CHAPTER X.
Early history of Geneva—Constitution—Duke Amedée the Eighth—Attempt to become master of Geneva—The Bishop inclined to cede his rights—The opposition of the citizens—Charles the Third—Berthelier—Alliance with Fribourg—His courage—Geneva taken—His refusal to fly—His arrest—A tooth-drawer named his judge—His execution—The news of his death causing the impression he had hoped for—Treaty—The Mamelukes—The Confrères de la Cuiller—Advance of Berne and Fribourg—Charles the Third’s forced concessions—Want of generosity in the Bernese—Noble conduct of Geneva—Protestant religion gaining strength—Bonnivard—Seized on the Jura—Cast into the dungeons of Chillon—Disputes in Geneva—The Grand Council decides that mass be abolished—Francis the First—Berne declares war against Savoy—Her alliance with Francis—The Duke of Savoy’s losses—Berne’s renewed misconduct—Proud reply of the Genevese—Bonnivard delivered—Calvin—His early life—His flight from Paris—His reception by Marguerite of Navarre—Persecution of Francis—Calvin’s reception by Louis the Twelfth’s Daughter—Geneva—His over severity—His expulsion—His return—His iron rule—Michael Servet—His irritating conduct towards Calvin—Calvin’s vow to be revenged—Servet’s arrest—His escape—Tracked by Calvin—Taken prisoner on his passage through Geneva—He is accused—Calvin’s valet—Burned at the stake outside the walls of Geneva.
The early history of Geneva; its foundation by the Allobroges; its increase under the Romans, Burgundians, and Franks, till it obtained privileges from Charlemagne, and held fairs; formed part of the second kingdom of Burgundy, and passed, along with its other relics, into the feeble power of the German emperors, is too long and uninteresting in its details for me to call it to your mind now. During the confused changes of these long revolutions, the clergy had found means at Geneva as well as at Sion, Lausanne, Constance, and other towns of the empire, to join to its spiritual jurisdiction a large portion of temporal authority; and the bishops obtained from the emperor the title of prince and sovereign of the town, and a part of the land surrounding it.
The inhabitants generally preferred his rule to that of the warlike and turbulent princes who owned the territories adjoining theirs; not only because they expected it would be mildly held, but because their own voices, joined to those of the chapter of his church, elected him, and having no military force under his command, he found moderation a necessary virtue. Besides this restraint, the bishop acknowledged others. He could not exercise authority alone; he was the emperor’s vassal, and the administration of justice was disputed with him by the counts of Geneva, who, from being merely imperial officers, had become the bishop’s first vassals. The people, profiting by their frequent discords, established their own power, and held fast the privileges granted by divers emperors. They elected four syndics and a treasurer, who chose in turn their principal assessors. They deliberated on taxes to be levied, alliances to be formed; on all important affairs interesting the general welfare—so that Geneva, being an imperial town, shared the exercise of sovereign power between her bishop and her citizens.
This already complicated constitution became still more so, when Amé the Fifth the Great, count of Savoy, strove to become master of Geneva. The Genevese, fearing the efforts against their liberty made by their bishop and the count of Geneva, who was his brother, had had recourse to Amé’s protection, a circumstance by which he profited. He obliged the bishop to cede to him the office of Vidomne, in virtue of which he became judge (from whose decision there was no appeal) of all civil causes.
Amedée the Eighth, afterwards Pope Felix, united in his person the necessary powers for following up this project of usurpation. The count of Geneva had sold him his rights and lands. Created by the Emperor Sigismund duke of Savoy, he proposed to the bishop to cede to him his rights also. A bull of Pope Martin the Fifth authorized the latter to abdicate his sovereignty, but he was sufficiently just to demand, ere doing so, the consent of the Genevese assembly: “Inasmuch,” the four syndics replied in the name of the citizens, “as Geneva, subject to the power of the church, has been governed peaceably and mildly for four hundred years, it seems neither useful nor honourable for church and bishop, but rather dangerous to the state, to admit a project of alienation. We will never suffer, while in our power to oppose it, any foreign domination. Ourselves and our children will continue beneath the rule of the church, with our bishop for sovereign, requiring of him, that, according to his duty and his oath, sworn at his accession, he shall govern faithfully, and preserve his right as heretofore,—the syndics and citizens of Geneva, on their side, promising him assistance in case of need, as also to all his successors who shall be elected canonically, that is to say, by the people in general council.”
The dukes of Savoy who succeeded Amedée the Eighth renewed the attempts made by their ancestor. They sometimes succeeded in causing the bishop to be chosen among the princes, the children, and even the bastards of their house. Philip of Savoy, brother of Philibert, was thus elected bishop at the age of seven. Growing older, his childhood was regretted, for he showed a stirring disposition, and a love of arms, which led him to sacrifice his subjects’ repose, and urge his brother’s taking possession of Geneva. Philibert, wiser and more just, voluntarily abandoned the design, and fixed his residence at Chambéry.
The reign of Charles the Third, who succeeded him in 1504, was that whose oppression and cruelty finally roused Geneva. He proved himself the citizens’ open enemy, attacking their liberties in every way, and unweariedly. Seconded by the bishop, who was his relative, he made various pompous entries into the town, winning over some few, intimidating others; seizing the citizens who even faintly opposed his will, and flinging them into dungeons, where they perished by famine or torture.
Berthelier, one of the Genevese council, had obtained letters of “bourgeoisie” at Fribourg, as a safeguard from the duke’s tyranny, and found them useful when, in 1517, having become involved in a private quarrel between André Malvenda and a judge named by the duke and bishop, others implicated like himself were punished by a light fine only, while he was attacked with a rancour which obliged him first to conceal himself, and then to escape to Fribourg. The citizens of Fribourg made an appeal in his favour, insisting on his being tried by his proper judges, the syndics of Geneva; and returning thither, he was absolved by them. But during his stay at Fribourg he had negotiated an alliance between that republic and his own country; and as it protected the independence of Geneva, (the inhabitants of each town styling those of the other co-citizens,) the angry duke strove to conceal his disappointment, and to bribe Berthelier to support his interests by the most seducing offers.
Notwithstanding the peril in which his refusal placed him; notwithstanding that an army of seven thousand Savoyards assembled at the gates of an unfortified town, and the inhabitants of Fribourg had sent deputies to declare that the Bernese and the whole of the Swiss confederation pressed them to break through their just concluded treaty, Berthelier, without a chance of flight or a hope of resistance, rejected the duke’s offers with disdain; communicated his own courage to the assembled council, and the alliance of Fribourg was confirmed, in the midst of menace and danger. The first of April, 1519, the herald at arms of the duke of Savoy, entering the assembly and seating himself above the syndics, declared war in the name of his master and theirs.
The Genevese armed and prepared for defence; but a message from Fribourg informing them that its army could not arrive in time to save them, they suffered the duke to enter their town, this time without his exercising much violence, for the Fribourg soldiers had advanced into the Pays de Vaud, and seized on hostages there. Charles the Third adopted another course: the bishop was prince of Geneva, and had rights the Fribourg citizens would not contest. He levied an army in Faucigny, and entered the town the 20th of August. Once more the friends of Berthelier implored him to fly: “No,” he answered, “our voices are not loud enough to reach Fribourg; they will hear and they will act when the blood of a victim calls upon them.” Far from concealing himself, he every day went to walk in a garden near the entrance of the town.
The third day after the bishop’s arrival, Berthelier met the Vidomne on his road, surrounded with soldiers come to arrest him. He advanced to meet them coolly; the Vidomne demanded his sword; Berthelier presented it: “Keep it carefully,” he said; “you will be called on to account for it.” He said no more, and allowed himself to be conducted to prison with perfect calmness. The syndics claimed him as within their jurisdiction; but the bishop, who with his soldiers held the town, rejected their demand, and created provost a tooth-drawer of his suite, to proceed against him. This new made judge vainly questioned the prisoner: “I am ready to reply to the syndics,” he answered; “of you I know nothing.”
He was condemned without further trial. Led forth from his prison to the place near it, he breathed a short prayer, turned towards the people, saying, “Ah citizens of Geneva!” stooped his head to the block, and received the death blow. The executioner raised it by the hair, and showed it to the crowd, saying, “This is the head of a traitor; let the sight of it be a warning to you.” His body was hung on a gibbet, but carried thence and buried.
In consequence of this murder, and that of others, victims like him, many took refuge in Berne, Fribourg, and other towns, and the recital of what had passed made, as Berthelier had hoped, a strong impression. Berne and Fribourg sent deputies to Geneva. A new treaty was entered into by the three towns, and solemnly ratified, the two cantons engaging to defend the Genevese in their persons, their liberties, and properties. Geneva in like manner bound herself to assist and protect Berne and Fribourg, but, being the weaker party, she was to do so at her own expense; while, on the contrary, she defrayed all that might be incurred in her favour by her allies. The duke of Savoy opposed the treaty strongly, but vainly. The office of the vidomne, who administered justice in the duke’s name, was abolished, and his partisans, whom the Swiss called Mamelukes, because they said, like the satellites of the sultan of Egypt, they were the pillars of tyranny, having retired from the city, and refused to return, were proclaimed traitors. Their only means of vengeance lay in joining themselves to the Savoyard nobles, who, under the name of Confrères de la Cuiller, ravaged the possessions of the Genevese, and the environs of their town. They had adopted the title at a banquet, where, assembled and intoxicated, they ferociously engaged to eat them as spoon meat, and since that time, and in memory of his vow, each of the brotherhood wore a spoon appended to his collar.
The bishop at this period was Pierre de la Baume, an immoral and inconsistent man, who, having served the duke at the expense of the citizens, with like caprice abandoned his cause, and sworn a solemn oath to consult no interests but theirs, broke it ere the year had passed away, and, on their refusal to renounce the alliance and restore the vidomnat, became their implacable enemy and the duke’s friend once more. His intrigues with Berne and Fribourg induced them to send deputies to Geneva, offering to cancel the treaty should the Genevese agree to doing so. But when, admitted before the council, they had discharged their task, and each member, raising his right hand, swore rather to die than consent, the ambassadors felt that their unanimous courage at least commanded esteem, and that, consistently with their own honour, their native towns could not abandon one so worthy support and liberty.
The surrounding country ravaged; the insulted faubourgs; the discovery of divers conspiracies for taking the city by storm, and putting its inhabitants to the sword, left the cantons no excuse for delaying to grant their promised assistance. Their army arrived at Morges, while ten thousand men commanded by the duke besieged Geneva; and, though the allies were inferior in number, these last, on the news of their approach, retired in haste and without order, for they were chiefly recruits and mercenaries. The Swiss came on notwithstanding; pillaging all on their way, and burning the castles of the brethren of La Cuiller. The duke sent an ambassador charged to throw the blame of all that had occurred on the last mentioned fraternity. The conferences were held at St. Julien, and Charles the Third saw himself obliged to acquiesce in the conditions proposed to him, engaging that all hostilities should cease, and placing in the power of Berne and Fribourg the Pays de Vaud as pledge of his sincerity, abandoning in their favour all rights he possessed over it, provided it were proved that he had not fulfilled his part of the treaty.
These concessions made, the chiefs of the allied army thought their most pressing business in Geneva consisted henceforth in demanding payment of the expenses of their expedition. The starved and pillaged Genevese solicited the patience due to their situation, yet by an effort worthy them and their love of liberty, divesting themselves even of necessaries, a portion of the debt was defrayed. When the army of the cantons marched from the town, they found themselves reduced to seek a last resource in their unshaken courage, which was most efficient of all. The troops had hardly retreated, ere the duke again attempted to cut off supplies, and levied a considerable corps with the design of employing it against them. Some time after, notwithstanding the alliance made and confirmed at several times, the duke’s intrigues at Berne influencing the cantons, they again ungenerously proposed its dissolution; giving, as a reason, that the Genevese were not rich enough to pay for the assistance they would require at each fresh attack. This proposal was made in a form painful as was its spirit to those by whom it was received; for the three deputies who were its bearers accompanied it with various menaces; yet the small and struggling nation, in its worst extremity, bore up bravely. “The more we may be threatened,” they replied, “the more will we be firm and constant; forasmuch as dying for the right, we will hold ourselves happy. Nevertheless, we so trust in God and the citizens of the two towns, believing they will observe the oaths made in presence of their Creator and fellow-men, that we will satisfy our debt, even if, so to do, we shall be obliged to pledge all our worldly goods, even to our wives and our children.”
It was after this that Berne and Fribourg, having vainly attempted to temporize, and striven to adopt a middle course, which the Genevese proudly rejected, returned to better feelings, and refused to renew their alliance with the duke, who had failed to pay to themselves the sums which he had forfeited. The Protestant religion was now gaining rapid growth, animating the Swiss with fresh zeal for the liberty it favoured, and deepening the duke’s hatred, as it changed to a kind of crusade what had been a mere spoliation. Though Geneva has since borne the title of reformed Rome, Zwingle and his associates had disseminated their doctrines over the rest of the Swiss states before it reached herself in 1528: for its entrance here grew out of the ill conduct and scandalous lives of their bishops and ecclesiastics, and such observations as the citizens made during the frequent journeys their commerce necessitated into Switzerland. Bonnivard, prior of the abbey of St. Victor, situated close to Geneva, esteemed for his pure life and profound learning, exhorted the Genevese to reform their conduct and enlighten their minds, to dare to speak and think freely. Fribourg (remained faithful to the Catholic creed) employed threats as well as prayers to prevent their allies falling away; but the Bernese soldiers, during the brief time they had spent in Geneva, had taught the people to insult the outward signs of their old faith, to fling down for firewood the rude wooden statues which decorated the churches; and the people, finding their bravadoes unpunished, repeated and exaggerated them daily. In 1530 Bonnivard was betrayed to the duke of Savoy, some say by false friends, others by bandits, who seized and rifled him on a wild tract of the Jura; and, delivered to Charles the Third, he was cast into the dungeon of Chillon. The bishop was leagued with the duke, though secretly, to make war on Geneva, and the proofs of his collusion were not wanting. Farel and Saulnier, both reformers, preached publicly to the excited multitude; and the little state divided by religious fury, the hand of the father was lifted against his son, and brother betrayed brother.
The Catholics conspired, and the Protestants resisted; conflicts in broad day and assassinations in the dark continued; while the laws of the magistrates were useless, and words of peace were despised. At last an order in council enacted “that every one should enjoy liberty of conscience, avoiding to create scandal.” But this species of truce did not last long. The Catholic priests provoked fresh sedition, and in the tumult which followed in the streets, a citizen of Fribourg was killed. Long disputes ensued, the Bernese taking part with the townsmen, the men of Fribourg with the bishop; till the latter, feigning or feeling fear, quitted Geneva to join the duke, and returned thither no more, the citizens shortly after publishing their resolve no longer to recognize him for their superior. His grand vicar published a charge, which commanded, on pain of excommunication, the burning of all French and German Bibles. The Bernese insisted that permission to preach should be granted to the reformers; and the sermons of Farel, delivered in consequence in the church of the Cordeliers, attracted multitudes and converted many. The bishop had excommunicated the citizens as hardened heretics, and these last could only procure food at the sword’s point, when the grand council, after long debates, commanded that the celebration of mass should cease in the city till further orders.
An edict ordained that God should be served according to the rules of the Gospel, and that all acts of papistical idolatry should be interdicted for ever.
Geneva was again besieged in 1535, and reduced to the last extremity, when Francis the First, king of France, not that he hated the heretics less, but that he hated Savoy more, offered assistance to the Genevese on condition of their putting him in possession of the rights their bishop had held. They rejected his proposals, saying, “They had suffered all things in the cause of freedom, and recommended it to his generosity.”
A few levies of troops were consequently made in France; but the Savoyards closed the passage to Geneva, while the duke declared “he would never permit the Genevese to change their religion without permission of the pope; and also, that his nobility, of whom he was in this instance master, was determined on sacrificing life and land to exterminate the Lutherans.” Under these circumstances, and also because an ally of the duke’s had made violent inroads on the Bernese possessions, Berne, aroused at last, declared war against Savoy,—representing in her manifesto as sole reason for so doing the “oppression of Geneva, with which it was impossible to bear longer; her own honour being interested in protecting a people persecuted for their common religion,—as to abandon her ally would cast upon herself an ineffaceable stain.”
As the Bernese army came on, the ducal troops fled. Advancing unresisted, the former burned the castles of the brotherhood of La Cuiller, and, entering Geneva, brought with their presence the term of its sufferings and long perplexities. Francis the First, reviving a former claim made on the death of Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan, despatched at this time (1536) an army to invade the Milanese territory, which on its march occupied Bresse and a great part of Savoy. His alliance was offered to Berne and accepted, and the unfortunate duke lost to France, Bresse, Turin, and Piedmont, as well as almost all which remained to him of Savoy. The Bernese were wanting in generosity once more. Their gain in booty and increase of territory had been great: the Pays de Vaud, with little pains, had become theirs; yet they demanded of the Genevese, as theirs by conquest, the rights and revenues of their duke and bishops. The Genevese answered proudly:—
“If we could have borne the yoke of a master, we could have spared ourselves the struggles and expenses our liberty has cost; we will not lose the fruit of them. We conjure you, who aided us in its maintenance, not to persist in a demand which tarnishes your glory: by all reasonable means we will strive to repay your services.”
A treaty made greatly to Berne’s advantage—9,917 golden crowns paid ere the close of the year—the cession of all which Geneva had conquered from Savoy, kept this promise. Henceforth free, the citizens profited by the long wished-for calm to establish order and purity of conduct, to found hospitals and colleges, and a short space of time saw an immoral, superstitious, and ignorant population replaced by one, industrious, serious to austerity, addicted to trades, arts, and sciences, in all which their success became remarkable. The Bernese army, on its march from Geneva, took Morges and Vevey, and besieging Chillon, became masters of this last spot of the Pays de Vaud owned by Savoy, and delivered Bonnivard, who had lain in its dungeons six long years.
In 1536 Calvin appeared in Geneva. Born at Noyon in Picardy, in 1509, and a cooper’s son, he had been destined for the church, and, through the protection of an abbé of his native town, had interest and patrons, which ensured advancement; and before he had taken orders, or attained the age of twenty, he owned titles and revenues attached to several benefices. While pursuing his ecclesiastical studies in Paris, he became acquainted with a young man born, like himself, at Noyon, and his senior by only a few years. The reformed religion was making progress in France, and Olivetan first instilled into his mind the seed which was to spring up a giant tree. He abandoned the study of theology, intending to adopt that of the law; but in consequence of an harangue pronounced at the university, full of the new doctrines, and of which he was believed the composer, he was obliged to fly from Paris, and during the concealment and wanderings, which lasted some months, he patiently continued his researches, and sometimes left his retreat to preach, in public, sermons extraordinary for their success and power. He was well received at the court of Marguerite de Navarre, sister of Francis the First, who at that time, rather with a view to please Rome than from hatred to heresy, had lighted, from one end of his kingdom to the other, the funeral piles of the reformers; and, to conciliate his allies, the protestant princes of Germany, spread abroad pamphlets, in which it was asserted that the men so rigorously treated belonged not to those sectarians, but to “the anabaptists, enemies of all order as well as of all religion.” In his famous work published as their confession of faith, “The Christian Institution,” he refuted the assertions of Francis, respecting the unfortunate victims of his policy; while entering into the subject more clearly and fully than any reformer had yet done, he attacked Rome in all her entrenchments. After its publication he went to Ferrara, and was well received by the Duchesse Renée of France, Louis the Twelfth’s daughter, who afterwards became protestant. Remaining there but a short time, he preached in various towns of Italy, and, discovered in this employment, was obliged to depart in all haste, to ensure his own safety. He returned to Paris, and finding his life endangered by a sojourn there also, he arrived in Geneva, where Farel had for some months borne the whole weight of the affairs of his church, and requested assistance, as unable to continue his labour alone. Become his coadjutor, and leaving to him the care of preaching, he almost entirely consecrated his time to instruction. He determined on reforming the lives as well as the doctrine of the citizens, and commencing this great work with too much promptitude and severity, he roused powerful enemies,—and the faction, profiting by the first favourable moment, demanded and obtained his exile a little less than two years after his coming. He retired first to Berne, and thence to Strasburg, where welcome and distinction waited him: he was regretted at Geneva, and implored to return. Calvin objected his engagements made with Strasburg; but deputies were despatched to the magistrates of this town, begging his restoration to his first flock. His sentence of banishment was unanimously revoked in the public assembly of citizens, and in September, 1541, he re-entered the city. Thenceforward, to the close of his life, his iron authority was undisputed; dancing, light songs, festivals,—pleasures which had always been considered innocent, were strictly forbidden. He, shortly after his arrival, presented in council his proposed changes in ecclesiastical discipline. They were adopted in the following November. In consequence of one of these was instituted a tribunal, called a Consistory, its members half clerical, half laymen, charged with watching over the maintenance of pure doctrine and moral conduct. Its power of censure extended to the most trivial words and actions. No citizen, by his important functions, could be raised above it, or could be sheltered from its reprimands, and the shame of seeing them inscribed on its registers. This new police rendered Calvin master of the occupations as well as the opinions of the Genevese; and as he reigned sovereign in the council to which it referred, as well as in the consistory, the judges pronounced condemnation on all who were opposed to him.
A magistrate was condemned to two months’ imprisonment for irregular life and connexion with Calvin’s enemies; Jacques Gruet to decapitation for writing impious letters and libertine rhymes. The darkest stain on Calvin’s memory is the death of Michael Servet. Born the same year with Calvin, but a Spaniard and destined for the law, he came to Paris early in life for the sake of studying there; but soon abandoning this profession, and also that of medicine afterwards adopted, he abandoned himself to theological dispute, and became, though not denying the divinity of Christ, a violent anti-trinitarian. Having taken up the trade of corrector of the press, he made his occupation subservient to his favourite idea, and, entrusted with a reimpression of the Bible, he added a preface and notes, which Calvin attacked as impertinent and impious. Servet entered into correspondence with him, making use of his talents and learning only to embarrass his adversary, till the paper war grew so violent, that the letters on either side changed to a series of invective. Servet vowed to humiliate his rival, and shortly after brought out a work, whose sole purpose was to call attention to a number of errors he had detected in those of Calvin, above all in his greatest and most valued one, “The Christian Institution.” The reformer was so irritated, that he wrote to his brethren, Farel and Viret, “If ever this heretic falls into my power, my influence with the magistrates shall be used for his destruction.”
From that moment he held no communication with Servet, and the latter, occupied with his system only, spent four years in the compilation of another work attacking the doctrine of the Trinity. It was printed at Vienna, without the author’s or printer’s name; but Calvin, recognising with the opinions the style of Servet, and finding his own writings and himself treated with contempt and bitterness, vowed vengeance on him.
Using unworthy means, he sent to the Cardinal de Tournon, then archbishop of Lyons, and the most violent foe of the reformed faith, some sheets of Servet’s treatise: and the archbishop communicating them to the governor-general of Dauphiné, he made every possible effort to discover from what press they had issued, but in vain; and Servet would have escaped had not Calvin expedited to Lyons the originals (of which he had obtained possession) of some letters contained in the work; affording proof positive of Servet’s being its author.
He was arrested in consequence, and would have been condemned and executed had he not found means to escape from prison. Anxious only to flee from France and to Italy, where he hoped to live unknown, he did not reflect that his shortest road might also prove the most perilous, and, without fear of the consequences, he arrived in Geneva. Made acquainted with his flight, but not with its direction, Calvin’s activity tracked his foe, and, at his demand, he was arrested. The city laws ordained that the accuser should share the prison of the accused, but not choosing to submit to them, this part devolved on one Lafontaine, said to be his valet, while he reserved to himself that of discussing the theological question. In the outset Servet appeared calm and unembarrassed, and even confident in his judges’ equity. As soon as the law process was terminated, copies of it were sent to Zurich, Berne, Bâle, and Schaffhausen. The advice of Zurich was the most severe, but Calvin’s assertion that the Protestant cantons pronounced for the sentence of death, is untrue. The 26th of October, 1553, the tribunal, sitting for the last time, condemned Servet to be burned alive. When its decision was made known to him, the firmness he had hitherto shown gave way, and his shrieks of terror were heart-rending. He hoped to soften Calvin, and had an interview with him two hours before he was led to execution, but his fate had been long decided. He was burned at the stake in a spot called Champey, a stone’s throw from the southern gate of Geneva. He suffered two hours of fearful torments, the wind blowing the flame from him, and cried in his despair, “Unhappy that I am, with the golden pieces and rich collar ye took from me, ye could not purchase wood enough to consume me quicker!”