History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume I Part 9

Such were the paltry evasions of cowardly souls, to excuse themselves for the neglect of admitted duty. We cannot wonder at the burning words of condemnation which this pusillanimity called forth from the pen of brave Pierre Toussain. "I have spoken to Lefevre and Roussel," he wrote some months later, "but certainly Lefevre has not a particle of courage.

May G.o.d confirm and strengthen him! Let them be as wise as they please, let them wait, procrastinate, and dissemble; the Gospel will never be preached without the _cross_! When I see these things, when I see the mind of the king, the mind of the d.u.c.h.ess [Margaret of Angouleme] as favorable as possible to the advancement of the Gospel of Christ, and those who ought to forward this matter, according to the grace given them, obstructing their design, I cannot refrain from tears. They say, indeed: 'It is not yet time, the hour has not come!' And yet we have here no day or hour. _What would not you do had you the Emperor and Ferdinand favoring your attempts?_ Entreat G.o.d, therefore, in behalf of France, that she may at length be worthy of His word."[180]

The remainder of the task imposed on the weak Bishop of Meaux and his new allies, the monks of St. Francis, proved a more difficult undertaking. The shepherds had been dispersed, but the flock refused to forsake the fold. From the nourishing food they had discovered in the Word of G.o.d, they could not be induced to return to the husks offered to them in meaningless ceremonies, celebrated in an unknown tongue by men of impure lives. The Gospels in French remained more attractive than the legendary, even after the bishop had abandoned the championship of the incipient reformation. Briconnet's own expressed wish was granted: if he had "changed his speech and teaching," the common people, at least, had not changed with him.

[Sidenote: The wool-carder, Jean Leclerc, tears down a papal bull.]

[Sidenote: His barbarous sentence.]

Among the first fruits of the Reformation in Meaux was a wool-carder, Jean Leclerc, into whose hands had fallen one of Lefevre's French Testaments. He was a man of strong convictions and invincible resolution. A bull, issued by Clement the Seventh in connection with the approaching jubilee, had been posted on the doors of the cathedral (December, 1524). It offered indulgence, and enjoined prayers, fasting, and partaking of the Communion, in order to obtain from heaven the restoration of peace between princes of Christendom. Leclerc secretly tore the bull down, subst.i.tuting for it a placard in which the Roman pontiff figured as veritable Antichrist. Diligent search was at once inst.i.tuted for the perpetrator of this offence, and for the author of the subsequent mutilation of the prayers to the Virgin hung up in various parts of the same edifice. A truculent order was also issued in the bishop's name, threatening all persons that might conceal their knowledge of the culprits with public excommunication, every Sunday and feast-day, "with ringing of bells and with candles lighted and then extinguished and thrown upon the earth, _in token of eternal malediction_."[181] Leclerc was discovered, and taken to Paris for trial. The barbarous sentence of parliament was, that he be whipped in Paris by the common executioner on three successive days, then transferred to Meaux to receive the like punishment, and finally branded on the forehead with a red-hot iron, before being banished forever from the kingdom.[182]

The cruel prescription was followed out to the letter (March, 1525). A superst.i.tious mult.i.tude flocked together to see and gloat over the condign punishment of a heretic, and gave no word of encouragement and support. But, as the iron was leaving on Leclerc's brow the ignominious imprint of the _fleur-de-lis_,[183] a single voice suddenly broke in upon the silence. It was that of his aged mother, who, after an involuntary cry of anguish, quickly recovered herself and shouted, "Hail Jesus Christ and his standard-bearers!"[184] Although many heard her words, so deep was the impression, that no attempt was made to lay hands upon her.[185]

[Sidenote: He is burned alive at Metz.]

From Meaux, Leclerc, forced to leave his home, retired first to Rosoy, and thence to Metz.[186] Here, while supporting himself by working at his humble trade, he lost none of his missionary spirit. Not content with communicating a knowledge of the doctrines of the Reformation to all with whom he conversed, his impatient zeal led him to a new and startling protest against the prevalent, and, in his view, idolatrous worship of images. Learning that on a certain day a solemn procession was to be made to a shrine situated a few miles out of the city gates, he went to the spot under cover of night, and hurled the sacred images from their places. On the morrow the horrified worshippers found the objects of their devotion prostrated and mutilated, and their rage knew no bounds. It was not long before the wool-carder was apprehended. His religious sentiments were no secret, and he had been seen returning from the scene of his nocturnal exploit. He promptly acknowledged his guilt, and was rescued from the infuriated populace only to undergo a more terrible doom at the hands of the public executioner (July 22, 1525).

His right hand was cut off at the wrist, his arms, his nose, his breast were cruelly torn with pincers; but no cry of anguish escaped the lips of Leclerc. The sentence provided still further that, before his body should be consigned to the flames, his head be encircled with a red-hot band of iron. As the fervent metal slowly ate its way toward his very brain, the bystanders with amazement heard the dying man calmly repeat the words of Holy Writ: "Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands." He had not completed the Psalmist's terrific denunciation of the crime and folly of image-worship when his voice was stifled by the fire and smoke of the pyre into which his impatient tormentors had hastily thrown him. If not actually the first martyr of the French Reformation, as has commonly been supposed, Jean Leclerc deserves, at least, to rank among the most constant and unswerving of its early apostles.[187]

[Sidenote: Jacques Pauvan.]

The poor wool-carder of Meaux was succeeded by more ill.u.s.trious victims.

One was of the number of the teachers who had been attracted to Bishop Briconnet's diocese by the prospect of contributing to the progress of a purer doctrine. Jacques Pauvan[188] was a studious youth who had come from Boulogne, in Picardy, to perfect his education in the university, and had subsequently abandoned a career in which he bade fair to obtain distinction, in order to a.s.sist his admired teacher, Lefevre, at Meaux.

He was an outspoken man, and disguised his opinions on no point of the prevailing controversy. He a.s.serted that purgatory had no existence, and that G.o.d had no vicar. He repudiated excessive reliance on the doctors of the church. He indignantly rejected the customary salutation to the Virgin Mary, "Hail Queen, Mother of mercy!" He denied the propriety of offering candles to the saints. He maintained that baptism was only a sign, that holy water was _nothing_, that papal bulls and indulgences were an imposture of the devil, and that the ma.s.s was not only of no avail for the remission of sins, but utterly unprofitable to the hearer, while the Word of G.o.d was all-sufficient.[189]

Pauvan was put under arrest, and his theses, together with the defence of their contents which one Matthieu Saunier was so bold as to write, were submitted to the Sorbonne. Its condemnation was not long withheld.

"A work," said the Paris theologians, "containing propositions extracted and compiled from the pernicious errors of the Waldenses, Wickliffites, Bohemians, and Lutherans, being impious, scandalous, schismatic, and wholly alien from the Christian doctrine, ought publicly to be consigned to the flames in the diocese of Meaux, whence it emanated. And Jacques Pauvan and Matthieu Saunier should, by all judicial means, be compelled to make a public recantation."[190]

Even strong men have their moments of weakness. Pauvan was no exception to the rule. Besides the terrors of the stake, the persuasions of Martial Mazurier came in to shake his constancy. This latter, a doctor of theology, had at one time been so carried away with the desire of innovation as to hurl down a statue of their patron saint standing at the door of the monastery of the Franciscans. He had now, as we have already seen, become the favorite instrument in effecting abjurations similar to his own. His suggestions prevailed over Pauvan's convictions.[191] The young scholar consented to obey the Sorbonne's demand. The faculty's judgment had been p.r.o.nounced on the ninth of December, 1525; a fortnight later, on the morrow of Christmas day--a favorite time for striking displays of this kind--Pauvan publicly retracted his "errors," and made the usual "amende honorable," clad only in a shirt, and holding a lighted taper in his hand.[192]

[Sidenote: He is burned on the Place de Greve.]

If Pauvan's submission secured him any peace, it was a short-lived peace. Tortured by conscience, he soon betrayed his mental anguish by sighs and groans. Again he was drawn from the prison, where he had been confined since his abjuration,[193] and subjected to new interrogatories. With the opportunity to vindicate his convictions, his courage and cheerfulness returned. As a relapsed heretic, no fate could be in store for him but death at the stake, and this he courageously met on the _Place de Greve_.[194] But the holocaust was inauspicious for those who with this victim hoped to annihilate the "new doctrines."

Before mounting the huge pyre heaped up to receive him, Pauvan was thoughtlessly permitted to speak; and so persuasive were his words that it was an enemy's exclamation that "it had been better to have cost the church a million of gold, than that Pauvan had been suffered to speak to the people."[195]

[Sidenote: The hermit of Livry.]

Scarcely more encouraging to the advocates of persecution was the scene in the area in front of Notre-Dame de Paris, when, at the sound of the great cathedral bell, an immense crowd was gathered to witness the execution of an obscure person, known to us only as "the hermit of Livry"--a hamlet on the road to Meaux. With such unshaken fort.i.tude did he encounter the flames, that the astonished spectators were confidently a.s.sured by their spiritual advisers that he was one of the d.a.m.ned who was being led to the fires of h.e.l.l.[196]

[Sidenote: Bishop Briconnet becomes the jailer of the "Lutherans."]

Where less rigor was deemed necessary, the penalty for having embraced the reformed tenets was reduced to imprisonment for a term of years, often with bread and water for the only food and drink. The place of confinement was sometimes a monastery, at other times the "_prisons of Monseigneur the Bishop of Meaux_."[197] Thus Briconnet enjoyed the rare and exquisite privilege of acting as jailer of unfortunates instructed by himself in the doctrines for the profession of which they now suffered! Meantime their companions having escaped detection, although deprived of the advantage of public worship, continued for years to a.s.semble for mutual encouragement and edification, as they had opportunity, in private houses, in retired valleys or caverns, or in thickets and woods. Their minister was that person of their own number who was seen to be the best versed in the Holy Scriptures. After he had discharged his functions in the humble service, by a simple address of instruction or exhortation, the entire company with one voice supplicated the Almighty for His blessing, and returned to their homes with fervent hopes for the speedy conversion of France to the Gospel.[198] Thus matters stood for about a score of years, until a fresh attempt was made to const.i.tute a reformed church at Meaux, the signal, as will appear in the sequel, for a fresh storm of persecution.

[Sidenote: Lefevre's subsequent history.]

A few words here seem necessary respecting the subsequent fortunes of the venerable teacher whose name at this point fades from the history of the French Reformation. The action of parliament (August 28, 1525), in condemning, at the instigation of the syndic of the theological faculty, nine propositions extracted from his commentary on the Gospels, and in forbidding the circulation of his translation of the Holy Scriptures, had given Lefevre d'etaples due warning of danger. We have already seen that a few weeks later (October, 1525) he had taken refuge in Strasbourg under the pseudonym of Antonius Peregrinus. But the _incognito_ of so distinguished a stranger could not be long maintained, and before many days the very boys in the streets knew him by his true name.[199]

Meantime the Sorbonne, in his absence, proceeded to censure a large number of propositions drawn from another of Lefevre's works. Shortly after a letter was received from Francis the First, written in his captivity at Madrid, and enjoining the court to suspend its vexatious persecution of a man "of such great and good renown, and of so holy a life," until the king's return. The refractory judges, however, neglected to obey the order, and continued the proceedings inst.i.tuted against Lefevre.[200]

[Sidenote: Lefevre and the Nuncio Aleander.]

When, however, Francis succeeded in regaining his liberty, a year later, he not only recalled Lefevre and his companion, Roussel, from exile, but conferred upon the former the honorable appointment of tutor to his two daughters and his third and favorite son, subsequently known as Charles, Duke of Orleans.[201] This post, while it enabled him to continue the prosecution of his biblical studies, also gave him the opportunity of instilling into the minds of his pupils some views favorable to the Reformation.[202] A little later Margaret of Angouleme secured for Lefevre the position of librarian of the royal collection of books at Blois; but, as even here he was subjected to much annoyance from his enemies, Margaret, now Queen of Navarre, sought and obtained from her brother permission to take the old scholar with her to Nerac, in Gascony.[203] Here, in the ordinary residence of his patron, and treated by the King of Navarre with marked consideration, Lefevre d'etaples was at last safe from molestation. The papal party did not, indeed, despair of gaining him over. The Nuncio Aleander, in a singular letter exhumed not long since from the Vatican records, expressed himself strongly in favor of putting forth the effort. Lefevre's "few errors" had at first appeared to be of great moment, because published at a time when to correct or change the most insignificant syllable, or a faulty rendering, in the ancient translations of the Holy Scriptures approved by the church, was an unheard-of innovation. But, now that more important questions had come up to arrest attention, the mere matter of retranslation, without introducing unsound doctrine, seemed to be a thing of little or no consequence.[204] Let Lefevre but leave the heretical company which he kept, and let him make _the least bit of a retraction_ respecting some few pa.s.sages in his works, and the whole affair would at once be arranged.[205]

[Sidenote: Lefevre's mental suffering.]

The reconciliation of Lefevre with the church did not take place. The "bit of a retraction" was never written. But none the less are Lefevre's last days reported to have been disturbed by hara.s.sing thoughts. The n.o.ble old man, who had consecrated to the translation of the Bible and to exegetical comment upon its books the energy of many years, and who had suffered no little obloquy in consequence, could not forgive himself that he had not come forward more manfully in defence of the truth. One day, not long before his death, it is said, while seated at the table of the King and Queen of Navarre, he was observed to be overcome with emotion. When Margaret expressed her surprise at the gloomy deportment of one whose society she had sought for her own diversion, Lefevre mournfully exclaimed, "How can I contribute to the pleasure of others, who am myself the greatest sinner upon earth?" In reply to the questions called forth by so unexpected a confession, Lefevre, while admitting that throughout his long life his morals had been exemplary, and that he was conscious of no flagrant crime against society, proceeded, in words frequently interrupted by sobs, to explain his deep penitence: "How shall I, who have taught others the purity of the Gospel, be able to stand at G.o.d's tribunal? Thousands have suffered and died for the defence of the truth in which I instructed them; and I, unfaithful shepherd that I am, after attaining so advanced an age, when I ought to love nothing less than I do life--nay, rather, when I ought to desire death--I have basely avoided the martyr's crown, and have betrayed the cause of my G.o.d!" It was with difficulty that the queen and others who were present succeeded in allaying the aged scholar's grief.[206]

The "anguish of spirit and terror of G.o.d's judgment experienced by so pious an old man as Lefevre," because he had concealed the truth which he ought openly to have espoused, supplied an instructive warning for his even more timid disciples. Farel, who never lacked courage, was not slow to avail himself of it. Taking advantage of the freedom of an old a.s.sociate, he addressed a letter containing an account of Lefevre's death, with some serious admonitions, to Michel d'Arande, who never venturing to separate from a church whose corruptions he acknowledged, had reached the position of Bishop of Saint Paul-Trois-Chateaux, in Dauphiny. The letter has perished, but the reply in which the prelate's dejection and internal conflicts but too plainly appear, has seen the light after a burial of three centuries. Admitting the guilt of his course, the bishop begs the intrepid reformer to pray for him continually, and meanwhile not to withhold his friendly exhortations, that at length the writer may be able to extricate himself from the deep mire in which he finds no firm foundation to stand upon.[207]

Such was the unhappy state of mind to which many good, but irresolute men were reduced, who, in view of the persecution certain to follow an open avowal of their reformatory sentiments, endeavored to persuade themselves that it was permissible to conceal them under a thin veil of external conformity to the rites of the Roman church.

[Sidenote: Fortunes of Gerard Roussel.]

Gerard Roussel, the most distinguished representative of this cla.s.s of mystics, was appointed by the Queen of Navarre to be her preacher and confessor, and promoted successively to be Abbot of Clairac and Bishop of Oleron. Yet he remained, to his death, a sincere friend of the Reformation. Occasionally, at least, he preached its doctrines with tolerable distinctness; as, for instance, in the Lenten discourses delivered by him, in conjunction with Courault and Bertault, before the French court in the Louvre (1532). In his writings he was still more outspoken. Some of them might have been written not only by a reformer, but by a disciple of Calvin, so sharply drawn were the doctrinal expositions.[208] Meanwhile, in his own diocese he set forth the example of a faithful pastor. Even so bitter an enemy of Protestantism as Florimond de Raemond, contrasting Roussel's piety with the worldliness of the sporting French bishops of the period, is forced to admit that his pack of hounds was the crowd of poor men and women whom he daily fed, his horses and attendants a host of children whom he caused to be instructed in letters.[209]

And yet, Gerard Roussel's half measures, while failing to conciliate the adherents of the Roman church, alienated from him the sympathies of the reformers; for they saw in his conduct a weakness little short of entire apostasy. More modern Roman Catholic writers, for similar reasons, deny that Roussel was ever at heart a friend of the Reformation.[210] Not so, however, thought the fanatics of his own time. While the Bishop of Oleron was one day declaiming, in a church of his diocese, against the excessive multiplication of feasts, the pulpit in which he stood was suddenly overturned, and the preacher hurled with violence to the ground. The catastrophe was the premeditated act of a religious zealot, who had brought with him into the sacred place an axe concealed under his cloak. The fall proved fatal to Gerard Roussel, who is said to have expressed on his death-bed similar regrets to those which had disturbed the last hours of Lefevre d'etaples. As for the murderer, although arrested and tried by the Parliament of Bordeaux, he was in the end acquitted, on the ground that he had performed a meritorious act, or, at most, committed a venial offence, in ridding the world of so dangerous a heretic as the Bishop of Oleron.[211]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 128: Scaevolae Sammarthani Elog. lib. i., i. 3. "Statura fuit supra modum humili," etc.]

[Footnote 129: Sc. Sammarthani Elog., _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 130: Lefevre's scientific works were numerous, and some of them pa.s.sed through many editions during the early years of the sixteenth century. See Haag, La France protestante, art. Lefevre. I have before me his edition of the Arithmetic of Boetius, with introduction and commentary, of the year 1510, and copies of his Astronomical Treatises of 1510 and 1516, the last of these published at Cologne.]

[Footnote 131: Sc. Sammarth. Elog., _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 132: Epistre a tons Seigneurs et Peuples (Edit. J. G. Fick), 172.]

[Footnote 133: The pa.s.sage in which Farel describes his former superst.i.tion is so characteristic, that I quote a few sentences: "Pour vray la papaute n'estoit et n'est tant papale que mon cur l'a este.... Car tellement il avoit aveugle mes yeux et perverti tout en moy, que s'il y avoit personnage qui fut approuve selon le pape, il m'estoit comme Dieu; si quelqu'un faisoit ou disoit quelque chose, d'ou le pape et son estat en fut en quelque mespris, j'eusse voulu qu'un tel ... fut du tout abbatu, ruine et destruit.... Ainsy Satan avoit loge le pape, sa papaute, tout ce qui est de luy en mon cur, de sorte que _le pape mesme_, comme je croy, _n'en avoit point tant en soy ne [ni]

les siens aussy, comme il y en avoit en moy_.... Et ainsy je persevere, ayant mon panteon en mon cur, et tant d'advocats, tant de sauveurs, tant de dieux que rien plus ... tellement que je pouvoye bien estre tenu pour un registre papal, pour martyrologe," etc. Epistre a tous Seigneurs et Peuples, 164, 167, 169.]

[Footnote 134: Herminjard, Correspondance des Reformateurs, i. 4, 481.]

[Footnote 135: See the dedication, dated Dec. 15, 1512, Herminjard, Correspondance des Reformateurs, i. 2-9.]

[Footnote 136: Letter of Farel to Pellican (1556), Herminjard, Correspondance des Reformateurs, i. 481: "Pius senex, Jacobus Faber, quem tu novisti, ante annos plus minus quadraginta, me manu apprehensum, ita alloquebatur: 'Gulielme, oportet orbem mutari, et tu videbis'

dicebat." So in the "Epistre a tous Seigneurs et Peuples" (Ed. Fick), 170: "Souventefois me disoit que Dieu renouvelleroit le monde, et que je le verroye." A few years later, at Strasbourg, the reformer reminded his former master of his prediction: "Voicy par la grace de Dieu, le commencement de ce qu'autrefois m'avez dit du renouvellement du monde,"

and Lefevre, then in exile, blessed G.o.d, and begged Him to perfect what he had then seen begun at Strasbourg. Ibid., 171. These statements are confirmed by a pa.s.sage in the Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles, in which, after deploring the corruption of the church, Lefevre observes: "Yet the signs of the times announce that a renewal is near, and while G.o.d is opening new ways for the preaching of the Gospel, by the discoveries and conquests of the Portuguese and Spaniards in all parts of the world, we must hope that He will visit His church and raise it from the degradation into which it is fallen." Herminjard, i. 5.]

[Footnote 137: Scaevolae Sammarthani, Elogia doctorum in Gallia virorum, lib. i. (Jenae, 1696); Bayle, s. v. Fevre and Farel; Tabaraud, Biographie univ., art. Lefevre; C. Schmidt, Wilhelm Farel, in Leben und ausgew.

Schriften d. Vater d. ref. Kirche; C. Cheneviere, Farel, Froment, Viret (Geneve, 1835).]

[Footnote 138: Gaillard, Histoire de Francois premier (Paris, 1769), vi.

397. It was the unpardonable offence of Lefevre in the eyes of his critic that he, a simple master of arts, had dared to investigate matters that fell to the province of doctors of theology alone. Letter of H. C. Agrippa (1519), in Herminjard, Correspondance des Reformateurs, i. 51: "Tantum virum semel atque iterum ... vocarunt hominem stultum, insanum fidei, Sacrarum Literarum indoctum et ignarum, et qui, _duntaxat humanarum artium Magister, praesumptuose se ingerat iis quae spectant ad Theologos_." As it clearly appears that Lefevre was not a doctor of the Sorbonne, Professor Soldan is mistaken in saying: "Seit 1493 lebte er als Doctor der Theologie zu Paris, u. s. w." The error is of long standing.]

[Footnote 139: See Alphonse de Beauchamp's sketches of the lives of the two Briconnets, in the Biographie universelle.]

[Footnote 140: According to a contemporary letter, this was the sole cause of Lefevre's departure. "Faber Stapulensis ab urbe longe abest ad XX. lapidem, neque ullam ob causam quam quod convitia in Lutherum audire non potest." Glarea.n.u.s to Zwingle, Paris, July 4, 1521, Herminjard, i.

71.]

[Footnote 141: Epistre a tous Seigneurs et Peuples, 168-175.]