History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume I Part 7

[Footnote 98: Cenac Moncaut, Histoire des Pyrenees (Paris, 1854), iv.

342, referring primarily to southern France.]

[Footnote 99: Since the end of the thirteenth century the bishop had been accustomed to delegate the contentious jurisdiction of his diocese to an ecclesiastical judge, taking the name of _vicar_, or more commonly _official_ ("vicarius generalis officialis"). The court itself became known as the _officialite_. Trials for heresy, breach of promise of marriage, etc., came before it. See the Dictionnaire de la conversation (1857), s. v. _Official_.]

[Footnote 100: Michel Surriano (1561), Rel. des Amb. Ven., Tommaseo, i.

502. The other half went to princes, barons, and other possessors of lands, etc.]

[Footnote 101: How they behaved there, the abbe of Meriot elsewhere tells us: "Et si le plus souvent a telles noyseay estoient les premiers les prebstres, l'espee au poing, car ilz estoient _des premiers aux danses, jeux de quilles, d'escrime, et es tavernes ou ilz ribloient et par les rues toute nuict aultant que les plus meschans du pays_." Mem de Claude Haton, 18.]

[Footnote 102: Memoires de Claude Haton, i. 89, 90.]

[Footnote 103: Giovanni Soranzo returned from France in 1558, or a year before the close of the reign of Henry II.]

[Footnote 104: Relazioni Venete, Alberi, ii. 409. Brantome is a familiar instance of a favorite thus rewarded from the estates of the church. His amusing vindication of the anomaly is worthy of a perusal. See Digression contre les Eslections des Benefices, uvres, tom. vii. On one occasion an enemy of the loquacious courtier caused the a.s.sa.s.sination of his _t.i.tular_ abbot, apparently in the hope of depriving Brantome of his chief source of revenue! Ibid., vii. 294.]

[Footnote 105: "Solo col ponderar loro la vita che tenevano." Relazione di G. Correro, 1569, Tommaseo, ii. 150.]

[Footnote 106: "Je n'ay point ouy dire, ny leu qu'auparavant ils fussent plus gens-de-bien, et mieux vivants; car en leurs Eveschez et Abbayes, ils estoient autant desbauchez que Gens-d'armes; car comme j'ay dit cydevant, qu'a la cour s'ils faisoient l'amour, c'estoit discretement et sans scandale," etc. Brantome, _ubi supra_, vii. 312.]

[Footnote 107: "Au moins plus sages hypocrites, qui cachent mieux leurs vices noirs." Brantome, _ubi supra_, vii. 287-289.]

[Footnote 108: Brantome, _ubi supra_, vii. 280.]

[Footnote 109: Brantome, vii. 286.]

[Footnote 110: Reponse a quelque apologie, etc. Par Antoine de Mouchy, surnomme Demochares, docteur en theologie, 1558. Feuillet 2. _Apud_ Henri Lutteroth, La reformation en France pendant sa premiere periode (Paris, 1859), 137.]

[Footnote 111: "Je suis esbahi de ce que ces jeunes gens nous alleguent le Nouveau Testament. J'avoys plus de cinquante ans que je ne scavoys que c'estoit du Nouveau Testament." Robert etienne, _apud_ Baum, Origines Evangelii in Gallia restaurati (Strasbourg, 1838), 35.]

[Footnote 112: "Un beau miracle," says the Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, 38.]

[Footnote 113: Histoire ecclesiastique des eglises Reformees au royaume de France (commonly ascribed to Theodore de Beze, or Beza) Lille edit., i. 11; Gaillard, vi. 460. A MS. narrative of the farce, dictated by Calvin and taken down by his secretary, Charles de Jonvillers, has been discovered in the Geneva Library. It is printed in the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. franc., iii. (1854), 33, etc. Calvin, who had himself been a student in the University of Orleans, and was fully acquainted with the circ.u.mstances, drew up this piquant monograph for J.

Sleidan to use in his famous history of the times, where an account may accordingly be read.]

[Footnote 114: See the order of Spifame, of Oct. 5, 1527, for payment to the master mechanic on several annual recurrences of the scene, Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. franc., xxv. (1876), 236, with M.

Bordier's erratum.]

[Footnote 115: Farel, Du vray Usage de la Croix, 129, 131.]

[Footnote 116: "Credo in Jesum inter animalia ex virgine nasciturum."

Cha.s.sanee, Catalogus Gloriae Mundi, fol. 295. The medals were said to have been unearthed at Autun, the residence of Cha.s.sanee, who informs us "multum curavi invenire, sed non potui." But, in addition to the coins, Cha.s.sanee gravely tells us there was also a _church_ built by the _Franks_ at Chartres before the advent of Christ, in honor of the most blessed Virgin _pariturae_; "from which it is demonstrated that, if other Gentiles prophesied _in word_ concerning Christ, the Franks believed on him _in deed_, just as also the Greeks, who erected a temple to the unknown G.o.d." Ibid., _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 117: From the simple costume worn arose the designation of "_les processions blanches_."]

[Footnote 118: Le protestantisme en Champagne: Recits extraits d'un ma.n.u.scrit de N. Pithou, seigneur de Chamgobert concernant l'histoire de la fondation, etc., de l'eglise ref. de Troyes des 1539 a 1595, par Ch.

L. B. Recordon (Paris, 1863), 31-33.]

[Footnote 119: The original of this remarkable record, the more significant from the subsequent position of Louise as a determined enemy of the Protestants, may be seen in Journal de Louise de Savoie, Coll. de memoires (Pet.i.tot), xvi. 407.]

[Footnote 120: See Mezeray's bitter words respecting Cardinal Duprat's last hours and character, Abrege chronologique, iv. 584.]

[Footnote 121: "Poi me disse che per opera del Reverendissimo di Granmont non si faria cosa buona in questa cosa, perche et lui et _il Gran Cancellario di Francia_ erano huomini _piu disposti a fare quattro guerre die una pace_." Cardinal Campeggio to Cardinal Salviati, _apud_ H. Laemmer, Monumenta Vaticana hist. eccles. saeculi XVI. ill.u.s.trantia, ex tab. sanctae sedis Apostolicae secretis, Frib. Brisg., 1861, 67.]

[Footnote 122: The Manichaeism of the Albigenses is maintained by Mosheim, Gieseler, Schmidt, etc. A good summary of the evidence in favor of this view is given in an article in the London Quarterly Review for April, 1855. The defence of the Albigenses from this serious charge is ably conducted by George Stanley Faber in his "Inquiry into the History and Theology of the Ancient Vallenses and Albigenses" (London, 1838).

One of the more recent apologists is F. de Portal, in his "Les descendants des Albigeois et des Huguenots" (Paris, 1860).]

[Footnote 123: At Arras, for instance, in 1460, a number of men and women were burned alive as _Vaudois_, after having been entrapped into an admission of their guilt by a treacherous advocate. Too late they exposed the deceit practised upon them, and protested their innocence.

The alleged crimes were: flying to their place of a.s.sembly by witchcraft, adoring the devil, trampling upon the cross, blasphemy, riotous feasting, and vile offences against morality--staple charges recurring again and again, _ad nauseam_, whenever persecuted men and women have been compelled to meet secretly for G.o.d's wors.h.i.+p. See L.

Rossier, Histoire des protestants de Picardie (Paris, 1861), 1-4; and more at length, Chronicon Cornelii Zantfliet, which styles the sufferers heretics a hundred times worse than Waldenses. Martene et Durand, Vet.

Scriptorum ampliss. collectio (Paris, 1729), vii. 501.]

[Footnote 124: If, as Adolphe Muntz concludes, after a critical examination of style, etc. (Nicolas de Clemangis; sa vie et ses ecrits, Paris, 1846), the famous treatise De ruina Ecclesiae, or _De corrupto Ecclesiae statu_, emanated not from Clemangis at Avignon, but from some member of the University of Paris hostile to the Popes of Avignon, yet the undisputed writings of Clemangis contain denunciations of the corruptions of the church quite as decided as any found in the spurious treatise. In his tract _De Praesulibus Simoniacis_, for example, he declares that the degradation of the clergy, fostered by the cupidity of the episcopate, had indeed made G.o.d's house a den of robbers. It was "rapinae officina in qua venalia exponuntur sacramenta ... in qua peccata etiam venduntur," etc. Muntz, 53. Certainly it would be hard to portray the life of the priests in darker colors than they appear in the letters of C. to Gerson, the authenticity of which is not challenged. See the extracts in Von Polenz, Calvinismus in Frankreich, i. 115. According to Nicholas de Clemangis, the _chaste_ priest was a rare exception, and an object of ridicule to his companions.]

[Footnote 125: The complicated motives inducing the Council of Constance to acquiesce in the cruel sentence of Huss were skilfully traced as far back as by the learned Mosheim, Inst.i.tutes of Eccles. Hist. (ed.

Murdoch), ii. 429, note.]

[Footnote 126: This rare poem has been reprinted, with the unimportant pa.s.sages omitted, in the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. franc., v. (1857) 268, etc.]

[Footnote 127:

"Cessez, cessez me donner ornemens, Calices, croix, et beaux accoutremens; Faictes que j'aye ministres vertueux....

Les images d'argent tant sumptueux, La grant beaute des moustiers si notables Ne sont pas tant devant Dieu acceptables Que la doctrine et vie bonne et saincte Des bona prelatz."

CHAPTER II.

THE REFORMATION AT MEAUX.

[Sidenote: Jacques Lefevre d'etaples.]

The reformatory movement, whose almost simultaneous rise at so many different points const.i.tutes one of the most noticeable features of the history of Europe in the sixteenth century, originated, so far as France was concerned, within the bosom of that famous nursery of mediaeval learning, the University of Paris. Among the teachers who, during the later years of the reign of Louis the Twelfth, attracted the studious from the most distant parts of Christendom, Jacques Lefevre, a native of etaples in Picardy, held a high rank for natural ability and extensive acquirements. It is true that neither his personal appearance nor his extraction commanded respect: he was diminutive in stature, and he could boast of no n.o.ble blood running in his veins.[128] A more formidable hinderance in the path to distinction had been the barbarous instruction he had received from incompetent masters, both in the inferior schools and in the university itself. But all obstacles, physical, social, and intellectual, melted away before the ardor of an extraordinarily active mind. Rising steadily above the contracted views, the blind respect for authority, and the self-satisfied ignorance of the instructors of his youth and the colleagues of his manhood and old age, he greeted with delight the advent of those liberal ideas which had wrought so wonderful a change in Germany and Italy. A thirst for knowledge even led him, in imitation of the sages of the early world, to travel to distant parts of Europe, and, if we may credit the statements of his admiring disciples, to pursue his investigations into portions of Asia and Africa.

[Sidenote: Restores letters to France.]

[Sidenote: His wide range of study.]

To Jacques Lefevre, of etaples--better known to foreigners under the Latin designation of Faber Stapulensis--belongs the honor of restoring letters to France. His eulogist, Scaevola de Sainte-Marthe, has not exaggerated his merit, when, placing him in the front rank of the learned men whom he celebrates, he likens the Picard doctor to a new sun rising from the Belgian coast to dissipate the fogs and darkness investing his native land and pour upon its youth the full beams of a purer teaching.[129] Lefevre confined his attention to no single branch of learning. He was equally proficient in mathematics, in astronomy, and in Biblical literature and criticism.[130] Brilliant attainments in so many departments were commended yet more to the admiration of beholders by a modest and una.s.suming deportment, by morals above reproach, and by a disinterested nature in which there was no taint of avarice. The sincerity of his unselfish love of knowledge was said to be attested by the liberality with which he renounced the entire income of his small patrimony in favor of his needy relations.[131]

[Sidenote: His pupil, Guillaume Farel.]

Enjoying a reputation for profound and exact learning which had spread to foreign countries, and admired even by the great humanist Erasmus, Lefevre had drawn to him a small band of the most promising of the scholars in attendance upon the university. Prominent among these for brilliancy and fiery zeal was a student more than thirty years younger than his teacher, Guillaume Farel, destined to fill an important place in the annals of the French reformation, and to play a leading role in the history of Geneva and Neufchatel. Farel was born in 1489, near Gap, in Dauphiny, and his childhood was spent at the foot of the Alps.

Unlike Lefevre, he belonged to a family of considerable importance in the provincial n.o.bility. The contrast was still more marked between the mild and timid professor and the pupil in whose nature courage was so prominent an element that it often a.s.sumed the appearance of imprudent contempt of danger.

[Sidenote: Devotion of scholar and pupil.]