The children learn religion in the Geneva catechism.
These were but the beginnings of evil. Three days passed, and the Lieutenant-Governor of Languedoc sent a special messenger to the king, to inform him of the rapid progress of the contagion. Fifteen of the most considerable cities of the province had openly received ministers.[915] Ten thousand foot and five hundred horse would be needed to reduce them, and, when taken, they must be held by garrisons, and punished by loss of their municipal privileges.[916] A fortnight more elapsed. Three or four thousand inhabitants of Nismes had retired in arms to the neighboring Cevennes.[917] When they descended into the plain, a larger number, who had submitted on the approach of the soldiery, would unite with them and form a considerable army. "Heresy, alas, gains ground daily," despondingly writes Villars; "the children learn religion only in the catechism brought from Geneva; all know it by heart." The cause of the evil he seemed to find in the circumstance—undoubtedly favorable to the Huguenots—that, of twenty-two bishops whose dioceses lay in Languedoc, all but five or six were non-residents.[918]
To all which lamentations the answer came back after the accustomed fashion: "Slay, hang without respect to the forms of law; send lesser culprits, if preferable, to the galleys."[919]
In Normandy, too, it began to be impossible for the Huguenots to conceal themselves. At Rouen, in spite of the severe penalties threatened, seven thousand persons gathered in the new market-place, on the twenty-sixth of August, "singing psalms, and with their preacher in the midst on a chair preaching to them," while five hundred men with arquebuses stood around the crowd "to guard them from the Papists." A few days before, at the opening of the great fair of Jumièges, a friar, according to custom, undertook to deliver a sermon; but the people, not liking his doctrine, "pulled him out of the pulpit and placed another in his place."[920]
Elections for the States General.
Nor was the courage of the Huguenots less clearly manifested a little later in the elections preparatory to the holding of the States General. In spite of strict injunctions issued by the Cardinal of Lorraine to the officers in each bailiwick and sénéchaussée, to prevent the debate of grievances from touching upon the authority of the Guises or that of the Church, and especially to defeat the election of any but undoubted friends of the Roman Church, his friends were successful in neither attempt. The voice of the oppressed people made itself heard in thunder-tones at Blois, at Angers,[921] and elsewhere. Even in Paris—the stronghold of the Roman faith—the reformed ventured, in face of a vast numerical majority against them, to urge in the Hôtel-de-Ville the insertion of their remonstrances in the "cahiers" of the city. Of thirteen provinces, ten addressed such complaints to the States General.[922]
Clerical demands at Poitiers.
But the clerical order did not forget its old demands, even where the Tiers État leaned to toleration. The provincial estates of Poitou, meeting in the Dominican convent of Poitiers, presented a contrast of this kind. The delegates of the people, after listening to the eloquent appeal of an intrepid Huguenot pastor, determined to petition the States General for the free exercise of the reformed religion. The representatives of the church made its complaints regarding the "ravishing wolves, false preachers, and their adherents, who are to-day in so great numbers that there are not so many true sheep knowing the voice of their shepherds." The "mild and holy admonitions" of the church having been thrown away upon these reprobates, the clergy proposed to open a register of all that should neglect to receive the sacrament at Easter, and to attend the church services with regularity. And it made the modest demand that all persons honored with an entry in this book should, as heretics, be deprived of all right to make contracts, that their wills be declared hull and void, and that all their property—in particular all houses in which preaching had been held—be confiscated. Of course, the aid of the secular arm was invoked, in view of "the great number and power of the said heretics."[923]
Theodore Beza invited to Nérac.
Jeanne d'Albret.