V- LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY PRINCETON, N. J. Stuart Fund BX 4843 .S52"i:832~^v 1 ^^ Smedley, Edward, 1788-1836 W History of the reformed religion in France 'r^iifwnnp;"'!;^ ']^' a &i: Mivin^UfmJSSZ HISTORY -,»?-' 'I V life REFORMED RELIGION IN FRANCE. BY THE REV. EDWARD SMEDLEY, M.A. LATE FELLOW OF SIDNEY SUSSEX COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. VOL. I. LONDON: PRINTED FOR J. G. & F. RIVINGTON, ST Paul's church yard, AND WATERLOO PLACE, PALL MALL. 1832. LONDON: GILBERT & RIVINGTON, PRINTERS, ST. JOHN'S SQUARE. CONTENTS TO VOL; •E^i^.^-^;^ Page CHAPTER I. Causes of the early Progress of the Reformation in France — Influence of the Vaudois — Corruption of the Gallican Church — Indifference of the Public Authorities to Reli- gious purity — Luther refers his Controversy with Eckius to the Judgment of the Sorbonne — Its Determination against him — Reformed Preaching in the Diocese of Meaux — Punishment of the Offenders — Cruel Martyrdom of Jean Le Clerc— Singular Theatrical Representation be- fore Francis I. — Martyrdom of Louis Berquin — -The Ger- man Protestants communicate the League ofSmalcalde to Francis I. — Monkish Fraud at Orleans — Hopes of the French Reformed — The Year of Placards — Expiatory Procession — Fierce Edict and cruel Executions — Francis temporizes with the German Protestants — His Duplicity — Sketch of Calvin's History 1 CHAPTER II. Nature of the Calvinistic Church Polity established in France — Clement Marot's Psalmody — Adopted by the Calvinists — Alliance between the Church of Geneva and the Vaudois — The Vaudois publish a Confession — Decree of the Parliament of Provence against the Merindolese — Report on their habits — Suspension of the Decree — Chaussonnee and the Rats — Persecution by the Baron d'Oppeda — Massacre at Cabrieres and Merindol — Death of Francis I. — Rise and great power of the House of Guise — Public entry of Henry II. into Paris — Burning of Heretics — Edict of Chateaubriand — Martyrdom of Louis de Marsac — Abuses in the French Church — First Calvi- Yl CONTENTS. Page nistic Church in France — Reformed Colony at Rio Janeiro — Treachery of Villegagnon — Outrage upon a Meeting-house in Paris — Antony, King of Navarre, and Louis, Prince of Conde, attend a Procession of the Re- formed — Arrest of Francis d'Andelot — His Imprisonment and Release — 1st National Synod of the French Re- formed Church — Its Confession and Canons of Discipline. 39 CHAPTER III. Dissensions in the Parliament of Paris — The Mercuriales — Presence of the King — Speeches of Dufaur and Du- bourg — Their arrest — Process against Dubourg — His condemnation — Death of Henry II. — Supplication of the Reformed to Catherine de Medicis — Dubourg's appeal — His firmness — Denouncements of the Reformed — Assas- sination of Minart — Execution of Dubourg — Outrages in Paris — Weakness of the King of Navarre — The Prince of Conde avows his conversion — Calvinistic doctrine of Passive obedience — Its sophistical resolution — Conde be- comes virtual Chief of the Reformed — La Renaudie — The King's journey to Blois — Frightful reports pre- ceding it 83 CHAPTER IV. Discovery of the proposed Rising — The King retires to Amboise — Death of La Renaudie and overthrow of the Conspirators — Accusation of Conde — Execution of the Baron de Castelnau — Death of the Chancellor Olivier — He is succeeded by De L'Hopital — Edict of Romorantin — The Baker of Tours — Origin of the term Huguenot — Flight of Conde — Council at Fontainebleau — Memorial presented by the Admiral — Speech of Montluc Bishop of Valence — Of the Cardinal of Lorraine — The States- General summoned to Orleans — Offers of the Reformed to the King of Navarre — His arrival at Orleans with Conde — Arrest of Conde — His Condemnation and For- titude — Reputed Design to assassinate the King of Navarre — Death of Francis II 115 CONTENTS. VU CHAPTER V. Page Assembly of the States- General — Speech of Quentin — Bold Memorial of the Huguenots — Their lid National Synod — Release of Conde — Formation of the Triumvirate — Edict of July — Ostensible reconciliation of Conde and the Duke of Guise — Colloquy at Poissy — Peter Martyr and Beza — Beza's interview with the Cardinal of Lorraine — Opening of the Colloquy — Speech of Beza — Reply of the Cardinal of Lorraine — Arrival of the Cardinal Legate of Ferrara — Second Speech of Beza — Reply of Despence — Of De Xaintes — Beza's explanation — Stratagem of the Cardinal of Lorraine — Beza's remonstrance — Speech of Peter Martyr — Of Lainez, General of the Jesuits — Pri- vate Conference of the disputants — Termination of the Colloquy 148 CHAPTER VL Tumult at St. Medard — Edict of January — Difficulty in procuring its Registration — The King of Navarre aban- dons the Huguenots — Beza's Disputaition concerning Images — The King of Navarre avows his apostacy — Massacre at Vassy — Remonstrance of the Huguenots — The Duke of Guise enters Paris — Conde retires to Meaux — His rapid occupation of Orleans — Huguenot Associa- tion and Manifesto ' 197 CHAPTER VIL Mutual outrages — Enormities of Blaise de Montluc and of the Baron des Adrets — Illd National Synod — Alliance between the Huguenots and Queen Elisabeth — Her Mani- festo — The armies take the field — Siege of Rouen — The King of Navarre wounded — Rouen stormed — Adventure of De Civille — Death of the King of Navarre — Conde's Dream — Battle of Dreux — Death of the Marechal St. Andre — Capture of Montmorency and Conde — Siege of VIU CONTENTS. Page Orleans — Assassination of the Duke of Guise — Account of Poltrot — He accuses the Admiral and Beza — His exe- cution — Defence of the Admiral and Beza — Conde ad- vises with the Huguenot Ministers relative to Peace — Treaty of Amboise — Disappointment of the Admiral — Peace with England 235 CHAPTER VIII. Majority of Charles IX. — The Queen of Navarre cited to Rome — Protest against the Citation by Charles IX. — Conspiracy for the abduction of the Queen of Navarre — It is frustrated — Progress of the French Court — Edict of Rousillon — Conferences at Bayonne — Vth National Synod — March of Spanish troops to the Netherlands — Levy of Swiss mercenaries for the service of France — Alarm of the Huguenots — Vlth National Synod — Unsuccessful attempt to seize the King at Meaux — Letters of Pius V. Battle of St. Denis — Death of the Constable Montmorency — The Huguenots reinforced from Germany — Treaty of Longjumeau — Continued outrages against the Huguenots — Design to surprise Conde — His escape to La Rochelle — Account of that City — Theatrical representation in it — Fierce Edicts by the King 277 CHAPTER IX. Battle of Bassac or Jarnac — Death of Conde — Letters of Pius V. — Henry of Bearne declared Protector of the Huguenots — Battle of Moncontour — Capture of Nismes — Treaty of St. Germain — Vllth National Synod — Favour- able treatment of the Huguenots — The Cross of Gas- tines 320 CHAPTER X. Projected marriage between Henry of Bearne and the Prin- cess Margaret — Assassination of LigneroUes — The Ad- nairal comes to Court — Pius V. endeavours to break off CONTENTS. IX Page the match — Mission of the Cardinal Legate Alessandrino — Examination of the words used to him by Charles IX. —Death of Pius V. — Vlllth National Synod— Letter of the Queen of Navarre to her Son — She proceeds to Paris — Her death and character — Henry assumes the title of King of Navarre — The Admiral disregards all warning. — His arrival in Paris — Fraud respecting the Dispensa- tion — 'The marriage — Festivities succeeding it — The Admiral is wounded — Maurevel the Assassin — The King visits the Admiral— State of the Huguenots on the night before the Feast of St. Bartholomew 354 PLATES TO VOL. I. I. Theodore Beza Frontispiece. II. Gaspard de CoLiGNY, Admiral of France , . page 64 III. Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine 167 IV. Francis, Duke of Guise 260 V. Louis of Bourbon, Prince of Conde 325 VI. Margaret of Valois, Queen of Navarre, Consort of Henry IV 367 ERRATUM. Page 212, line 4, for your read thy. HISTORY OF THE REFORMED RELIGION IN FRANCE. CHAPTER r. Causes of the early Progress of the Reformation in France — Influ- ence of the Vaudois — Corruption of the Galilean Church — Indif- ference of the Public Authorities to Religious purity — Luther refers his Controversy with Eckius to the Judgment of the Sorhonne — Its Determination against him — Reformed Preaching in the Diocese of Meaux — Punishment of the Offenders — Cruel Mar- tyrdom of Jean Le Clerc — Singular Theatrical Representation before Francis I. — Martyrdom of Louis Berquin — The German Protestants communicate the League ofSmalcalde to Francis I. — Monkish Fraud at Orleans — Hopes of the French Reformed — The Year of Placards — Expiatory Procession — Fierce Edict and cruel Executions — Francis temporizes with the Ger7)ian Protestants — His Duplicity — Sketch of Calvin's History. The Annals of an oppressed and struggling Church are far more likely to afford events of powerful inter- est than those of a dominant Hierarchy ; for it is in seasons of distress and suiTering, of privation, con- tumely, and persecution, that the loftier passions of our nature are most strongly elicited. No portion of Christendom has undergone severer trials for the sake B 2 INFLUENCE OF THE VAUDOIS [cH. I. of Truth than Protestant France ; and none, there- fore, may reward our enquiries with a richer harvest of varied and attractive incident. It is little necessary to ask what few gleams of faint and scattered light preluded, in that Country, the glorious day-spring which burst upon all Europe at the commencement of the XVIth century. Some glim- merings, but scarcely of so great brightness as has occasionally been asserted, may have broken in upon the darkness of the plains below, through the passes of the Alpine valleys. But it must be remembered that the Vaudois, who dwelt apart in that secluded Goshen, were confined to the narrow limits of their own fastnesses ; that they possessed little ability, and probably much less wish, of adding proselytes to a Faith which, if better known and more widely ex- tended, might attract more frequent and more cruel persecutions than those from which they had occa- sionally suffered. The influence of those remote shepherds, therefore, could be but slight and local ; and we may trace the causes of the early admission into France of the Reformed Doctrine and its rapid subsequent diffusion, to the deep sense with which great part of the nation was impressed, of the gross corruption of its existing Church, rather than to any previous acquaintance with a better Creed. The dis- ease was acutely felt, and a remedy, therefore, when proffered, was eagerly accepted; not with a direct knowledge of its medicinal qualities, nor of the spe- cific virtues of the salutary herbs from which it was extracted, but with a confident belief that God was the physician who administered the cup, and therefore that it must be mighty to save — Speak the word only, and thy servant shall he healed. CH. I.] UPON RELIGION IN FRANCE. 3 This feeling, however, was not general ; nor did it exist, for the most part, among the powerful of the land. Louis XII. indeed, some time before the epoch at which our narrative will commence, had paid a dis- tinguished tribute to the moral excellence of the Vaudois ; when, having been stimulated to their exter- mination by the bigotry of Pius III., he wisely and generously first instituted an enquiry into the habits of the accused. The result of that investigation demonstrated the pureness and inoifensiveness of the mountaineers ; and the King swore by all the Saints that, notwithstanding their Heresy, they were far better men than either himself or any of his other subjects. The same Prince at one time also had been forward in expressing detestation of the tyranny of the Pontificate, and a fixed resolve that it should be overthrown ; and Perdam Babyloms nomen was the legend of a golden coin which he struck at Naples, in the heat of Ms contest with Julius II. But they were Civil interests and Secular rights alone which he r^arded ; and no doubts as to Religious Truth can be discovered in either of these transactions. The Yau- dois might be guileless and virtuous after their fashion ; but never thelessthey were Heretics : the Pope was a monster of temporal ambition, whom, as such, it was the policy of the Kmgs of the Earth to restrain ; but the Babylon which Louis vowed to destroy was not the Spiritual Babylon, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations, drunken with the Mood of the Saints and the blood of the Mar- tyrs of Jesus. The Monarch of France was fully prepared to strip Rome of heifne linen, and purple and scarlet decked with gold, and precious stones, and. B 2 4 CONCORDAT OF BOLOGNA. [cH. I. jyearlsy but he was not equally prepared to come out of her himself and to invite his people also to come out of her, that they be not partakers of her sins, and that they receive not of her plagues. It was in a similarly worldly spirit that the Parlia- ment of Paris remonstrated so vigorously, not many years afterwards, when Francis I., soon after his ac- cession, had consented to an abolition of the Pragmatic Sanction. That Treaty, into the obscure origin of which this is not the fitting place to inquire, had preserved to France, even from the Xlllth century, the free election of her own Prelates ; and had thus averted from her the simoniacal collations of the Papacy, and the long train of abuses incident to foreign patronage. The young King, however, allured by the specious hope of establishment in Italy, through alliance with Leo X., rashly agreed to purchase his Pgp 14 aid by the surrender of those most import- ^^^^- ant privileges. When the Concordat of Bologna, by which the new Spiritual relations with the Holy See were arranged, had been read in the Council of Lateran, avowed by Francis, and presented by him to his Parliament of Paris for registration, the proi3osal was met by an indignant remonstrance and appeal. Bitter, however, as is the language employed in that Memorial against the " damnable ambition" and the " detestable avarice" of the Romish See, the violence which it was ever insatiably offering against all human rights, its exactions, its usurpations, its pestiferous nominations of unfitting Ministers to the destruction of souls, and its plague-spot of simony ; not one syllable is addressed against its far more crying perversion of Scripture, its abandonment of the A. D. 1518.] INDULGENCES. 5 sincerity of the Gospel, and its apostacy from the true institution of Christ '. Again, when Tetzel, by dint of frontless assurance and false Latin ^, was replenishing the Treasury of the Vatican, and cheating simple-hearted sinners into a fancied barter of Salvation for gold, it was not against the flagitious doctrine of Indulgences in general that the Faculty of Paris lifted its cry ; but against a single proposition, which affected the balance of accounts, and the value received in this retail huckstery for souls. "Whoever," says an ancient Canon revived for the immediate purpose, " whoever drops a teston into the coffer for the Cru- sade, in behalf of a soul now in Purgatory, delivers that soul, so that it infallibly proceeds at that very moment to Paradise. Therefore, by paying ten tes- tons for ten souls, or a thousand testons for a thou- sand souls, all those souls respectively, without doubt, pass directly to Paradise." This proposition, said the assembled Doctors, is false, scandalous, rashly asserted, and to be rejected for peace of conscience sake. But mark the rule which they substituted in its stead. " It is not infallibly certain that all souls indifferently which are in Purgatory, upon payment of 1 This Appeal is printed at length by Loescherus in his Acta et Documenta, i. 554, and may be found also in Gerdesius, Hist. Reformat ionis, i. Monumenta, p. 60. 2 The Diplomatawith which Tetzel was furnished for sale were printed forms, with blank spaces for the names of the purchasers, and the necessary pronouns (he, she, his, her, &c.) to be filled up by his own hand, as occasion required. In one of these Indul- gences, given at length by Gerdesius (nt sup. p. 73), the following clause occurs : idea autoritate Jpostolicd, nobis traditd, te conce- dimus facultatem eligendi idoneum secularem, &c. The offending TE in this passage is in the autograph of Tetzel. 6 THE SORBONNE AND INDULGENCES. [cH. I. ten sols sterling into the coffer for the Crusade, imme- diately, and without doubt, pass into Paradise. The question must be referred to God, who accepts, ac- cording to his pleasure, the treasure of the Church, applied to the aforesaid souls ^" This proposition, we are assured, is true, consonant with the opinions of all Doctors of Law, both human and divine, and affording encouragement to the piety of the faithful. The object here, then, was to check the lavish contri- butions diverted into foreign channels by the fears of Purgatory and the hopes of Paradise ; not by any means to deny the inexhaustible treasure of super- abundant merits, of which the Pope asserted that he held the keys. These he was at liberty to enjoy, and even to sell in moderation ; but he was not to establish a monopoly, nor to exclude all other traders from the market. No one, it was thought, would grudge a penny for the redemption of his grandsire's soul from the pain of cleansing fires, provided that after the disbursement he was quite certain of re- ceiving his pennyworth ; and thus all the pence in France would in time find their way to Rome. But 6nce raise a shadow of suspicion, a misgiving, how- ever faint, a doubt, however slender, that the money is not quite safely invested ; that there may be some flaw in the title of the estate purchased ; that there is no absolute warranty, no downright pledge of as- surance ; but that after all it is an adventure, a lot- tery, a game of chance, and a speculation in which they are engaged ; and those chapmen who before would have paid down on the nail, will look twice at ^ Qualificatio duarum Propositionum ad Indtdgentias Cruciate: pertinentes, Parisiis definita, anno 1518. Id. ibid. p. 1 13. A. D. 1519.] LUTHER APPEALS TO THE SORBONNE. 7 their penny, consider the value of ready money, and perhaps walk away with it still in their pockets. It was in this manner, on questions affecting their power and their purses, and not on any others, that the spi- ritual and Lay Authorities of France, at the season of Luther's appearance, raised opposition to the extra- vagant pretensions of Rome. Slight, however, as was the preparation which had been made for their growth and culture, two years had scarcely elapsed from the public avowal of his princi- ples, before Luther submitted them to the solemn cog- nizance of the French Divines ; and the result, as might be expected, was a peremptory and unequivocal condemnation. In the dispute which the Saxon Reformer maintained with the Romanist champion, Eckius, at Leipsic, the controversy con- sumed twenty days ; during which the points agitated concerned the Papal Supremacy, Pur- gatory, and Indulgences, regarding which last question Eckius himself, we are told, was jocose \ Hoffman, Rector of the University of Leipsic, who presided as Moderator, having declined to pass judgment between the disputants, a reference was mutually agreed upon to the Universities of Erfurt and of Paris. To this arrangement Luther willingly consented ; induced, as it appears, by a declaration which the Sorbonne had ^ De IndulgenfUs minore contentione disputatum est ; imb ipsi Eckio jocum et ludum ciehant. — Melancthon, Ep. od (Ecolawpa- diuin, a.Tp. Loescheri Act. Ref. iii. 215; et Gerdesium, i. 203. Melancthon, as well as Peter Mosellarius, were among the auditors of this disputation, and both of them have given very detailed ac- counts of it ; the former as above, the latter in an Epistle to Pflug, printed by Gerdesius, ih. 192. It is treated at great length by Milner also, in his Church History, iv. 400. 8 DECREE Of THE SORBONNE 1_CH. I. published two years before, affirming Councils to be superior to the Pope ; and perhaps tempted also by some rumours which had been conveyed to him, and which were perfectly true, that he was not destitute of admirers among the French Ecclesiastics. Great then must have been his surprise and disappointment, when, after a gestation of one-and-twenty months, the Parisian Faculty was delivered of a fierce April 15, 1521. . *' . denunciation of his opinions. " Many impious men and liars," said the Divines, " arose during the youth of the Church, such as Her- mogenes, Philetus, and liymenseus ; after them ap- peared Ebion, Marcius, and Apelles ; then Sabellius, Manichaeus, and Arius ; and in its more advanced age, and nearer our own times, Waldo, Wiclif, and John Huss. In the present days also, have sprung from that generation of vipers certain sons of evil, bom of the handmaiden and illegitimate, yea, children of the Devil ; among whom one of the principal is Martin Luther, if we may trust that it is a real name which appears on the titles of many writings attributed to him. He, indeed, like Hiel, who laid again the foundations of Jericho, in spite of the curse of Joshua, has revived several ancient Heresies, and added others which are new. He also elevates his own judgment above that of all Universities ; he despises the opinions of the holy Doctors of the Church ; and, as the summit of impiety, he endeavours to weaken the decision of Councils : as if God, reserving truths necessary to Salvation for Luther alone, had concealed them hitherto from the Church ! as if Christ had left His spouse even till these times in the darkness and blindness of error ! What impious and shameless arro- gance, not so much deserving to be refuted by argu- A. D. 1521. J AGAINST LUTHER. 9 ment as to be repressed by bonds, censures, fire and flame !" The Determination (as it is called) then enu- merates the various Heretics whom Luther has fol- lowed in the several Works which pass under liis name, for the doubt respecting their genuineness is gravely maintained throughout the Instrument. The last of these Works, De Captivitate Bahylonicd, is affirmed to rival the Koran in falsehood. " Whoever may be its author, he is assuredly a pernicious enemy of the Church of Christ, an execrable awakener of sleeping blasphemies, approving, commending, and extolling in that single volume every insane monster of Heresy who has preceded him." In conclusion, the Sorbonne avows, that " having carefully examined, and fully discussed the whole mass of doctrine attri- buted to Luther, it declares and adjudges it to abound with detestable errors, pernicious both to Faith and Morals. All he has written is so couched as to seduce the unlearned and to injure the wise ; it im- piously derogates from the authority of the Church, and of the Priestly Order; it is avowedly schismatical, opposed to Holy Scripture, and blasphemous against the Holy Spirit. Therefore, as highly mischievous to the Christian commonwealth, it should be extermi- nated and openly committed to the flames, and the author should be compelled by every possible judicial means to a public abjuration \" The Decree which we have thus abridged, was attacked by Melancthon, and not with his customary gentleness. In an Apology ^ for Luther, he charac- terizes the judgment of the Sorbonne as abound- 1 Gerdesius iv. Monumenta, 10. 2 Apologia adversus furiosum Parisienshim Theologastrorum Becretum. 10 THE REFORMED DOCTRINE PREACHED [cH. I. ing with tlie fury of women and the impotence of Monks ; and he attributes its composition to some hired scribbler. That not all, however, of the Eccle- siastics in France assented to Luther's condemnation, was soon evident by some occurrences in the Diocese of Meaux. Bri^onnet, Bishop of that See was among the few exemplary Prelates of his day. Zealously alive to the Spiritual interests of his flock, he not only personally laboured among them without ceasing, but he invited also, as public teachers, many of the most devout and learned Graduates of the neighbour- ing University of Paris. Several of these colonists of his Diocese were already deeply imbued with the New Learning ; and the chief were Faber and Farel, who contributed by their preaching to scatter abroad the good seed recently vivified in their own bosoms. The Cordeliers whose profits and congregations were sensibly diminished by the settlers whom Briconnet had imported, vigilantly observed and harshly repre- sented both the conduct and the teaching of those Ministers ; and when the Bishop supported his Clergy with somewhat of incautious warmth, and repre- sented the Friars to be cheats, hypocrites, and Pha- risees, the Friars in return, denounced the Ministers to the Parliament of Paris as Heretics, and the Bishop himself as their fosterer. The Parliament took serious cognizance of the complaint ; arrested such 1525. , . of the Ministers as had not seasonably withdrawn from the approaching storm, together with the most zealous of their followers, and cited the Bishop to a personal appearance. The orthodoxy of the latter was readily established ; and he was dis- missed, after a gentle admonition to observe greater discretion for the future, and the payment of a sum A. D. 1525.] IN THE DIOCESE OF MEAUX. 11 of money equivalent to the expense of prosecuting the less fortunate prisoners. Clear proofs of their Heresy were adduced ; most of them were scourged through the public thoroughfares of Paris, branded "wdth a hot iron at Meaux, and afterwards banished. The venerable Faber, then in his eighty-fifth year, sought an asylum with the King's sister, Margaret Q,ueen of Navarre S ever a beneficent patroness of men of letters, and an early convert to the Sacra- mentarian doctrine ^. He survived under her pro- tection at Nerac till his hundredth year^. Farel escaped to Geneva, where he afterwards became well known as the chief friend and colleague of Calvin. Jaques Povent, a disciple of Faber, having relapsed after abjuration, was burned alive on the Greve, and * De Thou. vi. 8. where may be found a high character of this devout and charitable Princess, consort of Henri d'Albret. A book which she published in 1533, entitled, Le Miroir de VAme pecheresse, was condemned by the Sorbonne, because, while not mentioning either Saints or Monks, or any means of jus- tification beside the blood of Christ, it contained a version, from Latin into French, of certain prayers usually addressed to the Virgin, which it transferred to our Saviour. The Queen avowed herself to be the authoress, and demanded the interposition of the King her brother, by whom the Sorbonne was compelled to rescind its censure. — Gerdesius iv. 89. 2 The student of Ecclesiastical History need not be informed that Lutheran and Sacramentarian are designations of two parties strongly opposed to each other on the doctrine of Con- substantiation ; but the terras appear to have been used indis- criminately for the early French Reformed, till both were super- seded by that of Huguenot. It might be that the Romanists were ignorant to which of the two parties the Heretics belonged ; or it might be also that the first French converts were divided between Luther and Zuinglius. ^ A remarkable account of his death is cited by Gerdesius i. 175. note b. 12 JACQUES POVENT AND JEAN LE CLERC. [cH. I. perhaps may be considered the Protomartyr of the French Reformation ^ Jean le Clerc, a woolcomber, who had affixed a paper to the gate of the Cathedral at Meaux^ reviling Indulgences, and calling the Pope Antichrist, was among those who were whipped and branded. When his mother, no less zealous than himself, perceived the wound seared upon his forehead by the burning iron, she exclaimed, " Christ and His marks for ever ^ !" Her son retired to Metz, where an ill- judged act of iconoclastic zeal soon exposed him to a barbarous and most disproportionate punishment. One evening, seizing a dead man's bone in the Cemetery of St. Louis, he shattered the nose of an ^ The Theses which Povent, or Pavanes as he is elsewhere called, maintained, and for which he was condemned, are pre- served by D'Argentre, i. 30. They are: — 1. That Purgatory is not founded on Scripture, nor allowed by the Greek Church, but invented by the avarice of Priests. 2. That God requires no vicar, because He is omnipotent. 3. That con- fession to a Priest is unnecessary. 4. That implicit reliance is not to be placed on the Doctors of the Church. 5. That ad- dresses to the Virgin Mary are futile. 6. That tapers are not to be offered to Saints. 7' That Masses do not avail to forgive- ness of sins, and that it is better to hear one Sermon than 100 Masses. 8. That the Papal Bulls and Indulgences are im- postures of the Devil. There may be a doubt whether Povent or Jean Chastelaine, an Augustine Friar, who preached the Re- formed doctrines at Metz, and was burned alive at Vic, on Jan. 12, 1525, was the first French Martyr. The death of Chaste- laine occasioned great popular commotion at Metz, which City had received the Lutheran doctrines about the end of the year 1523. — Meurisse, Hist, de la Naissance, du Progres, et de la Decadence de V Heresie dans la Ville de Metz, p. 3 — 5. et seq. 2 Vivat Christus, ej usque insignia! Schultet, ad ann. 1523, p. 378. Le Clerc's history is related also, more at length, by Varillas, Hist. Hceresium, lib. v. p. 373. A. D. 1524.] SATIRICAL STAGE-PLAY. 13 image of the Virgin, the diadem with which she was cro'W'ned, the head of the infant Jesus in her arms, the head and hands of a canonized Prebendary of the Cathedral, and the arm of a wooden image of St. Fiacre. These offences are thus particularized be- cause his Judges professed in some manner to assi- milate their sentence to his crime, when they con- demned him to the most savage mutilations. His nose and right hand were first cut off, two or three circles of red-hot iron were placed round his temples, and he was finally burned alive '. Notwithstanding these severe punishments in- flicted on the Heretics at Meaux, it by no means appears that the French Governmxent. immediately before that explosion, regarded the progress of the Reformers with a very serious eye ; and indeed, the perplexity of the Vatican furnished materials for the amusement of the Court of the reigning Monarch, Francis I. In 1524, the King himself was present, and did not refuse to smile at a light interlude repre- sented in one of the saloons of his own Palace ; the plot of which, as it has been handed down to us, could scarcely be agreeable to any very zealous Romanist. In this Tragedy, as it is strangely termed, when the curtain drew up, the Pope appeared seated on a lofty throne, crowned with his tiara, and en- circled with a throng of Cardinals, Bishops, and Men- dicant Friars. In the middle of the hall was a huge pile of charcoal, smouldering, and scarcely betraying any sign of the flame which lurked beneath, till it was approached by a venerable grey-haired man with ^ Pourfaire repoJidre, en quelque maniere, son chastiment a son ■crime, are the words of Meurisse, in whose History we find the details of this most atrocious execution, p. 21. 14 SATIRICAL STAGE-PLAY [cH. I, a mask imitating the features of Reuclilin \ At first he appeared as if alarmed at the unexpected sight of the large and brilliant company of Ecclesiastics ; but speedily recovering himself, he addressed them on Church abuses, and the necessity of Reform ; and then, approaching the embers, he roused them with his staff, and revealed the glowing charcoal under- neath. As Reuchlin withdrew, Erasmus entered, and was immediately recognized by the Cardinals, with whom he seemed on terms of old acquaintance. In his Speech on the diseased condition of the Church, he did not probe the wound to its core, but soothed and mitigated its virulence by mild and lenitive applications ; not declaring himself avowedly for either party, deprecating any sudden change in matters of so deep a moment, and strenuously re- commending Time as the most able physician. When he sat down behind the Cardinals, they paid him dis- tinguished attention, evidently dreading his opposi- tion no less than they coveted his support. Next appeared a true counterpart of the Talus ^ of Spenser, a man all iron both in body and soul. He was in- tended for Hutten ^, and bursting out into a furious ^ Reuchlin, — the best Hebraist of his days, the Capnio, as his German name is Hellenized, of the inimitable Epistol^e obscu- foruvi Firorum, and often cited as one of the supposed authors of that most exquisite Satire, — lost no opportunity of directing his keen ridicule against the Monks. 2 Faerie Queene, book v. ^ Of Ulric Hutten's share in the Eplstolce ohscurwum Firorwn, no doubt is entertained. He is described by Camerarius (Fita Melancthonis, 93. Ed. Leipsic. 15GG), in conformity with the character given above, Impatientissimus injuriarum, Ubertatis immodic^ cupidus, non prorsus tamen alienus a scBvitid, quce etiam vnltus acerbitate et minus clemente interdum oratione indica- A. D. 1524.] BEFORE FRANCIS I. 15 declamation, he taxed the Conclave, which he set at nought, as the authors of all corruption in Religion ; and openly denounced the Pope as Antichrist, the ravager and destroyer of Christendom. Seizing a pair of bellows he hurried to the embers and blew tliem violently into a flame so fierce as to temfy the Holy College. While, however, he was still blowing and fuming, he fell down dead on the spot ; and the Cardinals suppressing all marks, either of grief or joy, carried him away without any funeral service. Lastly, entered one in motley, whose Monkish garb declared him to be Luther. Like a second Isaac, he bore a pile of logs upon his shoulder, and cried out, " I will make this little fire shine through the whole World, so that Christ, who has well nigh perished by your devices, shall be restored to life in spite of you !" Then, tossing the logs upon the diarcoal, he kindled them into a blaze wliich illu- minated the whole chamber, and seemed to shine to the very uttermost ends of the Earth. Thereat the monster of a j\Ionk (monstrosus ccenGh'ites) broke hastily away, and the Pope and Cardinals, quaking with fear, thronged together in close deli- beration. Then the Pope, with many tears, demanded as- sistance and advice in a short and piteous Speech. Wlien he had concluded, up rose one of the Mendi- cants, a round, big-bellied, and sleek-headed little hatur .... animus ingens ac ferox, viribus pollens. Full illus- tration of the truth of the qualities here noticed may be found in Hutten's Preface (addressed to Leo X.) to a Tract, Contra effictam et ementitam Constantini Donationem, and, indeed, in most of his Invectivce et Epistolce in his Apology for Luther. 16 SATIRICAL STAGE-PLAY [cH. I. brother ^ who proffered ready aid to the Pontiff. The Holy Father's diploma, heretofore, he said, had constituted the Members of his Order defenders of the true Faith, and Inquisitors into Heretical pravity. If St. Peter would but a second time rely upon them, and place all the burden upon their shoulders, they would pledge themselves to carry the matter through to his entire satisfaction. The Cardinals hailed this proposal with acclamations, and urged upon his Holiness that those men who had dealt so well with John Huss at Constance, were of all other the most fit agents whom he could select for the pre- sent dangerous crisis. " Brethren," said the Pope, addressing the Mendicants, " if indeed you w^ill repeat your great work as at Constance, boundless are the rewards which you may expect. Your four- fold Order shall no longer wear rags, but be richly dressed, ride on horses and in litters, throw purple robes on their shoulders, carry mitres on their brows, and be fed moreover with the fattest Bishopricks. Go and prosper ; stay our falling dominion, and for the safety of us all first extinguish this fire, kindled tlie Lord knows how." The Friars, at the word, hur- ried to the flames, and pouring on them a vast quan- tity of neat wine, raised them at once to so fearful a height that the whole Conclave was stupified, and the Mendicants themselves fled with terror. When the Cardinals had recovered a little, they addressed a supplication to the Pope. " Most Holy Father, to thee is given authority both in Earth and Heaven ; ^ Fraterculns obeso et protentioreventriculo,capite inngui. Can thii picture have suggested to Dryden his " little, round, fat, oily man of God ?" A. D. 1524.] BEFORE FRANCIS I. 17 quench the fire with thy malediction that it may not overpower us. We know that there is not any ele- ment in Creation which must not subside at thy word. Heaven and Earth obey thee ; at thy bidding even Purgatory absolves or retains the souls of the departed. Wherefore, by thy saintly office, attack this fire with sound anathemas, lest we become a byeword and a reproach." " Cursed be he," was the Pope's apos- trophe, in consequence, to the fire, " who lighted thee ! Darkness overcome thee ; night surround thee, that thou mayest no longer bum ! May he who piled thee with fuel be stricken with the sores of Egypt, incurably in his lower bowels \ May God strike him with darkness, and blindness, and mad- ness, so that he may fumble in noon-day, even as a blind man fumbles in his night !" When the hapless Pope discovered that the fire was insensible to his curses, and that he was powerless against the ele- ments, he expired in a paroxysm of rage, and at the sight the whole assembly broke up, convulsed with laughter ^. Would that the many hours of Religious persecution which marked the reign of Francis I., had been devoted instead to equally harmless buf- foonery ! But the wish is as idle in this instance, as that which was similarly breathed by the Roman Satirist. We approach a real Tragedy ^. 1 We dare not follow his Holiness verbatinn ; for a Pope al- ways refines in his cursing. Percutiat eum Dominus ulcere Mgypti, et partem corporis per qiiam stercora egeruntur scabie et prurigine, ita ut curari non possit. 2 Tragoedia qiicB Parisiis coram ipso Rege Francisco I. dicitur actafuisse, A. D. 1524. Gerdesius ii. Mon. 48. ^ Atque utinam his potius migis tota ilia dedisset Tempora scBvitia;, claras quibus abstulit zirbi, Illustresque animas .' — Juvenal, Sat. iv. 150. C 18 LOUIS BERQUIN [cH. I. Louis Berquin, a gentleman of Picardy, employed in the honourable office of King's Advocate, had been convicted some time back of having translated into French certain writings of Luther ^ ; and as he obstinately declined to retract his adherence to the obnoxious doctrines, he would even then have been led to the stake, but for the intercession of powerful friends. Arrested a second time, about the season of the disturbance at Meaux, it seemed as if he must encounter certain destruction. Nevertheless, so ener- getic were the representations offered in his behalf by Queen Margaret of Navarre, to her brother Francis I., at that moment prisoner in Madrid, that the King exercised from his distant confinement the length of arm for which Royalty is proverbial, and commanded a suspension of the Process. It was not however, till the return of the Monarch from his cap- tivity, and even then with a sullen and reluctant obedience, that the Parliament allowed Berquin to be discharged from the Conciergerie. When Francis sent the Provost of Paris to demand his release, and in case of refusal to force the gates of his dungeon, the Magistrate was denied all positive answer, and coldly informed that he might execute his commis- sion ^. A few years later, when the King was closely occupied by the troubles of Italy and the ambitious schemes projected in the League of Cambrai, he forgot or abandoned his former client ; and the long protracted and persevering vengeance of the Parlia- ment was then fully gratified. 1 x*j.mong them was the Enchiridion Militis Christiani, which Burigny (i. 30G) says, differs greatly from the original. 2 Gamier, Hist, de France, xii. 389, et seq. A. D. 1529.] HIS CHARACTER. 19 Of the charges iijDon which Berquin was condemned, few particulars have reached us ; for Erasmus, from whom we derive a minute account of his behaviour at the stake, professes his own unacquaintance with them ; and on one point alone declares his confidence — that whatever might be his imputed errors, Berquin was con\dnced in his heart that he maintained the Truth. The victim was about forty years of age ; so pure and blameless in life that scandal had never rested on his name ; towards his friends he exhibited singular gentleness of af- fection ; towards the poor and needy unbounded diarity. To the external ordinances of the Church be paid all due observance, attending regularly to days of fasting or of festival, to Mass and serm^ons, and to whatever else might contribute to edification. Free from guile, liberal in disposition, upright in principles, he neither inflicted nor provoked injury ; neither was there any thing in his whole life unbe- coming of true Christian piety. His friends were probably mistaken when they declared liim to be most alien from the doctrines of Luther ; they were right, doubtless, when they added, that his chief crime was the ingenuous avowal of dislike to certain troublesome Divines, and Monks not less savage than stupid. Some of the heterodox propositions noted in one of his publications were, a declaration that the Scriptures ought to be read to the people at large in the vernacular tongue ; a remonstrance against the invocation of the Virgin Mary, often substituted in sermons in lieu of that of the Holy Ghost ; a denial that she was the fountain of all Grace ; and a wish that certain expressions which in the Vesper service, contrary to the unvarying tenor of Scripture, de- c^2 20 MARTYRDOM OF [cH. I. signaled her as " our life and hope," should be restricted to the Son, to whom they properly apper- tained. The Process against Berquin was submitted to the decision of twelve Judges, who, as the day of sentence approached, committed him to prison, an evil omen of their intended severity. He was condemned in the first instance, after public abjuration of his Heresy and the burning of his books by the executioner, to be bored through the tongue and committed to per- petual imprisonment. Astonished at a sentence thus harsh and unmerited, he spoke of an appeal to the King and to the Pope ; and his persecutors, indignant at the menace, informed him that since he declined their original award, they would effectually prevent his power of appeal by condemning him at once to the flames. Six hundred armed men surrounded the Place de Greve on the day of his execution. A by- stander ^ close to the stake when Berquin approached it, perceived in him no change of countenance, no gesture betraying agitation. " You would have said," are the strong words employed, " that he was medi- ^ Montius noster, cujus religiosam nosti fidem, nihil ausus est scribere nisi quod oculis suis cominus vide.rit ; aderat enim valde vicinus. — Erasmus, Ep. clx. How noble are the concluding words of this Letter ! Damnan, dissecari, suspendi, exuri, decol- lari, pits cum impiis sunt communia : damnare, dissecare, in crucem agere, exurere, decollare, bonis judicibus cum piratis ac tyrannis communia sunt. Varia sunt Jiominum judicia ; ille felix qui judice Deo absolvitur. In another Letter to Cornelius Agrippa, whom he warns of the necessity of discretion by the sad ex- ample of Berquin, Erasmus expresses a high estimate of that Martyr's virtues ; sit tibi exemplo Ludovicus Barquinus, quern nihil aliud perdidit quam in Monachos et Theologos simplex libertas ; vir alioqui moribus inculpatissimus. 9 A. D. 1529.] LOUIS BERQUIX. 21 tating in liis library upon his studies, or in the church upon his God." Not even when the executioner read aloud, in a hoarse voice, his accusation and sentence, did he show one symptom of diminished fortitude. When ordered to dismount from the cart, he de- scended cheerfully without a moment's delay. His bearing, however, by no means indicated that stony want of feeling which brutal hardihood sometimes generates in atrocious criminals, but was rather the effect of a tranquil spirit, at peace with God and with itself. The few words which he attempted to utter to the people, were rendered wholly inaudible by the shouts of the soldiery, instructed to drown his last Speech if he should attempt to deliver one ; and so effectually had the representations of the Priests steeled the hearts of the ignorant spectators, that when he was strangled at the stake, (the only mercy accorded to him,) not a single "Jesu!" was heard from the populace ; ready as they always were to bestow such aspirations on murderers and parricides. " Thus much," says the bearer of that " great injured name," from whom we have borrowed the above nar- rative, — who never failed in wisdom to detect folly and iniquity, or in honesty to visit them with the ridicule which he thought their best corrective, — " Thus much have I to relate to you concerning Berquin ; — if he died with a sound conscience, as I verily hope he did die, tell me in return whose end could be happier ^ ?" Great as was the discouragement which the Ger- man Protestants, (^the name recently assumed by the Lutherans,) must have received from these acts of the ^ Erasmus, Epist. clx. 22 EMBASSY OF THE GERMAN PROTESTANTS [cH. I. French Government, nevertheless the Declaration of Charles V., by which he secured the election of his brother Ferdinand as King of the Romans, seemed to present an opportunit}^ of uniting at least their Poli- tical interests with those of Francis I. On the formation of the celebrated League of Smalcalde, Envoys were accordingly despatched to Paris, who represented the covert design of Austria to transform the Empire into an hereditary Monarchy ; and the crafty policy by which she was arraying the Catholics and the Protestants against each other, in order, by the common weakness resulting from their dissensions, to disqualify both parties from opposing her own schemes of immeasurable ambition. " Ar- gument," said the zealous Deputies, not arms, must persuade to unity in Religion : we have long de- manded a General Council; for even the staunchest supporters of Rome admit that she needs some re- form ; nor are we so bigoted to our own particular system, but that we will cheerfully abandon it if ano- ther be shown to us more accordant with the Gospel and with the usages of the Primitive Church. All that we solicit is, that you will close your ears to the calumnies by which we are defamed ; that you will regard with suspicion the representations of the Pope, ever interested in the maintenance of abuses ; and the insidious blandishments of the Emperor, who seeks your destruction no less than our own. If you reject us, we may perish ; but the hour will not long be delayed in which you will regret the loss of allies, almost pointed out by Nature for your benefit." These were bold words, but it was the policy of Francis not to disapprove them. He answered in general terms, carefully avoiding any mention of Re- A. D. 1531.] TO FRANCIS I. 23 ligious controversy ; cordially united with the Pro- testants in a refusal to acknowledge Ferdinand's election ; applauded their intention of submitting to a General Council, the assembling of which he would not cease to urge upon the Pope ; and excused him- self from sending immediate succour, on account of the strict alliance in which he was engaged with the King of England, whose previous consent it was necessary to obtain ; but promised so soon as that approval should be granted, an event of which he felt no doubt, that he would despatch an Ambassador to Smalcalde, with full powers to negotiate a close union. This reply of Francis I. was held as a good omen by the German Protestants. It seemed also, by an occurrence which took place about the same time, that the French Reformed were not wholly excluded from the pale and protection of the Law ; and a nefa- rious fraud practised in relation to their Sect, at Orleans, was almost visited with severe punishment upon its contrivers. One midnight, while the Brethren of a Monastery in that City were assembled at Noc- tums, their devotion was interrupted by an unusual and inexplicable noise. The immediate and general conjecture resolved the sounds into the work of an Evil Spirit ;. and the Exorcist of the Convent was ac- cordingly called upon to employ his adjurations ; but there was no voice, neither did any one answer in return. At last, when the Spirit was asked whe- ther it was dumb? a loud noise was renewed and accepted as a token of its powers of communication. The marvel was too astounding to be concealed ; but the fathers, anxious, as it would seem, for an impar- tial confirmation of their own belief in the diabolical 24 PRETENDED GHOST [cH. I. agency, stated to many of the chief citizens of Or- leans that a singular event had occurred in their Monastery, and, without entering into its particulars, invited them to be fellow witnesses of it at the fol- lowing midnight. The Ghost was no less punctual in attendance at the appointed hour than were the citizens ; and when it again disturbed the service, it was required to answer " yes" or " no" to the cate- chism of the Exorcist, by a prescribed number of knockings. Was it the soul of any person buried in the church beneath? — Affirmed. After the recita- tion of many names, was it the soul of the wife of the Mayor ? — Affirmed. Was it damned, and for what sins ? for avarice, uncleanness, pride, lack of charity, or, finally, for Lutheranism ? All these offences but the last were denied ; and the charge of Heresy being fully admitted, and a wish expressed to have the body disinterred from consecrated ground, the Monks re- quired the lay witnesses to sign a testimonial to the confession of Lutheranism and damnation. The citizens demurred, out of respect for their Mayor ; but the Monks, without waiting for the certificate, conveyed the Host and all their relics elsewhere, and resolved not to perform Mass any longer in a place thus profaned. The Ordinary, as was usual, took cognizance of these proceedings ; visited the Convent; ordered exorcisms to be performed in his own pre- sence ; and with no inconsiderable penetration, not- withstanding the opposition of those best acquainted with the Ghost, stationed persons in the roofing of the church to seize it if it should appear. No traces, however, of the Evil Spirit were to be discovered. Notwithstanding this failure in immediate detec- tion, the Mayor of Orleans had strong reason to A. D. 1531.] AT ORLEANS. 25 believe that revenge had prompted the Monks to concert some juggling trick by which they hoped to destroy his reputation. His wife, when on her death- bed, had given strict injunctions that her funeral should be privately performed, in order to avoid the throng of begging Friars who traded in attendance upon those solemnities. The widower had con- formed to the request of the deceased ; and more- over had presented the Franciscans, in whose church she was buried, with no more than six pieces of gold. These causes of offence were increased yet farther, by a refusal to permit the Monks to appropriate a large portion of fuel from a wood which the Mayor had re- cently felled in the neighbourhood ; and their indig- nation at these repeated disappointments had not by any means been dissembled. The Mayor framed a Memorial grounded upon these facts, and laid it at the foot of the throne, praying for examination of the re- puted Ghost. But the Monks protested against the Royal jurisdiction ; and a Commission of Delegates from the Parliament of Paris was appointed to deter- mine their cause. For a long time no insight could be obtained into the case ; till some incautious ex- pressions, dropped by a novice, excited suspicion ; and the desired avowal was obtained upon his re- ceiving assurances of immunity, and of removal be- yond the power of his guilty employers, who had threatened him with speedy death if he should betray their secret. Two of the Friars, it appeared, one of whom was the Exorcist himself, had tutored this youth how to enact the Ghost by noises and knockings, and then, having concealed him in the vaultings of the ^^jilH*idi iui54V»4jiey easily executed the remainder of ^^V'Tlfetkg^^\Even when thus convicted, the 26 FAVORABLE APPEARANCES OF THE COURT. [cH. I. Franciscans persisted in denying the authority of the tribunal by which they had been condemned ; and when conveyed to Orleans, in order to undergo a punishment far too light for their crime, the trou- blous season which ensued prevented its infliction. They were sentenced to do penance in the Cathedral, and to make a public confession of their guilt at the place of common execution. During their previous imprisonment, they were daily visited, cherished, comforted, and supported, by numerous partizans ; especially by women, who followed them from Paris to Orleans with plentiful tears and cordial marks of sympathy. The great outcry raised against the Lutherans in the year which followed, increased the favour of the populace towards these pitiful jugglers ; and although it is said that the King had fully deter- mmed upon razing their Monastery to the ground, the feeling of the times manifested itself so strongly in their behalf, that it was thought better in the end to remit all farther penalty and to release them from confinement \ This willingness of the Parliament to do justice even against Monks ; the favourable reception of the Protestant Deputies, joined to the intercourse which, during the years immediately following, Francis avowedly maintained with them ; his intimate alli- ance with Henry VIIT., now a declared schismatic from Rome ; and the general tone of his Court, in which his sister Queen Margaret, and the ruling favourite, the Duchess d'Etampes, took no pains to conceal their partiality to the Sacramentarians, had encouraged an ardent hope in that Sect, that the ^ Sleidan, lib. ix. p. 141. Schultet, torn. ii. p. 4G3. Gerde- sins iv. 96. A. D. 1534.] THE PLACARDS. 2? King himself was at least tolerant ; and they attributed the occasional punishment of their brethren, solely to the zeal and importunity of the Bishops and chief Magistrates. Ere long, however, the indiscretion of perhaps a few heated individuals, fatally undeceived them. On one and the same night, were affixed in the streets of Paris, and of various other Qct. is chief towns of France, and on the gates of ^^2*- the very Palace at Blois, at that time the residence of the Court, numerous violent and ill-judged Placards \ ^ Hence the year received the name of L'an des Placards (Gerdesius iv. 100.) In the Monumenta appended to the same volume, these Placards are printed. Their general coarse and intemperate spirit may be estimated by the following extracts : — Le Pape et toute sa vermine de Cardinaux, d^ Evesques, et de Prestres, de Moines et d' autres caphards diseurs de Masses, et tous ceux qui y consentent soyent tels: assavoir, faiix-prophetes, damna- bles trompeurs, apostats, loups, faux-pasteurs, idoldtres, seduc- teurs, menteurs, et blasphemateurs execrables, meurtriers des ames, renonceurs de Jesus- Christ de sa mort et passion, faux- tesmoins, traistres, larrons, et ravisseurs de V honneur de Dieu, et plus detestahles que le Diahle Allumez done vos fagots pour vous hrusler et rostir vous mesmes, non pas nous, pour ce que nous ne voulons croire a vos idoles, a vos Dieux nouveaux et nouveaux Christs, qui se laissent manger aux bestes, et a vous pareillement qui estes pire que bestes ; en vos badinages, lesquels vous faites a Ventour de votre Dieu de paste, duquel vous vous jouez comme un chat d'un souris : faisans des marmiteux et frap- pans co7itre votre poictrine, apres Vavoir mis en trois quartlers, comme estans bien marris, Vappelans Agneau de Dieu, et lui de- mandans la paix Que pourroit dire un personnage qui n'auroit jamais vue une telle singerie ? Ne pourroit-il pas bien dire, " Ce povre Agneau n' a garde de devenir Moufon, car le Loup Va mange." — pp. 61 — 66. A longer satirical Work, which obtained great celebrity, was entitled Le Livre des Mar- chands, of which a full account may be found in Sleidan ix. adann. It treats of the extortion of Ecclesiastics, but in a style very infe- rior to that of our own contemporary Supplication of the Beggars. 28 EXPIATORY TROCESSION [cH. 1. reflecting upon the Mass and the doctrine of the Real Presence. Francis might be careless respecting the ostensible object of attack ; but his Councillors per- suaded him that a movement thus simultaneous, in many different parts of the Kingdom, betokened a combination which it was necessary should be sup- ])ressed. Four-and-twenty known Sacramentarians w^ere accordingly arrested in Paris ; and pains were taken to spread abroad an absurd rumour, (which, on account of that very absurdity, was doubtless more readily admitted by the gaping rabble,) that these miserable men had plotted to surprise the Catholic population during Mass, and to put men, women, and children, indiscriminately, to the sword. In order to increase the effect of a coup d'etat, by which the King resolved to convince his own subjects, his Italian allies, and, above all, the Pontiff, M^hose confidence it was most important that he should secure, how great was his attachment to the true Faith, how rooted his abhorrence of Heresy, he j^j, J 9 hastened to the Capital in the depth of a i53o. severe winter. There, he arranged an ex- piatory Procession ; in which himself, his Queen, the Princes of the blood, the Peers of France, the great Officers of the Crown, and the resident Ambassadors from Foreign Courts, personally assisted. An image of St. Genevieve, the patroness of the City, never ex- hibited unless in seasons of heaviest public calamity, was committed to the guardianship of the town butchers, who, from time immemorial, had asserted the privilege of that holy custody. Three days' prayer and fasting prepared them for their sacred charge ; and when they appeared abroad, their path was cleared by apparitors, but not without difficulty, A. D. 1533.] AT PARIS. 29 from the eager throng which pressed upon their steps ; for happy was he among the spectators who could touch the propitious Idol with the tip of his finger, with his cap, or even with his handkerchief ^ The costly shrine of S*^ Margaret, the precious reli- quaries of the Saincte Chapelle and of the other Pa- risian Churches, were carried abroad by bearers who walked with naked feet, and wore no other clothing than long shirts. The Archbishop of Paris held the consecrated Host, the canopy over which was borne by three sons of Francis, and by the Duke de Ven- dome. Next appeared the King himself, carrying a torch in his hand, and supported by the Cardinals of Bourbon and of Lorraine ; to the latter of whom he delivered the torch, at every halt of the procession, while he clasped his hands, knelt humbly on the ground, and implored the mercy of Heaven upon his people. In a nearly contemporary Ecclesiastical History may be found a very curious and picturesque account of this solemnity. The patience of the reader might be exhausted, if we were to marshal before him the un- numbered personages who figured in the Procession generalissime, as it is called ; if we were to particu- larise the interminable heads, bodies, and members of canonized mediators, which, for the first time since they had been deposited in the Saincte Chapelle, were now exhibited to popular gaze in the streets ; but we cannot refrain from enriching our pages with a single passage in which the music of the King's Swiss Guards is described as follows : " Their drums and fifes called to remembrance not the war of man with ^ Sleidan, lib. ix. p. 147. Gerdesius, torn. iv. p. 108. 80 EXPIATORY PROCESSION AND [cH. I. man, but that waged by man against God himself; so that they excited a piteous and Christian shud- dering in all hearts. To these fearful drums suc- ceeded the dulcet tones of hautboys, violins, cornets, and other musical instruments, distinct from the trumpets which flourished right melodiously. Joined with these were the choristers of the Royal Chapel on the right, and of La Saincte Chapelle on the left, fiil- fillijig their duty to the utmost, by praising God in motets, artfully composed in honour of the Holy Sacrament. It seemed as if the good King had wished to assemble in one all kinds of music, in order to recreate and console the spirits of Christians greatly troubled (ennuyez) on account of the dishonour wherewithal God had been visited, and to give them hope of His speedy assistance ^" At the conclusion of this solemn puppet-show Francis dined with the Archbishop ; and after the ban- quet, addressed the assembly in a speech expressive of tlie acute anguish which he felt at the outrage offered to the King of Kings by perverse men, unworthy of the name of men, who had blasphemed the Supreme Being, and publicly outraged the most august of His mysteries. His true body, and true blood. While his words were interrupted by the frequent sobs and groans of his auditors, he urged them in continuation, to denounce, without pity, all whom they knew to be Heretics. " Before God," he exclaimed, kindling with devotion, " if my right arm were gangrened I would cheerfully cut it off and cast it from me ; and if my own sons were unhappy enough to be seduced by these ^ Hist. CathoUque de nostre Temps, contre VHist. de Jean Sleydan, composee par S. Fontaine, Docteur en Theologie, liv. v. p. 200. 1558. A. D. 1535.] CRUEL EXECUTIONS IN PARIS. 31 detestable novelties, I myself would be the first to furnish proofs of their guilt." On the moment, a Proclamation was di'awn up, and issued, command- ing all French subjects, on pain of being considered accomplices, to lay informations against every Heretic whom they could discover, his harbourers and con- cealers. The reward, on conviction of any of these criminals, w-as a fourth part of the property of the condemned ; and finally, as the Press had been the great engine of recent ofience, its operations for the present were declared to be entirely suspended. Nor was this tyrannical Edict considered sufficient ; the day of mummery was to conclude with a spectacle of unparalleled horror. Francis, the most chivalrous Knight and accomplished Prince of his days, (fertile as those days were in valour and in magnificence,) stopped at six different places of execution, in which an equal number of victims of fanaticism were tarry- ing his arrival, in all the bitterness of preparation for an agonizing death. As if the ordinary terrors of the stake were inadequate for the punishment now re- quired, these Martyrs, bound to the extremity of long poles, were alternately lowered to, and with- di-awn from the blazing pile, till the ropes by which they were fastened caught fire, snapped asunder, and plunged their already haK-burned limbs into the de- vouring flame \ 1 Gerdesius ut mpra, where we learn that the horrible practice of cutting out the tongues of the Heretics, before they were led to execution, in order to prevent them from addressing the specta- tors, was first introduced during this Persecution. Felibien very calmly describes these horrors, as if they formed a part of the dessert at the Royal banquet ; apres le diner on hrusla les Here- tiques condamnez. Hist, de Paris, liv. xx. Vol. II. p. 1033. 15 32 INDIGNATION IN GERMANY. [cH. I. A few weeks only, however, elapsed before Francis discovered the full extent, not of the Moral guilt, but of the great Political fault which he had committed. Many Germans who had taken up their abode in Paris, terrified at the savage executions which they had witnessed, and at the encouragement offered to informers, hastily quitted the Kingdom, and on their return home, communicated their fears to their asto- nished Countrymen. The Emperor quickly perceived that a panic thus seasonably propagated, might be used with advantage in dissolving the connection be- tween Paris and the Leaguers of Smalcalde. He insinuated that the professions of amity advanced by Francis had been employed solely as a blind ; that his implacable enmity to the German name had wreaked itself, by punishments unheard of among the most barbarous heathens, upon such natives as he had decoyed within his pov/er ; that the Pro- testants might readily determine how far a Prince could be sincere in Christian Faith, who in the same hour leagued himself with the infidel Turk (as the King of France had recently done), and committed to a death of unequalled torture, those who differing from him on a few points of doctrine, still were brethren confessing the same Gospel, and worship- ping the same Redeemer. Thus astutely, when it served his purpose, could Charles extenuate the great disruption from Rome, which, at other seasons, he was equally well skilled to pourtray in its fullest ruggedness and separation. No sooner had Francis learned the consternation which his severe measures had produced in Germany, than he sought to counteract their ill effects. A new Edict restrained the Magistrates from admitting fresh A. D. 1535.] EXPLANATION BY FRANCIS I. 33 denunciations, and restored the Press to its fonner activity. In an Apology addressed to tlie Protestant Cities and Princes of the Empire, he represented his alliance with the Turk as a mere Commercial Treaty, authorised from time immemorial by the precedent of Venice. He affirmed that the few fanatics whom he had punished, had endeavoured to excite a sedi- tion in his Capital, and that public safety had de- manded a rigorous example ; that in permitting the Law to take its extreme course, he had only trodden in the steps of the German Princes themselves, who, in like manner, had suppressed the Anabaptists, when they were scattering the seeds of revolt under the cloak of Religion ; that not a single German had been included among the criminals ; and that it was not possible that any true Protestant should feel less abhorrence against the impious blasphemers who re- viled the Body and Blood of their common Saviour, than had been excited in himself. These represen- tations were followed up by a special mission to the Confederates at Smalcalde. William of Bellay, the Envoy selected, was personally intimate with many of the Deputies, and he adroitly depicted his Master as a skilful, and by no means an intolerant Theolo- gian. He assured them that the Sacramentarians who had been put to death, were Enthusiasts not to be honoured with the name of Protestants ; that the King had profoundly examined the recent Confession of Augsburg, in which (although not coinciding in every imlnt) he admitted that there was much sound thinking and acute reasoning on matters of the great- est import. For instance, that regarding Papal Supre- macy, Purgatory, the Celibacy of the Priesthood, D 34 DUPLICITY OF FRANCIS I. [cH. I. Monastic Vows, and the administration of the Sacra- ment in both kinds, his views so far coincided with those of the Reformers, that there could be little doubt of a final good understanding. In conclusion, Bellay invited them either to admit certain French Divines to a Conference at Smalcalde, or else to allow some of their own Body to return with him for a like purpose to France. Melancthon and many others earnestly wished to embrace the latter pro- position ; but the Elector of Saxony, from a prudent misgiving that Francis looked far more anxiously for a Temporal than a Spiritual Union, repressed the ardour of his confiding and unsuspicious friends. Nor was he deceived in his anticipations ; for Bellay, ere he departed, manifested the true object of his diplomacy, by proposing a formal alliance against the Emperor. The offer was received coldly, and the Ambassador retired disconcerted. Little indeed was Francis to be trusted. At the same moment at which Bellay was thus negociating with the Protestants at Smalcalde, his brother, the Archbishop of Paris, was engaged on a mission to the Vatican ; in which, with a hope of rendering Paul III. favourable to the views of the King of France for the recovery of Milan, the Envoy was instructed to re- present in the strongest possible colours the signal mark of attachment which his master had so lately exhibited to the true and ancient Church. In this attempt also the King was frustrated ; and, in order that no part of these transactions might be without its share of duplicity, the Archbishop, who in secret if not absolutely favourable, was most unusually in- dulgent to the New Learning, was recompensed by I CH. I.] CALVIN. 35 the Pope for the disappointment of his mission by the presentation of a Cardinal's Hat ^. Meantime, while the followers of Luther continued to acquire strength and numbers in Germany, they almost disappeared in France under the superior influence of a native Reformer. John Calvin was born at Noyon, in Picardy, in 1509, and imbibed or increased a strong attachment to Protestantism in the College of Forteret at Paris. A Speech, replete with Lutheran maxims, pronounced on one occasion by the Rector of that College, was traced, at least in part, to the pen of Calvin ; who, in order to escape a threatened arrest fled to Angouleme. During his concealment in that town, he found sufficient access to books to compose the most elaborate and me- thodical Work which had hitherto been written illus- trative of the Reformed Principles, his Christiance Religionis Institutio ; that bold Treatise appeared in print for the first time at Basle, in 1536, prefaced with a long, fearless, learned, and eloquent remonstrance to Francis I., whose hands were yet reeking with the blood of Martyrs to Protestantism ^. The early travels and various residences of Calvin are much disputed ; and their adjustment matters but little in this place, since his Historical and Ecclesias- Cardinal Bellay was an admirer and a correspondent of Me- lancthon. Some of his Letters are couched in an affectionate tone, and subscribed tuus ex animo Card. Bellajus. 2 The first edition known to bibliographers is that of Basle, 1536. The Dedication bears date Aug. 1, 1535, which has oc- casioned a suspicion, by no means well founded, that there may be an edition of that year also. The last copious revisions and augmentations by the author were given in a folio edition at Geneva, 1559. D 2 36 CALVIN. [CH. I. tical importance depends altogether upon his final settlement at Geneva. That City, long struggling against the encroachments of the Dukes of Savoy and of its own Bishops, to whom the Emperors had given a large share of temporal power under the title of Princes of Geneva and its environs, was roused to new exertions for Liberty at the epoch of the Re- formation. Its inhabitants uniting themselves in a solemn compact with those of Friburg and Basle, assumed the title of E'ldgenossen or Sworn Confede- rates ; one of the conjectural sources of the better known party name Huguenot, applied afterwards to the Protestants of France. So powerful had the Genevese rendered themselves in the year 1526, that the Duke of Savoy abandoned his pretensions to sovereignty. Within nine years from that date, the Reformed Doctrine also had become so entirely natu- ralized among them, that it was proclaimed the Reli- gion of the State ; the Popish Bishop was excluded, and Calvin, by that time notorious for his zeal, his talents, and his intrej^idity, received an invitation to fix his residence in the City as a public Teacher of Religion. The earnest adjuration of William Farel, (whom we have already seen at Meaux, and who had been one of the most ardent promoters of the late Revolution at Geneva,) was not likely to be without effect upon a disposition so fitted to receive strong impressions as that of Calvin ; and, when he was solemnly warned, that unless he became a fellow- labourer in the vineyard of Geneva, the curse of God would attend him whithersoever he went, it was but natural that his kindled imagination should accept tlie fervid wish of his friend as a special call from Heaven. But the City was at that moment feverish CH. I.] CALVIN. 37 and unsettled, in its first subsidence after a great Religious and Political change. Factious and fiery spirits were found in it, not yet prepared to bow- down to discipline ; strong passions roamed abroad unwilling to be controlled, and the stern and uncom- promising temper of the new Pastor was ill adapted to soothe them into repose and submission. Scarcely a year had passed from his first settlement before the inflexible severity with which Calvin pressed certain indifferent matters, as if they were essential, and the ill-judged pertinacity with which he sought to feed with strong meat that infant Church which required the milk of babes for its sustenance, occasioned his forcible ejection. The points in controversy speak for themselves. In ojDposition to a Decree of the Synod of Lausanne, he refused to allow the obser- vance of any holidays excepting Sundays, to admit Baptismal Fonts to be placed within his Churches, and to administer the Sacrament with unleavened bread. Resistance to these harmless customs, wholly unin- fluential as was their admission or rejection, upon purity either of Faith or Practice, appeared to Calvin of sufficient moment to justify the sacrifice of his newly embraced Spiritual charge ; and, in obedience to a decree of the Syndics, he retired in banishment to Strasburg \ ^ Farel retired together with Calvin. We hear much of him afterwards from Meurisse. On one occasion, when a Cordelier was preaching on " the perpetual virginity of the Mother of God," and that which the Bishop of Madaura, with a singular choice of epithets, terms Vamoureuse incarnation of our Saviour, Farel having interrupted the sermon and denied the assertion, lost his hair and beard under the nails of the women present, who would have killed him but for the seasonable appearance of a detachment of soldiers. — Hist, de VHeresie dans Metz, p. 67. 38 CALVIN. [CH. I. During his absence, men's thoughts and opinions grew calmer ; the heat generated by sudden and rapid transitions had time to abate ; and the want of a commanding and presiding mind which might arrange, fashion, and consolidate the hitherto jarring elements of their Ecclesiastical Polity, directed the wishes of the Genevese once again to Calvin. On his side, it was not likely that difficulty should arise. A restoration sought for by his disciples ensured him unlimited dominion ; the Spiritual government of a distinguished and now independent City, was in itself a most honourable charge ; and the prospect of future success in the labour of holiness, of pouring the full light of the Reformation over France, imme- diately adjoining and as yet but partially illuminated, might awaken in Calvin's bosom, a glorious hope that he was set apart as the chosen Apostle of his native Country. He accepted the proffered charge accordingly, and his brilliant visions were in great part realised. Never was more de- spotic sway established over men's "walls and con- sciences than that which he erected in Geneva ; and, although he failed to introduce his scheme as the dominant Religion of France, it became the real model, as himself was the virtual High Priest, of every se- parate Reformed Congregation within the limits of that Kingdom. [. I.] CALVIN. 39 CHAPTER 11. Nature of the Calvinistic Church Polity established in France — Clement Marof s Psalmody — Adopted by the Calvinists — Alliance between the Church of Geneva and the Vaudois — The Vaudois publish a Confession — Decree of the Parliament of Provence against the Merindolese — Report on their habits — Suspension of the Decree — Chaussonnee and the Rats — Persecution by the Baron d'Oppeda — Massacre at Cabrieres and Merindol — Death of Francis I. — Rise and great power of the House of Guise — Public eiitry of Henry II. into Paris — Burning of Heretics — Edict of Chateaubi'iarid — Martyrdom of Louis de Marsac — Abuses in the French Church — First Calvinistic Church in France — Reformed Colony at Rio Janeiro — Treachery of Villegagnon — Outrage upon a Meeting-house in Paris — An- tony, King of Navarre, and Louis, Prince of Conde, attend a Procession of the Reformed — Arrest of Francis d'Andelot — His Imprisonment and Release — 1st National Synod of the French Reformed Church — Its Confession and Canons of Disci- pline. An examination of the differences in Religious Faith between Calvin and his brother Reformers would be misplaced in these pages ; and it is not here that we need enter into the subtle and interminable mazes of Doctrinal controversy. His Creed, which differs widely in many respects from some opinions fre- quently inculcated in his name, may be most accu- rately learned from the Christian Institution which we have already mentioned ; and, for his Discipline, it is more our object to state what he did, than to inquire w^hether it was the best which might have been done. 40 CALVIN. [CH. U. For the maintenance of his own personal authority, no system assuredly could be better calculated than that which he arranged ; nor would it be just on that account to condemn him as labouring chiefly for liis own aggrandizement. That Calvin was influenced in part by ambition it would be idle to deny, for what man has' ever produced great effects upon his species, if wholly devoid of that passion ? a passion, when purified and defascated, amongst the noblest engrafted on our nature. And Calvin's ambition was thus sublimed. The work which he took in hand was not his own work, but that of his Master ; in order to perform it to the utmost, an extraordinary measure of power was necessary, and he, therefore, omitted no eff'ort to obtain, no vigilance to preserve his supremacy. That he did not mistrust his own use of that power can never be a matter of surprise ; that he saw its danger if transmitted to others, is evident from his not having recommended a suc- cessor, and from Beza's immediate advice after his friend's death \ that the oflice of President should be allowed to expire with him. The infallibility, ^ Spon, Hist, de Geneve, i. p. 313, note. Mosheim iv. 375. Maclaine, in his note on Mosheim, has not only given a wrong reference to Spon, but he has misrepresented facts. He states that Calvin, when at the point of death, advised the Clergy not to elect a successor, and proved to them the dangerous con- sequences of intrusting any one man during life with autho- rity so unlimited as that which himself had exercised. In the speeches reported in the notes to Spon, as delivered by Calvin on his death-bed, nothing of this kind occurs. But it is said, that when his infirmities prevented his regular attendance as President, Beza acted as his deputy; and that he, after Calvin's death, advised the substitution of an annual Moderator instead of a perpetual President. CH. II.] HIS CHURCH POLITY. 41 . in all but name, which he maintained while alive, was too precious and too perilous a legacy to be be- queathed to a successor. The chief distinction of Calvin's ritual worship \ from that of Luther was found in its extreme plain- ness ; a simplicity in too many instances degene- rating into absolute nakedness. Not only were images and pictures excluded from his sacred edi- fices, as idols and abominations, but the decent ma- jesty of devotion was violated by the rejection of almost every outward adjunct. The peculiar vest- ments which discriminated the Priest from the Lay- man were torn away ; the soul-awakening tones of the organ were silenced ; a frugal meal eaten at a plain table was substituted for the more ceremonious administration of the Sacrament of the body and blood of the Saviour. It seemed as if Calvin believed that the senses were no longer the channels through which the Mind received its knowledge and exhibited its operations ; and that to omit paying the homage of the body was the genuine mode of worshipping God in spirit. The flight of her Bishop pievented the con- tinuance of Episcopacy in the Church of Geneva, although it by no means appears that Calvin him- self was an enemy to that institution ; and it would be difficult to establish a necessary connection be- tween his polity, from which it was excluded by compulsion, and later voluntary Presbyterianism. The caprice of the Congregation was allowed to regu- late the salaries of the Ministers, who were thus placed under the control of the very persons whom it was their duty to teach and to reprove, in season and out of season, through good report and evil rejDort ; and upon whom, if it were only on that account, they ought 42 CALVINISTIC CHURCH POLITY. [cH. II. to be wholly independent. Besides the Minister, each Church appointed Deacons, who acted as trea- surers and almoners ; and Elders, who fulfilled the office of censors and guardians of public morals. Auricular confession indeed was abolished, but the inquisition of the Consistory formed by the union of the above three authorities, the Ministers, the Dea- cons, and the Elders, might prove equally dangerous, and was certainly far more tyrannical than the Romish custom. Once in every month this formid- able band assembled ; received the denunciations of tlie Elders ; summoned their erring brethren before tiieir bar ; took cognizance of their frailties ; sen- tenced them to public penances ; and enrolled their shame in ever-during registers. A Synod composed of DejDuties from the several Consistories met annually to decide on matters of general interest ; and in cases of extreme necessity, an appeal lay to a Council to which Representatives were furnished by all the Pro- vinces embracing Calvinism ^ One, and that an important part of the Genevan worship, was supplied from France ; and details, more copious than our limits permit us to borrow, of the origin of Congregational Psalmody, and its adoption by the Calvinists, are very amusingly given by Warton ^. Clement Marot, who held a post about the Royal household of France, had hitherto dedicated his facile powers of elegant versification to subjects always light, frequently licentious. Notwithstanding ^ The difficulties under which Calvin laboured, and the wis- dom which he manifested in encountering them, are noticed at much length in the masterly Preface to Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity. 2 History of English Poetry, § xiv. CH. II.] CLEMENT MAROT. 43 the freedom both of his life and writings, he early embraced the Reformed Religion ; was imprisoned for Heresy during the captivity of Francis I. in Madrid, and twice afterwards was compelled to take refuge in Geneva to escape similar arrest \ It was about the year 1540 that, renouncing his former themes, he put forth a metrical French version of the first fifty Psalms ; and in the Dedication to Francis I., after dravdng a parallel between that King and David, which, it may be thought, must have cost him no slight struggle with conscience to compose, he very strikingly exhibited the grotesque mixture of Eth- nical and Christian images, at that time present to his fancy. God, he says, was the Apollo who tuned David's harp ; the Holy Spirit was his Calliope ; his two-forked Parnassus was the summit of the crystalline heaven ; and his Hippocrene was the deep fountain of Grace ^. But, alas ! the vein of Marot flowed quite diversely from that of the Hebrew Poet-king, and when he ceased to sing of earthly love he ceased also to sing ^ In the close of his life, after the publication of his Psalms, Mavot again retired to Geneva, in which city he died in 1544. 2 Or donques, Roy, pren Voeuvre de David, Euvre plus tot de Dieu, qui le ravit : D'autant que Dieu son Apollo estoit. Qui luy en train et sa harbe mettoif. Le Saint Esprit estoit sa Calliope ; Son Parnassus, montaigne a double croppe, Fut le sommet du haut ciel crystallin : Finalement, son ruisseau cahalin De Grace fut lafontaine profonde ; Ou a grans traits il hut de la clere onde, Dont il devint Poete en un moment Le plus profond dessouz le firmament. Clement Marot au Roy tres chresten Francois premier de ce nom, snr la traduction des Psalmes de David, Sal. 44 CALVINISTIC PSALMODY. [cH. II. melodiously. The model which he furnished was faithfully copied, not many years afterwards, by the framers of our English Psalmody ; and the merits of tlie French bard may be accurately estimated, when we add, that, in his devotional strains, Marot was the Apollo, the Calliope, the Parnassus, and the Hippo- crene of Sternhold and Hopkins. Nevertheless, bald as was Marot's version, it was the Work of a popular Court-poet ; it was in rhyme easily adapted to the vaudevilles and ballad-tunes of the day ; and the translator, perhaps, was not a little surprised to hear every chamber of the Palace, and every street in Paris, re-echoing with his sacred songs, frequently accompanied by the fiddle, soon after their publica- tion. As no attempt was made to introduce them into the ritual of the Church, the Sorbonne approved their orthodoxy, and thus unwittingly gave additional keenness to a weapon soon to be turned against themselves. Calvin, as we have before stated, had banished the ancient Ecclesiastical music, and it is probable that he soon perceived the necessity of a substitute, which might impart some warmth to the general frigidity of his service. Marot's version appeared most season- ably for his purpose. It was so plain and prosaic that every peasant might easily understand, and commit it to memory. All resemblance to the Romish antiphonal chant, which Calvin rejected as supersti- tious and unedifying, was carefully avoided, by set- ting the words to simple and monotonous tunes, equally removed from science and from sweetness ^ 1 The learned Quick was of another opinion. " Louis Gua- dimel, another Asaph or Jeduthan. a most skilful master of A. D. 1540.] THE VAUDOIS PUBLISH A CONFESSION. 45 but in which every individual of the Congregation might take a part. Beza completed the task which Marot had begun ; their joint Psahus were appended to the Catechism of Geneva ; passed from the lips of the gallants of France to those of the herdsmen of Swiss- erland and the citizens of Flanders ; became one of the distinguishing characters of Calvinism ; and called down a severe Interdict from the Faculty of Paris, by which they had not long since been as formally sanc- tioned. Among other alliances by which Calvin had strengthened his rising Church was a union with the Vaudois, those forerunners of the Reformation who from time immemorial had preserved the Faith and usages of primitive Christianity, in the depth of their tranquil valleys in Piedmont. Already, more than once during the XVth century, had these inoffen- sive mountaineers been denounced by Rome, and subjected to persecution by the Dukes of SavDy ; but when the rashness of Charles V., in 1536, subjected the larger part of the dominion of those Princes to the sway of France, the Vaudois for a season enjoyed repose. Their chief safety, however, depended u^on their obscurity ; and could they have been content to be forgotten, they might have remained unharmed. But proud of connexion with the new and flourishing Church of Geneva, and perhaps over-estimating its power of temporal aid, they soon abandoned their cautious policy of concealment, and for the first time printed and published a Confession of Faith and a musick, set those sweet and melodious tunes unto which they are sung even unto this day." — Synodkon in Gallia Reformatd, Introduction, v. 46 DECREE AGAINST MERINDOL. [cH. II. Liturgy. A rejection of the doctrine of human merits, of traditions, of the infallibility of the Pope, of prayers for the dead, and of many other Romish practices stigmatised as superstitious and idolatrous ^ was little likely to pass uncensured by the French Prelacy ; and, accordingly, in 1540, the Archbishop of Aix denounced to the Parliament of Pro- vence certain portions of his Diocese as heretical. Beyond their valleys, the Vaudois had extended them- selves through some districts of Provence, in which they had colonized the large town of Merindol, and about thirty villages, the chief of which was Cabrieres. Eighteen of the inhabitants of the first-named place, having neglected a summons of the Parliament, were declared contumacious, and sentenced to perpetual banishment ; and a Decree of extermination was pro- nounced against their place of abode. " Whereas," so recites this barbarous Edict, " the town of Merindol is a notorious retreat and receptacle of all those who pro- fess the doctrines of certain damnable Sects, the Court orders that it shall be rendered desert and uninhabit- able ; that every house in it shall be burned or demolished ; and that all buildings, coverts, and 1 These opinions were maintained by Claude, Bishop of Turin, early in the IXth century, in a Commentary on tlte Epistle to the Galatians. The Vaudois formed a portion of his Diocese. The Confession of Faith presented by the Merindolese to Cardinal Sadolet and others in 1542, is printed by Gerdesius, iv. Monumcjita, 87. The Article on the Eucharist, although lengthy and elaborate, is far less involved than most contempo- rary statements of that controverted mystery. Nothing could be more offensive to a staunch advocate for Transubstantiation than the following plain language : — cerium est impostores esse qui docent panem Coencs esse j^roprium et reale (tit loquimtur) Christi corpus, p. 95. A. D. 1540.] REPORT ON THE VAUDOIS. 47 woods, within two hundred paces of its circuit, shall be razed to the ground \" The Governor of Provence refused to execute this savage Ordinance without express authority from the King; and Francis, when applied to, before sanctioning the cruelty, directed inquiry to be made into the habits and manners of those whom he was requested to destroy. It might be thought that the Report drawn up by William de Bellay, his former Envoy to Smalcalde, and now Governor of Provence, would have ensured protection on grounds not less of policy than of humanity. " The Vaudois," replied tliat high officer, " differ from our Communion in many parts of their Creed, but they are irre- proachable in their morals, laborious, sober, bene- volent, and of unshaken loyalty. Agriculture is their pride and sole occupation ; and so marvel- lous is their industry, that, in numerous cases in which landed proprietors have been contented with a small quit-rent, or have granted renewable leases on long terms, estates formerly rated at four crowns per annum have produced three hundred and fifty ; the tenants all the while having cheerfully and regu- larly paid their dues both to the Crown and to the landholder. Hospitality is one of their proverbial virtues, and not a beggar is ever known in their set- tlements. It must be confessed, however, that they rarely enter our Churches ; and if they do so, they pray with their eyes fixed on the ground, casting no regard on any of the Saints ; they do not use holy water, nor do they acknowledge the benefit derived * Tlist. Eccl. des Eglises Reformees dans la France, torn. p. 37. Gamier, Hist, de France, torn. xiii. p. 310. 9 48 STORY OF CHAUSSONNEE [cH. II. from pilgrimages and neuvaines ^ nor say Mass either for the living: or the dead." The utmost indulgence obtained from Francis, in consequence of this simple and touching relation of patriarchal manners, was a short respite. The villagers were commanded to appear before the Archbishop of Aix within three months, and to solicit from him reconciliation with the Church. In default of such obedience, the Par- liament of Provence was authorized to proceed against them with the uttermost rigour ; and all Civil and Military officers were enjoined to afford co-operation. " I do not burn Heretics in France," said the King, " in order that they may be nourished in the Alps ^." The given period elapsed without the required sub- mission of the Vaudois ; and years rolled on, and yet Xhe Royal Ordinance for their destruction remained unfulfilled. The cause of that forbearance, although ludicrous, is too illustrative of the follies which the Romish Church occasionally mingled with its cruel- ties to be altogether omitted. Chaussonnee, first President of the Parliament of Provence, was the author of a large Work, Catalogus Glorice Mimdi, in which he relates, that in early life, while he practised as an advocate at the Bar of Autun, so fearful was the devastation produced in the neigh- bourhood of that City by swarms of rats, that a general famine was reasonably apprehended. Every human means for the destruction of the marauders having failed, appeal was made to the power of the Church ; ^ Prayers made during ni7ie days to some particular Saint. 2 Introduction to Henry Arnaud's Recovery of the Faudois, by H. D. Acland, Ivi. ; to the Prolegomena of which interesting and most elegant volume every inquirer into the History of the Vau- dois is bound to express obligati tion. CH. II.] AND THE RATS. 49 and the Grand Vicar of the Diocese was instructed to promulgate the ordinary form of excommuni- cation, provided against noisome beasts and reptiles. Certain preliminary steps were necessary before the issue of this final Decree ; and in stating them we beseech our readers to suppress their smiles, and to remember that we are placing before them serious facts. First, the rats were cited to appear in the Ecclesiastical Court ; secondly, on their contumacy, the Grand Vicar appointed a day on which the defendants might be heard by their Proctor, in appeal against the Prosecutor, who claimed definitive sen- tence ; and Chaussonnee was appointed to the honour- able office of Advocate for the rats. His clients were largely indebted to his ingenuity. He pleaded that the rats were too widely dispersed to admit of general assembly under a single citation, and that the writs ought therefore to be read after Mass in each separate Parish. This demurrer occasioned consider- able delay ; and after the form, which was strictly legal, had been complied with, and the accused still continued to decline the summons, their able advo- cate resorted to a new defence. The journey, he urged, was long and incommodious ; the roads were beset with cats ; and, above all, any general proscrip- tion which involved in one mass parents together with their children, the innocent no less than the guilty, was opposed to the first natural principles of justice. We are ignorant of the issue of this Cause, but upon its dexterous conduct were reared the fame and for- tune of Chaussonnee, who always attributed to the reputation which he then obtained, his subsequent high professional advancement. At the moment at which he was preparing to execute the Edict issued 50 MASSACRE AT CABRIERES [cH. H. against the Vaudois by the Parliament over which he presided, a Provencal gentleman waited upon him ; turned the conversation upon his book ; opened it at the passage in which the above incident was narrated ; and asked whether a society of men deserved less regard than a herd of rats ? Chaussonnee, struck by the justice of the reproof, had the merit of suspending any farther steps towards persecution during the remainder of his life ^ Unhappily, on Chaussonnee's death, a President of widely different temper succeeded ; and to his exten- sive Civil power, Meinier, Baron d'Oppeda, united the Military command of the Province in the absence of its Governor. Personal motives are said to have sti- mulated his enmity against the Vaudois. One of his tenants, who had robbed him, found an asylum in their fastnesses ; and his hand had been disdainfully refused by a neighbouring Countess, who liberally extended protection to those industrious husbandmen, from whom her chief wealth was derived. D'Oppeda vowed their destruction, and commenced his design by forwarding to the Royal Council incessant reports of disaffection among the Mountaineers, and of their evident desire to erect themselves into independent Cantons, on the model of their Swiss neighbours. Arsenals and magazines, he said, were forming ; their difficult passes were entrenched ; their commanding heights were crowned with batteries ; at a word, 16,000 native troops, a^d an equal number of auxili- aries, could be gathered in the field ; and unless their formidable preparations were seasonably anticipated, the whole force of the Kino-dora mi2;ht hereafter be 1 De Thou vi. 15. Garnier xiii. 307—310, who cites Gauf- fredi, Hist, de Provence, and Perrin, Hist, des Vaudois. A. D. 1545.] AND MERINDOL. 51 demanded for their subjugation. Having thus art- fully awakened the King's fears, and received the in- structions which he so much desired, his next care was to prevent suspicion among his victims ; and he called out the extraordinary Militia of Provence, under the ostensible pretext of joining an armament at Marseilles, destined to co-operate in a ^^^^ descent upon England. It was not till they were almost surrounded that the Villagers per- ceived their danger ; and a great proportion, availing themselves of the only chance of safety now left open, retired in hasty flight to the mountains. As the troops advanced to Merindol, only one peasant youth was found within its precincts, who stipulated for his ransom with the soldier who arrested him by the pro- mise of two crowns. But D'Oppeda, unwilling to permit the escape of a single prisoner, paid the price of blood to his captor, tied the victim, thus pur- chased, to an olive-tree, and shot him to death, while the town was pillaged and burned \ Sixty men, capable of bearing arms, remained in the village of Cabrieres, and to them the Savage, not knowing the scantiness of their numbers, granted a capitulation. No sooner, however, had he discovered his mistake, than the terms were violated; and the prisoners, many of them accompanied by their wives about to become mothers, were driven to a neighbouring meadow, where the whole Body w^as put to the sword in cold blood ^. Meantime, the Churches in which some of the miserable women hoped to find sanctuary, ' Hist, des Egl. Ref. torn. i. p. 45. - Trucidantur ad unum fere omnes, non viri tantum sed el muUeres plerceque gravidce. — Gerdesius, iv. IGO. E 2 52 MASSACRE BY d'oPPEDA. [cH. II. afforded no protection against death preceded by dis- honour. Other females, in whom, either from too tender or too advanced age, the soldiery were disap- pointed of brutal gratification, were inclosed in a barn, and driven back by pikes, when they attempted esca]3e from the flames in which they were event- ually consumed \ Similar horrors were enacted in the pursuit of that band which had sought the moun- tains ; for of these also the greater part, the aged and infirm, the women ^ and children, drooping under fatigue, were readily overtaken. Two-and-twenty villages were levelled with the ground ; 4000 of their inhabitants were massacred ; and 700 of the most able-bodied peasants were reserved for galley slaves '. The temper of the French nation was not yet pre- pared for this wholesale and atrocious butchery on account of difference of Faith, and the intelligence of D'Opj^eda's great wickedness was received v/ith exe- crations. The King refused to admit him to his pre- sence, but content with this single mark of displeasure, forbade any judicial inquiry into his conduct. The last year of this reign was again sullied with numerous ^ Minerius etiam ad quadraginta circiter foemlnas in horreiim straminis atque fceni ple7Ui7n includit, post ignem suhjicit et m- cendit : aimque illce vestibus exutis conarentur flammam nascen- tem restlnguere, neque possent, ad viajorem fenestram, qudfoenum recondi solet in horreum, advolant, ut sese ejiciant. Sed ibi repulses telis et hastis conflagrdruiit omnes. — Id. ibid. 2 Erayit mulieres quingentce. — Id. ibid. 3 Camararius, Hist. Fratrum in Bohemia et Moravid is cited by Gerdesius as an authority for these horrors. We have de- pended mainly upon Gerdesius himself, Gamier, the Hist, des Egl. Re/., and De Thou, vi. 15. Fra Paolo has boldly de- nounced the Massacre in the lid book of his Hist, del Concilio Tridentino. 15 A. D. 1547.] RISE OF THE HOUSE OF GUISE. 53 bi-utal executions at Meaux ^ ; and tlie death of Francis, therefore, whom the Reformed now justly- esteemed a confirmed persecutor, was far from occa- sioning regret; especially since in his son March si and successor, Henry II., a Prince of less ^^*''- active habits, they expected a more lenient master. But the hands to which Henry, from his very acces- sion, committed the administration of his power, were most hostile to the Reformed principles. Few Houses in Europe were more illustrious than that of Lorraine, Drawing their remote origin from times beyond memorial, they numbered among their ancestors, in the paternal line, Godfrey, the first King of Jerusalem ; and, by the mother's side, they were descended from a daughter of Charlemagne. Claude, a younger brother of that family, having passed into the service of Louis XII., so far ingratiated himself with that INIonarch, and afterwards with his son, Francis L, that he obtained the erection of his estate of Guise into a Duchy ^ ; but the favour of the second reign was not of long endurance, and the latter days of Claude were passed in disgrace. His son Francis, a gallant and accomplished Prince, bold, enterprising, and ambitious, had won the aflfections of Henry by his skill in bodily exercises, and his agreeable talents for companionship. The marriage of one of his brothers, the Duke d'Elboeuf, to a daughter of the Royal mistress, Diana Duchess of Yalentinois, materially strengthened the interests of this aspiring Family ; and when the bond became more strongly knit by the ^ A full account of them may be found cited by Gerdesius, iv. 163, from the Acta et Monumetita Martyrum. 2 In 1527. 54 AMBITION OF THE GUISES. [cH. II. admission into the Royal councils of Charles Cardinal of Lorraine, the most crafty and politic spirit of his time, the threefold cord was in truth not easily to be broken. An alliance with the Royal House itself, within a few years from the point at which we have now arrived, was to give increased consolidation to a power already too swollen for that of subjects : and when their niece ^ Mary Queen of Scots, bestowed her hand upon the Dauphin Francis, the brothers of Guise might be deemed virtual Kings of France. There can be little doubt that all their sagacity and vigilance were thenceforward directed to the discovery of some favourable moment, at which the narrow line, still separating them from titular Royalty, might be safely overleaped. But the Reformed, deeply suffering from the bitterness of persecution with which they had been visited, especially by the Cardinal of Lorraine, watched their course with a keenly jealous observance ; and to the Political hatred which soon mingled itself with Religious differences, may be traced the ultimate failure of the Guises, no less than the long train of bitter calamities which France was doomed to suffer from intestine discord ^. 1 Daughter of their sister, Mary of Lorraine, Queen of James V. of Scotland. 2 The early history of the Family of Guise, and of their posi- tion in the French Court, is very lucidly given in the 1st Book of Davila. Antony Colynet, who in 1591 wrote, or rather trans- lated. The true History of the Civill Warres of France between the French King, Henry the IVth. and the Leaguers, does not speak of the House of Lorraine with all the respect which it de- serves. " Claude of Lorrayne," he says, " came into France in a manner, with a wallet and a staffe ; that is to say, a beggarly gentleman in comparison with the great revenues which hee and his heirs had afterwards in France." ..." He began to growe A. D. 1549. J ENTRANCE OF HENRY II. TO PARIS. 55 The hopes of the Calvinists, perhaps, were not wholly dissipated, till the new King celebrated a public entry into his Capital two years after his accession. The ceremonial was con- ducted with extraordinary pomp and magnificence, and attended by the principal Nobles of the Kingdom. Heralds had been previously despatched to the Em- peror at Brussels, where they proclaimed, that jousts would be held during fifteen days in Paris. Thither, in the names of the challengers, amongst whom it was announced, that Henry himself would appear both on foot and on horseback, they invited all Knights, desirous of honour, to proceed and seek it at the appointed season. At the time of this solem- nity, when the Coronation also of the Queen was celebrated, and a mock naval fight exhibited on the Seine, the King, surrounded by a brilliant cortege, held a Bed of Justice in his Parliament ; and a few days afterwards, assisted at a splen- did Religious Procession ; assembled the Notables in one of the saloons of the Palace, to take cognizance by crouching, and capping, and double diligence." The Cardi- nals of Guise and of Lorraine are contemptuously described as " two Massing Priests." The great ascendancy of the brothers, however, is narrated with much truth. '* In his time, (that of Francis II.) they disposed of all things after their owne willes. For the King sawe nothing but by their eyes, heard nothing but by their mouthes, did nothing but by their hands ; so that there remained nothing but onely the wearing of the crowne upon their owne heads, and the name of King. In this great pros- peritie they lacked nothing, neither will nor meanes to attaine to their intent, but that the Nobilitie of France was a perilous blocke in their way, which they could not leap over for to ascend to so great and high seate of majestie ; and instead of a velvet cap to weare a crowne of pure gold." — p. 2. 56 EXECUTIONS IN PARIS. [cH. II.- of the state of Religion ; and ordered the Concier- gerie to be cleared that very night of all the miser- able victims long since condemned for Heresy, but whose execution had been specially deferred, in order that it might add another spectacle to these days of Royal festivity. Four scaffolds were accord- ingly erected in different public places of the City ; one on the Greve, one in the Place Maubert, a third in front of the porch of Notre Dame, and the last on the spot recently dedicated to scenes of chivalrous pleasure in the tournaments at the Rue St. Antoine. As darkness fell, the piles blazed on high ; and the King, who visited them in succession, distinguished, not without compunction, among the cries of the WTCtched sufferers expiring in agony, the voice of a favourite attendant of his bed-chamber \ A more general blow against the Reformed was inflicted, when Henry, jealous of the designs of Charles V. upon the Duchy of Parma, espoused the cause of Octavio Famese against the Emperor and Pope Julius III. The King of France then not only protested against the re-assembling of the Coun- cil of Trent, at the opening of its new Session, but marched a body of troops to ravage the Ecclesiastical territories ; and willing to counteract any impression that he was hostile to the Church itself, which might J551 arise from these ambiguous acts, he issued June 25. ^^^ ordinance, the Edict of Chateaiihriand, visiting the Sacramentarians with peculiar and un- precedented severity. By that mandate, the Civil and Ecclesiastical Courts were instructed to co- operate for the extirpation of Heresy. In order to 1 Felibien, Hist, de Paris. De Thou, vi. 4. A. D. 1551.] EDICT OF CHATEAUBRIAND. 57 prevent the admission of any secret favourer of the Reformed opinions to stations of authority in the Law, every person applying for such appointments, was to exhibit testimonials, not only of his correct morals, hut also of his undoubted orthodoxy ; and, in like manner, to purge the magistracy, even in its lowest grades, from any suspected officers, secret in- quiries were to be made by the chiefs into the con- duct of all their inferiors, the Seneschals, Baillies, Provosts, and their respective Lieutenants, as to their strict performance of the Edict ; and the higher Counsellors were compelled to answer interrogatories concerning their Faith, whenever proposed to them at the Quarterly meetings. The most rigid examination on Religious points was instituted before bestowal of Academical appointments on Rectors of Colleges and Schoolmasters ; and, if in Corporate towns the Mayors and Aldermen were incautiously chosen, the electors exposed themselves to a process as fosterers of Heresy. Under that most extensive denomination were now included not only those who should give an asylum to the Reformed, or assist in any manner their escape from justice, but whoever also, after an arrest, should venture to intercede or to present the slightest petition in behalf of a prisoner. The pro- perty of all fugitives to Protestant States was to be seized and confiscated ; and any persons who had engaged in collusive transfers by which they nomi- nally held the estates of absent Heretics, and trans- mitted to them the rents, were subjected to like con- fiscation and an additional heavy fine. The informer who could prove that any subject of France had for- warded money to Geneva, was entitled to a clear third both of the penalties and of the property. The 58 RESTRICTIONS ON THE PRESS. 1_CH, 11. final clause was directed against the Press, that mighty engine upon which the progress of Knowledge must at all times depend, and without whose aid, the zeal, courage, piety, sufferings, activity, and talents of the Reformers might ultimately have proved in- effectual. Books and pamphlets written in every vein of literature, didactic, controversial, or satirical ; gravely illustrative of Protestant doctrines, or merci- lessly ridiculing the abuses of Popery, had long heen forwarded from Geneva to Lyons as a central maga- zine. Their subsequent dispersion through the dis- tant Provinces was easily effected; and a hope of gain from the general excitement of public curiosity, induced the booksellers of Paris, of Poitiers, and of Bordeaux, to circulate and even to reprint this at- tractive ware. By the Edict of Chateaubriand, the importation of every book of every sort from Geneva, or from any other town separated from the Romish Communion, was prohibited under pain of fine and corporal punishment. The Police of Lyons w^as or- dered to pay frequent visits to booksellers' shops and printing offices. Printers were forbidden from working, unless on their own premises ; from issuing abroad any Work without their own name and that of the author on its title-page ; from receiving any MS. of the Holy Scriptures, or connected with Theo- logy, unless attested by a certificate under the hands of two Doctors of Divinity ; from selling any publication not registered in a Catalogue which they were bound to present to the Magistrates ; from opening any packet of books on its arrival from a Foreign Country, unless in the presence of two Eccle- siastics ; and from selling by auction any library without the previous inspection of authorized censors. A. D. 1553.] LOUIS DE MARSAC. 59 Human ingenuity might tax itself in vain to frame a law more odious than this Edict ; more oppressive or more tyrannically opposed to intellectual advance- ment, and therefore to the best interests of mankind. The Plague was now raging in Paris, and it seemed as if it were believed that the wrath of Heaven might be deprecated by human vic- tims, so numerous were the daily offerings of Heretics delivered to the stake. In other parts of the King- dom, persecution was equally active. When the Duke of Guise compelled Charles V., hitherto unaccustomed to reverse, to raise the siege of Metz, after the fruitless loss of the flower of his troops, perhaps the triumph of the victorious commander derived no small addition from a committal to the flames, by the common exe- cutioner, of every Lutheran book which he found within the walls of the City after its relief ^ At Lyons far more barbarous fires were kindled, and numerous missionaries despatched by the Bernese for the conversion of that City were adjudged to the stake. Among these was a brave gentleman, Louis de Marsac, whose youth had been passed, not with- out distinction, in arms, and whose later years found consolation in the perusal of the Scriptures, a crime deemed worthy of capital punishment. When led out to execution, the prisoner observed that each of his fellow- suff'erers carried a halter round his neck ; an ignominy which had been spared himself, in con- sideration of the respect due to his military rank and services. Jealous, however, of his honour, and re- luctant to surrender any portion, however small, of 1 De Thou, xi. 12. " This act," ^ays Bishop IMeurisse, performed a Vimitatiou du pieux Roy Ezechias," p. 112. 60 ABUSES IN [CH. II. the glory of Martyrdom, the undaunted veteran turned to the attendant Magistrates, and asked of them, if there was any distinction between his own offence and that of his comrades ? "If there be not," he added, " give me also a like collar, and enrol me in a similar Order of Knighthood ^" The numerous abuses existing in the Gallican Church at the commencement of the Reformation had eminently assisted its progress in France. The Crown had by degrees assumed to itself the patronage of almost all the great Ecclesiastical preferments ; and by its corrupt disposal of Bishoprics and Abbeys, had rendered them prizes of Court favouritism instead of rewards of piety and learning. Persons most remote from Spiritual habits frequently thus obtained bene- fices either for themselves or for their connexions ; and even if they did not give occasion for scandal by open licentiousness, they deeply injured the credit of the Church by total ignorance or neglect of its duties. The privilege of Commendam was one of the most fruitful sources of disorder. In the earlier Christian Church, whenever a hostile irruption, a famine, or any other public calamity, had so far diminished the revenues of an Episcopal See, or a Religious House, as to render them insufficient for the support of its ordi- nary Head, the Metropolitan recommended the pastoral charge to some neighbouring Ecclesiastic, who ac- cepted the additional burden gratuitously, till a more favourable season permitted a re-establishment of the suspended dignity. It is easy to perceive how this charitable custom, at first so praiseworthy, dege- nerated in times less pure into abuse. The chief re- 1 De Thou, xii. 13. CH. II.] THE GALLICAN CHURCH. 61 venues of the Cardinals, whom the duties of the Sacred College detained in permanent abode at Rome, were at first derived from Prebends or other benefices with- out cure of souls ; but ambition and avarice gradually- fostered the desire of exalted station and overflowing coffers, and by the j)erversion of Commendams, the richest Sees were often accumulated in plurality upon Ecclesiastics by whom they could never be visited. The convenient licence thus assumed by the Court of Rome was not likely to be long unimitated by Secular Princes ; and, in France, the wealthiest benefices were abundantly showered down upon those, whose con- nexion v/ith the Blood Royal, or whose Cabinet duties as Ministers of State, attached them to the Court; even women were admitted as Eveques Laiz \ and either sold their Bishoprics or provided substitutes, or Custod'ines ^ as they were termed, to perform the Clerical offices for the least possible stipend. Similar abuses prevailed among the inferior Clergy ; and Dis- pensations were so readily accorded, that, unless in rare instances, the population at large lived either without any Pastors at all, or with Curates unworthy of the name. Religion, therefore, was sought for in vain, and its place was usurped by ignorance and superstition. A reform of these grievous Temporal abuses, preached boldly by men who announced also a more enlightened S^^iritual doctrine, which they asserted in despite of bonds, persecution, and death, and who ^ Description de VIsle des Hermaphrodites ; Journal d' Henri III. iv. 53. ^ Ptoze, Bishop of Senlis, who administered his Diocese by a Custodine, is called Eveqiie portatif, in the Satyre Menippee, i. 77- and, in the Remarques, Eveqice volant is said to be an equivalent expression. 62 FIRST ESTABLISHMENT OF A [cH. II. maintained their purity of teaching by a correspondent purity of life, was certain to obtain zealous partizans ; especially when it was opposed, not by argument but by arms ; combated only by the sword of the Law and the terror of punishment. In vain was the scaf- fold deluged with the blood of unnumbered Martyrs ! It became, as has been powerfully said elsewhere, the seed of the Church, springing up to abundant har- vest, and bearing a return, some sixty, some a hun- dred-fold. In vain were the tongues of Confessors torn out before they were dragged to execution, in order to prevent their dying words from awakening sympathy ! They being dead yet spake ; and their speech was as the voice of a trumpet. Day by day the Reformation embedded itself more firmly in France, and secretly or openly a very large propor- tion of the population embraced its doctrines. Hitherto, nevertheless, the Calvinists, as we must for the present call them, were but isolated indivi- duals, without a focus and point of union ; but their power, even while thus disjointed, had been suffi- ciently revealed in many separate struggles, espe- cially in those occurring at Metz ; and they could not long remain blind to the great benefit which would be derived from co-operation. It was in 1555 that the first avowed French Church, on the principles of the Reformation, was established at Paris, by a number of proselytes, for some time accustomed to assemble for worship in a house in an obscure quarter of the Fauxbourg St. Germain. The chief of this little band was named Ferriere Maligni ^ a gentleman of ancient extraction and large possessions in Maine. His anxiety to ob- ^ Brother-in-law of the Vidamede Chartres. Gamier, xv. 137. A. D. 1555.] CALVINISTIC CHURCH IN FRANCE. 63 tain Baptism administered otherwise than after the ritual of that Communion which he had abandoned, for an infant of which his wife was pregnant, induced him to organize a Body approaching to the model of Geneva, and consisting of a Minister, Deacons, and Elders. T-he example was followed during the same year at Meaux, at Poitiers, at Anglers, and at L'Isle d'Alvert in Saintonge ; and so rapidly were these Religious associations multiplied in other places — partly indeed by the connivance of Magistrates who in secret were their friends — that in the single dis- trict of Orleans, six Churches were founded before the I expiration of the two following years. Great was the stability derived from these fixed and j)ermanent institutions ; for hitherto Spiritual duties had been administered only by casual Pastors ; by itinerant missionaries from Geneva, ranging in small num- bers over a large circuit, hastily disappearing at the first alarm, and leaving their flocks untended in mo- ments of terror and of peril. The Churches now erected, although wholly independent upon each other, maintained a cordial and uninterrupted mutual communication ; ramified widely on all sides ; and by deputing from themselves a fitting Minister to every Congregation which had the will and the ability to support one, ensured new strength to the parent stock by every fresh branch which germinated from its bosom. Nor was it in France only that the French Re- formed hoped for establishment. Their Sect, pro- scribed in the Old World, sought for dominion in the New ; and the brilliant hope might have been grati- fied but for the treachery of a hypocrite by whom they were deceived and betrayed. Nicolas Durand, G4 EXPEDITION OF DURAND. [cH. II. of Villegagnon, a Knight of Malta and Vice-Admiral of Britany, had been much employed in naval ser- vices on the coast of Brazil ^ with the localities of which he had thus become well acquainted; and stimulated equally by avarice and by ambition *, he tliought to build his fortune on the patronage of one often to be mentioned with distinction in the follow- ing pages, Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France. That Nobleman's attachment to the Reformed Doc- trines, although not yet publicly avowed, was a matter of sufficient notoriety ; and Durand obtained his confidence by offering to plant a Protestant Colony on the shores of South America. Coligny ardently embraced the project ; and having represented to the King in general terms, with a careful avoidance of his particular object, the probable great commercial advantages which must result from an establishment in that Country, he obtained both the Royal permis- sion, and also funds sufficient for his purpose. Du- rand, in assembling his band of emigrants, took espe- cial care to secure, so far as prudence allowed, a great majority of Protestants ; and before the close of 1555 he disembarked 300 settlers on an Island in the Rio de Janeiro. The first advices which he transmitted home announced success in glowing language ; and his applications for more colonists, for marriageable women, and, above all, for two discreet and active 1 Durand had shown great skill also by eluding an English fleet which might have stopped the passage of the young Queen Mary, when the Scots, in 1548, resolved that she should be con- veyed from her own turbulent Country to France. De Thou, v. 15. 2 Glor'us studio et, ut qiddam aiunt, ingenti parandarum divi- tiarum ardore incitatiis. De Thou, xvi. 15. T. A.Deaii, sculp* 'SAsipAmiG) mm cccDJiLiK&srar, ADMTHAI. OF FRAiNCl:. Londm.-Pui'lisJvat by J. C. ScM JtivUi^^w,2/i.'i?-. A. D. 1555.] HIS TREACHERY. 65 Ministers, were received with avidity by Calvin and the Synod of Geneva. Missionaries cheerfully volun- teered on a service so hopeful and alluring ; and it was not until they landed on a barren and burning soil, which, although affording but scanty means of uncertain subsistence and scarcely extending a mile in circumference, had been dignified by the vanity of the adventurers with the swollen title of Antarctic France, that their dreams of peace, liberty, and abundance, were dissipated : nor was it till they had experienced, first the carelessness and opposition, afterwards the cruelty and persecution of Durand, that they discovered his object to be unconnected with purity of Religion. In his real design he had amply succeeded : the Admiral's influence and money had given him footing in America, and for the rest, it was now his interest to espouse the opposite party. Harassed by his tyranny and intolerance, the disap- pointed Ministers and many of their flock asked per- mission to return to Europe. It was readily ac- corded ; but the vessel provided for their passage was so little sea-worthy, that part of them feared to sail in her, and those who confided more willingly in the mercy of the elements than in that of their op- pressor, nearly perished by famine from want of suf- ficient stores. At length, on touching at Hennebon, in Britany, they delivered to the Magistrates of that town a sealed packet, which Durand had informed them would insure protection and hospitality at whatever French port they might first land. These LitteriJB Bellerophontece, however, in truth denounced the bearers as Heretics, and commended them to the secular arm. Fortunately for the unsuspecting mes- sengers of their own destruction, the authorities at r 66 FAILURE OF THE BRAZILIAN COLONY. [cH. 11. Henneboii favoured the Reformation, and disclosed the perfidy of Diirand to the miserable and ex- hausted fugitives. Ere the lapse of many years, his wickedness encountered just retribution. His num- bers, greatly weakened both by the departure of this persecuted band and by his rule of blood over those M^ho remained, were insufficient to withstand the attacks of the jealous Portuguese. During his ab- sence in quest of reinforcements, the island was captured, the fort which he had erected was destroyed ; and Rio de Janeiro, which, to adopt the opinion of the modern Historian of Brazil, but for the treachery of Villegagnon to his own party, would probably have been at this day the Capital of a French Colony, was wrested from its undeserving possessors shortly after its attainment \ Meantime, the embarrassed Political state of France, under the weak sway of Henry II., and the alarm and distraction which succeeded the memorable defeat of St. Quentin, removed the public attention for a short period from the increasing strength of Protest- antism, and enabled its now organized Church to strike root deeply, and with firmness. It was not until two years after the establishment of a Congre- gation in a Meeting-house so publicly situated as to be immediately fronting the Sorbonne, that its fre- quenters, amounting to more than 400 persons, 1 Southey, Hist, of Brazil, i, 291, where this expedition is related, mainly on the authority of Jean de Lery, one of the Re- formed adventurers, who returned home. De Thou, who has narrated Durand's attempt with much particularity, very highly commends Lery's account. Hanc navigatio7iem Leriiis, simid et regionis naturam ac mores geniis, sitmind fide ac simpUcitate de- scripsit. Ut sup. A. D. 1557.] ATTACKON A PARISIAN MEETING-HOUSE. 67 attracted any marked popular attention. During the panic, however, arisinoj from the recent loss •^ " . 1557. of the great battle just mentioned, the con- course of this large assembly of both sexes and of all classes, one evening at an unusual hour, to hear a sermon and to celebrate the Lord's Supper, excited suspicion in the neighbourhood. The inhabitants of that quarter of the city rose in arms, beset the INIeet- ing-house, and when the Calvinists opened its doors, at the close of their worship, in order to retire, attacked them with volleys of stories. A general tumult ensued ; a few of the Reformed, drawing their swords, cut their way through the infuriated rabble ; and the remainder, less courageous, endea- voured to defend themselves within the Meeting- house, which they barricaded, till the arrival of the Police freed them for awhile from danger. The officers took possession of a large and well-lighted apartment, down the centre of which were arranged some wooden benches round a long table covered with linen cloths ; and close to the side walls v/ere spread a few mattresses, as an accommodation for those persons who resided too distantly to permit them to return home at an advanced hour of night. But great indeed was the astonishment of the direct- ing Magistrate, when amid the Congregation he per- ceived numerous persons of distinction, and, espe- cially, certain Ladies of the Palace and Maids of Honour to the Queen. Willing to spare his. female prisoners the shame and, perhaps, the danger of open exposure to a fierce and licentious mob, he took all the precautions in his power for their safety. But his escort proved too weak ; and it was not until after the endurance of grievous insults and great F 2 68 REFORMED PROSECUTED BY MUSNIER. [cH. II. violence, so that the hoods of the women were rudely torn from their faces, and all suffered indiscriminately from blows and showers of mud, that they were lodged in the Chatelet. Pains were taken, during their imprisonment before trial, to spread abroad the most atrocious calumnies respecting the objects of their meeting. The nameless crimes which, from the first Ages of the Church, have been imputed to those whom peril has compelled to employ secrecy in their assemblies, were again revived ; and the innocent mattresses found in the Meeting-house were cited even from the Pulpit as damning proofs of the un- speakable guilt of the prisoners \ A Judge, of broken character, Musnier by name, concealing himself at the moment from a process of subornation and per- jury, solicited the odious post of public accuser ^ ; and the suspension of the suit against him was the price which he was to receive for his labour of bitterness and hatred. In a few days he expedited the legal forms against the accused, and pursuing his task with the ardour of one who felt that his own immunity was to be purchased by their destruction, he suc- ceeded in obtaining a sentence which brought five of his victims to the stake. The friends of the remain- ^ lis adjoustoient, pour mieux orner ce mensonge, qu'il y avoit des Nonnains et des Moines ; tant ces hons Religieux de la Pa- paute se sont acquis bonne reputation de sainctete, que s'il se fait quelque compte de paillardise et d'infamie il faut quHls soient de la partie. — Hist, des Egl. Ref. torn. i. liv. ii. p. 1^0. 2 " Having knowingly admitted a false witness against a gen- tleman of the Countess of Senignan, by which means he had sentenced that poor gentleman to be hanged." Laval, Hist, of the Ref and of the Ref Churches in France, i. 90. This villany is related at length by Henri Estienne, in his Apologie pour Herodote, vol. i. partii. c. 17. p. 375. A. D. 1557.] TRACT BY THEBP. OF AVRANCHES. 69 ing prisoners, and of the few who had escaped, drew up a bold Apology addressed to the King, but intended for the Public. It received many answers from the zeal of the Sorbonne ; and among them one not to be forgotten, of which the author was Cenalis, Bishop of Avranches. That learned Prelate entered into " a marvellous pleasant disputation^" concerning the signs of the True Church ; presupposing that, even without the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments, there were certain outward signs by which a True and False Church might be distin- guished from each other. The signs of our Church, says this acute reasoner, are Bells, by which we are summoned to Mass ; the signs of the Heretics are Pistols and Muskets, which they discharge during their meetings. He then wantons and luxuriates through a protracted antithesis of the opposite quali- ties of these visible testimonies. Bells, he says, wdth a play upon the words which it is difficult to ren- der, sound in unison. Muskets in confusion^ ; Bells explode musically, Muskets terrifically ; the former open Heaven, the latter Hell ; these disperse storms and lightning, those gather clouds and mimic thunder. In spite of this Logic, the Elector Palatine and the Protestant Cantons interceded for the prisoners ; and since the state of his external relations was too dangerous to permit Henry to run the hazard of awakening new foreign enemies, he dissembled, and consented to their enlargement. It was no longer then among the obscure or middle ^ This " dispute merveilleusement plaisante" is noticed in the Hist, des Egl. Ref. i. 125. 2 Les cloches sonnent, les harquebuses ionnent. 70 THE BOURBON PRINCES [cH. II. classes only that the spirit of tlie Reformation was to be sought ; it had reared its head in high places also ; and the Court and the Nobles of France were beginning to be divided among themselves on the great question of Religious Faith. Of the two Royal Houses of Valois and Bourbon, both descended from St. Louis, the former was now in possession of the Crown ; the latter, although depressed by Francis I., in conse- quence of the well-known treason of its Head, the Constable, enjoyed all the privileges of Princes of the Blood ; and its present representatives, Antony Duke of Vendome (who by marriage with Jeanne D'Albret had become titular King of Navarre) and his brother Louis Prince of Conde, may be named as the most illustrious of those who inclined to the Protestant doctrines ^ The King of Navarre was a man of easy temper and vacillating conduct, quickly alarmed, in- dolent, and devoted to pleasure. The Prince of Conde, on the other hand, was bold, hardy, daring, and adventurous. His marriage with a niece of the Admiral Coligny ^ cemented a union between the two 1 Antony and Louis were sons of Charles, Duke of Vendome, Head of the Bourbons after the death of the Constable at the Sack of Rome. Antony succeeded to the Crown of Navarre on the death of his Father-in-law, Henry d'Albret, in 1555. 2 The Princess of Conde was Eleanor de Roye, daughter of Magdelaine de Mailly, a sister of the Admiral Coligny. This union connected the Bourbons with the House of the Constable, Anne Montmorency, also ; for the mother of the Colignys was Louise of that Family. The spirit of Montmorency doubted, for a time, between the two Religions ; but at length he united himself, as we shall see hereafter, with the Romanists. Perhaps he might, in some measure, be influenced by a mistaken belief that the corrupt Popery of his own time was the same pure Christ- ianity which his ancestors had adopted in the days of Phara- A. D. 1558.] ATTEND A REFORMED PROCESSION. 7l Families, and brought him in contact with the Re- formed: and while the King of Navarre, floating loosely on the tide of scepticism, was for ever tossed about by some nev*^ wave of doubt, and lived and died in suspense between the two Creeds, the Prince of Conde devoted all the influence of his exalted rank, all his physical energies, and all his great powers of intellect to the support of the holy cause which he ultimately adopted with his inmost heart. The nuptials of the Dauphin Francis with Mary Queen of Scots had summoned a brilliant assembly to Paris, and the Bourbons, for a long time unused to bask in Royal favour, and there- fore, so far as the necessary obligations of their rank permitted, avoiding the chill atmosphere of the Court whose sunshine was eclipsed to them, attended the festivities, much more in compliance with etiquette than from inclination. No sooner had the King withdrawn from his Capital, after the conclusion of the spectacles, than these Princes, with their Consorts, resorted to the Protestant Congregations. Urged by the fiery zeal of Calvin, who in frequent letters had reproached them with cowardice and pusillanimity, the Reformed Ministers were then preparing to asto- nish all France by a bold avowal of their proscribed and persecuted Faith. The Princes of the Blood were prevailed upon to accompany a solemn Proces- sion through the Fauxbourg St. Germain, in which mond ; and which, as their descendant, he was bound to main- tain. It was the proud boast of the House of Montmorency to trace themselves from the first Frank who received Baptism ; a tradition, attested by their motto, Deus primum Christianuvi servetl Davila, lib. i. Ed Venet. 1733, fol. torn. i. p. 10. 72 FRANCIS d'aNDELOT [cH. II. nearly 4000 of the Reformed chanted, at the fullest pitch of voice, the Psalms of Marot, and paraded during several hours under the protection of a nume- rous escort of armed gentlemen. When intelligence of this singular exhibition was conveyed to the King, great pains were taken to impress upon him that it was but part of a general conspiracy on the eve of explosion. But the high rank of the chief parties concerned deterred him from proceeding farther, at the moment, than ordering his Parliament to prose- cute enquiries and receive informations, and threaten- ing capital punishment for any similar outrage ^ One step indeed he took in his perplexity, little justified either by prudence or by the immediate circumstances. Francis de Coligny, Sieur d' Andelot, although more boldly avowing the principles of Cal- vinism than his brother the Admiral, had not joined in this Procession. On visiting his estate in Britany, however, a Province as yet less imbued than any other with the Reformed Doctrines, he had been accompanied by a Protestant Minister, who preached and administered the Communion in the House of his Patron, and assisted him in laying the foundation of more than one Calvinistic Church. The King, unwilling wholly to overlook this open defiance of Law, was equally unwilling to expose himself to a breach with the powerful Family of Coligny ; and perhaps, as a consequence, with that of Montmorency also ; and he therefore mildly invited D'Andelot to Court, in order that he might hear his justification, and thus silence his accusers. For that purpose he informed beforehand, both the Cardinal de Chastillon 1 De Thou, XX. 15. A. D. 1558.] AVOWS THE REFORMED DOCTRINE. 73 another brother of D'Andelot, and a Montmorency his cousin, of the precise questions which he designed to ask, in order that time might be afforded for the pre- paration of suitable replies ; and he added, that with- out pursuing the investigation more deeply, he should be content with a simple disavowal. That disavowal, however, was not easily to be wrung from the single- hearted, spotless, and sincere D'Andelot ; and it was in vain that his Brother and his Cousin exhausted their casuistry to persuade the gallant and high- minded soldier, who coveted the glorious title sans reproche, to violate his honor and offend his con- science. The King, during a familiar conversation at supper, reminded him of the long and sincere attachment subsisting between them ; how nume- rous were the favours bestowed on the one hand, how great the services performed on the other. At the same time, he expressed a profound conviction, that one whom he so cordially loved, never could be found in the ranks of his enemies, lending himself to the rebellious stratagems of a turbulent and illegal Sect. Still, he continued, as some strange reports to the contrary had been whispered, it would be advisable that he should make a declaration of his opinions concerning the Mass. To this request D'Andelot calmly replied, that the remembrance of the King's exceeding grace and bounty was so deeply impressed upon his heart that he could not sufficiently display his gratitude, even if he expended his last drop of blood in the Royal service ; to which he had vowed to devote his sword, his body, and his life. Never- theless that his Soul belonged to God, its giver ; that having providentially been enlightened by the Gospel, and believing that he had discovered Truth in that 74 ARREST AND IMPRISONMENT [cH. II. very Creed which his Majesty persecuted blindly and without enquiry, he should think himself unworthy to live if he lied before his conscience and his King. And, finally, that since he was compelled to explain himself concerning the Mass, he did not hesitate to declare that he considered it to be a horrible profa- nation. The King, little prepared for this uncom- promising rejection of his overtures, and indignant at having lavished so much gentleness upon one who thus boldly defied his authority, hastily breaking up the table, seized a dish, and while intending to vent liis anger by shattering it on the ground, uninten- tionally struck the Dauphin, who sat next him, a severe blow. He then committed the offender to the prison of the Bishop of Meaux, and deprived him of his high office of Colonel in Chief of the French In- fantry ^ A short period of reflection, however, convinced the King of the impolicy of these extreme measures ; and he wrote with his own hand to the Constable Montmorency an account of the provocation which he had received from his kinsman, entreating him at the same time to be at ease, for that all was pardoned ; and in testimony of his intended mercy, he removed the prisoner from the Episcopal custody, in which he was in some measure exposed to the grasp of the Inquisition, to a much less formidable confinement in the Castle of Melun. During his imprisonment in that fortress, D'Andelot's hours were chiefly devoted to reading ; and Brantome, from whom we derive this information, is greatly scandalized that he was per- ' Quce dignitas maximum in militid nostra momentum hahet, De Thou, XX. 10. Hist, des Egl. Rcf. torn. i. p. 143, &c. A. D. 1558.] OF FRANCIS d'aNDELOT. 75 mitted to receive all kinds of books indiscriminately without previous search. The Inquisition, he tells us, was by no means so strict as it proved afterwards, and every here and there people might learn the New Religion. Then breaking out into that which we imagine is a denouncement of Letters in general, " See," he exclaims, " what are the fruits of leisure and of idleness ! how readily do they teach all evil matters, of which the wages is repentance \" It was in vain that Paul IV., who received with delight intelligence of the first vigorous commence- ment of this quarrel, extolled the King's piety, and the self-sacrifice which he had offered up. " What," said the Pontiff, kindling with his theme, and snuffing the fumes of an approaching Holocaust, " what is fitting on such occasions but to leap on the neck of the criminal, and to burn him alive on the spot ^ !" The Royal Ambassador, to whom these words were addressed, humbly represented that justice in France did not travel with footsteps thus rapid, especially when the fate of one so illustrious as D'Andelot was to be decided. Meantime, the wiles of the Tempter were put in force, instead of the fires of the Exe- cutioner. Ruse, Confessor to the King, a Doctor fully accomplished in the Logic of the Sorbonne, (as his name might seem to imply, if we were inclined to play upon it,) was instructed to wind himself into the confidence of the prisoner, and to sap that firmness which despised all menace and repelled every open attack. The tears of a beloved Wife and the remon- strances of the Admiral, who earnestly adjured his 1 Tom. vii. p. 384. Disc. Ixxxix. 7. 2 Gamier, xiv. 251. 76 POPULAR TUMULTS. [cH. II. brother to dissemble, after his own manner, till the arrival of a better season, at length prevailed, and D'Andelot so far yielded as to permit the celebration of Mass in his cell. The gates of the prison were tlirown open to him immediately on the conclusion of that service ; but never did his high-toned spirit cease to reproach itself with that which it regarded as a weak, guilty, and dishonourable compliance. This lenity of the King disconcerted and irritated the bigoted Romanists ; and not long afterwards, when the Parliament brought the suspended process against the corrupt Judge Musnier to conclusion, and con- demned him on the clearest evidence to the pillory and to banishment, the populace, attributing his sen- tence to the zeal which he had recently testified in prosecuting the Reformed unto death, rose in a Body when he was brought out for punishment, and prevented its execution. Two similar tumults soon afterwards occurred ; in one a Thief was rescued from the gal- lows because he was a Romanist ; in the other, a miserable Calvinist was, in like manner, torn from the hands of the Magistrates — not that his life might be preserved, but that he might expire under the protracted agonies inflicted by a ferocious rabble. Yet even in these moments of great peril, while the madness of the people was raging, while the Kings of the Earth stood up, and the Rulers took counsel together against the Reformed, the Calvin- ists of France had sufficient wisdom to provide for the unity of their Church by drawing up a Confes- sion of Faith and Canons of Discipline. Animated by holy courage, and confident in God, they con- voked their 1st. National Synod for those purposes, in the Metropolis of the Kingdom, and at the very A. D. 1559.] FIRST NATIONAL REFORMED SYNOD. 77 doors of the Court \ Over this memorable As- sembly, which commenced on the 20th of May, 1559, and continued its Session till the 28th of the same month ^, Francis de Morel, Sieur de Callonges, presided, assisted by the Deputies of eleven Churches ^. A Confession was promulgated, consisting of XV. distinct Articles, in which the following particulars ^e some of the most important. The Canon of Scripture agrees with that admitted by the Church of England, and the Apocryphal books, although not mentioned by name, are alluded to much after the manner of our own Vlth Article. (Art. IV.) The Apostles' Creed, together with the Nicene and Atha- nasian Creeds, are allowed " because they be agree- able to the Word of God." (Art. V.) The Trinity in Unity, the distinction of the three Persons, the begetting of the Son, and the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son jointly, are de- clared to be taught by Scripture. (Art. VI.) The perplexed question of Free Will is discreetly avoided, and the doctrine of God's Providence is treated in cautious and sensible language. (Art. VIII.) An acknowledgment of the creation of Adam pure and upright, conformably to God's image ; of his fall and consequent entire corruption (Art. IX.) ; of the burthen of Original Sin thus entailed upon his off- spring (Art. X.) ; "so that even the choicest of 1 In the Fauxbourg St. Germain. 2 De Thou mistakes the date of this Synod, and places it afl;er the arrest of the five Councillors, on the 28th of June, iv. Kal. Quint il. (xxii. 10.) To the courage of those who assembled he bears ample testimony, spreto certce necis metu. 3 Dieppe, St. Loo, Paris, Anglers, Orleans, Tours, Chastel- herault, Poitiers, Xaintes, St. Jean d'Angeli, and Marennes, 78 PROCEEDINGS OF THE [cH. II. God's Saints, although they do resist it, yet are they defiled with very many sins and offences so long as they live in this World" (Art. XI.) ; leads the way to the following account of Election, " We believe that out of this general corruption and condemnation in which all Men are plunged, God doth deliver them whom He hath in his eternal and unchangeable counsel chosen, of His mere goodness and mercy, through our Lord Jesus Christ, without any consi- deration of their works, leaving the rest in their sins and damnable estate, that He may show forth in them His Justice, as in the Elect He doth most illustriously declare the riches of His mercy. For one is not better than another until such time as God doth make the difference, according to His unchange- able purpose, which He hath determined in Jesus Christ before the Creation of the World. Nor can any one by his own power procure unto himself so great a blessing ; because we cannot by nature, nor of ourselves, excite in ourselves any one good mo- tion, thought, or affection, until such time as God does prevent and incline us to it by His Grace." (Art. XII.) Christ alone requisite to salvation (Art. XIII.) ; the union of God and Man in His person in opposition to the diabolical imagination of Servetus (Art. XIV.) ; justification by Faith ; and tiie abandonment of all human merit, are next un- equivocally professed (Art. XX.) All mediation but that of Christ is peremptorily rejected (Art. XXIV.) ; the Nature of our Lord is examined (Arts. XXV., XXVL, XXVII.) ; and the claims of Rome to the title of a true Church, are summarily dismissed ; " yet nevertheless, because there is yet some small track of a Church in the Papacy, and that Baptism, A. D. 1559.] FIRST NATIONAL REFORMED SYNOD. 79 as to its substance, hath been still continued ; and > because the efficacy of Baptism doth not depend ; upon him who doth administer it, we confess that ! they which are there baptized do not need a second ! Baptism. In the meanwhile, because of the cor- \ ruptions which are mingled with the administration of that Sacrament, no man can present his children to be baptized in that Church without polluting of his conscience." (Art. XXVIII.) The Calvinistic platform is then affirmed to agree with " that dis- cipline v/hich the Lord Jesus has established." (Art. XXIX.) The equality of all Churches is as- serted (Art. XXX.) ; and, in the Articles which succeed, a faint apology is offered for the breach of Apostolical succession into which Geneva is said to have been compulsorily driven. (Art. XXXI.) Then, after an explanation of the Sacraments, the Confession terminates with the following Articles on Political obedience ; — Articles which it might be thought would have rendered any Government, how- ever suspicious, confident of the fidelity, the sub- missiveness, and the desire to seek peace which must have animated the breast of every one who sub- scribed the document in which they were contained. " We believe that God will have the World to be ruled by Laws and Civil Government, that there may be some sort of bridles by which the unruly lusts of the World may be restrained; and, that therefore, he appointed Kingdoms, Commonwealths, and other kinds of Principalities, whether hereditary or otherwise. And not that alone, but also what- soever pertaineth to the ministration of justice, whereof he avoucheth himself the Author; there- fore, hath he even delivered the sword into the 15 so PROCEEDINGS OF THE [cH. II. | Magistrate's hand, so that sins committed against both the Tables of God's Law, not only against the Second but the First also, may be suppressed. And therefore, because God is the author of this order, we must not only suffer Magistrates whom He hath set over us, but we must also give them all honour and reverence, as unto His officers and lieutenants, which have received their commission from Him to exercise so lawful and sacred a function." (Art. XXXIX.) " Therefore, we affirm that obedience must be yielded unto their laws and statutes, that tribute must be paid to them, taxes and all other duties, and that we must bear the yoke of subjection with a free and willing mind, although the Magistrates be infidels : so that the sovereign Government of God be preserved entire. Wherefore we detest all those who do reject the Higher Powers, and would bring in a community and confusion of goods, and subvert the course of justice." (Art. XL.) On the Canons of Discipline it is not requisite that we should dwell ; they regulate the appoint- ment of Church Officers according to the well-known general Calvinistic model : and, in those Articles which regard the Laity, they occasionally exhibit somewhat of that spirit of encroachment on private rights and personal liberty of action which distin- guishes all Sects derived from the fountain of Ge- neva. Thus Ministers and all other Members of the Church are forbidden from " printing their own, or other Works concerning Religion, or in any wise publishing them till they have first communicated tliem unto two, or more, of the Gospel, of unspotted reputation." (Art. XXVIIL) " The Faithful whose A. D. 1559.] FIRST NATIONAL REFORMED SYNOD. 81 yoke-fellows are convict of adultery, shall be ad- vised to reconcile themselves with them ; but in case of refusal, that liberty they have by the word of God shall be declared to them. However none of the Churches shall dissolve the Marriage, lest they should intrench upon the authority of the Civil Ma- gistrate." (Art. XXXVII.) " No person may con- tract Marriage without the consent of Parents ; but in case Parents should be so unreasonable as to refuse their consent to such a holy and needful Ordinance, the Consistory shall advise what is to be done herein." (Art. XXXVIII.) " Promises of Marriage once made cannot be dissolved, no, not by mutual consent of the parties who have past those promises to each other ; and the Consistory of that Church where those persons are Members, shall judge of the lawfulness of those promises." (Art. XXXIX.) In the decisions of the Synod upon the Cases of Conscience submitted to it, we meet the same prudent and peaceable deference to Rulers and the Powers that be, which characterise the Articles already cited. " Our brother of St. John d'Angely demanding, whe- ther the Faithful might lawfully suffer their chil- dren's names to be recorded in the Registers of Popish Priests ? It was answered, That because it was a Civil Ordinance of his Majesty, the Mi- nisters and Consistories should specially observe the design and end of him that doth it, and ad- monish him that he be very careful lest thereby he be taken for a Papist." (Art. VIII.) "As to what was proposed by our brother of St. Lo, we answer. That notwithstanding the Popish Priests do unjustly claim a right to Tithes upon the account of their Ministry, yet they must be payed, because G 82 FIRST NATIONAL REFORMED SYNOD. [CH. II. of the King's commandment, as a matter in itself indifferent, and that sedition and scandal may be avoided \" (Art. XVI.) Well would it be if the Quakers had profited by the Lesson afforded them in this last decision of the wiser Calvinists, and had learned to avoid the silly and troublesome subter- fuge by which they elude the direct payment of Government dues ! ^ In this and our following accounts of other Synods of the French Reformed Church, we have relied upon the voluminous documents given by Quick in his laborious and invaluable com- pilation, Synodicon in Gallia Reformatd. CH. III.] DISSENSIONS IN THE PARLIAMENT OF PARIS. 83 CHAPTER III. Dissensions in the Parliament of Paris — The Mercuriales — Pre- sence of the King — Speeches of Dufaur and Duhourg — Their arrest — Process against Duhourg — His condemnation — Death of Henry II. — Supplication of the Reformed to Catherine de Medicis — Dubourg's appeal — His firmness — Denouncements of the Reformed — Assassination of Minart — Execution of Dubourg — Outrages in Paris — Weakness of the King of Navarre — The Prince of Conde avows his conversion — Calvinistic doctrine of Passive obedience — Its sophistical resolution — Conde becomes virtual Chief of the Reformed — La Renaudie — The King's journey to Blois — Frightful reports preceding it. This solemn meeting of the Reformed, and the pro- visions for organization wliich emanated from it, could not have occurred more seasonably ; for a blow was about to be struck wliich, but for the strength derived from union, might have proved fatal. Among the several Chambers of the Parliament of Paris ^ little agreement existed relative to the punishment of Heretics. The Grand Chamber ^ invariably con- ^ The Parliament of Paris is briefly described by Castelnau to be " an illustrious assembly of 130 Judges, attended by above 300 Advocates." — Mem. b. i. c. 4. The ordinary Edicts of the inferior Magistrates, and even the Royal Ordinances, were with- out force till registered by this powerful Body. There were Seven Parliaments in France during the reign of Henry II. (Henault ad ann. 1559). Mr. Hallam has ably compressed much information respecting the Parliament of Paris into a narrow compass. Middle Ages, i. 202. 7- ^ La Cour des Pers {i. e. des Peres) de France. — Mem. de Conde, i. 218. G 2 84 LENITY OF THE TOURNELLE. [cH. III. demned to the flames the delinquents cited before its tribunal ; the Court called La Tournelle on the other hand, was not less anxious to discover subterfuges by which means of escape might be opened. On one occasion, four Students of irreproachable life and morals, but zealous Calvinists, having been con- demned to death by the inferior Courts, appealed to the Tournelle. The President, eager to avoid a con- firmation of the horrible sentence, and having failed to procure from the culprits any disavowal of the charge, warned them to be cautious and reserved in answering the interrogatories which he was about to propose. He then questioned them on many doc- trinal points in which but slight shades of difference existed between the Reformed and the Romanists ; and, finally, as the most trying point of all, he en- quired their opinion of the Real Presence in the Eucharist. Placed on their guard by his previous advice, the prisoners contented themselves with re- plying that they admitted a Real Presence, without proceeding to explain the distinction between the Corporal Presence of the Papists and the Symbolical Presence of Calvin. The major part of the Judges appeared satisfied ; the Court would have broken up, and the former sentence would have been reversed, if one Member, more difficult than his brethren, had not asked whether the culprits were willing to assist at Mass. They answered unhesitatingly in the ne- gative ; and the President foreseeing that if they were called upon to state their reasons they must be utterly lost, demanded their explanation in writing, and gave them twenty-four hours to prepare it. Even this merciful artifice, however, was wholly unavailing. The accused, preferring integrity of conscience to life A. D. 1559.] DISSATISFACTION OF THE PUBLIC. 85 purchased by apostacy, shook off the proffered cle- mency as though it were pollution ; and their answer when presented to the Court at its next meeting, was found to contain one of the bitterest invectives against the Mass which had hitherto appeared. Ne- vertheless, even with this unexpected document be- fore them, the Judges persevered in mercy. They decreed that the Law had pronounced capital punish- ment against those Sacramentarians only who denied the Real Presence ; that the pain of death therefore did not extend to the prisoners who had admitted that doctrine ; and that their offence being no more than a want of reverence for the Mass, banishment would be a sufficient penalty. The prisoners were accordingly released, happy in their exile ; but the public voice loudly condemned tliis new interpretation of the Law. The very exist- ence of such a crime as Heresy, it said, was abolished by the recent sentence ; Zuinglius, Bucer, CEcolam- padius, nay, even Calvin himself, might now pro- pagate his blasphemies with impunity ; all former executions on account of Religion were rendered manifestly unjust ; and the Magistrates who had pronounced capital sentence must be stigmatised as murderers of the innocent \ This dissension between the two Chambers was represented to the King as utterly destructive of the foundations of all jurispru- dence ; if one Judge pronounced that to be criminal which another affirmed to be innocent, of what avail ^ One of the chief accusers of the Tournelle was Bourdin, the King's Prociireur-General, who is described as, docte, ayant beaucoup de Lettres des Gentils, mais peu on nulles des Chritiens, et des cBuvres encore moins. — Mem. de Conde, i. 219. 7 86 THE MERCURIALES. [cH. III. was any Code of Law ? Where was the security of either the Government or the governed ? or what man of any degree or condition possessed a sure rule of life whereby his course might be regulated ? Some of the Councillors, it was artfully stated, were them- selves tainted with the Heresy, the propagators of which they absolved ; and the King, at the a23proach- ing assembly of the next Mercuriales \ might have a favourable opportunity of receiving conviction to that effect by the testimony of his own ears. A Censor- ship, it appears, had long existed, the Members of which assembled on a Wednesday (Dies Mercurii) at an interval of every three months ; when the Presi- dents of the two Chambers, and of the several Courts emanating from them, and a deputation from the Councillors, met together with the Attorney-General and the King's Advocate, to review the public and private conduct of the several Magistrates ; to bring it, if necessary, before the cognizance of the whole Parliament, and there to institute legal proceedings against offending Members. It was on the 10th of June that the sitting of the ensuing Mercuriales oc- curred ; and a debate then commenced on the recent sentences, and on the general treatment of the Re- formed. In this discussion, much heat and violence were exhibited, and purposely fomented by the Pre- sident Le Maistre, a zealous Romanist ^. At a moment in which the irritation of the conflicting speakers ap- peared at its height, the King, as had been precon- ^ The constitution of the Mercuriales is fully explained by De Thou, xxii. 10, from whom we have given enough in the text to answer the immediate purpose. See also Mem. de Conde, i. 218. 2 Homme de nulles Lettres et sansjugement, viais caute et asiut. —Mem. de Conde, i. 220. I A. D. 1559.] SURPRIZED BY HENRY II. 87 certed, accompanied by the Bourbon Princes, the Cardinals of Lorraine and Guise, the Dukes of Guise and Montmorency, and a powerful armed escort, unexpectedly entered the Hall of Assembly ; and having taken his seat, addressed the Members. He had heard, he said, that his faithful Councillors were occupied in debates upon the best means of suppressing Religious troubles ; and, wishing to profit by their deliberations, upon a subject on which he felt much doubt, he now commanded them to proceed. If the first sudden apparition of Royalty and the numerous guards who surrounded the Chamber had alarmed the Members favourable to the New Doc- trine, consciousness of integrity soon reassured them ; and, for the most part, they continued to express their opinions "with their customary freedom. Louis Dufaur, a distinguished Advocate, argued that Religious differences were assuredly the principal cause of the existing peril and calamity ; but that the first step towards remedy ought to be a solemn inquiry as to the side to which the chief blame was attributable ; lest the question of the Prophet to the unrighteous Ahab might be applied in this instance also, " Art TJiou he that troublest Israel ^ ?" Anne ^ It need scarcely be remarked, that this is not the question of Elijah to Ahab, but of Ahab to Elijah, (I Kings xviii. 17). We give it, however, as it is reported in the Mem. de Conde, by De Thou, and afterwards by Garnier. The Hist, des Egl. Ref. does not notice the Speech at all. Puteanus, the commentator on De Thou, has perceived the error and corrected it in a note ; but at the expense of the pointed application which the speaker no doubt intended. Dufaur, covertly stigmatizing the King, 88 SPEECH OF DUBOURG. [cH. III. Dubourg, an Ecclesiastic, next opened an elaborate apology for the general Principles of the Reforma- tion. Having first thanked the King for his resolu- tion to probe this question to its core, and to act ac- cording to the rules of justice, he remarked that many crying sins, blasphemy, perjury, uncleanness, and adultery, stalked abroad in noon-day, unabashed and unpunished ; while new and unheard of penalties were devised against men who, guilty of no crime, raised the torch of Scripture, to discover by its light the corruptions of Rome. He then urged the neces- sity of a General Council, which might purge the Church of its manifold abuses; and he noticed the artifices by which each succeeding Pope had eluded the oath administered at his election, binding him immediately to convoke such an assembly. " While the Pontiffs are thus faithless, and while Kings occu- pied in projects of ambition are negligent of Spiritual interests, a few courageous men," continued the fer- vid Orator, "have taken this great work in hand; founding the goodly edifice which they seek to com- pact on the Word of God delivered in the Holy Volume, and on the Discipline of the primitive Fathers in the first three Centuries of the Church. How praiseworthy is the enterprise! how inappre- ciable the blessings to be derived from it if it be faithfully executed! and yet, Christendom, for the most part, has arrayed itself against this labour of love while yet in its cradle, by Edicts, Ordinances, whom he wished to characterize as Ahab, either purposely- altered the passage, or, in the heat of the moment, remembered it inaccurately. A. D. 1559.] FIERCE DEBATE. 89 and Proscriptions ; by terror of punishment and menaces of extermination ; forgetful that the Father of all Truth has emancipated the Soul of man from the sword of the tyrant, and that a well-grounded opinion can never be destroyed except by the supe- rior weight of an opposite opinion more consonant with Reason. God forbid that France should persist in following the insane example of Germany ! If she does so, the land will be fouled by massacre and carnage ; defaced by butchery and scaffolds ; black- ened by the smoke of persecuting flames ; and, after all these horrors, we shall be eager to retrace every step which we have trodden in blood." In conclu- sion, he advised the King to employ his utmost efforts for the convention of a General Council ; and if he failed in that attempt, at least to assemble within his own dominions the most pious and en- lightened Divines, who, by their joint labours, under his own vigilant control, might consummate a salu- tary Reform : meantime that all suits for Religious offences should be suspended. This bold declaration was followed by some more cautious speeches from other Members, who sought to extenuate the mer- ciful decision of the Courts on account of particular facts in the Cases brought before them ; and the debate was closed by a fiery harangue from the First President, Le Maistre, breathing the spirit of Tor- quemada himself ; extolling the pious energy of Philippe Auguste, who, in a single day, ordered 600 Albigenses to be burned in his own presence ; and recommending the Persecutions renewed from time to time against the Vaudois, as examples adapted to the existing state of Religion in France. At the end of the Session, the King observed, 90 ARREST OF THE FIVE COUNCILLORS [cH. III. with an angry tone, that he now clearly perceived the truth of those reports which informed him that his Parliament contained Members who despised both the Regal and the Pontifical authority. Few as they were, they disgraced the whole Body to which they belonged ; and they should find, to their cost, that they were heaping destruction on their own heads. Then turning to Montgomery, the Com- mander of his Scotch Guard, he ordered him to arrest Dufaur and Dubourg as the most obnoxious delinquents. Soldiers were also despatched to seize in their own houses six other Members, three of whom, by a timely warning, escaped. This unpre- cedented act of despotism was variously received according to the bias of men's opinions ; the Pope and the zealous Romanists extolled it as manifesting a holy vigour and a firm devotion to the cause of God, as worthy in all respects of the Most Christian King, and the eldest Son of the Church. But the more sober-minded perceived in it a violation of Liberty ; a breach of the Law by him who ought to be the Law's principal guardian and conservator ; a curtailment of freedom of debate ; a degradation of the character of the Parliament; a sullying of the Royal dignity. All these great errors conjoined, were esteemed perilous and portentous auguries of future trouble. The King, nevertheless, pressed on judicial pro- ceedings, and swore in his wrath that the criminals should be burned under his own eyes. The Pro- testant Princes of Germany employed their interces- sion uselessly ; their Envoys were treated with cold civility, and dismissed with general expressions that their Masters should receive abundant satisfaction. A. D. 1559.] CONDEMNATION OF DUBOURG. 91 Witliin nine days from the arrest of Duboiirg, against whom especial vengeance was meditated, his Judges were named and his trial commenced. He demurred to the authority of the Court, and asserted his privilege as a Councillor, not to be tried for a capital offence unless by the whole assembled Parlia- ment. A fresh breach of Law deprived him of this right, and the King appointed a Commission, before which if Dubourg persisted in his refusal to plead, he was to be reputed as already condemned. The prisoner, having first entered his protest against this new violation of Liberty, answered the interrogatories concerning his Faith so as to lead to full conviction that it was unsound. Without requiring farther evi- dence, the Archbishop of Paris pronounced him a Heretic, degraded him from his Order, ^nd delivered him over to the secular arm. An appeal still lay to the Archbishop of Sens, and of this Dubourg availed himself, with what success we shall perceive hereafter. . Two days after this judgment had been passed, the lance of Montgomery termi- nated Henry's designs of vengeance. De Thou men- tions a report, (but without either sanctioning or contradicting it \) that the King, w^hen raised from the fatal Lists in order to be conveyed to the Palace, ^ xxii. cap. lilt. Id verum necne sit non affirmaverim, certa et quce tantum in confesso sint scripturus. Then, unless the words are an interpolation by another hand, (for they do not occur in all copies,) De Thou states a medical opinion that the King must have been senseless after his wound. Certe, rei mediccc periti negant in tali vulnere vocem mitti posse — quihus ex qudcumqiie causa cerebrum ictum fuerit, eos confestim ac necessarib mutos fieri. ^2 ACCESSION OF FRANCIS II. [cH. III. looked back at the Bastile, and expressed a fear that he had wronged the innocent Councillors then con- fined within its walls. But a voice was ready at his ear to dispel this salutary remorse ; and the Cardinal of Lorraine, ill concealing his anger, whispered that such a misgiving must be prompted by the Father of Lies, the enemy of the human race ; and exhorted the dying Prince to be watchful against his seduc- tions, and to persevere in Faith unto the end. It was into the hands of the wily Prelate, who thus dried up the healing waters of Charity when they first sought issue from the bosom of his dying Sove- reign, and into those of his brother the Duke of Guise, the two bitterest enemies of the Reformed cause, that the new King, Francis II., im- plicitly resigned himself immediately on his accession. The Commission instituted to take cognizance of the Process against Dubourg had expired with Henry, and it was fondly hoped by the Reformed that it would not be renewed. Francis II., imbecile both in mind and body, seemed unlikely to assume the character of a Persecutor ; and a Prince yet a no- vice to the sceptre, and but just folded in the mantle of Royalty, might be thought reluctant to stain the festivities of his Coronation by a deed of blood. It can little be wondered also, in the excited state of feeling which marked the times, that an im- pression had spread abroad, if not originating with the Sacramentarians, assuredly encouraged by them, that the disastrous fate of Henry had been the result of an especial interposition of Providence. It was to the charge of Montgomery that he had consigned Dubourg as prisoner : it was the spear of Montgomery A. D. 1559.] dubourg's sentence confirmed. 93 which inflicted his death-wound ; he had vowed that Dubourg should burn under his own eyes ; it was in the eye that he had received the mortal thrust ; and Dubourg, from the windows of the Bastile, might view the jousts celebrated in the Rue St. Antoine \ Futile and frivolous as these petty coincidences appear to cooler minds in calmer moments, they were not without their weight when first remarked ; and it was therefore with no slight surprise that the Protest- ants heard, on the third day after the accession of Fran- cis, that the Cardinal of Lorraine had issued a new Commission to the former Judges ; that the Archbishop of Sens had confinued the sentence of his Brother Prelate of Paris ; and that nothing more remained to the prisoner but to endeavour to obtain his right of submitting a last and most unpromising appeal to the whole assembled Parliament. When we call to mind those events which haYe made the Queen Mother, Catherine de Medicis, a by-word and an abomination in History, we cannot learn without astonishment that she was the personage ^ A still more absurd coincidence is gravely advanced in a Disconrs de la mort du Roy Henry II., printed in the 1st volume of the Mem. de Conde, p. 13; namely, that Henry breathed his last at the very same hour of the day on which he had committed the Councillors to prison. The Author of the Hist, des Egl. Ref., almost as staunch a believer in " Prodigies, Omens, Day- fatalities, &c." as Aubrey himself, informs us, that one of the I tapestries decorating the couch on which the King lay in state, represented the Conversion of St, Paul, and bore the words, " Saul, Saul, why persecutes! thou me ?" The Constable, dreading the application, removed the offensive furniture, i. 196. Pasquier notices a prediction by Cardan, and a warning which Henry received from a Jew at Rome that a duel should be fatal to him. Lettres, lib. iv. vol. L p. 175. 94 APPEAL TO CATHERINE DE MEDICIS. [cH. III. upon whom the Reformed Church of Paris placed hope in this their destitution. But Catherine had not yet displayed herself in those colours of blood by which she is " incarnadined" to all posterity. During the life of her husband, the late King, she had culti- vated with seeming affection the society of the Dame de Roye (Mother of the Princess de Conde) and that of the Admiral Coligny, both known supporters of the Reformed interests. She had even, it was said, apparently lent a favourable ear to some of the Cal- vinistic Preachers ; and it could not be doubted that, at the present moment, she felt little complacency towards the Guises, who sought to engross the whole powers of Government, to diminish her natural rights, and to frustrate her parental influence over a Son whom she had hoped, on account of his weakness, to retain in perpetual minority. To the Queen Mother, therefore, the French Reformed addressed their sup- plication. " The pity and the good will," thus com- menced the simple-hearted petitioners, " which your Majesty has ever deigned to manifest towards our cause, have long taught us to regard you as a second Esther." — Alas ! there was another Queen, not in Shushan but in Israel, who threatened the lives of the Prophets of the Lord, and slew innocent men, and whose witchcrafts were many, to whom she might have been more fittingly likened ! — They then assured her that in their Religious Service, besides the cus- tomary prayer for the prosperity of the King, they had always used a 23articular one for herself, intreating that God would be pleased to preserve and to enlighten her by His Law ; they urged also that it was her pri- vilege, as Mother of the King, to rescue the guiltless from destruction, and to prevent her Son from imi- A. D. 1559.] MEASURES TAKEN BY DUBOURG. 95 tating, in the very outset of his reign, those atrocities which had recently called down the vengeance of Heaven upon her husband and his most unhappy Kingdom. The tears of Catherine were ever ready at command, and they plenteously bedewed this Me- morial. She then returned it with an assurance that no exertions which might contribute to their object should be wanting on her part ; and in the mean time she advised them to employ more than ordinary caution, and not to heighten the present imtation by publicly celebrating their worship, or by congregating in numerous assemblies. Furthermore, she commis- sioned the Admiral to procure for her a conference with the most discreet of the Parisian Reformed Ministers ; and named the day of the Sacre, at Rheims, as that on which it might take place with the least fear of attracting public notice. A Minister was accordingly mtroduced to her Closet at the ap- pointed time, but other unexpected calls wore away the day, and the conference was postponed. Dubourg himself, meanwhile, skilfully profited by every expedient which the Law afforded to procure delay, and his demurrers were one by one examined and overruled. Unable to obtain a general assembly of the Chambers, he shamed his enemies into granting pennission that he might be heard by Counsel, and might also challenge the Judges of his final appeal. Two were named by him at the moment in Court, the third he begged leave to mention in writing ; and when pressed upon this point, and ordered to declare himself instantly, having first apologised for the dis- courtesy which he was thus most reluctantly obliged to commit, he boldly protested against the judgment of the Cardinal of Lorraine, his most grievous enemy, 96 MERILLAC'S DEFENCE. [cH. III. and the author and fountain of all his persecutions. This avowal was unexpected ; but the Cardinal, far too experienced a politician to betray his mortifica- tion, mildly disclaimed enmity against the prisoner, and voluntarily withdrew. Merillac, the distinguished Advocate assigned for the defence, was sufficiently acquainted with the temper of the Court to know that, without some show of relaxation on the part of the accused from the severity of his principles, his cause was desperate. He first, therefore, arranged a written Confession of Faith, so generally and ambigu- ously expressed, that Dubourg might sign and the Judges accept it with equally clear consciences* Then, obtaining a promise from his client, that he would remain silent, and surrender himself altogether to the line of defence selected by his Advocate, after an exordium on the illustrious birth of the prisoner, who was nephew of a Chancellor of France, his great acquirements, his rare modesty, his primitive virtues,, and his excellence as a Magistrate ; he pointed out the numerous illegalities of the Process from its very commencement, and when Dubourg naturally ex- pected that in the peroration an annulment of all the proceedings would be demanded, he was astonished by hearing an appeal to the mercy of the King and the sympathy of the Judges ; an avowal of indiscre- tion in having too freely expressed opinions both in the Royal presence, and in his answers to the interro- gatories of the Archbishop of Paris ; and an admis- sion that he had been deceived by some Religious impostors pretending to extraordinary purity. " But the delusion," continued Merillac, " has passed away; the prisoner, sincerely attached to the Laws of his Country, and submitting to the Powers authorised by A. D. 1559.] DISAVOWED BY DUBOURG. 97 God, acknowledges his fault, and throws himself on the indulgence of the tribunal." Then, on his making a private signal to those of the Judges who were known to be favourable, and with whom the scheme had been preconcerted, the Court rose ; and Dubourg was reconducted to his cell without an opportunity of addressing it. By this friendly stratagem Dubourg would have been saved, if his noble spirit could have brooked the preservation of life by tacit acquiescence in falsehood. Calling for ink and paper on his return to prison, he wrote a peremptory disavowal of Merillac's statement of his repentance, and transmitted it forthwith to the Parliament. He then addressed a Circular Letter to the Protestant Churches, in order to counteract the impression which he feared might be entertained that the frequency of his appeals was prompted by any weakness of the flesh, any clinging to life, any shrink- ing from the fiery trial that awaited liim. The legal forms, he said, of which he had taken advantage, abuses as they were, were abuses authorised by the Constitution. Had he consulted his own feelings, he would long since have been at rest, and in the enjoy- ment of his Cro■\^m of Martyrdom ; but he owed it to himself, to his Brethren, to his Faith, and to his God, to seek time, in order to give every possible publicity to the doctrines which he maintained ; and not by any rash act of over-fervid zeal, to encounter the guilt of accelerating that death which in good season he should confront without fear. His friends again addressed themselves to Catherine, stating that they had complied with her advice, and had either discon- tinued their meetings or had held them in secrecy, but that persecution, notwithstanding, had waxed 98 APPEAL TO CATHERINE. [cH. III. fierce. For themselves, they could continue to pro- mise obedience ; but they warned the Queen that there was a numerous Body of men, not absolutely professed Reformers, but inwardly disgusted with the tyranny of Rome, who, if this nefarious process were persisted in, would infallibly have recourse to danger- ous extremities. Catherine was too high-couraged to read a threat like this without indignation. " Do they menace me ?" she exclaimed, " do they think to make me fear ? — Patience, patience ! matters have not yet come to such a point as they imagine \" The Admiral and Madame de Roye pacified her anger ; and she then declared, that whatever com- passion she might have exhibited towards the Re- formed when under suffering, was no more than womanly pity and natural sympathy for the unfortu- nate, and ought not to be interpreted as approbation of their tenets. How indeed could she decide res- pecting doctrines upon which she was wholly unin- formed? Doubtless, when she heard of persons encountering an agonizing death with joy, and in the midst of torments blessing God for the testimony which He graciously permitted them to manifest, it was scarcely possible not to suspect that their doc- trines were more than of men. On that account she wished much to converse with one of their Teachers ; and having heard reports of the great learning and piety of a certain Minister among them, Antony de Chandieu ^, a young man of very ancient family, she 1 Illsf. des Egl Rcf. i. 227, 2 Antony, Lord of Chandieu and Baron of Chabot, was named by the Church of Paris as their Minister at twenty years of age, and moderated at the Hid. National Synod, held at Orleans in 15G2. His latter years were passed at Geneva, where he died A. D. 1559.] BROCHURES. 99 earnestly desired the Admiral to bring him to her pri- vately. Coligny was well versed in the real temper of the profound dissembler who thought to deceive him by this mockery ; and far from endangering one of the chief hopes and most shining lights of the French Reformation by entanglement in her deadly coils, he prevailed upon Chandieu to withdraw from Paris ; and in his stead he submitted a written Confession of Faith and Canons of Discipline to the examination of the Queen Mother K The patience of the Sacramentarians was at length exhausted ; they renewed their meetings with more than accustomed freedom ; and with a pardonable in- discretion, they gave vent to irritated feeling by a deluge of satirical brochures, weapons now becoming of common use in this warfare. The Guises in return employed an engine less keen in edge perhaps, but far in 1591. According to the pedantic fashion of the times, he called himself, by Hebrew equivalents, Sadeel, the Field of God, or Zamariel, the Song of God. His life may be found among the Theologi Exteri of Melchior Adams. Chandieu was a Poet as well as a Divine ; and he accommodated to serious themes the short compositions, Les Octonaires, in which Ronsard had ex- celled on lighter subjects. The following lines are among the most pleasing which have descended to us from his pen : — Sur la Vanite du Monde. Le Beau du Monde s' efface Soudain comme un vent qui passe ; Soudain comme on volt lafleur Sans sa premiere couleur ; Soudain comme une ondefuit Devant V autre qui la suit. Qu'esi ce done que le Monde 2 Un vent, une fieur, une onde ! 1 Hist, des Egl Ref. i. 228. H 2 100 PERSECUTION IN THE FAUXBOURG [cH. III. more weighty and powerful. They issued an Ordi- nance condemning every house proved to have har- boured an assembly of Protestants to be razed to the ground, even if it belonged to an owner resident at a distance, or to a Religious Community ; for every landlord, it was argued, ought to be responsible for the orderly conduct of his tenants. The Fauxbourg St. Germain, or as it was then called in derision. La lietite Geneve^ was the chief resort of the Sacramen- tarians ; and numerous acts of pillage and violence were there perpetrated under colour of this Edict. Instant flight and abandonment of home and property were the only means by which the wretched inhabit- ants, if warned of the approach of the officers of justice, could hope to preserve liberty, perhaps life ; and not the least piteous result of this cruel perse- cution were the throngs of children, too young to be removed, who, raising their little hands to the passers by, asked with tears for their parents, for food, for shelter, and protection. Alas ! cold, hunger, and destitution for the most part terminated the sufferings of these Innocents. No friendly hand dared to offer succour, lest suspicion of Heresy should bring down on itself misery similar to that which it had ventured to relieve ^ The rich harvest reaped by Informers contributed not a little to increase the number of denouncements, and some Apostates who had been dismissed from Protestant Congregations for robbing the Alms- chest, and who were well acquainted with the chief Meeting-houses, betrayed them, Judas-like, to the Police. This example was folloM^ed by two run- 1 De Thou, xxiii. 8. Gamier, xiv. 363. A. D. 1559.] ST. GERMAIN FALSE DEPOSITIONS. 101 away apprentices, seeking revenge for some just chastisement inflicted by their Masters. These youths, accurately instructed beforehand in their tale, laid hideous depositions before the President St. Andre and his colleagues. They had been intro- duced by their Masters, as they affirmed, to several Protestant Meetings in the house of an Advocate named Trouilles, in the Place Maubert. One of those assemblies was held on the eve of Good Friday, when after hearing a Sermon, a large com- pany of both sexes partook of a sucking pig, dressed in mockery of the Paschal Lamb. This supper being concluded, the lamps were extinguished, and Orgies commenced under the foul veil of darkness, equally detestable with those which History has recorded of the Roman Bacchanalia, or which the dreams of a grotesque Fancy have invented in later times, as fitting accompaniments of the Satanic Sabbath on the Wal- purgisnacht. The daughters of the host were per- sonally recognised by the deponents as sharers in this scene of licentious horror ; and although on cross- examination the witnesses betrayed inconsistencies sufficient to discredit their whole story, the Magis- trates affected belief, and took no small pains to publish the odious details of their confession. Even in the concealment into which the calumniated ladies had been driven, they were pursued by this utter blasting of their good fame ; and feeling that life was nothing worth if honour were destroyed, they presented themselves before the Magistrates, and demanded and underwent a test of purity, more satis- factory indeed in its appeal to Reason than the Ordeal of elder times, but one from which the sensitiveness 102 ASSASSINATION OF MINART. [cH. III. of female delicacy must have recoiled with ten thou- sand-fold more apprehension than even from the glowing ploughshares. The imputation of dishonour was distinctly removed, but the deeper and more damning stain of Heresy remained ; and the maidens, notwithstanding their surrender had been volun- tary, continued to be rigorously imprisoned, and were daily menaced with delivery to the flames \ Other circumstances, besides the increased irritation against the Reformed excited by these false rumours, contributed to accelerate the catastrophe of Dubourg. In the Bastile, he was used with extraordinary rigour, deprived of all intercourse with his friends, fed upon bread and water, and occasionally enclosed in one of those iron cages, the invention of which is attributed to the detestable ingenuity of a favourite of Louis XI. The sole recreation permitted to him was his lute, on which he accompanied himself while singing Marot's Psalms ^. His friends, more anxious than himself for his preservation, arranged a plan for escape, which was discovered by an untoward acci- dent ; and the assassination of one who had distin- guished himself greatly in forwarding his prosecution was affirmed to have been perpetrated with his pri- vity. Minart, one of the Presidents, a man of loose habits and factious principles, from which many causes of private enmity might arise ^, was shot in the street, while returning in the evening from the Par- 1 De Thou, xxiii. U. HisU des Egl. Ref. i. 230, &c. 2 Hist, des Egl Ref. i. 246, ^ Alioqui vit(e solut^e atque ad voluptates projects homo. — De Thou, xxiii. 11. Homme fort voluptueux et de nulle erudition, mais grand faiseur de menees et factions. — Mem. de Conde, i. 221. A. D. 1559.] CONSEQUENT ALARM. 103 liament to his own home. Robert Stuart, ' Dec. 12. a Scotch adventurer, professing the Re- formed principles, was suspected of the murder ; and it was remembered that Dubourg had warned the deceased, not long before, that unless he voluntarily absented himself from the trial, he would assuredly be prevented by compulsion. The menace might be, and from Dubourg's character probably was, no more than a general assertion of God's justice ; but its fulfilment convinced one party that he who delivered it was prophetically inspired, the other, that he was cognizant of the intended murder. Rumours of a general conspiracy soon floated abroad ; a fate similar to that of Minart was said to be destined for the other obnoxious Judges ; the City was to be fired in many quarters at once, and, during the general confusion, the Conciergerie was to be forced and the prisoners were to be released ^ The obvious remedy for these dangers, if they were real, and the fittest sedative for the general panic, even if they were not so, seemed to be the speedy removal of the chief cause of popular excitement ; and three days, therefore, after the assassination of Minart, Dubourg was brought into Court and received sentence of immediate execution. He listened, says De Thou, who transcribes his very words from the public Registers, without one sign of fear ; pardoning ^ The Hist, des Egl. Ref. adds another remarkable reason which induced the Cardinal of Lorraine to secure his vengeance upon Dubourg (or avoir la peau de ce personnage, as the His- torian expresses himself) before the prisoner could extricate himself: poiir ce que Nostradamus, Astrologien et invocateur des Dialles, avoit mis en ses pronostications " le ban Bourg sera loin." —I. 241. 104 EXECUTION OF DUBOURG. [cH. HI. his Judges, whom he believed to have decided according to their consciences, although not according to knov^^ledge and the true vv^isdom of God ^ Ad- dressing himself in the end w^ith somewhat more of emotion to the Court, he added, " Quench at length the fires which you have kindled, and turn unto God with a penitent heart and mind, that your sins may he blotted out and forgiven. Let the wicked man turn away from his wickedness, and leave off to do per- versely, and acquaint himself with the Lord, and the Lord will have mercy ! For you, my brother Coun- cillors, farewell and prosper ! and think without ceasing in God and of God. For myself, I go cheer- fully to death." So fearful were the Authorities of any attempted rescue, that besides stationing a large armed force in various parts of the City, they erected gibbets and piled faggots on each of the many spots on which their victims had heretofore suffered, in order by uncertainty to distract attention from the real scene of execution. Dubourg mounted the tumbril with alacrity, and was conducted under a strong escort to the Greve ; where, having warned the spec- tators that he did not die there ignominiously like a malefactor, but because he adhered to the Gospel, he calmly laid aside his cloak and doublet without assistance ; and while the executioner prepared to strangle him before committal to the flames, the last words heard from his lips were, " Father, abandon me not, neither will I abandon Thee !" Thus perished in his thirty-eighth year Anne Dubourg, a man of ^ There is an antithesis in the original which defies transla- tion : qui secundum co»scientiam, non secundum scientiam et veram Dei sapientiam judicas&ent. — De Thou, xxiii. IL A. D. 1560.] OUTRAGES IN PARIS. 105 rare talents, and yet rarer integrity ; loved, wept, and honoured even by many of those who differed from him most widely in Religion. His constancy in death, says the Historian cited above, so embittered and so confirmed the adherents to his own Creed, that from his ashes sprang that rank growth of revolts and conspiracies which long and heavily overran this once most flourishing Kingdom ^ Whether sated for a while by the per- •^ ^ 1560. /petration of this great crime, or whether, as is more likely, alarmed by the threatening as- pect of the Reformed on the one hand, and of the now unmanageable fury of the populace of the Capital on the other, the Government but lan- guidly pursued the suits against the other Coun- cillors Vv^ho had been arrested together with Dubourg ; and they were released, after undergoing various degrees of lighter punishment. Meanwhile, the most frightful outrages disgraced the streets of Paris, and the search for Heretics was made a pretext for almost general brigandage. In every public thoroughfare, and at the corners of the chief streets, small images of the Virgin, or of some Saint, were erected, beneath which lighted tapers were placed on a table dressed as an Altar. The dregs of the canaille^ the rabble- priests of these mock shrines, sang hymns and cele- brated a profane worship before them ; and fiercely besetting every careless or scornful passenger who neglected or refused to pay his devotions to their Idol, dragged him before the Magistrates as a Sacra- 1 De Thou, xxiii. 11. Hist, des Egl. Ref. i. 248. The Pro- ct s against Dubourg, his various Interrogatories, his Confession of 7aith, and other documents relating to his History, occupy ninety pages in the 1st vol. of the Mem. de Conde, 217 — 304. 106 KING OF NAVARRE [cil. III. mentarian. To defray the expense of tapers, they carried about with them a small box called tire-lire ; and bold indeed was any one who refused to contri- bute to its contents : blows, insults, and perhaps the most protracted and horrible of all deaths, that which is inflicted by the hands of a savage and desperate mob, were the price of his rashness. Nor were they the Reformed only who were thus exposed to extor- tion ; the soundest Romanist, provided he were known to be rich, was an equally attractive quarry with the most notorious Heretic, and the fragrance of the odour of booty exhaled alike from both Religions \ The cry of Lutheran or Christandin when once raised, whether truly or falsely, drew thousands to the chace ; and the denounced individual, hunted down like some dog whom the voice of the multitude has pro- claimed to be rabid, was never quitted till his death and plunder glutted the ferocity and the avarice of his bloody pursuers ^. The Reformed, although constituting a large Body in the State, had been regarded hitherto solely as Religious dissidents ; but they were now about to assume a more important and formidable Political Character. The King of Navarre, as first Prince of the Blood Royal, had, without doubt, paramount claim to a principal share in the administration during the minority of Francis II. ; and he accordingly made his appearance at Court early after that Mo- narch's accession ; having first given out among the Protestants that one of his chief objects in visiting the Capital, was to demand liberty of conscience on ^ Lucri bonus est odor ex re Qudlihet. — Juv. xiv. 204. 2 De Thou, xxiii. \2.—Hist. des Egl. Ref. i. 248. 7 A. D. 1559.] AND PRINCE OF CONDE. 107 their behalf. But it was the policy of the Guises to estrange from the young King any probable com- petitor for that power which they wished to be ex- clusively their own ; and the exalted station of the King of Navarre, weak and undecided as he was, might render him a dangerous rival. They so con- trived, therefore, that his reception should be cold and bordering upon affront. Certain distinctions due to his rank were purposely withheld ; no provision was made for lodging him within the Palace ; the King addressed only a few and distant words to his Uncle, and did not summon him to the Council-board. These slights, however, failed to disturb the placid spirit of this most easy Prince ; and, in order to re- move him, at least for a time, from the circle of domestic Politics, the Guises offered a charge which he could hardly refuse, without that open rupture which he sedulously avoided, — the conveyance of the reluctant Elisabeth of Valois to her Spanish Bride- groom, afterwards Philip 11.^ Little, however, was the profit which they derived from thus displaying to the Reformed the pusillanimity, vacillation, and in- decision of the Prince whom they had hitherto consi- dered as their virtual leader; for a successor of widely different qualities was now substituted in his place. Under a person but scantily indebted to Na- ture for external advantages, and an appearance of carelessness and frivolity, Louis, Prince of Conde, nourished an ardent, intrepid, lofty, and indomitable spirit. Schooled in war, although hitherto confined to subaltern appointments, he had exhibited talents for military combination not less brilliant than his per- ^ Histoire du Tumulte d'Amhoise ; Mem. de Conde, i. 321. 108 CONDE EMBRACES THE REF. DOCTRINE. [cH. III. sonal courage; and without private revenues, and excluded from the favours of the Court, he had learned those lessons of self-denial and active exer- tion, of which Necessity is ever the great teacher. One cruel mortification to which the Guises had ex- posed him was a mission on an expensive embassy without adequate appointments ; a second was the refusal of the Government of Picardy, resigned by the Admiral Coligny, with the express object of ob- taining the succession for his friend and kinsman. These and many other affronts, the hopelessness of success in any public career, while the Guises re- tained power, the zealous urgency of his Princess and her Mother the Dame de Roye, the stings of disap- pointment, the hopes of ambition, the desire of revenge, decided him to embrace communion with a Sect actuated indeed by motives widely different from his own, yet desirous, like himself, to effect a change in the Government. Rapid in all his move- ments, resolute when he had decided, impatient of disguise, and prompt to action, he at once avowed his conversion to Protestantism ; and named a place and day for conference with some of the chief delegates of the Reformed, in order that he might offer himself for that supremacy among them which his brother had thrown away. Notwithstanding their sufierings and persecutions, it was much rather a strong and nervous guidance of power which the Reformed needed, than the elements of power itself. From Boulogne to Bayonne, from Brest to Metz, France now teemed with proselytes to the New Doctrine ; men accustomed to danger, bold, zealous, constant, and unshrinking, bound by strong ties among themselves, and maintaining un- 15 A. D. 1559.] PASSIVE OBEDIENCE. 109 broken correspondence with the Swiss Cantons and the German Princes. Give them but a competent Chief, show them once but a fitting Head, and the several members w^ere fully prepared to unite in meeting force by force, and to demand, probably to extort, enfranchisement from the oppression under which they now chafed with impatience. One diffi- culty, indeed, interposed itself between them and the possession of their final object. How was the liberty which they coveted to be won, except by open re- sistance to Government ? and how was open resist- ance to be reconciled with that passive obedience which Calvin had preached, and themselves had adopted as a fundamental principle of their Creed? The removal of this obstacle appears to have formed the chief subject of debate at Ferte, in Champagne, the spot on his own estate at which Conde first met the Reformed Deputies. By Conde himself — a sol- dier bred in camps, a recent proselyte, not so much to opinions as to a party, little knowing, and probably less regarding, those matters which he considered to be mere subtleties of Polemical disputation — such an objection would have been easily resolved ; he would have unsheathed the sword, and have cut the knot at a single stroke. But it was far otherwise with the personages whom he had chosen as associates. What- ever step they adopted must accord with the avowed doctrines of their Church; and no certainty of ad- vantage, no conviction of i3olicy, could be allowed to supersede the solemn fiat of Religion. They were not content to extricate themselves from scruples by some specious and cunning subterfuge, but they re- ferred grave and weighty doubts to the decision of stern and unbending conscience. Their proceedings, 110 SOPHISTICAL EVASION [cH. III. therefore, were necessarily tardy and deliberate. They drew up hypothetical cases and submitted them to Divines and Civilians; and the result was, as in similar cases it ever will be, an examj)le of, if we may so term it, the necessary continuity of error; a proof that if Man once begins his course from a wrong starting place, he requires some new fallacy at every step of his progress. The infusion of a single false principle may stagnate the life-blood of Truth for un- counted generations. South has somewhere said, " every great villainy is like a great absurdity, drawing after it a numerous train of homogeneous consequences." Calvin had formally affirmed that no outrage upon human liberty, however grievous, if committed by Rulers acting under divine right, might be forcibly resisted by a Christian man ^ ; in other words, he had preached up that extravagant doctrine with which our own English Pulpits sometimes resounded before the principles of the Revolution were understood and established. Were the reigning Prince a second Nero, Domitian, or Caligula, the Faithful, it was said, were bound to obey, even as the Apostles had obeyed. It was not possible, therefore, that the French Reformed could oppose the King ; but they raised a question concerning the King's majority ; they argued, that from his extreme youth he had no power of govern- ing for himself — that the Guises had usurped all au- 1 See the Institutio Christiana, lib. iv. c. 20, from § 24, to the end. Nobis autem interim summopere cavenduni ne illam plenam ven&randcB majestaUs Magistratuum authoritatem quam Deus gra- vissirnis edictj.s sanocit, eUamsi apud indignissimos resideat, et qui cum sua nequitid quantum in se earn poUuunt, spernamus ant viole- mus. § 31. A. D. 1559.] OF THAT DOCTRINE. Ill thority from him — and that against those tyrants, for the deliverance of the King, every means of attack was lawful. *' Religion," says the writer of the Apologie Chrestienne, one of the Tracts which this occasion produced, " Religion, and every received law of humanity, commands subjects to take up arms for their Prince whenever he is oppressed ; for the pre- servation of Law, and for the protection of their Country ^" It was useless to reply that the King had passed his 16th year ; that the term of Royal majority was unfixed by the French Law ; but that precedents, for the most part, had settled it at four- teen ; that Francis had been considered old enough, even during his Father's life-time, to enter into mar- riage ; and that his nearest advisers, and those by whom his Government was administered, were the Queen Dowager his Mother, and the Uncles of the Queen his Consort. These plain and unanswerable facts melted into air before the responses by which the Calvinistic Pastors and Lawyers sanctioned in- surrection : and a large Body of pure, upright, honest, sincere, and single-minded men, (no men ever more fully deserved those epithets,) either not having sufficient wisdom to descry, or sufficient moral courage to abandon their original error, sophistically reconciled themselves to its theoretical maintenance, together with its practical violation, gave the advantage in argument to their enemies, and supported the better cause on the worse prin- ciples ^. ^ Mem. de Conde, i. 360. See ^Iso similar arguments in the Hist, du Tumulte d'Jmboise before cited. 2 Davila has described the mixed motives of the several par- ties who joined in the Conspiracy of Amboise in a few masterly 112 LA RENAUDIE. [cH. III. The Prince of Concle was unanimously recognized as Chief of the enterprise now meditated, but policy required the conceahuent of his participation till the moment of execution. The open conduct of it was, therefore, intrusted to Geoffry du Barre, Sieur de la Renaudie or la Foret ; a gentleman of opulent and ancient family in Perigaud, who felt himself cruelly aggrieved by a decree of the Courts in a suit con- cerning a patrimonial benefice. The Romanist His- torians tax him openly with perjury during this Cause ; but from the honesty of De Thou, we leam that he was far less to be blamed than pitied ; that advantage had been taken of some mistake, for which he was subjected both to a heavy fine and to banish- ment ; and that during a long exile, he had con- tracted intimacy with many of his Countrymen, seeking the free exercise of their Religion at Lau- sanne and Geneva. Renaudie was able, daring, and active ; fired with resentment for the injustice which he had suffered, and panting to wash away by some great deed the stain of his unmerited condem- nation '. No man, therefore, was better qualified words, which mutatis mutandis may be applied to most similar enterprizes. After a very striking portrait of La Renaudie, he adds, di questa qualita e di questa nascita era il capo principale della Congiura, al quale s'erano accostati molti altrl, parte indotti dal rispetto della conscienza, parte spinti dal desiderio di cose nuove, e parte invitati dalV otio nemico naturale della Natione Francese. — Lib. i. tom. i. p. 35. ^ Oh falsi crimen quod forte incurrerat, ut fere evenit in hujus- modi negotiis . . . qui facinore insigni judicii infamiam, quam- vis oh alienum potius quam suum crimeri damnatus esset, eluere vellet. De Thou, xxiv. 18. The latter part of that Book, from the 17th Chapter, contains a detailed narrative of the Conspiracy of Amboise, upon which we have mainly depended. A. D. 1559.] HORRIBLE REPORTS OF THE KING. 113 for the bold and difficult task which he undertook. It seems as if about this time he had obtained a remission of his sentence, which enabled him to re- appear in France, and he profited by this liberty to traverse the Provinces and to secure co-operation. The languishing state of the King's health had in- duced the Court Physicians to recommend Blois as his Winter and Spring residence, and the most frightful rumours preceded his arrival in that City. His disease was affirmed to be Leprosy, and the remedy prescribed for it was said to be a daily bath of infants' blood. Accordingly, when he approached his Palace, it seemed as if the population had been desolated and swept away by Pestilence or some great convulsion of Nature. Every house was closed and barred ; and no individuals were visible except- ing a few agonized women flying hastily across the fields, clasping their babes to their bosoms, and when overtaken, dropping on their knees and im- ploring mercy for the Innocents, with shrieks of horror and desj)air. Pretended emissaries from the Royal Household had recently collected in all the neighbouring villages exact lists of the numbers and ages of the children whom they contained ; and mysterious hints had been purposely dropped, at the same time, of the dark purpose for which this cata- logue was designed. The Guises attributed these horrible reports to the malcontents, and they suc- ceeded in arresting one of their presumed agents; but the culprit, when submitted to the question, un- expectedly retorted upon his accusers ; declared that he had acted under the orders of the Cardinal of Lorraine ; and that he had been instructed to cir- culate accounts of corruption of blood in all the Mem- I 114 AMBITION OF THE GUISES. [cH. III. bers of the reigning family ; in order that the Crown might pass back from the descendants of the Usurper Hugh Capet to the legitimate Carlovingians repre- sented by the Guises ', It is not possible to decide by which party this detestable artifice was really practised ; but the charge of revolutionary designs, and of a wish to transfer the sceptre to their own line, thus raised against the Guises, proved a most useful weapon in the hands of their adversaries. In what manner they employed it we shall perceive by and by. 1 This, after all, perhaps, is the best origin which can be ascribed to the party name Huguenot, and so it is plainly consi- dered in more than one contemporary Tract : en maniere quHls ont de long temps compose par ensemble un sobriquet et mot a plaisir, par derision de ceux qu'ils disent estre descendus de la race du diet Hugue Capet, les appellavs Huguenotz. Advertisse- ment au Peuple de France ; Mem. de Condi, i. 402. And again, que la Couronne soit transferee de ceux que la Maison de Guise appelle Huguenots, comme estans descendus de la race de Hugue Capet, pour estre remise et restituee, comme ils disent, a ceux qui se renomment de Charlemagne. Complainte au Peuple Francois. ibid. 405. The Kingdom of Lothaire, or of Lorraine, derives its name from Lothaire IL to whom it was bequeathed by his Father, Lothaire, Emperor and King of Italy, a grandson of Charlemagne ; from whom the Guises were naturally proud of tracing their descent. CONSPIRACY OF AMBOISE. 115 CHAPTER IV. Discovery of the proposed Rising — The King retires to Amboise — Death of La Renaudie and overthrow of the Conspirators — Accu- sation of Conde — Execution of the Baron de Castelnau — Death of the Chancellor Olivier — He is succeeded by De L'Hopital — Edict of Romorantin — The Baker of Tours — Origin of the term Huguenot — Flight of Conde — Council at Fontainebleau — Me- morial presented by the Admiral — Speech of Montluc Bishop o, Faience — Of the Cardinal of Lorraine — The States-General summoned to Orleans — Offers of the Reformed to the King of Navarre — His Arrival at Orleans with Conde — Arrest Oj Conde — His Condemnation and Fortitude — Reputed Design to assassinate the King of Navarre — Death of Francis II. The unusual excitement which prevailed among the French refugees in Swisserland had not altogether escaped notice. Among the many whom La Re- naudie was compelled to trust, some might be faith- less, more, doubtless, were imprudent ; yet although tlie Guises from time to time received advices that some great enterprise was under contemplation, they never attained a sufficiently distinct clue to enable them to unravel the intricacies of its labyrinth. The day of rising was already fixed for the 10th of March ; five hun- dred mounted gentlemen, and about twelve hun- dred armed men on foot, were to concentrate them- selves in the vicinity of Blois ; and arrangements were made for the simultaneous occupation of the chief towns, and for arming the disaffected inha- bitants throughout the Provinces ; when by the faithlessness of Renaudie's host in Paris, Govem- i2 116 CONSPIRACY [CH. IV. ment received information of the secret, so far, at least, as the traitor himself was acquainted with it. Not a moment was to be lost in placing the King's person in security ; and under pretence of a hunting party, the Court was immediately transferred from the open and unfortified town of Blois, to a Castle in the neighbouring village of Amboise. Troops were then hastily assembled, and summonses addressed to the chief Nobility to repair thither for the immediate protection of their Sovereign. The keen penetration of the Guises at once perceived that some far greater influence than that possessed by La Ptcnaudie, was the prime mover of the engine by which they were to be overthrown ; and the discovery of the hidden soul of the enterprise was their next object. Of the Admiral they entertained great suspicions, and, in- deed, much fear ; and Catherine, who still maintained a close intimacy with him, was employed to resolve their doubts. Little can it be imagined that the Chastillons,now avowed Sacramentarians, and bosom- friends of Conde, had been denied his confidence ; but, perhaps, they had cautiously avoided all open participation in the Conspiracy, and awaited the result before they declared their full intentions. Con- fident therefore in his own security, Coligny repaired to the Closet of the Queen Dowager ; protested une- quivocal adhesion to the Court; pointed out the ex- treme danger of reducing to desperation so large a Body as the Reformed now constituted ; and sug- gested the issue of an Edict annulling all prosecu- tions for Heresy already commenced, and forbidding the institution of any new suit for the future till after the assembly of a General Council. This advice, although most unpalatable to the A. D. 1560.] OF AMBOISE. 117 Guises, was not to be declined when backed by the influence of Catherine and the exigence of the mo- ment. The Edict, therefore, was prepared, with little intention of its being ultimately observed ; and with an exception of all those who under pretext of Religion had conspired against the King, the Queens, the brothers of the King, the Princes of the Blood or the Chief Ministers ; an exception which must have gone far to render the Ordinance a dead letter among those whom it was chiefly intended to propitiate. The gathering accordingly took place, on the 17th of March \ a week after the day originally proposed : and Conde, faithful to his engagement, was among the first who arrived at the trysting place. As he entered the gates of the Castle of Amboise, the un- usual number of sentinels and certain precautions in his reception convinced him that the plot was disco- vered and himself suspected ; but, inwardly assured that he had not been personally denounced, he affected great indignation on hearing that there were traitors who dared to menace the King ; and re- quested to have some post allotted him, in which he might assist in defending the Castle. This offer of service could not be declined, but due care was taken, by placing him under vigilant observation, to frus- trate any attempt at escape. Disappointed in their hopes of surprise, it is no wonder that the Conspirators failed. In the affi'ay which ensued La Renaudie was killed ; most of his followers were gibbeted on the spot, or thrown into the Loire and drowned ^ : and the Baron of Castel- 1 De Thou, xxiv. 21. Castelnau says the 16th. — Mem. i. 8. 2 Ita ut flumen cadaveribus supernataret, oppidi vici sanguine 118 DENOUNCEMENT OF CONDE. [cH. IV. nau de Chalosse, and a few other of the Chiefs who surrendered on an assurance of being permitted to offer a representation of their grievances at the foot of the throne, were detained close prisoners. Among the captured was La Eigne, La Renaudie's Secre- tary ; from whom torture wrung a key to the cypher in which his late Master's papers were written, a revelation of the objects of the Conspiracy, and an account of its details, perhaps greatly exaggerated. That the death of the Guises was intended can scarcely be doubted; but it requires more trust- worthy evidence than that of a renegade confessing under terror of death, to produce a belief that a Prince of the Blood, and that Prince Louis of Conde, could design the murder of the King, of the King's brothers, and of the two Queens, the abolition of Monarchy, and the establishment of a Republic on the Swiss model. Nevertheless, of a project thus atrocious La Eigne did not hesitate to declare that the Prince of Conde was leader '. Plain as was this denouncement, it was not thought sufficient to warrant any judicial proceeding of so grave a character as the capital arraignment of a Prince of the Elood. Even if La Eigne's accusation should be supported by La Renaudie's documents, the latter might have employed Conde's name without authority, in order to strengthen his party ; and the Duke of Guise, therefore, discreetly recommended that unless much stronger evidence could be obtained all show of misgiving should be suppressed. The exundarent, platece hominum patihulis siiffixorum sylvd horresce- rent, is the brief, striking, and fearful account given by De Thou, xxiv. 21. 1 Id. ibid. A. D. 1560.] TRIAL OF CASTELNAU. 119 King, however, declared his suspicions openly to Conde's face, and forbad his departure from Am- boise. The Prince in return demanded an inquiry ; defended himself in full Council ; and at the con- clusion of a Speech marked with great vehemence, protested that if there were any man in the whole World bold enough to maintain an accusation against him, he would at that very moment lay aside all the privileges of his exalted rank, and meet him sword to sword in the Lists, to prove him a liar and a recreant. The glance of defiance at the Duke of Guise which accompanied these last words could not be mistaken ; and the whole assembly imagined that the challenge was about to be accepted when that Nobleman rose to reply. On the contrary, however, he avowed with consummate dissimulation his conviction that the Prince was by no means called upon to rebut the charges of a few miserable criminals, seeking to extenuate their own guilt by the implication of illus- trious names. " So firmly, indeed," he added, " am I convinced of the Prince of Conde's innocence, that if any accuser should appear I tender my services as Second to the Challenger." With the Baron de Castelnau, the most distin- guished among the prisoners both by rank and per- sonal merit, equal moderation was deemed unneces- sary. He had surrendered on the faith of a compact for personal security, attested by the signature of the Duke de Nemours ; and the perverted morals of the Age are remarkably exhibited in that Nobleman's sub- sequent conduct. When he learned that it was the intention of the Court to put the prisoner on his trial, he expressed bitter regret. " The document," he exclaimed, " is signed ; my name is affixed to it 120 TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF [cH. IV. ill writing; if tliere were no more than word of mouth against me, I might easily give the lie to any one who reproached me with its violation !" and this pseudo-principle of honour, which placed guilt not in the commission but in the discovery of wrong, has found an admirer in the writer by whom it is re- corded ^ ! In spite of the solemn agreement on which he had relied, Castelnau was subjected to an interrogatory, and threatened with the question. For a moment he hesitated and was silent, and the Duke of Guise taunted him with fear. " Fear !" were the noble words in answer, "I by no means deny it ; what man is there among you, unless he be destitute of all feeling, who could be wholly free from such an emo- tion, if he found himself bound hand and foot, and tossed to the mercy of his most implacable enemies, thirsting to drink his blood ! But give me back my sword, and the7i venture upon your taunt ; or change places with me, and answer whether every limb in your body would not tremble ! That natural feeling with which you reproach me, through God's aid, how- ever, shall by no means impair the judgment and pre- sence of mind which are necessary for my defence." And never, during a long and trying examination, was clearer self-possession or more tranquil courage manifested, than that which he continued to display. The Chancellor Olivier, the Duke of Guise, and the Cardinal of Lorraine, each in turn was silenced by some keen and searching rebuke. When the first of these expressed somewhat of contemptuous sur- I Tant etoit vaillant Prince et genereux. — Memoires de Vielle- ville, torn. iv. p. 191. A. D. 1560.] THE BARON DE CASTELNAU. 121 prise, that the prisoner, once a man of far different pursuits, should have become so profound a Theolo- gian as he then exhibited himself, Castelnau re- minded him of a conversation which had occurred between them not very long before. " When I visited you on my return from imprisonment in Flanders, and you inquired in what manner I had employed the tedious hours of my captivity, I replied that I had studied the Holy Scriptures, and ac- quainted myself with the controversies then agitating men's spirits. You approved my course, you dissi- pated what scruples I still retained, and we mutually agreed. How happens it that one of us since that time has so greatly changed his opinions that now we are unable to understand each other ? I will supply your answer. Then you were in disgrace, and spoke in the sincerity of your heart ; now you are the ^vretched eye-servant of Court favour, and in order to please a man who probably despises you, you betray your God and your conscience." The Cardinal of Lorraine hastened to the assistance of his embarrassed colleague, and while claiming to himself the merit of having confirmed him in Ro- manism, he dropped some unguarded expression which made Castelnau appeal to the Duke of Guise. The Duke in reply disavowed all acquaintance with Polemics. " Would that it were otherwise !" said the Baron in conclusion ; " for so far do I esteem you, that I dare pledge myself that were you in pos- session of equal light with that which has fallen to the share of your Brother, you would employ it to far better purpose." Castelnau, and four other Captains, were led to in- stant execution ; the last who received the fatal stroke, 122 DEATH OF THE CHANCELLOR OLIVIER. [cH. IV. Briquement de Villemonges, clipped his hands in the blood of his slaughtered comrades before he kneeled at the block, and then raising them to Heaven, ex- claimed, " Father, behold the blood of Thy children ! Thou wilt avenge it." The whole Court witnessed the tragical spectacle. The King's brothers — yet children — the two Queens and their attendant Ladies, were stationed in a gallery of the Castle which com- manded a view of the scaffold ^ ; and the only person who shrank from the sight of horror was Anne d'Este, mother of the Guises, who rushed to her own cham- ber, prophesying that vengeance must fall ere long on the heads of her own sons. The Prince of Conde himself was compelled to be present ; and, notwith- standing the spies by whom he knew he was sur- rounded, expressions of pity and indignation burst from his lips. The Chancellor Olivier, who always inclined to mercy, but had shown himself timid and temporising, overwhelmed with self-reproach at hav- ing shared in the destruction of these brave men, by his want of firmness in resisting the Guises, fell into a profound melancholy, which was succeeded by an acute fever. The Cardinal of Lorraine visited him while in his last agonies, but Olivier recoiled from the siffht, turned his face to the wall, and ex- March so. . ' pired \ ^ Depuis que le bruit des armes avoit fait cesser les promenades et les parties de chasse, il ne leur restoit presque plus d'autre amusement qiie d'assister a ces scenes tragiques, que Von avoit V attention de diversifier chaque jour. — Garnier, xiv. 416. 2 In the Hist, du Tumulte d'Amboise, it is said that Olivier expressed deep remorse for the execution of Dubourg ; and that when the Cardinal of Lorraine approached his bedside, he called out in accents of terror, " Ha, Cardinal ! tu nous fails tons damner J" — p. 328. A. D. 1560.] EDICT OF ROMORANTIN. 123 By the influence of Queen Catherine, the high vacant dignity was filled by Michael de L'Hopital, the greatest Chancellor ever known to France, as he is justly described by a contemporary \ To his wise and humane opposition, the general voice of History attributes the failure of a project entertained at that moment to establish the Inquisition in France. In order to counteract that nefarious design, he w^as compelled to yield assent to the promulgation of a Decree, known, from the place at which it was dated, as the Edict of Romorantin. This severe Ordinance transferred all cognizance of Heretics from the Civil Courts to the jurisdiction of the Bishops ; and by proposing large rewards, encouraged Informers in their denunciations. All assemblies of the Reformed were prohibited, under penalties similar to those in- flicted on High Treason ; and so assured did the President, Le Maitre, feel of their inextricable entan- glement in the net of Law, that he used to exclaim with delight, "We shall hang them for Sedition and strangle them for Heresy^. The King, meanwhile, wrote a long account of the Conspiracy to the King 1 Le plus grand Chancelier, le plus scavant, le plus digne, et le plus universel que fut jamais en France. — Brantome, Discours, Ixii. torn. V. p. 385. In his Digression sur M. de V Hospital, the same writer records some noble anecdotes of this great man. Although he never avowed the Reformed doctrines, his modera- tion rendered him suspected, so that it was a common saying at Court, " Dieu nous garde de la Masse de M. de V Hospital /" Gar- nier gives an amusing reason for the assent of the Guises to his appointment ; parce qu'il navoit point cesse de les celebrer dans les Poesies Latines quon vantoit beaucoup alors, et qu'on ne lit plus aujourdliui. — xiv. 418. 2 Hist, des Egl. Ref. i. 274. 124 THE king's letter to the K. of NAVARRE. [cH. IV. of Navarre ^ denouncing the wretched Heretics, who, under the cloak of Religion and the pretence of suc- couring and delivering him, had attempted the over- throw of his authority. He then noticed, that in the King of Navarre's own Government there were nume- rous Preachers and Ministers of Geneva wandering up and down ; and among them two, named Boye Normande and David, who the prisoners had con- fessed were most active in the work of seduction. He felt assured that his good Uncle would use all diligence to arrest those traitors, in order that they might no longer abuse the simplicity of the populace. A notice of the accusations against the Prince of Conde followed; and of these the King expressed his entire disbelief, asserting that he was never better pleased and satisfied with him. In an autograph postscript, he repeated his earnest desire for the seizure of the above-named Ministers ; stating that the King of Navarre could not do him a greater kindness than by confining them in some place of security till they might be delivered up to his own hands, in order to receive the punishment which they so justly merited. This request was instigated by the Guises, for the express purpose of creating em- barrassment. They well knew that Boye Normande and David were the two most distinguished Ministers of the South, who were constantly entertained at the Court of the King of Navarre, and even travelled in his company ; and they calculated that his refusal to arrest them must increase the bad impression already entertained against him. The King, how- 1 The entire Letter is given in the Mem, de Conde, i. 398. , A.D.1560.] THREE ACCOUNTS OF THE CONSPIRACY. 125 ever, replied, that lie was unacquainted with the pre- sent haunts of the delinquents ; that he had de- spatched couriers in pursuit of them ; and that, if they re-appeared in his dominions, their escape would be difficult. Three contemporary accounts of the Conspiracy of Amboise were offered to the Public. One was con- tained in an Oration which the Constable ]\Iontmo- rency was officially instructed to deliver before the Parliament of Paris, a task of little honour, and exe- cuted with intentional negligence. He spoke of the transaction as a movement {emeute^ which, although Government had been advised of it many months beforehand, might have proved dangerous to the King and Royal Family, but for the accidental pre- sence of a number of brave and loyal gentlemen at the time of the explosion ; he expressed his surprise that persons of base condition should have been per- mitted to fire some fifty shots at the gates of Am- boise ; and he added that one and all of the prisoners protested their design to be levelled at other persons, by no means at the King. The Guises were not a little offended at the numerous insinuations contained in this Speech. First, the mention of their long fore- knowledge implied that they had neglected taking precautionary measures ; secondly, the Prince of Conde and his friends were intended by the brave gentlemen who defeated the enterprise ; and lastly, they were themselves the other persons ostentatiously exhibited as the chief cause of disaffection. In order to dissipate the prejudice which might be thus excited, they published, in a Letter from the King to his Par- liament, a narrative declared to be authentic, and they carefully cuxulated it not only in France but 126 ACCOUNTS OF THE CONSPIRACY. [cH. IV. tlirough all the Courts of Europe. Some pers'ons, said this Letter, have endeavoured by a false colour- ing to excuse this damnable and detestable rebellion, but here we will display the truth. The guilt is then divided between certain exiles for other crimes, who desired the subversion of a Government by which they had been justly punished, and the Heretics who aimed at the establishment of a new Religion. These persons had the adroitness to persuade their deluded followers that even Princes fostered their design, and would eventually avow themselves its leaders. But the mercy of God, as by a miracle, discovered this odious project but a few days before its execution. After an attempted extenuation of the blood already poured out like water, accompanied by somewhat inconsistent menaces of future punishment, the King concluded by announcing his design of assembling, within six months, a Synod of the Galilean Church, for the more rigid establishment of Ecclesiastical dis- cipline ^ The third and last narrative was put forth by the Reformed. Like the Speech of the Constable, it designates the Conspiracy by the light name of Le Tamulte d'Amhoise^, and openly taxes the Guises with a design upon the Crown. The Reader, whose object is Truth, is thus furnished with more than ordinary means of discovering it by a diligent com- parison of these conflicting statements. On the appearance of a pestilential disorder at Amboise, the Court soon transferred itself to Tours, where a ludicrous circumstance occasioned no small ^ Lettres du Roy Francois II. envoyees aux Cours des Parle- mens de France. Mem. de Conde, i. 347. 2 Ibid. 320. A. D. 1560.] THE BAKER OF TOURS. 127 alarm to the Guises. A Baker in one of the suburbs was much importuned by his only child, a boy of six or seven years of age, to give him a sight of the King's public entry, which was to be conducted with more than ordinary magnificence. The man being a humourist, and intending to amuse his child, mounted him upon an Ass, which he took from his mill and decorated with some of his wife's petticoats for housings. The boy was nearly naked, had his eyes bandaged, and wore on his head a wooden helmet, on the crest of which was fixed the figure of a red-headed parroquet, continually pecking at the child's skull. The ass was led by two youths coloured and habited as Moors. In this silly masquerade the jealous eye of Political suspicion discovered an allusion to matters of high State mystery. The blinded boy was said to be the King, the red-headed bird who pecked him was the Cardinal of Lorraine, the Moors who guided his course at will represented foreign Princes ; and this far-fetched interpretation of an innocent and unmeaning folly obtained so much belief, that it was with difficulty the Royal Guard was restrained from sacking and pillaging the City which dared thus openly to manifest its disaffection. It was during this residence of the Court in Tours that the term Huguenot first received the preference which it has ever since maintained as the distinguishing title of the French Reformed. To the derivation which we have before incidentally mentioned, one other may be added; an ancient gate in Tours had been named after a certain King, or Count Hugo, a contemporary of Charlemagne ; and popular superstition asserted that the Ghost of that personage rode on horseback nightly through the quarter of the City in which the 128 ORIGIN OF THE NAME HUGUENOT. [cH. IV. gate was situated, and rudely handled every hapless passenger whom it chanced to encounter. It was in vaults in the neighbourhood of that gate that the Reformed chiefly assembled, and the name, at first bestowed in mockery on that account, was afterwards proudly adopted by them, in testimony of their loyal adherence to the line of Hugh Capet \ On the departure of the Court to Tours, the Prince of Conde obtained permission to pay a short visit to his own estates. During this absence, having received information that the Cardinal of Lorraine had col- lected much scattered evidence against him, and was resolute in pressing the institution of an impeachment, he proceeded to seek asylum in his Brother's resi- dence at Nerac, notwithstanding an express recall by the King. But the disaffection of the Huguenots and their league with Conde were not the only per- plexities under which the Guises laboured. Public credit was almost annihilated, commerce and agricul- ture were equally depressed, and it was important that some financial remedy should be discovered, in order to replenish a wholly exhausted Treasury. An assembly of the States-General was always hazard- ous, and to be resorted to only in extremity ; even from the Notables ^ danger might be apprehended 1 Davila, i. p. 33 ; Hist, des Egl. Ref. i. 270 ; Gamier, xiv. 433. Castelnau gives one more derivation ; namely, that when the Conspirators endeavoured to escape from Amboise, the coun- try-people said they were not worth a Huguenot, a small coin struck by Hugh Capet, of less value than a Denier. — ilfe/w. ii. 7' Pasquier refers the name to the Ghost of Hugo. 2 The Notables, as the name implies, were a select Council of distinguished personages. The Assembly called together under that name by Louis XIII. in 1G2G, is described by Felibien to A. D. 1560.] COUNCIL AT FONTAINEBLEAU. 129 in the present general ferment of party spirit ; and the Guises, therefore, at length determined to seek relief from an Extraordinary Council, over which they might retain at least some degree of control, and which might answer the double purpose of obtaining supplies, and of placing the chief leaders of the mal- contents within their power \ Accordingly, the Princes of the Blood, the Great Officers of the Crown, the Councillors of State, and a few other persons of high rank and importance, were summoned to meet at Fontainebleau. The King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde, however, suspecting a stratagem, declined attendance, and Coligny, assembling his friends and retainers, appeared with a formi- dable escort of 800 horsemen. Emboldened by this support, on the opening of the Council, he stepped forward to the foot of the throne, and bending one knee, presented a Memorial to the King. It was a Petition from the inhabitants of Normandy, into have been composee des Princes, des Cardbmux, de 2}hisieurs Archevesques et evesqiies, des Conseilleurs et Secretaires d'Estat, des Intendans des Finances, de plusieurs Gentilshommes repre- sentans la Noblesse, des Presidens et Procureurs Generaux des Parlemens, du Provost des Marchands, et des Officiers des Cours des Aydes. — Hist, de Paris, 1340. ^ Davila, whose leading fault is an affectation of intimate knowledge of secret motives, attributes both the Council at Fon- tainebleau and the subsequent meeting of the States-General entirely to the wish of the Guises to secure the persons of their enemies ; and he thinks also that the Prince of Conde, whose single destruction would have done more harm than good to their cause, was permitted to escape from Amboise as a stale, by which his colleagues might afterwards be more readily enticed into the snare (lib. ii. ad init.). In this statement there is per- haps not a little too much refinement. K 130 COUNCIL AT FONTAINEBLEAU. [cH. IV. whose discontents the Admiral had been instructed to inquire. They protested their loyalty and obedience, and their readiness to furnish extraordinary supplies, if demanded by public exigency. At the same time they strongly asserted the right of full liberty of con- science ; and since public Assemblies for their worship had been hitherto prohibited, and their being com- pelled to meet in secrecy had given a handle for atrocious imputations, they now humbly supplicated his Majesty to allow them Churches and freedom of Religious Service \ " This document," said Coligny, " was unsigned, and I at first refused to present it. Gain us but leave to meet, was the answer which I received, and in a single day you shall have 50,000 signatures !" "And I," retorted the Duke of Guise, " will find 100,000, whom I myself will head, who shall sign the contrary with their own blood ^ !" The unexpected boldness of this demand, and the appearance of menace with which it was accompanied. ^ A similar Requeste was transmitted at the same time to Catherine de Medicis, in which she is once more likened to Esther. Both these Papers are given at length in the Mtm. de Conde, ii. 045. 648. 2 Pasquier Lettres, liv. iv. vol. i. p. 183. It is impossible not to be struck with the great sagacity and foresight which this learned and most agreeable writer continually manifests. When relating this incident to his correspondent, M. de Fonssome, he adds, Cecy 7ious est U7i certain prognostic que Vtm et Vautre, Vun grand Prince et Vautre gra?id Seigneur seront quelque jour conducteurs de deux contraires partis qui ne sont encores formex. And again he speaks of Les deux miscrables mots de faction de Huguenot et Papiste que je crains nous apportn an long alter les mesmes calamitez et miseres que les Guelps et Gihellins dans ritalie, et la Rose Blanche et Rouge dedans VAngleterre. A. D. 1560.] SPEECH OF MONTLUC BP. OF VALENCE. 131 excited no small emotion in the Council. The Sit- tings continued during several days, and the most remarkable Speech delivered in their course was that with which Montluc Bishop of Valence, as junior Member, opened the debate. It is too long for entire insertion in our pages, but we translate the following striking passage, as a proof that not all the Romish Clergy of those times denounced the great change in Religion as productive of unmixed Evil ; but that there were some Prelates among them who, even in the presence of their Sovereign, and yet more of so bigoted a persecutor as the Cardinal of Lorraine, had sufficient wisdom, virtue, and courage, to assert general principles of Toleration, to unmask the mani- fest abuses of their own Church, and to proclaim the necessity for Ecclesiastical Reform. " The Doctrine, Sire, which so many of your sub- jects have embraced is not the hasty produce of three or four short days, but it has been ripening gradually during the course of thirty years ; it is preached by many hundred ]Ministers, diligent in their calling, skilled in Letters, apparently of modest, grave, and holy manners, professing a detestation of all vices, especially of avarice, fearlessly surrendering their lives for the support of their principles, and ever bearing in their mouths the blessed name of Jesus Christ ; a name of power sufficient to unseal the dullest ear, and to soften the hardest heart. These Preachers, moreover. Sire, having found your People as sheep Mdthout the guidance of any Shepherds, have been received with joy and listened to with avidity. You ask, perhaps, by what methods this !New Learning has been opposed ? I will begin by his Holiness the Pope, concerning whom, let m.e protest^ that I intend K 2 132 SPEECH OF [CH. IV. to speak with no less honour and reverenne than is his just due. Nevertheless, my conscience obliges me to deplore the calamity of these our times in which we have seen Christendom assailed from without, distracted within, and convulsed by diversity of opi- nions ; in which the Popes, careless of Church Dis- cipline, have turned their whole attention to War, and fomented the quarrels of Princes ; in which the Kings, your predecessors, have enacted sharp penal laws, with too hasty zeal, thus thinking to eradicate these opinions and to bind your People together in unity of Faith. But they have been deceived in their hopes and frustrated in their designs. The Ministers of Justice have greatly abused these Ordinances, executing them with evil speed, to gratify Informers who have denounced the accused for the sake only of sharing in confiscation. The Bishops, for the most part, have been indolent, not calling to mind with salutary fear that they must one day render account to God of the flocks committed to their charge. In good truth, their chief care has been directed, first, to the collection of their revenue, and afterwards to its expenditure in foolish, vicious, and scandalous toys ; so that while the flame was blazing in their Dioceses, more than forty Bishops at a time have been idling in Paris. Add to tliis, that Sees have been conferred on children, and on persons wholly ignorant, neither willing nor indeed able to perform their sacred duties. Alas ! the eyes of the Church have been bandaged, her pillars have been bowed down and are fallen ! Is it, to be wondered at that the Sectarian Ministers should remonstrate with those who lend them their ears, and should tell them that their guides have ceased to offer instmctio-n nnd to look to the a'ood of A. D. 1560.] MONTLUC BISHOP OF VALENCE. 133 their souls ; that their Priests, for the most part, are ignorant and avaricious, and have purchased their Benefices simoniacally ! At this very moment in which we so much need a supply of men of zeal, knowledge, and virtue, send but your ducats to Rome and you will have a proportionable stock of Priests in return. Every Cardinal will have some Cook or Steward, some Valet, Barber, or Lacquey, ready and gaping for a Benefice, and prepared by avarice, ignorance, and debauchery to increase the evil repute of our Priesthood. These are the excel- lent methods which have been chosen to promote peace and unity in our Church !" Again, separating those among the Reformed, who made Religion an excuse for Political designs, from those who were sincere in their profession, he pleaded thus eloquently for the latter : " Others there are, Sire, who have admitted this Doctrine, and who main- tain it with the true fear of God, and with due reve- rence for your Majesty, against whom they would on no account offend. Look to their lives and to their deaths if you would inquire concerning the motives by which they are actuated ! Observe their holy zeal, their vehement desire to find the one true way of Salvation, and having found it, to abide therein, and to set at nought in comparison with it all loss of worldly goods, all deaths under the most excruciating torture ! Yea, often as I call to mind any of those Confessors who die thus constantly for their Faith, every hair bristles on my head, and I mourn over our own misery, untouched as we are by any sense of God or of His Religion. Surely those whom I describe should be carefully set apart from others who abuse their name, and should never be 134 SPEECH OF [CH. IV. counted among the seditious. Even if my Order and Profession did not bind me to protest against the effusion of blood-and the severity of criminal punish- ments in matters concerning Faith, I would humbly urge you to look to Experience in confirmation of my opinion. When in the History of the World did penal laws ever restrain the jorogress of Religious Doctrine ? when, on the contrary, did not the patience of those who suffer under them raise unnumbered partizans to their cause ? Many who would never have heard of the Doctrine itself, when they see men die for it, resolve to search whether it be good or evil ; and many having so searched are prepared to die for it themselves, and to follow in the train of the Martyrs who have gone before them\" These were plain truths which the Guises probably little expected to hear from the lips of a Prelate. The Admiral, in a following Sitting, continued to urge the prayer of the Normans ; and the general senti- ments of the Assembly inclined towards the convo- cation of the States-General, and also of a National Synod, if the Pope could not be induced to proclaim a General Council. The Cardinal of Lorraine under- took to reply to Coligny in particular. The peti- tioners, he said, called themselves faithful subjects and servants of the King. If they were indeed so, it was nevertheless under a condition, sufficiently implied, although perhaps not openly expressed : namely, that the King would enroll himself among their Sect, or at least would cease to oppose it. That to grant them the use of Churches and the public ^ Mem. cle Conde, i. 555. Garnier, xiv. 482. The latter has not ventured to print this Speech entire. A. D. 1560.] THE CARDINAL OF LORRAINE. 135 exercise of their Religion, was manifestly to approve their Doctrine ; a step which the King could not take without hazarding his Salvation, and violating the solemn oath by which he was pledged to maintain the Catholic and Apostolical Religion throughout his dominions ; that as to the assembling of a Council, whether General or National, he perceived neither its advantage nor its necessity ; the King and the Bishops jointly possessed sufficient power for the reformation (if any such were needed) of Church Discipline, and Church Doctrine was already fixed by many former Councils on a basis not to be shaken. Was there indeed the slightest hope or the least appearance that those who chiefly clamoured for a Council would submit to its decision, if one were obtained ? Did they not seek to model it after their own fashion ? that is, contrary to every received precedent of anti- quity. And if their absurd pretensions were rejected (as no one could doubt that they would be rejected), would they not immediately declare, according to their custom, that they were sentenced without being heard, and that the Bishops were both Judges and Parties in the suit ? The docility, the meekness, and the charity which animated these perfect Christians, these new Evangelicals, might, he said, be measured by the flood of libels in which they poured out the venom of calumny against those who displeased them. That, for his own part, having collected no less than two-and-twenty scandalous writings against his single self, he carefully preserved them as so many precious tokens of honour : so many choice Patents of Nobility ; for he could not but esteem it as the greatest of all possible eulogies to have encountered the hatred of wretches thus wicked and perverse. 136 SPEECH OF THE CARDINAL OF LORRAINE. [cH. IV. For those who were deceived by their own ignorance and credulity, he entertained the most cordial pity ; and since harsh measures had failed, he did not object to treat them with gentleness. Deeply indeed- did he regret that they had been so long confounded with the really guilty ; willingly, if he could remove the blindness of their eyes and reconcile them to the Church, would he shed for their sakes his last drop of blood. He then, in conclusion, urged the necessity -^f taking extreme measures against all persons who carried arms in the Provinces without permission from the King ; recommended residence to the Bishops ; and agreed to a convocation of the States-GeneraP. ^ Velly, iv. 107, (where he has cited a long passage from Pasquier, Recherches de la France, liv. ii. c. ?• P- B6,) and his continuator, Villaret, v. 64, may be consulted for the obscure origin and history of the States- General of France. Their con- stitution is no where better explained than by Davila, from whom we shall borrow, in the words of his translator Farneworth. " The French Nation is divided into three Orders, by them called States. The first consists of Ecclesiastics, the second of Nobility, and the third of the Common People. These being divided into thirty Districts, or Jurisdictions, which they call Bailliages or Senes- chaussees, when a General Assembly of the Kingdom is to be held, all resort to their chief City, and, separating themselves into three distinct Chambers, every one chooses a Deputy, who in the name of their Body is to assist at the General Assembly, wherein all the affairs that concern any of those three Orders or the Government of the State, are proposed and discussed. In this manner, three Deputies are sent by every Bailliage; one for the Ecclesiastics, one for the Nobility, and one for the People, which, by a more honourable term, is called the Third State. When they are met together in the presence of the King, the Princes of the Blood, and Great Officers of the Crown, they form the Body of the States-General, and represent the authority, name, and power of the whole Nation. If the King is capable of governing, and is there in person, they have a power to con- A. D. 1560.] THE STATES-GENERAL SUMMONED. 137 The States-General were accordingly summoned to assemble at Meaux on the 10th of December ; and a Synod of Bishops was convened at Paris for the 20th of January following, provided the Pope did not beforehand proclaim a General Council. Pius IV., however, alarmed at this vigorous step which ap- peared to threaten the suppression of his Annates and the re-establishment of the Pragmatic Sanction \ if not a schism equally formidable with that which had rent England from the Spiritual dominion of Rome, hastened to declare that the long-expected General Council would meet at Trent during the ensuing Easter. It was a similarly overpowering necessity which had compelled the Guises to consent to the assembling of the States-General. The late Council at Fontainebleau had proved nugatory as to the provi- sion of supplies ; and new intimations of the restless- ness and pertinacity with which Conde was pursuing his hostile designs, obtained by the seizure of papers on one of his Emissaries, made them more than ever anxious, at all hazards, to secure his person. An «.ttempt to surprise Lyons was traced to the machi- sent \o his demands, to propose things necessary for the good of their (. rder, to lay fresh taxes upon the People, and to make or receive i>ew Laws and Constitutions. But when the King is in his minoi'ty, or otherwise incapacitated to govern, they have authority, u there is any dispute about it, to choose a Regent, to dispose of the principal offices, and to appoint a Council ; and if the Royal Line should fail, to choose a new King according to the Salic Law. L \* besides these great privileges, the Kings have always been accustomed to assemble the States General upon any weighty and urgent occasion, and to determine in all cases of difficulty with their advice and consent." — Book L vol. i. p. 56. ^ See p. 4. 138 THE BOURBONS RESOLVE [cil. IV. nations of the Bourbons, and wherever discontent arose their agents were visible. The Guises foresaw that without risking an open breach with the King, Conde could not be so far guilty of disrespect "as to neglect his citation to the most solemn of all National Meetings ; and if he were once again within their grasp, it would be their own fault if he were ever dis- entangled. The directly opposite qualities of the two Bourbon Princes tended, under these circumstances, to produce in each a similar determination ; and the King of Navarre, prompted by his moral timidity, the Prince of Conde by his fearlessness, respectively notified an intention of obeying the summons of the Court. His pensions, his Government, his vast possessions in various Provinces, his Principality of Bearne once already exposed to seizure, the remnant of his King- dom of Navarre upon which Spain was ever on the watch to make a stealthy spring, — all these were strong links to bind Antony to peace. The Hugue- nots indeed made splendid proffers of support, but could they realize these large promises ? they were almost untried; they might ignorantly miscalculate or wilfully exaggerate their power ; they were widely scattered ; were they able at a given moment to form a junction by which they might usefully co-operate ? The King on the other hand had a large and efficient army ready to move at a word ; and if he called in the alliance of Madrid, no fate short of destruction could be anticipated from his anger. The Prince of Conde, of widely different temper, unclouded by ap- prehension of dangers yet to come, unappalled by those which were real and present, above all, immea- surably confident in his illustrious rank, at first 15 I A. D. 1560.] TO ATTEND THE STATES-GENERAL. 139 refused to admit that any hazard existed ; and when in the end he was forced to acknowledge that the step was in truth perilous, he generously declared that his own single stake of life was of little value, if weighed against the loss of life, wealth, and Crown which his Brother might encounter ; and he resolved to partake his fortune, and to accompany him to the Assembly. Orleans was substituted for Meaux, which swarmed with Huguenots, as the City at which the States were to assemble ; and measures having been , . 1 , . 1 Tr- Oct. 18. taken to disarm the inhabitants, the King, lieading a large Body of troops, made a public entry, more intended to strike terror than to display magni- ficence \ about the middle of October. The Bour- bons, meantime, journeyed slowly from Bearne, and their route was carefully watched at every step of its progress. Theodore Beza accompanied them to Nerac, and thence, travelling by night, and not with- out danger, returned home to Geneva. More than once, the King of Navarre's resolution failed ; and when arrived at Muerdon, in Perigaud, he counter- feited illness, and wrote excuses to Catherine. Ashamed, or re-assured, he proceeded on to Limoges, where he found eight hundred gentlemen of distinc- tion, each accompanied by an armed suite, who ten- dered their personal services ; offered six thousand infantry, already raised in Poitou and la Santonge ; the assurance of four thousand more from Provence and Languedoc ; and of an equal number from Nor- mandy. All these troops were to be subsidized by the Reformed Churches for two months. Was it not ^ Non Icetd, ut alias solitum, sed terribili pompd iirhem i7i- gressus. De Thou, xxvi. 2, 140 OFFERS OF THE HUGUENOTS. [cH. IV. more politic, they asked, at once to embrace the bolder part, by openly avowing himself their Chief, than to place himself defenceless at the mercy of his enemies, with no other guarantee than the word of a faithless woman ? But the blood of Antony flowed in too dull and equable a current to partake of the generous warmth which animated his suitors. He coldly promised that if the Court thought to molest them for having thus contravened its last orders by appearing in arms, he would make it his business to plead their cause. Human patience could scarcely be expected to endure a reply so little in accordance with their present excited feelings. "It is your cause, Monseigneur, not ours," was the parting re- mark of one of these brave gentlemen, " which will require your attention ; you will soon enough have need of an Advocate. For ourselves we have still our swords ; and since our natural leaders abandon us, we must look elsewhere for others !" But notwithstanding every warning, the Princes moved on as if stricken with judicial blindness. The Princess of Conde, tenderly attached to her husband, and warned from sources which did not admit of doubt, MTote with her own hand, by a confidential messenger, that he was lost if he entered Orleans. The Brothers treated her alarm either as visionary, or as excited by a stratagem of the Guises, seeking to make them disobey the Royal mandate. Soon afterwards they were met by an officer, who signified, with some rudeness, on the part of the King, that they must travel only on the high roads, and not enter any fortified town. They asked for his orders, but his instructions had been only verbal, and the King of Navarre, instead of resisting them, a second A. D. 1560.] RECEPTION OF THE BOURBONS. 141 time feigned sickness, took to his bed, and remon- strated with Catherine, who, of course, disavowed the prohibition. Fresh warnings of intended treachery poured in from friends of the Princes, who exhorted them to instant flight, and promised men, money, and fortresses, if they would but hasten to Normandy. But it was now almost too late for the attempt — ano- ther day rendered escape impossible. Two hundred lances and 600 foot-soldiers awaited them at Poitiers, as a pretended Guard of honour. Surrounded by this formidable escort, they were hurried on to -^ Oct. 31. Orleans, where the great gates of the Palace remained barred and unopened at their approach. The King of Navarre was at length admitted on horseback, but the Prince alighted in the street, and was compelled to gain entrance through a wicket \ No attendant was waiting to receive them ; as they ti'aversed the Royal apartments, sentinels met their eyes at every step ; and few of the Courtiers saluted or even recognised them. In the Audience Chamber, the King, attended by the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, heard their compliments with a distant air, and motioned them to accompany him to the Closet of the Queen Mother. Catherine uttered a shriek, and burst into tears at their entrance ^ ; and the King, sternly addressing Conde, stated that he was accused of Treason, and must justify himself. When the Prince, with an unmoved countenance, ex- pressed his readiness to rebut every calumny which ^ Brantome was an eye-witness of this affront : il entra dans k logis du Roy, non a cheval, comme le Roy son frere, comme aucuns out dit, car je le vis, mats ayant mis pied a terre. Discours, Ixxx, 1. torn. vi. p. 334. - Obortis seuveris sev ijctir, larrvmis. De Thou. xxvi. .3. 142 ARREST OF CONDE. [cH. IV. might be advanced against him. " It is right," said the King, "that you should be heard in your de- fence;" and then ordering two Captains of his Body- guard to place the Prince under arrest, quitted the chamber. Conde was transferred to a house prepared beforehand for his con- finement, in which the windows were strongly barred, and many of the doors had been walled up ; in front, also, was a bastion planted with artillery, and com- manding the three streets by which it was ap- proached. All communication with his Brother, and even with his Wife, unless in the presence of wit- nesses, was strictly forbidden. Numerous arrests followed his own ; and among them that of his mother-in-law, the Dame du Roye, a woman of high spirit, who, in her confidential intercourse with the Queen Mother, had not concealed her aversion from the Guises, and who had consequently excited sus- picion. The King of Navarre, although not formally arrested, was placed under the most vigilant surveil- lance ; and he encountered the bitter mortification of being compelled to solicit the Cardinal of Lorraine, and of finding his entreaties received with haughty coldness \ The Queen Mother preserved a strict and ominous silence, and when the Princess of Conde threw herself at the King's feet, she was sternly informed that justice must take its course. Commissioners, selected from the Parliament of ^ Here again we have the ocular testimony of Brantome. Je le vis deux fois venir trouver M. Le Cardinal de Lorraine, en son jardin une fois et Vautre en sa chambre, pour le prier poxir inter- ceder pour son frere : mais il parloit a luy plus souvent descouvert que convert ; et Vautre se mettoit tres-hien a son ayse, car il faisoit grand froid. Disc. Ixxx. 1. torn. vi. p. 334. I A. D. 1560.] CONDE SENTENCED TO DEATH. 143 Paris, were instructed to arrange Conde's accusation without delay ; and their President was Christopher de Thou, Father of the Historian. Turning to him on his first interrogatory, Conde expressed surprise tliat he " the most knowing of all the round caps in the Kingdom ^ " should be ignorant that a Prince of the Blood could not be tried otherwise than by the King in person, assisted by the other Princes, the Peers of France, and the whole Parliament ; he -therefore protested, in this and all following stages, against their proceedings. His objection was over- ruled ; and by a threat that he should be condemned without farther Process if he persisted in refusing to plead, he was prevailed upon to commit his defence to the two bold and able Counsellors who had before advocated the cause of the persecuted Dubourg. A few additional Commissioners were named by the King to swell the ambiguous and illegal Court before which the Cause was to be heard. The Prince, who confined himself to rebutting the charge of participa- tion in the Conspiracy of Amboise, and in the more recent attempt at Lyons, made an open admission of his Religion : and upon evidence, which probably was distinct and clear, notwithstanding the general iniquity of the mock trial, he was pronounced guilty and adjudged to lose his head. De Thou states his belief, — upon the authority of his Father, from whose lips, he says, he had often heard the fact, — that the Judges, when compelled by the proofs before them to deliver this Sentence, were nevertheless so con- scious of their o\^^l want of legitimate authority, and so opposed to the bloody violence of the predomi- ^ Tons les bonnets ronds de Royaume. Gamier, xiv. 572. 144 PROTEST BY SANCERRE. [cH. IV. nating faction, that they minuted, but never actually- signed the Decree. Unhappily, the Registers of the Parliament disprove this assertion, which it were to be wished had been true \ It is believed, however, that the Chancellor de I'Hopital, and Guillart de Mortier, one of the Councillors of State, delayed their signatures till the latest possible day, in the hope of gaining time and of reversing the Sentence ; and a single aged Nobleman, Louis de Beuil, Comte de Sancerre, refused, even to the end, any attestation of his own disgrace. Although a sincere Romanist and a personal friend of the Guises, he did not hesi- tate to speak plainly to the King when pressed to compliance. " Any other service which your Majesty may command shall be performed while there is life in my body. But I will rather place my head be- neath the axe of the executioner, than bequeath as a heritage to my children the infamy of reading their Father's name subscribed to a capital Sentence against a Prince whose descendants may one day become their Kings ^." The Cardinal of Lorraine repre- sented Sancerre as fallen into dotage ; Francis him- self was inexorable ; and the 10th of December, the day on which the States- General were to be opened, was fixed for the execution. 1 Walckenaer, in a note on Renault, ii. 583, Ed. 1821. Re- nault observes that the Sentence on Conde reminds him of the pointed speech of a Celestin Monk of Marcoussi, who was show- ing to Francis I. the Tomb of Jean de Montagu, Grand Master of France, beheaded on a false accusation in the reign of Charles VII. The King lamented that so great a Minister should have been condemned to death by Justice. The Monk replied, Par- donnez mot, Sire, cefut par des Commissaires. 2 Mem. de Castelnau jmr Le Laboureur, i. 514. Gamier, xiv. 375. i A. D. 1560.] FORTITUDE OF CONDE. 145 The fortitude of Conde increased with his increas- ing peril ; and the menace of approaching death seemed but to confirm his lofty spirit in its in- flexibility. A Priest was sent to his chamber to perform Mass ; and the Prince dismissed him before he could commence the Service, with a remark that he had come to Orleans for very different purposes. A gentleman of distinguished birth, long admitted to his familiarity, but latterly engaged under the Guises, basely permitted himself to be employed as their agent, to discover the real state of the prisoner's mind. Having expressed his deep sympathy and regret, he ventured to hint at accommodation with his great enemies, to which he offered himself as mediator. The Prince listened without interruption till he had concluded, then taxed him with his pre- concerted mission, and desired him to reply, that the sole accommodation to which he could ever consent must be made at the sword's point. The King of Navarre, on the contrary, lived in perpetual terror. Rumours of intended assassination were hourly poured into his ears ; at one time he was to be poi- soned at a banquet ; at another to be shot during a hunting party ; at a third to be stabbed by the hand of the King himself. It has been said, indeed, that he was absolutely enticed for that purpose to the King's bed-chamber; that having twice uselessly de- clined the treacherous summons, he went forewarned of his intended murder and resolved to sell his life most dearly ; that the Guises were in attendance ; the Cardinal of Lorraine barred the door immediately on his entrance, and the King addressed him rudely with the intention of provoking an indignant an- swer. The King of Navarre, however, replied with L 146 ILLNESS AND [cH. IV. gentleness ; and Francis, either unable to fasten upon him the blame of a quarrel, or staggered by his un- expected and meek demeanour, rose and quitted the chamber without fulfilling his bloody purpose ; the Duke of Guise, as he passed, remarking, "Never was there so great a poltroon ! ^ " November was fast approaching to its close, and the fate of Conde appeared irrevocably sealed, when the King was attacked by alarming symptoms, and his probable demise at once changed the whole posi- tion of the Court. The Guises, indeed, would gladly have hurried Conde to the scaffold, and have com- menced an impeachment of the King of Navarre while Francis was yet alive. But it was by no means the interest of the Q,ueen Mother to strengthen their hands, already far too powerful ; and if in the ensuing reign of her second and infant son Charles, she might hope to recover any of the influence which had been wrested from her in the present, her object could be compassed only by preserving a more equa- ble balance of parties. The counsels also of the sin- cere and upright De L'Hopital, upon which she for- tunately threw herself in these difficulties, materially aided the cause of the Princes. Temporizing, there- fore, with that dissimulation of wliich she had so 1 Garnier, xiv. 577> relates this story on the authority of La Planche, without, however, attaching much credit to it. The King of Navarre, before obeying the summons, instructed Ranti, one of his attendants, in whom he placed much confidence, to preserve his bloody shirt, if he should be murdered, and to re- quest the Queen, his Consort, to show it to their son, whenever he was of sufficient age to become his avenger. De Thou, xxvi. 5, writes much to the same purpose, and dismisses the whole matter as doubtful : t(t vera ac certa minime affirmaverim. A. D. 1560.] DEATH OF FRANCIS II. 147 consummate a mastery, she assured the Guises that she considered their interests identified with her own, and that it was necessary for all their sakes that they should be reconciled to the Bourbons ; while, at the same time, she so far worked upon the fears of the King of Navarre as to prevail upon him to renounce his claim to the sole Regency, during tlie approaching minority. Then, prompting his part also to her dying son, she obtained from his do- cility an avowal, in the presence of the yet hostile parties and of numerous witnesses, that whatever steps had been taken against the Prince of Conde, originated entirely from himself, and were pursued contrary to the advice of the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine. False as all parties must have believed or known that declaration to be, it was considered sufficient to warrant an exchange of pro- fessions of future amity between the late deadly enemies ; and Francis, having witnessed this recon- ciliation, expired on the 5th of December, but five days before that morning which he had determined should be the last of Conde's existence. 148 ASSEMBLY OF THE STATES-GENERAL. [cH. V. CHAPTER V. Assembly of the States- General — Speech of Quentin — Bold Memo- rial of the Huguenots — Their lid National Synod — Release of Conde — Formation of the Triumvirate — Edict of July — Osten- sible reconciliation of Conde and the Duke of Guise — Colloquy at Poissy — Peter Martyr and Beza — Beza's interview with the Cardinal of Lorraine — Opening of the Colloquy — Speech of Beza — Reply of the Cardinal of Lorraine — Arrival of the Car- dinal Legate of Ferrara — Second Speech of Beza — Reply of Despence — Of De Xaintes — Beza's explanation — Stratagem of the Cardinal of Lorraine — Beza^s remonstrance — Speech of Peter Martyr — Of Lainez, General of the Jesuits — Private Conference of the disputants — Termination of the Colloquy. Charles IX. was in his eleventh year when called to the throne by this unexpected demise of his brother ; and the chief apprehension of Catherine, on succeed- ing to the full authority which she had thus dexte- rously obtained during his minority, arose from the approaching meeting of the States-General. Not- withstanding every precaution, a numerous Body of Huguenots must be found among the Deputies, and their proceedings before the Conspiracy of Amboise had sufficiently evinced their determination to make the Regency depend upon Constitutional election. If they predominated therefore in the ensuing Assembly, she foresaw that her power would be at an end, and that all authority would be transferred to the Bourbon bro- thers. When the Three Estates met on the appointed 13th of December, the Cardinal of Lorraine earnestly wished, on many accounts, to be elected Orator for the Ecclesiastical Chamber. At all times prompt to A. D. 1560.] SPEECH OF QUENTIN. 149 display the eloquence which he was conscious of possessing, he now more than ever desired to show that, although no longer Minister, he still retained his former personal consideration. But in this hope he was disappointed. The Nobles and the Tiers- Etdt coldly declined the proposition of the Clergy by fixing upon Jean Quentin, Professor of Canon Law and Deputy from the University of Paris ; and never was an important office less discreetly bestowed, duentin's Speech teemed with bitterness against the Reformed ; he urged the King to exterminate by fire and sword " those rebellious inventors of novel and execrable Sacraments;" and among the Historical precedents from which he said that salutary advice might be derived, he pointed especially to an inci- dent in the reign of the Emperor Arcadius. Under that Prince, Gairas, Master General of the Forces, projected the overthrow of the Throne, and in order to compass his design, leagued with the Arians ; "a Sect," exclaimed the Professor, " truly identical with the modern pretended Reformed." One of the requests of Gairas was for permission to appropriate a Church in Constantinople, in which, together with his Sectarian Brethren, he might celebrate Service ; and when the Patriarch Chrysostom peremptorily refused assent, the traitor threw off" the masque and perished miserably in his rebellion. This passage in Quentin's Speech excited no small movement in the Chamber. It was scarcely possible to suppose that he had not intended to establish a parallel between the Byzantine insurgent and Co- ligny ; and indeed the points of resemblance, as he had exhibited them, were confessedly numerous. Not to mention the similarity of sound between Gairas 7 150 MEMORIAL OF [CH. V. and Gaspard, the office of Master General of the Forces, was akin to that held by the Admiral ; and the demand of a Church in Constantinople brought to mind the Petition which Coligny had presented at the Council of Fontainebleau, praying that the Nobles might erect Meeting-houses for the Reformed on their own estates. The attack was resented accord- ingly ; the Admiral made strong representations of the personal affront which he had endured, and the Huguenot Nobles demanded the erasure from the Acts of the Assembly of all those offensive passages in which they had been stigmatised as Libertines, Gnostics, Montanists, or Arians, and their Religion confounded with almost every former Heresy by which Christendom had been distracted. After no small delay and discussion, it was agreed that, before the close of the Sitting, Quentin should declare that in his first Speech he had not meditated any personal allusion. The unhappy orator, overwhelmed by songs, satires, lampoons, and epigrams, and deeply suffering under the humiliation of offering a dis- avowal to which no one attached credit, died of chagrin, within a few months after he had filled the office most esteemed and coveted by his Ecclesiastical Brethren. Before the last day's Sitting, however, a Memorial of unusual boldness was presented by a Deputation of Huguenot Ministers, whom the King of Navarre introduced to the young Monarch in his Council Chamber. It spoke of their disappointment at the course pursued by the States- General, in whose Assembly the wickedness of certain powerful indi- viduals had, contrary to all equity, deprived them of their just hopes, by imposing silence on every matter A. D. 1561.] THE HUGUENOTS. 151 which concerned Religion. It characterised Quentin by the imtranslateable title of " Ce heau Latiniseur du Clerge,"" who had impudently prohibited the King from receiving, and the Lords of the Council from presenting any request in their behalf. It urged tlie King not to listen to calumnies against the best and soundest portion of his subjects ; to suspend the Processes to which they were daily exposed in Courts of Law ; to consider the absurdity of persecuting Christians who acknowledged one Gospel and one Creed, while he tolerated Jews and Mohammedans ; and to grant his Brethren in the Faith as much liberty in a Christian land as they would find in the domi- nions of the Sultan. After declaring the unalterable loyalty of the petitioners, it concluded with a prayer that they might be allowed to assemble, without arms, at whatever places and times the King might please to specify, under the inspection of any officers whom he might appoint to observe their transactions. The Memorial was received, but it was stated that its heads required deliberation, and its discussion was therefore postponed to a more convenient season. The disorders of the Revenue had by no means been corrected by this futile meeting of the States- General ; and that Body having been declared incompe- tent to its task, in consequence of the death of the late King, was summoned to assemble at Melun, after a fresh election of Deputies, in the course of the ensuing May. Anterior to that meeting, March lo, the Huguenots held their lid Synod. ^^^^- ' Poitiers was the spot selected for their discussions ; and there a strong Memorial was drawn up to be laid before the Council of Deputies on their first Sitting, urging the establishment of a legitimate Regency, as 152 H^ NATIONAL SYNOD. [cH. V. the only means of obtaining a satisfactory answer to the requests tendered at Orleans, by the King of Navarre. The Articles of Discipline agreed upon by the 1st Synod at Paris were corrected and enlarged in a few unimportant points ; and in these Canons the austere spirit of Calvinism once or twice exhibited itself in petulant hostility to innocent amusements. " All Consistories," it is said, " shall be admonished by their Ministers, that they do strictly forbid all Dancing, Mummeries, and Tricks of Jugglers" (Art. XT.) ; and among the " Particular matters" pro- pounded as Cases of Conscience, "upon mature deli- beration, it is decreed that whoso professeth a trade of Dancing, and hath been divers times admonished, and doth not quit it, shall be excommunicated." We read with far greater pleasure an Article conceived in a generous spirit of Charity, that " all violent and injurious words against the Papists, as also against their Chaplains, Priests, and Monks, shall not only be foreborne, but to the utmost of the Church's power shall be suppressed" (General Matters, VIII.). Some delicate points relative to promises of marriage were discussed ; and the nice scruples by which the Reformed allowed themselves to be perplexed are sufficiently evinced by the last question to which their Pastors are entreated to reply. " May he be admitted to communicate in the Bread only at the Lord's Table who hath an antipathy to Wine ?" — " Yes he may, provided that he do his utmost to drink of the cup ; but in case he cannot, he shall make a protestation of his antipathy" (XXXI.). The Memorial concerning the Regency was plainly the chief object for which this otherwise unimportant Synod had been convened ; and coupled with the A. D. 1561.] GREAT POLITICAL CHANGES. 153 release of the Prince of Conde, which occurred about the same time, it occasioned some extraordinary Poli- tical revolutions at Court. On the moment of the demise of the late King, Catherine had announced to Conde that he was free ; but the high-minded Prince considering it a point of honour not to owe his liberty to the accident of the King's dissolution, renewed his protest against the illegality of all the proceedings in his case ; demanded a solemn Arret in his favour, authenticated by the Parliament of Paris ; and until his innocence was thus formally established remained a voluntary prisoner \ The Arret was obtained after some formal and technical delays, and Conde, on his return to the Capital, found his party very greatly strengthened. The Electoral States, com- posed principally of Huguenots, recommended the exclusion of the Guises, as being foreigners, from the Royal Councils ; and Catherine found herself obliged, if she hoped to retain even partial authority, to pro- claim the King of Navarre Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom. But the States had not confined their declaration to this single matter ; they had adverted to the Crown debts, and had urged the resumption of the extravagant donations which the prodigality of Henry II. had lavished on his Favourites, among whom the Constable was particularised by name. This invidious denouncement completed the alien- ation of Montmorency from the Reformed ; and the ^ Two letters, written by Conde during this period of his im- prisonment, and characterized by great nobleness of spirit, (one to the King of Navarre, the other to the Queen Mother,) may be found in the Mem. de Conde, ii. 388. In the first he states, that he has had full experience of the good will of the Guises, and perceives quels cousins ce sont. 154 THE MARECHAL DE ST. ANDRe'. [cH. V. bitterness of spirit which the affront awakened, no less than a real community of interests, determined him to lay aside the jealousy which had long sepa- rated him from the Guises. Their union was com- pleted by the mediatory influence of a third party, the Marechal de St. Andre ; who having tasted, per- haps more than any other, of the inconsiderate bounty of Henry, had stronger reasons also than others for opposing the projected restitution of plunder. St. Andre — " a true LucuUus," as he is elegantly termed by the accommodating charity of Brantome \ or, as he is characterised by the more homely indignation of the Historian of the French Reformed Churches ^, " a man altogether surrendered to gluttony and its con- sequent vices, and from the original poverty of his Family not having wherewithal to furnish his plea- sures" — had, by dint of talent, courage, and agreeable manners, risen, almost in youth, from the post of First Gentleman of the Bed Chamber to the envied dignity of Marechal of France. By Henry II. he had been employed on various important and honour- able missions ; and among them was one to England, when he conveyed to Edward VI. the collar of the Order of St. Michael, and was presented in return for his Royal Master and for himself with that of the Garter ^. For these and other services he had been ^ Discours, Ixxxii. 1. tom. vi. p. 404. 2 j_ gg^ 2 Brantome, ut sup., where we learn that during the reign of Charles IX. the Garter was worn in the French Court on St. George's Day, by the King himself, by the Marechal de St. Andre, and by the Constable Montmorency, ce qui estoit une diose belle a voir, car la solemiite en est tres belle, avec la Jarre- Here, dont Vinstitution est fort antiqtie, et plus que de tons les mitres, fors celuy de rAnnonciade de Savoye qu'on tient la plus ancienne. 405. 6. A. D. 1561.] THE TRIUMVIRATE. 155 enriched both by the private largesses of Henry, and also by numerous confiscations of the estates of per- sons banished on account of Religion. The resti- tution of this wealth, indeed, if demanded, was im- possible ; it had been shared in part with the Royal Favourite, the Duchess De Valentinois, in part scat- tered in profuse and inordinate luxury ; in the em- bellishments of a costly seat at Valery surpassing in magnificence any of the Royal Palaces ; and in the maintenance of a table, which, from its elaborate and more than Apician science, appears to have been justly exposed to the sarcasm of Beza \ But although unable to refund, St. Andre might be called to severe account for that which he had expended, and be stripped of all which he retained ; and his most favourable chance of diverting the menaced storm appeared to be derived from an alliance of parties once violently opposed, but which now by his consummate knowledge of mankind he succeeded in uniting. This union of the Duke of Guise, the Constable, and the Marechal de St. Andre is known in contemporary History by the name of the Trium- . virate ; a name probably bestowed by the Hugue- nots, in order to assimilate it both in character and in odium to the detestable confederacies so called in Ancient Rome. The reconciliation of the Constable with the Duke of Guise was soon a matter of notoriety, but it did ^ // a este fort subject de tout temps a aymer ses ayses, ses plaisirs, et grands luxes de table. C'a este le premier de son temps qui les a introduits a la Cour, et certes par trap excessifs, disoit-on, en friandises et delicatesses de viandes, tant de chairs que de poissons, et autres friands mangers, is the admission of Erantome, ut sup. 156 THE CARDINAL OF LORRAINE PROPOSES [cH. V. not produce any immediate result. Both retired awhile from Court ; the former under the pretext of celebrating the nuptials of a son, the latter avowedly to disembarrass the Council from his presence. During their absence, an Edict long in preparation was issued, containing some provisions very favour- able to the Huguenots. The right of search in private houses on suspicion of Heretical meetings was forbidden, on pain of death, to any but Magis- trates ; all prisoners for Religious offences were enlarged ; and those in exile were permitted either to return and live unmolested within the Kingdom, provided they avoided occasion of scandal ; or to select their own place of retirement, after equitable disposal of their property. The Parliament of Paris, offended at the tolerant spirit of this Ordinance, refused to register it ; but the publicity which it had already received so far encouraged the Huguenots in the Capital that they ventured upon more- than usual openness in their meetings, and even obtained the ad- vantage in a tumult which their fearless conduct had excited, and in which several lives on both sides were sacrificed. The pleasing hopes excited by this demonstration of the mild intentions of Government were not dimi- nished by an unexpected proposition from the Car- dinal of Lorraine, made immediately after the Sacre of the young King, in a Council of State held at Rheims. He expressed his readi- ness as Chief Prelate of the Galilean Church, to consent that, in the ensuing Assembly of the States- General, the Clergy should meet separately from the two other Orders, for the purpose of reviewing the ex- isting condition of Ecclesiastical Discipline ; that, to A. D. 1561.] A COLLOQUY AT FOISSY. 15? avoid misconstruction by the Pope and Catholic Priests, their Assembly should not be termed a National Council ; but that the King might permit the attend- ance of the most distinguished Reformed Theologians, in order to discuss controverted points with the Catho- lic Divines. The Reformed could then no longer bruit abroad that calumny which they had hitherto so widely propagated, that the Catholics had no other argument than the Stake which they could oppose to Reason and to Truth. For his own part, so confident was he in the superiority of his cause, that he now pub- licly declared, that although less profoundly versed in Polemics than a professed Theologian, he would readily measure himself with any antagonist who might offer, were it even Calvin liimself. The Reformed accepted this defiance with alacrity, and the Council agreed to it unanimously ^ : Poissy was the spot named for the Ecclesiastical Confer- ence, Pontoise for the Assembly of the Nobility and Tiers Etdt ; both of them Towns in the immediate neighbourhood of St. Germain's. But the Council meantime adjourned to Paris, and there, leavened by a deputation of Members from the Parliament, all ^ The Cardinal of Lorraine doubtless was prompted by vanity in making this proposal. Catherine assented, because at that time the ascendancy of the Huguenots, which she thought would be increased by the Colloquy, was useful to her interests. But in a Letter to the Bishop ofRennes, written during the Sittings, that crafty woman assigned a directly opposite motive. II n'tf avoit meilleur moyen, ny plus fructueux, pour faire abandonner les d'lts ministres et retirer ceux qui leur adherent, que en faisanf confondre leur doctrine, et decouvrant ce qu'il y a d'erreur et d'Heresie. Memoires de Castelnau. Additions par Le Laboureur, i. 733. If such had been her true reason, miserably indeed would she have failed in her design. 158 EDICT OF JULY. [cH. V. bitterly hostile to the Reformed interests, deliberated twenty continuous days on the chief matters con- tained in the recent and as yet unregistered Ordi- nance. The result was a new Instrument, known from the month in which it was enacted as the Edict of July. It was carried by a majority of only three voices, and grievously were the Huguenots dismayed by its persecuting tenor. All Assemblies, public or private, held by armed or unarmed persons, in which sermons were preached or the Lord's Supper admi- nistered, contrary to the forms of the Church of Rome, were forbidden, on pain of forfeiture of bodily liberty and confiscation of property ; the Reformed Ministers were proscribed ; and the cog- nizance of Heresy, in conformity with the Edict of Romorantin, was assigned to the Bishops only ; with this single provision in favour of the offenders whom, on conviction, they should deliver to the secular arm, that their punishment was not to be extended beyond exile ^. It is not to be imagined, however, that this Edict, intolerant as were its provisions, could silence those who, fearless of martyrdom, were prepared, under every hazard, to avow the Truth ; and an incident of lighter character, which agreeably relieves many a sickening tale of persecution, at once proves how little the fervour of the Reformed was diminished, and how anxiously the Romish Priests called to their aid the mighty weight of public opinion as an assist- ant of the Law. In the village of Montmorillon, on die borders of Poitou and Limosin, a Church had 1 Hist, des Egl. Ref. i. 468, where the Edict is printed at length. A. D. 1561.] DE LA PONGE's SERMON. 159 been founded, chiefly by the zeal of Francis de la Ponge, who, after much exercise in the study of Scripture, resolved to devote his future years to the Ministry. Before delivering his first sermon, he had mortified himself by a long preparatory course of fasting and abstinence ; and when he mounted the pulpit, overcome by bodily weakness, and yet more by the solemnity of the holy duty in which he was about to engage, after the few opening words, he paused without being able to recover himself, and continued mute for a long time, with his hands clasped and his eyes raised to heaven. Breaking at length from this trance, as it were, and resuming self-possession, he defied Satan again to prevent his labour of love ; bade him avaunt as one bound and chained by God, who would bestow His grace upon the pious work now commenced ; and in proof of this assertion, he preached upon the spot for two good hours. Meantime, one of the enemy, on ob- serving De la Ponge's nervous seizure, ran off to the neighbouring village, and announced that the Minister had suddenly turned black in the face, and that the Devil had wrung his neck. The Priests, overjoyed at so seasonable a miracle, assembled in the Church, carried abroad the Host in procession, and announced this righteous judgment of God ; till, arriving at the Reformed Assembly, they were driven back with shame and confusion, upon discovering the Preacher yet alive, and persevering in an animated discourse, little likely as yet to arrive at its conclu- sion \ One event which occurred before the assembling of 1 Hist, des Egl, Ref. i. 765. 160 RECONCILIATION OF CONDE. [cil. V. the States-General demands notice as intimately connected with the History of the great leader of the Huguenots. The Prince of Conde still continued to attribute his arrest and peril of death during the late King's reign to the machinations of the Duke of Guise, and earnestly looked for an opportunity of satisfying his resentment. Since his release from confinement, however, the Duke of Guise had been absent from Court ; latterly employed in escorting to Calais his niece the unhappy Mary of Scotland, on her passage to her native dominions. When his duties as Grand Master of the Palace recalled him to St. Germain's, in order that he might officiate at the approaching solemnity, the Prince of Conde sum- moned his friends, and made evident preparations for a hostile decision of the quarrel. To prevent so fatal an interruption of the public repose, and the probable effusion of illustrious blood even within the verge of the Palace, Catherine interposed the mediation of the King, who having previously arranged the necessary forms with the Constable, summoned the rivals to his Chamber. There, in the presence of the most distinguished personages of the Court, he addressed the Queen as follows : " Madam, I have assem- bled this company in order to adjust the differ- ences between the Prince of Conde and Monsieur de Guise, who, I trust, will not refuse a settlement for the good of my service and of the Kingdom. To the end, therefore, that the Prince may know what he ought to believe, M. de Guise will first tell him how matters have passed." The Duke replied, according to the Constable's dictation, *' Sire, since you are pleased that I should give an explanation of past matters to M. le Prince, I will A. D. 1561.] WITH THE DUKE OF GUISE. 161 now do so. Monsieur, I have neither practised nor wished to practise against your honour, nor was I the author, mover, or instigator, of your imprisonment." To which the Prince replied, " Monsieur, I esteem as base and bad men any person or persons who oc- casioned it." — " I believe so," said the Duke, " and the remark in no wise affects me." Then the King bade them embrace, and be good friends. Such is the account of this remarkable scene, in which, while it is difficult to believe that the Duke of Guise acted a sincere part, it is quite evident, from thejierte of the Prince of Conde's reply, that he attached very little credit ^ to his declaration. The Clergy in general viewed the Assembly at Poissy with suspicion, and of 130 Bishops who had been summoned, scarcely fifty were present when the King opened the Sittings on the 30th 1 Beza considered the explanation to be altogether hollow. In a Letter to Calvin he relates its particulars, and adds, that on conversing with the Prince of Conde afterwards, rogatus quid sentirem, " verba ilia ambiguitatem prce se ferre" respondi. Calvini Op. viii. 154. Brantome, a professed eulogist of the Duke of Guise, omits the first speech, and makes him do no more than reply to the Prince's declaration, " qu'il le croyoit, mats que cette parole ne lay concernoit vy touchoit en rien," words, the subtilty and finesse of which he very highly applauds. Some persons, he says, maintained that the Duke had apolo- gized, mais les plus clairvoyans et les plus subtils et pointilleux esprits en matieres clievaleresques disoient que M. de Guise avoit trts sagement et subtilement respondu, en mode d'un Seigneur tres Men entendu en telles affaires, ainsi qiCil estoit ; comme celuy qui vouloit dire qu'il n'y avoit mil autre qui eut este cause ny motif de cet emprisonnement que luy mesme, que Von disoit avoir commis le peche etfait la faute, pour avoir este mis en prison ; et par ainsi, il y eut Men la du bigu, ainsi que Von en disoit a la Cour, et qu'il y alloit de Vun plus que de V autre : or, devines-le. Discours, Ixxviii. torn. vi. M 162 LETTER FROM CATH. DE MEDICIS [cH. V. of July. The Chancellor omitted all Political mat- ters in his Speech, and so entirely considered the meeting as a National Council, that the Cardinal de Tournon ^ who, as Dean of the Sacred College and Primate of France, was elected President, expressed great dissatisfaction. Considering how offensive to Rome must be any proceedings which should interfere with the proposed General Council at Trent, he de- clared that the present discussion should in no wise concern Faith, but be strictly limited to Discipline. A step taken by Catherine was less calculated to tranquil- lize the apprehensions of the Vatican. Having con- sulted, as is supposed, with Montluc, Bishop of Valence, she addressed to the Pope an explanatory Letter, pointing out the neces- sity of the Conference to which she had agreed, on account of the great number of Separatists. Never- theless, she assured the Holy Father that, through God's Grace, France had not produced any Anabap- tists, Libertines, deniers of the Apostles' Creed or of its interpretation by the Sacred OEcumenical Councils. She then insinuated that there were many points on which perhaps the Church might think it prudent to relax, in order to conciliate those who, by such indulgence, might be restored to its Communion. Was it not possible that the use of Images, forbidden by God and condemned by St. Gregory, might be removed, so far at least as adora- ^ Un vieux routier en affaires d'Estat. Pasquier, Lettres, liv. iv. torn. i. p. 198. Brantome, who characterizes him in similar words, admits that he was surpassed in dexterity by Catherine; tout viel roturier de prudence et de conseil qu'il estoit, ma foy, la Rei/fw en sqavoit plus que luy, ny que tout le Conseil du Roy ensemble. Dis- cours, ii. torn. ii. p. 275. A. D. 1561.] TO PIUS IV. 163 tion was concerned ? Might not exorcism and other unessential forms in Baptism he omitted ; so that water alone should be employed according to the direction of Scripture ? The insertion of the Priest's saliva into the infant's mouth, it was added, not only- appeared unnecessary, but in many cases was even dangerous. The administration of the Eucharist to the Laity in one kind only gave offence ; and the Decree of the Council of Constance, by which that practice was supported, ought not to be allowed to weigh against the word of God. Many other parti- culars relative to the Host, it was thought might be advantageously reformed ; the Vernacular Tongue might be substituted for Latin in the Prayers ; and Psalmody might be admitted as a portion of the public Service \ These propositions, although made with a show of the humblest deference to Pontifical authority, were little likely to be grateful to the ears of Pius IV. But he dissembled his anxiety, and replied with gentleness, that the unity of the Church demanded the reference of matters so weighty as those upon which the Queen had touched, to a Gene- ral Council ; that he relied upon her wisdom and piety not to permit the Conference to attempt more than a provisional Reform of such particular abuses in Discipline as might have crept into the Galilean Church ; and that even for the consideration of those matters, he wished her to await the arrival of a Le- gate, who was at that time on his journey. The disputants, however, were already assembled at Poissy, and Catherine proceeded to array them against each other without delay. The Reformed ^ De Thou, xxviii. 6. M 2 164 PETER MARTYR. [cH. V. Band consisted of twelve Ministers ^ ; each accompa- nied by two Lay Deputies, the most distinguished Gentlemen of their respective Provinces^. Two of the most experienced controversialists of the day had been summoned as their leaders, Peter Martyr from Zurich, and Theodore Beza from Geneva. The former, who did not arrive in sufficient time for the opening of the Conference, was a Florentine by birth ^ and before his conversion from Romanism, had obtained more than one considerable preferment by his great learning and his celebrity as a Preacher. On adopting the New Doctrine, and settling on a Professorship at Strasburg, he imitated the conduct of Luther by marrying a Nun *. During the reign of ^ Augustin Marlorat, Francois de St. Pol, Josef Raimond Mer- lin, Jean Malot, Francois de Morel, Nicolas Thobie, Claude de la Boissiere, Jean Bouquin, Josef Viret, Jean de la Tour, Nicolas des Gallards, and Jean del'Espine. De Thou, xxviii. 6. Besides the authorities cited in the course of our narrative for the dif- ferent occurrences at Poissy, a summary of the Colloquy may be found in the Mem. de Condt, ii. 400, and a very detailed account in the conclusion of the Vlth, and commencement of the Vllth Books of La Place, Commentaires de V Etat de la Religion. 2 Garnier, xv. 176. 3 His family name was Vermiglio ; his parents christened him Martyr, from a Church in their neighbourhood, dedicated to St. Peter the Martyr. * This lady, Catharine Cahie, died during Peter Martyr's resi- dence at Oxford, and was buried in Christ Church Cathedral, near the shrine of St. Frideswyde. Under the reign of Mary "her carcass was cast out from Ecclesiastical sepulture," by order of Cardinal Pole, and buried in a dunghill near the Dean's Stable. Its re-interment took place after the Accession of Eliza- beth, when Dr. Calf hill, at that time Subdean of Christ Church, placed in the same coffin with it the reliques of St. Frideswyde. He also published a Tract, Hist, de Exhumatione Katharine nuper uxoris Petri Martyris, 1 562. A. D. 1561.] THEODORE BEZA. 165 Edward VI. he visited England at the especial re- quest of the Protector Somerset and of Archbishop Cranmer, and was appointed first to the Divinity Pro- fessorship at Oxford, and afterwards to a Canonry of Christ Church. From the Persecution of the ensuing reign he was permitted to retire unharmed ; and after some years of wandering in Germany, he received an invitation to Zurich as its chief Pastor. Beza, a native of Vezelai, in Burgundy, was of noble parent- age by both descents. He was educated in the prin- ciples of the Reformation, and made a rapid progress in elegant literature ; to the cultivation of which pursuit and to the pleasures of the Capital, many of his early years were devoted. A dangerous illness awakened in him more serious feelings, and he deter- mined that, if he were permitted to recover, he would embrace the Ministry. With that design, he retired first to Lausanne and afterwards to Geneva ; in which latter City he especially attached himself to Calvin, and in return was admitted into his entire confidence and became his official colleague. An intimate acquaintance which he formed with the Bourbon Princes, during a residence at Nerac, in the Court of the King of Navarre, had made him well kno vn to the leading Huguenots ; and whether we regard his piety, his learning, his eloquence, his ready presence of mind, his many personal accom- plishments, his elegance of manners, or his accurate acquaintance with mankind, no more powerful advo- cate of their cause could have been selected. A knowledge of the public transactions during this Conference is, as on other similar occasions, readily accessible ; but it is not often that we are so closely admitted to the privacy of the great 166 CONVERSATION BETWEEN BEZA [cH. V. actors in History, as we find ourselves in a minute account of a preliminary familiar conversation in the Palace, given by Beza in a Letter to Calvin, and repeated in The History of the French Reformed Churches. He arrived at St. Germain en Laye, where he was received with great marks of esteem ^ on the 23d of August ; preached on the following morning, in the saloon of the Prince of Conde, before a large and distinguished congregation, who heard him " without any tumult or scandal ; " and in the evening was invited to the apartments of the King of Navarre, where were assembled the Queen Mother, tlie Prince of Conde, the Cardinals of Bourbon ^ and Lorraine, the Duke d'Estampes^ and Madame de 1 Those who are acquainted with Calvin only through fearful and repulsive portions of his Doctrine, may be surprized at the playfulness with which he answered Beza's account of his recep- tion at the French Court. Those who have ever suffered under the Gout may deem the following passages very creditable to his good temper. Hodie literas tuas accept, die scilicet nostro, uber- rimas et perceque suaves. Unde cognosces i?i dolore articulari adhue me deliciis vacare. Nop. semper tantuvi otii fiiit ; toto enim hiduo passus sum acerrimos cruciatus in pede dextro. Ccepit morbus mitigari nudiustertius ; sed non ita remisit qidn pedem teneaf devinctum. Atque ut scias me nihil fingere, odor olei mihi propS est amahilis, quamvis scspe nauseam citet. Ita non est cur aulicis tuis lautitiis invideam, bene et pinguiter unctus. Crede mihi jocando non ita me oblecto ut tibi abstergere cupio omnem molestiam, ne si forte rumor obsciirus ad te aliunde perveniat, anxietatem aliquant concipias. Video enim nisi te mirabiliter sustineat Deus non esse tibi vigorem decimte parti ferend^s. Tu post dimidiam noctem mihi respondes. Ego ex lecto post horam septimam dum commode licet ; ita providi sunt senes podagrici. No7iis Octobris MDLXi. Opera, viii. 2 Brother of the King of Navarre and of the Prince of Conde. * Jean de Brosse of Britany, for whom, upon his marriage with Anne de Pisseleu, a mistress of Francis I., Estampes was T. A-Dean, sctjItj^, .critiORILISS , CC AIEBEB-ML (D)]F IL^IRIEMLKrE ^'ndrro. TiChUshed, by J. G. &T. JiivinatorvilBSZ: A. D. 1561.] AND THE CARDINAL OF LORRAINE. 1G7 Crussol ^ Having made liis reverences to the Queen, Beza shortly explained to her the occasion of Lis coming; and the- deep anxiety felt both by his Bre- thren and himself to serve God and her Majesty, in an enterprize so holy and so necessary as that which was in contemplation. The Queen listened gra- ciously, expressed in return the consolation which she should derive from any attempt promising repose to the distracted Kingdom, and then asked some par- ticulars respecting Calvin's age and habits of life. The Cardinal of Lorraine here joined in the conver- sation, stating that he was already acquainted with Beza through his writings, and exhorting him to peace and unity. " You have," he said, " troubled this realm in your absence, let your presence be a signal for its pacification." Beza in reply declared, that after the service of his God, that of his King and Country was most dear to him ; that he had always in every way been far too unimportant to have the power of troubling so great a realm as France, and that on the other hand his inclination strongly prompted him to render her good offices ; in testimony whereof, he appealed to his past writings, and to the demon- strations which, by God's help, he trusted to make in the approaching Conference. The Queen then inquired if he had ever written any Work in French, to which he answered in the affirmative, naming his Translation of the Psalms, and a Reply to the late erected into a Duchy ; Henry II. deprived him of that Fief, and bestowed it upon his own mistress, Diana of Poitiers, but it was restored by Charles IX. 1 Louise de Clermont-Tallard, wife of Antoine de Crussol, created Duke of Uzez in 1562. 170 CONVERSATION BETWEEN BEZA [cH. V. SO," answered Beza ; " and deeply as I must regret that so little harmony reigns among us who call our- selves Christians, I had far rather hear an avowal of disagreement, than a futile attempt to cheat us into belief that we accord on points wherein our difference is so marked." "Well," said the Cardinal, "I teach the little children in my Diocese, when they are asked what is the Bread in the Lord's Supper, to answer, that it is the Body of Jesus Christ. Do you object to that?" "Far from it," rejoined Beza, " they are tlie very words of our Lord ; but the gist of the ques- tion lies in knowing after what manner the Bread is called the Body of Christ ; for every thing that is of similar kind is not so in precisely similar manner." They then discussed the Scriptural pliraseology re- lating to the Sacrament, upon which the Cardinal did not much rely in his own favour ; except that when Beza cited " that Rock was Christ," in proof of figu- rative applications, he met the text by a literal one, " the Word was made flesh : " but this objection, we are told, very speedily " slipped through his fingers ^" In the end, Beza said the matter might be reduced to four heads ; the first, concerning the signs ; the second, the things signified ; the third, the union of the signs with the things signified ; the fourth, our participation of the things signified together vnth the signs. "As to the first," he added, " we do not agree ; for you do not include in the Elements any other signs than certain accidents of the Bread and Wine, whereof we retain the substance, in conformity with the nature of a Sacrament and with all Scrip- ^ Eschappe tantost entre les mains. Hist, des Egl. Ref. i. 495. A. D. 1561.] AND THE CARDINAL OF LORRAINE. 171 ture." " No, no," interrupted the Cardinal, " I am not afraid of being unable to maintain Transubstan- tiation well enough ; but it is not necessary that our Divines should advance that tenet too forward ; and for my part, I do not think our Churches ought to be at variance on that account." *' On the second head," continued Beza, " we do not maintain that it is only the merit of the death and passion of Jesus Christ which is signified to us by the Bread and Wine, but that it is His true Body which was cruci- fied, and His true Blood which was shed for us ; in a word, that Jesus Clirist himself, very God and very Man, is signified to us by these visible signs, in order that our hearts may be exalted to contemplate Him spiritually through Faith, in the Heavens wherein He now abides ; and to communicate with His treasures laid up there in eternal life, as truly and certainly as in the course of nature, we see, handle, eat, and drink, the outward and visible signs." At hearing this declaration the Cardinal expressed great satisfaction, for he had been informed, he said, that the Reformed Doctrine was widely different. *' On the other hand," continued Beza, " we confess that there is a great difference between ordinary Bread and Wine and that of the Eucharist ; for ordi- nary Bread and Wine are no other than common ex- istences, such as God has been pleased to form them ; but in the Eucharist they become visible signs and tokens of the precious Body and Blood of our Lord. But we affirm that the change by which these natural creatures become Sacraments, is not in their sub- stance, which remains entire, but only in that their signs are applied to a use altogether differing from their natural import. For naturally they are des- 172 CONVERSATION BETWEEN BEZA [cH. V. tined only for our bodily nourishment ; but when made Sacraments they represent our Spiritual food. Moreover, we by no means attribute this change to the virtue of certain words pronounced over them, nor to the intention of him who pronounces them, but to the power of God, whose will and command- ment is testified to us by His word. Thus, then, since the thing signified is offered and given to us by tlie Lord as truly as are the outward signs, it is in this manner, and not otherwise, that we ought to re- gard their union ; namely, that the Body and Blood of Christ, which are truly administered to us, are also truly present in the Elements ; not that they are under, nor with, nor within the Bread and Wine, nor in any other place whatsoever, except in Heaven, to which Jesus Christ has ascended, in order that He may dwell there, according to His Human Nature \ till He comes again to judge both the Quick and the Dead." The Cardinal here, after renewing his assurance that he was not inclined to press Transubstantiation, said that undoubtedly we must look for Christ in Heaven ; and he then introduced something about absolute local presence and the opinions of certain Germans ; alluding, no doubt, to the Lutheran Doc- trine of Consubstantiation. " But to speak the truth," adds Beza, " this part of his discourse was in such sort as to show that he did not well under- stand the point ; and, indeed, he himself admitted tliat he had employed most of his time in other mat- ters." — " I must confess. Monsieur," answered Beza, " that we do not agree with those Germans whom ^ Selon sa nature humaine. Beza's meaning is not very clear in these words. A. D, 1561.] AND THE CARDINAL OF LORRAINE. 173 you mention, on this third head ; but thanks be to God ! we jointly with them affirm a true Communion with the Body and Blood of our Lord." " Do you then admit," inquired the Cardinal, " that we really and substantially communicate with the true Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist?" — " That," answered Beza, *' is the fourth head which remains to be touched upon. In brief, we say that we sensibly handle, eat, and drink, the visible signs ; and that as for the things signified, to wit, the Body and Blood of Christ, they are truly and without any subterfuge offered to all partakers, but that they can be received no otherwise than spiritually by Faith ; not by the hand nor by the mouth. Yet, notwith- standing, we believe that this Spiritual Communion is no less certain than the certainty that we see with our eyes and handle with our hands the outward signs ; albeit, the efficacy of the Holy Spirit and of Faith is incomprehensible both by our senses and by our understanding." At these words the Cardinal strongly declared to the Queen his great satisfaction at the opinions which he had heard, and his confi- dence that the issue of the future discussions would be most happy if they were proceeded in with similar gentleness and reason. When the Queen and her company had retired, he turned to Beza with a gra- cious and winning air \ and took his leave, saying, " I am delighted to have seen and heard you ; and I call upon you in God's name to confer with me, in order that we may mutually acquaint ourselves with each other's reasonings, and you will find that I am not so black as I have been painted ^" ^ Caressant. 2 Brantome has amusingly described the mutual esteem which 174 DUPLICITY OF THE C. OF LORRAINE. [cH. V. In this trying interview, Beza exhibited great tact and knowledge of the World, as well as a ready ac- quaintance with controversy. Without receding one step from the position which he was bound in con- science to maintain, he so expressed himself as not only to avoid offending his opponent, but even fairly and honestly to conciliate his good will. The mea- sure of the Cardinal's sincerity, on the other hand, may be estimated by one little incident. As he was withdrawing, Madame de Crussol took him by the hand, and said, vdth her customary freedom, " You have shown yourself a good man this evening, but what wall you be to-morrow ^ ?" The Lady's doubt was prophetic ; for the rumours of the Court on the next morning were loud that Beza in the very outset had been attacked, confounded, abashed, and con- verted by the Cardinal. Nevertheless, when Mont- morency congratulated the Queen while at dinner on this success, Catherine pointedly and openly re- plied, that she had been present at the whole con- he supposes to have been engendered between the Cardinal of Lorraine and Beza, ce grand personnage, as he names him. After stating that on account of the splendid display made by the Cardinal at the Council of Trent, in his harangues, discours, disputes, responses, et argufies, he was supposed to possess a Familiar Spirit, he says that in consequence of a private inter- view with Beza, (most probably the conversation related above,) Uun et Varitre ne se pouvoient exalter assez, comme deux beaux chevaux qui s'entregrattent Vun V autre, et non pas comme deux asnes, disoit-on alors ; car lis estoient liars de ce pair et de ce rang, pour estre par trop remplis de science. — Discours, Ixxviii. tom. vi. p. 277- ^ Domina Cursolia, quasi prcesagiens quid crastino accideret, prehensd Cardirialis manu, ita ilium aperte {nosti mulieris inge- nium) palam accepit, ^' Hodie" inquit, " vir bonus, eras vero quid?'' — Letter to Calvin, Opera, viii. 156. A. D. 1561.] ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE COLLOQUY. 175 versation, and that he was very ill informed as to its result ^ The Reformed Ministers continued to preach in the Palace daily, and without interruption, till the morning on which the Disputation was appointed to commence. It had been stipulated by the Calvinists, and verbally agreed to by Catherine ^, that since the Bishops were parties in the dispute, they were not to be judges also ; that the King, the Royal Family, and the Great Officers of State should be present ; that the only standard of reference should be the Canonical Scriptures ; and that the proceedings should be noted down by Secretaries chosen on each side, and daily attested by the signatures of the dis- putants. The Faculty of Paris, meantime, had pro- tested against any discussion with Heretics who denied the authority of Bishops and Prelates ; and urged, that if they must be heard, at all events the hearing should not take place in the Royal presence ; such a course, it was said, would but little contribute to edification, and might awaken perilous doubts in the bosom of the youthful King. Catherine dryly answered, that the mode of discussion was already arranged, and the Divines quitted the Palace in grievous discontent. At noon, on the 9th of September, the Court assembled in the Refectory of a Convent at Poissy. On the right of the King sate his brother, the Duke of Orleans and the King of Navarre ; on his left, the Queen Mother and the Queen of Navarre ; beliind them were ranged a great number of Princes and 1 Letter to Calvin, Opera, viii. 156. Hist, des Egl. Ref. i. 492—497. 2 Hist, des Egl. Ref. i. 499. 176 COLLOQUY AT POISSY. [cH. V. Princesses, Lords, Knights, and Gentlemen wdth their Ladies. On each side of the Chamber were seated three Cardinals ^ ; below them thirty-six Archbishops and Bishops ; and behind, a vast com- pany of Ecclesiastics, Doctors, and Deputies of the Clergy. At the end of the Hall and fronting the throne stood the Royal Guard, and a host of spec- tators of all classes. Silence having been proclaimed, the King opened the Sitting in a few words, and commanded the Chancellor to explain more at length the objects of the Conference. L'Hopital, in the Speech which he delivered accordingly, took occasion to commend a National Synod as better adapted to existing circumstances than a General Council ; and perhaps on that account the Cardinal de Tournon demanded a written copy of the Speech ; but his motion, after some slight discussion, was over-ruled. The Reformed Ministers, assisted by the Deputies from the Provincial Churches, were then introduced by the Duke of Guise, and Beza, who had been chosen their spokesman, immediately commenced his address. He began with a short prayer appropriate to the circumstances in which he was placed ; then, having congratulated himself upon the attainment of a privi- lege hitherto denied to those of his Religious Profes- sion, namely, that of standing before his Sovereign and pleading in his presence, he endeavoured to re- move the prejudices which false reports and evil calumnies had created against the Reformed. "Think not," he said, " that we have come hither in the hope of propagating error ; our object is rather to discover ^ De Tournon, De Lorraine, De Chastillon, — D'Armignac, De Bourbon, De Guise. A. D. 1561.] beza's speech. 177 and to amend whatever may be faulty, either on your side or on our own. Esteem us not so bigoted as to entertain a desire to overthrow that which we know to be eternal, the Church of God. Believe not that we would willingly reduce you to our own con- dition of lowliness and poverty ; in which, neverthe- less, thanks be to the Lord ! we are not without sin- gular contentment. We approach you with a sincere wish to repair the breaches in our Jerusalem ; to re- edify our Spiritual Temple ; to restore the House of God, built up of lively stones, to its former glory ; to collect and gather again, within the unity of a single fold, the flock of the one and sovereign Shep- herd ; that flock which has been so widely scattered abroad by the just vengeance of Heaven and the perverse carelessness of men." Passing on to a review of the Doctrines of his Brethren, he touched rapidly on the main points of difference from the ancient Religion ; not impugn- ing the principles maintained by others, so much as defending those asserted by himself. The one and plenary Atonement of Christ ; His single inter- cession and advocacy; the nature of good works, namely, that they proceed entirely from the Holy Spirit, are good only in so far as they are agreeable to the commandments of God, and by no means entitle us to that eternal life which is wholly His free gift ; the Canon of Scripture, as alone con- taining all that is necessary for Salvation ; the Sa- craments, as outward signs of inward Grace ; — all these points were affirmed ; and the Doctrine of the Lord's Supper, as distinguished both from Transub- stantiation and Consubstantiation, was pointedly 178 COLLOQUY AT POISSY. [cH. V. enunciated. " Should any one ask whether we assert that Jesus Christ is absent from the Eucharist, we unhesitatingly reply, No. But if we look to the distinction of places, — as we must do when the ques- tion of corporal presence is advanced — then we pro- nounce that His Body is as remote from the Bread and Wine as the highest Heaven is from the surface of the Earth." Hitherto the Orator had been listened to with mute and profound attention ; but as the last words were delivered, a hasty murmur ran along the benches, and numerous indignant voices exclaimed, "he has spoken blasphemy." Some of the Ecclesiastics rose to quit the Assembly, and the Cardinal de Tournon besought the King and Queen either to silence Beza, or to dissolve the Sitting \ The King ^ For the satisfaction of Catherine, Beza addressed to her, on the following day, a Letter explanatory of the words which had excited so great a movement. It is printed in the Hist, des Egl. Ref. i. 522. In a Letter to the Bishop of Rennes, be- fore cited, Catherine herself gives the following account of this incident. Beza continua longuement sa remonstrance em assez doux termes, se soumettant souventefois, si Von montroit par la Sainte Escriture qu'ils errassent en aucune chose, de se reduire et laisser vainer e a la Verite. Mais estant enfin tomhe sur le fait de la Ce7ie, il s'ouhlia en une comparaison si ahsurde et iant offensive des oreilles de V assistance, que peu s'en fallut que je ne luy imposasse silence, et que je ne les renvoyasse tous, sans les laisser passer plus avant. Mais voyant qu'il estoit sur la fin de sadite remonstrance, et considerant que comme its ont accou- tume de s'avantager en toutes choses pour la confirmation et per- suasion de leur doctrine, ils eussent plustost fait leur profit de tel commandement que regu correction et amendement ; et da- vantage tel qui Vavoit out en ses raisons s'en fut alle imhii et persuade de sa doctrine, sans ouir ce qui luy sera respondu: La- A. D. 1561.] beza's speech. 179 contented himself wath commanding order, and Beza proceeded without farther interruption. " We are on Earth," he said, " the Body of Christ is in Hea- ven : yet if any one should thence conclude that we assert Jesus Christ to be absent from this Holy Supper, we maintain his conclusion to be false. For we so far honour God, that believing the Body of Christ to be in Heaven, and no where else, and knowing ourselves to be on Earth, and no where else, still we affirm that spiritually and through Faith, we are partakers of Christ's Body and Blood ; even as certainly as we behold the Sacrament with our eyes, touch it with our hands, place it within our lips, and feed bodily on its substance." On Baptism, he said, little difference existed be- tween the two Churches. The five other Sacraments, as they were called by the Romanists, were ad- mitted by the Reformed, in degree and as useful Ceremonies. In Church Discipline so great was the confusion which prevailed, that the most skilful Architect would find it difficult to recognise one vestige of the Apostolic building, either in Ordinances or in Morals. Before God, he protested, that the sole design of the Reformed, was to approach, if possible, to primitive beauty and purity ; to abolish superstitions ; to retrench superfluities ; to adopt any new Ordinances which upon solemn consideration might be deemed agreeable to Scripture, and suitable to change of times and circumstances. He con- cluded by professions of obedience to the King, and desst(S je me contins, bien offensee toufefois de son propos, ainsi que vous pourrez juger par ce que luy et ses compagnons m'en depuls bailie par escrit, que je vous envoye. Mem. de Castelnau. Additions par Le Laboureur, i. 733. N 2 180 COLLOQUY AT POISSY. [cH. V. of reliance upon the wisdom of his Councillors ; and then bending on his knees, he presented the Con- fession of Faith of the Reformed Churches of France, which the King received graciously and handed to the Prelates. The Cardinal of Tournon immediately, with marks of anger and disturbance ^, entreated the King not to believe one syllable which had been uttered, but to abide firmly in the Religion professed by his Ancestors since the reign of Clovis, and in which he had been educated by his Royal Mother. He then demanded time, in order that an answer might be prepared ; confidently trusting that when his Majesty heard that reply, he would be brought back — not brought back, he said, correcting him- self, but preserved in the path of Orthodoxy. The King answered briefly, that, in the course he had hitherto adopted, he had been guided by the advice of his Council ; he then retired, and the Assembly rose. When the Romanist Divines met after this first day's Conference, to deliberate on their future pro- ceedings, the Cardinal of Lorraine began by remark- ing that, if he could have had his will, either Beza should have been dumb, or his audience deaf. It was resolved that the Cardinal himself should reply, but only to the two points of Church Discipline and the Eucharist ; that a Confession of Faith opposed to that of the Ministers should be framed and pre- sented for their signature ; and that if they declined its acceptance, their Heresy should be solemnly con- demned and the Conference dissolved. The Minis- ters, apprized of these intentions, presented a Re- ^ Indtgnatione tumens, voce pro; ird iremuld. De Thou xxviii. 10. A. D. 1561.] REPLY OF THE C. OF LORRAINE. 181 monstrance ; wliicli, by the Chancellor's mediation, was so favourably received, that the Cardinal deter- mined on an entire change of tactics ; and while he prepared his answer, he dispatched an express to the Governor of Metz, enjoining him to send up to Poissy, as secretly as possible, three or four of the most sagacious, clear-sighted and firmly-principled Lutheran Divines. By arraying the tenets of the Confession of Augsburg against the Calvinistic Doc- trine of the Lord's Supper, he trusted to perplex and divide the Reformers ; and thus, to use his own ex- pression, to escape like St. Paul between the Phari- sees and Sadducees. The Conference assembled on the 16th of Sep- tember, in the same manner as before, when the Cardinal delivered his reply. He first argued that on all matters connected with Ecclesiastical Doctrine and Discipline the Church possessed absolute so- vereignty, so that Princes were but her Sons and Members ; thus more than covertly disapproving and rebuking the arrangement by which the King had been appointed to preside. He then addressed him- self with great learning and a most profuse display of authorities, to the two points which it had been determined should alone be treated ; and it is re- markable that, in discussing the Real Presence, he again produced the miserable play of words on Ccena and Ccenum, which Beza in the first conversation had disavowed; and which the Cardinal now pro- tested he would not render into French, out of con- sideration for the weaker brethren. Before address- ing himself to the King in his peroration, he made a spirited apostrophe to the Reformed, which very dexterously preluded the farther design he was me- 182 COLLOQUY AT POISSY. [cH. V. ditating. — " If," he said, " in this most unjust and causeless quarrel, we have become so odious to you that you separate from us altogether ; that you think us unworthy to live and to dwell in your society ; that — horrible to say — you shrink from prayer and sacrifice to God, if performed in the same Temples with us, why should you refuse to accept the Greek Communion as an arbiter ? And if you abhor the Universal Church, why will you not abide by the decision of one which is Particular ? Why not appeal to Separatists like yourselves, and turn to the Con- fession of Augsburg? The Ministers who jDrofess that Creed, one and all will condemn you. But if you are rejected on the Doctrine of the Sacrament, even by dissentients from the Catholic Church, who agree with you in almost every thing else, what hope can we have that you will ever accord with us who differ from you, not only on that question, but on most other points also ? If, therefore, you are thus besotted by self-complacency, and reduced to solitude in your opinions ; if you will not approach our Faith, absent yourselves also from our Flocks. Leave to us the charge of those over whom you do not possess any authority, and whom you endeavour to seduce from their attachment to those legitimate Pastors who derive their commission from God him- self" When the Cardinal had finished his harangue, the Prelates rose in a mass, and would have retired, saying, that after a display so eloquent, so argu- mentative, and so convincing, it was not possible there could be any more room for dispute \ Beza, 1 Beza in his Letter to Calvin writes handsomely of the Car- dinal's Speech ; Splendida ilia nostri Purpurati Oratio. A. D. 1561.] ARRIVAL OF THE LEGATE. 183 however, seized tlie moment with admirable prompt- ness, and when he began, the Members resumed their seats. Addressing the King, he offered either to reply on the instant, or to await any other day which his Majesty might appoint as more season- able, when, according to the previous stipulation, each party might adduce its authorities. The King expressed his assent to the latter proposal. More than a week, however, was allowed to pass before a re-assembling of the Divines took place ; and the arrival of the Papal Legate during that in- terval produced an essential change in the form of the Conference. Pius IV. recollecting the oppo- sition which former Legates to France, in much less tempestuous seasons, had encountered in the exer- cise of their functions, evinced considerable sagacity in his choice of a Minister. Ippolito d'Este \ Car- dinal of Ferrara, and brother of the reigning Prince of that Duchy, was closely allied, not only to the Guises, but even to the Royal House of France ^ ; he possessed Benefices within that Kingdom exceed- ing sixty thousand Crowns in annual value, and he was moreover a personage of pleasing and accom- plished manners, and an acute and skilful diplo- matist. Yet, notwithstanding his illustrious birth, his intimate connexion with France, and his accom- modating personal qualities, he was insulted in his passage through Lyons ; and on his arrival at St. ^ Son of the infamous Lucrezia Borgia by marriage with her fourth husband, Alfonso I. Duke of Ferrara. 2 The Princess Renee of France, daughter of Louis XII. was Consort of the Duke of Ferrara, brother to the Cardinal. A daughter, the issue of that marriage, and therefore niece to the Cardinal, was Duchess of Guise. 184 COLLOQUY AT POISSY. [cH. V. Germain the populace followed him with rude shouts — " The Fox, the Fox !" — till they compelled him to abandon the customary Legatine privilege of being preceded by an Apparitor bearing a Crucifix. Even in higher places also, he had little cause to be satis- fied with his reception. The Chancellor de L'H6- pital refused to affix the seals to his Faculty as Legate, notwithstanding a promise that the Instru- ment should never be employed. When, after long denial, at the express command of the King, he did seal that paper, it was endorsed with a special pro- test under his own hand, " me non consent'iente ;"" and, after all, when it was presented to the Parlia- ment, that Body replied that they neither could nor would admit its registry. But " the Fox," says Beza, in despite of these provocations, never showed any symptoms of anger, and by preserving unrufiled calmness he ultimately triumphed. When the Con- ference was re-opened, on the 24th of September, neither the King nor his Brother was present. The happy Children were released from their for- mer painful task of moderating in Polemical Di- vinity, not from any commiseration for their tender years, as unfitted for that grave purpose, but in order to deprive the Disputation of much of the publicity which it had hitherto enjoyed. The Queen Mother, the Queen of Navarre, the Princes of the Blood, the Cardinals, and a scanty Committee of Ecclesiastics, were now the only persons confronted with the Reformed Ministers ; and the place of as- sembly was transferred from the spacious Refectory to the smaller Chamber of the Prior. Books there were in plenty, with a show of fulfilling a promise made by the Cardinal of Lorraine, that he would A. D. 1561.] beza's second speech. 185 confirm his Doctrine of the Sacrament by appeal to every Father of the Church who had \\Titten in the first five Centuries ; but, numerous as were the volumes produced, not one page of them was ever opened \ Beza recommenced by arguing at great length in favour of the validity of the Calvinistic Church. It was, undoubtedly, his weakest point ; and he re- sorted, perhaps, to over-subtle distinctions when he maintained — first, that the succession from the Apostles, which he called doctrinal, was a surer mark of the true Church than personal succession ; and, secondly, that besides ordinary vocation to the Ministry, another ought also to be admitted, which is extraordinary. Upon the purity of doctrinal suc- cession, it is quite manifest that every Sect will pronounce a verdict favourable to itself ; and no En- thusiast, however boldly he has leaped into the fold, has ever been backward in asserting his especial call to God's service. On the fallibility of Particular Churches and of Councils, he was far more success- ful ; and the paramount authority of Scripture over the Traditions and the Canons of the Church, was pointedly stated and proved. " To ask whether of the two is superior. Scripture or the Church, ap- pears to be not less impertinent, than to ask if the Child be above the Parent, the Wife above the Hus- band, and Man above his God. Grant that the Church in one sense existed before the Scripture ; yet, nevertheless, paradoxical as it may appear, the Scripture, in truth, is the most ancient, for by it the Church itself was engendered, conceived, and born." » Hist, des Egl. Ref. i. 556. 186 DESPENCE — DE XAINTES. [cH. V; Having apologised for the great extent at which he had treated matters relative to Church Discipline, (his Speech had already occupied an hour and a half ^) he offered to continue, if the Queen so pleased, on the remaining head, the Lord's Supper. But the Cardinal of Lorraine made a sign to one of the most learned Romanist Doctors, Claude Despence, who began a reply ^. Despence readily admitted the paramount autho- rity of Scripture over the Church ; but he strongly objected to the legality of the Ministry of Beza and his companions, owing to the want of imposition of hands ; and he farther argued that even those wlio might have been previously ordained by the Church of Rome, had forfeited their privilege by apostacy. Then, proceeding to the authority of Traditions, he affirmed that certain Doctrines had no other founda- tion ; as that of the co-essentiality of the Son, and, so far as its name was concerned, the Trinity itself. In regard to Councils, he taxed Beza with an in- correct application of a passage in TertuUian, and of having advanced an Historical fact on the authority of a writer so justly suspected as Socrates. Be- fore Beza could explain, " a little white Friar ^" named De Xaintes, uprose, and with great vehe- mence of speech drev/ a parallel between Beza and ^ Disserui ad sesquihoram, Letter to Calvin ut sup. 2 Beza names him to Calvin not very respectfully, with an allusion which we are unable to explain. Orationem meam ex- cepit conductitius ilk Balaam qui tibi aliquando ducatum obtulit ut chartam et pennas tibi comparares. Ut sup, 3 Un petit Moine blayic, as he is called in the Hist, des Egl Ref. or, more opprobriously in the Letter to Calvin, infacetissimus cucullio. I A. D. 1561.] beza's reply. 187 the Anabaptists ; expressed astonishment at his having ventured to cite Chrysostom, a writer who he said had stated the existence of Scripture to be contrary to the intention of God ; recommended him before he again quoted the Fathers to read them three or four times over ; and added to the Doctrines which rested solely on Tradition, Infant Baptism, and the perpetual virginity of Mary. When he had ceased, Beza, first calmly remonstrating on the irre- gularity of this interruption, and the confusion which it was likely to produce, addressed himself to the objection of Despence concerning the imposi- tion of hands, maintaining that such a form was by no means essential: " For our part," he said, "we feel no interest in the matter. We have good testi- mony of our call in our examination and election by an Elder, in the approval of our Magistrates and People, and in reception into the Ministry by solemn prayers and thanksgiving. And if you assert that the first builders of our Church edified it with- out authority, as not being included in the Apos- tolical succession, I reply that many of them might have claimed that succession if they had so chosen ; but in truth they preferred a voluntary renunciation of that mark of the Romish Church ; not thereby despising Ecclesiastical order and discipline, but be- cause in your Church, a prey to confusion and dis- traction, neither order nor discipline was to be found. Briefly, instead of amusing ourselves by a reference to this ceremony in support of our claims to true Pastoi^^hip, let us come at once to substantial mat- ters, and inquire concerning Doctrine. Is that which we preach pure ? Are our differences from your Church just? If these things be so, then are we 188 beza's retly. [ch. v. true Ministers, despite the want of imposition of hands ; a want not arising from our fault but from those who have overthrown that Ecclesiastical Polity which we are striving to restore." All this Argu- ment we need not observe is founded on a petitio imncipu. He then denied that the Doctrines of the Trinity, of the co-essentiality of the Son, and of Infant Bap- tism, rested on Tradition only. Each was fairly de- ducible from Scripture ; and as for the assertion of Mary's perpetual virginity, it was not an Article of Faith. Next adverting to the admonition of De Xaintes that he should read the Fathers three or four times over before he quoted them, he assured him in return that he had read his citation from Chrysostom more than twenty times ; and moreover that he would pledge himself that neither De Xaintes nor any one else had ever read in that Father the blasphemous sentiment which his opponent had incorrectly attri- buted to him. To the charges of a mistaken appli- cation of TertuUian and of reliance upon the autho- rity of Socrates, he answered not a word at the moment ; and he afterwards justified his silence, when his companions inquired privately concerning it, by stating that his reply was directed to principal matters, and not to accessories ; an excuse by no means likely to disarm his opponents, even if it satisfied his friends \ 1 From a passage in TertuUian, De Prcescrvptionibus adversus H