The Huguenots in France Part 17

"I have often pitched my professor's chair," said Court, "in a torrent underneath a rock. The sky was our roof, and the leafy branches thrown out from the crevices in the rock overhead, were our canopy. There I and my students would remain for about eight days; it was our hall, our lecture-room, and our study. To make the most of our time, and to practise the students properly, I gave them a text of Scripture to discuss before me--say the first eleven verses of the fifth chapter of Luke. I would afterwards propose to them some point of doctrine, some pa.s.sage of Scripture, some moral precept, or sometimes I gave them some difficult pa.s.sages to reconcile. After the whole had stated their views upon the question under discussion, I asked the youngest if he had anything to state against the arguments advanced; then the others were asked in turn; and after they had finished, I stated the views which I considered most just and correct. When the more advanced students were required to preach, they mounted a particular place, where a pole had been set across some rocks in the ravine, and which for the time served for a pulpit. And when they had delivered themselves, the others were requested by turns to express themselves freely upon the subject of the sermon which they had heard."

When the _proposant_ or probationer was considered sufficiently able to preach, he was sent on a mission to visit the churches. Sometimes he preached the approved sermons of other pastors; sometimes he preached his own sermons, after they had been examined by persons appointed by the synod. After a time, if approved by the moderator and a committee of the synod, the _proposant_ was licensed to preach. His work then resembled that of a pastor; but he could not yet administer the sacrament. It was only when he had pa.s.sed the synod, and been appointed by the laying on of hands, that he could exercise the higher pastoral functions.

Then, with respect to the maintenance of the pastors and preachers, Court recounts, not without pride, that for the ten years between 1713 and 1723 (excepting the years which he spent at Geneva), he served the Huguenot churches without receiving a farthing. His family and friends saw to the supply of his private wants. With respect to the others, they were supported by collections made at the a.s.semblies; and, as the people were nearly all poor, the amount collected was very small. On one occasion, three a.s.semblies produced a halfpenny and six half-farthings.

But a regular system of collecting moneys was framed by the synods (consisting of a meeting of pastors and elders), and out of the common fund so raised, emoluments were a.s.signed, first to those preachers who were married, and afterwards to those who were single. In either case the pay was very small, scarcely sufficient to keep the wolf from the door.

The students for the ministry were at first educated by Court and trained to preach, while he was on his dangerous journeys from one a.s.sembly in the Desert to another. Nor was the supply of preachers sufficient to visit the congregations already organized. Court had long determined, so soon as the opportunity offered, of starting a school for the special education of preachers and pastors, so that the work he was engaged in might be more efficiently carried on. He at first corresponded with influential French refugees in England and Holland with reference to the subject. He wrote to Basnage and Saurin, but they received his propositions coolly. He wrote to William Wake, then Archbishop of Canterbury, who promised his a.s.sistance. At last Court resolved to proceed into Switzerland, to stir up the French refugees disposed to help him in his labours.

Arrived at Geneva, Court sought out M. Pictet, to whom he explained the state of affairs in France. It had been rumoured amongst the foreign Protestants that fanaticism and "inspiration" were now in the ascendant among the Protestants of France. Court showed that this was entirely a mistake, and that all which the proscribed Huguenots in France wanted, was a supply of properly educated pastors. The friends of true religion, and the enemies of fanaticism, ought therefore to come to their help and supply them with that of which they stood most in need. If they would find teachers, Court would undertake to supply them with congregations. And Huguenot congregations were rapidly increasing, not only in Languedoc and Dauphiny, but in Normandy, Picardy, Poitou, Saintonge, Bearn, and the other provinces.

At length the subject became matured. It was not found desirable to establish the proposed school at Geneva, that city being closely watched by France, and frequently under the censure of its government for giving shelter to refugee Frenchmen. It was eventually determined that the college for the education of preachers should begin at Lausanne. It was accordingly commenced in the year 1726, and established under the superintendence of M. Duplan.

A committee of refugees called the "Society of Help for the Afflicted Faithful," was formed at Lausanne to collect subscriptions for the maintenance of the preachers, the pastors, and the seminary. These were in the first place received from Huguenots settled in Switzerland, afterwards increased by subscriptions obtained from refugees settled in Holland, Germany, and England. The King of England subscribed five hundred guineas yearly. Duplan was an indefatigable agent. In fourteen years he collected fourteen thousand pounds. By these efforts the number of students was gradually increased. They came from all parts of France, but chiefly from Languedoc. Between 1726 (the year in which it was started) and 1753, ninety students had pa.s.sed through the seminary.

When the students had pa.s.sed the range of study appointed by the professors, they returned from Switzerland to France to enter upon the work of their lives. They had pa.s.sed the school for martyrdom, and were ready to preach to the a.s.semblies--they had paved their way to the scaffold!

The preachers always went abroad with their lives in their hands. They travelled mostly by night, shunning the open highways, and selecting abandoned routes, often sheep-paths across the hills, to reach the scene of their next meeting. The trace of their steps is still marked upon the soil of the Cevennes, the people of the country still speaking of the solitary routes taken by their instructors when pa.s.sing from parish to parish, to preach to their fathers.

They were dressed, for disguise, in various ways; sometimes as peasants, as workmen, or as shepherds. On one occasion, Court and Duplan travelled the country disguised as officers! The police heard of it, and ordered their immediate arrest, pointing out the town and the very house where they were to be taken. But the preachers escaped, and a.s.sumed a new dress.

When living near Nismes, Court was one day seated under a tree composing a sermon, when a party of soldiers, hearing that he was in the neighbourhood, came within sight. Court climbed up into the tree, where he remained concealed among the branches, and thus contrived to escape their search.

On another occasion, he was staying with a friend, in whose house he had slept during the previous night. A detachment of troops suddenly surrounded the house, and the officer knocked loudly at the door.

Court made his friend go at once to bed pretending to be ill, while he himself cowered down in the narrow s.p.a.ce between the bed and the wall.

His wife slowly answered the door, which the soldiers were threatening to blow open. They entered, rummaged the house, opened all the chests and closets, sounded the walls, examined the sick man's room, and found nothing!

Court himself, as well as the other pastors, worked very hard. On one occasion, Court made a round of visits in Lower Languedoc and in the Cevennes, at first alone, and afterwards accompanied by a young preacher. In the s.p.a.ce of two months and a few days he visited thirty-one churches, holding a.s.semblies, preaching, and administering the sacrament, during which he travelled over three hundred miles. The weather did not matter to the pastors--rain nor snow, wind nor storm, never hindered them. They took the road and braved all. Even sickness often failed to stay them. Sickness might weaken but did not overthrow them.

The spies and police so abounded throughout the country, and were so active, that they knew all the houses in which the preachers might take refuge. A list of these was prepared and placed in the hands of the intendant of the province.[55] If preachers were found in them, both the shelterers and the sheltered knew what they had to expect.

The whole property and goods of the former were confiscated and they were sent to the galleys for life; and the latter were first tortured by the rack, and then hanged. The houses in which preachers were found were almost invariably burnt down.

[Footnote 55: It has since been published in the "Bulletin de la Societe du Protestantisme Francais."]

Notwithstanding the great secrecy with which the whole organization proceeded, preachers were frequently apprehended, a.s.semblies were often surprised, and many persons were imprisoned and sent to the galleys for life. Each village had its chief spy--the priest; and beneath the priest there were a number of other spies--spies for money, spies for cruelty, spies for revenge.

Was an a.s.sembly of Huguenots about to be held? A spy, perhaps a traitor, would make it known. The priest's order was sufficient for the captain of the nearest troop of soldiers to proceed to disperse it. They marched and surrounded the a.s.sembly. A sound of volley-firing was heard. The soldiers shot down, hanged, or made prisoners of the unlawful worshippers. Punishments were sudden, and inquiry was never made into them, however brutal. There was the fire for Bibles, Testaments, and psalm-books; galleys for men; prisons and convents for women; and gibbets for preachers.

In 1720 a large number of prisoners were captured in the famous old quarry near Nismes, long the seat of secret Protestant worship. But the troops surrounded the meeting suddenly, and the whole were taken.

The women were sent for life to the Tour de Constance, and the men, chained in gangs, were sent all through France to La Roch.e.l.le, to be imprisoned in the galleys there. The amba.s.sador of England made intercession for the prisoners, and their sentence was commuted into one of perpetual banishment from France. They were accordingly transported to New Orleans on the Mississippi, to populate the rising French colony in that quarter of North America.

Thus crimes abounded, and cruelty when practised upon Huguenots was never investigated. The seizure and violation of women was common.

Fathers knew the probable consequence when their daughters were seized. The daughter of a Huguenot was seized at Uzes, in 1733, when the father immediately died of grief. Two sisters were seized at the same place to be "converted," and their immediate relations were thrown into gaol in the meantime. This was a common proceeding. The Tour de Constance was always filling, and kept full.

The dying were tortured. If they refused the viatic.u.m they were treated as "d.a.m.ned persons." When Jean de Molenes of Cahors died, making a profession of Protestantism, his body was denounced as d.a.m.ned, and it was abandoned without sepulture. A woman who addressed some words of consolation to Joseph Martin when dying was condemned to pay a fine of six thousand livres, and be imprisoned in the castle of Beauregard; and as for Martin, his memory was declared to be d.a.m.ned for ever. Many such outrages to the living and dead were constantly occurring.[56] Gaolers were accustomed to earn money by exhibiting the corpses of Huguenot women at fairs, inviting those who paid for admission, to walk up and "see the corpse of a d.a.m.ned person."[57]

[Footnote 56: Edmund Hughes, "Histoire de la Restauration du Protestantisme en France," ii. 94.]

[Footnote 57: Benoit, "Edit de Nantes," v. 987.]

Notwithstanding all these cruelties, Protestantism was making considerable progress, both in Languedoc and Dauphiny. In reorganizing the Church, the whole country had been divided into districts, and preachers and pastors endeavoured to visit the whole of their members with as much regularity as possible. Thus Languedoc was divided into seven districts, and to each of those a _proposant_ or probationary preacher was appointed. The presbyteries and synods met regularly and secretly in a cave, or the hollow bed of a river, or among the mountains. They cheered each other up, though their progress was usually over the bodies of their dead friends.

For any pastor or preacher to be apprehended, was, of course, certain death. Thus, out of thirteen Huguenots who were found worshipping in a private apartment at Montpellier, in 1723, Vesson, the pastor, and Bonicel and Antoine Comte, his a.s.sistants, were at once condemned and hanged on the Peyrou, the other ten persons being imprisoned or sent to the galleys for life.

Shortly after, Huc, the aged pastor, was taken prisoner in the Cevennes, brought to Montpellier, and hanged in the same place. A reward of a thousand livres was offered by Bernage, the intendant, for the heads of the remaining preachers, the fatal list comprising the names of Court, Cortez, Durand, Rouviere, Bombonnoux, and others. The names of these "others" were not mentioned, not being yet thought worthy of the gibbet.

And yet it was at this time that the Bishop of Alais made an appeal to the government against the toleration shown to the Huguenots! In 1723, he sent a long memorial to Paris, alleging that Catholicism was suffering a serious injury; that not only had the "new converts"

withdrawn themselves from the Catholic Church, but that the old Catholics themselves were resorting to the Huguenot a.s.semblies; that sometimes their meetings numbered from three to four thousand persons; that their psalms were sometimes overheard in the surrounding villages; that the churches were becoming deserted, the cures in some parishes not being able to find a single Catholic to serve at Ma.s.s; that the Protestants had ceased to send their children to school, and were baptized and married without the intervention of the Church.

In consequence of these representations, the then Regent, the Duke of Bourbon, sent down an urgent order to the authorities to carry out the law--to prevent meetings, under penalty of death to preachers, and imprisonment at the galleys to all who attended them, ordering that the people should be _forced_ to go to church and the children to school, and reviving generally the severe laws against Protestantism issued by Louis XIV. The result was that many of the a.s.semblies were shortly after attacked and dispersed, many persons were made prisoners and sent to the galleys, and many more preachers were apprehended, racked, and hanged.

Repeated attempts were made to apprehend Antoine Court, as being the soul of the renewed Protestant organization. A heavy reward was offered for his head. The spies and police hunted after him in all directions. Houses where he was supposed to be concealed were surrounded by soldiers at night, and every hole and corner in them ransacked. Three houses were searched in one night. Court sometimes escaped with great difficulty. On one occasion he remained concealed for more than twenty hours under a heap of manure. His friends endeavoured to persuade him to leave the country until the activity of the search for him had pa.s.sed.

Since the year 1722, Court had undertaken new responsibilities. He had become married, and was now the father of three children. He had married a young Huguenot woman of Uzes. He first met her in her father's house, while he was in hiding from the spies. While he was engaged in his pastoral work his wife and family continued to live at Uzes. Court was never seen in her company, but could only visit his family secretly. The woman was known to be of estimable character, but it gave rise to suspicions that she had three children without a known father. The spies were endeavouring to unravel the secret, tempted by the heavy reward offered for Court's head.

One day the new commandant of the town, pa.s.sing before the door of the house where Court's wife lived, stopped, and, pointing to the house, put some questions to the neighbours. Court was informed of this, and immediately supposed that his house had become known, that his wife and family had been discovered and would be apprehended. He at once made arrangements for having them removed to Geneva. They reached that city in safety, in the month of April, 1729.

Shortly after, Court, still wandering and preaching about Languedoc, became seriously ill. He feared for his wife, he feared for his family, and conceived the design of joining them in Switzerland. A few months later, exhausted by his labours and continued illness, he left Languedoc and journeyed by slow stages to Geneva. He was still a young man, only thirty-three; but he had worked excessively hard during the last dozen years. Since the age of fourteen, in fact, he had evangelized Languedoc.

Shortly before Court left France for Switzerland, the preacher, Alexandre Roussel, was, in the year 1728, added to the number of martyrs. He was only twenty-six years of age. The occasion on which he was made prisoner was while attending an a.s.sembly near Vigan. The whole of the people had departed, and Roussel was the last to leave the meeting. He was taken to Montpellier, and imprisoned in the citadel, which had before held so many Huguenot pastors. He was asked to abjure, and offered a handsome bribe if he would become a Catholic.

He refused to deny his faith, and was sentenced to die. When Antoine Court went to offer consolation to his mother, she replied, "If my son had given way I should have been greatly distressed; but as he died with constancy, I thank G.o.d for strengthening him to perform this last work in his service."

Court did not leave his brethren in France without the expostulations of his friends. They alleged that his affection for his wife and family had cooled his zeal for G.o.d's service. Duplan and Cortez expostulated with him; and the churches of Languedoc, which he himself had established, called upon him to return to his duties amongst them.

But Court did not attend to their request. His determination was for the present unshaken. He had a long arrears of work to do in quiet. He had money to raise for the support of the suffering Church of France, and for the proper maintenance of the college for students, preachers, and pastors. He had to help the refugees, who still continued to leave France for Switzerland, and to write letters and rouse the Protestant kingdoms of the north, as Brousson had done before him some thirty years ago.

The city of Berne was very generous in its treatment of Court and the Huguenots generally. The Bernish Government allotted Court a pension of five hundred livres a-year--for he was without the means of supporting his family--all his own and his wife's property having been seized and sequestrated in France. Court preached with great success in the princ.i.p.al towns of Switzerland, more particularly at Berne, and afterwards at Lausanne, where he spent the rest of his days.

Though he worked there more peacefully, he laboured as continuously as ever in the service of the Huguenot churches. He composed addresses to them; he educated preachers and pastors for them; and one of his princ.i.p.al works, while at Lausanne, was to compose a history of the Huguenots in France subsequent to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

What he had done for the reorganization of the Huguenot Church in France may be thus briefly stated. Court had begun his work in 1715, at which time there was no settled congregation in the South of France. The Huguenots were only ministered to by occasional wandering pastors. In 1729, the year in which Court finally left France, there were in Lower Languedoc 29 organized, though secretly governed, churches; in Upper Languedoc, 11; in the Cevennes, 18; in the Lozere 12; and in Viverais, 42 churches. There were now over 200,000 recognised Protestants in Languedoc alone. The ancient discipline had been restored; 120 churches had been organized; a seminary for the education of preachers and pastors had been established; and Protestantism was extending in Dauphiny, Bearn, Saintonge,[58] and other quarters.

[Footnote 58: In 1726, a deputation from Guyenne, Royergue, and Poitou, appeared before the Languedoc synod, requesting preachers and pastors to be sent to them. The synod agreed to send Maroger as preacher. Betrine (the first of the Lausanne students) and Grail were afterwards sent to join him.

Protestantism was also reawakening in Saintonge and Picardy, and pastors from Languedoc journeyed there to administer the sacrament. Preachers were afterwards sent to join them, to awaken the people, and reorganize the congregations.]

Such were, in a great measure, the results of the labours of Antoine Court and his a.s.sistants during the previous fifteen years.

CHAPTER XII.

THE CHURCH IN THE DESERT, 1730-62--PAUL RABAUT.

The persecutions of the Huguenots increased at one time and relaxed at another. When France was at war, and the soldiers were fighting in Flanders or on the Rhine, the bishops became furious, and complained bitterly to the government of the toleration shown to the Protestants.

The reason was that there were no regiments at liberty to pursue the Huguenots and disperse their meetings in the Desert. When the soldiers returned from the wars, persecution began again.