The extreme rigour of St. Louis against what he called 'that vile oath,' blasphemy (a crime which is indefinite enough except in name), gives perhaps the most striking indication of the state of people's minds, and especially of the King's mind on this subject. Every blasphemer was branded on the lips with a red hot iron. 'One day the King caused a burgess of Paris to be branded in this manner. Violent murmurs arose in the city, and reached the King's ears. He answered by declaring that he would consent to be branded on his own lips and to keep the disgrace of the mark all his life, if only the vice of blasphemy could be banished from his kingdom.' Some time afterwards, when he was executing a work of great public utility, he received numerous expressions of gratitude from the owners of property in Paris. 'I expect a greater recompense from the Lord,' he said, 'for the maledictions which I received after branding that blasphemer, than for the benedictions which I now receive on account of this act of public utility.'
Of all human errors, the most popular are the most dangerous, for they are the most contagious, and those from which the noblest natures find it most difficult to keep themselves free. It is impossible to observe without alarm the aberrations of reason and moral rectitude into which men who were in other respects enlightened and virtuous have been dragged by the leading ideas of their generation. And this alarm is very greatly increased when we discover what iniquity, what suffering, what public and private calamity have been the result of deviations from right which were tolerated by the noblest spirits of the age. On the question of religious liberty, St. Louis is a striking example of the degree to which an upright judgment and scrupulous conscience may be led astray if it falls under the dominion of a popular feeling or idea. In all times of great intellectual fermentation he stands as a solemn warning to those men who prize independence of thought as well as of action, and to whom nothing is so dear as justice and truth.
[Footnote 53: Not marked in text; probably related to the quotation 'I expect a greater recompense …': Faure, vol. ii. p. 300; Joinville, chap, cxxxviii.]
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John Calvin.
Born At Noyon, July 10, 1509.
Died At Geneva, May 27, 1564.
Chapter I.
Final Judgment On Great Men And Great Events Must Be Reserved For Future Generations.
Characteristics Of The Religious Reform Of The Sixteenth Century.
Great events and great men impose a difficult and painful task upon those who wish to understand them thoroughly, and to appreciate their worth. They form the stage upon which all the difficult and striking complications of good and evil, truth and error, virtue and vice, noble and base passions, valuable results and fatal consequences are displayed. They represent the noble impulses and also the disastrous failures, the grandeur, but at the same time the imperfection of human nature and human destiny; and we cannot, therefore, contemplate them without sadness and perplexity.