IV.
It appeared, in 1533, as if better days were about to dawn upon the French Reformation. The queen-mother, Louise de Savoie, who hoped to redeem by fanatic bigotry the libertinism of her youth, had just died. Francis I. had made an alliance with the Protestants of the League of Smalcald, and the credit of Marguérite de Valois had thence increased. She took advantage of the occasion to open the pulpits of Paris to Gérard Roussel, Courault, and Bertault, who leaned towards the Reformed doctrines. The bishop, Jean du Bellay, offered no opposition. He was a man of great reading, and in his letters to Melancthon signed himself: yours cordially.
The churches were crowded. Noël Beda, and other doctors of the Sorbonne, tried to raise the people; but they were banished by the Parliament. At this, the rage of the monks grew boundless. They performed, at their college of Navarre, a representation in which Marguérite de Valois, reading the Bible while spinning, was suddenly changed into an infernal fury. The Sorbonnists condemned at the same time one of her books, entitled The Mirror of the Sinful Soul, where no mention was made either of saints, or of purgatory, or of any other redemption than that of Jesus Christ. A Cordelier declared in a public sermon, that Marguérite deserved to be inclosed in a sack and thrown into the river.
Such insolence was too great for the king’s endurance. He had the regents of the college of Navarre punished, and the censure of the Sorbonne disavowed by the university in a body. He even threatened to inflict upon the Cordelier the penalty with which the monk had menaced Marguérite de Valois; but she interceded for him, and the punishment was commuted.
This disposition of Francis did not last long. Having had an interview with Clement VII. at Marseilles, in the month of October, 1533, for the marriage of his son Henry with Catherine de Medici, the pope’s niece, and being desirous of an alliance with this pontiff for the conquest of the Milanese, the dream of his life, he returned to Paris with a mind bent against the heretics. Many Lutherans, or Sacramentarians, as they were then called, were cast into prison, and the three suspected preachers interdicted from preaching.
All the new converts, already very numerous, did not bear the stroke of persecution patiently, and were sorely grieved to be deprived of their pastors. At this juncture one Féret arrived, bringing from Switzerland placards against the mass, which he proposed to disseminate throughout the kingdom. The most prudent opposed the design, affirming that too much precipitation would ruin everything. But the enthusiasts, as always happens in moments of crisis, prevailed.
On the 18th of October, 1534, the inhabitants of Paris found on the public places, in the crossways, on the palace-walls, on the doors of the churches, a placard with this title: “Truthful articles concerning the horrible, great, and unbearable abuses of the Popish Mass, invented directly against the Holy Supper of our Lord, the only Mediator, and only Saviour, Jesus Christ.”
This document was written in a bitter and violent style. Popes, cardinals, bishops, and monks were attacked with the sharpest invectives. It thus concluded: “In fine, truth has deserted them, truth threatens them, truth chases them, truth fills them with fear; by all which shall their reign be shortly destroyed for ever.”
The people gathered in groups around the placards. Horrible rumours circulated, such as the masses invent in their days of rage. The Lutherans, it was said, had laid a frightful plot for burning the churches, firing the town, and massacring every one. And the multitude shouted: Death! death to the heretics! The priests and monks, who were perhaps the first deceived, kindled the rage. The magistrates, although more calm, were irritated by so daring an attack upon the ecclesiastical order of the kingdom.
The tempest burst with equal violence at the Château de Blois, where Francis I. was at the time. A placard had been posted (many suspected, by the hand of an enemy) on the very door of the king’s apartment. The prince saw therein an insult, not only against his authority, but against his person, and the Cardinal de Tournon imbedded this notion so deep in his heart, that he deliberated, says an historian, upon destroying all, had it been in his power.
Orders were immediately issued to seize the Sacramentarians, dead or alive. The criminal-lieutenant, Jean-Morin, obtained the assistance of a certain sheath or scabbard-maker, who had been a summoner for the secret meetings, and whose life had been promised him on condition that he should lead the serjeants to the houses of the heretics. Some, warned in time, took flight; the others, men and women, those who had condemned the placards, as well as those who had approved them, were thrust alike pell-mell into the prisons.
It is reported that the civil-lieutenant, having entered the house of one of them, Barthélemy Milon, a cripple, wholly helpless of body, said to him: “Come, get thee up.” “Alas, sir,” replied the paralytic, “it must be a greater master than you to raise me up.” The serjeants carried him off, and the courage of his companions in captivity grew firm through his exhortations.
Their trial was soon over. But for the Sorbonne and the clergy, the blood of the heretics was not enough. Their object was to strike the imagination of the people by a generalissimo procession, and, by persuading the king to be present, to bind him decisively to the system of persecution. This fête marks an important date in our recital; for it was from this moment that the Parisian populace took part in the contest against the heretics; and, once mounted on the stage, they never quitted it until the end of the League. In the chain of events, this procession, intermingled with executions, was the first of the bloody days of the sixteenth century; the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Barricades, the murder of Henry III., and the assassination of Henry IV., could but follow.
A chronicler of the time, Simon Fontaine, a doctor of the Sorbonne, has left us a long description of this event. It took place on the 29th of January, 1535. An innumerable concourse had come from all the surrounding country. “There was not the smallest piece of wood or stone jutting from the walls which was not occupied, provided there was room on it for anybody. The house-tops were covered with men, great and small, and one might have supposed the streets to have been paved with heads.”
Never had so many relics been paraded through the streets of Paris. The reliquary of the Sainte-Chapelle was then first brought out. Priests bore the head of St. Louis, a piece of the holy cross, the true crown of thorns, a real nail, and also the spear-head which had pierced the side of our Lord. The shrine of St. Geneviéve, the patron saint of Paris, was carried by the corporation or company of butchers, who had fitted themselves for the holy office by a fast of several days, and each one was bent upon touching the precious relic with the tip of his finger, or with his handkerchief, or cap.
Cardinals, archbishops, and bishops, coped and mitred, figured in their places. Then came the king, bareheaded, holding a burning torch of wax in his hand; after him walked all the princes, knights, counsellors of the Parliaments, companies of the trades, and fraternities. In front of their houses stood the burgesses with lighted tapers, who sank on their knees as the holy sacrament went by.
After mass, the king dined at the palace of the bishop, with his sons, the queen, and the princes of the blood royal. At the conclusion of the repast, he called together the clergy, ambassadors, lords, presidents of the courts of justice, all the notables; and having seated himself on a throne, he protested that he would not pardon, even in his children, the crime of heresy; and that if he knew that one of the members of his body were infected with it, he would cut it off with his own hands.
The same day, six Lutherans were burned. The most courageous had had their tongues cut out beforehand, lest a word of faith or a prayer, issuing from the flames, might move the conscience of the executioners. They were suspended on a moveable gibbet, which, rising and falling by turns, plunged them into the fire or drew them out, until they were entirely consumed. This was the punishment of the estrapade. The ferocious emperor of Rome, who wished that his victims might feel themselves die, had not invented that cruelty, and the Inquisition of Spain accorded to the Saracens and the Jews the favour of being more quickly burned.
On his return to the Louvre, Francis saw these executions. The hangmen waited for his passing, that he might witness the show.
An ordinance was soon published, decreeing the extermination of heretics, with pain of death against those who should conceal them, and a reward of a fourth of the goods of the victims to informers.
Francis I. had soon occasion to repent of having yielded to this excess of frenzy. The Protestants of Germany were indignant, and threatened to ally themselves against him, with the House of Austria. He sent them explanations through his ambassador, Guillaume de Langey, to say that those whom he had put to death were rebels, Sacramentarians, and not Lutherans. He even resumed, in order to effect a reconciliation with the League of Smalcald, the overtures which had been made to Melancthon, to attract him to Paris; and he published a milder edict, directing the release of persons suspected of heresy, on condition that they should abjure within six months. This edict of Coucy, drawn for diplomatic reasons, was never carried into execution.
Marguérite de Valois retired to Béarn, where her little court became the asylum of the celebrated men who escaped from persecution. Many refugee families brought thither their industry and their fortunes. Everything assumed a new face. The laws were corrected, the arts cultivated, agriculture was improved, schools were established, and the people were prepared to receive the teaching of the Reformation.
The queen of Navarre died in 1549, wept for by the Béarnese, who loved to repeat her generous saying: “Kings and princes are not the lords and masters of their inferiors, but only ministers whom God has set up to serve and to keep them.”
Marguérite de Valois was the mother of Jeanne d’Albret, and grandmother of Henry IV.