CHAPTER X.
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION PREVAILS.—CALVIN AND FAREL REFUSE TO GIVE THE LORD’S SUPPER.—THE PULPIT IS CLOSED TO THEM.
(April 15 to 20, 1538.)
RESISTANCE OF CALVIN.
The very circumstances which inspired the confidence of Berne were exactly those which roused the resistance of Calvin. Those powerful and magnificent lords could not believe that so dignified an intervention would fail to secure submission; and Calvin could not consent that the interests of the Church of Christ should be regulated by the magistrate, like those of the highways and the soldiery. Besides, in the present case, the question was about foreign magistrates. To their intervention the citizen and the Christian could not but be equally opposed. Calvin wished to maintain the principle of religious liberty, and he requested that time should be allowed him to come to an understanding with the other Churches. However, if the letter to the ministers was unsuccessful, that sent to the council had a success so abundant that it not only surpassed the hopes of the Bernese, but crossed their desires and threw an obstacle in the way of their projects. The syndics who had been named in a spirit hostile to the reformers, and all the citizens who had placed them in office, were delighted to see variance between Berne and Calvin and Farel. For them it was a piece of real good fortune, although for the ministers it was a grievous event. The two states, Berne and Geneva, acting in unison, would soon get the better of two poor ministers. Further, the council was at this time in a bad humor. The third preacher, the aged and energetic Courault, who had remained at Geneva, had blamed the syndics in one of his sermons, and it was resolved to reprimand him. It is safe to rely, in this matter, on what the Registers state. It is not right to receive, as some have done, the burlesque and lying imputations of the notorious slanderer Bolsec, who, ‘after the example of Herostratos, chose to pass down to posterity branded with infamy.’[597] The council forbade Courault to preach. This was the state of things when the letters from Berne arrived. The council immediately gave orders that Calvin and Farel should appear before them on Friday, April 19. It was the Holy week, and that day was the day of the Passion. This consideration caused no hesitation on the part of the enemies of the Reformation. As the holy supper was to be celebrated two days later on Easter Sunday, they were anxious to hurry forward the business. The ministers then found themselves between the anvil and the hammer; they must submit or fall, and do which they would, they would be weakened and lowered. The secretary having read the letter from Berne, the first syndic declared to the reformers that the council was determined to accede to the demand of that city, and to conform to the usages there established with respect to ceremonies. Then he asked them if they would themselves observe them, and requested them to answer Yes or No. Calvin and Farel demanded the time necessary, not merely, as has been asserted, for reflection on the subject, but also and especially, that the question might be settled by the competent authorities, the Swiss synod, which in ten days (April 29) was to be held at Zurich. Meanwhile they begged that no innovation should be made until the next supper. In making this request Calvin pledged himself to accept whatever should be decreed by that legitimate authority. This was on his part a large concession. To his Scriptural and just judgment it did not appear consistent, after separating from Roman Catholicism, still to retain any part of the system, even were it only a trifle, such as unleavened bread, baptisteries, and festivals. To one of the latter, especially, he felt great objection. He knew that small concessions lead on to large ones, and he feared that Rome would act according to the proverb, and if you gave an inch would take an ell. It is needless to repeat how decided and firm Calvin was, and yet, out of love for peace and for unity, he conceded to his adversaries what he might justly have refused them. All he asked was that they would wait for ten days the decision of the synodal authority. This, assuredly, was not saying No in an absolute manner.[598] It was quite the reverse; and the adversaries of Calvin ought rather to have wondered at his compliance than have blamed him for his inflexible obstinacy. His request was fair, and it ought to have been granted. But they would not listen to it. It was ordered that the supper should be celebrated conformably to the Bernese usage; and the council appointed the magistrates who were to take care that it was thus celebrated in the churches of St. Peter, St. Gervais, and Rive. It may be asked how it was that men who were by no means remarkable for their attachment to traditional observances should be so obstinate in sacrificing the ritual of Geneva to the ritual of Berne. Impartial judges have said, ‘The Council had taken this resolution in order to win over the Bernese and to implicate them in the opposition to the reformers.’[599] We confess that this explanation appears to us very probable.
DISTURBANCES AT GENEVA.
This decision was despotic, and in that very quality was in accordance with the order which the councils intended to establish at Geneva, that of Césaropapia, in which the prince and the magistrate, taking the place of the pope, settle everything in the Church. The inflexibility of the council on the one side and the firmness of the reformers on the other came into collision, and the result was a shock to the people which troubled their everyday life and could not, but lead to a conflict. Those who formed the lowest section of the opposition, excited and agitated, began to cry out against the resistance of the ministers, and they thought that if the latter would not obey with a good grace, they must be compelled to yield by terror and by force. If the people were to express their will with energy, if they took up arms, and filled the streets and massed themselves like roaring waves in front of the houses of Farel, Calvin, and Courault, those men, no matter what their strength might be, would have no choice but to give way before that impetuous torrent. ‘Thereupon,’ says the chronicler Rozet, ‘great excesses and blasphemies were committed. Dissolute men went about the town by night in dozens, armed with arquebuses, which they discharged in front of the ministers’ houses. They shouted, The Word of God! and after that, The word of Andrew! They threatened to throw them into the Rhone if they did not come to some agreement with the magistrates respecting the ceremonies in question; and these proceedings, all open and notorious, went unpunished.’[600] It is not easy to ascertain what the cry, The word of Andrew, meant.[601] The cry, To the Rhone! was invariably heard at Geneva when popular risings took place. Froment was greeted with it when he began to preach the Gospel there; and some women would have thrown him over the bridge (du pont en bas) if a party of men had not rescued him. They did not, indeed, fling every one into the Rhone whom they threatened; but these cries could not but seem to Farel and Calvin a mournful return for their great and severe labors.
INDIGNATION OF COURAULT.
These disorderly deeds had lamentable consequences. Neither Farel nor Calvin complained of them. They had now at heart interests more important than their own, more precious even than their lives. They did not return evil for evil. But the former preacher to the Queen of Navarre, the blind and aged Courault, was not so forbearing. He likewise had heard these insults. A man of integrity and devoted to duty, he had at the same time a heart easily wounded, and he knew how to speak hard words. The night between Friday and Saturday, during which these cries had resounded in the city, was not a pleasant or a peaceful one for him. He was more irritated, perhaps, on account of the indignities which were heaped upon Calvin and Farel than for what concerned himself. Chagrin, disquietude, and anger kept him sleepless. His blood was heated, his heart was incensed, his imagination inflamed.
‘Je me tourne et m’agite et ne peux nulle part
Trouver que l’insomnie, amère, impatiente,
Qu’un malaise inquiet et qu’une fièvre ardente.’[602]
The state of poor old Courault seems to be described in these lines. To him these disorders were intolerable, and he said that if men should hold their peace the very stones would cry aloud. He would cry out, and cry out in the pulpit. True, that was forbidden him; but no matter, in spite of the prohibition of men he would preach. He rose very early and went to St. Peter’s church to perform the service of six o’clock A.M., with no other preparation, alas! than the distress and bitterness which had preyed on his mind through the night. The character of his preaching was not such as was wanted for a people so sensitive as the Genevese. His eloquence somewhat resembled that of the monks to whose order he had belonged, which consisted, for the most part, in making a noise and in shouting.[603] His mind was not cultivated, but he had a glowing imagination, which animated his discourse and enabled him to hit hard blows. Although he was of a more serious turn, he shared, to some extent, the faults of the most illustrious orators of the preceding period, Barletta, Maillard, and Menot; and he sometimes attacked, as they did, the vices of his hearers by satire occasionally delicate and occasionally coarse, but always prompted by a good and grave intention. He would now discharge his conscience. Let them put him in prison, banish him, or beat him soundly; his soul, wearied with grief, must burst its bonds. He uttered, doubtless, some excellent things, some true and pious words; but, agitated as he was, he allowed himself to indulge in that intemperate mode of speech which was then so common. With his spirit still disturbed by those noisy and tumultuous crowds collected under the windows of the reformers, from the midst of which came redoubled shouts, jesting songs, insults, accusations, and menaces, he likened them to the ‘kingdom of the frogs,’ that from the bosom of the marshes croak and make a loud noise. Then recalling a vulgar phrase, the old Frenchman, hardly escaped from the rough life of persecution, inquired of the Genevese what they complained of,—they who were ‘like rats in straw,’ that is to say, were folk greatly at their ease, possessing everything they could wish and in want of nothing.[604] In another passage, rising to a higher strain, and recalling the image of Nebuchadnezzar, with its head of gold and its feet part of iron and part of clay, fragile and broken by a little stone, he predicted to the syndics and councils that as intrigue had placed them in office they would not long retain their power. ‘You, gentlemen of the government,’ said he, ‘you have feet of wax.’ These feet, in his opinion, would soon melt in the sunshine of their victory and prosperity. This comparison, imitative of Biblical style, was not unbefitting to a preacher, and the prophecy which it contained did not fail of accomplishment. At the news of this minister preaching in defiance of the prohibition, and at the report of his sayings, which were most likely misrepresented, the government felt that they were insulted, and determined to act rigorously. Officers of state went to the old man’s house, arrested and took him to prison. It was the eve of Easter Day. It was customary to make presents at that period; and this was the present which was bestowed on the aged, noble, but free-spoken minister and confessor of Christ, who had already experienced treatment too rough at the hands of the adherents of the pope in the kingdom of France.[605]
PROTEST AGAINST HIS IMPRISONMENT.
The news of the imprisonment of Courault rapidly spread through Geneva, and deeply affected the friends of the Reformation. A pastor in prison! Yes, and justly, if he were guilty of any common offence. But he had done what he believed to be his duty. From the Christian pulpit he had rebuked scandalous excesses, and on that account he was committed to prison, while those who were really guilty of them were let alone and went unpunished.[606] It appears from the protocol of the 19th, that two men, forming part of the band which had gone about singing by night and had made disturbances at Rive, had been themselves placed in confinement. But the place and the date of that affair prove that it was on a quite different charge. The incarceration of Courault filled Calvin and Farel with sorrow, for they esteemed their old and venerable colleague, and they knew how much he had already suffered for the truth’s sake. Some of the councillors and citizens friendly to the Reformation resolved to protest against the imprisonment of their pastor. Claude Savoye, Michel Sept, Lambert, Chautemps, Domaine d’Arlod, Claude and Louis Bernard, Deserts, Claude Pertemps, and many others joined Calvin and Farel, and they all went together in a long procession to the Hôtel de Ville. They entered the hall of the council, and found there two out of the four syndics, and these the men who were most against them, Richardet and de Chapeaurouge.
Farel spoke first. He complained that they had acted ‘ill, wickedly, and unjustly in putting Courault in prison,’ and demanded that the Council of the Two Hundred should be assembled. The laymen thought it strange that their adversaries should not be satisfied with announcing, like Richardet, that they would not go to the preaching, but should seem to intend also to deprive their fellow-citizens of it by committing the preachers to prison. The notion that a syndic should presume to hinder him from hearing the Word of God especially irritated Michel Sept. ‘They shall preach!’ he said, vehemently. Farel, remembering all that he had done and borne through long years for this city of Geneva, to the emancipation of which he had probably contributed more than any other man by his teaching, his courage, his prayers, and his deeds, said to the magistrates, ‘Without me you would not be what you are.’
The syndics replied that, as the pulpit had been interdicted to Courault, and he had nevertheless preached that very morning, and had announced that he should continue to do so, they would not set him at liberty. The magistrates wished to see if this incident would furnish them with an opportunity of attaining the end which they had set before them. ‘Will you,’ they said to Farel and Calvin, ‘submit to the letters and ordinances of the lords of Berne? In that case we might restore to you your colleague.’ This bargain, which consisted in the release to them of an innocent prisoner if they on their part would do what they held to be wrong, appeared to the ministers a piece of shameful trafficking. ‘We will do, in such matters, what God commands,’ they replied. However, they were not willing to abandon their colleague. They offered to give bail, that he might under that guarantee be set at liberty. This proposition was a usual one in such cases, but the magistrates declined to accept it, and the reason which they gave for their refusal aggravated the harshness of the act. ‘Courault,’ they said, ‘is not a citizen of Geneva, and he is imprisoned for contempt of justice.’ The members of the council were thoroughly bent on getting rid of Courault, who was less prudent than his colleagues. It appears from authentic documents, that they even offered Calvin to wait, as to the question of ritual, for the decision of the synod of Zurich, if he would consent that Courault should be deprived of his office of preacher. This Calvin refused.[607] The petitioners withdrew, much pained by the severity of the council towards their friend, and some of the laymen, especially Lambert, complained aloud as they quitted the Hôtel de Ville. They spoke of ‘false witnesses who had been examined; of traitors in the general council; and it is well known,’ they said, ‘who they are.’[608]
FAILURE OF THE INTERVENTION.
The council met after the departure of the reformers and their friends, and again decided that the Lord’s supper should be celebrated the next day, Easter Sunday, according to the rites established at Berne, and not according to those of Geneva; and it decreed that, if the ministers still refused to celebrate it, they should be forbidden to preach. One cannot but be astonished at this decision, and at the mean spirit which it displays on the part of the council. Simple and evangelical usages had been established in Geneva: the citizens had been called upon to take an oath in St. Peter’s church to a confession of faith which in its spirit is entirely in agreement with those practices; and now, in a matter which but little concerns it, in order to gratify the lords of Berne, whom it could easily resist when it chose to do so, the council determined to compel the ministers to observe a ceremony essentially Judaic,[609] even at the risk of seeing worship suspended and the Church overthrown. This looks very much like a pretext, good or bad, which they laid hold of for the purpose of getting rid of the reformers. The chief-usher went in the afternoon to the pastors to communicate the decree to them. He did not find Farel, but Calvin, learning from the officer that the civil magistrate, without waiting for the resolution of the synod of Zurich, was himself deciding this ecclesiastical question, just as if it were an affair of military orders to give to an officer, refused to accept the order. Thereupon the chief-usher, in the name of the council, prohibited his preaching.[610]
What to do? This was the question which Calvin put to himself. He longed for unity and peace in Geneva. He appealed afterwards to the Genevese themselves. ‘We take God to witness,’ said he, ‘and your own consciences, in the light of his countenance, that while we have been among you all our exertions have been directed towards preserving you in happy union and pleasing concord. But those who had a mind to form a party by themselves have separated from us, and have introduced division in your Church and in your city.’[611] Lambert’s exclamation, when he spoke aloud of traitors and false witnesses, is sufficient to show us what was the state of Geneva at that time. Concord was nothing more than a lovely dream. The most violent passions were called into play. One would have said that God was giving up the inhabitants of the city to the unruly motions of their own hearts; and that is the most terrible chastisement which he ever employs in the punishment of men. Not, indeed, that these motions showed themselves violent alike in all. The lower classes were agitated, like their lake when the north wind, blowing impetuously, lifts up the waves and dashes them furiously on the rocks, the walls, and the banks. But among other classes appearances were better kept up. Nevertheless, if any reason were still left, it was too often only passion that made use of it for its own ends.
CONFUSION.
The confusion that prevailed in Geneva at this period is attested by contemporaries. ‘Popery had indeed been forsworn,’ says Theodore Beza,[612] ‘but many had not cast away with it those numerous and disgraceful disorders which had for a long time flourished in the city, given up as it was for so many years to canons and impure priests. Some of the families which stood in the highest rank still kept alive those old enmities which grew up at the period of the wars with Savoy.’[613] ‘The mischief had gone to such a length that the city, owing to the factious temper of some of the citizens, was divided into various parties.’[614] ‘Nothing was to be heard,’ says Michel Rozet, ‘but informations (dénonces) and quarrels between the former and the present lords (the former and the new councils), some being the ringleaders, others following in their steps; the whole mingled with reproaches about the booty taken in the war, or the spoils carried off from the churches.’[615]
‘There was nothing but confusion.’[616]
Neither the mild admonitions which were at first tried, nor the more rigorous reprimands to which recourse was afterwards had, produced any effect on the disturbers of the peace, and they failed to put an end to their disorderly proceedings.[617]
‘I have lived here,’ says Calvin himself, when speaking of this period, ‘engaged in strange contests. I have been saluted in mockery, of an evening, before my own door, with fifty or sixty shots of arquebuses. You may imagine how that must astound a poor scholar, timid as I am, and as I confess I always was.’[618]
Such was the melancholy condition of Geneva according to men who, on questions of fact and of public fact, are the most respectable authorities that history can produce. She has but few witnesses endowed with the moral courage of Michel Rozet, Theodore Beza, and Calvin.[619]
PERPLEXITY OF THE REFORMERS.
The reformers were in great perplexity. The synod of Lausanne, at which the Bernese had opposed the hearing of the representatives of the Genevese Church, could not bind the latter. Their resistance to the introduction of new usages, which was ordered by the council without awaiting the decision of the synod of Zurich, was legitimate. If matters of that kind are left to the decision of the civil power, the natural order of things is inverted, the autonomy of the Church is disowned; and who knows whether, in a turbulent democracy, religion may not fall into the hands of an excited people who will, according to the saying of a celebrated but scoffing writer, take it up ‘to play at ball with it, and make it bound upwards as readily with the foot as with the fist.’[620] However, Calvin could not help asking himself whether the actual question, the acceptance of unleavened bread which the Jews used to eat at the time of the Passover, was of a sufficiently weighty kind to put an end to his ministry at Geneva. He did not think it was. ‘If we have at heart,’ he said, ‘union and peace, let us seek after a unity of minds in doctrine, rather than insist in a too scrupulous manner on a conformity of the most exact kind to this or that ceremony. There are some points on which the Lord leaves us freedom, in order that our edification may be the greater. Not to be careful about this edification, and to seek instead of it a slavish conformity, is unworthy of a Christian.’[621] Such were Calvin’s views on the question about leavened or unleavened bread.
But the question was about a quite different matter. The reformer had before him a town in agitation and division, its parties, quarrels, hatreds, scoffings, cries, disorders, and scandals. Is this the temple in which the festival of peace is to be celebrated? ‘No,’ said he, ‘the aspect of the Church is not at present such as the legitimate administration of our office requires.[622] Whatever people may say, we do not believe that our ministry ought to be confined within such narrow limits that when once we have delivered our sermon we have nothing more to do except to rest as if we had accomplished our task. It is more than that; it is that we must with greater vigilance take care of those whose blood will be demanded at our hands if they should perish through our negligence. This solicitude fills us with distress of mind at all times, but when we have to distribute the Lord’s supper, then it fiercely consumes and cruelly torments us.[623] While the faith of many of those who wish to take part in it is in our opinion doubtful and even open to suspicion, we see them all rushing headlong and pell-mell to the sacred table. And one would say that they are eating greedily the wrath of God rather than partaking of the sacrament of life.’[624] Calvin, as these words show, had still before his eyes that riotous communion of January, previous to which the council had decreed ‘that the supper should not be refused to anyone.’ He recollected the disposition, the look, the deportment, with which many had taken part in it; he still felt the heaviness of heart which he had experienced when giving the bread of life to such men. Now all had grown worse. The evil which had then shown itself, bursting the few chains which kept it down, now broke forth with violence. The population was excited, angry, rebellious. It was no longer merely the profligacy of some individuals; there was general perplexity, disturbance, and confusion. The agitation was not confined to the coarser minds; some of the most cultivated were going beyond all bounds. The saying of a celebrated writer with respect to another city might be applied to Geneva, ‘The devil is let loose on this town: within the memory of man so frightful a time has not been seen.’
VIOLENCE OF PARTIES.
Was this the moment for celebrating the feast of peace? In the judgment of every sensible man it would have been an absurdity. If a feast is to be held on board ship, is it to be just when the whirlwind of the tempest strikes the vessel, when the sea-waves lift themselves up, when those on board shake and totter like a drunken man, while they go up to the heavens and down to the abysses? Is that the time for the dance to begin, and for the passengers gracefully to execute measured paces, to the sound of musical instruments? Or would anyone choose for attendance at a sweet and harmonious concert the moment when the hall is on fire? And yet it was proposed, in the midst of burning lawless passions, to have by force, by the decree of the magistrate, a display of holy things which would be nothing but a profanation.
It cannot even be said, as is usually said, that the subject of excommunication was in question here. Not to give the supper at present did not mean that it should not be given afterwards. Calvin had given it. But it was not the time for it. Non erat hic locus. The reformer acted with the wisdom of a physician who will not give leave to impatient sick folk to take a mountain journey; he will do so afterwards, when they have regained their strength, but not now. Perhaps there may be individuals among them who will never scale the rocks because they will never have the power to do so. But that has nothing to do with those who are whole. For the physician there will be no more lovely day than that on which, at the head of his party, he shall be able to breathe with his friends the keen and healthful air of the heights, which at an earlier period would have killed them. That joy, we say again, Calvin had once tasted.
Calvin and Farel, having considered everything, took such a resolution as circumstances demanded; they would not give the supper on the following day, which was Easter Day. Having adopted this resolution, they communicated it to the authorities. ‘Farel and Calvin,’ says Rozet, ‘informed the council that they could not administer the supper in the midst of these divisions, gangs, and blasphemies, and with profligacies multiplying around them.’[625] Such was their motive clearly expressed. But they would do more than that. They had been prohibited from preaching. What! on this Easter Day should the doors of the churches be closed and the pulpit be dumb! Moreover, since they had refused to celebrate the supper, they owed to those whom God had confided to their ministry to give them their reasons. That was not for their harm but for their good, and they were bound to do it. Nevertheless, to occupy the pulpit on that day in defiance of the prohibition of the government, which was supported by the majority of the people, would be a grave affair for these two men, both feeble in body, the one in consequence of his labors, and the other by constitution. ‘But,’ said Calvin one day, recalling a saying of David, ‘though a camp, an army, that is to say, everything which is terrible and appalling in the world, should rise up against us, though all men should conspire to destroy us, we have no fear of all their might, for the power of God is far greater. We shall not be entirely free from fear; if we were, it would rather be from stupidity than from courage. But we shall hold before us the shield of faith, lest our hearts should faint or fail through the terrors which beset us.’[626] A victory which the court of Turin, with the aid of Spain and of the pope, failed to gain over the senate and people of Geneva, these two feeble men attempt and win. Here was one of the most beautiful triumphs of which the cause of religious liberty engaged in a conflict with the despotism of the state can boast. It was more than that. It was Christian heroism which prefers the fulfilment of the will of God, with exile, to a comfortable abode in one of the fairest countries in the world, with a conscience sacrificed and a slavish submission to Cæsar in things pertaining to God. It was in this character that the two principal witnesses to Calvin’s life regarded it. ‘Thenceforth Calvin,’ says one of them, ‘as he was of a spirit essentially heroic, stoutly and steadily resisted the seditious, together with the aforesaid Farel.’[627]—‘Farel and Calvin,’ says the other, ‘each endowed with a noble and heroic spirit, openly declared that they could not celebrate in a religious manner the Lord’s supper, among citizens who were so miserably at variance with each other, and so opposed to all discipline in the church.’[628] The decay of Christian principle is the only possible explanation of the fact that some should have ventured a judgment on them, contrary to that which was pronounced by contemporaries.