But in the body of the people, more subjected to the teaching of the priesthood, prejudices and hatreds were rife. Whence resulted vexatious interferences with the rights of freedom, local privileges, as the corporations of trades, and in the small appointments in the gift of the municipal councils. Whence also arose acts of violence on the least pretence, against the places of worship, against the property, against the persons; and when it was dared, attacks became more regular and more general, and were habitually headed by some ignorant parish vicar, or some abject monk.
By what has been said, we may judge of the condition of the Reformed after the Edict of Grace. They had, at intervals, days of repose, which permitted them to apply themselves to theological learning, to develop their ordinary instruction, and to cultivate the industrial arts. But this rest was uncertain, this calm unquiet, so to speak, and persecution soon went on increasing, until the favourable moment appeared for the annihilation of the French Reformation. We shall only relate what is most important.[81]
VIII.
Cardinal de Richelieu, who had written a method of controversies, in the leisure moments of his youth, was bent upon the execution of his plan of reunion. He thereupon sounded the pastors and the provincial synods, by means of his confidant Father Joseph, a mysterious personage, an emissary at once intriguing, active, and unscrupulous; he was seconded in his work by a certain Théophile de la Milletière, an equivocal Calvinist, and a writer of but little learning, who was ambitious to gain a name by promoting designs of which he did not comprehend the object.
Among the persons who were captivated by this project, were the prudent and skilful, who were desirous of abandoning a religion—if they could do so without dishonour—so little agreeable to [those in] power, as well as simple people, who foolishly believed that (Roman) Catholicism was willing to make serious concessions, no less than some other good folks, who treated the whole matter as a question of charity. In the number of these last, a man of merit, Petit, pastor and professor of theology at Nismes, was for some time found.
However, it soon appeared, that under the pompous word reunion, nothing else was dreamed of than an act of repentance on the part of the Calvinists, and of gracious amnesty on that of the (Roman) Catholics—a no more considerable change than that of a few terms, which shocked the ear of the disciples of Calvin. Certain pastors were to be gained beforehand, who, for form’s sake, should hold a disputation with (Roman) Catholic doctors in the king’s presence, and should oppose no strong objection. Then they were to demand admittance as penitents, and the Church of Rome, like a good mother, would receive them with open arms. Lastly, a meeting, filled with people of this easy mould, was to be got together in a national synod; and when once the project of reunion was officially announced, material force was to be employed to compel the submission of the recalcitrants, or to expel them from the kingdom.
The plan was skilfully conceived: the only flaw, however, was the omission to take honourable and faithful consciences into the account. It failed. The pastors displayed obstinacy, and, what is remarkable, the laity were even more obstinate than their ministers. Not one provincial synod entered into the plot. Petit acknowledged his error; La Milletière was excommunicated, and immediately became a (Roman) Catholic; Richelieu had other matters to attend to, and the idea of the reunion was abandoned, to be again attempted on two or three occasions before the Revocation.
The clergy went a different way to exterminate heresy, namely, by means of missionaries, ambulating controversialists, otherwise called converters, or propagators of the faith, whom we find at work from the year 1630. Some of them were monks, Capuchins and Recollets, of whom Fénélon somewhere says, that they had drawn universal contempt upon themselves by their ignorance and their fanatical rage. The others were laymen of the lowest condition—cordwainers, brokers, tailors, itinerant grinders, little shopmen—who, without any study, abandoned their trade for the championship of the (Roman) Catholic faith.
These vagabonds received a fixed sum per head, for every proselyte, and the rate varied according to the importance of the convert. They were careful to take certificates duly legalized, of their conquests, so that they might insure the receipt of their money. Fraud soon entered into the transaction, as might have been expected. There were wretches who joined the Reformed communion for the express purpose of deserting it, or feigned to belong to it that they might abjure, and afterwards share [the proceeds of their iniquity] with their accomplices.
The converters had learned a catalogue of ridiculous subtilties and gross quibbles by heart, which they retailed on all occasions. The refutation of what was least ignoble in these polemics, was made with a master’s hand by the pastor Drelincourt, in his Abrégé des Controverses, whence he was called the scourge of the propagators of the faith.