History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume I Part 21

The Swiss and Germans made a prompt response. The Senate of Strasbourg addressed Francis, praising his clemency, but calling his attention to the danger all good men were exposed to. "If but a single little word escape the mouth of good Christian men, directed against the most manifest abuses, nay, against the flagitious crimes of those who are regarded as _ecclesiastics_, how easy will it be, inasmuch as these very ecclesiastics are their judges, to cry out that words have been spoken to the injury of the true faith, the Church of G.o.d, and its traditions?"[382]

Zurich, going even further, made the direct request of its royal ally, that hereafter all persons accused of holding heretical views should be permitted by his Majesty to clear themselves by an appeal to the pure Word of G.o.d, and no longer be subjected without a hearing to torture and manifold punishments.[383] Berne and Basle remonstrated with similar urgency.

[Sidenote: An emba.s.sy receives an unsatisfactory reply.]

Receiving no reply to their appeal, in consequence of the king's attention being engrossed by the war then in progress with the emperor, and by reason of the dauphin's unexpected death, the same cantons and Strasbourg, a few months later, were induced to send a formal emba.s.sy.

But, if the envoys were fed with gracious words, they obtained no real concession. Francis a.s.sured the Bernese and their confederates that "it was, as they well knew, only for love of them that he had enlarged the provisions of his gracious Edict of Coucy, by lately[384] extending pardon to all exiles and fugitives"--that is, "Sacramentarians" and "relapsed" persons included. This, it seemed to him, "ought to satisfy them entirely."[385] It was a polite, but none the less a very positive refusal to entertain the suggestion that the abjuration of their previous "errors" should no longer be required of all who wished to avail themselves of the amnesty. Nor did it escape notice as a significant circ.u.mstance, that Francis selected for his mouth-piece, not the friendly Queen of Navarre, but the rough and bigoted _Grand-Maitre_--Anne de Montmorency, the future Constable of France.[386]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 328: Melanchthon to Du Bellay, Aug. 1, 1534, Opera (Bretschneider, Corpus Reformatorum), ii. 740.]

[Footnote 329: This is only a brief summary of the most essential points in these strange articles, which may be read entire in Melanch. Opera, _ubi supra_, ii. 744-766.]

[Footnote 330: Ibid., ii. 775, 776.]

[Footnote 331: See the interesting letter of a young Strasbourg student at Paris, Pierre Siderander, May 28, 1533, Herminjard, Correspondance des reformateurs, iii. 58, 59. The refrain of one placard,

"Au feu, au feu! c'est leur repere!

Faiz-en justice! Dieu l'a permys,"

gave Clement Marot occasion to reply in a couple of short pieces, the longer beginning:

"En l'eau, en l'eau, ces folz seditieux."

[Footnote 332: Crespin, Actiones et Monimenta (Ed. of 1560), fol. 64.]

[Footnote 333: Bulletin, ix. 27, 28.]

[Footnote 334: Merle d'Aubigne, on the authority of the hostile Florimond de Raemond, ascribes it to Farel. But the style and mode of treatment are quite in contrast with those of Farel's "Sommaire,"

republished almost precisely at this date; while many sentences are taken verbatim from another treatise, "Pet.i.t Traicte de l'Eucharistie,"

unfortunately anonymous, but which there is good reason to suppose was written by Marcourt. The author of the latter avows his authors.h.i.+p of the placard. See the full discussion by Herminjard, Correspondance des reformateurs, iii. 225, note, etc.]

[Footnote 335: Courault was foremost in his opposition. Crespin, Actiones et Monimenta, fols. 64, 65.]

[Footnote 336: "Qui estes pire que bestes, en vos badinages lesquels vous faites a l'entour de vostre _dieu de paste, duquel vous vous jouez comme un chat d'une souris_: faisans des marmiteux, et frappans contre vostre poictrine, apres l'avoir mis en trois quartiers, _comme estans bien marris_, l'appelans Agneau de Dieu, et lui demandans la paix."]

[Footnote 337: This singular placard is given _in extenso_ by Gerdesius, Hist. Evang. Renov., iv. (Doc.) 60-67; Haag, France prot., x. pieces justif., 1-6; G. Guiffrey, Cronique du Roy Francoys I^er, Appendix, 464-472.]

[Footnote 338: Journal d'un bourgeois, 442. Not _Blois_, as the Hist.

ecclesiastique, i. 10, and, following it, Soldan, Merle d'Aubigne, etc., state. Francis had left Blois as early as in September for the castle of Amboise, see Herminjard, Corresp. des reformateurs, iii. 231, 226, 236.]

[Footnote 339: "Ne me puis garder de vous dire qu'il vous souviengne de _l'opinion que j'avois que les vilains placars estoient fait par ceux guiles cherchent aux aultres_." Marg. de Navarre to Francis I., Nerac, Dec., 1541, Genin, ii. No. 114. Although Margaret's supposition proved to be unfounded, it was by no means so absurd as the reader might imagine. At least, we have the testimony of Pithou, Seigneur de Chamgobert, that a clergyman of Champagne confessed that he had committed, from pious motives, a somewhat similar act. The head of a stone image of the Virgin, known as "Our Lady of Pity," standing in one of the streets of Troyes, was found, on the morning of a great feast-day in September, 1555, to have been wantonly broken off. There was the usual indignation against the sacrilegious perpetrators of the deed.

There were the customary procession and ma.s.ses by way of atonement for the insult offered to high Heaven. But Friar Fiacre, of the _Hotel-Dieu_, finding himself some time later at the point of death, and feeling disturbed in conscience, revealed the fact that from religious considerations he had himself decapitated the image, "_in order to have the Huguenots accused of it, and thus lead to their complete extermination_!" Recordon, Protestantisme en Champagne, ou recits extraits d'un MS. de N. Pithou (Paris, 1863), 28-30.]

[Footnote 340: A. F. Didot, Essai sur la typographie, in Encyclop.

moderne, xxvi. 760, _apud_ Herminjard, iii. 60.]

[Footnote 341: That is, 1535 New Style. For it will remembered that, until 1566, the year in France began with Easter, instead of with the first day of January. Leber, Coll. de pieces rel. a l'hist. de France, viii. 505, etc.]

[Footnote 342: "Combien que ... nous eussions prohibe et defendu que nul n'eust des lors en avant a imprimer ou faire imprimer aulcuns livres en nostre royaulme, sur peine de la hart." As neither of these disgraceful edicts was formally registered by parliament, they are both of them wanting in the ordinary records of that body, and in all collections of French laws. The _first_ seems, indeed, to have disappeared altogether.

M. c.r.a.pelet, etudes sur la typographie, 34-37, reproduces the _second_, dated St. Germain-en-Laye, February 23, 1534/5, from a volume of parliamentary papers labelled "Conseil." Happily, the preamble recites the cardinal prescription of the previous and lost edict, as given above in the text. M. Merle d'Aubigne carelessly places the edict abolis.h.i.+ng printing _after_, instead of _before_, the great expiatory procession.

Hist. of the Reformation in the Time of Calvin, iii. 140.]

[Footnote 343: Felibien, Hist. de la ville de Paris, ii. 997.]

[Footnote 344: Soissons MS., Bulletin, xi. 255.]

[Footnote 345: I. e., _gainier_, sheath-or scabbard-maker. Hist.

ecclesiastique, i. 10; Journal d'un bourgeois, 444; see Varillas, Hist.

des revol. arrivees dans l'Eur. en matiere de rel., ii. 222.]

[Footnote 346: "Qui ad se ea pericula spectare non putabant, qui non contaminati erant eo scelere, hi etiam in partem pnarum veniunt.

_Delatores et quadruplatores_ publice comparantur. Cuilibet simul et testi et accusatori in hac causa esse licet." J. Sturm to Melanchthon, Paris, March 4, 1535, Bretschneider, Corpus Reformatorum, ii. 855, etc.]

[Footnote 347: The _name_ and the _affliction_ of this first victim give Martin Theodoric of Beauvais an opportunity, which he cannot neglect, to compare him with a pagan malefactor and contrast him with a biblical personage. "Hunc gladium ultorem persenserunt quam plurimi degeneres et alienigenae in flexilibus perversarum doctrinarum semitis obambulantes; inter alios, _paralyticus Luthera.n.u.s Neroniano Milone perniciosior_. Cui malesano opus erat salutifer Christus, ut _sublato erroris grabato, viam Veritatis insequutus fuisset_. At vero elatus, in funesto sacrilegi cordis desiderio perseverans, _flammis combustus_ c.u.m suis participibus seditiosis Gracchis, exemplum sui cunctis haereticis relinquens deperiit.

Et peribunt omnes sive plebeii, sive primates," etc. Paraclesis Franciae (Par. 1539), 5.]

[Footnote 348: The Journal d'un bourgeois, 444-452, gives an account, in the briefest terms and without comment, of the sentences p.r.o.nounced and executed. See also G. Guiffrey, Cronique du Roy Francois I^er, 111-113.]

[Footnote 349: The real message sent by Francis I. to his mother, after the disaster of Pavia, was quite another thing from the traditional sentence: "Tout est perdu sauf l'honneur." What he wrote was: "Madame, pour vous avertir comme je porte le ressort de mon infortune, de toutes choses ne m'est demeure que l'honneur _et la vie sauve_," etc. Papiers d'etat du Card, de Granvelle, i. 258. It is to be feared that, if saved in _Italy_, his honor was certainly lost in _Spain_, where, after vain attempts to secure release by plighting his _faith_, he deliberately took an _oath_ which he never meant to observe. So, at least, he himself informed the notables of France on the 16th of December, 1527: "Et voulurent _qu'il jurast; ce qu'il fist, sachant ledict serment n'estre valable, au moyen de la garde qui luy fust baillee, et qu'il n'estoit en sa liberte_." Isambert, Recueil des anc. lois franc., xii. 292.]

[Footnote 350: Registres de l'hotel de ville. Felibien, pieces justif., v. 345. In the preceding account these records, together with those of parliament (ibid., iv. 686-688), the narrative of Felibien himself (ii.

997-999), and the Soissons MS. (Bulletin, xi. 254, 255), have been chiefly relied upon. See also Cronique du Roy Francoys I^er, 113-121.]

[Footnote 351: "En sorte que si un des bras de mon corps estoit infecte de cette farine, je le vouldrois coupper; et si mes enfans en estoient entachez, je les vouldrois immoler." Voltaire (Hist. du parlement de Paris, i. 118), citing the substance of this atrocious sentiment from Maimbourg and Daniel, who themselves take it from Mezeray, says incredulously: "Je ne sais ou ces auteurs ont trouve que Francois premier avait p.r.o.nonce ce discours abominable." M. Poirson answers by giving as authority Theodore de Beze (Hist. eccles., i. 13). But on referring to the doc.u.mentary records from the Hotel de Ville, among the _pieces justificatives_ collected by Felibien, v. 346, the reader will find the speech of Francis inserted at considerable length, and apparently in very nearly the exact words employed. The contemporary Cronique du Roy Francoys I^er, giving the fullest version of the speech (pp. 121-12), attributes to the king about the same expressions.]

[Footnote 352: Histoire eccles., i. 13.]

[Footnote 353: Histoire eccles., _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 354: "Une espece _d'estrapade_ ou l'on attachoit les criminels, que les bourreaux, par le moyen d'une corde, guindoient en haut, et les laissoient ensuite tomber dans le feu a diverses reprises, pour faire durer leur supplice plus longtems." Felibien, ii. 999.]

[Footnote 355: Gerdes, Hist. Evang. renov., iv. 109. For the nature of the penalty, see b.a.s.t.a.r.d D'Estang, Les parlements de France, i. 425, note on punishments.]

[Footnote 356: When John Sturm wrote, March 4th, _eighteen_--when Latomus wrote, somewhat later, _twenty-four_--adherents of the Reformation had suffered capitally. Bretschneider, Corp. Reform., ii.

855, etc. "Plusieurs aultres hereticques en grant nombre furent apres bruslez a divers jours," says the Cronique du Roy Francoys I^er, p. 129, "_en sorte que dedans Paris on ne veoit que potences dressees en divers lieux_," etc.]

[Footnote 357: G. Guiffrey, Cronique du Roy Francoys I^er, 130-132; Soissons MS. in Bulletin, etc., xi. 253-254. We may recognize, among the misspelt names, those, for example, of _Pierre Caroli_, doctor of theology and parish priest of Alencon, already introduced to our notice; _Jean Retif_, a preacher; _Francois Berthault_ and _Jean Courault_, lately a.s.sociated in preaching the Gospel under the patronage of the Queen of Navarre; besides the scholar _Jacques Lefevre d'etaples_, and _Guillaume Feret_, who brought the placards from Switzerland.]

[Footnote 358: Under the head of _Sacramentarians_ were included all who, like Zwingle, denied the bodily presence of Christ in or with the elements of the eucharist.]

[Footnote 359: "De ne lire, dogmatiser, translater, composer ni imprimer, soit en public ou en prive, aucune doctrine contrariant a la foy chretionne." Declaration of Coucy, July 16, 1535, Isambert, Recueil des anc. lois franc., xii. 405-407. See also a similar declaration, May 31, 1536, ibid., xii. 504.]

[Footnote 360: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, 458, 459.]

[Footnote 361: Neantmoins Dieu le createur, luy estant en ce monde, a plus use de misericorde que de rigueur, et qu'il ne faut aucunes fois user de rigueur, et que c'est une cruelle mort de faire brusler vif un homme, dont parce il pourroit plus qu'autrement renoncer la foy et la loy. Ibid., _ubi supra_.]