VII.
Towards the end of the reign of Francis I., and under that of his son Henry II., the Reformation made such rapid progress, that it becomes impossible to follow it in all its details. Men of letters, of the law, of the sword, of the Church itself, hastened to its banner. Several great provinces,—Languedoc, Dauphiny, the Lyonnese, Guienne, Saintonge, Poitou, the Orleanese, Normandy, Picardy, Flanders; the most considerable towns of the kingdom,—Bourges, Orleans, Rouen, Lyons, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Montpellier, La Rochelle, were peopled with Reformers. It is calculated that they comprised in a few years nearly a sixth of the population, of whom they were the élite. They might have repeated the saying of Tertullian: “We date only from yesterday, and are, yet, everywhere.”
If the persecution kept some aloof, it brought the accession of a greater number, through that instinct, which impels the human conscience to rise against injustice, and incline to the side of the victim. Moreover, the faith, the constancy, and the serenity of the martyrs soared above the ferocity of the executioner.
The impulse once given to the movement, everything was shaken. There was in the understanding, in the heart, and, so to say, in the air one breathed, an immense want of religious reforms. People began to reflect that religion is not to be transmitted, like a name or an estate which one inherits, but that, before accepting it, one is bound to examine it by and for oneself. People also began to consider more minutely the enormous abuses of the Romish church, and crowds separated themselves from that degenerated communion.
The ecclesiastical benefices were distributed, particularly after the Concordat, which had abolished the electoral forms, among court favourites, soldiers, intriguers, and even children; all incapable of fulfilling the duties of their offices. There were supernumerary prelates, who were derisively called flying, or portative bishops. The cardinals set the example of disorder. The prelates lived a scandalous life at Paris. The members of the lower clergy were, in general, immoral and greedy, the monks ignorant and shameless. This conduct was compared with that of the preachers of the Reformation, men of simple habits, for the most part poor and grave; and the contrast was so striking, that honest hearts could not resist it. Without some great lords on one side, and the lowest of the people on the other, the church of Rome was lost in France.
The provincial nobility, which had not been depraved in the atmosphere of the royal household, were all inclined to the new ideas. They entertained against the privileges of the priests, and against their territorial encroachments, an old, though suppressed hostility, that only waited an occasion to burst forth. They had, beside, considerable leisure in their castles, since the severe interdiction of wars of lord against lord; and reading at eve, around the feudal hearth, the Holy Scriptures, they were drawn, almost without being aware of it, to the teachings of Luther and Calvin.
The people of the third estate, who had received a lettered education,—advocates, legists, professors, notable burghers,—were already won beforehand, by their very studies, to these opinions. “Above all,” says with great simplicity an historian devoted to Catholicism, “painters, watchmakers, sculptors, goldsmiths, booksellers, printers, and others, who, from their callings, have some nobility of mind, were among the first easily surprised.”[19]
Traders, who voyaged in foreign countries, brought back impressions favourable to the Reformation. They recognised that this religion, by correcting the manners of the people, developed at the same moment their commerce, and contributed to the advance of their industry.
Many secular and regular ecclesiastics in the provinces were also shaken. Having taken orders without having learned any other thing than the barbarous theology of the schools, they had taught their dogmas in good faith. But placed face to face with the new dogma, they saw the stamp of truth upon it. They then betook themselves to some business for a livelihood, and, working at their handicraft, preached in secret the doctrines of the Reformation. They were encouraged by the thought that Rome would sooner or later come to an understanding with the Reformers in a general council. Hence those contradictions among some of them, which have not been sufficiently comprehended by our older historians.
The hawkers of Bibles and religious tracts aided powerfully in these conquests of the new faith. They were called bale-bearers, basket or library-carriers. They belonged to different classes of society: many were students in theology, or even ministers of the Gospel.
The printing-presses of Geneva, Lausanne, Neufchâtel, specially established to inundate France with religious writings, furnished them with books. And then, staff in hand, basket on back, through heat and cold, by lonely ways, through mountain-ravines and dreary morasses, they went from door to door, often ill received, always at the hazard of their lives, and knowing not in the morning where to lay their head at night. It was chiefly through them that the Bible penetrated into the manor of the noble, and beneath the hut of the villager.
Exposed, like the old Vaudois of Piedmont, to cruel pursuit, the new pedlars imitated their ingenuity, by placing at the top of their packs pieces of stuff or other unsuspicious objects, while they concealed beneath, the prohibited wares. “To gain easier access in the towns, in the country, in the houses of the nobility,” says again Florimond de Rémond, “some of them went as hawkers of little trinkets for the ladies, hiding in the depth of their bales the little books, which they presented to girls; but this was done furtively, as if they were things of great rarity, to make them better relished.”[20] From the many victims they furnished to the scaffold and the stake, we must suppose these humble packmen to have been very numerous. We cannot dwell upon this subject; but history owes it to their heroic devotedness, that we should recount the martyrdom of one among them at least.
A Dauphinese, named Pierre Chapot, after a short sojourn at Geneva, found employment as a compositor at Paris, and in his hours of leisure sold religious books. A spy of the Sorbonne surprised him in 1546, and Chapot was cited before the Chambre ardente of the Parliament. His mild air, modest behaviour, his appeals to the justice of the counsellors, the Bible that he invoked with such assurance, softened the judges, and he obtained permission to enter upon a disputation with three doctors of theology. These last acceded with reluctance, saying that to discuss with heretics was a thing of evil consequence.
Chapot relied upon scriptural texts, and the others answered him with councils and traditions. Then, turning to the counsellors, the prisoner begged them not to allow a reference to anything but the declarations of the Gospel. Cut to the quick, the Sorbonnists said to the judges: “Why do you permit yourselves to be dictated to by a wicked and wily heretic? Why have you brought us hither to discuss articles already censured and condemned by the theological faculty? We will carry our complaint before those whom it concerns.” And they all departed deeply angered.
After they had left, the hawker said, with a calm voice: “You see, gentlemen, that these people proffer no other reasons than shouts and menaces; I want nothing more than to persuade you of the justice of my cause.” And falling upon his knees, with clasped hands, he implored God to inspire all the company with a right judgment, for the honour and glory of His name. Some of the judges, touched with compassion, would have acquitted him. But the contrary opinion prevailed, and the only favour he obtained, was not to have his tongue cut out before being burned alive.
He was taken to the Place Maubert, supported in a cart by two men, for the torture had broken his limbs. From the height of this new pulpit, he cried: “Christian people, although you see me here carried to die like a malefactor, and although I feel guilty of all my sins, I pray each of you to understand, that I am now about to depart from life like a true Christian, and not for any heresy, or because I am without God. I believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ, who, by His death, has delivered us from everlasting death. I believe that he was conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary....”
He was interrupted by the doctor Maillard, one of those with whom he had disputed before the Parliament: “Master Pierre,” he said to him, “it is here that you ought to implore pardon of the Virgin Mary, whom you have so grievously offended.” “Sir, I pray you,” replied the sufferer, “let me speak; I will say nothing that is unfitting a good Christian. As for the Virgin Mary, I have offended her in nothing, nor would I wish to have done it.” “Then say but one Ave Maria.” “No, I will not say it.” And he repeated without ceasing: “Jesus, son of David, have mercy upon me.” At this moment the doctor ordered the executioner to tighten the cord, and the martyr gave up his soul to God.
After the execution, the theologians of the Sorbonne complained loudly to the Chambre ardente, and declared that if heretics were permitted to speak, everything would be lost. The Parliament therefore resolved that all the condemned should have, without exception, their tongues cut out.
The disciples of the new religion had among them signs of recognition; and when they were too numerous to form one assembly, they divided themselves into small bands. The most resolute, or the best informed, undertook to explain the Bible. They were sometimes poor artisans, who made their exhortations by turn. The meetings took place in the evening, or at night, or in the morning, in order to escape the eye of the enemy. Anything served for these assemblies: a barn, a cellar, a garret, the bosom of a wood, an opening of a rock in the mountain-side.
The object of assembling was in some places concealed by means, which reveal at the same time the simplicity and the rigour of the period. “For the purpose of these meetings,” says Florimond de Rémond, speaking of those of Paris, “they chose some house with secret doors, so as to be able on necessity to fly, and also to enter by different ways. And he who was to preach, brought with him dice and cards, that he might throw them upon the carpet instead of the Bible, and conceal their deed by gaming.... The minister of Mantes was better advised, when secretly preaching in Paris, at the Croix-Verte, near the Louvre, he had counters and tale-books put upon the table, in order to deceive those who might suddenly come upon them, if they did not belong to his flock.”[21]
When a pastor visited, in passing, these meetings, the rejoicing was very great. He was listened to for hours; the symbols of the Holy Supper were received from his hands; the persecutions they had mutually suffered told of those which yet awaited them; and in separating, the adieus spoken were for the scaffold and for heaven.
So long as a regular form of church government was not established, and in the absence of a minister of the Gospel, the administration of the sacrament was abstained from. Calvin and the pastors of the Reformation would not authorize each little assembly to receive the communion at the hands of a man without a recognised call. “We by no means approve that you should begin in this way, or even that you should be hasty to have the Holy Supper, until you have an established order among you,” wrote Calvin, in 1553, to the faithful dispersed in Saintonge.
But if the sacraments were wanting at the beginning, they preserved a great rigidity of manners and discipline. Sinners were reproved, the erring admonished, and the authors of scandals excluded from the communion. “They declared themselves,” says the historian, whom I am never weary of citing, because he seems to have well understood the disciples of the Reformation,—“they declared themselves enemies of luxury, of public debauches, and of the frivolities of the world, too much in vogue among the Catholics. In their feasts and assemblies, instead of dancing and hautboys, they had readings from the Bibles, that were placed upon the table, and spiritual songs, especially the Psalms put into verse. The women, by their decent carriage and modest dress, appeared in public like mourning Eves or repentant Magdalens, as says Tertullian of those of his time. The men, all subdued, seemed stricken with the Holy Ghost.”[22]
The popular opinion was not ill-founded, and Catherine de Medicis affirmed it one day in her trifling way: “I shall turn to the new religion, that I may pass for a pious prude.”
This was the most flourishing and purest period of the French Reformation. There were, no doubt, among the faithful, some unquiet, restless minds, who only joined it out of an empty passion for novelty; there were among them also many differences, which compromised the general cause, and many lukewarm, that were called temporisers, middle-course men, or Nicodemites. But the rivalries of the great houses of the kingdom, and political quarrels, had not yet mixed themselves up with religion. The Reformers suffered, and took no vengeance; they received death without a desire to retaliate, and displayed more severity against themselves than their enemies.