History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume I Part 37

[Footnote 585: It was in view of this response of the king that Bullinger wrote to Calvin: "He lives that delivered His people from Egypt; He lives who brought back the captivity from Babylon; He lives who defended His church against Caesars, kings, and profligate princes.

Verily we must needs pa.s.s through many afflictions into the kingdom of G.o.d. But _woe to those who touch the apple of G.o.d's eye_!" See Calvin's Letters (Eng. trans.), ii. 349, note.]

[Footnote 586: Prof. Baum has graphically described the unsuccessful intercession of the Swiss cantons in his Theodor Beza, i. 177-179.]

[Footnote 587: Histoire eccles. des egl. ref., i. 57.]

[Footnote 588: Ibid., _ubi supra_; Crespin, Actiones et Mon., fols.

185-217 (also in Galerie Chretienne, i. 268-330); De Thou, ii. 180, 181.

The description of the closing scenes of the lives of the Five Scholars of Lausanne is among the most touching pa.s.sages in the French martyrology, but the limits of this history do not admit of its insertion (see Baum, i. 179-181, and Soldan, i. 236-238). Their progress to the place of execution was marked by the recital of psalms, the benediction, "The G.o.d of peace, that brought again from the dead, etc.,"

and the Apostles' creed; and, after mutual embraces and farewells, their last words, as their naked bodies, smeared with grease and sulphur, hung side by side over the flames, were: "Be of good courage, brethren, be of good courage!"]

[Footnote 589: Beza to Bullinger, Dec. 24, 1553, and May 8, 1554; Baum, Theodor Beza, i. 431, 438.]

[Footnote 590: The bull of Julius the Third sanctioning the use of these proscribed articles of food--at whose instigation it was given is uncertain--was regarded by the Parliament of Paris as allowing a "scandalous relaxation" of morals, and the keeper of the seals gave orders, by cry of the herald, that all booksellers and printers be forbidden to sell copies of it (Feb. 7, 1553). But this was not sufficient, since the bull was afterward publicly burned by order of Henry the Second and the parliament. Reg. of Parliament, in Felibien, Hist. de Paris, iv. 763; see also ibid., ii. 1033.]

[Footnote 591: Floquet, Hist. du parlement de Normandie, ii. 258-260.]

[Footnote 592: Garnier, Hist. de France, xxvii. 49, etc., whose account of the attempted introduction of the Spanish Inquisition into France is the most correct and comprehensive.]

[Footnote 593: Ibid., _ubi supra_; De Thou, ii. 375. The edict establis.h.i.+ng the Spanish inquisition is not contained in any collection of laws, as it was never formally registered. Dulaure (Hist. de Paris, iv. 133, 134) gives, apparently from the Reg. criminels du parl., registre cote 101, au 20 mai 1555, an extract from it: "Que les inquisiteurs de la foi et juges ecclesiastiques peuvent librement proceder a la punition des heretiques, tant clercs que lacs, jusqu'a sentence definitive inclusivement; que les accuses qui, avant cette sentence, appelleront comme d'abus resteront toujours prisonniers, et leur appel sera porte au parlement. Mais, non.o.bstant cet appel, si l'accuse est declare heretique par les inquisiteurs, et pour ne pas r.e.t.a.r.der son chatiment, il sera livre au bras seculier." (Soldan, from Lamothe-Langon, iii. 458, reads _exclusivement_, which must be wrong, if, indeed, the whole be not a mere paraphrase, which I suspect.)]

[Footnote 594: By the advice of the Cardinal of Lorraine, the Parliament of Paris had been divided into two sections, holding their sessions each for six months, and each vested with the powers of the entire body. This change went into effect July 2, 1554, and lasted three years. It was made ostensibly to relieve the judges and expedite business, but really in the interest of despotism, to diminish the authority of the undivided court sitting throughout the year. De Thou, ii. 246, 247.]

[Footnote 595: The post of Inquisitor-General of the Faith in France, having his seat at Toulouse, had, as we have already seen, long existed.

It was filled in 1536 by friar Vidal de Becanis (the letters patent appointing whom are given in the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot.

fr., i. (1853), 358). He was succeeded by Louis de Rochetti, who left the Roman Catholic Church, and was burned alive at Toulouse, Sept. 10, 1538. Afterward Becanis was reinstated (Ibid., _ubi supra_). A circular letter of this inquisitor-general, accompanying a list of heretical and prohibited works, is given, Ibid., i. 362, 363, 437, etc.]

[Footnote 596: Garnier, Hist. de France, xxvii. 49-54.]

[Footnote 597: The date, Oct. 16th, usually given (by De Thou, Garnier, etc.) for this harangue is incorrect. The publication of the valuable "Memoires-journaux du Duc de Guise," which Messrs. Michaud and Poujoulat (1851) have brought out of their obscurity, affords us the advantage of reading the account of the deputation and speech of Seguier in the words of his own report, from the Registers of Parliament (pp. 246-249). From this we learn that Seguier and Du Drac left Paris on Sat.u.r.day, Oct.

19th, reached Villera-Cotterets on Monday the 21st, and had an audience on Tuesday the 22d.]

[Footnote 598: "Qu'il falloit croire l'Escriture et rendre tesmoignage de sa creance par bonnes uvres, et qui ne la veut croire et accuse les autres estre lutheriens, est plus heretique que les mesmes lutheriens." Memoires de Guise, 248.]

[Footnote 599: Memoires de Guise, 246-249; Gamier, xxvii. 55-70; De Thou, liv. xvi., ii. 375-377.]

[Footnote 600: Mem. de Guise, 249, 250.]

[Footnote 601: According to Claude Haton (p. 38), a part of the emigrants were, by the king's permission, drawn from the prisons of Paris and Rouen. Nor does the pious curate see anything incongruous in the attempt to employ the released criminals in converting the barbarians to the true faith. However, although Villegagnon was a native of Provins, where Haton long resided, the curate's authority is not always to be received with perfect a.s.surance.]

[Footnote 602: The reconciliation between the statements of the text (in which I have followed the unimpeachable authority of the Hist. eccles.

des eglises reformees) and the a.s.sertion of the equally authoritative life of Coligny by Francis Hotman (Latin ed., 1575, p. 18, Eng. tr. of D. D. Scott, p. 70). that Coligny's "love for true religion and vital G.o.dliness, and his desire to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d aright," dated from the time of his captivity after the fall of St. Quentin (1557), and the opportunity he then enjoyed for reading the Holy Scriptures, is to be found probably in the view that, having previously been convinced of the truth of the reformed doctrines, he was not brought until then to their bold confession and courageous espousal--acts so perilous in themselves and so fatal to his ambition and to his love of ease. Respecting Villegagnon's promise to establish the "sincere wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d" in his new colony, see the rare and interesting "Historia navigationis in Braziliam, quae et America dicitur. Qua describitur autoris navigatio, quaeque in mari vidit memoriae prodenda: Villegagnonis in America gesta, etc. A Joanne Lerio, Burgundo, etc., 1586." Jean l'Hery or Lery was a young man of twenty-two, who accompanied the ministers and skilled workmen whom Villegagnon invited to Brazil, partly from pious motives, partly, as he tells us, from curiosity to see the new world (page 6).

Despite his sufferings, the adventurous author, in later years, longed for a return to the wilderness, where among the savages better faith prevailed than in civilized France: "Ita enim apud nos fides nulla superest, resque adeo nostra tota _Italica_ facta est," etc. (page 301).]

[Footnote 603: Jean Lery, _ubi supra_, 4-6.]

[Footnote 604: What Villegagnon actually believed was an enigma to Lery, for the vice-admiral rejected both transubstantiation and consubstantiation, and yet maintained a _real_ presence. Lery, 58, 54.

Cointas had at first solemnly abjured Roman Catholicism, and applied for admission to the Reformed Church. Ibid., 46.]

[Footnote 605: Lery himself is in doubt respecting the exact occasion of the change in Villegagnon's conduct. Some of the colonists were fully persuaded "inde id accidisse, quod a Cardinali Lotharingo, aliisque qui ad eum e Gallia scripserunt ... graviter fuisset reprehensus, quod a Catholica Romanensi Ecclesia descivisset: hisque literis eum ita perterritum fuisse, ut sententiam repente mutaverit." Others believed him guilty of premeditated treachery: "Post meum tamen reditum accepi Villagagnonem c.u.m Card. Lotharingo consilium jam inivisse, antequam e Gallia excederet, de vera Religione simulanda, ut facilius auctoritate Colignii maris praefecti abuterentur," etc. Hist. navig. in Brasiliam, 62, 63.]

[Footnote 606: The Protestants were bearers of a Bellerophontic letter, addressed to the magistrates of whatever French port they might enter, intended to compa.s.s their destruction as heretics and rebels. They made the harbor of Hennebon, in Brittany, whose Protestant officers disclosed the secret plan and welcomed the half-famished fugitives. Lery, 304-330; Hist. eccles., i. 102; La Place, Commentaires de l'estat de la rel. et republ., 25.]

[Footnote 607: De Thou, ii. 381-384; Hist. eccles., 100-102; Lery, 339 _et pa.s.sim_; La Place, _ubi supra_. "Clarissimi, erudissimique viri D.

Nicolai Villagagnonis, equitis Rhodii, adversus novitium Calvini ...

dogma de sacramento Eucharistiae, opuscula tria, Coloniae, 1563." In the preface of the first of these treatises, Villegagnon denies the reports of his fickleness and cruelty as slanders of the returning Protestants, and defends his conduct in throwing the three _monks_ into the sea. In a dedication to Constable Montmorency (dated 1560) he clears himself from the charge of atheism brought against him because he expelled the ministers "on discovering the vanity of their religion." There are subjoined Richier's articles, etc.]

[Footnote 608: Hist. eccles., i. 61.]

[Footnote 609: Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 61-63.]

[Footnote 610: Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 63-71.]

[Footnote 611: "In Gallia pergunt ecclesiae zelo plane mirabili.

_Parisienses_ novum ministrum petunt, quern brevi, ut spero, missuri sumus." Beza to Bullinger, Jan. 1, 1556 (Baum, i. 450).]

[Footnote 612: Beza to Bullinger, Feb. 12, 1556 (Ib., i. 453). The curate of Meriot deplores the progress of the Reformation during this year. "L'heresie prenoit secretement pied en France.... Mais ah! le malheur advint tel que la plus part des grands juges de la court de parlement, comme presidens et conseillers, furent et estoient intoxiquez et empoisonnez de ladite heresie lutherienne et calvinienne, et qui pis est de la moytie, se trouva finallement des evesques qui estoient tous plains et couvers de ceste mauldite farinne. Et pour ce que le roy tenoit le main forte pour faire pugnir de la peine du feu les coulpables, y en avait mille a sa suitte et en la ville de Paris, _lesquelz faisoient bonne mine et meschant jeu_, feignoient d'estre vrays catholiques, et en leur secret et consciences estoient parfaictz hereticques." Mem. de Claude Haton, 27.]

[Footnote 613: The execution of the "Five from Geneva" at Chambery, in Savoy--then, as now again, a part of France--and the violent persecution in the neighborhood of Angers, are well known (Crespin, fols. 283-321; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 68, 69). The inclination to resist force by force, manifested by some Protestants in Anjou, was promptly discouraged by Calvin; letter of April 19, 1556 (Lettres franc., ii.

90). The number and names of the martyrs will probably never be ascertained. "N'estoit quasi moys de l'an qu'on n'en bruslast a Paris, a Meaux et a Troie en Champagne deux ou trois, en aulcun moy plus de douze. Et si pour cela les aultres ne cessoient de poursuivre leur entreprinse de mettre en avant leur faulce religion." Mem. de Cl. Haton, 48. The Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., vii. (1858) 14, extracts from the registers of the Parliament of Toulouse, June 11, 1556, the sentence of a victim hitherto unknown--one Blondel. He had dared to protest against the impiety of the procession of the "Fete-Dieu," or "Corpus Christi," by singing "a profane hymn of Clement Marot." Parliament turned aside from the procession, and in the sacristy of the church of St. Stephen rapidly tried him, and ordered him to be burned the same day at the stake in a public square, as a "reparation of the injury done to the holy faith." Certainly a church dedicated to the Christian protomartyr was not the most appropriate place for drawing up such a decree!]

[Footnote 614: De Thou, ii. 404.]

[Footnote 615: De Thou, ii. 412-416.]

[Footnote 616: The papal letter sent by the hands of Caraffa to Henry (together with a sword and hat solemnly blessed by Paul himself) is reprinted in Cimber et Danjou, Archives curieuses, iii. 425, 426.]

[Footnote 617: De Thou, ii. 417.]

[Footnote 618: A letter of Henry himself to M. de Selve, his amba.s.sador at Rome, gives us the fact of the effort and of its failure: "Voyant les heresies et faulces doctrines, qui a mon tres grand regret, ennuy et desplaisir, pullulent en mes royaume et pays de mon obeissance, j'avoys despieca advise, selon les advis _que le cardinal Caraffe estant dernierement pardeca m'en a donne de la part de nostre Saint-Pere, de mettre sus et introduire l'inquisition_ selon la forme de droict, pour estre le vray moien d'extirper la racine de telles erreurs, pugnir et corriger ceulx qui lea font et commettent avec leurs imitateurs, toutes fois pour ce que en cela se sont trouvez quelques difficultez, alleguant ceulx des estats de mon royaume, lesquels ne veulent recevoir, approuver, ne observer la dicte inquisition, les troubles, divisions et aultres inconveniens qu'elle pourroit apporter avec soy, et mesmes, en ce temps de guerre, il m'a semble pour le mieulx de y parvenir par aultre voye," etc. Memoires de Guise, p. 338. The letter is inaccurately given in Sismondi, Hist. des Francais, xviii. 623. See Dulaure, H. de Paris, iv. 135.]

[Footnote 619: "Comme celluy qui ne desire autre chose en ce monde, que veoir mon peuple nect et exempt d'une telle dangereuse peste et vermyne que sont lesdictes heresies et faulces et reprouvees doctrines." Henry to De Selve, _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 620: Sismondi, Hist. des Francais, xviii. 62.]

[Footnote 621: Sir Wm. Pickering to Council, Melun, Sept. 4, 1551, State Paper Office MSS. Patrick Fraser Tytler, Reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, i. 420.]

[Footnote 622: Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 72.]

[Footnote 623: See the declaration of Henry, in Preuves des Libertez de l'egl. gallicane, part iii. 174.]

[Footnote 624: Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 72, 73.]

[Footnote 625: "Hoc quidem tibi possum pro comperto affirmare regnum Dei tantum nunc progressum _in decem minimum Galliae urbibus ac Lutetiae praesertim_ facere ut magni nescio quid Dominus illic moliri aperte videatur." Beza to Bullinger, March 27, 1557, Baum, Theodor Beza, i.

461.]

[Footnote 626: At Autun, in Sept., 1556. Hist. eccles., i. 70. No wonder that the example set by the judges of Autun "served greatly to instruct others!"]

[Footnote 627: Recueil gen. des anc. lois fr., xiii. 494-497. The respective jurisdictions of the clerical and lay judges remained the same. An article, however, was appended declaring that in future the confiscated property of condemned heretics should no more inure to the crown, or be granted to private individuals, but should be applied to charitable purposes. What a feeble barrier this provision proved to the cupidity of the courtiers, long glutted with the spoils of "Lutherans"--real or pretended--the case of Philippine de Luns showed very clearly, some two or three months later.]