History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume I Part 11

[Footnote 184: "Vive Jesus Christ et ses enseignes!"]

[Footnote 185: Histoire ecclesiastique des eglises reformees, attributed to Theodore Beza (Ed. of Lille, 1841), i. 4; Crespin, Actiones et Monimenta Martyrum (Geneva, 1560), fol. 46; Haag, La France protestante, art. Leclerc; Daniel, x. 23, who finds no more suitable epithet for Leclerc than "_ce scelerat_."]

[Footnote 186: At this time a city of the Empire, and not conquered by France until the reign of Henry II. (1552).]

[Footnote 187: The story of Leclerc's fortunes is told both by Crespin, _ubi supra_, fol. 46, and by the Histoire ecclesiastique, i. 4; but, strange to say, both these early authorities fall into the same error: they place the first arrest of Leclerc in 1523, and his death a year later. Almost all subsequent writers have implicitly followed their authority. The Registres du parlement de Paris, already referred to, March 20, 1524/5, fix the former event as having occurred only three days before--"depuis trois jours" (p. 27); while Francois Lambert's letter to the Senate of Besancon, dated August 15, 1525, expressly states that Leclerc was burned Sat.u.r.day, July 22, 1525. Herminjard, i.

372. Jean Chatellain had been executed at Vic, in Lorraine, six months earlier (January 12, 1525). See P. Lambert to the Elector of Saxony, Herminjard, i. 346.]

[Footnote 188: In accordance with the uncertain orthography of the age, the name is variously written--Pauvan, Pauvant, Pavanne, or Pouvent.]

[Footnote 189: Pauvan's propositions, with the vindication by Saunier (or Saulnier) are recapitulated in the censure of the theological faculty, dated Dec. 9, 1525, and published _in extenso_ among the doc.u.ments appended to Gerdesius, Hist. Evang. Renov., iv. 36, etc.

Professor Soldan (i. 107) and others are incorrect in placing the propositions and their condemnation by the Sorbonne subsequent to the abjuration, which in this very doc.u.ment the Sorbonne demands.]

[Footnote 190: Ibid., iv. 47.]

[Footnote 191: "You err, Master Jacques," Crespin tells us that Mazurier used to say, "You err, Master Jacques; for you have not looked into the depth of the sea, but merely upon the surface of the waters and waves."

"_You err, Master Jacques_" became a proverbial expression in the mouths of the inhabitants of Meaux for a generation or more. Actiones et Monimenta (Geneva, 1560), fol. 52 _verso_.]

[Footnote 192: "Tout nud, en sa chemise, criant mercy a Dieu et a la vierge Marie." Journal d'un bourgeois, _ubi infra_.]

[Footnote 193: His sentence seems to have been seven years' imprisonment in the priory of St. Martin des Champs, and it was the prior that denounced him to parliament. Ibid., _ubi infra_.]

[Footnote 194: Crespin, _ubi supra_, fol. 53; Hist. eccles., i. 4; Haag, France prot., s. v. On the 26th of August, 1526, if, as is likely, he is the "jeune filz, escolier beneficie, non aiant encore ses ordres de prestrise, nomme maistre ... natif de Therouanne, en Picardie," whom the Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris refers to--page 291--as having abjured on Christmas eve, 1525, and been burned "le mardi 28^e aoust, 1526." At any rate, as M. Herminjard has remarked, Beza and Crespin are certainly wrong in placing Pauvan's recantation and execution respectively a year too early (in 1524 and 1525, instead of 1525 and 1526). The date of the Sorbonne's judgment is decisive on this point.]

[Footnote 195: Our authority for the remark of the Parisian doctor, Pierre Cornu, is Farel, in a MS. note to a hitherto inedited letter of Pauvan, and in his speech at the discussion at Lausanne. Herminjard, i.

293, 294. Farel's application was not without pungency: "Votre foi est-elle si bien fondee qu'un jeune fils, qui encore n'avoit point de barbe, vous ait fait tant de dommage, sans avoir tant etudie ne veu, sans avoir aucun degre, et vous etiez tant?" The admirer of heroic fort.i.tude will scarcely subscribe to the words of the Jesuit Daniel, Hist. de France, x. 24: "On ne donne place dans l'histoire _a ces meprisables noms_, que pour ne laisser ignorer la premiere origine de la funeste contagion," etc.]

[Footnote 196: Histoire eccles., i. 4.]

[Footnote 197: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris sous le regne de Francois I^er, April 14, 1526, p. 284.]

[Footnote 198: Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fol. 118.]

[Footnote 199: Haag, La France protestante, art. Lefevre; Schmidt, Wilhelm Farel. Bayle (Diet. s. v. Fevre) maintains, on the authority of Melchior Adam's Life of Capito, that Lefevre and Roussel were sent by Margaret of Angouleme on a secret mission to Strasbourg. Erasmus, in a letter of March, 1526, and Sleidan (lib. v. ad fin.) know nothing of this, and speak of the trip as merely a flight.]

[Footnote 200: Haag, _ubi supra_, vi. 507, note.]

[Footnote 201: Haag, La France protestante, art. Lefevre; Gaillard, Hist. de Francois premier, vi. 411. The boy, at this time Duke of Angouleme, did not a.s.sume the name of _Charles_ until after his eldest brother's death. The Swiss cantons, acting as his sponsors, had given him the somewhat uncommon Christian name _Abednego_ (Abdenago)!

Herminjard, ii. 17, 195.]

[Footnote 202: The Duke of Orleans may have had sincere predilections for Protestantism. At least, it is barely possible that the very remarkable instructions given to his secretary, Antoine Mallet, when on the 8th of September, 1543, Charles sent him to the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse, were something besides mere diplomatic intrigue to secure for his father's projects the support of these Protestant princes. See, however, a fuller discussion of this incident farther on, Chapter VI.]

[Footnote 203: Margaret to Anne de Montmorency, Genin, Lettres de Marguerite d'Angouleme, i. 279, and Herminjard, ii. 250.]

[Footnote 204: "Come un cavallo ch' ha un apostema stringendoli il naso non sente il cauterio."]

[Footnote 205: "Una retrattationcella." The letter of the Nuncio to Sanga, secretary of Clement VII., Brussels, December 30, 1531, appeared in H. Laemmer, Monumenta Vaticana (ex Tabulariis Sanctae Sedis Apostolicae Secretis), Friburgi Brisgoviae, 1861. I have called attention to its importance in the Bulletin de la Societe de l'hist. du prot. franc., xiv. (1865), 345. M. Herminjard has given a French translation, ii.

386.]

[Footnote 206: This incident has been rejected as apocryphal by Bayle, and, after him, by Tabaraud (in the Biographie universelle), as well as more recently by Haag (France protestante). It has rested until now on the unsupported testimony of Hubert Thomas, secretary of the Elector Palatine, Frederick II., whom he accompanied on a visit to Charles V. in Spain. On his return the Elector fell sick at Paris, where he received frequent visits from the King and Queen of Navarre. It was on one of these occasions that Margaret related to him this story, in the hearing of the secretary. (It is reproduced in Jurieu, Histoire du Calvinisme, etc., Rotterdam, 1683, pt. i. 70.) Bayle objected that it was incredible that the reformers should have failed to allude to so striking and suggestive an occurrence. The objection has been scattered to the winds.

With singular good fortune, M. Jules Bonnet has discovered among the hidden treasures of the Geneva Library an original memorandum in Farel's own handwriting, prefixed to a letter he had received from Michel d'Arande, fully confirming the discredited statements. "Jacobus Faber Stapulensis noster laborans morbo quo decessit, per aliquot dies ita perterritus fuit judicio Dei, ut actum de se vociferaret, dicens se aeternum periisse, quod veritatem Dei non aperte professus fuerit, idque dies noctesque vociferando querebatur. Et c.u.m a Gerardo Rufo admoneretur ut bono esset animo, Christo quoque fideret, is respondit: 'Nos d.a.m.nati sumus, veritatem celavimus quam profiteri et testari debebamus.'

Horrendum erat tam pium senem ita angi animo et tanto horrore judicii Dei concuti; licet tandem liberatus bene sperare cperit ac perrexerit de Christo." Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., etc., xi. 215; Herminjard, iii. 400.]

[Footnote 207: "Quo tandem ex hoc profundo limo, in quo non est substantia, eripi queam." Michel d'Arande to Farel (1536 or 1537), Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. franc., _ubi supra_; Herminjard, iii. 399, etc.]

[Footnote 208: Speaking of Roussel's as yet inedited MS., "Familiere exposition du symbole et de l'oraison dominicale," Professor C. Schmidt, than whom no one has better studied the mysticism of the sixteenth century, remarks that the basis of the work is the doctrine of justification by faith, the sole authority invoked is that of the Scriptures, the only head of the church is Jesus Christ, the perfect church is the invisible church, the visible church is recognized by the preaching of the Gospel in its purity, and by the administration of the _two_ sacraments as originally inst.i.tuted. He adds that the doctrines of the Lord's Supper and of predestination are expounded in a thoroughly Calvinistic manner. See Professor S.'s excellent monograph, "Le mysticisme quietiste en France au debut de la reformation sous Francois premier," read before the Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., Bulletin, vi.

449, etc.]

[Footnote 209: Historia de ortu, progressu et ruina haereseon hujus saeculi (Col. 1614), lib. vii. c. 3, p. 392.]

[Footnote 210: _E. g._, Tabaraud, Biographie univ., art. Roussel.]

[Footnote 211: Haag, France protestante, art. Gerard Roussel; Gaillard, Hist. de Francois premier, vi. 418; Flor. de Raemond, _ubi supra_.]

CHAPTER III.

FRANCIS I. AND MARGARET OF ANGOULEME--EARLY REFORMATORY MOVEMENTS AND STRUGGLES.

[Sidenote: Francis I. and his sister.]

[Sidenote: The portrait of the king.]

Francis the First and his sister, Margaret of Angouleme, were destined to exercise so important an influence in shaping the history of the French Reformation during the first half of the sixteenth century, that a glance at their personal history and character seems indispensable.

Francis Was in his twenty-first year when, by the extinction of the elder line of the house of Orleans, the crown came to him as the nearest heir of Louis the Twelfth.[212] He was tall, but well proportioned, of a fair complexion, with a body capable of enduring without difficulty great exposure and fatigue. In an extant portrait, taken five years later, he is delineated with long hair and scanty beard. The drooping lids give to his eyes a languid expression, while the length of his nose, which earned him the sobriquet of "le roi au long nez," redeems his physiognomy from any approach to heaviness.[213] On the other hand, the Venetian Marino Cavalli, writing shortly before the close of his reign, eulogizes the personal appearance of Francis, at that time more than fifty years old. His mien was so right royal, we are a.s.sured, that even a foreigner, never having seen him before, would single him out from any company and instinctively exclaim, "This is the king!" No ruler of the day surpa.s.sed him in gravity and n.o.bility of bearing. Well did he deserve to succeed that long line of monarchs upon each of whom the sacred oil, applied at his coronation in the cathedral of Rheims, had conferred the marvellous property of healing the king's-evil by a simple touch.[214]

[Sidenote: His character and tastes.]

At his accession, the lively imagination of Francis, fed upon the romances of chivalry that const.i.tuted his favorite reading, called up the picture of a brilliant future, wherein gallant deeds in arms should place him among the most renowned knights of Christendom. The ideal character he proposed for himself involving a certain regard for his word, Francis's mind revolted from imitating the plebeian duplicity of his wily predecessor, Louis the Eleventh--a king who enjoyed the undesirable reputation of never having made a promise which he intended in good faith to keep. The memory of the disingenuous manner in which Louis, by winking at the opposition of the Parliament of Paris, had suffered the revocation of the Pragmatic Sanction to fail, in spite of his own solemn engagements to carry it into execution, was, undoubtedly, one of the leading motives inducing the young prince, at the very beginning of his reign, to adopt the arbitrary measures already spoken of in a preceding chapter, respecting the papal concordat. Not for half his kingdom, he repeatedly declared, would he break the pledge he had given his Holiness. It is not difficult, however, to reconcile the pertinacity of Francis, on this occasion, with the frequent and well authenticated instances of bad faith in his dealings with other monarchs.

If his literary abilities were slender and his acquirements meagre, this king had at least the faculty of appreciating excellence in others. The scholars and wits whom, as we have seen, he succeeded in gathering about him, repaid his munificence with lavish praise, couched in all manner of verse, and in every language employed in the civilized world. Even later historians have not hesitated to rate him much higher than his very moderate abilities would seem to warrant.[215] The portrait drawn by the biographer of his imperial rival is, perhaps, full as advantageous as a regard for truth will permit us to accept. "Francis," says Robertson, "notwithstanding the many errors conspicuous in his foreign policy and domestic administration, was nevertheless humane, beneficent, generous.

He possessed dignity without pride, affability free from meanness, and courtesy exempt from deceit. All who had access to him, and no man of merit was ever denied that privilege, respected and loved him.

Captivated with his personal qualities, his subjects forgot his defects as a monarch, and, admiring him as the most accomplished and amiable gentleman in his dominions, they hardly murmured at acts of maladministration, which, in a prince of less engaging dispositions, would have seemed unpardonable."[216]

[Sidenote: Contrast between Francis I. and Charles V.]

Two monarchs could scarcely be more dissimilar than were Francis and the Emperor Charles. "So great is the difference between these two princes,"

says the Venetian Giustiniano, "that, as her most serene majesty the Queen of Navarre, the king's sister, remarked to me when talking on the subject, one of the two must needs be created anew by G.o.d after the pattern of the other, before they could agree. For, whilst the most Christian king is reluctant to a.s.sume the burden of great thoughts or undertakings, and devotes himself much to the chase or to his own pleasures, the emperor never thinks of anything but business and aggrandizement; and, whereas the most Christian king is simple, open, and very liberal, and quite sufficiently inclined to defer to the judgment and counsel of others, the emperor is reserved, parsimonious, and obstinate in his opinions, governing by himself, rather than through any one else."[217]

This diversity of temperament and disposition had ample scope for manifestation during the protracted wars waged by the two monarchs with each other. Fit representative of the race to which he belonged, Francis was bold, adventurous, and almost resistless in the impetuosity of a first a.s.sault. But he soon tired of his undertakings, and relinquished to the cooler and more calculating Charles the solid fruits of victory.[218]

[Sidenote: Francis's religious convictions.]

Of the possession of deep religious convictions I do not know that Francis has left any satisfactory evidence. That he was not strongly attached to the Roman church, that he thoroughly despised the ignorant monks, whose dissolute lives he well knew, that he had no extraordinary esteem for the Pope, all this is clear enough from many incidents of his life. It would even appear that, at one or two points, he might have been pleased to witness such a reformation of the church as could be effected without disturbing the existing order. To this he was the more inclined, that he found almost all the men distinguished for their learning arrayed on the side of the "new doctrines," as they were styled, while the pretorian legion of the papacy was headed by the opponents of letters.

[Sidenote: His fear of innovation.]