CHAPTER VI.

CALVIN AND GENEVA.—MORE SYSTEMATIC PERSECUTION BY THE KING.

The placards of 1534 mark an epoch in the history of the Huguenots.

In the initial stage of great enterprises a point may sometimes be distinguished at which circumstances, in themselves trivial, have shaped the entire future. Such a point in the history of the Huguenots is marked by the appearance of the "Placards" of 1534. The pusillanimous retreat of Bishop Briçonnet from the advanced post he had at first assumed, robbed Protestantism of an important advantage which might have been retained had the prelate proved true to his convictions. But the "Placards," with their stern and uncompromising logic, their biting sarcasm, their unbridled invective, directed equally against the absurdities of the mass and the inconsistencies of its advocates, exerted a far more lasting and powerful influence than even the lamentable defection of the Bishop of Meaux. Until now the attitude of Francis with respect to the "new doctrines" had been uncertain and wavering. It was by no means impossible that, imitating the example of the Elector of Saxony, the French monarch should even yet put himself at the head of the movement. Severe persecution had, indeed, dogged the steps of the Reformation. Fire and gibbet had been mercilessly employed to destroy it. The squares of Paris had already had the baptism of blood. But the cruelties complained of by the "Lutherans," if tolerated by Francis, had their origin in the bigotry of others. The Sorbonne and the Parisian Parliament, Chancellor Duprat and the queen mother, Louise of Savoie, are entitled to the unenviable distinction of having instigated the sanguinary measures of re194pression directed against the professors of the Protestant faith, of which we have already met with many fruits. The monarch, greedy of glory, ambitious of association with cultivated minds, and aspiring to the honor of ushering in the new Augustan age, more than once seemed half-inclined to embrace those religious views which commended themselves to his taste by association with the fresh and glowing ideas of the great masters in science and art. More than once had the champions of the Church trembled for their hold upon the sceptre-bearing arm; while as often their opponents, with Francis's own sister, had cherished illusory hopes that the eloquent addresses of Roussel and other court-preachers had left a deep impress on the king's heart.

The orthodoxy of Francis no longer questioned.

But the "Placards" effectually dissipated alike these hopes and these fears. There was no longer any question as to the orthodoxy of Francis. Apologists for the Reformation might seek to undeceive his mind and remove his prejudices. His own emissaries might endeavor to persuade the Germans, of whose alliance he stood in need, that his views differed little from theirs. But there can be no doubt that, whatever his previous intentions had been, from this time forth his resolution was taken, to use his own expression already brought to the reader's notice, to live and die in Mother Holy Church, and demonstrate the justice of his claim to the title of "very Christian." The audacity of the Protestant enthusiast who penetrated even into the innermost recesses of the royal castle, and affixed the placards to the very chamber door of the king, was turned to good account by Cardinal Tournon and other courtiers of like sentiments, and was adduced as a proof of the assertion so often reiterated, that a change of religion necessarily involved also a revolution in the State. The free tone of the placards seemed to reveal a contemptuous disregard of dignities. The ridicule cast upon the doctrine of transubstantiation was an assault on one of the few dogmas respecting which Francis had implicit confidence in the teachings of the Church. Henceforth the king figures on the page of history as a determined opponent and persecutor of the Reformation, less hostile, indeed, to the "Lutherans," than to the "Sacramentarians," or "Zwinglians," but nevertheless an avowed enemy of innovation. The change195 was recognized and deplored by the Reformers themselves; who, seeing Francis in the last years of his reign give the rein to shameful debauchery, and meantime suffer the public prisons to overflow with hundreds of innocent men and women, awaiting punishment for no other offence than their religious faith, pointedly compared him to the effeminate Sardanapalus surrounded by his courtezans.³⁸⁷³⁸⁷ The Protestants might be pardoned, under the circumstances, if their language was somewhat bitter respecting both emperor and king. "Combien que j'espère que nostre Antioche (Charles V.), qui nous presse maintenant, sera serré de si près, qu'il ne luy souviendra des gouttes de ses mains, ne de ses pieds; car il en aura par tout le corps. De son compagnon Sardanapalus (Francis I.), Dieu luy garde la pareille. Car ils sont bien dignes de passer tous deux par une mesme mesure." Calvin to M. de Falaise, Feb. 25, 1547, Lettres françaises, i. 191.—The expression "Sardanapalus inter scorta" occurs in a letter of Calvin to Farel, Feb. 20, 1546 (Bonnet, Letters of John Calvin, ii., 35, 36). It will, therefore, be seen from the date that Merle d'Aubignê is mistaken in referring the description to Henry II. Hist. de la Réf., liv. xii. c. 1.

Change in the courtiers.

While so marked a change came over the disposition of the king, it is not strange that a similar revolution was noticed in the sentiments of the courtiers—a class ever on the alert to detect the slightest variation in the breeze to which they trim their sails. The greater part of the high dignitaries, the early historian of the reformed churches informs us, adapting themselves to the king's humor, abandoned the study of the Bible, and in time became violent opponents of practices which they had sanctioned by their own example. Even Margaret of Navarre is accused by the same authority—and he honestly represents the belief of the contemporary reformers—of having yielded to these seductive influences. She plunged, like the rest, he tells us, into conformity with the most reprehensible superstitions; not that she approved them, but because Gérard Roussel and similar teachers persuaded her that they were things indifferent. Thus, allowing herself to trifle with truth, she was so blinded by the spirit of error as to offer an asylum in her court of Nérac to Quintin and Pocques, blasphemous "Libertines" whose doctrines called forth a refutation from the pen of Calvin.³⁸⁸³⁸⁸ Histoire ecclésiastique, i. 14.196

The French Reformation becomes a popular movement.

Geneva the centre of activity.

The French Reformation was thus constrained to become a popular movement. The king had refused to lead it. The nobles turned their backs upon it. Its adherents, threatened with the gallows and stake, or driven into banishment, could no longer look for encouragement or direction toward Paris and the vicinage of the court. The timid counsels of the high-born were to be exchanged for the bold and fiery words of reformers sprung from the people. Excluded from the luxurious capital, the Huguenots were, during a long series of years, to draw their inspiration from a city at the foot of the Alps—a city whose invigorating climate was no less adapted to harden the intellectual and moral constitution than the bodily frame, and where rugged Nature, if she bestowed wealth with no lavish hand, manifested her impartiality by more liberal endowments conferred upon man himself. Geneva henceforth becomes the centre of reformatory activity, of which fact we need no stronger evidence than the severe legislation of France to destroy its influence; and the same causes that gave the direction of the movement to the people shaped its theological tendencies. Under the guidance of Francis and Margaret, it must have assumed much of the German or Lutheran type; or, to speak more correctly, the direct influence of Germany upon France, attested by the name of "Lutherans," up to this time the ordinary appellation of the French Protestants, would have been rendered permanent. But now the persecution they had experienced, in consequence of their opposition to the papal mass, confirmed the French reformers in their previous views, and disinclined them to admit even such a "consubstantiation" as Luther's followers insisted upon.

Geneva secures its independence.

The same complicated political motives that led Francis to relax his excessive rigor against the Protestants of his realm, in order to avoid provoking the anger of the German princes, prompted him to assist in securing the independence of Geneva, which, at the time, he little dreamed would so soon become the citadel of French Protestantism. After a prolonged contest, the city on the banks of197 the Rhône had shaken off the yoke of its bishop, and had bravely repelled successive assaults made by the Duke of Savoy. The first preachers of the Reformation, Farel and Froment, after a series of attempts and rebuffs for romantic interest inferior to no other episode in an age of stirring adventure, had seen the new worship accepted by the majority of the people, and by the very advocates of the old system, Caroli and Chapuis. If the grand council had thus far hesitated to give a formal sanction to the religious change, it was only through fear that the taking of so decided a step might provoke more powerful enemies than the neighboring duke. The latter, being fully resolved to humble the insubordinate burgesses, had for two years been striving to cut off their supplies by garrisons maintained in adjoining castles and strongholds; nor would his plans, perhaps, have failed, but for the intervention of two powerful opponents—Francis and the Swiss Canton of Berne.

with the assistance of Francis I.

Louise de Savoie was the sister of Duke Charles. Her son had a double cause of resentment against his uncle: Charles had refused him free passage through his dominions, when marching against the Milanese; and, contrary to all justice, he persistently refused to give up the marriage portion of his sister, the king's mother. Francis avenged himself, both for the insult and for the robbery, by permitting a gentleman of his bedchamber, by the name of De Verez, a native of Savoy, to throw himself into the beleaguered city with a body of French soldiers.

and the Bernese.

While Geneva was thus strengthened from within, the Bernese, on receipt of an unsatisfactory reply to an appeal in behalf of their allies, came to their assistance with an army of ten or twelve thousand men. Discouraged by the threatening aspect his affairs had assumed, Charles relaxed his grasp on the throat of his revolted subjects, and withdrew to a safe distance. His obstinacy, however, cost him the permanent loss not only of Geneva, but of a considerable part of his most valuable territories, including the Pays de Vaud—a district which, after remaining for more than two hundred and fifty years a dependency of Berne, has within the present198 century (in 1803), become an independent canton of the Swiss confederacy.³⁸⁹³⁸⁹ Mémoires de Martin du Bellay (Edition Petitot), xviii. 271-273. See also Mignet, Établissement de la réforme religieuse à Genève, Mém. historiques, ii. 308, etc. Also, Merle d'Aubigné, Hist. of the Reformation in the Time of Calvin, v. 395, etc.

Calvin the apologist of the Protestants.

The horrible slanders put in circulation abroad, in justification of the atrocities with which the unoffending Protestants of France were visited, furnished the motive for the composition and publication of an apology that instantly achieved unprecedented celebrity, and has long outlived the occasion that gave it birth. The apology was the "Institutes;" the author, John Calvin. With the appearance of his masterpiece, a great writer and theologian, destined to exercise a wide and lasting influence not only upon France, but over the entire intellectual world, enters upon the stage of French history to take a leading part in the unfolding religious and political drama.

His birth and training.

Studies at Paris;

also at Orleans and Bourges.

John Calvin was born on the tenth of July, 1509, at Noyon, a small but ancient city of Picardy. His family was of limited means, but of honorable extraction. Gérard Cauvin, his father, had successively held important offices in connection with the episcopal see. As a man of clear and sound judgment, he was sought for his counsel by the gentry and nobility of the province—a circumstance that rendered it easy for him to give to his son a more liberal course of instruction than generally fell to the lot of commoners. It is not denied by Calvin's most bitter enemies that he early manifested striking ability. In selecting for him one of the learned professions, his father naturally preferred the church, as that in which he could most readily secure for his son speedy promotion. It may serve to illustrate the degree of respect at this time paid to the prescriptions of canon law, to note that Charles de Hangest, Bishop of Noyon, conferred on John Calvin the Chapelle de la Gésine, with revenues sufficient for his maintenance, when the boy was but just twelve years of age! Such abuses as the gift of ecclesiastical benefices to beardless youths, however, were of too frequent occurrence to at199tract special notice or call forth unfriendly criticism. With the same easy disregard of churchly order the chapter of the cathedral of Noyon permitted Calvin, two years later, to go to Paris, for the purpose of continuing his studies, without loss of income; although, to save appearances, a pretext was found in the prevalence of some contagious disease in Picardy. Not long after, his father perceiving the singular proficiency he manifested, determined to alter his plans, and devoted his son to the more promising department of the law, a decision in which Calvin himself, already conscious of secret aversion for the superstitions of the papal system, seems dutifully to have acquiesced. To a friend and near relation, Pierre Robert Olivetanus, the future translator of the Bible, he probably owed both the first impulse toward legal studies and the enkindling of his interest in the Sacred Scriptures. Proceeding next to Orleans, in the university of which the celebrated Pierre de l'Étoile, afterward President of the Parliament of Paris, was lecturing on law with great applause, Calvin in a short time achieved distinction. Marvellous stories were told of his rapid mastery of his subject. Not only did he occasionally fill the chair of an absent professor, and himself lecture, to the great admiration of the classes, but he was offered the formal rank of the doctorate without payment of the customary fees. Declining an honorable distinction which would have interfered with his plan of perfecting himself elsewhere, he subsequently visited the University of Bourges, in order to enjoy the rare advantage of listening to Andrea Alciati, of Milan, reputed the most learned and eloquent legal instructor of the age.

His studies under Wolmar.

Meanwhile, however, Calvin's interest in biblical study had been steadily growing, and at Bourges that great intellectual and religious change appears to have been effected which was essential to his future success as a reformer. He attached himself to Melchior Wolmar, a distinguished professor of Greek, who had brought with him from Germany a fervent zeal for the Protestant doctrines. Wolmar, reading in the young law student the brilliant abilities that were one day to make his name illustrious, prevailed upon him to devote him200self to the study of the New Testament in the original. Day and night were spent in the engrossing pursuit, and here were laid the foundations of that profound biblical erudition which, at a later date, amazed the world, as well, unfortunately, as of that feeble bodily health that embittered all Calvin's subsequent life with the most severe and painful maladies, and abridged in years an existence crowded with great deeds.

Translates Seneca "De Clementia."

The illness and death of his father called Calvin back to Noyon,³⁹⁰³⁹⁰ In dedicating to Wolmar his commentary on II. Corinthians, Calvin deplored the loss sustained in the interruption of his Greek studies under his old teacher, "manum enim, quæ tua est humanitas, porrigere non recusasses ad totum stadii decursum, nisi me, ab ipsis prope carceribus, mors patris revocasset." Upon the basis of the words here italicized, Merle d'Aubigné builds up a story of outcries and intrigues of priests (against Calvin) who "did all in their power to get him put into prison"! Ref. in Time of Calvin, ii. 28. M. Herminjard observes hereupon that one need not be very thoroughly versed in Latin or in Roman antiquities to understand Calvin's allusion; and every classical scholar will sympathize with M. Herminjard when he expresses, in view of the historian's blunder, "un étonnement proportionné à la célébrité de l'auteur." Corresp. des réformateurs, ii. 333. but in 1529 we find him again in Paris, where three years later he published his first literary effort. This was a commentary on the two books of Seneca, "De Clementia," originally addressed to the Emperor Nero. The opinion has long prevailed that it was no casual selection of a theme, but that Calvin had conceived the hope of mitigating hereby the severity of the persecution then raging. The author's own correspondence, however, betrays less anxiety for the attainment of that lofty aim, than nervous uneasiness respecting the literary success of his first venture. Indeed, this is not the only indication that, while Calvin was already, in 1532, an accomplished scholar, he was scarcely as yet a reformer, and that the stories of his activity before this time as a leader and religious teacher, at Paris and even at Bourges, deserve only to be classed with the questionable myths obscuring much of his history up to the time of his appearance at Geneva.³⁹¹³⁹¹ See the very sensible remarks of Herminjard, ubi supra, iii. 202.

Calvin's escape from Paris to Angoulême.

The incident that occasioned Calvin's flight from Paris was narrated in a previous chapter. Escaping from the officers sent201 to apprehend him as the real author of the inaugural address of the rector, Nicholas Cop, Calvin found safety and scholastic leisure in the house of his friend Louis du Tillet, at Angoulême. If we could believe the accounts of later writers, we should imagine the young scholar dividing his time in this retreat between the preparation of his "Institutes" and systematic labors for the conversion of the inhabitants of the south-west of France. Tradition still points out the grottos in the vicinity of Poitiers, where, during a residence in that city, Calvin is said to have exclaimed, pointing to the Bible lying open before him: "Here is my mass;" and then, with uncovered head and eyes turned toward heaven, "Lord, if at the judgment-day thou shalt reprove me because I have abandoned the mass, I shall reply with justice, 'Lord, thou hast not commanded it. Here is thy law. Here are the Scriptures, the rule thou hast given me, wherein I have been unable to find any other sacrifice than that which was offered upon the altar of the cross!'"³⁹²³⁹² A. Crottet, Histoire des églises réf. de Pons, Gémozac, et Mortagne en Saintonge (Bordeaux, 1841), 10-11, and Merle d'Aubigné, Hist. of the Ref. in the Time of Calvin (Am. ed.), iii. 53, tell the story without any misgivings, and the latter with characteristic embellishment. But it rests on the unsupported and slender authority of Florimond de Ræmond, lib. vii. c. 14, from whose account I cannot even find that the scene was laid in the caverns.

He resigns his benefices.

He reaches Basle.

The caverns bearing Calvin's name may never have witnessed his preaching, and the address ascribed to him rests on insufficient authority;³⁹³³⁹³ Stähelin (Johannes Calvin, Leben und ausgewählte Schriften, i. 33) well remarks that what makes this address very suspicious is the circumstance that a quite similar passage occurs in Calvin's letter to Sadolet, leading us to the conclusion that we have here only a "reminiscence" of this much later document. but it is certain that the future reformer about this time took his first decided step in renouncing connection with the Roman Church, by resigning his benefices, the revenues of which he had enjoyed, although precluded by his youth from receiving ordination.³⁹⁴³⁹⁴ He resigned his chapel of La Gésine and his curacy of Pont l'Evêque, May 4, 1534. Herminjard, iii. 201. Not many months later, finding himself solicited on all sides to take an active part as a teacher of the little companies of Protestants202 arising in different cities of France, he resolved to leave France and court elsewhere obscurity and leisure to prosecute undisturbed his favorite studies.³⁹⁵³⁹⁵ This, and not the persecution at that time raging in France, is the reason assigned by Calvin himself in the preface to his commentary on the Psalms, where he tells us that, the very year of his conversion, seeing "que tous ceux qui avoyent quelque désir de la pure doctrine se rangeoyent à lui pour apprendre," he began to seek some hiding-place and means of withdrawing from men. "Et de faict," he adds, "je veins en Allemagne, de propos délibéré, afin que là je peusse vivre à requoy en quelque coin incognu." Corresp. des réformateurs, iii. 242, 243. See the same in the Latin ed., Calvini opera (Amsterdam, 1667), iii. c. 2. This preface is dated Geneva, July 23, 1557. Accordingly, we find him, after a brief visit to Paris and Orleans, reaching the city of Basle, apparently toward the close of the year 1534.³⁹⁶³⁹⁶ Whether before or after the appearance of the "Placards," is uncertain. On Calvin's early life, see Beza's Life, already referred to; the Histoire ecclésiastique; various letters in J. Bonnet's Letters of Calvin, and Herminjard, Corresp. des réformateurs; Haag, France protestante; the reformer's life by Paul Henry, D.D., and especially the scholarly work of Dr. E. Stähelin (2 vols., Elberfeld, 1860-1863).

Apologetic character given to his great work.

It was here that Calvin appears to have conceived for the first time the purpose of giving a practical aim to the great work upon the composition of which he had been some time busy. In spite of his professions of unsullied honor, Francis the First had not hesitated to disseminate, by means of his agents beyond the Rhine, the most unfounded and injurious reports respecting his Protestant subjects. It was time that these aspersions should be cleared away, and an attempt be made to touch the heart of the persecuting monarch with compassion for the unoffending objects of his blind fury. Such was the object Calvin set before himself in a preface to the first edition of the "Institutes," addressed "To the Very Christian King of France."³⁹⁷³⁹⁷ The mooted question whether Calvin wrote the Institutes originally in Latin or in French—in other words, whether there was a French edition before the first Latin edition of 1536—has been set at rest by M. Jules Bonnet, who, in a contribution to the Bulletin de l'histoire du protestantisme français, vi. (1858) 137-142, establishes the priority of the Latin. The chief points in the proof are: 1st, the absence of even a single copy of the supposed French edition of 1535; 2d, Calvin's statement to Francis Daniel, Oct. 13, 1536, "I am kept continually occupied upon the French version of my little book;" 3d, his decisive words in the preface to the edition of 1551: "Et premièrement l'ay mis en latin à ce qu'il pust servir à toutes gens d'estude, de quelque nation qu'ils fussent; puis après désirant de communiquer ce qui en pouvoit venir de fruict à nostre nation françoise, l'ay aussy translaté en nostre langue." See also chap. iii. of Professors Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss, Introd. to Institution de la religion chrétienne (Calv. Opera, t. iii.). It was a document of rare importance.203

The preface to the "Christian Institutes."

Eloquent peroration.

He briefly explained the original design of his work to be the instruction of his countrymen, whom he knew to be hungering and thirsting for the truth. But the persecutions that had arisen and that left no place for sound doctrine in France induced him to make the attempt at the same time to acquaint the king with the real character of the Protestants and their belief. He assured Francis that the book contained nothing more nor less than the creed for the profession of which so many Frenchmen were being visited with imprisonment, banishment, outlawry, and even fire, and which it was sought to exterminate from the earth. He drew a fearful picture of the calumnies laid to the charge of this devoted people, and of the wretched church of France, already half destroyed, yet still a butt for the rage of its enemies. It was the part of a true king, as the vicegerent of God, to administer justice in a cause so worthy of his consideration. Nor ought the humble condition of the oppressed to indispose him to grant them a hearing; for the doctrine they professed was not their own, but that of the Almighty himself. He boldly contrasted the evangelical with the papal church, and refuted the objections urged against the former. He defended its doctrine from the charge of novelty, denied that miracles—especially such lying wonders as those of Rome—were necessary in confirmation of its truth, and showed that the ancient Fathers, far from countenancing, on the contrary, condemned the superstitions of the day. He refuted the charge that Protestants forsook old customs when good, or abandoned the only visible church; and in a masterly manner vindicated the Reformation from the oft-repeated charge of being the cause of sedition, conflict, and confusion. He begged for a fair and impartial hearing. "But," he exclaimed in conclud204ing, "if the suggestions of the malevolent so fill your ears as to leave no room for the reply of the accused, and those importunate furies continue, with your consent, to rage with bonds and stripes, with torture, confiscation, and fire, then shall we yield ourselves up as sheep appointed for slaughter, yet so as to possess our souls in patience, and await the mighty hand of God, which will assuredly be revealed in good time, and be stretched forth armed for the deliverance of the poor from their affliction, and for the punishment of the blasphemers now exulting in confidence of safety. May the Lord of Hosts, illustrious king, establish your seat in righteousness and your throne with equity."³⁹⁸³⁹⁸ Opera Calvini (Amst., 1667), t. ix.

Has no effect in allaying persecution.

Calvin achieves distinction.

The learned theologian's eloquent appeal failed to accomplish its end. If Francis ever received, he probably disdained to read even the dedication, classed by competent critics among the best specimens of writing in the French language,³⁹⁹³⁹⁹ "La dédicace à François Ier, qui est peut-étre une des plus belles choses que possède notre langue." Paul L. Jacob, bibliophile (Lacroix), "Avertissement" prefixed to Œuvres françaises de Calvin. The Institutes he designates "ce chef-d'œuvre de science théologique, de philosophie religieuse et de style." "Here," says Henri van Laun, "was a force and concision of language never before heard in France.... The influence of Calvin's writings upon the style of his successors, and upon the literary development of his country, cannot easily be over-estimated. With him French prose may be said to have attained its manhood; the best of his contemporaries, and of those who had preceded him, did but use as a staff or as a toy that which he employed as a burning sword." History of French Literature (New York, 1876), i. 338, 339. and must have regarded the volume to which it was prefixed as a bold vindication of heresy, and scarcely less insulting to his majesty than the placards themselves. Others, better capable of forming a competent judgment, or more willing to give it a dispassionate examination, applauded the success of a hazardous undertaking that might have appalled even a more experienced writer than the French exile of Noyon. The Institutes gave to a young man, who had scarcely attained the age at which men of mark usually begin to occupy themselves with important205 enterprises, the reputation of being the foremost theologian of the age.

He revises the Bible of Olivetanus.

Other studies invited Calvin's attention. Not content with perfecting himself in the original languages of the Holy Scriptures, he revised with care the French Protestant Bible, translated by his relation Olivetanus, of which we shall have occasion to speak in another chapter. Meanwhile, in an age of intense mental and moral awakening, no scholastic repose, such as he had pictured to himself, awaited one who had made good his right to a foremost rank among the athletes in the intellectual arena.

Visits Italy.

Before his unexpected call to a life of unremitting conflict, Calvin visited Italy. In the entire absence of any trustworthy statement of the occasion of this journey, it is almost idle to speculate on the objects he had in view.⁴⁰⁰⁴⁰⁰ Yet it is more probable, as Stähelin suggests (Joh. Calvin, ii. 93), that the classical associations of Italy drew him to the peninsula, which was at that time the home of art, than that his fame, having already penetrated to Ferrara, procured him a direct invitation from Renée to visit her. Certain, however, it is that the court of the Duchess Renée, at Ferrara, offered to a patriotic Frenchman attractions hard to be resisted.

The court of Renée de France.

Brantôme's eulogy of Renée.

The younger daughter of Louis the Twelfth resembled her father not less in character than in appearance and speech.⁴⁰¹⁴⁰¹ Showing, according to Brantôme, "en son visage et en sa parole qu'elle estoit bien fille du Roy et de France." Dames illustres, Renée de France. Cut off by the pretended Salic law from the prospect of ascending the throne, she had in her childhood been thrown as a straw upon the variable tide of fortune. After having been promised in marriage to Charles of Spain, heir to the most extensive and opulent dominions the sun shone upon, and future Emperor of Germany, she had (1528) been given in marriage to the ruler of a petty Italian duchy, himself as inferior to her in mind as in moral character.⁴⁰²⁴⁰² See the pompous ceremonial on this occasion and the epithalamium of Clément Marot, in Cronique du Roy François Ier (G. Guiffrey, 1860), 68-73. As for Renée, if her face was homely and unprepossessing, her intellect was vigorous. She had turned to good account the opportunities206 for self-improvement afforded by her high rank. Admiring courtiers made her classical and philosophical attainments the subject of lavish panegyric, perhaps with a better basis of fact than in the case of many other princes of the time; while with the French, her countrymen, the generous hospitality she dispensed won for her unfading laurels. "Never was there a Frenchman," writes the Abbé de Brantôme, "who passing through Ferrara applied to her in his distress and was suffered to depart without receiving ample assistance to reach his native land and home. If he were unable to travel through illness, she had him cared for and treated with the utmost solicitude, and then gave him money to continue his journey."⁴⁰³⁴⁰³ Dames illustres, ubi supra. Ten thousand poor Frenchmen are said to have been saved by her munificent charity, on the occasion of the recall of the Duke of Guise, after Constable Montmorency's disastrous defeat at St. Quentin. Her answer to the remonstrance of her servants against this excessive drain upon her slender resources bore witness at once to the sincerity of her patriotism and to a virile spirit which no Salic law could extinguish.⁴⁰⁴⁴⁰⁴ "Que voulez-vous? Ce sont des pauvres François de ma maison; et lesquels si Dieu m'eust donné barbe au menton et que je fusse homme, seroient maintenant tous mes sujets. Voire me seroient-ils tels, si cette meschante Loy Salicque ne me tenoit trop de rigueur." Ibid., ubi supra. A readable account of the life of this remarkable woman is given in "Some Memorials of Renée of France, Duchess of Ferrara" (2d edit., London, 1859), a volume enriched, to some extent, with letters drawn from the Paris National Library, and from less accessible collections in Great Britain.

The brief stay of Calvin at Ferrara is involved in the same obscurity that attends his motives in visiting Italy. But it is known that he exerted at this time a marked influence not only on others,⁴⁰⁵⁴⁰⁵ Possibly including the wonderfully precocious child, Olympia Morata. See M. Jules Bonnet's monograph, Vie d'Olympia Morata, épisode de la Renaissance et de la Réforme en Italie. Stähelin has well traced Calvin's religious influence upon Renée and the important family of Soubise. Joh. Calvin, i. 94-110. The extant letters of Calvin to Renée are full of manly and Christian frankness, and affectionate loyalty. Lettres françaises, i. 428, etc. but on Renée de France herself, who, from this period forward, appears in the character of an avowed friend of207 the reformatory movement. Calvin had from prudence assumed the title of Charles d'Espeville, and this name was retained as a signature in his subsequent correspondence with the duchess.

Calvin leaves Ferrara.

A point so close to the centre of the Roman Catholic world as Ferrara could scarcely afford safety to an ardent reformer, even if the fame of his "Institutes" had not yet reached Rome; and Ercole the Second was too dependent upon the Holy See to shrink from sacrificing the guest his wife had invited to the palace. Returning, therefore, from Ferrara, without apparently pursuing his journey to Rome or even to Florence, Calvin retraced his steps and took refuge beyond the Alps. Possibly he may have stopped on the way in the valley of Aosta, and displayed a missionary activity, which has been denied by several modern critics, but is attested by local monuments and tradition, and has some support in contemporary documents.⁴⁰⁶⁴⁰⁶ Stähelin is skeptical about, and Prof. Billiet and M. Douen reject altogether the story of Calvin's labors at Aosta. Thus much M. Bonnet believes to be established by concurrent MS. and traditional authority: That, early in the year 1536, Calvin had succeeded in gaining over to the reformed doctrines a number of influential men in this Alpine valley, of the families of La Creste, La Visière, Vaudan, Borgnion, etc.; that he and his converts were accused of plotting to induce the district to embrace Protestantism, and imitate the example of its Swiss neighbors, by constituting itself a canton, free of the Duke of Savoy; that the estates, on the 28th of February, 1536, declared their intention (with a unanimity procured, perhaps, by the expulsion of the opposite party) to live and die in the obedience of the Duke of Savoy and of mother Holy Church; that Calvin and his principal adherents escaped with difficultly into Switzerland; and that expiatory processions were instituted at Aosta, in token of gratitude for deliverance from heresy, in which the bishop and the most prominent noblemen, as well as the common people, "walked with bare feet and in sackcloth and ashes, notwithstanding the rigor of the season." Tradition still points out the "farm-house of Calvin," his "bridge," and the window by which he is said to have escaped. The event is commemorated by a monument of the market-place, bearing an inscription that testifies to its having been erected in 1541, and renewed in 1741 and 1841. See the interesting Aostan documents contributed by M. Bonnet to the Bulletin de l'hist. du protest. français, ix. (1860) 160-168, and his letter to Prof. Rilliet, ibid., xiii. (1864) 183-192.

Revisits France.

Is recognized while passing through Geneva.

Farel compels him to remain.

Once more in Basle, Calvin resolved, after a final visit to the home of his childhood, to seek out some quiet spot in Germany,208 there to give himself up to those scholarly labors which he fancied would be more profitable to France than the most active enterprises he might engage in as a preacher of the Gospel. He had accomplished the first part of his design, had disposed of his property in Noyon, and was returning with his brother and sister, when the prevalence of war in the Duchy of Lorraine led him to diverge from his most direct route, so as to traverse the dominions of the Duke of Savoy and the territories of the confederate cantons of Switzerland. Under these circumstances, for the first time, he entered the city of Geneva, then but recently delivered from the yoke of its bishop and of the Roman Church. He had intended to spend there only a single night.⁴⁰⁷⁴⁰⁷ This is Calvin's distinct statement: "quum rectum iter Argentoratum tendenti bella clausissent, hac (Geneva) celeriter transire statueram, ut non longior quam unius noctis moræ in urbe mihi foret." Calvin, Preface to Psalms. He was accidentally recognized by an old friend, a Frenchman, who at the time professed the reformed faith, but subsequently returned to the communion of the Church of Rome.⁴⁰⁸⁴⁰⁸ "Unus homo, qui nunc turpi defectione iterum ad Papistas rediit, statim fecit ut innotescerem." Ibid., ubi supra. Consequently Beza, in his Latin Life of Calvin, is mistaken when he asserts: "eos [sc. Farel and Viret] igitur quum, ut inter bonos fieri solet, Calvinus transiens invisisset," etc.; for it was Farel that sought him out, on Du Tillet's information. Du Tillet was the only person in Geneva that detected in the traveller, Charles d'Espeville, the John Calvin who had written the "Institutes." He confided the secret to Farel, and the intrepid reformer whose office it had hitherto been to demolish, by unsparing and persistent blows, the popular structure of superstition, at once concluded that, in answer to his prayers, a man had been sent him by God capable of laying, amid the ruins, the foundations of a new and more perfect fabric. Farel sought Calvin out, and laid before him the urgent necessities of a church founded in a city where, under priestly rule, disorder and corruption had long been rampant. At first his words made no impression. Calvin had traced out for himself a very different course, and was little inclined to exchange a life of study for the perpetual struggles to which he was so unexpect209edly summoned. But when he met Farel's request with a positive refusal, pleading inexperience, fondness for literary pursuits, and aversion to scenes of tumult and confusion, the Genevese reformer assumed a more decided tone. Acting under an impulse for which he could scarcely account himself, Farel solemnly prayed that the curse of God might descend on Calvin's leisure and studies, if purchased at the price of neglecting the duty to which the voice of the Almighty Himself, by His providence, distinctly called him.⁴⁰⁹⁴⁰⁹ Calvin, in the preface to the Psalms already quoted, says: "Genevæ non tam consilio, vel hortatu, quam formidabili Gulielmi Farelli obtestatione retentus sum, ac si Deus violentam mihi e cœlo manum injiceret. Et quum privatis et occultis studiis me intelligeret esse deditum, ubi se vidit rogando nihil proficere, usque ad maledictionem descendit, ut Deus otio meo malediceret, si me a ferendis subsidiis in tanta necessitate subducerem. Quo terrore perculsus susceptum iter ita omisi," etc.—Beza throws these words into Farel's mouth: "At ego tibi, inquit, studia tua praetextenti denuntio Omnipotentis Dei nomine, futurum ut nisi in opus istud Domini nobiscum incumbas, tibi non tam Christum quam teipsum quærenti Dominus maledicat." Vita Calvini (Op. Calv., Amst. 1661, tom. i).

The amazed and terrified student felt—to use his own expression—that God had stretched forth His arm from heaven and laid violent hold upon him, rendering all further resistance impossible. He yielded to the unwelcome call, and became the first theological professor of Geneva. Somewhat later he was prevailed upon to add to his functions the duties of one of the pastors of the city.

Farel's own recollections.

If the scene impressed itself ineffaceably on the memory or one of the principal actors, its effect, we may be sure, was no less lasting in the case of the other. More than a quarter of a century after, Farel, on receiving the announcement that his worst apprehensions had been realized, in the death of his "so dear and necessary brother Calvin," wrote to a friend a touching letter, in which he referred in a few sentences to the same striking interview. "Oh, why am not I taken away in his stead, and why is not he, so useful, so serviceable, here in health, to minister long to the churches of our Lord! To Whom be blessing and praise, that, of His grace, He made me fall in with him where I had never expected to meet him, and, contrary210 to his own plans, compelled him to stop at Geneva, and made use of him there and elsewhere! For he was urged on one side and another more than could be told, and specially by me, who, in God's name, urged him to undertake matters that were harder than death. And albeit he begged me several times, in the name of God, to have mercy on him and suffer him to serve God in other ways, as he has always thus occupied himself, nevertheless, seeing that what I asked was in accordance with God's will, in doing himself violence he has done more and more promptly than any one else has done, surpassing not only others, but himself. Oh, how happily has he run an excellent race!"⁴¹⁰⁴¹⁰ This interesting letter, dated Neufchâtel, June 6, 1564, was communicated by M. Herminjard to the editor of the fine edition of Farel's Du Vray Usage de la Croix, printed by J. G. Fick, Geneva, 1865, who gives it entire, pp. 314, etc.

Calvin becomes the head of the commonwealth.

His view respecting church and state,

and the punishment of heresy.

For twenty-eight years the name of Calvin was inseparably associated with that of the city which owes its chief renown to his connection with it. Excepting the three years of exile, from 1538 to 1541, occasioned by a powerful reaction against his rigid system of public morality, he was, during the whole of this period, the recognized head of the Genevese commonwealth. A complete mastery of the principles of law, acquired by indefatigable study at Orleans and Bourges, before the loftier teachings of theology engrossed his time and faculties, qualified him to draw up a code to regulate the affairs of his adopted country. If its detailed prohibitions and almost Draconian severity are repugnant to the spirit of the present age, the general wisdom of the legislator is vindicated by the circumstance that he transformed a city noted for the prevalence of every form of turbulence and immorality into the most orderly republic of Christendom. Few, it is true, will be found to defend the theory respecting the duty of the state toward the church in which Calvin acquiesced. But the cruel deaths of Gruet and Servetus were only the legitimate fruits of the doctrine that the civil authority is both empowered and bound to exercise vigilant supervision over the purity of the church. In this doctrine the reformers of the sixteenth century were firm211 believers. They held, as John Huss had held a hundred years before, that Truth could appropriately appeal for support to physical force, under circumstances that would by no means have justified a similar resort on the part of Error. The consistent language of their lives was, "If we speak not the truth, we refuse not to die." "If the Pope condemns the pious for heresy, and furious judges unjustly execute on the innocent the penalty due to heretics, what madness is it thence to infer that heretics ought not to be destroyed for the purpose of aiding the pious! As for myself, since I read that Paul said that he did not refuse death if he had done anything to deserve it, I openly offered myself frequently prepared to undergo sentence of death, if I had taught anything contrary to the doctrine of piety. And I added, that I was most worthy of any punishment imaginable, if I seduced any one from the faith and doctrine of Christ. Assuredly I cannot have a different view with regard to others from that which I entertain respecting myself."⁴¹¹⁴¹¹ "Sane non possum de aliis aliud sentire quam quod de me statuo." Farel to Calvin, Sept. 8, 1553, Calv. Opera, ix. (Epistolæ), 71. So wrote Farel, and almost all his contemporaries agreed with him. And thus it happened that the conscientious Calvin and the polished Beza were at the pains of writing long treatises, to prove that "heretics are justly to be constrained by the sword,"⁴¹²⁴¹² Declaration pour maintenir la vraye foy que tiennent tous chrestiens de la Trinité des personnes en un seul Dieu. Par Jean Calvin. Contre les erreurs detestables de Michel Servet Espaignol. Où il est aussi monstré, qu'il est licite de punir les heretiques: et qu'à bon droict ce meschant a esté executé par justice en la ville de Genève. 1554.—In this famous little book the author classifies doctrinal errors according to their gravity. Slight superstitions and the ignorance into which simple folk have fallen, are to be borne with till God reveal the truth to them. Offences of greater magnitude, because injurious to the church, should be visited with mild penalties. "But when malicious spirits attempt to overthrow the foundations of religion, utter execrable blasphemies against God, and disseminate damnable speeches, like deadly poison, to drag souls to perdition—in short, engage in schemes to cause the people to revolt from the pure doctrine of God—then it is necessary to have recourse to the extreme remedy, so that the evil may not spread farther" (pp. 48, 49). almost at the very moment when they were begging the Bernese to intercede212 with their ally, King Henry the Second, of France, in behalf of the poor Protestants languishing in the dungeons of Lyons, or writing consolatory letters to Peloquin and De Marsac, destined to suffer death in the flames not many days before the execution of the Spanish physician at Geneva.⁴¹³⁴¹³ See Calvin to C. and T. Zollicoffre, March 28, and the same to Peloquin and De Marsac, Aug. 22, 1553. Servetus was burned Oct. 27.

His fault the fault of the age.

In truth, however, it was less Calvin than the age in which he lived that must be held responsible for the crime against humanity with which his name has come to be popularly associated. He did, indeed, desire and urge that Servetus should be punished capitally, although he made an earnest but unsuccessful effort to induce the magistrates to mitigate the severity of the sentence, by the substitution of some more merciful mode of execution.⁴¹⁴⁴¹⁴ Two months before the execution Calvin wrote to Farel, Aug. 20, 1553: "Spero capitale saltem fore judicium pœnæ vero atrocitatem remitti cupio;" and on the 26th of October, he again wrote, "Genus mortis conati sumus mutare, sed frustra. Cur non profecerimus, coram narrandum differo." Calv. Opera, ix. 70, 71. As it is thus in evidence not only that Calvin did not burn Servetus, but desired him not to be burned, and made an ineffectual attempt to rescue him from the flames, we might anticipate for the stale calumny a speedy end, were not the tenacity of life characterizing such inventions so notorious as to have passed into a proverb. But the other principal reformers of Germany and Switzerland—Melanchthon, Haller, Peter Martyr, and Bullinger gave their hearty endorsement to the cruel act;⁴¹⁵⁴¹⁵ Melanchthon, for example, after expressing his entire satisfaction with Calvin's treatise, and his conviction that the church both now and hereafter owes and will owe him gratitude for it, adds: "Affirmo etiam, vestros magistratus juste fecisse, quod hominem blasphemum, re ordine judicata, interfecerunt." Mel. to Calvin, Oct. 14, 1554, Opera (Bretschneider), viii. 362. while if any further proof were needed to attest the sincerity and universality of approval accorded to it, it is afforded by the last letters of the brave men who were themselves awaiting at Chambéry, a few mouths later, death by the same excruciating fate as that which befell Servetus at Geneva.⁴¹⁶⁴¹⁶ Laborie, one of the heroic "five," sending from prison an account of his examination, states that, when one of his judges asked him whether he did not know that God had by Moses sanctioned the punishment of heretics, he freely admitted it: "Hæreticos certe puniendos facile concessi, et in exemplum proposui impurum illum canem Servetum, qui Genevæ ultimo supplicio affectus fuit: verum sedulo caverent, ne in Christianos et Dei filios velut hæreticos animadvertant," etc. Letter in Crespin, Actiones et Monimenta Martyrum (Genevæ, 1560), fol. 291.213

Calvin shuns notoriety.

The prominence obtained by Calvin as chief theologian and pastor of the church of Geneva, however, was foreign to his tastes. He was by preference a scholar, averse to notoriety, fond of retirement, and, if we are to believe his own judgment, timid and even pusillanimous by nature.⁴¹⁷⁴¹⁷ "Ego qui natura timido, molli et pusillo animo esse fateor." Preface to the Psalms. He had in vain sought seclusion in France. From Basle and Strasbourg he made a hasty retreat in order to preserve his incognito, and avoid the fame the Institutes were likely to earn for him.⁴¹⁸⁴¹⁸ "Porro, an propositum esset mihi famam aucupari, patuit ex brevi discessu, præsertim quum nemo illic sciverit me authorem esse." Ibid. Only Farel's adjuration detained him in Geneva, and he subsequently confessed that his fortitude was not so great but that he rejoiced even more than was meet when the turbulent Genevese expelled him from their city.⁴¹⁹⁴¹⁹ "Me tamen non tanta sustinnit magnanimitas, quin turbulenta ejectione plus quam deceret lætatus sim." Ibid. But not even then was he able to secure the coveted quiet, for Martin Bucer was not slow in imitating the urgency of Farel, and employed the warning example of the prophet Jonah seeking to flee from the will of the Almighty, to induce him to employ himself in the organization and administration of the French church at Strasbourg.⁴²⁰⁴²⁰ "Præstantissimus Christi minister, M. Bucerus me iterum simili qua usus fuerat Farellus, obsecratione, ad novam stationem retraxit. Jonæ itaque exemplo, quod proposuerat, territus," etc. Ibid. Not less decided was Calvin's reluctance to accede to the repeated invitations of the council and people of Geneva, that he should return and resume his former position.

His character and natural endowments.

He is consulted by Protestants in every quarter of Europe.

Such was the man who was called to take the reins of the spiritual direction, not only of a single small city, but of a large body of earnest thinkers throughout France, and even to distant parts of Christendom—a man of stern and uncompromising devotion to that system which he believed to be truth; of slender imagination, but of a memory prodigious in its grasp, of an214 understanding wonderfully acute, and of a power of exposition and expression unsurpassed by that possessed by any writer among his contemporaries. His constitution, naturally weak, had been still further enfeebled by excessive application to study. In his letters there are frequent references to the interruptions occasioned by violent pains in his head, often compelling him to stop many times in the writing of a single letter.⁴²¹⁴²¹ "La difficulté est," he writes to M. de Falaise, April, 1546, "des fascheries et rompemens de teste qui interviennent, pour interrompre vingt fois une lettre, ou encore d'advantaige." He adds (and the details are interesting) that, although his general health is good, "je suis tormenté sans cesse d'une doleur qui ne me souffre quasi rien faire. Car oultre les sermons et lectures, il y a desjà un mois que je n'ay guères faict, tellement que j'ay presque honte de vivre arnsi inutile." Lettres françaises, i. 141, 142. Many a scholar of his day, or of ours, would consider a week of health well occupied with the preparation and delivery of two sermons and three theological lectures. His strength was taxed to the utmost by the unremitting toil incident to his multifarious occupations. The very recital of his labors fills us with amazement. He preached twice every Sunday, besides frequent sermons on other days. He lectured three times a week on theology. He made addresses in the consistory, and delivered a lecture every Friday in the conference on the Scriptures known as the "Congrégation." To these public burdens must be added others imposed upon him by his wide reputation. From all parts of the Protestant world, but especially from every spot in France where the Reformation had gained a foothold, the opinion of Calvin was eagerly sought on various points of doctrine and ecclesiastical practice. To Geneva, and especially to Calvin, the obscure and persecuted adherents of the same faith, not less than the most illustrious of the Protestant nobility, looked for counsel and direction. Under his guidance that system was adopted for supplying France with ministers of the Gospel which led the Venetian ambassador, near the end of the great reformer's life, to describe Geneva as the mine from which the ore of heresy was extracted.⁴²²⁴²² "Ginevra ... che è la minera di questa sorte di metallo." Relazione di M. Suriano, 1561. Relations des Amb. Vénitiens, i. 528. How faithfully he discharged the trust com215mitted to him is sufficiently attested by a voluminous correspondence, some portions of which have escaped the wreck of time; while the steady advance of the doctrines he advocated is an enduring monument to the zeal and sagacity of his exertions.

Meets with bitter opposition,

but obtains the support of the people.

In his arduous undertaking, however, Calvin had to encounter no little opposition in the very city of Geneva. It was this, even more than bodily infirmity, that bore severely upon his spirits, and robbed him of the rest demanded alike by his overtaxed body and mind. His advocacy of strenuous discipline procured him relentless enemies among the Genevese of the "Libertine" party. Those were stormy times for Calvin, when, in derision of the student, legislator, and theologian, deafening salutes were fired by night before his doors, and when the dogs were set upon him in the streets.⁴²³⁴²³ This period of his life was referred to by him in his last address to the body of his colleagues: "J'ay vescu içy en combats merveilleux; j'ay esté salué par mocquerie le soir devant ma porte de 50 ou 60 coups d'arquebute. Que pensez-vous que cela pouvoit estonner un pauvre escholier, timide comme je suis, et comme je l'ay toujours esté, je le confesse?... On m'a mis les chiens à ma queue, criant hère, hère, et m'ont prins par la robbe et par les jambes." Adieux de Calvin, apud Bonnet, Lettres françaises, ii. 575. But, when we read of the violent antagonism elicited by the publication of the severe provisions of the "Ordinances," regulating even the minor details of the life of a Genevese citizen, it must not be forgotten that the unpopular system, although devised by Calvin, was not imposed by him upon unwilling subjects, but established by a free and decisive vote of the people, in the exercise of its sovereignty, and influenced to its adoption by the same considerations that had determined Calvin himself in devising it.⁴²⁴⁴²⁴ "This sacrifice," M. Gaberel forcibly observes, "has scarcely a parallel in history. Men willingly consent to make the greatest efforts, to perform the most painful acts of self-denial, with the aim of saving their country. Formerly the Genevese suffered unto death to preserve their independence. Now the same unselfish spirit is demanded of them in ordinary times that they exhibited in evil days. And, if the people accepts the 'Ordinances,' it is because it has narrowly scanned the slavery to which that moral license was leading it, which Rome authorizes in order to confiscate all other liberties. It accepts the 'Ordinances' because it has just escaped the treacherous machinations, the servitude prepared for it by men whose principle is to go just as their own heart leads them.... Strengthened by this vote, Calvin can henceforth hope to succeed in his project, and make of Geneva the Protestant metropolis, bearing as its motto, 'Holiness to the Lord.'" Histoire de l'église de Genève, i. 346, 347.216

An estimate of Calvin by Étienne Pasquier.

Such a man could not fail to secure the respect of his opponents, and the undisguised admiration of all who could regard his character and work with some degree of impartiality. Among the most virtuous of his contemporaries was the excellent Étienne Pasquier, who described him as he appeared in the eyes of men of culture—men who, without forsaking the Roman Catholic Church, were stanch friends of reform and of progress. "He was a man," says Pasquier, "that wrote equally well in Latin and in French, and to whom our French tongue is greatly indebted for having enriched it with an infinite number of fine touches. It were my wish that it had been for a better subject. He was a man, moreover, marvellously versed and nurtured in the books of the Holy Scriptures, and such that, had he directed his mind in the right way, he might have ranked with the most illustrious doctors of the church. And, in the midst of his books and his studies, he was possessed of the most active zeal for the progress of his sect. We sometimes saw our prisons overflowing with poor, misled people, whom he unceasingly exhorted, consoled, and comforted by his letters; and there were never lacking messengers to whom the doors were open, in spite of any exertions of the jailers to the contrary. Such were the methods by which he gained over step by step a part of our France."⁴²⁵⁴²⁵ Recherches de la France (ed. of 1621), p. 769. Giovanni Michiel, in 1561, told the Doge of Venice: "Nè potria vostra Serenità creder l'intelligenza e le pratiche grandi che ha nel regno il principal ministro di Genevra che chiamano il Calvino, Francese e Picardo di nazione, uomo di estraordinaria autorità, per la vita, per la dottrina, e per i scritti appresso tutti quelli di questa sette." Rel. des Amb. Vén., i. 415.

Continued persecution.

The tongues of the victims cut out, and records burned.

The flames of the persecution kindled by the publication of the placards continued to burn. From Paris, where Laurent de la Croix fell a victim to the rage of the priests, the conflagration spread to Essarts, in Poitou, where a simple girl was consigned to the fire for reproving a Franciscan217 monk; and to Macon, where an unlearned peasant underwent a like punishment, amazing his judges by the familiarity he displayed with the Bible. Agen, in Guyenne, and Beaune, in Burgundy, witnessed similar scenes of atrocious cruelty; while at Nonnay, André Berthelin was burned alive, because, when wending his way to the great fair of Lyons, he refused to kneel down before one of the many pictures or images set up by the roadside for popular adoration. At Rouen, four brave reformers were thrown into a tumbril, reeking with filth, to be drawn to the place of execution, one of them exclaiming with radiant countenance: "Truly, as says the apostle, we are the offscouring of the earth, and we now stink in the nostrils of the men of the world. But let us rejoice, for the savor of our death will be a sweet savor unto God, and will profit our brethren."⁴²⁶⁴²⁶ Histoire ecclésiastique, i. 13-17; Crespin, Actiones et Monimenta (Geneva, 1560), fol. 65, etc. But the details of these executions are too horrible and too similar to find a place here. Nor, indeed, would it be possible to frame a complete statement of the case of each of the constant sufferers; for, from this time forward, it became a favorite practice with those who presided over these bloody assizes to cut out the tongues of their victims, lest their eloquent appeals should shake the confidence of the spectators in the established faith, and afterward to throw the official record of the trial of Protestants into the fire that consumed their bodies, in order to prevent its furnishing edifying material for the martyrology.⁴²⁷⁴²⁷ Histoire ecclésiastique, i. 15.

Failure of persecution.

But, as usual, persecution failed utterly of accomplishing what had been expected of it. For a brief moment, indeed, Francis flattered himself that exemplary punishments had purged his kingdom of the professors of the hated doctrines.⁴²⁸⁴²⁸ "En manèire que pensions nostredit royaume en estre purgé du tout et nettoyé," Francis is made to say in the Edict of Fontainebleau. Isambert, Recueil des anciennes lois françaises, xii. 677, etc. But, in the course of a few years, he discovered that, in spite of continued severities, the "new faith" had so spread—partly by means of persons suffered to return, in virtue218 of the royal declaration of Coucy (on the sixteenth of July, 1535), and partly through the teachings of others who lay concealed during the first violence of the storm—that he had good reason to fear that the last errors were worse than the first.⁴²⁹⁴²⁹ "Tellement qu'il est fort à douter que les nouveaux erreurs soient pires que les premiers." Ibid., xii. 677. What rendered the matter still more serious was the favor shown to the heretics by persons of high rank and influence.⁴³⁰⁴³⁰ "Plusieurs gros personnages, qui secrettement les recèlent, supportent et favorisent en leurs fausses doctrines, leur aydans et subvenans de leurs biens, de lieux, et de places secrettes et occultes, èsquelles ils retirent leurs sectateurs, pour les instruire èsdites erreurs et infections." Ibid., xii. 677.

Edict of Fontainebleau cuts off appeal, June 1, 1540.

With the view of employing still more rigid means for the detection and punishment of the offenders, a fresh edict was published from Fontainebleau, on the first of June, 1540. In this long and sanguinary document the monarch—or the Cardinal of Tournon, who enjoyed the credit of a principal part in its preparation—enjoined upon the officers of all the royal courts, whether judges of parliament, seneschals, or bailiffs, to institute proceedings concurrently against all persons tainted with heresy. No appeal was to be permitted to delay their action. The examination of the suspected took precedence of all other cases. Tribunals of inferior jurisdiction were instructed to send prisoners for heresy, together with the record of their examination, to the sovereign courts of parliament, there to be tried in the "Chambre criminelle." The appeal to the "Grand' chambre," customarily allowed to persons claiming immunity on account of order or station, was expressly cut off, so as to render the course of justice more expeditious. Negligent judges were threatened with suspension and removal from office. The high vassals of the crown were ordered to lend to the royal courts their counsel and assistance, and to surrender to them all offenders as guilty of sedition and disturbance of the public peace—crimes of which the king claimed exclusive cognizance. Ecclesiastics were exhorted to show equal diligence in the prosecution of culprits that were in orders. In short, every servant of the king was bidden to abstain from harboring or favoring the "Lutherans," since the errors and219 false doctrines the latter disseminated, it was said, contained within them the crime of treason against God and the king, as well as of sedition and riot.⁴³¹⁴³¹ "Attendu que tels erreurs et fausses doctrines contiennent en soy crime de lèze majesté divine et humaine, sédition du peuple, et perturbation de nostre estat et repos public." Ibid., xii. 680. Every loyal subject must, therefore, denounce the heretics and employ all means to extirpate them, just as all men are bound to run to help in extinguishing a public conflagration.⁴³²⁴³² "Mais tantost et incontinent qu'ils en seront advertis, les révéler à justice, et de tout leur pouvoir aider à les extirper, comme un chacun doit courir à esteindre le feu public." Ibid., xii. 680.

Exceptional fairness of President Caillaud.

The last injunction was not altogether unnecessary. Even among the judges of parliament there were fair-minded persons not inclined to condemn accused men or books on mere report. The ambassador of Henry the Eighth having, in 1538, denounced an English translation of the Holy Scriptures that was in press at Paris, the chancellor commissioned President Caillaud to investigate the case. The latter, finding that the printer's excuse was the scarcity of paper in England, quietly set about a comparison of the suspected version with accessible French translations. He said nothing to doctors of theology or royal prosecuting officers. "It seemed to me," he reported, "quite unnecessary to give the matter such notoriety. Moreover, I mistrusted that, without further investigation, without even looking into it, they would have condemned the English translation for the sole reason that it is in that tongue. For I have seen them sustain that the Holy Scriptures ought not to be translated into the French language or any other vernacular tongue. Nevertheless, the Bible in French was printed in this city so long ago as in 1529, and again this present year, and is for sale by the most wealthy printers. For my part I have seen no prohibition either by the church or by the secular authority, although I once heard some decretal alleged in condemnation." Unfortunately such judges as Louis Caillaud were rare—men that would take the pains to obtain the services of a person acquainted with the English language to translate aloud a Bible suspected of heretical teachings, while themselves220 testing its accuracy by scanning versions made from the Vulgate and the Hebrew original!⁴³³⁴³³ President Louis Caillaud to the chancellor (Antoine Du Bourg), Oct. 22, 1538. Musée des archives nationales; Documents orig. exposés dans l'Hotel Soubise (Paris, 1872), 347.

Royal letters from Lyons, Aug. 30, 1542.

Two years more had scarcely passed before fresh legislation against the Protestants demonstrated the impotence of all measures thus far resorted to. The interval had certainly been improved by their enemies, for the stake had its victims to boast of.⁴³⁴⁴³⁴ Among others, two "Lutherans," otherwise unknown to us, whose execution a young German student, Eustathius de Knobelsdorf, witnessed on the Place Maubert, and described in a letter to George Cassander, professor at Bruges, like himself a Roman Catholic. One of the "Lutherans," a beardless youth of scarcely twenty years, the son of a shoemaker, after having his tongue cut out and his head smeared with sulphur, far from showing marks of terror, signified, by a motion to the executioner, his perfect willingness to meet death. "I doubt, my dear Cassander," writes De Knobelsdorf, "whether those celebrated philosophers, who have written so many books on the contempt of death, would have endured so cruel tortures with such constancy. So far did this youth seem to be raised above what is of man." Letter of July 10, 1542. Translated in Bulletin, vi. (1858), 420-423; and Baum, Theodor Beza, i. 52-55. And yet the new religious body had its ministers and its secret conventicles, with an ever increasing number of adherents. Accordingly, on the thirtieth of August, 1542, Francis, then at Lyons, addressed new letters patent to the various parliaments, enjoining new vigilance and activity. Previous edicts had not borne all the fruit expected from them; for there was still a bad seed of error and damnable doctrines—so wrote the king—growing and multiplying from day to day. So exemplary a punishment must, therefore, be inflicted, as might forever terrify offenders.⁴³⁵⁴³⁵ "En sorte que la justice, punition, correction, et démonstration en soit faite telle et si griefve, que ce puisse estre perpétuel exemple à tous autres." The king even threatened delinquent prelates with seizure of their temporalities, in case they failed to exercise due diligence in so important a matter.⁴³⁶⁴³⁶ Isambert, Recueil des anciennes lois françaises, xii. 785-787.

Audacity of the "Lutherans" of Bordeaux.

Francis I. and the Sacramentarians.

King, bishops and parliaments were terribly in earnest. All were agreed that Protestantism must and should be crushed, however little they harmonized as to the reasons of its increase221 or the method of suppressing it. The Archbishop of Bordeaux denounced to the parliament of that city the growing audacity of the "Lutherans" of his diocese, who had even dared to preach their doctrines publicly. He accounted for this disorder by the fact that the prosecution and exemplary punishment of heretics had ceased to be the uniform rule; as if the experience of the past score of years had not demonstrated the futility of attempting to compel religious uniformity by the fear of human tribunals and ignominious death. He therefore begged the parliament to spare neither him nor his brother prelates in the matter of defraying the expense of bringing "Lutherans" to trial and death. The secular judges were of the same mind with the prelates, and both took new courage from a declaration of Francis himself, which the archbishop had recently heard with his own ears at Angoulême. In the presence of Cardinal Tournon and others, the king had assured him that "he desired that no sacramentarian should be permitted to abjure, but that all such heretics should be remorselessly put to death!"⁴³⁷⁴³⁷ "Lui a dit qu'il voulait qu'aucun sacramentaire ne fût admis à abjurer, ains fût puni de mort." Reg. secr. du Parl. de Bordeaux, July 7, 1543, Boscheron des Portes, i. 47, 48. By such pitiless measures did Francis still think to establish his unimpeachable loyalty to the doctrine of transubstantiation.

Royal ordinance of Paris, July 23, 1543.

But, as ill success continued to attend every attempt to crush the Reformation in France, it was necessary to find some plausible explanation of the failure. The ecclesiastical counsellors of the king alleged that they discovered it in the recent edicts themselves, which they represented as derogating from the efficiency of both prelates and inquisitors of the faith. To meet this new objection, Francis complaisantly published another ordinance (on the twenty-third of July, 1543), carefully defining the respective provinces of the lay and clerical judges. Prelates and inquisitors were authorized to proceed, in accordance with canon law, to obtain information alike against clergymen and laymen, in case of suspected heresy, and the secular judges were strictly enjoined to afford them all222 needed assistance in execution of their writs of summons and arrest. But all persons guilty of open heresy, and not actually in holy orders, must be given over, together with the documents relating to their offences, to the royal judges and to the courts of parliament, and by them tried as seditious disturbers of the peace and tranquillity of the commonwealth and of the king's subjects, secret conspirators against the prosperity of his estate, and rebels against his authority and laws.⁴³⁸⁴³⁸ "Conspirateurs occultes contre la prospérité de nostre estat, dépendant principalement et en bonne partie de la conservation de l'intégrité de la foy catholique en nostredit royaume, rebelles et désobéyssans a nous et à nostre justice." Recueil des anc. lois françaises, xii. 819. In order, however, to secure to the ecclesiastical tribunals their full control over clergymen, it was provided that any churchman condemned to banishment, or any other punishment short of death, should immediately after the "amende honorable," and before execution of sentence, be remitted to his spiritual superiors to undergo deprivation of office, and such other penalties as canon law might prescribe.⁴³⁹⁴³⁹ Ibid., xii. 820.

Heresy to be punished as sedition.

Repression proves a failure.

But the succession of edicts, each surpassing the last in severity, had not rendered the path of the judges, whether lay or ghostly, altogether easy. There were found prisoners, accused of holding and teaching heretical doctrines, well skilled in holy lore, however ignorant of the casuistry of the schools, who made good their assertion that they could give a warrant for all their distinctive tenets from the Sacred Scriptures. Their arguments were so cogent, their citations were so apposite, that the auditors who had come with the expectation of witnessing the confusion of a heretic, often departed absorbed in serious consideration of a system that had so much the appearance of truth when defended by a simple man in jeopardy of his life, and when fortified by the authority of the Bible. More learned reformers had appealed successfully to the Fathers to whose teachings the church avowed its implicit obedience. It was clear that some standard of orthodoxy must be established. For, if St. Augustine or St. Cyprian might be brought up to prove the errors of the priests, what was it but223 allowing the reformers to place the Roman Church at the bar, even in the very courts of justice? Might not the most damaging losses be expected to flow from such trials?

The public courts, indeed, were not the only places where the inconsistencies of the established church with its own ancient standards and representative theologians were brought out into bold relief. The pulpits of the very capital resounded, it was alleged, with contradictory teachings, scandalizing the faithful not a little at the holy season of Advent.⁴⁴⁰⁴⁴⁰ The preamble of the royal letters giving execution to the Twenty-five Articles of the Sorbonne mentions as a moving cause "plusieurs scandales et schismes par cy devant intervenus, et mesmement en cest advent de Noel dernier passé, par le moyen et à l'occasion de contentions, contradictions et altercations de certain prédicateurs preschans et publians divers et contraires doctrines." Recueil des anc. lois françaises, xii. 820.

The Sorbonne's Twenty-five Articles.

To put an end to so anomalous a state of affairs, the Parisian theologians, with the consent of the king, resolved to enunciate the true Catholic faith, in the form of twenty-five articles meeting all questions now in dispute (on the tenth of March, 1543). Of the general contents of this new formulary, it is sufficient to observe that it more concisely expressed the doctrines developed in the decisions of the Council of Trent; that it insisted upon baptism as essential to the salvation even of infants; that it magnified the freedom of the human will, and maintained the justification of the sinner by works as well as by faith; and that, dwelling upon the bodily presence of Christ in the consecrated wafer, it affirmed the propriety of denying the cup to the laity, the utility of masses for the dead, the lawfulness of the invocation of the blessed Virgin and the saints, the existence of purgatory, the infallibility of the church, the authority of tradition, and the divine right of the Pope.⁴⁴¹⁴⁴¹ Recueil des anc. lois franç., xii. 821-825. Among other recommendations appended to the articles, was the following somewhat interesting one, designed to correct the irreverence of the age: "Quand il vient à propos d'alleguer le nom des saincts apostres et évangelistes ou saincts docteurs, qu'ils n'ayent à les nommer par leurs norm simplement, sans aucune préface d'honneur, comme ont accoustumé dire, 'Paul,' 'Jacques,' 'Mathieu,' 'Pierre,' 'Hiérosme,' 'Augustin,' etc. Et ne leur doit estre grief adjouster et préposer le nom de 'sainct,' en disant, 'sainct Pierre,' 'sainct Paul,' etc.!"

Francis gives them the force of law.

On the twenty-third of July, 1543, the very day of the publi224cation of the edict of persecution previously mentioned, Francis by letters-patent gave the force of law to the exposition of the faith drawn up by the theological faculty of "his blessed and eldest daughter, the University of Paris." Henceforth no other doctrines could be professed in France. Dissent was to be treated as "rebellion" against the royal authority.⁴⁴²⁴⁴² Ibid., xii. 820. In answer to these Articles, Calvin wrote his "Antidote aux articles de la faculté Sorbonique de Paris."

Persecution more systematic.

The inquisitor Matthieu Ory.

The sanguinary legislation at which we have glanced bore its most atrocious fruits in the last years of Francis, and in the reign of his immediate successor. The consideration of this topic must, however, be reserved for succeeding chapters. Until now the persecution had been carried on with little system, and its intensity had varied according to the natural temperament and disposition of the Roman Catholic prelates, not less than the zeal of the civil judges. Many clergymen, as well as lay magistrates, had exhibited a singular supineness in the detection and punishment of the reformed. Some bishops, supposed to be at heart friendly to the restoration of the church to its pristine purity of doctrine and practice, had scarcely instituted a serious search. The royal edicts themselves bear witness to their reluctance, in spite of threatened suspension and deprivation. It is true that an attempt had been made to secure greater thoroughness and uniformity, by augmenting the number of inquisitors of the faith, and this, notwithstanding the fact that their authority infringed upon that of the bishops, whose right was scarcely questioned to exclusive cognizance of heresy within their respective dioceses. Not only had Matthieu Ory⁴⁴³⁴⁴³ Ory, Oriz, or Oritz, as his name was indifferently written, was a prominent character in subsequent scenes of blood, and was, as we may hereafter see, the agent employed by Henry II. to cajole, or frighten his aunt, Renée, and bring her back into the bosom of the Roman Church. The letters-patent giving this personage, who is styled "doctor of theology and prior of the preaching friars (Dominicans) of Paris," authority to exercise the functions of inquisitor of the faith throughout the kingdom, in place of Valentin Lievin, deceased, are of May 30, 1536, Recueil des anc. lois fr., xii. 503. Similar letters were issued April 10, 1540. His confirmation by Henry II., June 22, 1550, ibid., xiii. 173. and others been appointed with jurisdiction over the entire225 kingdom, but a special inquisitor was created for the province of Normandy. Even these persons, however, were not always equally zealous in the performance of their allotted task. It was notorious that the good cheer with which Ory was regaled by the astute Protestants of Sancerre led him to report them to be excellent people. A deputy, who next visited the reputed heretics, brought back an equally flattering statement. And so the persecuting "lieutenant particulier" of Bourges seems to have had some ground for his complaint, "that good wine and a right new coat caused all these inquisitors to return well satisfied, without bringing him any prey."⁴⁴⁴⁴⁴⁴ Histoire ecclésiastique, i. 13. It is, in fact, an interesting circumstance that Rocheli, or Rochetti, the deputy inquisitor referred to in the text, not long after became a convert to Protestantism, and applied himself to preaching the doctrines he had once labored to overturn.

The Nicodemites and Libertins.

It could not be otherwise, however, than that these severe measures and the employment of new agents in the pitiless work of persecution should induce many feeble souls to suppress their true sentiments, and to make the attempt, under an external conformity with the Roman Church, to maintain opinions and a private devotion quite inconsistent with their professions. And, while the progress of the Reformation was seriously impeded by the timidity of this class of irresolute persons—appropriately styled by their contemporaries "the Nicodemites"—scarcely less danger threatened the same doctrines from the insidious assaults of the Libertines, a party which, ostensibly aiming at reform and religious liberty, really asked only for freedom in the indulgence of vicious propensities. Against both of these pernicious tendencies the eloquent reformer of Geneva employed his pen in forcible treatises, which were not without effect in checking their inroads.⁴⁴⁵⁴⁴⁵ The first, entitled "Epistolæ duæ; prima de fugiendis impiorum illicitis sacris et puritate Christianæ religionis; secunda de Christiani hominis officio in sacerdotiis papalis ecclesiæ vel administrandis vel abjiciendis," 1537. The second, "Contre la secte fantastique et furieuse des Libertins qui se disent spirituels," 1544. The latter, from its pointed reference to Quintin and Pocquet, two notorious leaders, seems to have given offence to Margaret of Navarre, by whom they had been harbored in ignorance of their true character. A letter written to the queen by Calvin immediately upon learning this, April 28, 1545 (Bonnet, Lettres françaises, i. 111-117), is at once one of the best examples of his nervous French style, and a fine illustration of manly courage tempered with respect for a princess who had deserved well of Protestantism. A single sentence admirably portrays his attitude toward the formidable sect which had so devastated the Low Countries and had now entered France in the persons of two of its worst apostles—a sect regarded by him as more pernicious and execrable than any previously existing: "Un chien abaye, s'il voit qu'on assaille son maistre; je seroys bien lasche, si en voyant la vérité de Dieu ainsi assaillie, je faisoys du muet sans sonner mot."226

Margaret of Navarre at Bordeaux.

It must be confessed that the Queen of Navarre herself gave no little aid and comfort to the advocates of timid and irresolute counsels, by a course singularly wanting in ingenuousness. This amiable princess knew how to express herself with such ambiguity as to perplex both religious parties and heartily satisfy neither the one side nor the other. She was the avowed friend and correspondent of Melanchthon and Calvin. She was believed to be in substantial agreement with the Protestants. Her views of the fundamental doctrine of justification by faith and the paramount authority of the Holy Scriptures were those for which many a Protestant martyr had laid down his life. Even on the question of the Lord's Supper, her opinions, if mystical and somewhat vague, were certainly far removed from the dogmas of the Roman Church. She condemned, it is true, the extreme to which the "Sacramentarians" went, but it was difficult to see precisely wherein the modified mass she countenanced differed from the reformed service. Certainly not a line in her correspondence with Calvin points to any important difference of sentiment known by either party to exist between them. What shall we say, then, on reading of such language as she used in 1543, when addressing the Parliament of Bordeaux? She had been deputed by her brother to represent him, and was, consequently, received by the court, (on the twenty-fourth of May) with honors scarcely, if at all, inferior to those that would have been accorded to Francis had he presented himself in person. Her special commission was to notify parliament of an expected attack by the English, and to request that due preparation227 should be made to ward it off. From this topic she passed to that of heresy, in respect to which she expressed herself to this effect: "She exhorted and prayed the court to punish and burn the true heretics, but to spare the innocent, and have compassion upon the prisoners and captives."⁴⁴⁶⁴⁴⁶ "A exhorté et prié la cour de vouloir faire punir et brûler les vrais hérétiques," etc. Reg. du Parl., May 24, 1543, Boscheron des Portes, Hist. du parlement de Bordeaux, i. 63. If, as the interesting minute of the queen's visit informs us, she next proceeded to claim the immemorial right, as a daughter of France, to open the prisons and liberate the inmates according to her good pleasure,⁴⁴⁷⁴⁴⁷ "Réclame son privilége de fille de France écrit dans un livre qui est à Saint Denis, de faire ouvrir les prisons," etc. Ibid., ubi supra. it can scarcely be imagined that the assertion of the right at this time had any other object in view than the release of those imprisoned for conscience' sake. It is true that she took pains to protest that she would avoid meddling with prisoners incarcerated for other crimes than such as her brother was accustomed to pardon; but as the interference of Francis in behalf of Berquin, Marot, and others accused of heresy, was sufficiently notorious, her guarantee could scarcely be considered very broad. Certainly she was not likely to find a "true heretic" worthy of the stake among all those imprisoned as "Lutherans" in the city of Bordeaux.

Negotiations in Germany.

Hypocritical representations made by Charles of Orleans.

While Francis, as we have seen, was from year to year aggravating the severity of his enactments against the adherents of the Reformation in his own kingdom, he did not forget his old rôle of ally of the Protestant princes of the empire. It would be too wide a digression from the true scope of this work, should we turn aside to chronicle the successive attempts of the French monarch to secure these powerful auxiliaries in his struggle with his great rival of the house of Hapsburg. One incident must suffice. The hypocrisy of Francis could, perhaps, go no farther than it carried him when, in 1543, his son Charles, Duke of Orleans, at the head of a royal army took possession of the Duchy of Luxemburg. The duke, who can hardly be imagined to have allowed himself to take any important step, certainly no step fraught with such mo228mentous consequences as might be expected to follow this, without explicit instructions from his father, at once despatched an envoy to the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse. The subordinate agent in this game of duplicity was instructed to assure the great Protestant leaders that it was the earnest desire of the Duke of Orleans to see the Gospel preached throughout the whole of France. It was true that filial reverence had hitherto restrained him from gratifying his desires in this direction in his Duchy of Orleans; but in the government of Luxemburg and of all other territories acquired by right of arms, he hoped to be permitted by his royal father to follow his own preferences, and there he solemnly promised to introduce the proclamation of God's holy word. In return for these liberal engagements, the duke desired the German princes, then on the point of meeting for conference at Frankfort, to admit him to an alliance offensive and defensive, especially in matters concerning religion. He assured them of the support not only of his own forces, but of his father's troops, committed to him to use at his discretion, adding, as a further motive, the prospect that the Gospel would find more ready welcome in the rest of France, when the king saw its German advocates close allies of his youngest son.⁴⁴⁸⁴⁴⁸ The text of this singular document, dated Rheims, Sept. 8, 1543, is in Gerdes., Hist. Reform., iv. (Monumenta) 107-109. When the "Instructions" fell into the hands of Charles V., he naturally tried to make capital of a paper so little calculated to please Roman Catholics, emanating from a son of the "Most Christian king." And Francis thought himself compelled to clear himself from the charge of lukewarmness in the faith, if not of actual heretical bias, by exercising fresh severities upon the devoted Protestants of his own dominions.

Commendable scepticism of the Germans.

But the princes were much too familiar with the wiles of Francis to repose any confidence in the lavish professions of his son. And the historian who discovers that the more intimately the king strove to associate himself with the German Protestants, the more fiercely did he commit the Protestants of France to the flames, in order to demonstrate to the Pope the immaculate orthodoxy of his religious belief, will not fail to applaud their discernment. Not229 until toward the very close of Francis's reign, when the Lutherans descried portents of a storm that threatened them with utter extermination, raised by the bigotry or craft of Charles the Fifth, did they manifest any anxiety to enter into near connection with the French monarch.

Francis was reaping the natural rewards of a crooked policy, dictated by no strong convictions of truth or duty, but shaped according to the narrow suggestions of an unworthy ambition. If he punished heretics at home, it was partly to secure on his side the common sentiment of the Roman Catholic world, partly because the enemies of the Reformation had persuaded him that the change of religion necessarily involved the subversion of established order and of royal authority. If he made overtures to the Protestant princes of Germany, the flimsy veil of devotion to their interests was too transparent to conceal the total want of concern for anything beyond his own personal aggrandizement.

Two mournful exemplifications of the fruits of his persecuting measures must, however, be presented to the reader's notice, before the curtain can be permitted to fall over the scene on which this monarch played his part. The massacre of Mérindol and Cabrières and the execution of the "Fourteen of Meaux" are the melancholy events that mark the close of a reign opening, a generation earlier, so auspiciously.

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