out. No change could be observed in his face when the hangman approached him to perform this first act of cruelty. He put the tongue out as far as he could, the torturer pulled it out still farther with pinchers, and cut it off, slapping the martyr with it on the cheek. He then threw the tongue among the crowd, who, “it is said,” adds the writer conscientiously, “picked it up and flung it back in the martyr’s face. As he got out of the cart, he looked as if he were going to a feast and not to punishment.” Unmoved by the howling and the savage cries of the mob, he took his place calmly at the post, where a chain was passed round him. He now and then spat the blood from his mouth, but kept his eyes fixed on heaven, as if looking there for help. When the executioner covered his head with sulphur and pointed to the fire, he still smiled and bowed, as if to show he died willingly. The old man, who was the father of a large family and much respected for his upright life, had retracted, and his punishment was consequently modified. He was strangled before being thrown into the flames; “yet some,” adds the eye-witness, “thought this punishment too mild, and would have had him burned alive.”[10]

The history of persecution contains little novelty: it is the same story of calumnious accusations and savage fury from the letter of Pliny to the invectives of the monks in the sixteenth century. The council which assembled at Bourges in 1528 not only condemned all Lutheran doctrines whatsoever, but compared heretics with sorcerers and magicians in order to render them more odious. The Reformers were accused of being bad subjects, rebels, revolutionists, aiming at the overthrow of the monarchy as well as the perversion of religion. This Francis I. pretended to believe, though he knew better; and it is this charge which Calvin so eloquently refutes in his “Letter to the King,” prefixed to his “Christian Institutes.” “Is it possible,” he asks, “that we who have never been heard to utter a seditious word, and whose lives have always been known to be simple and peaceable, should be plotting the overthrow of the kingdom? And what is more, being now driven from our homes (he is referring particularly to the emigration after the persecutions of 1534), we cease not to pray for your prosperity.... Praised be God, we have not profited so ill by the gospel, that our lives can not hold forth to our detractors an example of liberality, chastity, compassion, temperance, patience, modesty, and all other virtues. Verily the truth beareth witness for us that we fear and honor God purely, when by our life and by our death we desire his name to be sanctified.” In the “Institutes” he went still farther, laying down principles that almost consecrate oppression. “We must show a wicked tyrant such honor as our Lord has condescended to ordain.... We must show this obedience through fear of God, as we serve God himself, since it is from him that princes derive their power.” This obedience, however, he is very careful to restrict to secular matters. “When God ordained mortals to rule, he did not abdicate his rights. If kings command any thing contrary to him it should have no honor, for, says Peter, we ought to obey God rather than men.”

The cruelties of this age may be accounted for, though they can not be excused. Within the memory of living men, political heretics have been punished quite as severely (the stake excepted) as religious heretics, and that too without the same excuse. The priest when he burned the body hoped, or professed to hope, to save the soul: the political heretic was often sacrificed to secure a party or a minister in power. The persecutors of the sixteenth century must not, therefore, be overwhelmed with inconsiderate reproval: they were but men, living in an age when persecution was a duty, and heretics had no rights. There is still too much of the savage in the human breast, though civilization has done much to extinguish it; in the reign of Francis I. the savage was uppermost. But so remarkably did the blood of the martyrs prove the seed of the Church, that a Catholic writer compares the “Lutherans” of this time to the fabulous hydra; when one head was cut off, two sprang up in its place. And no wonder; for the author of the “History of Heresies” writes of these martyrs, even while ascribing their patient endurance to satanic influence, “that Christianity had revived in all its primitive simplicity.”

In 1544 Francis I. concluded the treaty of Crespy with the Emperor Charles V., by which the two monarchs bound themselves to exterminate heresy within their respective dominions. The king chanced to be ill of a dangerous disease brought on by his licentiousness, and for five or six weeks his life hung upon a thread. The bigoted Cardinal de Tournon, making him believe that his sufferings were a judgment from God, urged him to propitiate heaven by destroying heresy. Moved by these motives, and by misrepresentations which the victims had no opportunity of correcting, for they were never heard, Francis issued an order for the extirpation of the Waldenses of Provence, who appear to have excited the wrath of the clergy to a terrible height. These Vaudois, as they are usually called, the better to distinguish them from the Waldenses of Savoy, lived in the south-east corner of France, between the Durance and the Alps. They were a peaceable, God-fearing, industrious race,[11] and had been a living protest against the Church of Rome for hundreds of years—even from the days of Constantine, if their annals may be trusted. Louis XII. is reported to have called them “better Christians than himself;”[12] and a Romish missionary, who was sent to turn them from the error of their ways, was himself converted and forced to acknowledge that “he had learned more from the little Vaudois children than he had ever done at college.” In the wildest valleys of the Alps, and on rocky heights where the chamois could hardly keep his footing, they built their huts and tended their flocks. They had covered a barren district with smiling harvests, “making the desert blossom as the rose.” Du Bellay, governor of Piedmont, describes them as “a simple people,” paying their taille to the crown and the droits to their lord more regularly than their orthodox neighbors. But their virtues were their chief crime in the eyes of the king’s clerical advisers. In 1540 the Parliament of Provence had condemned twenty-three of these poor creatures to be burned alive for contumacy, and ordered their country to be laid waste. The sanguinary decree farther directed the towns of Mérindol and Cabrières, and other places, which had been the refuge and retreat of the heretics, to be razed to the ground, the caves which had served them for an asylum to be destroyed, the forests cut down, the fruit-trees rooted up, the rebel chiefs put to death, and their wives and children banished for life.”[13] Some friends of the poor Vaudois succeeded in getting the decree suspended until 1st January, 1545; when Francis I., hoping to do a meritorious work that would atone for his dissolute life, ordered it to be enforced. To John Menier, baron of Oppède, and chief president of the Parliament of Provence, was entrusted the task of carrying out the royal decree. He was one of those happily rare individuals who delight in slaughter from mere blood-thirstiness. He made no distinction between believers and heretics. The troops under his orders—wild mercenaries with more of the brigand than of the disciplined soldier—wasted the country with fire and sword. From the frightful detail of cruelties one little fact may be gathered characteristic of the man. All the inhabitants of the town of Mérindol, which stood on the Durance,[14] were put to the sword, with the exception of one person, a poor idiot, who had ransomed his life by promising a soldier two crowns. Oppède heard of it, and sending for the soldier, gave him the two crowns, and having thus bought the prisoner, ordered him to be tied to a tree and shot forthwith. “I know how to treat these people,” he roared out; “I will send them, children and all, to live in hell.” The small town of Cabrières, in the same neighborhood and a little south of the poetic Vaucluse, was treated with similar severity. Every house was destroyed; between 700 and 800 persons were killed in the streets or fields; a number of women who had fled for refuge to a barn were burned to death, and those who had escaped the sword and fire were sent to the galleys “with circumstances of inhumanity,” says the historian, “that would have deserved our pity on any other occasion.”[15] “In one church,” says Guérin, “I saw between four and five hundred poor souls of women and children butchered.” Twenty-five women—

who had taken refuge in a cavern in the papal territory of Avignon, were smothered to death, the vice-legate kindling the fire with his own hands.[16] In fine, twenty-four towns and villages were destroyed and 3000 persons put to death. Such little boys and girls as the soldiers did not want were sold into slavery: they might be purchased for a crown apiece. And that none might escape, the Parliament of Provence issued a proclamation, forbidding the neighbors to offer the Vaudois either food or shelter, so that many were starved to death in the mountains.[17]

The tale of these fearful atrocities provoked a cry of indignation from one end of the country to the other:[18] even the king complained that his orders had been exceeded, but not until after the letters patent of 18th August, 1545, approving of all that had been done. We are told that the memories of these cruelties haunted his dying-bed, and that he bequeathed to his son the duty of taking vengeance on the murderers of the Vaudois. This may be true, but when the Swiss cantons remonstrated with him for his cruelty, he bade them mind their own business, for the heretics had merely received the just reward of their crimes. The only person punished for these horrors—and that was at the suit of Madame de Cantal, whose property had been ruined by the slaughter of her peasantry—was one Guérin, king’s advocate in the Parliament of Aix.[19] M. d’Oppède appears to have been so terrified at the mere idea of being tried, that he fell ill and died in great suffering; a judgment of God, as the Reformed declared it. A Catholic historian of these days has ventured to apologize for cruelties which could find no defender in the sixteenth century. “Certain names,” he says, “are branded for what is the result of a popular force and movement by which they are carried away. In a religious and believing state of society there are necessities, as there have been cruel political necessities at another epoch. Exaltation of ideas drives men to crime as by a fatality.”[20] Such reasoning will justify any crime, public or private. To admit the cowardly doctrine of “necessity,” is to destroy moral responsibility, to make intellect subservient to matter, and justice to brute force. It makes the usurper or the murderer accuser, judge and executioner in his own cause. It is a vindication of coups d’état—a deification of successful villainy. If generally admitted, it would induce a moral torpor fatal to all intelligence. There were men living in the Catholic communion in the sixteenth century who thought very differently from the paradoxical historian of the nineteenth. Sadolet, Bishop of Carpentras—a man so full of kindness and charity that a modern writer has called him the “Fénelon of his age”—interfered to suspend the execution of the first decree against the Vaudois of Mérindol. He was a ripe scholar and corresponded with all the learned men of the day, heretical or orthodox, including Calvin and Melanchthon. To the latter he wrote: “I am not the man to hate another because he differs from me in opinion.”[21] When Sturm of Strasburg accused him of lying, he said: “You should have left such coarse terms to Luther: they are unbecoming a mind like yours. But you are mistaken, and I am sure you will return to your usual polite style. If ever you, Bucer, or Melanchthon have need of me, I am ready to serve you in more than words.” It is pleasing to meet with such a character, when religious prejudice ran so high on both sides.

One of the most terrible tragedies to which the persecuting edicts gave rise occurred at Meaux, in October, 1546, when sixty persons were seized in the house of Stephen Mangin, where they had met to hear a sermon. As the soldiers were taking them through the streets to prison, some of the Protestant spectators burst out with Marot’s noble version of the seventy-ninth Psalm—

From Meaux they were transferred to Paris for trial, which resolved itself into an attempt to extort a confession from them by torture. They were sentenced to be carried back to Meaux, and fourteen of them were to be burned alive in the market-place, after suffering the question extraordinary. Others were to be hung up by the shoulders during the execution of their brethren, and then to be flogged and imprisoned for life in a monastery. As they were passing through a forest on their way back, a man followed them shouting: “Brethren, remember Him who is in heaven above.” He was caught, flung into the cart, and put to death with the rest. Stephen Mangin, who was regarded as the ringleader, first had his tongue cut out; he was then dragged on a hurdle from the prison to the place of execution, where he and his companions, after being tortured, were burned at fourteen stakes arranged in a circle, praising God to their last breath. One Dr. Picard, a celebrated man in his day, preached a sermon on the occasion, in which he declared it was necessary to salvation to believe that these fourteen poor creatures were condemned to the bottomless pit; and if an angel came from heaven to say the contrary, he must not be listened to; “for God would not be God, if he did not damn them eternally.”

The example thus set at Meaux was imitated in other parts of France; but, far from checking the progress of the new doctrines, it served to prove the strong faith of the converts. Thus Jean Chapot, who had been denounced for bringing a bale of heretical books from Geneva, would not give up the names of the persons to whom he had sold them, though he was almost torn asunder on the rack. One Mark Moreau of Troyes displayed similar firmness and constancy at the stake, to which he was condemned after being tortured, because he refused to betray the other Lutherans in that city. Francis Daugy cried out from the midst of the flames: “Be of good cheer, brethren, I see heaven opening and the Son of God stretching out his arms to receive me.” As the Demoiselle Michelle de Caignoncle was going to the stake, one of her poor pensioners ran by her side crying: “You will never give us alms again.” “Yes, once more!” she said, and threw her slippers to the woman, who was barefoot. One Thomas of St. Paul was taken out of the flames and urged to recant. “Put me back into the fire,” he exclaimed: “I am on the road to heaven.”

Among the victims of this reign was one whose name occupies a conspicuous place in the history of the revival of learning. Stephen Dolet, famous among the poets of the Renaissance, had set up a printing-press at Lyons, where he appears to have been unpopular among those of his own trade, through supporting the compositors who had “struck” for higher wages. He had been twice condemned for heresy: once on the information of the infamous Anthony Mouchi, a doctor of the Sorbonne and heretic-finder to the Inquisition, who has transmitted his name to posterity under the form of mouchard. Dolet had escaped to Piedmont; but yearning with that love for his native country, which is so strong a characteristic of the French people, he returned to Lyons, where he was speedily arrested and carried to Paris. Here he was accused and convicted of atheism, the charge being founded on his translation of a passage in Plato. While in prison, hourly expecting death, he exclaimed: “My whole life has been a struggle; thank God, it is over at last.”[22] When he was led to the stake in the Place Maubert, the executioner bade him invoke the Virgin and St. Stephen, his patron saint, or else his tongue would be cut out and he would be burned alive. Dolet repeated the required formula, and then was hanged and burned (3d August, 1546). Dolet must not be ranked among the martyrs of religion: he suffered because he had offended the clergy by his independent spirit. The doctors of the Sorbonne would willingly have forgiven his being a printer and an atheist, if he had not stood forward as the champion of free thought.

Robert Etienne (or Stephens, as he is called by English scholars) was more fortunate than Dolet. Up to the age of twenty-five he continued in the Romish Church, professing a doubtful sort of orthodoxy, like many other celebrated men of that day; and it is probable that he would have continued in this undecided equivocal state all his life, but for the virulent attacks made upon him by certain theologians, who were violent in proportion to their stupidity. His quarrel with the Sorbonne began as early as 1523, when that same body, which in 1470 had invited the first printers to Paris, took alarm at the agitation of men’s minds and turned fiercely against its own work. The presumption of a young man, and he a layman, to correct a text of Scripture, seemed monstrous. The publication of his Latin Bibles in 1528 and 1532, and more especially that of the small portable Bible in 1534, aggravated their hostility. But all this was as nothing to the rage excited by his edition of the Latin Bible in 1545, wherein he had collected the notes of that learned professor of Hebrew, Francis Vatable. In these notes the active inquisitors of the Sorbonne found a number of heretical propositions, such as a denial of the existence of purgatory, of the efficaciousness of confession, and so forth. Hitherto Robert had been able to escape the fate of his heterodox brother Dolet, through the intervention of the king and the influence of John du Bellay and others. But against this last tempest the royal authority seemed powerless. The Faculty of Theology instituted proceedings against him, when, unhappily for him, Francis I. died; and although Robert Etienne found an equally kind patron in his successor, the character of the new king was more impressionable. The Sorbonne attacked him more violently, and foreseeing that Henry would be unable to protect him, he quitted France, as Clement Marot, Olivetan, Amyot, and most of the professors of the Royal College had done before him. Beza tells us that all learning was suspected, and that hence many good but learned Catholics were numbered among the heretics. A man was liable to be condemned for not lifting his cap on passing an image (and they were at the corner of almost every street), for not kneeling at the sound of the Ave Maria bell, and for eating meat on fast days. Clement Marot was sent to prison and narrowly escaped burning for eating some bacon during Lent.

The fasting, or not fasting, on certain days soon became a test of orthodoxy.

One of the last victims of this reign was Jean Brugière, who, after several imprisonments and escapes, was taken to Paris, tried, and condemned to be burned alive at Issoire (3d March, 1547). He was transferred to Montferrand, where Ory, the inquisitor, discussed the “real presence” with him. “If you deny,” said Ory, “that the body of our Lord is in the host, when the priest has pronounced the sacramental words, you deny the power of God, who can do every thing.” “I do not deny the power of God,” answered Brugière, “for we are not disputing whether God has power or not to do it, so much as what he has done in his Holy Sacrament, and what he desires us to do.” When the time of his suffering came, the priests pressed a crucifix to his lips, and bade him call on the Virgin and saints. “Let me,” he said with a smile, “let me think of God before I die. I am content with the only advocate he has appointed for sinners.” While preparing the rope or chain, the executioner slipped and fell. Brugière, who remained calm and unmoved, held out his hand to raise him. “Cheer up! M. Pouchet, I hope you are not hurt,” he said. When the fire was kindled, he raised his eyes to the cross and exclaimed: “Oh heavenly Father, I beseech thee, for the love of thy Son, that thou wilt be pleased to comfort me in this hour by thy Holy Spirit, in order that the work begun in me may be perfected to thy glory and to the benefit of thy poor Church.” When all was over, the crowd withdrew in silence. The curate of Issoire said, as he returned home: “May God give me grace to die in the faith of Brugière.”[23]

Francis I. died slowly of a disgusting malady, the consequence of his licentious amours. For a time his life was prolonged by the use of potent medicines; but the opportunity thus given him of redeeming the past was wasted in regrets that he had not extirpated heresy.[24] He used often to say, if we may credit Brantome, that this novelty—the Reformation—“tended to the overthrow of all monarchy, human and divine.” Yet none of the kings who embraced the new creed lost their thrones; while the devotee Henry III., and the converted Henry IV., both fell by orthodox daggers. The king’s funeral sermon was preached by Pierre du Chastel, Bishop of Macon, whose orthodoxy had become suspected in consequence of the attempts he had made to save Stephen Dolet. When Cardinal de Tournon reproached him with this, the good prelate made answer: “I acted like a bishop, you like a hangman.” When the sermon was published, the Sorbonne hunted out several heretical propositions, particularly a passage where the bishop, after extolling Francis as a saint of the highest order, continued: “I am convinced that, after so holy a life, the king’s soul, on leaving his body, was transported to heaven without passing through the flames of purgatory.”[25] The Sorbonne protested against this, and a deputation of doctors went to St. Germains, where the court was staying, to denounce the heretical panegyrist. They were received by John de Mendoza, the first chamberlain, who desired them to be quite easy in their minds: “If you had known His Majesty as well as I did, you would have understood the meaning of the bishop’s words. The king could never stop anywhere, however agreeable the place might be; and if he went to purgatory, he only remained there long enough to look about him, and was off again.” Solvuntur risu tabulæ! The doctors retired in confusion: there was no answering such a jest.

The character of Francis is a “mingled yarn.” He had great virtues, but he also had great vices. He had noble aspirations, but he often suffered them to be obscured by ignoble passions. All his life long he allowed himself to be led by women. Had they all been like his sister, Margaret of Valois, it would have been well for him, for France, and for religion; but they were more frequently such as the Duchess of Valentinois, and even worse. He was ambitious, but it was more for his kingdom than for himself; he was a warrior, though not equal to his rivals; he was sumptuous and extravagant, but architects and painters, historians and poets, scholars and wits, were not neglected by him. He was impressionable and superstitious, but he often checked the fiery zeal of the persecutors, tried to reform the clergy in his dilettante fashion, and was never bigoted except when frightened by the priests, or when he fancied his personal dignity insulted. It is not wonderful that Frenchmen look back to him with pride, for he represents the national character in its best as well as in its worst phases.