BOOK FIRST.

FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE FRENCH REFORMATION TO THE EDICT OF JANUARY (1562).

3

CHAPTER I.

FRANCE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

Extent of France at the accession of Francis the First.

When, on the first day of the year 1515, the young Count of Angoulême succeeded to the throne left vacant by the death of his kinsman and father-in-law, Louis the Twelfth, the country of which he became monarch was already an extensive, flourishing, and well-consolidated kingdom. The territorial development of France was, it is true, far from complete. On the north, the whole province of Hainault belonged to the Spanish Netherlands, whose boundary line was less than one hundred miles distant from Paris. Alsace and Lorraine had not yet been wrested from the German Empire. The "Duchy" of Burgundy, seized by Louis the Eleventh immediately after the death of Charles the Bold, had, indeed, been incorporated into the French realm; but the "Free County" of Burgundy—la Franche Comté, as it was briefly designated—had been imprudently suffered to fall into other hands, and Besançon was the residence of a governor appointed by princes of the House of Hapsburg. Lyons was a frontier town; for the little districts of Bresse and Bugey, lying between the Saône and Rhône, belonged to the Dukes of Savoy. Further to the south, two fragments of foreign territory were completely enveloped by the domain of the French king.4 The first was the sovereign principality of Orange, which, after having been for over a century in the possession of the noble House of Châlons, was shortly to pass into that of Nassau, and to furnish the title of William the Silent, the future deliverer of Holland. The other and larger one was the Comtât Venaissin, a fief directly dependent upon the Pope. Of irregular shape, and touching the Rhone both above and below Orange, the Comtât Venaissin nearly enclosed the diminutive principality in its folds. Its capital, Avignon, having forfeited the distinction enjoyed in the fourteenth century as the residence of the Roman Pontiffs, still boasted the presence of a Legate of the Papal See, a poor compensation for the loss of its past splendor. On the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, the Spanish dominions still extended north of the principal chain of the Pyrenees, and included the former County of Roussillon.

Territorial development.

But, although its area was somewhat smaller than that of the modern republic, France in the sixteenth century had nearly attained the general dimensions marked out for it by great natural boundaries. Four hundred years had been engrossed in the pursuit of territorial enlargement. At the close of the tenth century the Carlovingian dynasty, essentially foreign in tastes and language, was supplanted by a dynasty of native character and capable of gathering to its support all those elements of strength which had been misunderstood or neglected by the feeble descendants of Charlemagne. But it found the royal authority reduced to insignificance and treated with open contempt. By permitting those dignities which had once been conferred as a reward for pre-eminent personal merit to become hereditary in certain families, the crown had laid the foundation of the feudal system; while, by neglecting to enforce its sovereign claims, it had enabled the great feudatories to make themselves princes independent in reality, if not in name. So low had the consideration of the throne fallen, that when Hugh Capet, Count of Paris, in 987 assumed the title of king of France, basing his act partly on an election by nobles, partly on force of arms, the transaction elicited little opposition from the rival lords who might have been expected to resent his usurpation.5

Excessive subdivision in the tenth century.

France contained at this time six principal fiefs—four in the north and two in the south—each nearly or fully as powerful as the hereditary dominions of Hugh, while probably more than one excelled them in extent. These limited dominions, on the resources of which the new dynasty was wholly dependent in the struggle for supremacy, embraced the important cities of Paris and Orleans, but barely stretched from the Somme to the Loire, and were excluded from the ocean by the broad possessions of the dukes of Normandy on both sides of the lower Seine. The great fiefs had each in turn yielded to the same irresistible tendency to subdivision. The great feudatory was himself the superior of the tenants of several subordinate, yet considerable, fiefs. The possessors of these again ranked above the viscounts of cities and the provincial barons. A long series of gradations in dignity ended at the simple owners of castles, with their subject peasants or serfs. In no country of Europe had the feudal system borne a more abundant harvest of disintegration and consequent loss of power.³³ Mignet, Essai sur la formation territoriale et politique de la France depuis la fin du onzième siècle jusqu'à la fin du quiinzième. Notices et Mémoires Historiques, ii. 154.

Decline of the feudal system.

The reduction of the insubordinate nobles on the patrimonial estates of the crown was the first problem engaging the attention of the early Capetian kings. When this had at length been solved, with the assistance of the scanty forces lent by the cities—never amounting, it is said, to more than five hundred men-at-arms⁴⁴ Mignet, 157, 158.—Louis the Fat, a prince of resplendent ability, early in the twelfth century addressed himself to the task of making good the royal title to supremacy over the neighboring provinces. Before death compelled him to forego the prosecution of his ambitious designs, the influence of the monarchy had been extended over eastern and central France—from Flanders, on the north, to the volcanic mountains of Auvergne, on the south. Meanwhile the oppressed subjects of the petty tyrants, whether within or around his domains, had learned to look for redress to the sovereign6 lord who prided himself upon his ability and readiness to succor the defenceless. His grandson, the more illustrious Philip Augustus (1180-1223), by marriage, inheritance, and conquest added to previous acquisitions several extensive provinces, of which Normandy, Maine, and Poitou had been subject to English rule, while Vermandois and Yalois had enjoyed a form of approximate independence under collateral branches of the Capetian family.

The conquests of Louis the Fat and of Philip Augustus were consolidated by Louis the Ninth—Saint Louis, as succeeding generations were wont to style him—an upright monarch, who scrupled to accept new territory without remunerating the former owners, and even alienated the affection of provinces which he might with apparent justice have retained, by ceding them to the English, in the vain hope of cementing a lasting peace between the rival states.⁵⁵ A manuscript chronicle of the time of Charles the Sixth, quoted by Guizot, Histoire de la Civilisation en France, iv. 144, states the interesting fact that the inhabitants of Périgord and the adjoining districts, thus surrendered to Henry the Third of England, for centuries bore so hearty a grudge against the French king, of whom the rest of France was justly proud, and whose name the church had enrolled in the calendar, that they never would consent to regard him as a saint or to celebrate his feast day!

France the foremost kingdom of Christendom.

The same pursuit of territorial aggrandizement under successive kings extended the domain of the crown, in spite of disaster and temporary losses, until in the sixteenth century France was second to no other country in Europe for power and material resources. United under a single head, and no longer disturbed by the insubordination of the turbulent nobles, lately humbled by the craft of Louis the Eleventh, this kingdom awakened the warm admiration of political judges so shrewd as the diplomatic envoys of the Venetian Republic. "All these provinces," exclaimed one of these agents, in a report made to the Doge and Senate soon after his return, "are so well situated, so liberally provided with river-courses, harbors, and mountain ranges, that it may with safety be asserted that this realm is not only the most noble in Christendom, rivalling in antiquity our own most illus7trious commonwealth, but excels all other states in natural advantages and security."⁶⁶ "Le quali tutte provincie sono così bene poste," etc. Relazione di Francia dell' Amb. Marino Cavalli, in Relations des Ambassadeurs Vénitiens (Tommaseo, Paris), i. 220. Another of the same distinguished school of statesmen, taking a more deliberate survey of the country, gives utterance to the universal estimate of his age, when averring that France is to be regarded as the foremost kingdom of Christendom, whether viewed in respect to its dignity and power, or the rank of the prince who governs it.⁷⁷ "Dico che il regno di Francia per universal consenso del mondo fu riputato il primo regno di cristianità," etc. Commentario del regno di Francia del clarissimo sig. Michel Suriano, Rel. des Amb. Vén., i. 470. In proof of the first of these claims he alleges the fact that, whereas England had once been, and Naples was at that moment dependent upon the Church, and Bohemia and Poland sustained similar relations to the Empire, France had always been a sovereign state. "It is also the oldest of European kingdoms, and the first that was converted to Christianity," remarks the same writer; adding, with a touch of patriotic pride, the proviso, "if we except the Pope, who is the universal head of religion, and the State of Venice, which, as it first sprang into existence a Christian commonwealth, has always continued such."⁸⁸ "Dopo il papa che è universal capo della religione, e la signoria di Venezia, che, come è nata, s'è conservata sempre cristiana." Suriano, ubi supra, i. 472.

France contrasted with England.

Other diplomatists took the same view of the power and resources of this favored country. "The kingdom of France," said Chancellor Bacon, in a speech against the policy of rendering open aid to Scotland, and thus becoming involved in a war with the French, "is four times as large as the realm of England, the men four times as many, and the revenue four times as much, and it has better credit. France is full of expert captains and old soldiers, and besides its own troops it may entertain as many Almains as it is able to hire."⁹⁹ This was in the early part of Queen Elizabeth's reign, Dec. 15, 1559, MSS. British Museum. I use the summary in the Calendar of State Papers (Stevenson), p. 197, note.8

Assimilation of language and manners.

Meantime France was fast becoming more homogeneous than it had ever been since the fall of the Roman power. As often as the lines of the great feudal families became extinct, or these families were induced or compelled to renounce their pretensions, their fiefs were given in appanage to younger branches of the royal house, or were more closely united to the domains of the crown, and entrusted to governors of the king's appointment.¹⁰¹⁰ Marino Cavalli stated, in 1546, that this systematic policy of continually incorporating and never alienating had been pursued for eighty years. So successful had it proved, that everything had been absorbed by confiscation, succession, or purchase. There was, perhaps, no longer a single prince in the kingdom with an income of 20,000 crowns; while even their scanty resources and straitened estates the princes possessed simply as ordinary proprietors, from whose actions an appeal was open to the king. Relazioni Venete (Albèri, Firenze), serie 1, i. 234, 235. In either case the actual control of affairs was placed in the hands of officers whose highest ambition was to reproduce in the provincial capital the growing elegance of the great city on the Seine where the royal court had fixed its ordinary abode. The provinces, consequently, began to assimilate more and more to Paris, and this not merely in manners, but in forms of speech and even in pronunciation. The rude patois, since it grated upon the cultivated ear, was banished from polite society, and, if not consigned to oblivion, was relegated to the more ignorant and remoter districts. Learning held its seat in Paris, and the scholars who returned to their homes after a sojourn in its academic halls were careful to avoid creating doubts respecting the thoroughness of their training by the use of any dialect but that spoken in the neighborhood of the university. As the idiom of Paris asserted its supremacy over the rest of France, a new tie was constituted, binding together provinces diverse in origin and history.

The nobles flock to Paris.

The spirit of obedience pervading all classes of the population contributed much to the national strength. The great nobles had lost their excessive privileges. They no longer attempted, in the seclusion of their ancestral estates, to rival the magnificence or defy the authority of the king. They began to prefer the capital to the freer retreat of their9 castles. During the reign of Francis the First, and still more during the reign of his immediate successors, costly palaces for the accommodation of princely and ducal families were reared in the neighborhood of the Louvre.¹¹¹¹ Yet the old prejudice against city life had not fully died out. So late as in 1527, Chassanée wrote: "Galliæ omnis una est nobilium norma. Nam rura et prædia sua (dicam potius castra) incolentes urbes fugiunt, in quibus habitare nobilem turpe ducitur. Qui in illis degunt, ignobiles habentur a nobilibus." Catalogus Gloriæ Mundi, fol. 200. It was currently reported that more than one fortune had been squandered in the hazardous experiment of maintaining a pomp befitting the courtier. Ultimately the poorer grandees were driven to the adoption of the wise precaution of spending only a quarter of the year in the enticing but dangerous vicinity of the throne.¹²¹² Michel Suriano, Rel. des Amb. Vén., i. 488.

The cities.

The cities, also, whose extensive privileges had constituted one of the most striking features of the political system of mediæval Europe, had been shorn of their exorbitant claims founded upon royal charters or prescriptive usage. The kings of France, in particular, had favored the growth of the municipalities, in order to secure their assistance in the reduction of refractory vassals. Flourishing trading communities had sprung up on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and of the ocean, and on the banks of the navigable rivers emptying into them. These corporations had secured a degree of independence proportioned, for the most part, to the weakness of their neighbors. The policy of the crown had been, while generously conferring privileges of great importance upon the cities lying within the royal domain, to make still more lavish concessions in favor of the municipalities upon or contiguous to the lands of the great feudatories.¹³¹³ Mignet, ubi supra, ii. 160, etc.

The capital.

No sooner, however, did the humiliation of the landed nobility render it superfluous to conciliate the good-will of the proud and opulent citizens, than the readiest means were sought for reducing them to the level of ordinary subjects. Paris especially, once almost a republic, had of late learned submission and docility.¹⁴¹⁴ Rel. dell' Amb. Marino Cavalli (1546), ubi supra, i. 229. By the change, however, the capital10 had lost neither wealth nor inhabitants, being described as very rich and populous, covering a vast area, and wholly given up to trade.¹⁵¹⁵ It would seem that the Venetian ambassadors were never free from apprehension lest their admiration of what they had seen abroad might be construed as disparagement of their own island city. Hence, Marino Giustiniano (A. D. 1535), after making the statement which we have given in the text, is careful to add: "Pur non arriva di richezza ad una gran gionta quanto Venezia; nè anco ha maggior popolo, per mio giudizio, di che loro si gloriano." Rel. Venete (Albèri, Firenze), serie 1, i. 148. In the absence of an accurate census, the number of its inhabitants was variously stated at from 300,000 souls to nearly thrice as many; but all accounts agreed in placing Paris among the foremost cities of the civilized world.¹⁶¹⁶ The lowest estimate, which is that of Guicciardini (Belgiæ Descriptio, apud Prescott, Philip II., i. 367), is probably nearest the mark; the highest, 800,000, is that of Davila, Storia delle Guerre Civili, 1. iii. (Eng. trans., p. 79). Marino Cavalli, in 1546, says 500,000; Michel Suriano, in 1561, between 400,000 and 500,000. M. Dulaure is even more parsimonious than Guicciardini, for he will allow Paris, in the sixteenth century, not more than 200,000 to 210,000 souls! Histoire de Paris, iv. 384. Some of the exaggerated estimates may be errors of transcription. At least Ranke asserts that this is the case with the 500,000 of Fran. Giustiniani in 1537, where the original manuscript gives only 300,000. Französische Geschichte, v. (Abschn. 1), 76.

Military resources.

With the military resources at his command, the king had the means of rendering himself formidable abroad and secure at home. The French cavalry, consisting of gentlemen whose duty and honorable distinction it was to follow the monarch in every expedition, still sustained the reputation for the impetuous ardor and the irresistible weight of its charges which it had won during the Middle Ages. If it had encountered unexpected rebuffs on the fields of Crécy, Poitiers and Agincourt, the chivalry of France had been too successful in other engagements to lose courage and enthusiasm. The nobles, both old and young, were still ready at any time to flock to their prince's standard when unfurled for an incursion into Naples or the Milanese. Never had they displayed more alacrity or self-sacrificing devotion than when young Francis the First set out upon his campaigns in Italy.¹⁷¹⁷ See, for example, the MS. receipt, from which it appears that, in 1516, Sieur Imbert de Baternay pledged his entire service of plate to help defray the expenses of the war. Capefigue, François Premier et la Renaissance, i. 141. The11 French infantry was less trustworthy. The troops raised in Normandy, Brittany, and Languedoc were reported to be but poorly trained to military exercises; but the foot-soldiers supplied by some of the frontier provinces were sturdy and efficient, and the gallant conduct of the Gascons at the disastrous battle of St. Quentin was the subject of universal admiration.¹⁸¹⁸ Marino Giustiniano (1535), Rel. Venete (Albèri), i, 185, François de Rabutin, Guerres de Belgique (Ed. Panthéon), 697.

Foreign mercenary troops.

What France lacked in cavalry was customarily supplied by the Reiters, whose services were easily purchased in Germany. The same country stood ready to furnish an abundance of Lansquenets (Lanzknechten), or pikemen, who, together with the Swiss, in a great measure replaced the native infantry. A Venetian envoy reported, in 1535, that the French king could, in six weeks at longest, set on foot a force of forty-eight thousand men, of whom twenty-one thousand, or nearly one-half, would be foreign mercenaries. His navy, besides his great ship of sixty guns lying in the harbor of Havre, numbered thirty galleys, and a few other vessels of no great importance.¹⁹¹⁹ Marino Giustiniano, ubi supra.

The rights of the people overlooked.

The States General an object of suspicion.

The power gained by the crown through the consolidation of the monarchy had been acquired at the expense of the popular liberties. In the prolonged struggle between the king, as lord paramount, and his insubordinate vassals, the rights of inferior subjects had received little consideration. From the strife the former issued triumphant, with an asserted claim to unlimited power. The voice of the masses was but feebly heard in the States General—a convocation of all three orders called at irregular intervals. Upon the ordinary policy of government, this, the only representative body, exercised no permanent control. If, in its occasional sessions, the deputies of the Tiers État exhibited a disposition to intermeddle in those political concerns which the crown claimed as its exclusive prerogative, the king and his advisers found in their audacity an additional motive for postponing as long as possible a resort to an expedient so disa12greeable as the assembling of the States General. Already had monarchs begun to look with suspicion upon the growing intelligence of untitled subjects, who might sooner or later come to demand a share in the public administration.

And rarely convoked.

A long break in the history of representative government.

Compensating advantages.

It was, therefore, only when the succession to the throne was contested, or when the perils attending the minority of the prince demanded the popular sanction of the choice of a regent, or when the flames of civil war seemed about to burst forth and involve the whole country in one general conflagration, that the royal consent could be obtained for convening the States General. During the first half of the sixteenth century the States General were not once summoned, unless the designation of States be accorded to one or two convocations partaking rather of the character of "Assemblies of Notables," and intended merely to assist in extricating the monarch from temporary embarrassment.²⁰²⁰ M. A. Boullée (in his Histoire complète des États-Généraux, i. 181, etc.) and other writers give the character of States General to the gathering of princes, clergy, etc., at Tours, in May, 1506. This was the assembly from which Louis XII. obtained the welcome advice to break an engagement to give his daughter Claude, heiress of Brittany, in marriage to Charles, the future emperor of Germany, in order that he might be free to bestow her hand on Francis of Angoulême. M. Boullée is also inclined to call the assembly after the battle of St. Quentin, January 5, 1558, a meeting of the States General. But Michel Suriano is correct in stating (Rel. des Amb. Vén., Tommaseo, i. 512-514) that between Louis XI.'s time and 1560 the only States General were those of 1483. Chancellor L'Hospital's words cited below are conclusive. The repeated wars of Louis the Twelfth, of Francis the First, and of Henry the Second were waged without any reference of the questions of their expediency and of the mode of conducting them to the tribunal of popular opinion. Thousands of brave Frenchmen found bloody graves beyond the Alps; Francis the First fell into the hands of his enemies, and after a weary captivity with difficulty regained his freedom; a new faith arose in France, threatening to subvert existing ecclesiastical institutions; yet in the midst of all this bloodshed, confusion and perplexity the people were left unconsulted.²¹²¹ Some of Louis XI.'s successors imbibed his aversion for these popular assemblies, and would, like Louis, have treated any one as a rebel who dared to talk of calling them. Michel Suriano, Rel. des Amb. Vén. (Tommaseo), i. 512-514. From the accession of Charles13 the Eighth, in 1483, to that of Charles the Ninth, in 1560, the history of representative government in France is almost a complete blank. So long was the period during which the States General were suspended, that, when at length it was deemed advisable to convene them again, the chancellor, in his opening address, felt compelled to enter into explanations respecting the nature and functions of a body which perhaps not a man living remembered to have seen in session.²²²² Chancellor L'Hospital's remarkable words were: "Or, messieurs, parceque nous reprenons l'ancienne coustume de tenir les estats jà délaissés par le temps de quatre-vingts ans ou environ, où n'y a mémoire d'homme qui y puisse atteindre, je diray en peu de paroles que c'est que tenir les estats, pour quelle cause Fon assembloit les estats, la façon et manière, et qui y présidoit, quel bien en vient au roy, quel au peuple, et mesmes s'il est utile au roy de tenir les estats, ou non." The address in full in La Place, Commentaires de l'Estat de la République, etc. (Ed. Panthéon), 80. Yet, while the desuetude into which had fallen the laudable custom of holding the States every year, or, at least, on occasion of any important matter for deliberation, might properly be traced to the flood of ambition and pride which had inundated the world, and to the inordinate covetousness of kings,²³²³ Michel Suriano, ubi supra. there were not wanting considerations to mitigate the disappointment of the people. Chief among them, doubtless, in the view of shrewd observers, was the fact that the assembling of the States was the invariable prelude to an increase of taxation, and that never had they met without benefiting the king's exchequer at the expense of the purses of his subjects.²⁴²⁴ "Tellement que sous ces beaux et doux appasts, l'on n'ouvre jamais telles assemblees que le peuple n'y accoure, ne les embrasse, et ne s'en esiouysse infiniement, ne considerant pas qu'il n'y a rien qu'il deust tant craindre, comme estant le general refrain d'iceux, de tirer argent de luy.... Au contraire jamais on ne feit assemblee generale des trois Estats en cette France, sans accroistre les finances de nos Roys à la diminution de celles du peuple." Pasquier, Recherches de la France, l. ii. c. 7, p. 82.

The endurance of the Tiers État.

Absolutism of the crown.

Meanwhile the nation bore with exemplary patience the accumulated burdens under which it staggered. Natives and foreigners alike were lost in admiration of its wonderful pow14ers of endurance. No one suspected that a terrible retribution for this same people's wrongs might one day overtake the successor of a long line of kings, each of whom had added his portion to the crushing load. The Emperor Maximilian was accustomed to divert himself at the expense of the French people. "The king of France," said he, "is a king of asses; there is no weight that can be laid upon his subjects which they will not bear without a murmur."²⁵²⁵ "Il rè di Francia è rè d'asini, perchè il suo popolo supoorta ogni sorte di peso, senza rechiamo mai." Michel Suriano, Commentarii (Rel. des Amb. Vén., Tommaseo), i. 486. The warrior and historian Rabutin congratulated the monarchs of France upon God's having given them, in obedience, the best and most faithful people in the whole world.²⁶²⁶ Guerres de Belgique (Éd. Panthéon), 585. The Venetian, Matteo Dandolo, declared to the Doge and Senate that the king might with propriety regard as his own all the money in France, for, such was the incomparable kindness of the people, that whatever he might ask for in his need was very gladly brought to him.²⁷²⁷ "Egli può riputar poi tutti li danari della Francia esser suoi; perche nelli suoi bisogni, sempre che li dimanda, gli sono portati molto volontariamente per la incomparabil benevolenza di essi popoli." Relaz. Ven. (Albèri), ii. 172. It was not strange, perhaps, that the ruler of subjects so exemplary in their eagerness to replenish his treasury as soon as it gave evidence of being exhausted, came to take about the same view of the matter. Accordingly, it is related of Francis the First that, being asked by his guest, Charles the Fifth, when the latter was crossing France on his way to suppress the insurrection of Ghent, what revenue he derived from certain cities he had passed through, the king promptly, replied: "Ce que je veux"—"What I please."²⁸²⁸ Cayet, Hist. de la guerre sous le règne de Henry IV., i. 248. We shall see that Francis carried out the same ideas of absolute authority in his dealings both with reputed heresy and with the Gallican Church itself. He seems even to have believed himself commissioned to do all the thinking in matters of religion for his more intellectual sister; for, if Brantôme may be credited, when Constable Montmorency, on one occasion, had the temerity to suggest to him that all his efforts to extirpate error in France would be futile until he began with Margaret of Angoulême, Francis silenced him with the remark: "No more on that subject! She loves me too much; she will never believe anything but what I desire." Femmes illustres: Marguerite, reine de Navarre.15

Fruits of the abasement of the people.

Yet it must be noted, in passing, that the studied abasement of the Tiers État had already begun to bear some fruit that should have alarmed every patriotic heart. It was, as we have seen, impossible to obtain good French infantry except from Gascony and some other border provinces. The place that should have been held by natives was filled by Germans and Swiss. What was the reason? Simply that the common people had lost the consciousness of their manhood, in consequence of the degraded position into which the king, and the privileged classes, imitating his example, had forced them. "Because of their desire to rule the people with a rod of iron," says Dandolo, "the gentry of the kingdom have deprived them of arms. They dare not even carry a stick, and are more submissive to their superiors than dogs!"²⁹²⁹ "Stanno a quelli soggetti più che cani." Relaz. Ven., ii. 174. No wonder that all efforts of Francis to imitate the armies of free states, by instituting legions of arquebusiers, proved fruitless.³⁰³⁰ Ibid., ubi supra. Add to this that trade was held in supreme contempt,³¹³¹ "Mercatores aspernantur," says Chassanée in 1527, "ut vile atque abjectum omnium genus." Catal. Gloriæ Mundi, fol. 200. and the picture is certainly sufficiently dark.

Checks upon the king's authority.

Yet, while, through the absence of any effectual barrier to the exercise of his good pleasure, the king's authority was ultimately unrestricted, it must be confessed that there existed, in point of fact, some powerful checks, rendering the abuse of the royal prerogative, for the most part, neither easy nor expedient. Parliament, the municipal corporations, the university, and the clergy, weak as they often proved in a direct struggle with the crown, nevertheless exerted an influence that ought not to be overlooked. The most headstrong prince hesitated to disregard the remonstrances of any one of these bodies, and their united protest sometimes led to the abandonment of schemes of great promise for the royal treasury. It is true that parliament, university, and char16tered borough owed their existence and privileges to the royal will, and that the power that created could also destroy. But time had invested with a species of sanctity the venerable institutions established by monarchs long since dead, and the utmost stretch of royal displeasure went not in its manifestation further than the mere threat to strip parliament or university of its privileges, or, at most, the arrest and temporary imprisonment of the more obnoxious judges or scholars.

The Parliament of Paris

The Parliament of Paris was the legitimate successor of that assembly in which, in the earlier stage of the national existence, the great vassals came together to render homage to the lord paramount and aid him by their deliberations. This feudal parliament was transformed into a judicial parliament toward the end of the thirteenth century. With the change of functions, the chief crown officers were admitted to seats in the court. Next, the introduction of a written procedure, and the establishment of a more complicated legislation, compelled the illiterate barons and the prelates to call in the assistance of graduates of the university, acquainted with the art of writing and skilled in law. These were appointed by the king to the office of counsellors.³²³² Mignet, ubi supra, ii. 173. In 1302, parliament, hitherto migratory, following the king in his journeys, was made stationary at Paris. Its sessions were fixed at two in each year, held at Easter and All Saints respectively. The judicial body was subdivided into several "chambers," according to the nature of the cases upon which it was called to act.

Becomes the supreme court.

From this time the Parliament of Paris assumed appellate jurisdiction over all France, and became the supreme court of justice. But the burden of prolonged sessions, and the necessity now imposed upon the members of residing at least four months out of every year in the capital, proved an irksome restraint both to prelates and to noblemen. Their attendance, therefore, began now to be less constant. As early as in 1320 the bishops and other ecclesiastical officers were excused, on the ground that their duty to their dioceses and sacred functions demanded their presence elsewhere. From17 the general exemption the Bishop of Paris and the Abbot of St. Denis alone were excluded, on account of their proximity to the seat of the court. About the beginning of the fifteenth century, the members, taking advantage of the weak reign of Charles the Sixth, made good their claim to a life-tenure in their offices.³³³³ See the sketch by Daniel, Histoire de France, reprinted in Leber, Collection de pièces relatives à l'histoire de France, vi, 266, etc.; also Mignet, ubi supra, ii. 177, etc.

Provincial parliaments.

The rapid increase of cases claiming the attention of the Parliament of Paris suggested the erection of similar tribunals in the chief cities of the provinces added to the original estates of the crown. Before the accession of Francis the First a provincial parliament had been instituted at Toulouse, with jurisdiction over the extensive domain once subject to the illustrious counts of that city; a second, at Grenoble, for Dauphiny; a third, at Bordeaux, for the province of Guyenne recovered from the English; a fourth, at Dijon, for the newly acquired Duchy of Burgundy; a fifth, at Rouen, to take the place of the inferior "exchequer" which had long had its seat there; and a sixth, at Aix-en-Provence, for the southeast of France.³⁴³⁴ Mignet, ubi supra, ii. 212; Floquet, Histoire du parlement de Normandie, tom. i.; Daniel, ubi supra; Vicomte de Bastard-D'Estang, Les parlements de France, i. 189.

Claim to the right of remonstrance.

To their judicial functions, the Parliament of Paris, and to a minor degree the provincial parliaments, had insensibly added other functions purely political. In order to secure publicity for their edicts, and equally with the view of establishing the authenticity of documents purporting to emanate from the crown, the kings of France had early desired the insertion of all important decrees in the parliamentary records. The registry was made on each occasion by express order of the judges, but with no idea on their part that this form was essential to the validity of a royal ordinance. Presently, however, the novel theory was advanced that parliament had the right of refusing to record an obnoxious law, and that, without the formal recognition of parliament, no edict18 could be allowed to affect the decisions of the supreme or of any inferior tribunal.

Indulgence of the crown.

The Chancellor's oath.

In the exercise or this assumed prerogative, the judges undertook to send a remonstrance to the king, setting forth the pernicious consequences that might be expected to flow from the proposed measure if put into execution. However unfounded in history, the claim of the Parliament of Paris appears to have been viewed with indulgence by monarchs most of whom were not indisposed to defer to the legal knowledge of the counsellors, nor unwilling to enhance the consideration of the venerable and ancient body to which the latter belonged. In all cases, however, the final responsibility devolved upon the sovereign. Whenever the arguments and advice of parliament failed to convince him, the king proceeded in person to the audience-chamber of the refractory court, and there, holding a lit-de-justice, insisted upon the immediate registration, or else sent his express command by one of his most trusty servants. The judges, in either case, were forced to succumb—often, it must be admitted, with a very bad grace—and admit the law to their records. We shall soon have occasion to note one of the most striking instances of this unequal contest between king and parliament, in which power rather than right or learning won the day. In spite, however, of occasional checks, parliament manfully and successfully maintained its right to throw obstacles in the way of hasty or inconsiderate legislation. In this it was often efficiently assisted by the Chancellor of France, the highest judicial officer of the crown, to whom, on his assuming office, an oath was administered containing a very explicit promise to exercise the right of remonstrance with the king before affixing the great seal of state to any unjust or unreasonable royal ordinance.³⁵³⁵ The formula is worthy of attention: "Quand on vous apportera à sceller quelque lettre, signée par le commandement du Roi, si elle n'est de justice et raison, ne la scellerez point, encore que ledit Seigneur le commandast par une ou deux fois; mais viendrez devers iceluy Seigneur, et lui remonstrerez tous les points par lesquels ladite lettre n'est pas raisonnable, et après que aura entendu lesdita points, s'il vous commande la sceller, la scellerez, car lors le péché en sera sur ledit Seigneur et non sur vous." In full in M. de Saint-Allais, De l'ancienne France (Paris, 1834), ii. 91; see also Capefigue, François Premier et la Renaissance, i. 106.19

Abuses in the administration of justice.

Not that either the Parliament of Paris or the provincial parliaments were free of grave defects deserving the severe animadversion of impartial observers. It was probably no worse with the Parliament of Bordeaux than with its sister courts;³⁶³⁶ Certainly not than with the Parliament of Aix. See its shortcomings in the papers of Prof. Joly, of the Faculté des Lettres of Caen, entitled "Les juges des Vaudois: Mercuriales du parlement de Provence au XVIe siècle, d'après des documents inédits." Bulletin de l'hist. du Prot. fr., xxiv. (1875), 464-471, 518-523, 555-564. yet, when Charles the Ninth visited that city in 1564, honest Chancellor L'Hospital seized the opportunity to tell the judges some of their failings. The royal ordinances were not observed. Parliamentary decisions ranked above commands of the king. There were divisions and violence. In the civil war some judges had made themselves captains. Many of them were avaricious, timid, lazy and inattentive to their duties. Their behavior and their dress were "dissolute." They had become negligent in judging, and had thrown the burden of prosecuting offences upon the shoulders of the king's attorney, originally appointed merely to look after the royal domain. They had become the servants of the nobility for hire. There was not a lord within the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Bordeaux but had his own chancellor in the court to look after his interests.³⁷³⁷ "Qu'il n'y a pas un seigneur en ce ressort, qui n'aye son chancelier en ceste Cour." Boscheron des Portes, Histoire du parlement de Bordeaux (Bordeaux, 1877), i. 191-194, from Registers of Parliament. It was sufficiently characteristic that the same judicial body of which such things were said to its face (and which neither denied their truth nor grew indignant), should have been so solicitous for its dignity as to send the monarch, upon his approach to the city, an earnest petition that its members should not be constrained to kneel when his Majesty entered their court-room! To which the latter dryly responded, "their genuflexion would not make him any less a king than he already was."³⁸³⁸ "La génuflexion ne le ferait pas moins roi qu'il était." Ibid., i. 185.20

The University of Paris.

Among the forces that tended to limit the arbitrary exercise of the royal authority, the influence of the University of Paris is entitled to a prominent place. Nothing had added more lustre to the rising glory of the capital than the possession of the magnificent institution of learning, the foundation of which was lost in the mist of remote antiquity. Older than the race of kings who had for centuries held the French sceptre, the university owed its origin, if we are to believe the testimony of its own annals, to the munificent hand of Charlemagne, in the beginning of the ninth century. Careful historical criticism must hesitate to accept as conclusive the slender proof offered in support of the story.³⁹³⁹ See Pasquier's conclusive argument in his chapter: "Que l'opinion est erronée par laquelle on attribue l'institution de l'Université de Paris à l'Empereur Charlemagne." Recherches de la France, 800. So universally accepted, however, in Pasquier's time, was the story of Charlemagne's agency in the matter, that "de croire le contraire c'est estre hérétique en l'histoire," p. 798. It is, perhaps, safer to regard one of the simple schools instituted at an early period in connection with cathedrals and monasteries as having contained the humble germ from which the proud university was slowly developed. But, by the side of this original foundation there had doubtless grown up the schools of private instructors, and these had acquired a certain prominence before the confluence of scholars to Paris from all quarters rendered necessary an attempt to introduce order into the complicated system, by the formation of that union of all the teachers and scholars to which the name of universitas was ultimately given.

If the origin of the University of Paris, like that of the greater number of human institutions, was insignificant when viewed in the light of its subsequent growth, the meagreness of the early course of instruction was almost incredible to those who, in an age of richer mental acquisitions, listened to the prelections of its numerous and learned doctors. The Trivium and the Quadrivium constituted the whole cycle of human knowledge. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric were embraced in the one; music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy in the other. He was indeed a prodigy of erudition whose compre21hensive intellect had mastered the details of these, the seven liberal arts, or, to use a familiar line of the period,

But the ignorant pedagogues of the eleventh century gave place, in the early part of the twelfth, to instructors of real merit—to Peter Abelard, among others, and to his pupil Peter Lombard, the fame of whose lectures attracted to Paris great crowds of youth eager to become proficient in philosophy and

The four nations.

Hitherto there had been but one faculty—the Faculty of Arts; but among the students a distribution into four "nations" had been effected. The Nation of France embraced the students coming from the royal dominions, which then comprised a limited territory, with Paris as its capital, together with the students of Italy, Spain, and the east. The Nation of Picardy consisted of students from the province of that name and from the neighboring County of Flanders. The Nation of Normandy received youths belonging to the rich provinces of Normandy and Brittany, and to the west. The Nation of England gathered those who came from the British Isles, as well as from the extensive territories in southwestern France long held by the kings of England. After the reconquest of Guyenne, however, the German students became the controlling element in the fourth nation, and the designation was changed to the Nation of Germany. The Rector of the university and the four Procurators of the nations were entrusted with the administration of the general interests of the vast scholastic community.

The faculties.

Chancellor and rector.

With the rise of new branches of science to contest the supremacy of the old, the institution of other faculties was called for. The demand was not conceded without a determined struggle of so serious a character as to require the intervention of two popes for its settlement. Nevertheless, before the end of the thirteenth century, the three new faculties of theology, medicine, and law had assumed their places by the side of the four original nations. The faculties were represented in the rector's council by three Deans,22 invested with power equal to that enjoyed by the procurators of the nations. While the rector, always chosen from the faculty of arts, was the real head of this republic of letters in all that concerned its inner life and management, the honorable privilege of conferring the degrees that gave the right to teach belonged to the chancellor of the university.⁴⁰⁴⁰ The chancellor "de Notre Dame," the chancellor proper, alone had the power to create doctors in theology, law, and medicine; but candidates for the degree of master of arts might apply either to him or to the rival chancellor of Sainte Geneviève: "Quant aux Maistres és Arts, à l'un ou l'autre Chancelier, selon le choix qui en est fait par celuy qui veut prendre sa licence." Pasquier, Recherches, 840. The former, elected every three months, began and ended his office with solemn processions, the first to invoke the blessing of heaven upon his labors, the second to render thanks for their successful termination. The chancellor, holding office for life, was an ecclesiastic of the church of Paris, originally the bishop or some one appointed by him, who, if he enjoyed less direct control over the scholars in their studies, was yet the chief censor of their morals,⁴¹⁴¹ "Le premier juge et censeur de la doctrine et mœurs des escoliers, que nous appelons Chancelier de l'Université." Pasquier, ubi supra, 265. and the representative of the university in its dealings with foreign bodies, and especially with the Roman See.⁴²⁴² Pasquier has a fund of quaint information respecting the university, the chancellor, the rector, etc. Of the contrast between rector and chancellor he remarks: "Quant au Chancelier de l'Université il pare seulement de ce coup contre toutes ces grandeurs (sc. du Recteur); que le Recteur fait des escoliers pour estudier (tout ainsi que le capitaine des soldats, quand il les enrolle pour combattre) mais le Chancelier fait des capitaines quand il baille le bonnet de Theologie, Decret, Medecine, et Arts, pour enseigner et monter en chaire." Ubi supra, 843.

The Sorbonne.

No other mediæval seat of learning attained so enviable a reputation as Paris for completeness of theological training. From all parts of Christendom students resorted to it as to the most abundant and the purest fountain of sound learning. In 1250, Robert de Sorbonne, the private confessor of Louis the Ninth, emulating the munificence of previous patrons of letters, founded a college intended to facilitate the education of secular students of theology. The college took23 the name of its author, and, becoming famous for the ability of its instructors, the Sorbonne soon engrossed within its walls almost the entire course of theological teaching given in the University of Paris. Although the students in the colleges of Navarre and Plessis devoted themselves to the acquisition of the same science, they had little public instruction save that for which they resorted to the Sorbonne. By reason of the prominence thus gained as the seat of the principal instruction in theology, the Sorbonne became synonymous with the theological faculty itself.⁴³⁴³ Sleidanus, De statu rel., etc., ad annum 1521.

Its great authority.

A body of theologians of admitted eminence necessarily spoke with authority. In France the decisions of the Sorbonne were accepted as final upon almost all questions affecting the doctrine and practice of the Church. Abroad its opinions were esteemed of little less weight than the deliberate judgments of synods. Difficulties in church and state were referred to it for solution. In the age of the reformation the Sorbonne was invited to pronounce upon the truth or falsity of the propositions maintained by Martin Luther, and, a few years later, upon the validity of the grounds of the divorce sought by Henry the Eighth of England. But, unhappily, the reputation of the faculty was tarnished by scholastic bigotry. Slavish attachment to the past had destroyed freedom of thought. With a species of inconsistency not altogether without a parallel in history, the very body which had been active in the promotion of science during the Middle Ages assumed the posture of resistance the moment that the advocates of substantial reform urged the necessity of immediate action. Abuses which had provoked the indignation of Gerson, once Chancellor of the University of Paris, and employed the skilful pen of the bold Rector Nicholas de Clemangis, met with no word of condemnation from the new generation of theologians.

Such was the Sorbonne of the beginning of the sixteenth century, when intriguing doctors, such as Beda and Quercu, ruled in its deliberations. An enemy of liberal studies as well24 as of the "new doctrines," the faculty of theology was as ready to attack Erasmus for his devotion to ancient literature, or Jacques Lefèvre for establishing the existence of the "three Marys," as to denounce the Bishop of Meaux for favoring "Lutheran" preachers in his diocese. Against all innovators in church or state, the sentiments of the Sorbonne, which it took no pains to conceal, were that "their impious and shameless arrogance must be restrained by chains, by censures—nay, by fire and flame—rather than vanquished by argument!"⁴⁴⁴⁴ "Vinculis, censuris, imo ignibus et flammis coercendam, potius quam ratione convincendam." Determination of the Fac. of Theology against Luther, April 15. 1521, Gerdes, Hist. Evang. Renov., iv. 10, etc., Documents.

Number of students.

Meanwhile, in the external marks of prosperity the University of Paris was still in its prime at the period of which I speak. The colleges, clustered together in the southern quarter of the city—the present Quartier Latin—were so numerous and populous that this portion continued for many years after to be distinguished as l' Université.⁴⁵⁴⁵ From the Cité, or island on which the city was originally built, and the Ville, or Paris north of the Seine. Pasquier, Recherches, 797; J. Sinceri, Itinerarium Galliæ (1627), 270. The number of students, it is true, had visibly diminished since one hundred years before. The crowd of youth in attendance was no longer so great as in 1409, when, according to a contemporary, the head of a scholastic procession to the Church of Saint Denis had already reached the sacred shrine before the rector had left the Church of the Mathurins in the Rue Saint Jacques, a point full six miles distant.⁴⁶⁴⁶ Juvenal des Ursins, apud Pasquier, 267. Yet the report of Giustiniano, in 1535, stated it as the current belief that the university still had twenty-five thousand students in attendance, although this seemed to be an exaggerated estimate. "For the most part," he added, "they are young, for everybody, however poor he may be, learns to read and write."⁴⁷⁴⁷ Relazioni Venete (Albèri), i. 149. Another ambassador, writing eleven years later, represents the students, now numbering sixteen or twenty thousand, as extremely poor. Their instructors, he tells us, received very modest salaries;25 yet, so great was the honor attaching to the post of teacher within the university walls, that the competition for professorial chairs was marvellously active.⁴⁸⁴⁸ Ibid., i. 226.

The influence of the clergy fell little short of that of the university in moderating the arbitrary impulses of the monarch.

The Gallican liberties.

The Gallican Church had for many centuries been distinguished for a manly defence of its liberties against the encroachments of the Papal court. Tenacious of the maintenance of doctrinal unity with the See of Rome, the French prelates early met the growing assumption of the Popes with determined courage. At the suggestion of the clergy, and with their full concurrence, more than one French king adopted stringent regulations intended to protect the kingdom from becoming the prey of foreigners. Church and State were equally interested in the successful prosecution of a warfare carried on, so far as the French were concerned, in a strictly defensive manner. The Papal treasury, under guise of annats, laid claim to the entire income of the bishopric or other benefice for the first year after each new appointment. It seized upon the revenues of vacant ecclesiastical offices, which the king specially affected. Every bull or brief needed to secure induction into office—and the number of these articles was almost unlimited—was procured at a heavy expense. Further sums were exacted for pronouncing a dispensation in favor of those appointees whom youth or some other canonical impediment incapacitated for the acceptance and discharge of the requisite functions.

Objects of the Gallican party.

The main objects of both crown and clergy were, consequently, to secure the kingdom from the disastrous results of the interference of Italians in the domestic affairs of France; to preserve the treasure of the realm from exhaustion resulting from the levy of arbitrary imposts fixed by irresponsible aliens, and exacted through the terrors of ecclesiastical penalties; to prevent the right of election to lucrative livings from falling into the hands of those who would use the privilege only as a means of acquiring26 riches; and to rescue clergymen themselves from being hurried away for trial beyond the confines of their native land, and possibly from suffering hopeless confinement in Roman dungeons. In a word, it was the aim of the Gallican party to prove that "the government of the church is not a despotism."⁴⁹⁴⁹ "Donc, le gouvernement de l'Église n'est pas un empire despotique." Abbé Claude Fleury, Discours sur les Libertés de l'Église gallicane, 1724 (reprinted in Leber, Coll. de pièces relatives à l'hist. de France, iii. 252).

Pragmatic Sanction of St. Louis.

It is a somewhat anomalous circumstance that the first decided step in repressing the arrogant claims of the Papal See was taken by a monarch whose singular merits have been deemed worthy of canonization by the Roman Church. Louis the Ninth had witnessed with alarm the rapid strides of the Papacy toward universal dominion. His pride was offended by the pretension of the Pontiff to absolute superiority; his sovereign rights were assailed when taxes were levied in France at the pleasure of a foreign priest and prince. He foresaw that this abuse was likely to take deep root unless promptly met by a formal declaration placing the rights of the French monarch and nation in their true light. For this reason he issued in 1268 a solemn edict, which, as emanating from the unconstrained will of the king, took the name of the "Pragmatic Sanction of Saint Louis."

The preamble of this famous ordinance, upon the authenticity of which doubts have been unnecessarily cast,⁵⁰⁵⁰ "On a contesté l'authenticité de cette pièce, mais elle est aujourd'hui généralement reconnu." Isambert, Recueil gén. des anciennes lois françaises, i. 339. declares the object of the king to be to secure the safety and tranquillity of the church of his realm, the advancement of divine worship, the salvation of the souls of Christ's faithful people, and the attainment of the favor and help of Almighty God. To his sole jurisdiction and protection had France ever been subject, and so did Louis desire it to remain. The provisions of the Pragmatic Sanction were directed chiefly to guarding the freedom of election and of collation to benefices, and to prohibiting the imposition of any form of taxes by the Pope upon ecclesias27tical property in France, save by previous consent of the prince and clergy.⁵¹⁵¹ Preuves des Libertez de l'Eglise Gallicane, pt. ii.; Isambert, ubi supra; Ordonnances des Roys de France de la troisième race, i. 97-98. Section 5 sufficiently expresses the feelings of the king in reference to the insatiable covetousness of the Roman court: "Item, exactiones et onera gravissima pecuniarum, per curiam Romanam ecclesiæ regni nostri impositas vel imposita, quibus regnum nostrum miserabiliter depauperatum extitit, sive etiam imponendas, aut imponenda levari, aut colligi nullatenus volumus, nisi duntaxat pro rationabili, pia et urgentissima causa, inevitabili necessitate, et de spontaneo et expresso consensu nostro et ipsius ecclesiæ regni nostri." See also Sismondi, Histoire des Français, vii. 104.

In this brief document had been laid the foundation of the liberties of the Gallican Church, not under the form of novel legislation, but of a summary of previous usage.

Philip the Fair and Boniface.

Political reasons, not long after the death of Louis, gave new vigor to the policy of opposition to which this king had pledged France. His grandson, the resolute Philip the Fair, found fresh incitement in the extravagant conduct of a contemporary Pope, Boniface the Eighth. The bold ideas advanced by Hildebrand in the eleventh, and carried into execution by Innocent the Third in the thirteenth century, were wrought into the very texture of the soul of Boniface, and could not be concealed, in spite of the altered condition of mediæval society. Intolerant, headstrong, and despotic, he undertook to exercise a theocratic rule, and commanded contending monarchs to lay down their arms, and submit their disputes to his arbitrament. To such a summons Philip was not inclined to submit. The crafty and unscrupulous prince, whose contempt for divine law was evidenced by his shameless practice of injustice, whose coffers were filled indifferently by the confiscation of the rich spoils of the commanderies of the Templars, and by recklessly debasing the national currency, did not hesitate to engage in a contest with the most presumptuous of Popes. He appealed to the States General, and all three orders indignantly repudiated the suggestion that their country had ever stood to the Papacy in the relation of a fief. The disastrous example of the English John Lackland had found no imitator on the southern side of the channel. The Pope was28 declared a heretic. Emissaries of Louis seized him in his native city of Anagni, within the very bounds of the "Patrimony of St. Peter," and the rough usage to which he was then subjected hastened his death. His successors on the pontifical throne proved somewhat more tractable.

The Popes at Avignon.

During his short and unimportant pontificate, Benedict the Eleventh restored to the chapters of cathedrals the right of electing their own bishops. Upon his death, Philip secured the elevation to the pontifical dignity of an ecclesiastic wholly devoted to French interests, the facile Clement the Fifth, who, in return for the honor conferred upon him, removed the seat of the Papacy to Avignon. Here for the seventy years of the so-called "Babylonish Captivity," the Popes continued to reside, too completely subject to the influence of the French monarchs to dream of resuming their tone of defiance, but scarcely less exacting than before of homage from other rulers. In fact, the burden of the pecuniary exactions of the Popes rather grew than diminished with the change from Rome to Avignon, and with the institution of rival claimants to the tiara, each requiring an equal sum to support the pomp of his court, but recognized as legitimate by only a portion of Christendom. The devices for drawing tribute from all quarters were multiplied to an almost insupportable extent. So effectual did they prove, that no pontiff, perhaps, ever left at his death a more enormous accumulation of treasure than one of the Popes of Avignon, John the Twenty-second. Much of this wealth was derived from the rich provinces of France.

The Schism.

Close upon the "Captivity" followed the "Schism," during which the generally acknowledged Popes, who had returned to Rome, were opposed by pretenders at Avignon and elsewhere. A double incentive was now given to the monarchs of Europe for setting bounds to the ambition of the Papacy. For while the Popes, through the loss of a great part of their authority and prestige, had become less formidable antagonists, their financial extortions had waxed so intolerable as to suggest the strongest arguments appealing to the self-interest of kings. Hence the frequency with which the demand29 for "a reformation in the head and the members" resounded from all parts of the Western Church. And hence, too, those memorable councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basle, which, coming in rapid succession at the commencement of the fifteenth century, bade fair to prove the forerunners of a radical reformation. It does not belong here to discuss the causes of their failure to answer this reasonable expectation. Yet with one of these assemblages is closely connected a very important incident in the history of the Gallican Church.

The Council of Bourges.

The Council of Basle had not yet concluded its protracted sessions when Charles the Seventh summoned the clergy of France to meet him in the city of Bourges. The times were troublous. The kingdom was rent with intestine division. A war was still raging, during the progress of which the victorious arms of the English had driven the king from his capital and deprived him of more than one-half of his dominions. The work of reinstating the royal authority, though well begun by the wonderful interposition of the Maid of Orleans, was as yet by no means complete. Undaunted, however, by the unsettled aspect of his affairs, Charles—the "King of Bourges," as he was contemptuously styled by his opponents—made his appearance in the national council convened in his temporary capital. He was attended by the dauphin, the Dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, the Count of Maine, and many other noblemen, as well as by a goodly train of doctors of civil and canon law. Awaiting his arrival were five archbishops, twenty-five bishops, and a host of abbots and deputies of universities and chapters of cathedrals. In the presence of this august convocation, in which all that was most prominent in church and state was represented, Charles published, on the seventh of July, 1438, an ordinance which has become celebrated under the name of the "Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges"—by far the more important of the two documents of similar nature emanating from the French throne.⁵²⁵² Sismondi, Hist. des Français, xiii. 317, etc.

The Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges.

The Pragmatic Sanction, as it is often called by way of pre-eminence, is the magna charta of the liberties of the Gallican30 Church. Founded upon the results of the discussions of the Council of Basle, it probably embodies all the reformatory measures which the hierarchy of France was desirous of effecting or willing to accept. How far these were from administering the needed antidote to the poison which was at work and threatened to destroy all true religious life—if, indeed, that life was not already too near extinction—may readily be understood when it is discovered that, with the exception of a few paragraphs relating to ecclesiastical discipline and worship, the following comprise all the important provisions:

The Pragmatic Sanction establishes the obligation of the Pope to convene a general council of the church at least every ten years. The decisions of the Council of Basle are declared to be of perpetual force. Far from deriving its authority from the Holy See, the Œcumenical Council, it is affirmed, depends immediately upon Christ, and the Pope is no less bound than all other Christians to render due obedience to its decisions. The right of appeal from the Pope to the future council—a claim obnoxious in the last degree to the advocates of papal supremacy—is distinctly asserted. The Pope is declared incapable of appointing to any high ecclesiastical dignities, save in a few specified cases; in all others recourse is to be had to election. The pontiff's pretensions to confer minor benefices are equally rejected. No abuse is more sharply rebuked and forbidden than that of expectatives—a species of appointment in high favor with the papal chancery, whereby a successor to ecclesiastical dignities was nominated during the lifetime of the incumbent, and in view of his decease.

The Pragmatic Sanction restricts the troublesome and costly appeals to Rome to cases of great importance, when the parties in interest reside at a distance of more than four days' journey from that city. At the same time it prescribes that no one shall be vexed by such appeals after having enjoyed actual possession of his rank for three years. Going beyond the limits of the kingdom, it enters into the constitution of the "Sacred College," and fixes the number of the cardinals at twenty-four, while placing the minimum age of candidates for the hat at31 thirty years. The exaction of the annats is stigmatized as simony. Priests living in concubinage are to be punished by the forfeiture of one-fourth of their annual stipend. Finally the principle is sanctioned that no interdict can be made to include in its operation the innocent with the guilty.⁵³⁵³ The Pragmatic Sanction is long and intricate, consisting in great part of references to those portions of the canons of the Council of Basle which it confirms. The entire document may be seen in the Ordonnances des Roys de Fr. de la troisième race, xiii. 267-291, and in the Recueil gén. des anc. lois franç., ix. 3-47. Isambert thus defines the term pragmatic: "On appelle pragmatique toute constitution donnée en connaissance de cause du consentiment unanime de tous les grands, et consacrée par la volonté du prince. Le mot pragma signifie prononcée, sentence, édit; il était en usage avant Saint Louis."

So thorough a vindication of the rights of the Gallican Church had never before been undertaken. The axe was laid at the root of formidable abuses; freedom of election was restored; the kingdom was relieved of a crushing burden of tribute; foreigners were precluded from interfering with the systematic administration of the laws. The clergy, both regular and secular, received the greatest benefits, for, while they could no longer be plundered of so large a part of their incomes, their persons were protected from arbitrary arrest and hopeless exile beyond the Alps.

The council had not adjourned when the tidings of the transactions at Bourges reached the city of Basle. The members were overjoyed, and testified their approval in a grateful letter to the Archbishop of Lyons. But their exultation was more than equalled by the disgust of Pope Eugenius the Third. Indeed, the pontificates of this pope and his immediate successors were filled with fruitless attempts to effect the repeal of the Pragmatic Sanction. A threat was made to place France under an interdict; but this was of no avail, being answered by the counter-threat of the king's representative, who proposed to make a practical application of the instrument, by appealing from his Holiness to a future general council. So the Pope, having a vivid recollection of the perils attending a contest with the French crown, wisely avoided the hazardous venture.⁵⁴⁵⁴ Abbé Claude Fleury, Libertés de l'Église Gallicane, in Leber, iii. 321.32

Louis XI. consents to its abrogation.

In Louis the Eleventh the papal court seemed to have found a more promising prince to deal with. Animated by hatred of his father, and disposed to oppose whatever had met his father's approval, Louis had, while yet dauphin, given the Pope's agents flattering assurances of his good intentions.⁵⁵⁵⁵ "Commemoravit (i. e., the papal legate) ea quæ per ipsum tibi nostro nomine pollicenda, vovenda et promittenda, nos, antequam regnum suscepisemus, religionis instinctus quidam deduxerat." Letter of Louis XI. to the Pope, Tours, Nov. 27, 1461. On ascending the throne, he permitted his father's memory to be treated with disrespect, by suffering a nuncio to pronounce absolution over the corpse for the heinous sin of originating the Pragmatic Sanction. Later, on receiving the assurance of the Pope's support for the house of Anjou in Naples, he consented to repeal the hateful ordinance. A royal declaration for this purpose was published in 1461, contrary to the advice of the king's council.⁵⁶⁵⁶ Louis XI.'s letter to the Pope, annulling the Pragmatic Sanction, is in the Ordonnances des roys de Fr. de la troisième race, xv., 193-194. Its tone could not have been more submissive had it been penned for him by the Pope himself. The Pragmatic Sanction is referred to contemptuously as "constitutio quædam in regno nostro quam Pragmaticam vocant." Louis professes to be moved by the consideration that obedience is better than all sacrifice, and that the Pragmatic Sanction is hateful to the Papal See, "utpote quæ in seditione et schismatis tempore ... nata est; et quæ, dum tibi, a quo sacræ leges oriuntur et manant, quantamlibet eripit auctoritatem, omne jus et omnem legem dissolvit." It was "as if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up, or as if the staff should lift up itself, as if it were no wood." Nothing could surpass Louis's obsequiousness: "Sicut mandasti ... pellimus dejicimus stirpitusque abrogamus," etc. He pledges his royal word to overcome opposition: "Quod si forte obnitentur aliqui aut reclamabunt, nos in verbo regio pollicemur tuæ Beatitudini atque promittimus exsequi facere tua mandata, omni appellationis aut oppositionis obstaculo prorsus excluso," etc. Louis was never more to be distrusted than when he bound himself by the most stringent promises. It met with universal reprobation. The Parliament of Toulouse would register the document only with an accompanying note stating that this had been done "by the most express command of the king." The Parliament of Paris absolutely declined to admit it in its records, and sent a deputation to Louis to set forth the pernicious results that were to be expected from the overthrow of his father's wise regula33tions.⁵⁷⁵⁷ See the Remonstrances of Parliament, Ordonnances, etc., xv. 195-207. The University made bold to appeal to a general council of the Church.

But subsequently re-enacts it.

Meanwhile it happened that Louis made the unwelcome discovery that his Italian friends had deceived him, and that the prospect was very remote of obtaining the advantages by which he had been allured. It was not very difficult, therefore, to persuade him to renounce his project. Not content with this, three years after his formal revocation of the entire Pragmatic Sanction, he even re-enacted some of the clauses of the document respecting "expectatives" and "provisions."

Parliament protests against the repeal.

But a few years later, in 1467, Louis again conceived it to be for his interest to abrogate the Pragmatic Sanction. At the suggestion of Cardinal Balue, the recent enactment against "expectatives" was repealed. The Parliament of Paris, however, refused to record the letters patent. Among other powerful arguments adduced was the fact that a recent investigation had proved that, in the three years of the pontificate of Pius the Second during which the Pragmatic Sanction had been virtually set aside (1461-1464), Rome drew from the kingdom not less than 240,000 crowns in payment of bulls for archbishoprics, bishoprics, and abbeys falling vacant within this term; 100,000 for priories and deaneries; and the enormous sum of 2,500,000 crowns for "expectatives" and "dispensations."⁵⁸⁵⁸ The calculations on which these figures are based can be seen in sections 73-76 of the Remonstrances above referred to. Ibid., xv. 195-207. This startling financial exhibit was accompanied by statements of the indirect injury received by the community from the great number of candidates thrown on the tender mercies of relations and friends, whom they thus beggared while awaiting a long deferred preferment.⁵⁹⁵⁹ "Les autres ambitieux de benefices, si espuisoient les bourses de leurs parens et amis, tellement qu'ils demeuroient en grand' mendicité et misere, ou'aucunesfois estoient cause de l'abreviation de leurs jours; et tout le fruit qu'ils emportoient, c'estoit pour or du plomb." Ibid., section 64. Even when successful, "they received only lead for gold." Frequently, when they were about to clutch the coveted34 prize, a rival stepped in armed with documents annulling those previously given. Cases had, indeed, been known in which ten or twelve contestants presented themselves, all basing their claims upon the pontifical warrant.⁶⁰⁶⁰ Ibid., ubi supra.

Fall of Cardinal Balue.

Cardinal Balue was not slow in finding means to remove from office the intrepid Procureur-général, who had been prominent in urging parliament to resist the measure of repeal. But Saint-Romain's bold stand had confirmed both parliament and university, and neither body would acquiesce in the papal demands. Louis, however, was reconciled to a second abandonment of the scheme by the opportune discovery of the cardinal's treachery. The unhappy prelate met with deserved retribution, for his purple did not save him from enduring his own favorite mode of punishment, and being shut up in a great iron cage. The new Perillus was thus enabled—to the intense satisfaction of many whom he had wronged—to test in his own person the merits of a contrivance which he was reputed himself to have invented.⁶¹⁶¹ Historians have represented Cardinal Balue as enclosed in the very cage he had used for the victims of his own cruelty. This appears to be incorrect. There is an entry in the accounts of Louis XI., under date of February 11, 1469, of the payment of sixty livres Tournois to Squire Guion de Broc, to be used by him "in having constructed, at the castle Douzain, an iron cage, which the said lord (i. e., Louis) has ordered to be made for the security and guard of the person of the Cardinal of Angers (Balue)." Vatout, Château d'Amboise, 64, 65, note.

A concordat subsequently agreed upon by Louis and the Pope fared no better than the previous compacts. Parliament and university were resolute, and the king, having no further advantage to gain by keeping his word, was as careless in its fulfilment as was his wont. The Pragmatic Sanction was still observed as the law of the land. The highest civil courts, ignoring the alleged repeal, conformed their decisions to its letter and spirit, while the theologians of the Sorbonne taught it as the foundation of the ecclesiastical constitution of France. Yet, public confidence in its validity having been shaken, it was desirable to set all doubts at rest by a formal re-enactment. This was proposed by the Dean of St. Martin of Tours, in the35 States General held during the minority of Charles the Eighth; but, notwithstanding the well-known opinion of all the orders, this reign passed without the adoption of any decided action.

Action of Louis XII.

His motto.

It was reserved for Louis the Twelfth to take the desired step. In 1499 he published the Pragmatic Sanction anew, and ordered the exclusion from office of all that had obtained benefices from Rome. In vain did the Pope rave. In vain did he summon all upholders of the ordinance to appear before the Fifth Lateran Council. The sturdy prince—the "Father of his people"—who had chosen for his motto the device, "Perdam Babylonis nomen," made little account of the menaces of Julius the Second, whom death overtook, it is said, while about to fulminate a bull transferring the title of "Very Christian King" from Louis the Twelfth of France to Henry the Eighth of England.⁶²⁶² Fleury, ubi supra, 340.

Concordat of Leo X. and Francis I.

Thirsting for military distinction, Francis the First had no sooner obtained the throne than he entered upon the career of arms in northern Italy, and the signal victory of Marignano, won less than ten months after his accession (September 13, 1515), closed his first campaign. This success was productive of more lasting results than merely the temporary possession of the Milanese. It led to a reconciliation with the Pope, and to a stately interview in the city of Bologna. All that was magnificent and captivating to the senses had been studied to dazzle the eyes of a young and imaginative prince; for Leo the Tenth, patron of the arts and of artists, was an adept in scenic effects. Certainly never did pomp and ceremony more easily effect the object for which they were employed. The interview of Bologna paved the way for a concordat, in which the rights of the Gallican Church were sacrificed, and the spoils divided between king and pontiff.⁶³⁶³ See Capefigue's animated description of the scene in the cathedral of Bologna, ubi supra, i. 229. Three cardinals took part in the elaboration of the details of the instrument—two on the pontifical, the third on the royal side. The last was the notorious Cardinal Duprat, elevated by Francis to the office of chancellor—a minister of religion who36 was soon to introduce venality into every department of government. The source of the concordat determined tolerably well its character.

Appreciating the strength of the opposition its pretensions had always encountered in France, the papal court had resolved to renounce a portion of its claims in favor of the king, in order to retain the rest more securely. Under the pretext that the right of election vested in the chapters had been abused, partly by the choice of illiterate and improper men, partly through the practice of simony, the selection of archbishops and bishops was taken from them and confided to the king. He was empowered to choose a doctor or licentiate of theology or law, not less than twenty-seven years of age, within six months after the see became vacant. The name of the candidate was to be submitted to the Pope for approval, and, if this first nomination was rejected, a second was to be made by the king. Similar regulations were made respecting abbeys and monastic institutions in general, a few exceptions being allowed in favor of those patrons and bodies to whom special privileges had been accorded. The issue of "expectatives" was prohibited; but, as no mention was made of the "annats," it followed, of course, that this rich source of gain to the papal treasury was to lie open, in spite of the provisions of the Pragmatic Sanction to the contrary.⁶⁴⁶⁴ The text of the concordat is given in the Recueil gén. des anc. lois, etc., xii. 75-97.

Such were some of the leading features of the concordat between Leo the Tenth and Francis the First—a document introducing changes so violent as to amount almost to a complete revolution in the ecclesiastical constitution of the land.

Dissatisfaction of the French.

After receiving the unqualified approval of the Lateran Council, in a session at which few prelates were present from outside of Italy, the concordat, engrossed on white damask, and accompanied by a revocation of the Pragmatic Sanction on cloth of gold, was forwarded to Francis, who had now returned to his kingdom. The latter, not ignorant of the discontent already engendered by the mere rumor of the transaction, first37 submitted the concordat alone to a mixed assembly composed of prelates and canons, of presidents and counsellors of parliament, doctors of the university, and other prominent personages. But the king's caution failed of accomplishing what had been intended. The general dissatisfaction found expression in the speech of Cardinal Boissy, demanding that the clergy be consulted by itself on a matter so vitally affecting its interests, and suggesting the necessity of a national council for that purpose. Francis angrily retorted that the clergy must obey, or he would send its bishops to Rome to discuss with the Pope.

Struggle with the parliaments.

Failing in the attempt to forestall the expression of disapprobation of the judiciary by securing the favorable verdict of a picked assembly of influential persons, the king, nevertheless, proceeded to carry into execution that clause of the concordat which enjoined ratification by the parliaments. Letters patent were first dispatched commanding all judges to conform to its provisions, and these were followed shortly by copies of the instrument itself and of the revocation of the Pragmatic Sanction, for registry. At this point properly began one of the most notable contests between the crown and parliaments of France. The Parliament of Paris, taking the ground that so fundamental a change in the national customs demanded mature consideration, deferred action. With the view of exercising a pressure on its deliberations, Francis now commissioned his uncle, the Bastard of Savoy, to be present at the sessions. Against this unprecedented breach of privilege parliament sent a deputation humbly to remonstrate; but all to no purpose. The irritated prince, who entertained the most extravagant views of the royal prerogative, declared his intention to satisfy himself concerning the real disposition of his judges, and assured the deputies that he had firmly resolved to despatch the disobedient to the inferior parliaments of Bordeaux and Toulouse, and fill their places with "men of worth." "I am your king," was his constant exclamation, and this passed with him for an unanswerable argument in support of his views. But the members of parliament were not easily moved. Undoubtedly the success attending their38 previous resistance to the repeal of the Pragmatic Sanction, on at least three occasions in the reign of Louis the Eleventh, emboldened them in the present instance. Unawed by the presence of the Bastard of Savoy, they refused to concede the registration of the concordat, and declared that they must continue to observe the Pragmatic Sanction, endorsed, as that ordinance had been, by the representatives of the entire nation. Not only did they protest against suffering the Sanction to be annulled, but they insisted upon the convocation of the clergy in a body similar to that assembled by Charles the Seventh, as an indispensable preliminary to the investigation of the matter.

Haughty demeanor of the king.

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

A formal command was now addressed to the Parliament of Paris, and the bearer, La Trémouille, informed that body, as it listened to the message, that Francis had repeated to him more than ten times within a quarter of an hour, "that he would not for half his kingdom fail of his word to the Pope, and that if parliament rebelled, he would find means to make it repent of its obstinacy." Under these circumstances, further resistance from a body so completely dependent on the sovereign was not to be thought of. Yet, even when compelled to yield, parliament, at the suggestion of the gens du roi, coupled the registry of the concordat with a declaration that it was made at the ex39press command of the king several times reiterated, that parliament disapproved of the revocation of the Pragmatic Sanction; and that, in the adjudication of causes, it would continue to follow the ordinance of Charles the Seventh, while appealing to the Pope under better advisement, and to a future council of the church. Thus the concordat, projected at Bologna in 1515, and signed at Rome on the sixteenth of August, 1516, was registered by the Parliament of Paris de expressissimo mandato regis, on the twenty-second of March, 1518.⁶⁵⁶⁵ Leue, publiée et registrée par l'ordonnance et du commandement du Roy, nostre sire, réiterée par plusieurs fois en presence du seigneur de la Trimouille, etc. Recueil des anc. lois, xii. 97.

The university remonstrates.

Even now Francis had not quite silenced all opposition. The rector of the University of Paris, not content with entering a formal remonstrance,⁶⁶⁶⁶ Appellatio Univ. Parisiensis pro sacrarum Electionum et juris communis defensione, adversus Concordata Bononiensia, apud Gerdes. Hist. Ev. Renov. i. 61-69 (Documents). "Idcirco," it runs, "a domino nostro Papa non recte consulto, et ... pragmaticæ sanctionis statutorum abrogatione, novorum statutorum editione, ... ad futurum concilium legitime ac in tuto loco, et ad quem libere et cum securitate ... adire poterimus ... provocavimus et appellavimus, prout in his scriptis provocamus et appellamus." took a bolder step. Making use of a prerogative long since conceded to the university, of exercising a censure over the press, he posted a notice to all printers and publishers forbidding the reproduction of the concordat on pain of loss of their privileges. The dean and canons of the cathedral church of Paris also handed in a protest. The preachers of several churches rivalled the rector in audacity, by publicly inveighing against the dangers of the ecclesiastical innovations introduced by the king. It is not surprising that a prince impatient even of wholesome rebuke was enraged at this monkish tirade. Parliament was ordered to bring the culprits to justice; but, strange to say, none could be discovered—a circumstance certainly attributable rather to the supineness of the judges than to any lack of witnesses. To the university Francis wrote in a haughty vein, threatening the severe punishment of any of its doctors that dared preach against the government; while, by an edict from40 Amboise, he forbade the rector and his associates from assembling for the discussion of political questions.

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

The resistance not altogether fruitless.

Nor was this altogether an empty claim. Some of the provisions of the concordat were never enforced, and that was a solid advantage gained through the opposition. The parliaments persisted in rendering judgment, in such cases as came before them, in conformity with the Pragmatic Sanction. The Bishop of Albi, chosen by the canons, was confirmed in his see, notwithstanding the pretensions of a nominee of the crown. And yet the concordat was not merely maintained by the Pope and the king, but, a few years later, its provisions were extended to monastic foundations previously possessed of an undisputed title to elect. This was done to gratify Francis on the marriage of his second son Henry to Catharine de' Medici, niece of Clement, the reigning pontiff. The somewhat suspicious story is told, that, to aid in carrying out this new act of injustice, Cardinal Duprat, having ordered all ecclesiastical bodies to send him the original documents attesting their right of election, at once consigned the parchments to the fire, in order to destroy all memory of these troublesome claims. If the tale be apocryphal, it at least indicates sufficiently well the estimation in which the prelate's character was held by his contemporaries.

Advantages gained by the crown.

The clergy reluctantly admitted the concordat into their books after the lapse of two centuries, but solely, as they declared, for convenience of reference. The restoration of the Pragmatic Sanction continued to be demanded by one or all the orders of the States General, during the reigns of Francis the Second, Charles the Ninth, and their successors, not least on the ground that the day that witnessed its repeal also beheld the introduction of the "heresy" that had since attained such41 formidable proportions.⁶⁷⁶⁷ I have made considerable use of the very clear dissertation on the Pragmatic Sanction and the concordat, republished in Leber, Collection de pièces relatives à l'hist. de France, tome 3. The commotion in Paris at the introduction of the concordat is described in a lively manner by the unknown author of the "Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris sous le règne de François Ier," 39, 70, etc. But, if opposed and denounced, the concordat was carried into execution, so far as most of its provisions were concerned, until the French revolution. The advantages gained by the crown were too palpable to be voluntarily relinquished. Almost the entire patronage of the church was thrown into the hands of the king, who, in the reign of Louis the Fifteenth, held at his disposal eighteen archbishoprics, 112 bishoprics, 1,666 abbeys for men, and 317 abbeys and priories for women.⁶⁸⁶⁸ Almanach royal pour l'an 1724 (Paris), 34. It must not be forgotten that the annats, or first-fruits of benefices, now regularly falling into the pontifical treasury, made the concordat scarcely less valuable to the Papal See.⁶⁹⁶⁹ Leo X. also obtained from Francis, as an equivalent for the concessions embodied in the concordat, the sum of 100,000 livres, as the dower of Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne, a princess of royal blood, married in 1518 to Lorenzo de' Medici, Count of Urbino, the Pope's nephew. The money was to be levied upon the next tithe taken from the revenues of the French clergy, which Leo thus authorized. Catharine de' Medici sprang from this marriage. See the receipt of Lorenzo for the instalment of a quarter of the dower, in the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. français, ix. (1860), 122.

Era of the Renaissance.

The most enviable distinction of the reign of Francis the First consisted in the fact that it was the era of that extraordinary development of the fine arts and of literature known as the Renaissance. Illustrious during the Middle Ages, and foremost in the pursuit of scholastic learning, France had unfortunately lost that proud eminence when the revival of letters enkindled elsewhere a new passion for discovery. Her adventurous sons had taken the lead in the crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but three hundred years later no expeditions were fitted out in her ports to explore and appropriate the virgin territories beyond the western sea. The art of printing and the impulse given to astronomical research originated abroad. The famous mediæ42val seat of learning seemed to have been suddenly visited with a premature decay. Even the exiled scholars of the East, fleeing before Turkish barbarism, disdained to settle in a country where the treasures of ancient science which they had brought with them from Mount Athos and Constantinople were so inadequately appreciated.⁷⁰⁷⁰ Mignet, Établissement de la Réforme à Genève, Mémoires, ii. 243. Étienne Pasquier draws a dark picture of the barbarism reigning at Paris at the accession of Francis. More highly honored than any other university of Europe, that of Paris had fallen so low that the Hebrew tongue was known only by name, and as for Greek, the attention given to it was more apparent than real. "Car mesmes lors qu'il estoit question de l'expliquer, ceste parole couroit en la bouche de plusieurs ignorans, Græcum est, non legitur." The very Latin, which was the language in ordinary use, was rude and clumsy. Recherches de la France, 831.

Francis's attainments overrated.

A munificent patron of art.

The reign of Francis the First, however, was destined to remove much of the reproach which had been incurred by reason of this singular tardiness in entering the path of improvement. Born of parents possessed of unusual intelligence and yet rarer education, and stimulated by the companionship of an elder sister whose extensive acquirements furnished the theme of countless panegyrics, Francis early conceived the design of making his court illustrious for the generous patronage extended to the disciples of the liberal arts. His own attainments have been overrated, and posterity has too credulously believed all that admiring and interested courtiers chose to invent in his praise. But, if he was himself ignorant of anything beyond the mere rudiments even of Latin, the universal language of science, he possessed at least one signal merit: he was a munificent friend of those whom poverty would otherwise have precluded from cultivating their resplendent abilities. I shall not repeat the familiar names of the eminent painters and sculptors whom he encouraged and enriched, nor give a list of the skilful architects employed in the construction of his magnificent palaces of St. Germain and Fontainebleau, of Chambord and Chenonceaux. Poetry, not less than painting and architecture, witnessed his liberality. Clément Marot, whose name has been regarded as marking the first truly remarkable epoch in the history of this43 department of French art,⁷¹⁷¹ La Harpe, Cours de litérature, vi. 405. was a favorite at the court of Francis and Margaret of Angoulême, and repaid their gifts with unbounded eulogy. The more solid studies of the philosopher and the linguist were fostered with equal care. Vatable, Melchior Wolmar, and other scholars of note were invited to France, to give instruction in Greek and Hebrew. Erasmus himself might have been induced to yield to the king's importunate messages, could he have been able to divest himself of the apprehension of annoyance from the bigoted "Sorbonnists;" while even Melanchthon was, at a later period, on the point of accepting a pressing summons to visit the French court on a mission of reconciliation.

Foundation of the Collége Royal.

Among the most notable achievements of this prince was the foundation of a school of learning intended to supply the deficiencies of the instruction given by the university. In the "Collége Royal" Francis desired to leave a lasting token of his devotion to letters. Here he founded chairs of three languages—of Greek and Hebrew at first, and afterward of Latin—whence was derived the name of Trilingue, under which the college was celebrated in the writings of the day. The monarch's plan encountered the obstacles which prejudice always knows how to set in the way of improvement. The university doctors, fearing that their own prelections would be forsaken for the more brilliant lectures of the salaried professors of the royal school, demanded that the latter should submit to an examination before the more ancient body of instructors; but parliament wisely rejected their pretensions. Liberal men throughout the world rejoiced at the defeat of the Sorbonne and its representative, Beda,⁷²⁷² Gaillard, Histoire de François premier (Paris ed., 1769), vii. 282-300. Félibien, among the many interesting documents he has preserved, reproduces one of the first programmes of the professors of the Collége Royal, preserved from destruction, doubtless, simply from the circumstance that it formed the ground of a citation of the professors by the syndic of the university (Beda), January, 1534, wherein he alleges that "some simple grammarians or rhetoricians, who had not studied with the faculty, had undertaken to read in public and to interpret the Holy Scriptures, as appears from certain bills posted in the streets and squares of Paris." In the programme, Agathius Guidacerius, Francis Vatable, P. Arnesius (Danesius), and Paul Paradisus figure as lecturing—the first two upon the Psalms, the third on Aristotle, and the last on Hebrew grammar and the book of Proverbs. Michel Félibien, Histoire de la ville de Paris (Paris, 1725), iv. 682. while44 Marot, alluding to the quarrel in a poetical epistle to the king, poured out in verse his contempt for the "Theologasters" of Paris:

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

An age of blood.

Yet, by the side or these manifestations of a growing appreciation of art, science, and letters, it must be confessed that there were indications, no less distinct, of a lamentable neglect of moral training, and of a state of manners scarcely raised above that of uncivilized communities of men. It was still an age of blood. The pages of chronicles, both public and private, teem with proofs of the insignificant value set upon human life and happiness. In many parts of France the peasant rarely enjoyed quiet for even a few consecutive months. Organized bands of robbers, familiarly known as "Mauvais Garçons," infested whole provinces, and laid towns and villages under contribution. Not unfrequently two or three hundred men were to be found in a single band, and the robberies, outrages, and murders they committed defy recital. Often the miscreants were aventuriers, or volunteers whose45 employers had failed to furnish them their stipulated pay, and who avenged their losses by exactions levied upon the unfortunate peasantry. Indeed, if we may believe the almost incredible statements of one of the laws enacted for their suppression, they had been known to carry by assault even walled cities, and to exercise against the miserable inhabitants cruelty such as disgraces the very name of man.⁷³⁷³ The law of 1523 thus sets forth some of their exploits: "Outre mesure multiplient leurs pilleries, cruautez et meschancetez, jusques à vouloir assaillir les villes closes: les aucunes desquelles ils out prinses d'assaut, saccagées, robées et pillées, forcé filles et femmes, tué les habitans inhumainement, et cruellement traitté les aucuns en leur crevant les yeux, et coupant les membres les uns après les autres, sans en avoir pitié, faisant ce que cruelles bestes ne feroient," etc. Isambert, Recueil des lois anc., xii. 216. See also Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris (1516), 36; and Lettres de Marguerite d'Angoulême, Nouvelle Coll., lettre 7.

Barbarous punishments.

The character or the punishments inflicted for the commission of crime furnishes a convenient test of national civilization. If France in the sixteenth century be tried by this criterion, the conclusion is inevitable that for her the age of barbarism had not yet completely passed away. The catalogue of crimes to which death was affixed as the penalty is frightfully long; some of them were almost trivial offences. A boy less than sixteen years of age was hung for stealing jewelry from his master.⁷⁴⁷⁴ Journal d'un bourgeois (1516), 37. On the other hand, with flagrant inconsistency, a nobleman, René de Bonneville, superintendent of the royal mint, for the murder of his brother-in-law, was dragged to the place of execution on a hurdle, but suffered the less ignominious fate of decapitation. A part of his property was given to his sister, and the rest confiscated to the crown, with the exception of four hundred livres, reserved for the purchase of masses to be said for the benefit of the soul of his murdered victim.⁷⁵⁷⁵ Ibid, (anno 1527), 328.

Especially for heresy.

For other culprits extraordinary refinements of cruelty were reserved. The aventuriers, when so ill-starred as to fall into the hands of justice, were customarily burned alive at the stake.⁷⁶⁷⁶ Ibid., 36. It would appear that even this penalty did not deter them from the commission of their infamous crimes, for a fresh edict, in 1523 (Isambert, xii., 216), prescribes that for exemplary punishment "lesdicts blasphemateurs exécrables avant que souffrir mort, ayent la gorge ouverte avec un fer chaud et la langue tirée ou coupée par les dessouz; et ce faict penduz et attachez au gibet ou potence, et estranglez, selon leurs desmerites!"46 The same fate overtook those who were detected in frauds against the public treasury. More frightful than all the rest was the vengeance taken by the law upon the counterfeiter of the king's coin. The legal penalty, which is said to have become a dead letter on the pages of the statute-book long before the French revolution, was in the sixteenth century rigidly enforced: on the 9th of November, 1527, a rich merchant of Paris, having been found guilty of the crime in question, was boiled alive before the assembled multitude in the Marché-aux-pourceaux.⁷⁷⁷⁷ Journal d'un bourgeois, 327. The Marché-aux-pourceaux, or swine market, was a little west of the present Palais Royal, just outside of the walls of Paris, as they existed in the time of Francis I. See the atlas accompanying Dulaure, Histoire de Paris. In December, 1581, the Parliament of Rouen sentenced one Salcède to this horrible death. Bastard d'Estang, Les parlements de France, i. 428. Heresy and blasphemy were treated with no greater degree of leniency than the most infamous of crimes. Even before the reformation a lingering death in the flames had been the doom pronounced upon the person who dared to accept or promulgate doctrines condemned by the church. But when the bitterness of strife had awakened the desire to enhance the punishment of dissent, new or extraordinary tortures were resorted to, of the application of which this history will furnish only too many examples. The forehead was branded, the tongue torn out, the hand cut off at the wrist, or the agonies of death prolonged by alternately dropping the wretched victim into the fire and drawing him out again, until exhausted nature found tardy release in death.

But if we can to some extent account for the excess of cruelty which blind frenzy inflicted on the inflexible martyr to his faith, it is certainly more difficult to explain the severity exercised upon the more pliable, whom the arguments of ghostly advisers, or the terrors of the Place de Grève, had induced to recant. Generally the judge did nothing more in their behalf than commute their punishment by ordering them to be strangled before47 their bodies were consigned to the flames.⁷⁸⁷⁸ Journal d'un bourgeois, 326. Yet in one exceptional case—that of a servant whose master, a gentleman and one of the men-at-arms of the Regent of Scotland, was burned alive—the court went to such a length of leniency as to let the repentant heretic off with the sentence that he first be beaten with rods at the cart's end, and afterwards have his tongue cut out.⁷⁹⁷⁹ Ibid., 251. Even the clearest evidence of insanity did not suffice to remove or even mitigate the penalties of impiety. A poor, crazy woman, who had broken the consecrated wafer when administered to her in her illness, and had applied to it some offensive but absurd epithet, was unhesitatingly condemned to the stake. An appeal to a superior court procuring no reversal of her sentence, she was burned at Tours in the year 1533.⁸⁰⁸⁰ Ibid., 434. A somewhat similar instance is mentioned by the continuator of the Chronicles of Enguerrand de Monstrelet (anno 1503), l. iii. c. 220.

Belief in astrology.

Predictions of Nostradamus.

Other marks of a low stage of civilization were not wanting. The belief in judicial astrology was almost universal.⁸¹⁸¹ See the vigorous treatise it called forth from the pen of the great Reformer of Geneva in 1549, under the title of "Advertissement contre l'Astrologie qu'on appelle judiciaire, et autres curiositez qui règnent aujourd'huy dans le monde." Paul L. Jacob, Œuvres françoises de Calvin, 107, etc. Pretenders like Nostradamus obtained respect and wealth at the hands of their dupes. All France trembled with Catharine de' Medici, when the astrologer gave out that the queen would see all her sons kings, and every one foreboded the speedy extinction of the royal line. The "prophecy," as it was gravely styled, obtained public recognition, and was discussed in diplomatic papers. When two of the queen's sons had in fact become kings of France, and a third had been elected to the throne of Poland, while the marriage of the fourth with Queen Elizabeth was under consideration, Catharine's allies saw grounds to congratulate her that the prediction which had so disquieted her was likely to obtain a more pleasing fulfilment than in the successive deaths of her male descendants.⁸²⁸² Despatch of La Mothe Fénélon, June 3, 1573, Corr. dipl., v. 345, 346.

A still more pernicious form of superstition was noticeable in48 the credit enjoyed by charms and incantations, not merely among illiterate rustics, but even with persons of high social station. No phase of the magic art led to the commission of more terrible crimes or revealed a worse side of human character than that which pretended to secure the happiness or accomplish the ruin, to prolong the life or hasten the death, of the objects of private love or hatred. While systematically practising upon the credulity of his dupes, the professed master of this ill-omened art frequently resorted to assassination by poison or dagger in the accomplishment of his schemes. Sorcery by means of waxen images was particularly in vogue. Thus, the Queen of Navarre, the sister of Francis the First, in her singular collection of tales, the "Heptameron," gives a circumstantial account of the mode in which her own life was sought by this species of witchcraft.⁸³⁸³ L'Heptaméron dea Nouvelles de très haute et très illustre princesse Marguerite d'Angoulême, Reine de Navarre. Publié sur les MSS. par la Soc. des Bibliophiles français. Première Journée, Première Nouvelle. Five puppets had been provided: three, representing enemies (the queen being one of the number), had their arms hanging down; the other two, representing persons whose favor was desired, had them raised aloft. With certain cabalistic words and occult rites the puppets were next secretly hidden beneath an altar whereon the mass was celebrated, and the mysterious "sacrifice" was believed to complete the efficacy of the charm. It was no new superstition imported from abroad, but one that had existed in France for centuries.⁸⁴⁸⁴ The practice of magic with small waxen images into which pins were thrust, impious words being uttered at the same time, was at least as old in France as the beginning of the fourteenth century. In 1330 Robert of Artois employed it to compass the death of Philip of Valois and his queen; just as two centuries and a half later the adherents of the League resorted to the same device to destroy Henry III. and Henry of Navarre. See note L to the Heptameron (edit. cit.), i. 170. Jean de Marcouville (Recueil mémor. Paris, 1564, Cimber et Danjou, iii. 415) alludes to similar sorcery just after the death of Philip the Fair, in 1314. It was therefore no "Italian sorcery" introduced into France by Catharine de' Medici, as M. De Félice seems to suppose (Hist. des prot. de France, liv. ii. c. 17).

Reverence for relics.

The French were behind no other nation in reverence for relics of saints and for pictures and images representing them. In the partial list, compiled by a contemporary, of the curiosities49 of this nature scattered through Christendom,⁸⁵⁸⁵ "Advertissement très-utile du grand profit qui reviendroit à la Chrétienté, s'il se faisoit inventaire de tous les corps saints et réliques," etc., 1543 (Œuvres françoises de Calvin). A racy treatise, which well exhibits the service done by the author to the French language. the majority of the relics mentioned are selected from the immense treasures laid up in the thousands of cathedrals, parish churches, and abbeys within the domains of the "Very Christian King." In one place the hair of the blessed Virgin was carefully preserved; in another the sword of the archangel Michael, or the entire body of St. Dionysius. It was true that the Pope had by solemn bull, about a century before, declared, in the presence of the French ambassador, that the entire body of this last-named saint was in the possession of the inhabitants of Ratisbon; but, had any one been so rash as to affirm at Saint Denis, near Paris, that the veritable remains were not there, he would certainly have been stoned.⁸⁶⁸⁶ Ibid., 171. At Notre-Dame de l'Ile, above Lyons, no little account was made of the twelve combs of the apostles!⁸⁷⁸⁷ Ibid., 169.

The reflecting man who found, by a comparison of the treasures of different churches within his own personal observation, that some of the pretended relics were frivolous or impossible, and that the same members of some favorite saint were reproduced at points widely distant, might well speculate upon the probable benefits to Christendom from a complete inventory of the contents of the churches of two or three thousand bishoprics, of twenty or thirty thousand abbeys, and of more than forty thousand convents.⁸⁸⁸⁸ Ibid., 139. He might find difficulty in believing that our Lord was crucified with fourteen nails; that "an entire hedge" should have been requisite to plait the crown of thorns; that a single spear should have begotten three others; or that from a solitary napkin there should have issued a whole brood of the same kind.⁸⁹⁸⁹ Ibid., 155. He would be scandalized on learning that each apostle had more than four bodies, and the saints at least two or three apiece.⁹⁰⁹⁰ Ibid., 139. And his faith in the genuineness of the objects of popular adoration would be still further shaken, if, on50 subjecting them to a closer examination, he discovered that, as was the case at Geneva, he had been worshipping a bone of a deer as the arm of Saint Anthony, or a piece of pumice for the brain of the apostle Peter.⁹¹⁹¹ Ibid., 140.

But, whatever sceptical conclusions might be reached by the learned and discerning, the devotion of the common people showed no signs of flagging. In the parish church of St. Stephen at Noyon, it was not the Christian proto-martyr alone that was decorated with a cap and other gewgaws, when his yearly festival came around, but likewise the "tyrants," as they were styled by the people, who stoned him. And the poor women, seeing them thus adorned, took them to be companions of the saint, and each one had his candle. The devil with whom St. Michael contended fared equally well.⁹²⁹² Ibid., 179, 180. The very stones that were the instruments of St. Stephen's death were adored at Arles and elsewhere.⁹³⁹³ Ibid., 172. It was, however, to the Parisians that the palm in this species of superstition rightfully belonged. The knife wherewith an impious Jew had stabbed a consecrated wafer was held in higher esteem than the wafer itself! And so marked was the preference that it aroused the displeasure of one of the most bigoted doctors of the Sorbonne, De Quercu, who reproached the Parisians for being worse than the Jews themselves, "inasmuch as they adored the knife that had served to rend the precious body of Jesus Christ."⁹⁴⁹⁴ Ibid., 156.

The consecrated wafer.

When such superstitious respect was paid to the relics of saints, it is not surprising that the consecrated wafer or host received the most extravagant marks of adoration. The king himself was often foremost in public demonstrations in its honor. Louise de Savoie, mother of Francis the First, relates in her quaint diary the pompous ceremonial observed in restoring to its original position a pyx containing the host which had been stolen from the chapel of the palace of St. Germain-en-Laye. The culprit had suffered the customary penalty, having had his hand cut off and being afterward burned alive. In the expiatory procession which took place a few days51 later, Francis himself walked with uncovered head and carrying a lighted taper in his hand, from Nanterre to St. Germain. If we may credit his mother's somewhat partial account, the sight of the monarch's signal piety was so touching as to bring tears to the eyes of admiring spectators.⁹⁵⁹⁵ "Et lors faisoit beau voir mon fils porter honneur et reverence au saint sacrement, que chacun en le regardant se prenoit à pleurer de pitié et de joye." Journal de Louise de Savoie, Collection de mémoires (Petitot), xvi. 407.

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

Wealth and power of the clergy.

At the period of which I am now treating, the clergy, both regular and secular, had attained unprecedented wealth and power. Never, perhaps, had France been more fully represented in the "Sacred College." Assuredly never since the residence of the Popes in Avignon had the French members possessed such immense riches. Thirteen French cardinals sat in the papal consistory at one time in the reign of Francis the First; twelve at the accession of his son to the throne.⁹⁶⁹⁶ Gaillard, Hist. de François premier, vii. 45, etc.; Mézeray, Abrégé chron. de l'hist. de France (Amst., 1682), iv. 644. Their influence in the kingdom was almost beyond conception, both on account of the multitude of benefices they held, and the distinction of the families from whom they sprang and whose titles they retained. Some were the incumbents of as many as ten bishoprics and abbeys; while the cardinals of Bourbon, of Lorraine, of Châtillon, of Du Bellay, and of Armagnac were of the best blood in the realm, and enjoyed in their own right, or by reason of their office, very extensive jurisdiction.

Non-residence of the prelates.

A standing reproach against the prelates was their non-residence in the dioceses committed to their pastoral supervision.52 In fact, when the Council of Trent, by one of its first decrees, forbade a plurality of benefices and enjoined residence, its action was regarded as an open declaration of war against the French episcopate.⁹⁷⁹⁷ Gaillard, ubi supra. But if this abuse is deplored by Roman Catholic historians as the fruitful cause of the introduction and rapid progress of Protestantism,⁹⁸⁹⁸ Cénac Moncaut, Histoire des Pyrénées (Paris, 1854), iv. 342, referring primarily to southern France. the reformers, viewing their work as an instrument specially designed by heaven for the purification of a corrupt church, might well be justified in regarding the negligence of the bishops as a wise providential arrangement. Many a feeble germ of truth was spared the violence of persecution until the kindly sun and the plentiful showers had conferred greater powers of endurance. Happily for the reformers, the duty of watching for the first appearance of reputed heresy, which belonged properly to the bishops, was but poorly discharged by many of the deputies to whom they entrusted it. Nor could a delegated authority always accomplish what might have been done by a principal.⁹⁹⁹⁹ Since the end of the thirteenth century the bishop had been accustomed to delegate the contentious jurisdiction of his diocese to an ecclesiastical judge, taking the name of vicar, or more commonly official ("vicarius generalis officialis"). The court itself became known as the officialité. Trials for heresy, breach of promise of marriage, etc., came before it. See the Dictionnaire de la conversation (1857), s. v. Official.

Revenues of the clergy.

The annual revenues of the clergy of France were estimated by a Venetian ambassador, with unsurpassed facilities for obtaining accurate information, at six million crowns of gold, out of the fifteen millions that constituted the total revenues of the kingdom. While the clergy thus absorbed two-fifths of the whole income of France, the king was limited to one million and a half crowns, or just one-tenth, derived from his particular estates.¹⁰⁰¹⁰⁰ Michel Surriano (1561), Rel. des Amb. Vén., Tommaseo, i. 502. The other half went to princes, barons, and other possessors of lands, etc.

Morals of the clergy.

Wealth had engendered luxury and vice. Engrossed in the pursuit of pleasure or personal aggrandizement, the vast majority of clergymen had lost all solicitude for the spiritual welfare53 of their flocks. About the middle of the century Claude Haton, curate of Mériot—certainly no friend of the reformatory movement—wrote in his Mémoires: "The more rapidly the number of heretics in France increased, the more indifferent to the discharge of their duty in their charges were the prelates and pastors of the church, from cardinals and archbishops down to the most insignificant curate. They cared little or nothing how anything went, if they could but draw the income of their benefices at whatever place of residence they had selected with a view to the promotion of their pleasure.¹⁰¹¹⁰¹ How they behaved there, the abbé of Mériot elsewhere tells us: "Et si le plus souvent à telles noyseay estoient les premiers les prebstres, l'espée au poing, car ilz estoient des premiers aux danses, jeux de quilles, d'escrime, et ès tavernes où ilz ribloient et par les rues toute nuict aultant que les plus meschans du pays." Mém de Claude Haton, 18. They let their benefices out at the highest rate they could get, little solicitous as to the hands they might fall into, provided only they were well paid according to the terms of the agreement. The archbishops, bishops, and cardinals of France were almost all at the court of the king and the princes. The abbots, priors and curates resided in the large cities and in other places, wherein they took more delight than within the limits of their charges and preaching the true word of God to their subjects and parishioners. From their indifference the Lutheran heretics took occasion to slander the Church of Jesus Christ and to seduce Christians from it."¹⁰²¹⁰² Mémoires de Claude Haton, i. 89, 90.

No regard to the spiritual wants of the people.

Such a condition of utter indifference on the part of the clergy to the interests of the souls committed to their charge cannot surprise us when we learn that benefices were conferred without regard to the wants of the people. The Venetian Soranzo, in an address delivered after the fruits of the concordat had had full time to mature,¹⁰³¹⁰³ Giovanni Soranzo returned from France in 1558, or a year before the close of the reign of Henry II. declared that in the majority of cases these ecclesiastical positions were dispensed with little respect to things sacred, and through simple favor. They served as a convenient method of rewarding good services. Little account was made of the quali54fications of the candidate, who might have earned his reward in the army or in the civil service. And so it often happened that he who to-day was a merchant or a soldier, to-morrow was made bishop or abbot. When, indeed, the fortunate man had a wife or was reluctant to assume the habit, he could readily get permission to place the benefice in the name of another, himself retaining the income.¹⁰⁴¹⁰⁴ Relazioni Venete, Albèri, ii. 409. Brantôme is a familiar instance of a favorite thus rewarded from the estates of the church. His amusing vindication of the anomaly is worthy of a perusal. See Digression contre les Eslections des Benefices, Œuvres, tom. vii. On one occasion an enemy of the loquacious courtier caused the assassination of his titular abbot, apparently in the hope of depriving Brantôme of his chief source of revenue! Ibid., vii. 294. "These new pastors," said Correro, "placed in charge of the churches men who had taken it into their heads to be clergymen only to avoid the toils of some other occupation—men who, by their avarice and dissoluteness of life, confused the innocent people and removed their previous great devotion. This was the door, this was the spacious gateway, by which heresies entered France. For the ministers sent from Geneva were easily able to create in the people a hatred of the priests and friars, by simply weighing in the balance the life led by the latter."¹⁰⁵¹⁰⁵ "Solo col ponderar loro la vita che tenevano." Relazione di G. Correro, 1569, Tommaseo, ii. 150.

The clergy before the concordat.

It was the fashion among those who passed for philosophers to ascribe the universal dissolution of morals among French ecclesiastics to the operation of the concordat between Francis the First and Pope Leo the Tenth, which, said they, by bringing so many bishops and other high dignitaries to the court in quest of preferment, had corrupted the characters of the prelates, while exposing their flocks to all the evils which neglect is wont to breed. Unfortunately, the portraits of the period preceding the revocation of the Pragmatic Sanction that have come down to us dispel the Arcadian simplicity of manners which seems only to have existed in the imagination of a few warm admirers of everything ancient. If the prelates of France were dissolute after the introduction of the concordat, we are assured by a writer by no means partial to the "new doctrines," that the state of affairs was no better at55 an earlier period. In their abbeys or bishoprics they were as debauched as those who followed arms for their profession.¹⁰⁶¹⁰⁶ "Je n'ay point ouy dire, ny leu qu'auparavant ils fussent plus gens-de-bien, et mieux vivants; car en leurs Eveschez et Abbayes, ils estoient autant desbauchez que Gens-d'armes; car comme j'ay dit cydevant, qu'à la cour s'ils faisoient l'amour, c'estoit discrètement et sans scandale," etc. Brantôme, ubi supra, vii. 312. The bishops bought their places with money, or with promises which were to be fulfilled after preferment. "And when they had attained these high dignities," he adds, "God knows what lives they led. Assuredly they were far more devoted to their dioceses than they have since been; for they never left them. But it was to lead a most dissolute life with their dogs and birds, with their feasts, banquets, marriage entertainments and courtezans, of whom they gathered seraglios.... All this was permitted, and none dared to remonstrate or utter censure. Even more could be related, which is passed over in silence through fear of creating scandal. Our present bishops, if not better men, are at least more discreet hypocrites, and more skilfully conceal their black vices."¹⁰⁷¹⁰⁷ "Au moins plus sages hypocrites, qui cachent mieux leurs vices noirs." Brantôme, ubi supra, vii. 287-289. Nor were the morals of the monastic orders depicted in brighter colors. "Generally the monks elected the most jovial companion, him who was the most fond of women, dogs, and birds, the deepest drinker—in short, the most dissipated; and this in order that, when they had made him abbot or prior, they might be permitted to indulge in similar debauch and pleasure. Indeed, they bound him beforehand by strong oaths, to which he was forced to conform either voluntarily or by constraint. The worst was that, when they failed to agree in their elections, they usually came to blows with fist and sword, and inflicted wounds and even death. In a word, there was more tumult, more faction and intrigue, than there is at the election of the Rector of the University of Paris."¹⁰⁸¹⁰⁸ Brantôme, ubi supra, vii. 280. It was not strange, therefore, that Francis, unable otherwise to recompense his deserving nobles, should prefer to bestow upon them rich abbeys and priories, rather than leave these to the monks in their cloisters—monks who, as the monarch used to56 say, "were good for nothing but to eat and drink, to frequent taverns and gamble, to twist cords for the cross-bow, set traps for ferrets and rabbits, and train linnets to whistle"—men whose idleness and other vices were so notorious that the expressions, "He is as idle as a priest or monk," and "Avaricious and lewd as a priest or monk," passed into proverbs.¹⁰⁹¹⁰⁹ Brantôme, vii. 286.

Aversion to the use of the French language.

Ecclesiastical teachers themselves so ignorant and corrupt could not be expected to do much for the elevation of the laity. Of popularizing knowledge, especially religious knowledge, the clergy and their adherents had little thought. Latin alone was deemed suitable for the discussion of matters of faith. It was enough to condemn the employment of French for this purpose, that it could be understood by the people. For the reformers was reserved the honor of raising the dialect of the masses to the dignity of a language fit for the highest literary uses, and of compelling even their antagonists to resort to it in self-defence, though, it must be confessed, with a very poor grace. So late as in 1558 we find a leading theologian of the Sorbonne publicly apologizing for the condescension. "Very dear friend," he writes in the address to the reader, "I doubt not that, at first sight, you will regard it as strange and perhaps very wrong that this reply is couched in the vulgar tongue; seeing that it would be much more suitable were it circulated in the Latin rather than the French tongue, inasmuch as the subject-matter consists of things greatly concerning Christian faith, which require rather to be put in Latin than in French. Of this also we have the example of the holy ancient doctors, who were always accustomed to write against heretics in Latin and not in French."¹¹⁰¹¹⁰ Réponse à quelque apologie, etc. Par Antoine de Mouchy, surnommé Démochares, docteur en théologie, 1558. Feuillet 2. Apud Henri Lutteroth, La réformation en France pendant sa première période (Paris, 1859), 137. If such was the avowed repugnance to the use of the language of the people in the treatment of religious themes, so late as within a year of the death of Henry the Second, it may readily be conceived how deep the aversion was a generation earlier, at the first appearance of the reformation.57

Ignorance of the Holy Scriptures.

As to acquaintance with the contents of the Holy Scriptures, either in the original or in translation, there was next to none among the professed teachers of science and religion. If the statements of the celebrated scholar and printer, Robert Étienne, or Stephens, seem almost incredible, they nevertheless come from a witness of unimpeachable veracity. Referring to the period of his boyhood or early youth—he was born in 1503—Étienne sketched the biblical attainments of the doctors of the Sorbonne after this fashion: "In those times, as I can affirm with truth, when I asked them in what part of the New Testament some matter was written, they used to answer that they had read it in Saint Jerome or in the Decretals, but that they did not know what the New Testament was, not being aware that it was customary to print it after the Old. What I am going to state will appear almost a prodigy, and yet there is nothing more true nor better proven: Not long since, a member of their college used daily to say, 'I am amazed that these young people keep bringing up the New Testament to us. I was more than fifty years old before I knew anything about the New Testament!'"¹¹¹¹¹¹ "Je suis esbahi de ce que ces jeunes gens nous alleguent le Nouveau Testament. J'avoys plus de cinquante ans que je ne scavoys que c'estoit du Nouveau Testament." Robert Étienne, apud Baum, Origines Evangelii in Gallia restaurati (Strasbourg, 1838), 35.

Miracles to stimulate the popular faith.

The "ghost of Orleans."

The absence of teaching founded upon a rational exposition of the Holy Scriptures was not less marked than was the abundance of reported miracles, by means of which the popular faith was stimulated and sustained. Above all, the doctrine of transubstantiation was fortified by the circulation of stories of wonders such as that which took place at Poitiers, in 1516, when the consecrated wine, spilled by a crazy man, from white instantly became red.¹¹²¹¹² "Un beau miracle," says the Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, 38. At other times imposture was resorted to in support of such profitable beliefs as the existence of purgatorial fires, or to inculcate the advantage accruing from masses for the souls of the dead. The "ghost of Orleans" has become historic. The wife of the provost of the city having died, was buried, as she had58 requested, without any pomp and without the customary gifts to the church. Thereupon the Franciscans conceived the scheme of making use of her example to warn others against following a course so detrimental to monastic and priestly interests. The mysterious knockings by means of which the deceased was supposed to give intimation of her miserable doom and of her desire that her body, as of one that had been tainted with heresy, should be removed from the holy ground wherein it had been interred, were listened to with amazement by the awe-stricken people. But the opportune discovery of a novice, conveniently posted above the ceiling of the convent chapel, sadly interfered with the success of the well contrived plot, and eleven monks convicted of complicity in the fraud were banished the kingdom. They would have been even more severely punished had not fear been entertained lest the reformers might find too much occasion for triumph.¹¹³¹¹³ Histoire ecclésiastique des Églises Réformées au royaume de France (commonly ascribed to Theodore de Bèze, or Beza) Lille edit., i. 11; Gaillard, vi. 460. A MS. narrative of the farce, dictated by Calvin and taken down by his secretary, Charles de Jonvillers, has been discovered in the Geneva Library. It is printed in the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. franç., iii. (1854), 33, etc. Calvin, who had himself been a student in the University of Orleans, and was fully acquainted with the circumstances, drew up this piquant monograph for J. Sleidan to use in his famous history of the times, where an account may accordingly be read.

Theatrical effects.

A strange coin.

More excusable were the theatrical effects which were intended, without actually deceiving, to heighten the religious devotion of worshippers. Thus, every Pentecost or Whit-Sunday, in the midst of the service an angel was seen to descend from the lofty ceiling of the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, attended by two smaller angels, and bearing a silver vase containing water for the use of the celebrant of the high mass.¹¹⁴¹¹⁴ See the order of Spifame, of Oct. 5, 1527, for payment to the master mechanic on several annual recurrences of the scene, Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. franç., xxv. (1876), 236, with M. Bordier's erratum. For this somewhat harmless piece of spectacular display a justification might be sought in the religious impressions which the people were supposed to derive most easily through the senses; but nothing could be urged in defence of much that59 the clergy tolerated or encouraged. Superstitions of heathen origin were suffered to reign undisturbed. Pagan statues were openly worshipped. An Isis received homage and was honored with burning candles. An Apollo at Polignac was a centre of religious veneration, and even the unsavory surroundings, when the spot where it stood was transformed into a stable, could not deter an anxious crowd of devotees from prostrating themselves before it.¹¹⁵¹¹⁵ Farel, Du vray Usage de la Croix, 129, 131. What better could be expected in an age and country in which the people were imposed upon by reports that prehistoric coins had been discovered bearing the strange legend: "I believe in Jesus to be born among animals and of a Virgin"?¹¹⁶¹¹⁶ "Credo in Jesum inter animalia ex virgine nasciturum." Chassanée, Catalogus Gloriæ Mundi, fol. 295. The medals were said to have been unearthed at Autun, the residence of Chassanée, who informs us "multum curavi invenire, sed non potui." But, in addition to the coins, Chassanée gravely tells us there was also a church built by the Franks at Chartres before the advent of Christ, in honor of the most blessed Virgin parituræ; "from which it is demonstrated that, if other Gentiles prophesied in word concerning Christ, the Franks believed on him in deed, just as also the Greeks, who erected a temple to the unknown God." Ibid., ubi supra.

Indecent processions.

It was not astonishing that the church itself did little to remove the barbarism prevailing among the common people, for, in point of fact, buffoonery, immodesty, and cruelty had intruded into the very ceremonial of religion. Never were there more disgusting exhibitions of the low state of the public morals than when the occurrence of pestilence, drought, or some other signal visitation of the displeasure of heaven induced a clergy scarcely less rude than the laity to institute propitiatory processions. On such occasions children of both sexes, or perhaps grown men and women, with bare feet, and wearing for their only clothing a sheet that scarcely concealed their forms, passed through the streets of the towns, or wearily trudged from village to village, responsively singing the litanies of the Virgin or the saints, and loudly repeating the refrain, Ora pro nobis.¹¹⁷¹¹⁷ From the simple costume worn arose the designation of "les processions blanches." Often shameful indecency and a reckless60 disregard of human life were displayed. In one of the villages of Champagne, during the protracted drought of 1556, the sacred scenes of the Passion were publicly enacted in the streets. The person of our Lord was represented by a young man in a state of entire nudity and bound with cords, who at every step was scourged by his companions, personating the Roman soldiers. The picture was true to life, and the blows so far from unreal that the prime actor in the scandalous performance fell a victim to the inhuman treatment and died within a few days. The fruits of practices so coarse and debasing were such as may easily be conceived.¹¹⁸¹¹⁸ Le protestantisme en Champagne: Récits extraits d'un manuscrit de N. Pithou, seigneur de Chamgobert concernant l'histoire de la fondation, etc., de l'église réf. de Troyes dès 1539 à 1595, par Ch. L. B. Recordon (Paris, 1863), 31-33.

The monastic orders incur contempt.

It was a lamentable but notorious fact that, as a consequence of the unnatural divorce of religion and morality, the clergy, both secular and regular, by their excesses had incurred the contempt of the laity. If the Franciscan monks enjoyed an unenviable pre-eminence in this respect, so as to have come to constitute one of the stock characters in the "Heptameron" and similar works, scarcely less constant than the prodigals or parasites of the New Comedy, the other orders were but little behind them. And so Louise de Savoie made this significant entry in her diary: "In the year 1522, in December, my son and I, by the grace of the Holy Ghost, began to understand the hypocrites, white, black, gray, smoky, and of all colors; from whom may God, by his clemency and infinite goodness, be pleased to preserve and defend us. For, if Jesus Christ be not a liar, there is no more dangerous generation in all human kind."¹¹⁹¹¹⁹ The original of this remarkable record, the more significant from the subsequent position of Louise as a determined enemy of the Protestants, may be seen in Journal de Louise de Savoie, Coll. de mémoires (Petitot), xvi. 407. Bishops and cardinals won little more respect than the monks; for was it not the most prominent of the wearers of the purple who, as Chancellor of France, introduced venality into the most sacred offices61 of state,¹²⁰¹²⁰ See Mézeray's bitter words respecting Cardinal Duprat's last hours and character, Abrégé chronologique, iv. 584. while by his quarrelsome and unscrupulous diplomacy he richly merited the bon mot of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, that he was more inclined to make four wars than, one peace?¹²¹¹²¹ "Poi me disse che per opera del Reverendissimo di Granmont non si faria cosa buona in questa cosa, perche et lui et il Gran Cancellario di Francia erano huomini più disposti a fare quattro guerre die una pace." Cardinal Campeggio to Cardinal Salviati, apud H. Laemmer, Monumenta Vaticana hist. ecclés. sæculi XVI. illustrantia, ex tab. sanctæ sedis Apostolicæ secretis, Frib. Brisg., 1861, 67.

Abortive efforts at reform.

It does not enter into the province of this history to discuss in detail the causes of the deplorable vices that characterized the priesthood on the eve of the great religious movement of the sixteenth century; nor can we pause to make that analysis of the doctrinal errors then prevalent, which belongs rather to the office of the historian of the Reformation. It will be sufficient, therefore, if we glance hastily at some of the partial and abortive efforts directed toward the reform of doctrine and manners of which mediæval France was the theatre.

The Cathari and Albigenses.

Foremost among the popular opponents of the papacy were the Cathari and Albigenses. The accounts of the origin of the sect or sects bearing these names are vague and unsatisfactory, and the reports of their creed and worship are inconsistent or incredible. The ruin that overwhelmed them spared no friendly narrative of their history, and scarcely one authoritative exposition of the belief for the profession of which their adherents encountered death with heroic fortitude. Defeat not only compelled the remnants of the Albigenses to succumb to Simon de Montfort and his fellow crusaders, but reduced them to the indignity of having the record of their faith and self-devotion transmitted to posterity only in the hostile chronicles of Roman ecclesiastics. But even partisan animosity has not robbed the world of the edifying spectacle of a large number of men and women, of a quiet and peaceable disposition, persistently and fearlessly protesting, through a long series of years, against the worship of saints and62 images, resisting the innovations of a corrupt church, and adhering with constancy to a simple ritual unencumbered with superstitious observances. Careful investigation establishes the fact that the Holy Scriptures were read and accepted as the supreme authority as well in doctrine as in practice, and that the precepts there inculcated were adorned by lives so pure and exemplary as to evoke an involuntary expression of admiration from bitter opponents.

There is little doubt that strange doctrinal errors found a foothold in parts, at least, of the extensive territory in southern France occupied by the Albigenses. Oriental Dualism or Manichæism not improbably disfigured the creed of portions of the sect; while the belief of others scarcely differed from that of the less numerous Waldenses of Provence or their brethren in the valleys of Piedmont. But, whatever may be the truth on this much contested point,¹²²¹²² The Manichæism of the Albigenses is maintained by Mosheim, Gieseler, Schmidt, etc. A good summary of the evidence in favor of this view is given in an article in the London Quarterly Review for April, 1855. The defence of the Albigenses from this serious charge is ably conducted by George Stanley Faber in his "Inquiry into the History and Theology of the Ancient Vallenses and Albigenses" (London, 1838). One of the more recent apologists is F. de Portal, in his "Les descendants des Albigeois et des Huguenots" (Paris, 1860). the remarkable spread of the Albigenses during the latter part of the twelfth century must be regarded as strongly marking the revolt of the French mind, especially in the more impetuous south, against the priestly absolutism that crushed all freedom of religious thought, and equally against a church tolerating the most flagrant abuses. Nor can the historian who desires to trace the more remote consequences of important moral movements fail to notice the singular fact that the soil watered by Albigensian blood at the beginning of the thirteenth century was precisely that in which the seed sown by the reformers, three hundred years later, sprang up most rapidly and bore the most abundant harvest. After so long a period of suspended activity, the spirit of opposition once more asserted its vital energy—soon, it is true, to meet fresh difficulties, but only such difficulties as would tend to develop and strengthen it.63

The crime of vauderie.

With the suppression of the Albigenses all open popular protest against the errors of the church ceases until the advent of the Reformation. The latent tendency did, indeed, manifest its continued existence in those obscure practices known as vauderie, which, distorted by the imagination of reckless informers and interested judges, and converted into the most monstrous crimes against religion and morality, occasioned the death of countless innocent victims.¹²³¹²³ At Arras, for instance, in 1460, a number of men and women were burned alive as Vaudois, after having been entrapped into an admission of their guilt by a treacherous advocate. Too late they exposed the deceit practised upon them, and protested their innocence. The alleged crimes were: flying to their place of assembly by witchcraft, adoring the devil, trampling upon the cross, blasphemy, riotous feasting, and vile offences against morality—staple charges recurring again and again, ad nauseam, whenever persecuted men and women have been compelled to meet secretly for God's worship. See L. Rossier, Histoire des protestants de Picardie (Paris, 1861), 1-4; and more at length, Chronicon Cornelii Zantfliet, which styles the sufferers heretics a hundred times worse than Waldenses. Martene et Durand, Vet. Scriptorum ampliss. collectio (Paris, 1729), vii. 501. But it was chiefly among the learned, and particularly in the bosom of the University of Paris, that the pressing need of a thorough purification of the church found expression. Not that the remedies advocated were so definite and radical, or based upon so full a recognition of the distinctive character of Christianity, as to merit the name of reformatory projects. Yet, standing somewhat in advance of their contemporaries, a few theologians raised their voices in decided condemnation of those evils which needed only to be held up to public notice to incur the universal reprobation of mankind.

Nicholas de Clemangis.

John Gerson.

Nicholas de Clemangis, Rector of the University of Paris, subsequently private secretary of Benedict the Thirteenth at Avignon, and perhaps the most elegant writer of his age, drew a startling picture of the wretched state of the church at the beginning of the fifteenth century. No writer had ever described more vividly the corruption of the convents and monasteries, or denounced more unsparingly the unfaithfulness and impurity of the parish clergy, and the simony pervading alike all grades of the hierarchy. His censure was the64 more effective because he spoke in sorrow rather than in anger.¹²⁴¹²⁴ If, as Adolphe Müntz concludes, after a critical examination of style, etc. (Nicolas de Clémangis; sa vie et ses écrits, Paris, 1846), the famous treatise De ruina Ecclesiæ, or De corrupto Ecclesiæ statu, emanated not from Clemangis at Avignon, but from some member of the University of Paris hostile to the Popes of Avignon, yet the undisputed writings of Clemangis contain denunciations of the corruptions of the church quite as decided as any found in the spurious treatise. In his tract De Præsulibus Simoniacis, for example, he declares that the degradation of the clergy, fostered by the cupidity of the episcopate, had indeed made God's house a den of robbers. It was "rapinæ officina in qua venalia exponuntur sacramenta ... in qua peccata etiam venduntur," etc. Müntz, 53. Certainly it would be hard to portray the life of the priests in darker colors than they appear in the letters of C. to Gerson, the authenticity of which is not challenged. See the extracts in Von Polenz, Calvinismus in Frankreich, i. 115. According to Nicholas de Clemangis, the chaste priest was a rare exception, and an object of ridicule to his companions. John Gerson, his contemporary and friend, who reached the eminent position of chancellor of the university, was not less bold in stigmatizing the same evils, while the weight of his authority was even greater. So far, however, was he from grasping the nature and need of a substantial renovation of the existing religious belief, that to his influence in no inconsiderable measure was due the perfidious condemnation and execution of the great Bohemian forerunner of the Reformation, John Huss. The student of mediæval history may be inclined to smile at the subtilties of scholastic distinctions, but he is also compelled to lament the fact that the death of a Realist was greeted with demonstrations of evident satisfaction by a philosopher belonging to the opposite school of the Nominalists.¹²⁵¹²⁵ The complicated motives inducing the Council of Constance to acquiesce in the cruel sentence of Huss were skilfully traced as far back as by the learned Mosheim, Institutes of Eccles. Hist. (ed. Murdoch), ii. 429, note.

Jean Bouchet's "Deploration."

A century elapsed between the time of Nicholas de Clemangis and Gerson and the almost simultaneous appearance of Ulrich Zwingle in Switzerland and Martin Luther in Germany. During this long interval of expectation the voice of remonstrance was not altogether silent. A few earnest men refused to suppress the indignation they felt at the sight of the impiety that had invaded the sacred precincts of the church. Among65 the last of those whose words have come down to us was Jean Bouchet, a native of Poitiers. In 1512, only five years before the publication of the theses of the reformer of Wittemberg, he gave to the world a poem not devoid of historical interest, though possessed of little poetic merit, entitled "La Déploration de l'Église militante."¹²⁶¹²⁶ This rare poem has been reprinted, with the unimportant passages omitted, in the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. franç., v. (1857) 268, etc. In this spirited lament it is the church herself that addresses the hierarchy—pontiff, cardinals, patriarchs, bishops, and others—as well as kings and secular dignitaries. She complains of the great injuries and molestations she endures. The practice of simony has converted a temple into a loathsome stable. Science and learning are no longer necessary for the candidate for ecclesiastical preferment; a hundred crowns in hand will serve his purpose much better, no matter how bad his moral character may be. As for his qualifications, he is full well provided if he can manage the hounds aright and knows how to hunt with the falcon. "Cease," cries the church through the poet to the French princes, "cease to load me down with gewgaws, with chalices, crosses, and sumptuous ornaments. Furnish me instead with virtuous ministers. The exquisite beauty of abbeys or of silver images is less pleasing in God's sight than the holy life of good prelates."¹²⁷¹²⁷ As it is, the dissolute ministers of religion are engrossed in forbidden games, in banquets, and the chase. Decked out with flowers, rings, and trinkets, the bishop in his dress is more like a soldier or a juggler, than a servant of the church. He recites his prayers reluctantly, while words of profane swearing flow freely from his lips. From such disorders as these the church invokes her worldly protectors to deliver her.66

The abuses which Jean Bouchet described, and other abuses of a similar kind, were so notorious that no intelligent man could close his eyes to the evidence of their existence. They had been recited again and again by more eloquent tongues than that of the poet of Poitiers. Dante and Petrarch had held them up to immortal contempt. Boccaccio had made them the subject of ridicule in his popular stories. But neither remonstrance nor taunt had effectually abated the prevailing corruption. It remained that a new remedy should be tried, and the time for its application was close at hand.

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