In the reign of Francis I., from 1524 to 1547, eighty-one death-sentences for heresy were executed. At Paris only, from the 10th of November to the 2d of May, a space of some six months, one hundred and two sentences to death by fire for heresy were pronounced; twenty-seven were executed; two did not take place, because those who ought to have undergone them denounced other Reformers to save themselves; and seventy-three succeeded in escaping by flight. The Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris (pp. 444- 450) does not mention sentences to lesser penalties. In a provincial town, whose history one of its most distinguished inhabitants, M. Boutiot, has lately written from authentic documents and local traditions, at Troyes in fact, in 1542 and 1546, two burgesses, one a clerk and the other a publisher, were sentenced to the stake and executed for the crime of heresy: “on an appeal being made by the publisher, Mace Moreau, the Parliament of Paris confirmed the sentence pronounced by the bailiff’s court,” and he underwent his punishment on the Place St. Pierre with the greatest courage. The decree of the Parliament contains the most rigorous enactments against books in the French language treating of religious matters; and it enjoins upon all citizens the duty of denouncing those who, publicly or not, make profession of the new doctrine. “The Lutheran propaganda,” say the documents, “is in great force throughout the diocese; it exercises influence not only on the class of artisans, but also amongst the burgesses. Doubt has made its way into many honest souls. The Reformation has reached so far even where the schism is not complete. Catholic priests profess some of the new doctrines, at the same time that they remain attached to their offices. Many bishops declare themselves partisans of the reformist doctrines. The Protestant worship, however, is not yet openly conducted. The mass of the clergy do not like to abandon the past; they cling to their old traditions, and, if they have renounced certain abuses, they yield only on a few points of little importance. The new ideas are spreading, even in the country. . . . Statues representing the Virgin and the saints are often broken, and these deeds are imputed to those who have adopted the doctrines of Luther and of Calvin. A Notre-Dame de Pitie, situated at the Hotel-Dieule-Comte, was found with its head broken. This event excites to madness the Catholic population. The persecutions continue.” Many people emigrated for fear of the stake. “From August, 1552, to the 6th of January, 1555,” says the chronicler, “Troyes loses in consequence of exile, probably voluntary, a certain number of its best inhabitants,” and he names thirteen families with the style and title of “nobleman.” He adds, “There is scarcely a month in the year when there are not burned two or three heretics at Paris, Meaux, and Troyes, and sometimes more than a dozen.” Troyes contained, at that time, says M. Boutiot, eighteen thousand two hundred and eighty-five inhabitants, counting five persons to a household. [Histoire de la Ville de Troyes, t. iii. pp. 381, 387, 398, 415, 431.] Many other provincial towns offered the same spectacle.
During the long truce which succeeded the peace of Cambrai, from 1532 to 1536, it might have been thought for a while that the persecution in France was going to be somewhat abated. Policy obliged Francis I. to seek the support of the Protestants of Germany against Charles V.; he was incessantly fluctuating between that policy and a strictly Catholic and papal policy; by marrying his son Henry, on the 28th of October, 1533, to Catherine de’ Medici, niece of Pope Clement VII., he seemed to have decided upon the latter course; but he had afterwards made a movement in the contrary direction; Clement VII. had died on the 26th of September, 1524; Paul III. had succeeded him; and Francis I. again turned towards the Protestants of Germany; he entered into relations with the most moderate amongst their theologians, with Melancthon, Bucer, and Sturm; there was some talk of conciliation, of a re-establishment of peace and harmony in the church; nor did the king confine himself to speaking by the mouth of diplomatists; he himself wrote to Melancthon, on the 23d of June, 1535, “It is some time now since I heard from William du Bellay, my chamberlain and councillor, of the zeal with which you are exerting yourself to appease the altercations to which Christian doctrine has given rise. I now hear that you are very much disposed to come to us for to confer with some of our most distinguished doctors as to the means of re-establishing in the church that sublime harmony which is the chief of all my desires. Come, then, either in an official capacity or in your own private character; you will be most welcome to me, and you shall in either case have proof of the interest I feel in the glory of your own Germany and in the peace of the world.” Melancthon had, indeed, shown an inclination to repair to Paris; he had written, on the 9th of May, 1535, to his friend Sturm, “I will not let myself be stopped by domestic ties or by fear of danger. There is no human greatness before which I do not prefer Christ’s glory. One thought alone gives me pause: I doubt my ability to do any good; I fear it is impossible to obtain from the king that which I regard as necessary for the Lord’s glory and for the peace of France. You know that kingdom. Pronounce your judgment. If you think that I shall do well to undertake the journey, I am off.”
Melancthon had good reason to doubt whether success, such as he deemed necessary, were possible. Whilst Francis I. was making all these advances to the Protestants of Germany, he was continuing to proceed against their brother Christians in France more bitterly and more flagrantly than ever. Two recent events had very much envenomed party feeling between the French Catholics and Reformers, and the king had been very much compromised in this fresh crisis of the struggle. In 1534 the lawless insurrection of Anabaptists and peasants, which had so violently agitated Germany in 1525, began again; the insurgents seized the town of Munster, in Westphalia, and there renewed their attempt to found the kingdom of Israel, with community of property and polygamy. As in 1525, they were promptly crushed by the German princes, Catholic and Protestant, of the neighborhood; but their rising had created some reverberation in France, and the Reformers had been suspected of an inclination to take part in it. “It is said,” wrote the Chancellor de Granvelle, in January, 1535, to the ambassador of France at the court of Charles V., “that the number of the strayed from the faith in France, and the danger of utter confusion, are very great; the enterprise of the said strayed, about which you write to me, to set fire to the churches and pillage the Louvre, proves that they were in great force. Please God the king may be able to apply a remedy!” [Papiers d’Etat du Cardinal de Granvelle, t. ii. p. 283.] The accusation was devoid of all foundation; but nothing is absurd in the eyes of party hatred and suspicion, and an incident, almost contemporaneous with the fresh insurrection of the Anabaptists, occurred to increase the king’s wrath, as well as the people’s, against the Reformers, and to rekindle the flames of persecution. On the 24th of October, 1534, placards against the mass, transubstantiation, and the regimen as well as the faith of the Catholic church, were posted up during the night in the thoroughfares of Paris, and at Blois on the very chamberdoor of Francis I., whose first glance, when he got up in the morning, they caught. They had been printed at Neufchatel, in Switzerland, where the influence of the refugee William Farel was strong, and their coarse violence of expression could not fail to excite the indignation of even the most indifferent Catholics. In their fanatical blindness factions say only what satisfies their own passions, without considering moral propriety or the effect which will be produced by their words upon the feelings of their adversaries, who also have creeds and passions. Francis I., equally shocked and irritated, determined to give the Catholic faith striking satisfaction, and Protestant audacity a bloody lesson. On the 21st of January, 1535, a solemn procession issued from the church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois. John du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, held in his hands the holy sacrament, surrounded by the three sons of France and the Duke de Vendome, who were the dais-bearers; and the king walked behind, with a taper in his hand, between the Cardinals of Bourbon and Lorraine. At each halting-place he handed his taper to the Cardinal of Lorraine, folded his hands, and humbly prostrating himself, implored divine mercy for his people. After the procession was over, the king, who had remained to dine with John du Bellay, assembled in the great hall of the palace the heads of all the companies, and taking his place on a sort of throne which had been prepared for him, said, “Whatever progress may have already been made by the pest, the remedy is still easy if each of you, devoured by the same zeal as I, will forget the claims of flesh and blood to remember only that he is a Christian, and will denounce without pity all those whom he knows to be partisans or favorers of heresy. As for me, if my arm were gangrened, I would have it cut off though it were my right arm, and if my sons who hear me were such wretches as to fall into such execrable and accursed opinions, I would be willing to give them up to make a sacrifice of them to God.” On the 29th of January there was published an edict which sentenced concealers of heretics, “Lutheran or other,” to the same penalties as the said heretics, unless they denounced their guests to justice; and a quarter of the property to be confiscated was secured to the denouncers. Fifteen days previously Francis I. had signed a decree still stranger for a king who was a protector of letters; he ordered the abolition of printing, that means of propagating heresies, and “forbade the printing of any book on pain of the halter.” Six weeks later, however, on the 26th of February, he became ashamed of such an act, and suspended its execution indefinitely. Punishments in abundance preceded and accompanied the edicts; from the 10th of November, 1534, to the 3d of May, 1535, twenty-four heretics were burned alive in Paris, without counting many who were sentenced to less cruel penalties. The procedure had been made more rapid; the police commissioner of the Chatelet dealt with cases summarily, and the Parliament confirmed. The victims had at first been strangled before they were burned; they were now burned alive, after the fashion of the Spanish Inquisition. The convicts were suspended by iron chains to beams which alternately “hoisted” and “lowered” them over the flames until the executioner cut the cord to let the sufferer fall. The evidence was burned together with the convicts; it was undesirable that the Reformers should be able to make a certified collection of their martyrs’ acts and deeds.
After a detailed and almost complacent enumeration of all these executions, we find in the Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris this paragraph: “The rumor was, in June, 1535, that Pope Paul III., being advertised of the execrable and horrible justice which the king was doing upon the Lutherans in his kingdom, did send word to the King of France that he was advertised of it, and that he was quite willing to suppose that he did it in good part, as he still made use of the beautiful title he had to be called the Most Christian king; nevertheless, God the Creator, when he was in this world, made more use of mercy than of rigorous justice, which should never be used rigorously; and that it was a cruel death to burn a man alive because he might have to some extent renounced the faith and the law. Wherefore the pope did pray and request the king, by his letters, to be pleased to mitigate the fury and rigor of his justice by granting grace and pardon. The king, wishing to follow the pope’s wishes, according as he had sent him word by his letters patent, sent word to the court of Parliament not to proceed any more with such rigor as they had shown heretofore. For this cause were there no more rigorous proceedings on the part of justice.” [Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris, p. 456.]
Search has been made to discover whether the assertion of the Bourgeois de Paris has any foundation, whether Pope Paul III. really did write in June, 1535, the letter attributed to him, and whether its effect was, that the king wrote to Parliament not to proceed against the Reformers “with such rigor.” No proof has, however, been obtained as to the authenticity of the pope’s letter, and in any case it was not very effectual, for the same Bourgeois de Paris reports, that in September, 1535, three months after that, according to him, it was written: Two fellows, makers of silk ribbons and tissues, were burned all alive, one in the Place Maubert and the other in St. John’s cemetery, as Lutherans, which they were. They had handed over to their host at Paris some Lutheran books to take care of, saying, ‘Keep this book for us while we go into the city, and show it to nobody.’ When they were gone, this host was not able to refrain from showing this book to a certain priest, the which, after having looked at it, said incontinently, ‘This is a very wicked book, and proscribed.’ Then the said host went to the commissioner of police to reveal that he had such and such a book of such an one, the which sent forth with to the house of the said host to take and carry off the said two fellows to the Chatelet. Being questioned, they confessed the state of the case. Whereupon, by sentence of the said commissioner, confirmed by decree, “they made honorable amends in front of the church of Notre-Dame de Paris, had their tongues cut out, and were burned all alive and with unshaken obstinacy.” Proceedings and executions, then, did not cease, even in the case of the most humble class of Reformers, and at the very moment when Francis I. was exerting himself to win over the Protestants of Germany with the cry of conciliation and re-establishment of harmony in the church. Melancthon, Bucer, and Luther himself had allowed themselves to be tempted by the prospect; but the German politicians, princes, and counsellors were more clear-sighted. “We at Augsburg,” wrote Sailer, deputy from that city, “know the King of France well; he cares very little for religion, or even for morality. He plays the hypocrite with the pope, and gives the Germans the smooth side of his tongue, thinking of nothing but how to cheat them of the hopes he gives them. His only aim is to crush the emperor.” The attempt of Francis I. thus failed, first in Germany, and then at Paris also, where the Sorbonne was not disposed, any more than the German politicians were, to listen to any talk about a specious conciliation; and the persecution resumed its course in France, paving the way for civil war.
The last and most atrocious act of persecution in the reign of Francis I. was directed not against isolated individuals, but against a whole population, harried, despoiled, and banished or exterminated on account of heresy. About the year 1525 small churches of Reformers began to assume organization between the Alps and the Jura. Something was there said about Christians who belonged to the Reformation without having ever been reformed. It was said that, in certain valleys of the Piedmontese Alps and Dauphiny and in certain quarters of Provence, there were to be found believers who for several centuries had recognized no authority save that of the Holy Scriptures. Some called them Vaudians (Waldensians), others poor of Lyons, others Lutherans. The rumor of the Reformation was heard in their valleys, and created a lively emotion amongst them. One of them determined to go and see what this reformation was; and he returned to his valleys with good news and with pious books. Regular relations were from that time established between the Reformers of Switzerland, France, and Germany, and the Christian shepherds of these mountains. Visits were exchanged Farel and Saunier went amongst the Vaudians and conversed with them about their common faith, common in spite of certain differences. Rustic conferences, composed of the principal landholders, barbas or pastors, and simple members of the faithful, met more than once in the open air under the pines of their mountains. The Vaudians of Provence had been settled there since the end of the thirteenth century; and in the course of the fourteenth other Vaudians from Dauphiny, and even from Calabria, had come thither to join them. “Their barbas,” says a contemporary monk [Histoire des Guerres excitees dans le Comtat venaissin par les Calvinistes du seizieme siecle, par le pere Justin, capucin], “used to preside at their exercises of religion, which were performed in secret. As they were observed to be quiet and circumspect, as they faithfully paid taxes, tithe, and seigniorial dues, and as they were besides very laborious, they were not troubled on the score of their habits and doctrines.” Their new friends from Switzerland and Germany reproached them with concealment of their faith and worship. As soon as they had overtly separated from the Roman church, persecution began; Francis I. checked its first excesses, but it soon began again; the episcopal prisons were filled with Vaudians, who bristled at the summons to abjure; and on the 29th of March, 1535, thirteen of them were sentenced to be burned alive. Pope Paul III. complained to Francis I. of their obstinacy; the king wrote about it to the Parliament of Aix; the Parliament ordered the lords of the lands occupied by the Vaudians to force their vassals to abjure or leave the country. When cited to appear before the court of Aix to explain the grounds of their refusal, several declined. The court sentenced them, in default, to be burned alive. Their friends took up arms and went to deliver the prisoners. Merindol was understood to be the principal retreat of the sectaries; by decree of November 18, 1540, the Parliament ordered that “the houses should be demolished and razed to the ground, the cellars filled up, the woods cut down, the trees of the gardens torn up, and that the lands of those who had lived in Merindol should not be able to be farmed out to anybody whatever of their family or name.” In the region of Parliament itself complaints were raised against such hardships; the premier president, Barthelemy Chassaneuz, was touched, and adjourned the execution of the decree. The king commissioned William du Bellay to examine into the facts; the report of Du Bellay was favorable to the Vaudians, as honest, laborious, and charitable farmers, discharging all the duties of civil life; but, at the same time, he acknowledged that they did not conform to the laws of the church, that they did not recognize the pope or the bishops, that they prayed in the vulgar tongue, and that they were in the habit of choosing certain persons from amongst themselves to be their pastors. On this report, Francis I., by a declaration of February 18, 1541, pardoned the Vaudians for all that had been irregular in their conduct, on condition that within the space of three months they should abjure their errors; and he ordered the Parliament to send to Aix deputies from their towns, burghs, and villages, to make abjuration in the name of all, at the same time authorizing the Parliament to punish, according to the ordinances, those who should refuse to obey, and to make use, if need were, of the services of the soldiery. Thus persecuted and condemned for their mere faith, undemonstrative as it was, the Vaudians confined themselves to asking that it might be examined and its errors pointed out. Those of Merindol and those of Cabriere in the countship of Venasque drew up their profession of faith and sent it to the king and to two bishops of the province, Cardinal Sadolet, Bishop of Carpentras, and John Durandi, Bishop of Cavaillon, whose equity and moderation inspired them with some confidence. Cardinal Sadolet did not belie their expectation; he received them with kindness, discussed with them their profession of faith, pointed out to them divers articles which might be remodelled without disavowing the basis of their creed, and assured them that it would always be against his sentiments to have them treated as enemies. “I am astonished,” he wrote to the pope, “that these folks should be persecuted when the Jews are spared.” The Bishop of Cavaillon testified towards them a favor less unalloyed: “I was quite sure,” said he, “that there was not so much mischief amongst you as was supposed; however, to calm men’s minds, it is necessary that you should submit to a certain appearance of abjuration.” “But what would you have us abjure, if we are already within the truth?” “It is but a simple formality that I demand of you; I do not require in your case notary or signature; if you are unwilling to assent to this abjuration, none can argue you into it.” “We are plain men, monseigneur; we are unwilling to do anything to which we cannot assent;” and they persisted in their refusal to abjure. Cardinal Sadolet was summoned to Rome, and the premier president Chassaneuz died suddenly. His successor, John de Maynier, Baron of Oppede, was a violent man, passionately bigoted, and moreover, it is said, a personal enemy of the Vaudians of Cabrieres, on which his estates bordered; he recommenced against them a persecution which was at first covert; they had found protectors in Switzerland and in Germany; at the instance of Calvin, the Swiss Protestant cantons and the German princes assembled at Smalkalden wrote to Francis I. in their favor; it was to his interest to humor the Protestants of Germany, and that fact turned out to the advantage of the Vaudians of Provence; on the 14th of June, 1544, he issued an edict which, suspending the proceedings commenced against them, restored to them their privileges, and ordered such of them as were prisoners to be set at large; “and as the attorney-general of Provence,” it goes on to say, “is related to the Archbishop of Aix, their sworn enemy, there will be sent in his place a counsellor of the court for to inform me of their innocence.” But some months later the peace of Crespy was made; and Francis I. felt no longer the same solicitude about humoring the Protestants of Switzerland and Germany. Baron d’Oppede zealously resumed his work against the Vaudians; he accused them of intriguing; with foreign Reformers, and of designing to raise fifteen thousand men to surprise Marseilles and form Provence into a republic. On the 1st of January, 1545, Francis I. signed, without reading it they say, the revocation of his edict of 1544, and ordered execution of the decree issued by the Parliament of Aix, dated November 18, 1540, on the subject of the Vaudians, “notwithstanding all letters of grace posterior to that epoch, and ordered the governor of the province to give, for that purpose, the assistance of the strong hand to justice.” The duty of assisting justice was assigned to Baron d’Oppede; and from the 7th to the 25th of April, 1545, two columns of troops, under the orders, respectively, of Oppede himself and Baron de la Garde, ravaged with fire and sword the three districts of Merindol, Cabrieres, and La Coste, which were peopled chiefly by Vaudians.
We shrink from describing in detail all the horrors committed against a population without any means of self-defence by troops giving free rein to their brutal passions and gratifying the hateful passions of their leaders. In the end three small towns and twenty-two villages were completely sacked; seven hundred and sixty-three houses, eighty-nine cattle-sheds, and thirty-one barns burned; three thousand persons massacred; two hundred and fifty-five executed subsequently to the massacre, after a mockery of trial; six or seven hundred sent to the galleys; many children sold for slaves; and the victors, on retiring, left behind them a double ordinance, from the Parliament of Aix and the vice-legate of Avignon, dated the 24th of April, 1545, forbidding “that any one, on pain of death, should dare to give asylum, aid, or succor, or furnish money or victuals, to any Vaudian or heretic.”
It is said that Francis I., when near his end, repented of this odious extermination of a small population, which, with his usual fickleness and carelessness, he had at one time protected, and at another abandoned to its enemies. Amongst his last words to his son Henry II. was an exhortation to cause an inquiry to be made into the iniquities committed by the Parliament of Aix in this instance. It will be seen, at the opening of Henry II.‘s reign, what was the result of this exhortation of his father’s.