CHAPTER V.

MELANCHTHON'S ATTEMPT AT CONCILIATION, AND THE YEAR OF THE PLACARDS.

It appears almost incredible that, so late as in the year 1534, the hope of reuniting the discordant views of the partisans of reform and the adherents of the Roman Church should have been seriously entertained by any considerable number of reflecting minds, for the chasm separating the opposing parties was too wide and deep to be bridged over or filled. There were irreconcilable differences of doctrine and practice, and tendencies so diverse as to preclude the possibility of harmonious action.

Hopes of reunion in the church.

Not so, however, thought many sincere persons on both sides, and not less on the side of the Reformation than on that of the Roman Catholic Church. True, the claims of the papacy were insupportable, and the most flagrant abuses prevailed; but many of the reformers believed it quite within the bounds of possibility that the great body of the supporters of the church might be brought to recognize and renounce these abuses, and break the tyrannical yoke that had, for so many centuries, rested upon the neck of the faithful. The ancient fabric of religion, they said, is indeed disfigured by modern additions, and has been brought, by long neglect, to the very verge of ruin. But these tasteless excrescences can easily be removed, the ravages of time reverently repaired, and the grand old edifice restored to its pristine symmetry and magnificence. In a word, it was a general reformation that was contemplated—no radical reconstruction after a novel plan. And the future council, in which all phases of opinion160 would be freely represented, was to provide the adequate and sufficient cure for all the ills afflicting the body politic and ecclesiastic.

By some of the more sanguine adherents of both parties these flattering expectations were long entertained. With others the attempt to effect a religious reconciliation seems to have served merely as a mask to hide political designs; and at this distance of time it is among the most difficult problems of history to determine the proportion in which earnest zeal and rank insincerity entered as factors into the measures undertaken for the purpose of reconciling theological differences. Especially is this true respecting the overtures made by the French monarch to Philip Melanchthon, which now claim our attention.

Melanchthon and Du Bellay.

A plan of reconciliation.

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 drawn161 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!³²⁸³²⁸ Melanchthon to Du Bellay, Aug. 1, 1534, Opera (Bretschneider, Corpus Reformatorum), ii. 740.

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.

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 worship of saints, and advocate expunging from the ritual all appeals for their assistance. 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 mass was the Gordian knot which162 must be reserved for the future council of the church to untie or cut.³²⁹³²⁹ 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.

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!³³⁰³³⁰ Ibid., ii. 775, 776.

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.

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 threats163 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 associates. A lamentable instance of the kind must now be noticed.

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 nobility" was passionately entreated to sustain the wounded faith of God, and the King of Glory was supplicated to confound "the accursed dogs," the Lutherans.³³¹³³¹ See the interesting letter of a young Strasbourg student at Paris, Pierre Siderander, May 28, 1533, Herminjard, Correspondance des réformateurs, iii. 58, 59. The refrain of one placard, Under the circumstances, it was not strange that the "Lutheran" placard was hastily torn down by some zealot, with164 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.

Mission of Féret to Switzerland.

The success of this method of reaching the masses, 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 Féret, an apprentice of the king's apothecary;³³²³³² Crespin, Actiones et Monimenta (Ed. of 1560), fol. 64. and the printing seems to have been done in the humble but famous establishment of Pierre Van Wingle, in the retired Vale of Serrières, just out of Neufchâtel, 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 Olivetanus.³³³³³³ Bulletin, ix. 27, 28. There is less certainty respecting the authorship, 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.³³⁴³³⁴ Merle d'Aubigné, on the authority of the hostile Florimond de Ræmond, 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, "Petit 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 authorship of the placard. See the full discussion by Herminjard, Correspondance des réformateurs, iii. 225, note, etc.

The placard against the mass.

Féret, 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 Mass." Among those to whom the165 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 retard, instead of advancing, the cause it advocated.³³⁵³³⁵ Courault was foremost in his opposition. Crespin, Actiones et Monimenta, fols. 64, 65. 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 principal 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 document 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 passed 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 mass, through which (if God 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 assured that the one sacrifice of Christ, being perfect, demands no repetition. 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 mass-priests, with all who consent thereunto, are false prophets, damnable deceivers, apostates, wolves, false shepherds, idolaters, seducers, liars and execrable blasphemers, murderers of souls, renouncers of Jesus Christ, of his death and passion, false witnesses, traitors, thieves, and rob166bers of the honor of God, and more detestable than devils." After citing from the book of Hebrews some passages 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 God? Doth he suffer himself to be eaten of mice and spiders? He who is the bread of angels and of all the children of God, is he given to us to become the food of animals? Will ye make him who is incorruptible at the right hand of God to be the prey of worms and corruption? Were there no other error than this in your infernal theology, well would ye deserve the fagot! Light then your fires to burn yourselves, not us who refuse to believe in your idols, your new gods, and new Christs that suffer themselves to be eaten indifferently by animals and by you who are no better than animals!"³³⁶³³⁶ "Qui estes pire que bestes, en vos badinages lesquels vous faites à 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, après l'avoir mis en trois quartiers, comme estans bien marris, l'appelans Agneau de Dieu, et lui demandans la paix." Closing with a vivid contrast between the fruits of the mass and those of the true Supper of our Lord, the writer finally exclaims of his opponents, "Truth fails them, Truth threatens and pursues them, Truth167 terrifies them; by which their reign shall shortly be destroyed forever."³³⁷³³⁷ This singular placard is given in extenso by Gerdesius, Hist. Evang. Renov., iv. (Doc.) 60-67; Haag, France prot., x. pièces justif., 1-6; G. Guiffrey, Cronique du Roy Françoys Ier, Appendix, 464-472.

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 mass. 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 surpass the infuriated populace in loud execrations of the wretch for whom burning alive seemed too mild a punishment.

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,³³⁸³³⁸ Journal d'un bourgeois, 442. Not Blois, as the Hist. ecclésiastique, i. 10, and, following it, Soldan, Merle d'Aubigné, etc., state. Francis had left Blois as early as in September for the castle of Amboise, see Herminjard, Corresp. des réformateurs, iii. 231, 226, 236. 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 his168 more fanatical subjects to harass any of those eminent scholars whose literary attainments added lustre 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 Angoulême had proved unavailing in his behalf. The heretics who had now ventured to nail an exposé of their dogmas on his bedchamber door could scarcely anticipate greater clemency.

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 friendship 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 circumstances, what were the sufferings of a few poor reformers, when weighed in the balance against the triple crown of his Holiness?

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.³³⁹³³⁹ "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., Nérac, Dec., 1541, Génin, 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 masses by way of atonement for the insult offered to high Heaven. But Friar Fiacre, of the Hôtel-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 récits extraits d'un MS. de N. Pithou (Paris, 1863), 28-30.169

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 passions 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 ignoble 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 petition, 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.³⁴⁰³⁴⁰ A. F. Didot, Essai sur la typographie, in Encyclop. moderne, xxvi. 760, apud Herminjard, iii. 60. The king was now acting upon the advice of his ghostly counsellors!

He suspends the disgraceful edict.

Happily for Francis, however, whose ambition it had hitherto been to figure as a modern Mæcenas, even a subservient parliament declined the customary registration. The king, too, coming to his senses after the lapse of six weeks, so far yielded to170 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 institute a censorship. 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,"³⁴¹³⁴¹ 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 pièces rel. à l'hist. de France, viii. 505, etc. 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."³⁴²³⁴² "Combien que ... nous eussions prohibé et défendu que nul n'eust dès lors en avant à 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. Crapelet, Études 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'Aubigné carelessly places the edict abolishing printing after, instead of before, the great expiatory procession. Hist. of the Reformation in the Time of Calvin, iii. 140.

Vigorous proceedings of parliament.

Meantime, parliament had not been slack in obeying the command to search diligently for the authors and publishers of171 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 assembled in their churches for divine worship, and assassinate 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."³⁴³³⁴³ Félibien, Hist. de la ville de Paris, ii. 997.

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.³⁴⁴³⁴⁴ Soissons MS., Bulletin, xi. 255. 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,³⁴⁵³⁴⁵ I. e., gaînier, sheath-or scabbard-maker. Hist. ecclésiastique, i. 10; Journal d'un bourgeois, 444; see Varillas, Hist. des révol. arrivées dans l'Eur. en matière de rel., ii. 222. 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.³⁴⁶³⁴⁶ "Qui ad se ea pericula spectare non putabant, qui non contaminati erant eo scelere, hi etiam in partem pœnarum 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.172

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, Barthélemi Milon, whom paralysis had deprived of the use of the lower half of his body.³⁴⁷³⁴⁷ 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 alienigenæ in flexilibus perversarum doctrinarum semitis obambulantes; inter alios, paralyticus Lutheranus 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 cum suis participibus seditiosis Gracchis, exemplum sui cunctis hæreticis relinquens deperiit. Et peribunt omnes sive plebeii, sive primates," etc. Paraclesis Franciæ (Par. 1539), 5. His unpardonable offence was that copies of the placard against the mass 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 shirt 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 God 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.³⁴⁸³⁴⁸ The Journal d'un bourgeois, 444-452, gives an account, in the briefest terms and without comment, of the sentences pronounced and executed. See also G. Guiffrey, Cronique du Roy François Ier, 111-113. 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 a173 fortitude and a noble 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 liberty³⁴⁹³⁴⁹ 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 demeuré que l'honneur et la vie sauve," etc. Papiers d'État 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 baillée, et qu'il n'estoit en sa liberté." Isambert, Recueil des anc. lois franç., xii. 292. might have sat at the feet of these, his obscure subjects, to learn the true secret of greatness.

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, assembled in Notre Dame, and thence in solemn state marched to the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, to meet the king. Sixteen dignitaries bore174 aloft the precious reliquary of Sainte Geneviève; 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 massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day—the royal court and the civil and municipal 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. Honoré 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 Éléonore, 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 noble ladies, with attendant gentlemen and guards, constituted 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 multitudinous 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.

An honorable place was held by the ecclesiastics of the "Sainte Chapelle," originally built by Louis the Ninth, in the precincts of his own palace, for the reception of the marvellous relics he brought home from Holy Land. Those relics were all here, together with the other costly possessions of the chapel—the crown of thorns, the true cross, Aaron's rod that175 budded, the great crown of St. Louis, the head of the holy lance, one of the nails used in our Lord's crucifixion, the tables of stone, some of the blood of Christ, the purple robe, and the milk of the Virgin Mary—all borne in jewelled reliquaries by bishops.

Four cardinals in scarlet robes followed—Givri, Tournon, Le Veneur, and Châtillon—an uncongenial group, in which the violent persecutor and the future partisan of the Reformation walked side by side. But the central point in the entire procession was occupied not by these, but by Jean du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, bearing aloft a silver cross in which was enclosed the consecrated wafer of the eucharist, whose title to adoration it was the grand object of the celebration to vindicate. The king's three sons—the dauphin, and the Dukes of Orleans and Angoulême—with a fourth prince of the blood—the Duke of Bourbon Vendôme—held the supports of a magnificent canopy of velvet, sprinkled with golden fleurs-de-lis, above the bishop and his sacred charge. Francis himself walked behind him, with a retinue of nobles, officers of government, judges of parliament, and other civilians closing the line. The king was naturally the object of universal observation.

Dressed in robes of black velvet lined with costly furs, he devoutly followed the elevated host, with uncovered head, and with a large waxen taper in his hands. Several stations had, at great expense, been erected along the designated route. At each of these the procession halted, and the Bishop of Paris placed the silver cross with its precious contents in a niche made to receive it. Then the king, having handed his taper to the Cardinal of Lorraine at his side, knelt down and reverently worshipped with joined hands, until a grand anthem in honor of the sacrament had been intoned. The scene had been well studied, and it made the desired impression upon the by-standers. "There was no one among the people," say the registers of the Hôtel de Ville in unctuous phrase, "be he small or great, that did not shed warm tears and pray God in behalf of the king, whom he beheld performing so devout an act and worthy of long remembrance. And it is to be believed that there lives not a Jew nor an infidel who, had he witnessed the example of176 the prince and his people, would not have been converted to the faith."³⁵⁰³⁵⁰ Registres de l'hôtel de ville. Félibien, pièces justif., v. 345. In the preceding account these records, together with those of parliament (ibid., iv. 686-688), the narrative of Félibien himself (ii. 997-999), and the Soissons MS. (Bulletin, xi. 254, 255), have been chiefly relied upon. See also Cronique du Roy Françoys Ier, 113-121.

Memorable speech of the king.

At the conclusion of the mass—the most brilliant that had ever been celebrated within the walls of the cathedral, Francis proceeded to the episcopal palace, to dine in public, with the princes his children, the high nobility, cardinals, ambassadors, privy counsellors, and some of the judges of the Parliament of Paris. Here it was that he delivered a speech memorable in the history of the great religious movement of the time. Addressing parliament and representatives of the lower judiciary, Francis plainly disclaimed all sympathy with the Reformation. "The errors," he said, "which have multiplied, and are even now multiplying, are but of our own days. Our fathers have shown us how to live in accordance with the word of God and of our mother Holy Church. In that church I am resolved to live and die, and I am determined to prove that I am entitled to be called Very Christian. I notify you that it is my will that these errors be driven from my kingdom. Nor shall I excuse any from the task. Were one of my arms infected with this poison, I should cut it off! Were my own children contaminated, I should immolate them!³⁵¹³⁵¹ "En sorte que si un des bras de mon corps estoit infecté 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 Mézeray, says incredulously: "Je ne sais où ces auteurs ont trouvé que François premier avait prononcé ce discours abominable." M. Poirson answers by giving as authority Théodore de Bèze (Hist. ecclés., i. 13). But on referring to the documentary records from the Hôtel de Ville, among the pièces justificatives collected by Félibien, 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 Françoys Ier, giving the fullest version of the speech (pp. 121-12), attributes to the king about the same expressions. I therefore now impose this duty upon you, and relieve myself of177 responsibility." Turning to the doctors of the university, the king reminded them that the care of the faith was entrusted to them, and he therefore appealed to them to watch over the orthodoxy of all teachers and report all defections to the secular courts.

Constancy of the sufferers.

Francis had spoken in the heat of passion, but, in the words of a contemporary, "if his fury was great, still greater was the constancy of the martyrs."³⁵²³⁵² Histoire ecclés., i. 13. Of this, indeed, the king did not have to wait long for a proof. For, after having witnessed, in company with the queen, the amende honorable of six condemned "Lutherans" or "Christaudins," which took place on the square in front of the cathedral, Francis, as he returned to the Louvre, passed the places where these unfortunates were undergoing their supreme torments—three near the Croix du Tiroir, in the Rue St. Honoré, and three at the Halles. The first were men of some note—Simon Fouhet, of Auvergne, one of the royal choristers, supposed to have been the person who posted the placard in the castle of Amboise, Audebert Valleton, of Nantes, and Nicholas L'Huillier, from the Châtelet of Paris. The others were of an inferior station in life—a fruitster, a maker of wire-baskets, and a joiner. All, however, with almost equal composure, submitted to their fate as to the will of Heaven, rather than the sentence of human judges; scarcely seeming, in their firm anticipation of an immortal crown, to notice the tumultuous outcries of an infuriated mob which nearly succeeded in snatching them from the officers of the law, in order to have the satisfaction of tearing their bodies to pieces.³⁵³³⁵³ Histoire ecclés., ubi supra.

Ingenious contrivance for protracting torture.

It would seem, however, that the most relentless enemy could scarcely have complained that any womanish indulgence had been shown to the persons singled out to expiate the crime of posting the placard against the mass. To delay the advent of death, the sole term of their excruciating sufferings, an ingeniously contrived instrument of torture was put in play, which if not altogether novel, had at least been but seldom employed up to this time. Instead of178 being bound to the stake and simply roasted to death by means of the fagots heaped up around him, the victim was now suspended by chains over a blazing fire, and was alternately lowered into it and drawn out—a refinement of cruelty whose principal recommendation to favor lay in the fact that the diversion it afforded the spectators could be made to last until they were fully satisfied, and the executioner chose to allow the writhing sufferer to be suffocated in the flames.³⁵⁴³⁵⁴ "Une espèce d'estrapade où 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 à diverses reprises, pour faire durer leur supplice plus longtems." Félibien, ii. 999. So satisfactory were the results of the Estrapade, that it came to be universally employed as the instrument for executing "Lutherans," with the exception of a favored few, to whom the privilege was accorded of being hung or strangled before their bodies were thrown into the fire. Such was, soon after this time, the fate of a woman, a school-teacher by profession, found guilty of heresy. In any case, the judges took effectual measures to forestall the deplorable consequences that might ensue from permitting the "Lutherans" to address the by-standers, and so pervert them from the orthodox faith. The hangman was instructed to pierce their tongue with a hot iron, or to cut it out altogether; just as, at a later date, the sound of the drum was employed to drown the last utterances of the victims of despotism.³⁵⁵³⁵⁵ Gerdes, Hist. Evang. renov., iv. 109. For the nature of the penalty, see Bastard D'Estang, Les parlements de France, i. 425, note on punishments.

Flight of Marot.

The flames of persecution were not extinguished with the conclusion of the solemn expiatory pageant. For months strangers sojourning in Paris shuddered at the horrible sights almost daily meeting their eyes.³⁵⁶³⁵⁶ 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 héréticques en grant nombre furent après bruslez à divers jours," says the Cronique du Roy Françoys Ier, p. 129, "en sorte que dedans Paris on ne véoit que potences dressées en divers lieux," etc. The lingering hope that a prince naturally clement and averse to needless bloodshed, would at length tire of countenancing these continuous scenes of atrocity,179 seemed gradually to fade away. Great numbers of the most intelligent and scholarly consulted their safety in flight; the friendly court of Renée of France, Duchess of Ferrara, affording, for a time, asylum to Clément Marot, the poet, and to many others. Meantime the suspected "Lutherans" that could not be found were summoned by the town-crier to appear before the proper courts for trial. A list of many such has escaped destruction of time.³⁵⁷³⁵⁷ G. Guiffrey, Cronique du Roy Françoys Ier, 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 Alençon, already introduced to our notice; Jean Retif, a preacher; François Berthault and Jean Courault, lately associated in preaching the Gospel under the patronage of the Queen of Navarre; besides the scholar Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples, and Guillaume Féret, who brought the placards from Switzerland. Fortunately, most of them had gotten beyond the reach of the officers of the law, and the sentence could, at most, effect only the confiscation of their property.

Royal declaration of Coucy, July 16, 1535.

As summer advanced, however, the rigor of the persecution was perceived to be somewhat abating. Finally, on the sixteenth of July, the king so far yielded to the urgency of open or secret friends of progress among the courtiers, as to issue a "Declaration" to facilitate the return of the fugitives. "Forasmuch," said Francis, "as the heresies, which, to our great displeasure, had greatly multiplied in our kingdom, have ceased, as well by the Divine clemency and goodness, as by the diligence we have used in the exemplary punishment of many of their adherents—who, nevertheless, were not in their last hours abandoned by the hand of our Lord, but, turning to Him, have repented, and made public confession of their errors, and died like good Christians and Catholics—no further prosecution of persons suspected of heresy shall be made, but they will be discharged from imprisonment, and their goods restored. For the same reason, all fugitives who return and abjure their errors within six months will receive pardon. But Sacramentarians³⁵⁸³⁵⁸ 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. and the relapsed are excluded from this offer. Furthermore, all men are forbidden, under180 pain of the gallows, and of being held rebels and disturbers of the public peace, to read, teach, translate or print, whether publicly or in private, any doctrine contrary to the Christian faith."³⁵⁹³⁵⁹ "De ne lire, dogmatiser, translater, composer ni imprimer, soit en public ou en privé, aucune doctrine contrariant à la foy chrétionne." Declaration of Coucy, July 16, 1535, Isambert, Recueil des anc. lois franç., xii. 405-407. See also a similar declaration, May 31, 1536, ibid., xii. 504. The concession, it must be confessed, was not a very liberal one; for the exiles could return only on condition of recanting. Yet the new regulations were mild in comparison with the previous practice, which consigned all the guilty alike to death, and left no room for repentance. Consequently, there were not a few, especially of the learned who had been suspected of heresy, that were found ready to avail themselves of the permission, even on the prescribed terms.

Alleged intercession of Pope Paul III.

In explanation of this change in the policy of Francis, the most remarkable rumors circulated among the people. Not the least strange was one that has been preserved for us by a contemporary.³⁶⁰³⁶⁰ Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, 458, 459. It was reported in the month of June, 1535, that Pope Paul the Third, having been informed of "the horrible and execrable" punishments inflicted by the king upon the "Lutherans," wrote to Francis and begged him to moderate his severity. The pontiff did, indeed, express his conviction that the French monarch had acted with the best intentions, and in accordance with his claim to be called the Very Christian King. But he added, that when God, our Creator, was on earth, He employed mercy rather than strict justice. Rigor ought not always to be resorted to; and this burning of men alive was a cruel death, and better calculated to lead to rejection of the faith than to conversion.³⁶¹³⁶¹ Neantmoins Dieu le créateur, luy estant en ce monde, a plus usé de miséricorde 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. He therefore prayed the king to appease his anger, to abate the severity of justice, and grant pardon to the guilty. Francis, consequently, because of his desire to please his Holiness, became more moderate, and enjoined upon parliament to practise181 less harshness. For this reason the judges ceased from criminal proceedings against the "Lutherans," and many prisoners were discharged both from the Conciergerie and from the Châtelet.

That this extraordinary rumor was in general circulation appears from the circumstance that it is alluded to by a Paris correspondent of Melanchthon; while another account that has recently come to light states it not as a flying report, but as a well-ascertained fact.³⁶²³⁶² "Et le très-crestien et bon roy François premier du nom, à la prière du pape, pardonna à tous, excepté a ceulx qui avoient touché à l'honneur du saint sacrement de l'autel." Soissons MS., Bulletin, xi. 254. Sturm to Melanchthon, July 6, 1535, says: "Pontificem etiam aiunt æquiorem esse, et haud paulo meliorem quam fuerunt cæteri. Omnino improbat illam suppliciorum crudelitatem, et de hac re dicitur misisse [literas ad Regem]." Herminjard, iii. 311. Cf. Erasmus Op., 1513. Its singularity is shown from its apparent inconsistency with the well-known history and sentiments of the Farnese Paul. It is difficult to conceive how the pontiff who approved of the Society of Jesus and instituted the Inquisition in the kingdom of Naples, could have been touched with compassion at the recital of the suffering of French heretics. Yet the paradoxes of history are too numerous to permit us to reject as apocryphal a story so widely current, or to explain it away by making it only a popular echo of the convictions of the more enlightened as to the views that were most befitting the claimant to a universal episcopate.

Clemency again dictated by policy.

Francis himself, however, made no such statement to the Venetian ambassador at his court. Marino Giustiniano, who gave in his report to the doge and senate this very year, was informed by the French king that, on hearing of the suspension by the Emperor Charles the Fifth of all sentences of death against the Flemish heretics, he had also himself ordered that against every species of heretics, except the Sacramentarians, proceedings should indeed be held as before, but not to the extremity of death.³⁶³³⁶³ "Sapendo, come sua Maestà m'ha detto, che Cesare in Fiandra aveva sospeso ogni esecuzione di morte contro questi eretici, ha anche egli concesso che contra ogni sorte di eretici si proceda come avanti, ma citra mortem, eccetto i sacramentarii." Relazione del clarissimo Marino Giustiniano (1535), Relaz. Venete, i. 155. It is evident,182 therefore, that the suppression of the most cruel features of the persecution had no higher motive than political considerations. Francis had worked himself into a frenzy, and counterfeited the sincerity of a bigot, when it was necessary to make the Pope a friend, and a show of sanguinary ardor seemed most adapted to accomplish his object. He now became tolerant, on discovering that the course he had entered upon was alienating the Protestant princes of Germany, upon whose support he relied in his contest with Charles the Fifth. The turning-point appears to have been coincident with the time when he found that the emperor was endeavoring to outbid him by offering a short-lived toleration to the Netherlanders.

Francis writes to the German princes.

Only eleven days after the solemn propitiatory procession, and while the trial and execution of the French reformers were still in progress, Francis had written to his allies beyond the Rhine, in explanation of the severe punishment of which such shocking accounts had been circulated in their dominions. He justified his course by alleging the disorderly and rebellious character of the culprits, and laid great stress upon the care he had taken to secure German Protestants from danger and annoyance.³⁶⁴³⁶⁴ Francis I. to the German Princes, February 1, 1535, Bretschneider, Corpus Reform., ii. 828, etc.

Melanchthon entreated to come to France.

A month later, Voré de la Fosse was on his way to Wittemberg, on a private mission to Melanchthon. He was bearer of a long and important letter from John Sturm. The learned writer, a German scholar of eminence and a friend of the reformed doctrines, was at this time lecturing in Paris, and after his departure from Francis's dominions, became rector of the infant university of Strasbourg. He contrasted the hopeful strain in which he had described to his correspondent the prospects of religion, a year since, with the terrors of the present situation. Crediting the king with the best intentions, he cast the blame of so disastrous a change upon the insane authors of the placards, who had drawn on themselves a punishment that would have been well deserved, had it been moderate in degree. But, unhappily, the innocent had183 been involved with the guilty, and informers had gratified private malice by magnifying the offence. Francis had, it was true, been led, at the intercession of Guillaume du Bellay and his brother, the Bishop of Paris, to interpose his authority and protect the Germans residing in his realm. But, none the less, he begged Melanchthon to fly to his succor, and to exert an influence over the king which was the result of Voré's continual praise, in putting an end to this unfortunate state of things. Francis, he added, was willing to give pledges for the reformer's safety, and would send him back in great honor to his native land, after the conclusion of the proposed conference. "Lay aside, therefore," wrote Sturm, "the consideration of kings and emperors, and believe that the voice that calls you is the voice of God and of Christ."³⁶⁵³⁶⁵ Sturm to Melanchthon, March 4, 1535, Bretschneider, Corpus Reform., ii. 855, etc. Voré followed up this invitation with great earnestness both in personal interviews and by letter.³⁶⁶³⁶⁶ A letter of Voré is found in Bretschneider, ubi supra, ii, 859.

His perplexity.

What answer should the reformer give to so pressing an invitation? In his acknowledgment of Sturm's letter, Melanchthon confessed that no deliberation had ever occasioned him so much perplexity. It was not that domestic ties retained him or dangers deterred him. But he was harassed by the fear that he would be unable to accomplish any good. If only this doubt—amounting almost to despair—could be removed, he would fly to France without delay. He approved—so he assured his correspondent—of checking those fanatics who were engaged in sowing absurd and vile doctrines, or created unnecessary tumults. But there were others against whom no such charge could be brought, but who modestly professed the Gospel. If through his exertions some slight concessions were obtained, while points of greater importance were sacrificed, he would benefit neither church nor state. What if he secured immunity from punishment for such as had laid aside the monk's cowl? Must he then consent to the execution of those conscientious men who disapproved of the evident abuses of the mass and of the worship of the saints? Now, as it was184 precisely the expression of this disapprobation that had caused the present massacres, he trembled with fear lest he should be put in the position of one that justified these atrocious severities. In short, it was his advice, he said, in view of the cunning devices by which the "phalanxes" of monks were wont to play upon the hopes and fears of the high-born, that Francis, if honestly desirous of consulting the glory of Christ, and the tranquillity of the church, be rather exhorted to assemble a general council. Other measures appeared to him, not only useless, but fraught with peril.³⁶⁷³⁶⁷ Melanchthon to Sturm, May 5, 1535, ibid., ii. 873.

Formal invitation from the king.

At this point the king himself took a direct part in the correspondence. On the twenty-third of June, 1535, he sent Melanchthon a formal request to visit his court, and there dispute, in his presence, with a select company of doctors, concerning the restoration of doctrinal unity and ecclesiastical harmony. He assured the reformer that he had been prompted by his own great zeal to despatch Voré with this letter—itself a pledge of the public faith—and besought him to suffer no one to persuade him to turn a deaf ear to the summons.³⁶⁸³⁶⁸ Ibid., ii. 879. The address was, "Dilecto nostro Philippo Melanchthoni." Sturm, Cardinal du Bellay, and his brother, all wrote successively, and urged Melanchthon to come to a conference from which they hoped for every advantage.³⁶⁹³⁶⁹ "Nihil est quod de vestro congressu non sperem," are Cardinal du Bellay's words, June 27th. Ibid., ii. 880, 881.

Melanchthon consents.

No wonder that, after receiving so complimentary an invitation, Melanchthon concluded to go to France, and applied (on the eighteenth of August) to the Elector John Frederick for the necessary leave of absence. He briefly sketched the history of the affair, and set forth his own reluctance to enter upon his delicate mission, until provided with the elector's permission and a safe conduct from the French monarch. Two or three months only would be consumed, and he had made arrangements for supplying his chair at Jena during this short absence.³⁷⁰³⁷⁰ Ibid., ii. 904, 905. The university had been temporarily removed from Wittemberg to Jena, on account of the prevalence of the plague. It appears, however, that Melanchthon felt185 less confident of obtaining a gracious reply to his request than his words would seem to indicate. Consequently, he deemed it prudent to ask Luther to write first and urge his suit. The latter did not refuse his aid. "I am moved to make this prayer," said Luther in his letter to the elector, "by the piteous entreaty of worthy and pious persons who, having themselves scarcely escaped the flames, have by great efforts prevailed upon the king to suspend the carnage and extinguish the fires until Melanchthon's arrival. Should the hopes of these good people be disappointed, the bloodhounds may succeed in creating even greater bitterness, and proceed with burning and strangling. So that I think that Master Philip cannot with a clear conscience abandon them in such straits, and defraud them of their hearty encouragement."³⁷¹³⁷¹ Luther to the Elector of Saxony, Aug. 17, 1535, Works (Ed. Dr. J. K. Innischer), lv. 103.

The elector refuses to let him go.

But even the great theological doctor's intercession was unavailing. The very day the elector received "Master Philip's" application, he wrote to Francis explaining his reasons for refusing to let Melanchthon go to Paris. It is true that the letter was not actually sent until some ten days later;³⁷²³⁷² August 28, 1535. The reasons alleged to Francis were, the injurious rumors the mission might give rise to, and the damage to the university from Melanchthon's absence. At some future time, the elector said, he would permit Melanchthon to visit the French king, should his Majesty still desire him to do so, and present hinderances be removed. but no entreaties could move the elector to reconsider his decision. Melanchthon indignantly left the court and returned to Jena.³⁷³³⁷³ "Subindignabundus hinc discessit." Luther to Justus Jonas, Aug. 19. Here he subsequently received a written refusal from John Frederick, couched in language far from agreeable. The elector expressed astonishment that he should have permitted matters to go so far, and that he continued to apply for permission even after his prince's desire had been intimated. The danger to be apprehended for the peace of Germany was far greater than any possible advantage that could be expected from his mission. And the writer hinted very distinctly that little confidence could be reposed in Francis's pro186fessions, where the Gospel was concerned, as public history sufficiently demonstrated.³⁷⁴³⁷⁴ "Daneben was eurer Person halb, dessgleichen auch in Sachen des Evangelii für Trost, Hoffnung oder Zuversicht zu dem Franzosen zu haben, ist wohl zu bedenken, dieweil vormals wenig Treue oder Glaube von ihm gehalten, wie solches die öffentliche Geschicht anzeigen." Letter of Aug. 24, 1535. The elector expressed himself at greater length to his chancellor, Dr. Brück (Pontanus). Such a mission would appear suspicious when the elector was on the point of having a conference with the King of Hungary and Bohemia. Melanchthon might make concessions that Dr. Martin (Luther) and others could not agree to, and the scandal of division might arise. Besides, he could not believe the French in earnest; they doubtless only intended to take advantage of Melanchthon's indecision. For it was to be presumed that those most active in promoting the affair were "more Erasmian than evangelical (mehr Erasmisch denn Evangelisch)." Bretschneider, ii. 909, etc.

Melanchthon's chagrin.

The most ungrateful of tasks was reserved for Melanchthon himself—the task of explaining his inability to fulfil his engagement. In a letter to Francis, he expressed the hope that the delay might be only temporary, and he exhorted the king to resist violent counsels, while seeking to promote religious harmony and public tranquillity by peaceable means. To Du Bellay and Sturm he complained not a little of the "roughness" of his prince, whom he had never found more "harsh." He thought that the true motive of the elector's refusal was to be found in the exaggerated report that he had given up everything, merely because he had spoken too respectfully of the ecclesiastical power. "I am called a deserter," he writes. "I am in great peril among our own friends on account of this moderation; as moderate citizens are wont in civil discords to be badly received by both sides. Evidently the fate of Theramenes impends over me; for I believe Xenophon, who affirms that he was a good man, not Lysias, who reviles him."³⁷⁵³⁷⁵ See the three letters, and other interesting correspondence, Bretschneider, ii. 913, etc. However it may have been with M., Luther's regret at the elector's refusal was of brief duration. As early as Sept. 1st he wrote characteristically to Justus Jonas: "Respecting the French envoys, so general a rumor is now in circulation, originating with most worthy men, that I have ceased to wish that Philip should go with them. It is suspected that the true envoys were murdered on the way, and others sent in their place(!) with letters by the papists, to entice Philip out. You know that the Bishops of Maintz, Lüttich, and others, are the worst tools of the Devil; wherefore I am rather anxious for Philip. I have therefore written carefully to him. The World is the Devil, and the Devil is the World." Luther's Works (Ed. Walch), xxi. 1426.187

The proposed conference reprobated by the Sorbonne.

Meanwhile the proposed conference encountered no less decided reprobation from the Sorbonne, to which Francis had submitted his project. For the "articles" drawn up by Melanchthon, a year before, in a spirit of conciliation much too broad to please the Protestants, when placed in the hands of the same theological body, in a modified form, and without the name of the author, were returned with a very unfavorable report. The Parisian doctors suggested that, as an appropriate method of satisfying himself whether there was any hope of accommodation, Francis might propound such interrogatories as these to the German theologians from whom the articles emanated: "Whether they confessed the church militant, founded by divine right, to be incapable of erring in faith and good morals, of which church, under our Lord Jesus Christ, St. Peter and his successors have been the head. Whether they will obey the church, receive the books of the Bible³⁷⁶³⁷⁶ That is, including the apocryphal books. as holy and canonical, accept the decrees of the general councils and of the Popes, admit the Fathers to be the interpreters of the Scriptures, and conform to the customs of the church?" As an insufferable grievance they complained that the "articles" were not a request for pardon, but actually a demand for concessions.³⁷⁷³⁷⁷ "Qui est, Sire," they observe with evident amazement at the bare suggestion, "demander de nous retirer à eux, plus qu'eux se convertir à l'Église." The articles having been submitted through Du Bellay, August 7, 1535, the Faculty's answer was returned on the 30th of the same month, accompanied by a more elaborate Instructio, the former in French, the latter in Latin. Both are printed among the Monumenta of Gerdes, 75-78, and 78-86.

The plan to entrap Melanchthon and some considerable portion of the German Protestants into conciliatory proposals which Luther and the more decided reformers could not admit, having failed through the abrupt and tolerably rude refusal of the Elector of Saxony to permit his theological professor to comply with the invitation of Francis, the latter appears to have deter188mined to put the best appearance upon the affair. Accordingly, he promptly signified to the Sorbonne his approval of its action, and he seems even to have suffered the rumor to gain currency that he was himself dissuaded from bringing Melanchthon to France, by the skilful arguments of the Cardinal of Tournon.³⁷⁸³⁷⁸ Florimond de Ræmond (l. vii. c. 4), and others writers copying from him, represent Tournon as purposely putting himself in the king's way with an open volume of St. Irenæus in his hands. Obtaining in this way his coveted opportunity of portraying the perils arising from intercourse with heretics, the prelate enforced his precepts by reading a pretended story related by St. Polycarp, that the Apostle John had on one occasion hastily left the public bath on perceiving the heretic Cerinthus within. Soldan (Gesch. des Prot. in Frankreich, i. 163) sensibly remarks that little account ought to be made of the statements of a writer who associates Louise de Savoie—in her later days a notorious enemy of the Reformation, who had at this time been four years dead—- with her daughter Margaret, in "importuning" the king to invite Melanchthon.

In spite of the rebuff he had received, however, Francis made an attempt to effect such an arrangement with the Protestant princes of Germany as would secure their co-operation in his ambitious projects against Charles the Fifth. To compass this end he was quite willing to make concessions to the Lutherans as extensive as those which Melanchthon had offered the Roman Catholics.

Du Bellay's representations at Smalcald.

Four months had not elapsed since the unsuccessful issue of his first mission, before Du Bellay was again in Germany. On the nineteenth of December, he presented himself to the congress of Protestant princes at Smalcald. Much of his address was devoted to a vindication of his master from the charge of cruelty to persons of the same religious faith as that of the hearers. The envoy insisted that the Germans had been misinformed: If Francis had executed some of his subjects, he had not thereby injured the Protestants. The culprits professed very different doctrines. The creed of the Germans had been adopted by common consent. Francis admitted, indeed, that there were some useless and superfluous ceremonies in the church, but could not assent to their indiscriminate abrogation unless by public decree. Ought not the Protestant princes to ascribe to their friend, the French king,189 motives as pure and satisfactory as those that impelled them to crush the sedition of the peasants and repress the Anabaptists? As for himself, Francis, although mild and humane, both from native temperament and by education, had seen himself compelled, by stern necessity and the dictates of prudence, to check the promptings of his own heart, and assume for a time attributes foreign to his proper disposition. For gladly as he listened to the temperate discussion of any subject, he was justly offended at the presumption of rash innovators, men that refused to submit to the judgment of those whose prerogative it was to decide in such matters as were now under consideration.

He makes, in the name of Francis, a Protestant confession.

Not content with general assurances, Du Bellay, in a private interview with Brück, Melanchthon, and other German theologians, ventured upon an exposition of Francis's creed which we fear would have horrified beyond measure the orthodox doctors of the Sorbonne.³⁷⁹³⁷⁹ Some years earlier, Du Bellay had, while on an embassy, set forth his royal master's pretended convictions in favor of the Reformation with so much verisimilitude as to alarm the papal nuncio, who dreaded the effect of his speeches upon the Protestants. "Non è piccola murmoration quì en Corte, ch'l Orator Francese facea più che l'officio suo richiede in animar Lutherani." Aleander to Sanga, Ratisbon, July 2, 1532, Vatican MSS., Laemmer, 141. He informed them, with a very sober face, that the king's religious belief differed little from that expressed in Melanchthon's "Common Places." His theologians had never been able to convince him that the Pope's primacy was of divine right. Nor had they proved to his satisfaction the existence of purgatory, which, being the source of their lucrative masses and legacies, they prized as their very life and blood. He was inclined to limit the assumption of monastic vows to persons of mature age, and to give monks and nuns the right of renouncing their profession and marrying. He favored the conversion of monasteries into seminaries of learning. While the French theologians insisted upon the celibacy of the priesthood, for himself he would suggest the middle ground of permitting such priests as had already married to retain their wives, while prohibiting others from following their example, unless they resigned the190 sacerdotal office. He would have the sacramental cup administered to the laity when desired, and hoped to obtain the Pope's consent. He even admitted the necessity of reform in some of the daily prayers, and reprehended the want of moderation exhibited by the Sorbonne, which not only condemned the Germans, but would not hesitate on occasion to censure the cardinals or the Holy Pontiff himself.

The Germans are not deceived.

We cannot find that Du Bellay's honeyed words produced any very deep impression. Princes and theologians knew tolerably well both how sincere was the king's profession of friendliness to the "Lutheran" tenets, and what was the truth respecting the persecution that had raged for months within his dominions. The western breezes came freighted with the fetid smoke of human holocausts, and not even the perfume of Francis's delicately scented speeches could banish the disgust caused by the nauseating sacrifice. The princes might listen with studied politeness to the king's apologetic words, and assent to the general truth that sedition should be punished by severity; but they took the liberty, at the same time, to express a fervent prayer that the advocates of a reformed religion and a pure gospel might not be involved in the fate of the unruly. And they disappointed the monarch by absolutely declining to enter into any alliance against the Emperor Charles the Fifth. The French ambassador returned home, and Francis so dexterously threw aside the mask of pretended favor to a moderate reformation in the church, that it soon became a disputed question whether he had ever assumed it at all.³⁸⁰³⁸⁰ Sleidan, De statu rel. et reipubl., lib. ix., ad annum 1535. The Jesuit Maimbourg rejects the secret conference of Du Bellay as apocryphal, in view of Francis's persecution of the Protestants at Paris, and his declaration of January 21st. But Sleidan's statement is fully substantiated by an extant memorandum by Spalatin, who was present on the occasion (printed in Seckendorff, Gerdes, iv. 68-73 Doc., and Bretschneider, ii. 1014). It receives additional confirmation from a letter of the Nuncio Morone to Pope Paul III., Vienna, Dec. 26, 1536 (Vatican MSS., Laemmer, 178). Morone received from Doctor Matthias, Vice-Chancellor of the Empire, an account of Francis's recent offer to the German Protestants "di condescendere nelle loro opinioni," on condition of their renouncing obedience to the emperor. He reserved only two points of doctrine as requiring discussion: the sacrifice of the mass, and the authority and primacy of the Pope. The Protestants rejected the interested proposal of the royal convert.191

Efforts of the French Protestants in Switzerland and Germany.

Meantime the French Protestants were unremitting in their efforts to obtain a more satisfactory solution of the religious question than was contained in the Declaration of Coucy. They wrote to Strasbourg, to Berne, to Zurich, to Basle, imploring the intercession of these states. Particular attention was drawn to the severe treatment endured by their brethren in Provence and Dauphiny. The writers declared themselves to be not rebels, but the most loyal of subjects, recognizing one God, one faith, one law, and one king. They were not "Lutherans," nor "Waldenses," nor "heretics;" but simply Christians, accepting the Decalogue, the Apostles' Creed, and every doctrine taught in either Testament. It was unreasonable that they should be compelled by fines, imprisonment, or bodily pains, to abjure their faith, unless their errors were first proved from the Bible, or before the convocation of a General Council.³⁸¹³⁸¹ The authorship of this interesting document, and the way it reached its destination, are equally unknown. It is published—for the first time, I believe—in Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss, Opera Calvini (1872), x. part ii. 55, 56.

An appeal from Strasbourg and Zurich.

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 God, and its traditions?"³⁸²³⁸² Senatus Argentoratensis Francisco Regi, July 3, 1536, ibid., x. 57-61.

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 God, and no longer be sub192jected without a hearing to torture and manifold punishments.³⁸³³⁸³ Senatus Turicensis Francisco Regi, July 13, 1536, ibid., x. 61. Berne and Basle remonstrated with similar urgency.

An embassy 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 embassy. But, if the envoys were fed with gracious words, they obtained no real concession. Francis assured 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 lately³⁸⁴³⁸⁴ Edict of Lyons, May 31, 1536, Herminjard, iv. 192. extending pardon to all exiles and fugitives"—that is, "Sacramentarians" and "relapsed" persons included. This, it seemed to him, "ought to satisfy them entirely."³⁸⁵³⁸⁵ François Ier aux Conseils de Zurich, Berne, Bâle et Strasbourg, Compiègne, Feb. 20, and Feb. 23, 1537, Basle MSS., ibid., iv. 191-193. Cf. the documents, mostly inedited, iv. 70, 96, 150. 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 circumstance, that Francis selected for his mouth-piece, not the friendly Queen of Navarre, but the rough and bigoted Grand-Maître—Anne de Montmorency, the future Constable of France.³⁸⁶³⁸⁶ Le Conseil de Berne au Conseil de Bâle, March 15, 1537, ibid., iv. 202, 203, Sleidan (Strasb. ed. of 1555), lib x. fol. 163 verso. It must, however, be remarked that the "evangelical cities" would not take the rebuff as decisive, and, within a few months, were again writing to Francis in behalf of his persecuted subjects of Nismes and elsewhere. Le Conseil de Berne à François Ier, Nov. 17, 1537, Berne MSS., Herminjard, iv. 320.

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