History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume I Part 3

[Sidenote: Struggle with the parliaments.]

Failing in the attempt to forestall the expression of disapprobation of the judiciary by securing the favorable verdict of a picked a.s.sembly of influential persons, the king, nevertheless, proceeded to carry into execution that clause of the concordat which enjoined ratification by the parliaments. Letters patent were first dispatched commanding all judges to conform to its provisions, and these were followed shortly by copies of the instrument itself and of the revocation of the Pragmatic Sanction, for registry. At this point properly began one of the most notable contests between the crown and parliaments of France. The Parliament of Paris, taking the ground that so fundamental a change in the national customs demanded mature consideration, deferred action.

With the view of exercising a pressure on its deliberations, Francis now commissioned his uncle, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d of Savoy, to be present at the sessions. Against this unprecedented breach of privilege parliament sent a deputation humbly to remonstrate; but all to no purpose. The irritated prince, who entertained the most extravagant views of the royal prerogative, declared his intention to satisfy himself concerning the real disposition of his judges, and a.s.sured the deputies that he had firmly resolved to despatch the disobedient to the inferior parliaments of Bordeaux and Toulouse, and fill their places with "men of worth." "I am your king," was his constant exclamation, and this pa.s.sed with him for an unanswerable argument in support of his views. But the members of parliament were not easily moved. Undoubtedly the success attending their previous resistance to the repeal of the Pragmatic Sanction, on at least three occasions in the reign of Louis the Eleventh, emboldened them in the present instance. Unawed by the presence of the b.a.s.t.a.r.d of Savoy, they refused to concede the registration of the concordat, and declared that they must continue to observe the Pragmatic Sanction, endorsed, as that ordinance had been, by the representatives of the entire nation. Not only did they protest against suffering the Sanction to be annulled, but they insisted upon the convocation of the clergy in a body similar to that a.s.sembled by Charles the Seventh, as an indispensable preliminary to the investigation of the matter.

[Sidenote: Haughty demeanor of the king.]

Francis, who happened to be at his castle of Amboise, on the Loire, now sent word that parliament should appoint a deputation to convey to him the reasons of its refusal. But when the delegates reached the castle-gate, an entire month elapsed before Francis would condescend to grant them audience. They were at length admitted, only to be treated with studied contempt. "There can be but one king in France," was the arrogant language of the young prince to the judges who had grown gray in the service of Charles the Eighth and the good King Louis. "You speak as if you were not my subjects, and as if I dared not try you and sentence you to lose your heads." And when the indignity of his words awakened the spirited remonstrance of the deputies, Francis rejoined: "I am king: I can dispose of my parliament at my pleasure. Begone, and return to Paris at break of day."

A formal command was now addressed to the Parliament of Paris, and the bearer, La Tremouille, informed that body, as it listened to the message, that Francis had repeated to him more than ten times within a quarter of an hour, "that he would not for half his kingdom fail of his word to the Pope, and that if parliament rebelled, he would find means to make it repent of its obstinacy." Under these circ.u.mstances, further resistance from a body so completely dependent on the sovereign was not to be thought of. Yet, even when compelled to yield, parliament, at the suggestion of the _gens du roi_, coupled the registry of the concordat with a declaration that it was made at the express command of the king several times reiterated, that parliament disapproved of the revocation of the Pragmatic Sanction; and that, in the adjudication of causes, it would continue to follow the ordinance of Charles the Seventh, while appealing to the Pope under better advis.e.m.e.nt, and to a future council of the church. Thus the concordat, projected at Bologna in 1515, and signed at Rome on the sixteenth of August, 1516, was registered by the Parliament of Paris _de expressissimo mandato regis_, on the twenty-second of March, 1518.[65]

[Sidenote: The university remonstrates.]

Even now Francis had not quite silenced all opposition. The rector of the University of Paris, not content with entering a formal remonstrance,[66] took a bolder step. Making use of a prerogative long since conceded to the university, of exercising a censure over the press, he posted a notice to all printers and publishers forbidding the reproduction of the concordat on pain of loss of their privileges. The dean and canons of the cathedral church of Paris also handed in a protest. The preachers of several churches rivalled the rector in audacity, by publicly inveighing against the dangers of the ecclesiastical innovations introduced by the king. It is not surprising that a prince impatient even of wholesome rebuke was enraged at this monkish tirade. Parliament was ordered to bring the culprits to justice; but, strange to say, none could be discovered--a circ.u.mstance certainly attributable rather to the supineness of the judges than to any lack of witnesses. To the university Francis wrote in a haughty vein, threatening the severe punishment of any of its doctors that dared preach against the government; while, by an edict from Amboise, he forbade the rector and his a.s.sociates from a.s.sembling for the discussion of political questions.

These were the closing scenes of the exciting drama. The king had triumphed, but not without encountering a spirited opposition from parliament, university, and clergy. If these had succ.u.mbed, it had only been before superior strength, and each of the bodies reserved to itself the right of treating the concordat as a nullity and the Pragmatic Sanction as still the ecclesiastical const.i.tution of the land.

[Sidenote: The resistance not altogether fruitless.]

Nor was this altogether an empty claim. Some of the provisions of the concordat were never enforced, and that was a solid advantage gained through the opposition. The parliaments persisted in rendering judgment, in such cases as came before them, in conformity with the Pragmatic Sanction. The Bishop of Albi, chosen by the canons, was confirmed in his see, notwithstanding the pretensions of a nominee of the crown. And yet the concordat was not merely maintained by the Pope and the king, but, a few years later, its provisions were extended to monastic foundations previously possessed of an undisputed t.i.tle to elect. This was done to gratify Francis on the marriage of his second son Henry to Catharine de'

Medici, niece of Clement, the reigning pontiff. The somewhat suspicious story is told, that, to aid in carrying out this new act of injustice, Cardinal Duprat, having ordered all ecclesiastical bodies to send him the original doc.u.ments attesting their right of election, at once consigned the parchments to the fire, in order to destroy all memory of these troublesome claims. If the tale be apocryphal, it at least indicates sufficiently well the estimation in which the prelate's character was held by his contemporaries.

[Sidenote: Advantages gained by the crown.]

The clergy reluctantly admitted the concordat into their books after the lapse of two centuries, but solely, as they declared, for convenience of reference. The restoration of the Pragmatic Sanction continued to be demanded by one or all the orders of the States General, during the reigns of Francis the Second, Charles the Ninth, and their successors, not least on the ground that the day that witnessed its repeal also beheld the introduction of the "heresy" that had since attained such formidable proportions.[67] But, if opposed and denounced, the concordat was carried into execution, so far as most of its provisions were concerned, until the French revolution. The advantages gained by the crown were too palpable to be voluntarily relinquished. Almost the entire patronage of the church was thrown into the hands of the king, who, in the reign of Louis the Fifteenth, held at his disposal eighteen archbishoprics, 112 bishoprics, 1,666 abbeys for men, and 317 abbeys and priories for women.[68] It must not be forgotten that the _annats_, or first-fruits of benefices, now regularly falling into the pontifical treasury, made the concordat scarcely less valuable to the Papal See.[69]

[Sidenote: Era of the Renaissance.]

The most enviable distinction of the reign of Francis the First consisted in the fact that it was the era of that extraordinary development of the fine arts and of literature known as the _Renaissance_. Ill.u.s.trious during the Middle Ages, and foremost in the pursuit of scholastic learning, France had unfortunately lost that proud eminence when the revival of letters enkindled elsewhere a new pa.s.sion for discovery. Her adventurous sons had taken the lead in the crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but three hundred years later no expeditions were fitted out in her ports to explore and appropriate the virgin territories beyond the western sea. The art of printing and the impulse given to astronomical research originated abroad. The famous mediaeval seat of learning seemed to have been suddenly visited with a premature decay. Even the exiled scholars of the East, fleeing before Turkish barbarism, disdained to settle in a country where the treasures of ancient science which they had brought with them from Mount Athos and Constantinople were so inadequately appreciated.[70]

[Sidenote: Francis's attainments overrated.]

[Sidenote: A munificent patron of art.]

The reign of Francis the First, however, was destined to remove much of the reproach which had been incurred by reason of this singular tardiness in entering the path of improvement. Born of parents possessed of unusual intelligence and yet rarer education, and stimulated by the companions.h.i.+p of an elder sister whose extensive acquirements furnished the theme of countless panegyrics, Francis early conceived the design of making his court ill.u.s.trious for the generous patronage extended to the disciples of the liberal arts. His own attainments have been overrated, and posterity has too credulously believed all that admiring and interested courtiers chose to invent in his praise. But, if he was himself ignorant of anything beyond the mere rudiments even of Latin, the universal language of science, he possessed at least one signal merit: he was a munificent friend of those whom poverty would otherwise have precluded from cultivating their resplendent abilities. I shall not repeat the familiar names of the eminent painters and sculptors whom he encouraged and enriched, nor give a list of the skilful architects employed in the construction of his magnificent palaces of St. Germain and Fontainebleau, of Chambord and Chenonceaux. Poetry, not less than painting and architecture, witnessed his liberality. Clement Marot, whose name has been regarded as marking the first truly remarkable epoch in the history of this department of French art,[71] was a favorite at the court of Francis and Margaret of Angouleme, and repaid their gifts with unbounded eulogy. The more solid studies of the philosopher and the linguist were fostered with equal care. Vatable, Melchior Wolmar, and other scholars of note were invited to France, to give instruction in Greek and Hebrew. Erasmus himself might have been induced to yield to the king's importunate messages, could he have been able to divest himself of the apprehension of annoyance from the bigoted "Sorbonnists;"

while even Melanchthon was, at a later period, on the point of accepting a pressing summons to visit the French court on a mission of reconciliation.

[Sidenote: Foundation of the College Royal.]

Among the most notable achievements of this prince was the foundation of a school of learning intended to supply the deficiencies of the instruction given by the university. In the "College Royal" Francis desired to leave a lasting token of his devotion to letters. Here he founded chairs of three languages--of Greek and Hebrew at first, and afterward of Latin--whence was derived the name of _Trilingue_, under which the college was celebrated in the writings of the day. The monarch's plan encountered the obstacles which prejudice always knows how to set in the way of improvement. The university doctors, fearing that their own prelections would be forsaken for the more brilliant lectures of the salaried professors of the royal school, demanded that the latter should submit to an examination before the more ancient body of instructors; but parliament wisely rejected their pretensions.

Liberal men throughout the world rejoiced at the defeat of the Sorbonne and its representative, Beda,[72] while Marot, alluding to the quarrel in a poetical epistle to the king, poured out in verse his contempt for the "Theologasters" of Paris:

"L'ignorante Sorbonne; Bien ignorante elle est d'estre ennemie De la _Trilingue_ et n.o.ble Academie Qu'as erigee....

O povres gens de savoir tout ethiques!

Bien faites vray ce proverbe courant: '_Science n'ha hayneux que l'ignorant!_'"

It would be unfair to French scholars.h.i.+p to omit all notice of the fact that there were not wanting natives of France itself whose sound learning ent.i.tled them to rank with the most conscientious of German humanists; such men as Lefevre d'etaples, a prodigy of almost universal acquirements; or Louis de Berquin, who furnishes a signal instance of a n.o.bleman of high position that did not shun the toil and danger of a more than ordinarily profound investigation of theological truth. Both will claim our attention again.

[Sidenote: An age of blood.]

Yet, by the side or these manifestations of a growing appreciation of art, science, and letters, it must be confessed that there were indications, no less distinct, of a lamentable neglect of moral training, and of a state of manners scarcely raised above that of uncivilized communities of men. It was still an age of blood. The pages of chronicles, both public and private, teem with proofs of the insignificant value set upon human life and happiness. In many parts of France the peasant rarely enjoyed quiet for even a few consecutive months. Organized bands of robbers, familiarly known as "Mauvais Garcons," infested whole provinces, and laid towns and villages under contribution. Not unfrequently two or three hundred men were to be found in a single band, and the robberies, outrages, and murders they committed defy recital. Often the miscreants were _aventuriers_, or volunteers whose employers had failed to furnish them their stipulated pay, and who avenged their losses by exactions levied upon the unfortunate peasantry. Indeed, if we may believe the almost incredible statements of one of the laws enacted for their suppression, they had been known to carry by a.s.sault even walled cities, and to exercise against the miserable inhabitants cruelty such as disgraces the very name of man.[73]

[Sidenote: Barbarous punishments.]

The character or the punishments inflicted for the commission of crime furnishes a convenient test of national civilization. If France in the sixteenth century be tried by this criterion, the conclusion is inevitable that for her the age of barbarism had not yet completely pa.s.sed away. The catalogue of crimes to which death was affixed as the penalty is frightfully long; some of them were almost trivial offences.

A boy less than sixteen years of age was hung for stealing jewelry from his master.[74] On the other hand, with flagrant inconsistency, a n.o.bleman, Rene de Bonneville, superintendent of the royal mint, for the murder of his brother-in-law, was dragged to the place of execution on a hurdle, but suffered the less ignominious fate of decapitation. A part of his property was given to his sister, and the rest confiscated to the crown, with the exception of four hundred livres, reserved for the purchase of ma.s.ses to be said for the benefit of the soul of his murdered victim.[75]

[Sidenote: Especially for heresy.]

For other culprits extraordinary refinements of cruelty were reserved.

The _aventuriers_, when so ill-starred as to fall into the hands of justice, were customarily burned alive at the stake.[76] The same fate overtook those who were detected in frauds against the public treasury.

More frightful than all the rest was the vengeance taken by the law upon the counterfeiter of the king's coin. The legal penalty, which is said to have become a dead letter on the pages of the statute-book long before the French revolution, was in the sixteenth century rigidly enforced: on the 9th of November, 1527, a rich merchant of Paris, having been found guilty of the crime in question, was boiled alive before the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude in the _Marche-aux-pourceaux_.[77] Heresy and blasphemy were treated with no greater degree of leniency than the most infamous of crimes. Even before the reformation a lingering death in the flames had been the doom p.r.o.nounced upon the person who dared to accept or promulgate doctrines condemned by the church. But when the bitterness of strife had awakened the desire to enhance the punishment of dissent, new or extraordinary tortures were resorted to, of the application of which this history will furnish only too many examples. The forehead was branded, the tongue torn out, the hand cut off at the wrist, or the agonies of death prolonged by alternately dropping the wretched victim into the fire and drawing him out again, until exhausted nature found tardy release in death.

But if we can to some extent account for the excess of cruelty which blind frenzy inflicted on the inflexible martyr to his faith, it is certainly more difficult to explain the severity exercised upon the more pliable, whom the arguments of ghostly advisers, or the terrors of the _Place de Greve_, had induced to recant. Generally the judge did nothing more in their behalf than commute their punishment by ordering them to be strangled before their bodies were consigned to the flames.[78] Yet in one exceptional case--that of a servant whose master, a gentleman and one of the men-at-arms of the Regent of Scotland, was burned alive--the court went to such a length of leniency as to let the repentant heretic off with the sentence that he first be beaten with rods at the cart's end, and afterwards have his tongue cut out.[79] Even the clearest evidence of insanity did not suffice to remove or even mitigate the penalties of impiety. A poor, crazy woman, who had broken the consecrated wafer when administered to her in her illness, and had applied to it some offensive but absurd epithet, was unhesitatingly condemned to the stake. An appeal to a superior court procuring no reversal of her sentence, she was burned at Tours in the year 1533.[80]

[Sidenote: Belief in astrology.]

[Sidenote: Predictions of Nostradamus.]

Other marks of a low stage of civilization were not wanting. The belief in judicial astrology was almost universal.[81] Pretenders like Nostradamus obtained respect and wealth at the hands of their dupes. All France trembled with Catharine de' Medici, when the astrologer gave out that the queen would see all her sons kings, and every one foreboded the speedy extinction of the royal line. The "prophecy," as it was gravely styled, obtained public recognition, and was discussed in diplomatic papers. When two of the queen's sons had in fact become kings of France, and a third had been elected to the throne of Poland, while the marriage of the fourth with Queen Elizabeth was under consideration, Catharine's allies saw grounds to congratulate her that the prediction which had so disquieted her was likely to obtain a more pleasing fulfilment than in the successive deaths of her male descendants.[82]

A still more pernicious form of superst.i.tion was noticeable in the credit enjoyed by charms and incantations, not merely among illiterate rustics, but even with persons of high social station. No phase of the magic art led to the commission of more terrible crimes or revealed a worse side of human character than that which pretended to secure the happiness or accomplish the ruin, to prolong the life or hasten the death, of the objects of private love or hatred. While systematically practising upon the credulity of his dupes, the professed master of this ill-omened art frequently resorted to a.s.sa.s.sination by poison or dagger in the accomplishment of his schemes. Sorcery by means of waxen images was particularly in vogue. Thus, the Queen of Navarre, the sister of Francis the First, in her singular collection of tales, the "Heptameron," gives a circ.u.mstantial account of the mode in which her own life was sought by this species of witchcraft.[83] Five puppets had been provided: three, representing enemies (the queen being one of the number), had their arms hanging down; the other two, representing persons whose favor was desired, had them raised aloft. With certain cabalistic words and occult rites the puppets were next secretly hidden beneath an altar whereon the ma.s.s was celebrated, and the mysterious "sacrifice" was believed to complete the efficacy of the charm. It was no new superst.i.tion imported from abroad, but one that had existed in France for centuries.[84]

[Sidenote: Reverence for relics.]

The French were behind no other nation in reverence for relics of saints and for pictures and images representing them. In the partial list, compiled by a contemporary, of the curiosities of this nature scattered through Christendom,[85] the majority of the relics mentioned are selected from the immense treasures laid up in the thousands of cathedrals, parish churches, and abbeys within the domains of the "Very Christian King." In one place the hair of the blessed Virgin was carefully preserved; in another the sword of the archangel Michael, or the entire body of St. Dionysius. It was true that the Pope had by solemn bull, about a century before, declared, in the presence of the French amba.s.sador, that the entire body of this last-named saint was in the possession of the inhabitants of Ratisbon; but, had any one been so rash as to affirm at Saint Denis, near Paris, that the veritable remains were not there, he would certainly have been stoned.[86] At Notre-Dame de l'Ile, above Lyons, no little account was made of the _twelve combs_ of the apostles![87]

The reflecting man who found, by a comparison of the treasures of different churches within his own personal observation, that some of the pretended relics were frivolous or impossible, and that the same members of some favorite saint were reproduced at points widely distant, might well speculate upon the probable benefits to Christendom from a complete inventory of the contents of the churches of two or three thousand bishoprics, of twenty or thirty thousand abbeys, and of more than forty thousand convents.[88] He might find difficulty in believing that our Lord was crucified with fourteen nails; that "an entire hedge" should have been requisite to plait the crown of thorns; that a single spear should have begotten three others; or that from a solitary napkin there should have issued a whole brood of the same kind.[89] He would be scandalized on learning that each apostle had more than four bodies, and the saints at least two or three apiece.[90] And his faith in the genuineness of the objects of popular adoration would be still further shaken, if, on subjecting them to a closer examination, he discovered that, as was the case at Geneva, he had been wors.h.i.+pping a bone of a deer as the arm of Saint Anthony, or a piece of pumice for the brain of the apostle Peter.[91]

But, whatever sceptical conclusions might be reached by the learned and discerning, the devotion of the common people showed no signs of flagging. In the parish church of St. Stephen at Noyon, it was not the Christian proto-martyr alone that was decorated with a cap and other gewgaws, when his yearly festival came around, but likewise the "tyrants," as they were styled by the people, who stoned him. And the poor women, seeing them thus adorned, took them to be companions of the saint, and each one had his candle. The devil with whom St. Michael contended fared equally well.[92] The very stones that were the instruments of St. Stephen's death were adored at Arles and elsewhere.[93] It was, however, to the Parisians that the palm in this species of superst.i.tion rightfully belonged. The knife wherewith an impious Jew had stabbed a consecrated wafer was held in higher esteem than the wafer itself! And so marked was the preference that it aroused the displeasure of one of the most bigoted doctors of the Sorbonne, De Quercu, who reproached the Parisians for being worse than the Jews themselves, "inasmuch as they adored the knife that had served to rend the precious body of Jesus Christ."[94]

[Sidenote: The consecrated wafer.]

When such superst.i.tious respect was paid to the relics of saints, it is not surprising that the consecrated wafer or host received the most extravagant marks of adoration. The king himself was often foremost in public demonstrations in its honor. Louise de Savoie, mother of Francis the First, relates in her quaint diary the pompous ceremonial observed in restoring to its original position a pyx containing the host which had been stolen from the chapel of the palace of St. Germain-en-Laye.

The culprit had suffered the customary penalty, having had his hand cut off and being afterward burned alive. In the expiatory procession which took place a few days later, Francis himself walked with uncovered head and carrying a lighted taper in his hand, from Nanterre to St. Germain.

If we may credit his mother's somewhat partial account, the sight of the monarch's signal piety was so touching as to bring tears to the eyes of admiring spectators.[95]

In view of the general prevalence of debasing forms of superst.i.tion among the people, it is not inappropriate to consider the condition of that cla.s.s of the population which is wont to exert the most potent influence in forming the moral sentiments and moulding the character of the unlettered ma.s.ses. We have already touched upon the external relations of the clergy to the king and to the Pope; let us now look more narrowly into its internal state.

[Sidenote: Wealth and power of the clergy.]

At the period of which I am now treating, the clergy, both regular and secular, had attained unprecedented wealth and power. Never, perhaps, had France been more fully represented in the "Sacred College."

a.s.suredly never since the residence of the Popes in Avignon had the French members possessed such immense riches. Thirteen French cardinals sat in the papal consistory at one time in the reign of Francis the First; twelve at the accession of his son to the throne.[96] Their influence in the kingdom was almost beyond conception, both on account of the mult.i.tude of benefices they held, and the distinction of the families from whom they sprang and whose t.i.tles they retained. Some were the inc.u.mbents of as many as _ten_ bishoprics and abbeys; while the cardinals of Bourbon, of Lorraine, of Chatillon, of Du Bellay, and of Armagnac were of the best blood in the realm, and enjoyed in their own right, or by reason of their office, very extensive jurisdiction.

[Sidenote: Non-residence of the prelates.]

A standing reproach against the prelates was their non-residence in the dioceses committed to their pastoral supervision. In fact, when the Council of Trent, by one of its first decrees, forbade a plurality of benefices and enjoined residence, its action was regarded as an open declaration of war against the French episcopate.[97] But if this abuse is deplored by Roman Catholic historians as the fruitful cause of the introduction and rapid progress of Protestantism,[98] the reformers, viewing their work as an instrument specially designed by heaven for the purification of a corrupt church, might well be justified in regarding the negligence of the bishops as a wise providential arrangement. Many a feeble germ of truth was spared the violence of persecution until the kindly sun and the plentiful showers had conferred greater powers of endurance. Happily for the reformers, the duty of watching for the first appearance of reputed heresy, which belonged properly to the bishops, was but poorly discharged by many of the deputies to whom they entrusted it. Nor could a delegated authority always accomplish what might have been done by a princ.i.p.al.[99]

[Sidenote: Revenues of the clergy.]