He was interrupted by the doctor Maillard, one of those with whom he had disputed before the Parliament: “Master Pierre,” he said to him, “it is here that you ought to implore pardon of the Virgin Mary, whom you have so grievously offended.” “Sir, I pray you,” replied the sufferer, “let me speak; I will say nothing that is unfitting a good Christian. As for the Virgin Mary, I have offended her in nothing, nor would I wish to have done it.” “Then say but one Ave Maria.” “No, I will not say it.” And he repeated without ceasing: “Jesus, son of David, have mercy upon me.” At this moment the doctor ordered the executioner to tighten the cord, and the martyr gave up his soul to God.
After the execution, the theologians of the Sorbonne complained loudly to the Chambre ardente, and declared that if heretics were permitted to speak, everything would be lost. The Parliament therefore resolved that all the condemned should have, without exception, their tongues cut out.
The disciples of the new religion had among them signs of recognition; and when they were too numerous to form one assembly, they divided themselves into small bands. The most resolute, or the best informed, undertook to explain the Bible. They were sometimes poor artisans, who made their exhortations by turn. The meetings took place in the evening, or at night, or in the morning, in order to escape the eye of the enemy. Anything served for these assemblies: a barn, a cellar, a garret, the bosom of a wood, an opening of a rock in the mountain-side.
The object of assembling was in some places concealed by means, which reveal at the same time the simplicity and the rigour of the period. “For the purpose of these meetings,” says Florimond de Rémond, speaking of those of Paris, “they chose some house with secret doors, so as to be able on necessity to fly, and also to enter by different ways. And he who was to preach, brought with him dice and cards, that he might throw them upon the carpet instead of the Bible, and conceal their deed by gaming.... The minister of Mantes was better advised, when secretly preaching in Paris, at the Croix-Verte, near the Louvre, he had counters and tale-books put upon the table, in order to deceive those who might suddenly come upon them, if they did not belong to his flock.”[21]
When a pastor visited, in passing, these meetings, the rejoicing was very great. He was listened to for hours; the symbols of the Holy Supper were received from his hands; the persecutions they had mutually suffered told of those which yet awaited them; and in separating, the adieus spoken were for the scaffold and for heaven.
So long as a regular form of church government was not established, and in the absence of a minister of the Gospel, the administration of the sacrament was abstained from. Calvin and the pastors of the Reformation would not authorize each little assembly to receive the communion at the hands of a man without a recognised call. “We by no means approve that you should begin in this way, or even that you should be hasty to have the Holy Supper, until you have an established order among you,” wrote Calvin, in 1553, to the faithful dispersed in Saintonge.
But if the sacraments were wanting at the beginning, they preserved a great rigidity of manners and discipline. Sinners were reproved, the erring admonished, and the authors of scandals excluded from the communion. “They declared themselves,” says the historian, whom I am never weary of citing, because he seems to have well understood the disciples of the Reformation,—“they declared themselves enemies of luxury, of public debauches, and of the frivolities of the world, too much in vogue among the Catholics. In their feasts and assemblies, instead of dancing and hautboys, they had readings from the Bibles, that were placed upon the table, and spiritual songs, especially the Psalms put into verse. The women, by their decent carriage and modest dress, appeared in public like mourning Eves or repentant Magdalens, as says Tertullian of those of his time. The men, all subdued, seemed stricken with the Holy Ghost.”[22]
The popular opinion was not ill-founded, and Catherine de Medicis affirmed it one day in her trifling way: “I shall turn to the new religion, that I may pass for a pious prude.”
This was the most flourishing and purest period of the French Reformation. There were, no doubt, among the faithful, some unquiet, restless minds, who only joined it out of an empty passion for novelty; there were among them also many differences, which compromised the general cause, and many lukewarm, that were called temporisers, middle-course men, or Nicodemites. But the rivalries of the great houses of the kingdom, and political quarrels, had not yet mixed themselves up with religion. The Reformers suffered, and took no vengeance; they received death without a desire to retaliate, and displayed more severity against themselves than their enemies.