History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume I Part 19

Early in the spring of the year 1534 Melanchthon received a courteous visit at Wittemberg from an agent of the distinguished French diplomatist, Guillaume du Bellay-Langey, envoy to the Protestant princes of Germany. The interview paved the way for a long correspondence between Melanchthon and Du Bellay himself, in which the latter threw out suggestions of the practicability of some plan for bringing the intelligent and candid men in both countries to adopt a common ground in respect to religion. Finally, in response to Du Bellay's earnest request, his correspondent consented to draw up such a scheme as appeared to himself proper to serve for the basis of union. The result was a paper of a truly wonderful character, in which the reader scarcely knows whether to admire the evident charity dictating every line, or to smile at the simplicity betrayed in the extravagant concessions. In a letter accompanying his proposal Melanchthon set forth at some length both his motives and his hopes. In touching upon controverted points, he claimed to have exhibited a moderation that would prove to be not without utility to the church. He professed his own belief that an accommodation might be effected on every doctrinal point, if only a free and amicable conference were to be held, under royal auspices, between a few good and learned men. The subjects of dispute were less numerous than was generally supposed, and the edge of many a sharply drawn theological distinction had been insensibly worn away by the softening hand of time. By such a conference as he proposed the perils of a public discussion could be avoided--a form of controversy fatal, for the most part, to the peace of the unlearned. In fact, no radical change was absolutely required in the ancient order or in ecclesiastical polity.

Not even the pontifical authority itself need necessarily be abolished; for it was the desire of the Lutheran party, so far as possible, to retain all the accustomed forms. In fine, he begged Du Bellay to exhort the monarchs of Europe to concord while yet there was room left for the counsels of moderation. What calamities might otherwise be in store!

What a ruin both of church and state, should a collision of arms be precipitated![328]

But Melanchthon's ardor had carried him far beyond his true reckoning.

No other reformer could have brought himself to approve the articles now submitted for the king's perusal; while it was certain that not even this unbounded liberality would satisfy the exorbitant demands of the Roman party.

[Sidenote: Melanchthon's concessions.]

Melanchthon not only admitted that an ecclesiastical system with bishops in many cities was lawful, but that the Roman pontiff might preside over the entire episcopate. He countenanced, to a certain extent, the current doctrine respecting human tradition and the retention of auricular confession. He discerned a gradual approach to concord in respect to justification, and found no difficulty in the divergent views of free will and original sin. He did, indeed, insist upon the rejection of the wors.h.i.+p of saints, and advocate expunging from the ritual all appeals for their a.s.sistance. So, too, monks ought to be allowed to forsake the cloister, and monastic establishments could then be advantageously turned into schools of learning. The celibacy of the clergy should, in like manner, be forthwith granted. There was, however, in his view, one point that bristled with difficulties. How to remove them Melanchthon confessed himself unable to suggest. The question of the popish ma.s.s was the Gordian knot which must be reserved for the future council of the church to untie or cut.[329]

[Sidenote: His own misgivings.]

A faint suspicion seems, however, to have flitted through the Wittemberg reformer's mind, that possibly, after all his large admissions, his attempt was but labor lost! For, in a letter to Martin Bucer, written on the very day he despatched his communication to Du Bellay, he more than hinted his own despair of effecting an agreement with the Pope of Rome, and excused himself for his apparently lavish proffers, on the plea that he was desirous of making his good French friends comprehend the chief points of controversy![330]

[Sidenote: A favorable impression made on Francis.]

Melanchthon's articles, faithfully transmitted by Du Bellay, produced on the mind of Francis a favorable impression. The ambitious monarch welcomed the prospect of a speedy removal of the doctrinal differences that had previously marred the perfect understanding he wished to maintain with the Protestant princes of Germany. Whether, however, any higher motives than considerations of a political character weighed with him, may well be doubted.

Meantime, an unexpected occurrence for the time dispelled all thought of that harvest of conciliation and harmony which the more moderate reformers looked for as likely to spring up from the seed so liberally sown by Melanchthon.

[Sidenote: Indiscreet partisans of reform.]

If, among the advocates of the purification of the church, there was a party which, with Melanchthon, seemed ready to jeopard some of the most vital principles of the great moral and religious movement, in the vain hope of again cementing an unnatural union with the Roman system, there was another faction, to which moderation and half-way measures were utterly repulsive. Its partisans believed themselves warranted in resorting to open acts expressive of detestation of the gilded idolatry of the popular religion. For their views they alleged the Old Testament history as sufficient authority. Had not the servants of Jehovah braved the resentment of the priests of Baal, and disregarded the threats of kings and queens? Why treat the saints' images, the crucifixes, the gorgeous robes and manufactured relics, with more consideration than was displayed by Hebrew prophets in dealing with heathen abominations? So inveterate an evil as the corruption of all that is most sacred in Christianity could only be successfully combated by vigor and decision.

Only under heavy and repeated blows does the monarch of the forest yield to the axe of the woodman.

Between the extremes of ill-judged concession and untimely rashness, the great body of those who had embraced the Reformation endeavored to hold a middle course, but found themselves exposed to many perils, not the result of their own actions, but brought upon them by the timidity or foolhardiness of their a.s.sociates. A lamentable instance of the kind must now be noticed.

[Sidenote: Placards and pasquinades.]

For many months the street-walls of Paris had been employed by both sides in the great controversies of the day, for the purpose of giving publicity to their views. Under cover of night, placards, often in the form of pasquinades, were posted where they would be likely to meet the eyes of a large number of curious readers. So, in the excitement following the arrest and exile of Beda and other impertinent and seditious preachers, placards succeeded each other nightly. In one the theologians of the Sorbonne were portrayed to the life, and each in all his proper colors, by an unfriendly pencil. In another, "Paris, flower of n.o.bility" was pa.s.sionately entreated to sustain the wounded faith of G.o.d, and the King of Glory was supplicated to confound "the accursed dogs," the Lutherans.[331] Under the circ.u.mstances, it was not strange that the "Lutheran" placard was hastily torn down by some zealot, with the exclamation that the author was a heretic, while a crowd stood all day about the other transcribing its unpoetic but pious exhortations to burn the offenders against Divine justice, and no one attempted to remove it.

[Sidenote: Mission of Feret to Switzerland.]

The success of this method of reaching the ma.s.ses, who could never be induced to read a formal treatise or book, suggested to some of the more ardent "Lutherans" of Paris the idea of preparing a longer placard, which should boldly attack the cardinal errors of the papal system of religion. But, the press being closely watched in the French capital, it was thought best to have the placard printed in Switzerland, where, indeed, the most competent and experienced hands might be found for composing such a paper. The messenger employed was a young man named Feret, an apprentice of the king's apothecary;[332] and the printing seems to have been done in the humble but famous establishment of Pierre Van Wingle, in the retired Vale of Serrieres, just out of Neufchatel, and on the same presses which, in 1533, gave to the world the first French reformed liturgy, and, two years later, the Protestant translation of the Bible into the French language by Oliveta.n.u.s.[333]

There is less certainty respecting the authors.h.i.+p, but it seems highly probable that not Farel, but an enthusiastic and somewhat hot-headed writer, Antoine de Marcourt, must be held responsible for this imprudent production.[334]

[Sidenote: The placard against the ma.s.s.]

Feret, having on his return eluded detection at the frontiers, reached Paris in safety. He brought with him a large number of copies of a broadside headed, "_True Articles respecting the horrible, great and insupportable Abuses of the Papal Ma.s.s_." Among those to whom the paper was secretly submitted, there were some who, more prudent than the rest, decidedly opposed its publication. It was too violent, they said. The writer's ill-advised severity would answer no good purpose. The tract would alienate the sympathy of many, and thus r.e.t.a.r.d, instead of advancing, the cause it advocated.[335] Remonstrance, however, proved futile.

Early on the morning of the eighteenth of October, 1534, a placard was found posted upon the walls in all the princ.i.p.al thoroughfares of the metropolis. Everywhere it was read with horror and indignation, mingled with rage; and loud threats and curses were uttered against its unknown author.

The doc.u.ment that called forth these expressions and was the occasion of more important commotions in the sequel, had so direct and potent an influence upon the fortunes of the Reformation in France that it cannot be pa.s.sed over without a brief reference to the general character of its contents. It began with a solemn address: "I invoke heaven and earth in testimony of the truth, against that proud and pompous papal ma.s.s, through which (if G.o.d remedy not speedily the evil) the world will be wholly desolated, destroyed, and ruined. For therein is our Lord so outrageously blasphemed and the people so blinded and seduced, that it ought no longer to be suffered or endured." Every Christian must needs be a.s.sured that the one sacrifice of Christ, being perfect, demands no repet.i.tion. Still the world has long been, and now is, flooded with wretched sacrificing priests, who yet proclaim themselves liars, inasmuch as they chant every Sunday in their vespers, that Christ is a priest forever after the order of Melchisedec. Wherefore not only every man of sound understanding, but "they themselves, in spite of themselves, must admit that the Pope and all his brood of cardinals, bishops, monks, and canting ma.s.s-priests, with all who consent thereunto, are false prophets, d.a.m.nable deceivers, apostates, wolves, false shepherds, idolaters, seducers, liars and execrable blasphemers, murderers of souls, renouncers of Jesus Christ, of his death and pa.s.sion, false witnesses, traitors, thieves, and robbers of the honor of G.o.d, and more detestable than devils." After citing from the book of Hebrews some pa.s.sages to establish the sufficiency of Christ, the writer addresses his opponents: "I demand then of all sacrificing priests, whether their sacrifice be perfect or imperfect? If imperfect, why do they deceive the poor people? If perfect, why need it be repeated? Come forward, priests, and reply if you can!"

The body of Christ cannot, it is argued, be contained in the host. It is _above_, whither also we are bidden raise our hearts and look for the Lord. To breathe or mutter over the bread and wine, and then adore them, is idolatry. To enjoin this adoration on others is a doctrine of devils.

But these impudent heretics, not ashamed of attempting to imprison the body of Jesus in their wafer, have even dared to place this caution in the rubric of their missals, "If the body of our Lord, being devoured of mice or spiders, has been destroyed or much gnawed, or if the worm be found altogether within, let it be burned and placed in the reliquary."

"O Earth! How dost thou not open and swallow up these horrible blasphemers! Wretched men, is this the body of the Lord Jesus, the true Son of G.o.d? Doth he suffer himself to be eaten of mice and spiders? He who is the bread of angels and of all the children of G.o.d, is he given to us to become the food of animals? Will ye make him who is incorruptible at the right hand of G.o.d to be the prey of worms and corruption? Were there no other error than this in your infernal theology, well would ye deserve the f.a.got! Light then your fires to burn _yourselves_, not us who refuse to believe in your idols, your new G.o.ds, and new Christs that suffer themselves to be eaten indifferently by animals and by you who are no better than animals!"[336] Closing with a vivid contrast between the fruits of the ma.s.s and those of the true Supper of our Lord, the writer finally exclaims of his opponents, "Truth fails them, Truth threatens and pursues them, Truth terrifies them; by which their reign shall shortly be destroyed forever."[337]

[Sidenote: The popular excitement in Paris.]

It would be difficult to exaggerate the effect produced upon the populace of Paris by this intemperate handbill. If any part of the ceremonial of the church was deeply rooted in the devotion of the common people, it was the service of the ma.s.s. And in attacking the doctrine of the Real Presence, the authors of this libel, distributed under cover of the darkness, had, in the estimation of the rabble, proved themselves more impious and deserving a more signal punishment than that sacrilegious Jew whose knife had drawn drops of miraculous blood from the transubstantiated wafer. Not the parish priests, nor the doctors of the Sorbonne, could surpa.s.s the infuriated populace in loud execrations of the wretch for whom burning alive seemed too mild a punishment.

[Sidenote: Anger of the king.]

But a second act of ill-timed rashness accomplished a result even more disastrous for Protestantism than the kindling of the fanatical zeal of the people; for it inflamed the anger of the king, and made him, what all the persuasions of the Roman court had hitherto failed to make him, a determined enemy and persecutor of the "new doctrines." A copy of the placard was secretly affixed by night to the very door of the royal bedchamber in the castle of Amboise,[338] where Francis and his court were at the time sojourning. If the contents of the tract offended the religious principles carefully inculcated upon the king by his spiritual instructors, the audacity of the person who, disregarding bars, bolts and guards, had presumed to invade the privacy of the royal abode and obtrude his unwelcome message, could not but be regarded in the light of a direct personal insult. Francis had not been in the habit of troubling himself about the private opinions of the learned on vexed points of theology; nor had he been inclined to permit his more fanatical subjects to hara.s.s any of those eminent scholars whose literary attainments added l.u.s.tre to his brilliant court. Yet his claim to the right of enforcing uniformity of belief--and that uniformity a complete _conformity_ to his own creed--had rather been held in abeyance than relinquished. Louis de Berquin had, at his cost, discovered that the royal protection could not be expected even by a personal favorite and a scholar of large acquisitions, when, not content with holding doctrines deemed heretical, he strove to promulgate them. The interposition of Margaret of Angouleme had proved unavailing in his behalf. The heretics who had now ventured to nail an expose of their dogmas on his bedchamber door could scarcely antic.i.p.ate greater clemency.

[Sidenote: Political considerations.]

To personal motives were added political considerations. Indulgence to the perpetrators of an act so insulting to the Roman Catholic religion might drive the pontiff, whose friends.h.i.+p was an essential requisite of success in Francis's ambitious projects, to become the fast friend of the emperor, his rival. Pope Clement the Seventh had been succeeded by Paul the Third. The alliance cemented by the marriage of the Duke of Orleans to Catharine de' Medici had been dissolved by the death of the bride's uncle. The favor of the new Pope must be conciliated. Under such circ.u.mstances, what were the sufferings of a few poor reformers, when weighed in the balance against the triple crown of his Holiness?

[Sidenote: Fruitless intercession of Margaret.]

Francis determined to return to Paris for the purpose of superintending in person a search for the culprits. It is true that the Queen of Navarre attempted to moderate his anger by suggesting that it was not unlikely that the placard, far from being composed by the "Lutherans,"

was the cunning device of their enemies, who thus sought to insure the ruin of the innocent. But the king appears not unreasonably to have rejected the suggestion as improbable; although, seven years later, Margaret reminded him of her surmise, and maintained that the sequel had strongly confirmed its accuracy.[339]

[Sidenote: Francis abolishes the art of printing.]

Far, indeed, from yielding to his sister's persuasions, Francis in his anger took a step which he would certainly have been glad himself, a few months later, to be able to forget, and of which his panegyrists have fruitlessly striven to obliterate the memory. On the thirteenth of January, 1535, after the lapse of nearly three months from the date of the publication of the placards--an interval that might surely be regarded as sufficiently long to permit his overheated pa.s.sions to cool down--the king sent to the Parliament of Paris _an Edict absolutely prohibiting any exercise of the Art of Printing in France, on pain of the halter_! It was no secret from whom the ign.o.ble suggestion had come.

A year and a half earlier (on the seventh of June, 1533), the theologians of the Sorbonne had presented Francis an urgent pet.i.tion, in view of the multiplication of heretical books, wherein they set forth the absolute necessity of suppressing forever by a severe law the pestilent art which had been the parent of so dangerous a progeny.[340]

The king was now acting upon the advice of his ghostly counsellors!

[Sidenote: He suspends the disgraceful edict.]

Happily for Francis, however, whose ambition it had hitherto been to figure as a modern Maecenas, even a subservient parliament declined the customary registration. The king, too, coming to his senses after the lapse of six weeks, so far yielded to the remonstrances of his more sensible courtiers as to recall his rash edict, or, rather, suspend its operation until he could give the matter more careful consideration.

Meanwhile he undertook to inst.i.tute a censors.h.i.+p. The king was to select twelve persons of quality and pecuniary responsibility, from a list of twice that number of names submitted by parliament; and this commission was to receive the exclusive right to print--and that, in the city of Paris alone--such books as might be approved by the proper authorities and be found necessary to the public weal. Until the appointment of the twelve censors the press was to remain idle! Nor was the suspension of the prohibitory ordinance to continue a day longer than the term required by the monarch to decide whether he preferred to modify its provisions or leave them unchanged. "Albeit on the thirteenth day of January, 1534,"[341] wrote this much lauded patron of letters, "by other letters-patent of ours, and for the causes and reasons therein contained, _we prohibited and forbade any one from thenceforth printing, or causing to be printed, any books in our kingdom, on pain of the halter_: nevertheless, we have willed and ordained that the execution and accomplishment of our said letters, prohibitions and injunctions, be and continue suspended and surcease until we shall otherwise provide."[342]

[Sidenote: Vigorous proceedings of parliament.]

Meantime, parliament had not been slack in obeying the command to search diligently for the authors and publishers of the placards. Many reputed "Lutherans" had been arrested, some of whom, it was given out, pretended to reveal the existence of a plot of the reformers to fall upon the good Christians of the metropolis while a.s.sembled in their churches for divine wors.h.i.+p, and a.s.sa.s.sinate them in the midst of their devotions!

The credulous populace made no difficulty in accepting the tale. Paris shuddered at the thought of its narrow escape, and some hundreds of thousands of men and women reverently crossed themselves and thanked heaven they had not fallen a prey to the blood-thirsty designs of a handful of peaceable and unarmed adherents of the "new doctrines!" As for Francis himself, a grave historian tells us that his apprehensions were inflamed by the very mention of the word "conspiracy."[343]

[Sidenote: Abundance of victims.]

The investigation had been committed to practised hands. The prosecuting officer, or _lieutenant-criminel_, Morin, was as famous for his cunning as he was notorious for his profligacy. Moreover, the judicious addition of six hundred _livres parisis_ to his salary afforded him a fresh stimulus and prevented his zeal from flagging.[344] The timidity or treachery of one of the prisoners facilitated the inquest. Terrified by the prospect of torture and death, or induced by hope of reward, a person, obscurely designated as _le Guainier_, or _Gueynier_,[345] made an ample disclosure of the names and residences of his former fellow-believers. The pursuit was no longer confined to those who had been concerned in the distribution of the placards. All reputed heretics were apprehended, and, as rapidly as their trials could be prosecuted, condemned to death. There was a rare harvest of falsehood and misrepresentation. No wonder that innocent and guilty were involved in one common fate.[346]

It does not come within the scope of this history to give an edifying account of the courage displayed by the victims of the frenzy consequent upon the placards. The very names of many are unknown. Among the first to be committed to the flames was a young man, Barthelemi Milon, whom paralysis had deprived of the use of the lower half of his body.[347]

His unpardonable offence was that copies of the placard against the ma.s.s had been found in his possession. A wealthy draper, Jean du Bourg, had been guilty of the still more heinous crime of having posted some of the bills on the walls. For this he was compelled before execution to go through that solemn mockery of penitence, the _amende honorable_, in front of the church of Notre Dame, with but a s.h.i.+rt to conceal his nakedness, and holding a lighted taper in his hand; afterward to be conducted to the _Fontaine des Innocents_, and there have the hand that had done the impious deed cut off at the wrist, in token of the public detestation of his "high treason against G.o.d and the king." A printer, a bookseller, a mason, a young man in orders, were subjected to the same cruel death. But these were only the first fruits of the prosecution.[348] However opinions may differ respecting the merits of the cause for which they suffered, there can be but one view taken of their deportment in the trying hour of execution. In the presence of the horrible preparatives for torture, the most clownish displayed a fort.i.tude and a n.o.ble consciousness of honest purpose, contrasted with which the pusillanimous dejection, the unworthy concessions, and the premeditated perjury of Francis, during his captivity at Madrid not ten years before, appear in no enviable light. The monarch who bartered away his honor to regain his liberty[349] might have sat at the feet of these, his obscure subjects, to learn the true secret of greatness.

[Sidenote: The great expiatory procession.]

The punishment of the persons who had taken part in the preparation and dissemination of the placards was deemed an insufficient atonement for a crime in the guilt of which they had involved the city, and, indeed, the whole kingdom. As the offence excelled in enormity any other within the memory of man, so it was determined to expiate it by a solemn procession unparalleled for magnificence. Thursday, the twenty-first of January, 1535, was chosen for the pageant. Along the line of march the streets had been carefully cleaned. A public proclamation had bidden every householder display from his windows the most beautiful and costly tapestries he possessed. At the doors of all private mansions large waxen tapers burned, and, at the intersection of all side streets, wooden barriers, guarded by soldiers, precluded the possibility of interruption.

Early on the appointed morning, the entire body of the clergy of Paris, decked out in their most splendid robes and bearing the insignia of their respective ranks, a.s.sembled in Notre Dame, and thence in solemn state marched to the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, to meet the king. Sixteen dignitaries bore aloft the precious reliquary of Sainte Genevieve; others in similar honor supported the no less venerated reliquary of Saint Marcel. Those skilled in local antiquities averred that never before had the sacred remains of either saint been known to be brought across the Seine to grace any similar display.

At Saint Germain l'Auxerrois--that notable church under the very shadow of the Louvre, whose bell, a generation later, gave the first signal for the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew's Day--the royal court and the civil and munic.i.p.al bodies that had been permitted to appear on so august an occasion, were in waiting. At length the magnificent column began its progress, and threading the crowded streets of St. Honore and St. Denis, made its way, over the bridge of Notre Dame, to the island upon which stood and still stands the stately cathedral dedicated to Our Lady. Far on in the van rode eleonore, Francis's second queen, sister to the emperor, conspicuous for her dignified bearing, dressed in black velvet and mounted on a palfrey with housings of cloth of gold. In her company were the king's daughters by his former wife, the "good Queen Claude,"

all in dresses of crimson satin embroidered with gold; while a large number of princesses and n.o.ble ladies, with attendant gentlemen and guards, const.i.tuted their escort.

The monastic orders came next. Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, Carmelites, all were there, with burning tapers and highly prized relics. The parish churches were represented in like manner by their clergy; and these were followed by the chapter of the cathedral and by the mult.i.tudinous professors and scholars of the university. Between this part of the procession and the next, came a detachment of the Swiss guards of the king, armed with halberds, and a band of skilled musicians performing, on trumpets, hautboys, and other instruments, the airs of the solemn hymns of the church.