History has preserved the pious words uttered by the Vaudois, who had taken refuge with their pastors in the mountain gorges. Prepared for death, and beholding in the distance the blazing ruins of their dwellings, the old and young thus exhorted each other: “The least of our cares should be for our property and our lives; the greatest and chiefest fear that ought to fill us with emotion, is lest we fail in the confession of our Lord Jesus Christ and his holy Gospel. Let us call on God, and he will have pity upon us.”
The massacre of the Vaudois raised the indignation of all France; the souls of the people were not yet merciless, as they became during the religious wars. The king complained that his orders had been exceeded; but, sick and almost dying, he gave way to the representations of the Cardinal de Tournon, and had not the courage to punish the assassins. But, in his last moments, he adjured his son to take vengeance upon them, adding that if he failed therein, his memory would be execrated throughout the world.
In effect, the matter was brought before the Parliament of Paris in 1550, where it occupied fifty audiences. The advocate of the Vaudois, or rather of the Lady du Cental, who complained that she had been ruined, spoke for seven days consecutively, with a force which was said to have shown the things, instead of relating them. The Baron d’Oppède defended himself, and had the audacity to commence his pleading with these words of the Psalmist: “Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation.” He was acquitted. The advocate-general Guérin only was condemned to death, and care was taken to specify in the sentence that he had been guilty of misappropriating the king’s money; as if a whole people murdered was not a sufficient crime in the eyes of these judges.
VII.
Towards the end of the reign of Francis I., and under that of his son Henry II., the Reformation made such rapid progress, that it becomes impossible to follow it in all its details. Men of letters, of the law, of the sword, of the Church itself, hastened to its banner. Several great provinces,—Languedoc, Dauphiny, the Lyonnese, Guienne, Saintonge, Poitou, the Orleanese, Normandy, Picardy, Flanders; the most considerable towns of the kingdom,—Bourges, Orleans, Rouen, Lyons, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Montpellier, La Rochelle, were peopled with Reformers. It is calculated that they comprised in a few years nearly a sixth of the population, of whom they were the élite. They might have repeated the saying of Tertullian: “We date only from yesterday, and are, yet, everywhere.”
If the persecution kept some aloof, it brought the accession of a greater number, through that instinct, which impels the human conscience to rise against injustice, and incline to the side of the victim. Moreover, the faith, the constancy, and the serenity of the martyrs soared above the ferocity of the executioner.
The impulse once given to the movement, everything was shaken. There was in the understanding, in the heart, and, so to say, in the air one breathed, an immense want of religious reforms. People began to reflect that religion is not to be transmitted, like a name or an estate which one inherits, but that, before accepting it, one is bound to examine it by and for oneself. People also began to consider more minutely the enormous abuses of the Romish church, and crowds separated themselves from that degenerated communion.
The ecclesiastical benefices were distributed, particularly after the Concordat, which had abolished the electoral forms, among court favourites, soldiers, intriguers, and even children; all incapable of fulfilling the duties of their offices. There were supernumerary prelates, who were derisively called flying, or portative bishops. The cardinals set the example of disorder. The prelates lived a scandalous life at Paris. The members of the lower clergy were, in general, immoral and greedy, the monks ignorant and shameless. This conduct was compared with that of the preachers of the Reformation, men of simple habits, for the most part poor and grave; and the contrast was so striking, that honest hearts could not resist it. Without some great lords on one side, and the lowest of the people on the other, the church of Rome was lost in France.
The provincial nobility, which had not been depraved in the atmosphere of the royal household, were all inclined to the new ideas. They entertained against the privileges of the priests, and against their territorial encroachments, an old, though suppressed hostility, that only waited an occasion to burst forth. They had, beside, considerable leisure in their castles, since the severe interdiction of wars of lord against lord; and reading at eve, around the feudal hearth, the Holy Scriptures, they were drawn, almost without being aware of it, to the teachings of Luther and Calvin.
The people of the third estate, who had received a lettered education,—advocates, legists, professors, notable burghers,—were already won beforehand, by their very studies, to these opinions. “Above all,” says with great simplicity an historian devoted to Catholicism, “painters, watchmakers, sculptors, goldsmiths, booksellers, printers, and others, who, from their callings, have some nobility of mind, were among the first easily surprised.”[19]