History of the Protestants of France, from the commencement of the Reformation to the present time

by G. de Félice

Another protestation, parallel to the preceding, and which has been styled Catholic Protestantism, had constantly manifested itself in the bosom of the Church itself, particularly after the appearance of the mystics of the Middle Age. Among the theologians, Bernard de Clairvaux, Gerson d’Ailly, Nicholas de Clémangis; among the poets, Dante and Petrarch; even councils held at Pisa, Constance, and Basle; men the most renowned for their piety and their character, for their genius and their learning, had raised the same cry: “A reform, a reform in the Church! A reform in the head and the members, in the faith and the manners!” But this Catholic movement always failed; because it never attacked the root of the evil. The secret of obtaining all—is it not that of desiring and daring all?

Whilst the Papacy persecuted the former of these protestations, and tried to seduce the other, a new enemy presented itself: the most redoubtable of all, because it could assume the most diverse forms; because it displayed itself everywhere at the same moment; because neither artifices nor tortures could subdue it. And what was this antagonist?—The human mind itself awakening from its long sleep. The fifteenth century had restored to it the books of antiquity. It suddenly felt itself animated with an intense want of investigation and renewal; and resuming, at the same time, philosophy, history, poetry, the sciences, the arts, all the wonders of the most flourishing ages of Greece and ancient Rome, it was aware that it could and would march onward in its independence.

The discovery of printing came to help the revival of learning. The old world reappeared in its entirety at the same time that Christopher Columbus discovered a new one. More than three thousand writings were published from the year 1450 to the year 1520. There was a prodigious activity, which knew neither fatigue nor fear; and what could the Church oppose to this first expansion of the human mind, so happy and so proud of entering again upon the possession of itself? The martyrdom of Savonarola did not intimidate it; at the most it took a by-turn in the treatises of Pomponatius, to arrive at the same end. The Vatican, which had sometimes been so skilful, was not so in the face of this vast movement. Several popes succeeded each other, feeble, or covetous of money, or stained with the foulest crimes: Paul II., Sixtus IV., Innocent VIII., Alexander VI., Julius II. The last, Leo X., having the voluptuous tastes of the race of the Medici, to which he belonged, without sharing their grandeur or their courage,—a priest without theological learning, a pontiff without gravity, setting his buffoons to dispute about the immortality of the soul, and amusing himself with the frivolous diversions of the theatre, when Germany was on fire,—seems to have been chosen from on high to level the path of the Reformation.

Thus everything was ready. Scarcely do we place our foot upon the threshold of the sixteenth century, before we hear those hollow sounds which, in the moral world, as in the physical, announce the approach of the storm. The heart is oppressed, the mind is disturbed: something extraordinary, we know not what, is about to happen. Kings upon their thrones, the learned in their closets, professors in their chairs, pious men in their oratories, even warriors upon the field of battle, tremble and reveal, by brief words or acts of violence, the presentiments which pursue them.

In 1511, the emperor Maximilian and the king Louis XII. convoke a council at Pisa, in order to recall Julius II. to his duty, and to remedy the evils of the Church. Several cardinals attend, in spite of the prohibitions of the Vatican; and on the 21st of April, 1512, the pope Julius is suspended, as notoriously incorrigible and contumacious. “Arise, Cæsar,” write with one accord the members of this assembly to the emperor Maximilian: “Arise, be firm and watchful; the Church falls; the good are oppressed; and the wicked triumph.”

Julius II. opposed council with council, and assembled in the basilic of the Lateran the prelates who remained faithful to him. But even there, before this pontiff, who possessed no other knowledge than that of arms, Œgidius de Viterbo, general of the order of the Augustines, accuses the priests of having abandoned prayer for the sword, and of haunting, after battle, houses of prostitution. “Can we contemplate,” he asks, “without shedding tears of blood, the ignorance, the ambition, the immodesty, the impiety reigning in the holy places, whence they ought to be for ever banished?”

As they hearkened to these cries of distress descending from such high places, the troubled nations appealed to a new general council, as if experience had not taught them that these great assemblies, so prodigal of words, were barren for a work of reformation! But the multitude knew not whence deliverance might come, and, in its anxiety, it clung to the illusions of its old recollections.

In the midst of this universal and restless expectation, the enemy grew bold. Reuchlin maintained the rights of knowledge against the barbarous teaching of the universities. The noble Ulrich of Hutten, the representative of chivalry in this grand struggle, announced by appeals from the sword to public reason, the advent of a new civilization. Erasmus, the Voltaire of the epoch, excited the laughter of kings, lords, cardinals, and even the pope, at the expense of the monks and doctors, and opened the door by which the modern world must pass. Then Martin Luther appeared.

It is not part of my task to write the history of the Reformer. Sent to Rome respecting the affairs of the order of the Augustines, he found there a vast and profound incredulity, a revolting immorality. Luther returned to Germany heartbroken, his conscience agitated with bitter doubts. An old Bible, which he discovered in the convent of Erfurt, revealed to him a religion wholly different from that which he had been taught. Still the thought was not yet born within him to undertake the reformation of the Church. Pastor and professor at Wittenberg, he confined himself to spreading around him healthy doctrines and good examples.

But John Tetzel, a vender of indulgences, audacious to effrontery, covetous to cynicism, whilom condemned to prison for notorious crimes, and menaced with drowning in the Inn by the inhabitants of the Tyrol, dared to interpose his vile traffic between the word of Luther and the souls confided to him. Luther became indignant: he re-perused his Bible; and in 1517 he affixed to the door of the cathedral of Wittenberg those ninety-five theses destined soon to raise throughout all Europe such a formidable echo.