On the twenty-third of June, Charles, accompanied by his mother, by the King of Navarre, and the other princes of the blood, and by the council of state, came to the chamber of parliament, and the chancellor announced to the assembled members the object of this extraordinary visit. It was to obtain advice not respecting religion itself—that was reserved for the deliberation of the national council, and its merits could not be discussed here—but respecting the best method of appeasing the commotions daily on the increase, caused by a diversity of religious tenets. He therefore begged all present to express in brief terms their opinions on this important topic. It is not surprising that the answers given should have been of the most varied import. Ever since the time of Henry the Second, the Parliament of Paris had contained a considerable number of friends, more or less open, of Protestantism, and among the princes and noblemen who came to join in the deliberation, the number of its warm advocates was proportionately still greater. At the same time, the Roman Catholic party was largely represented in the ranks of the members of the parliament proper, as recent events had indicated; while, among the high nobility and the dignitaries of the church, the weight of the constable and the Duke of Guise, the cardinals of Bourbon, Tournon, Lorraine, and Guise, and the Bishop of Paris, counterbalanced the influence of the King of Navarre, the Prince of Condé, the Châtillons, and the chancellor. Five or six different opinions were announced by the successive speakers;[1043] but they could all be reduced to three. The more tolerant advocated the suspension of all punishments until the determination of the questions in dispute by a council. A second class, on the contrary, maintained the propriety and expediency of enforcing the laws which made death the penalty of heretical belief. The rest—and they mustered in the end a majority of three[1044] over the advocates of toleration, while they were much more numerous than the champions of bloody persecution—advised the king to give to the ecclesiastical courts exclusive cognizance of heresy, according to the provisions of the Edict of Romorantin, and to forbid the holding of public or private conventicles, whether with or without arms, in which sermons should be preached or the sacraments administered otherwise than according to the customs of the Romish Church.[1045] Such was the result of the deliberations of the Mercuriale of June and July, 1561,[1046] in the course of which opinions had been freely expressed far more radical than those of Anne Du Bourg in the Mercuriale of 1559.
The "Edict of July."
Disappointment at its severity.
The edict for which the direction had been thus marked out was published on the eleventh of July, 1561.[1047] It has become celebrated in history as the "Edict of July." After reiterating the injunctions of previous royal letters, and forbidding all insults and breaches of the peace, on pain of the halter, Charles was made to prohibit "all enrollings, signatures, or other things tending to sedition." Preachers in the churches were strictly commanded to abstain from uttering words calculated to excite the popular passions or prejudice. The most important portion of the law, however, was that which punished, by confiscation of body and goods, all who attended, whether with or without arms, conventicles in which preaching was held or the holy sacraments administered. Of simple heresy the cognizance was still restricted, as by the edict of Romorantin in the previous year, to the church courts; but no higher penalty could be imposed on the guilty, when handed over to the secular arm, than banishment from the kingdom. The punishment of all offences in which public disorder or sedition was mingled with heresy, remained in the hands of the presidial judges.[1048] These were the leading features of this severe ordinance. It is true that the edict was expressly stated to be only provisional—to last no longer than until the Universal or National Council, whichever might be held—that pardon was offered to those who would live in a Catholic manner for the future, that calumny was threatened with exemplary punishment. Yet it was clear that the law was framed in the interest of the Roman Catholics, and in their interest alone. The Duke of Guise openly exulted. He exclaimed in the hearing of many, "that his sword would never rest in its scabbard when the execution of this decision was in question."[1049] The disappointment of the Protestants was not less extreme. At court, Admiral Coligny did not hesitate to declare that its provisions could never be executed.[1050] The farther they were removed from St. Germain, the more loudly the Huguenots murmured, the greater was their indisposition to submit to the harsh conditions imposed upon them. In Guyenne and Gascony, and in Languedoc, where whole towns were to be found containing scarcely one avowed partisan of the papacy, the discontent was open and threatening. How long did the bigots of Paris intend to keep their eyes closed and refuse to recognize the altered aspect of affairs? Until what future day was the simplest of rights—the right of the social and public worship of God—to be proscribed? Must the inhabitants of entire districts continue, month after month, and year after year, to stand in the eye of the law as culprits, with the halter around their necks, and beg mercy of a despised priesthood and a dissolute court, for the crime of assembling in the open field, in the school-houses, or even in the parish churches, where their fathers had worshipped before them, to listen to the preaching of God's word?
Iconoclasm at Montauban.
With the rising excitement the power of the ministers to control the ardor of their flocks steadily declined. How could the people be moderate, or even prudent, when their rights were so thoroughly ignored? The events of Montauban during August and the succeeding months, may serve to illustrate the growing impatience of the laity. Until now, as we have seen, the earnest warnings of their pastors had generally been successful in restraining the Huguenots from touching the symbols of a hated system so temptingly exhibited before their eyes. But, a few weeks after the unofficial intelligence of the enactment of the edict of July had reached the city, the work of destruction commenced. On the night of the fourteenth of August the Church of St. Jacques received the first bands of iconoclasts. The pictures and images were torn down or hurled from their niches and destroyed; but the chalices, the silver crosses, and other precious articles, were left untouched. The object was neither robbery nor plunder. A week later, the same fate befel the paintings in the church of the Augustinians. After another and a shorter interval, the chapels of St. Antoine, St. Michel, St. Roch, St. Barthélemi, and Notre Dame de Baquet, witnessed similar scenes of destruction. It was at this juncture that the edict of July was brought to Montauban and publicly proclaimed. Nothing could have been more inopportune. The raging fever of the popular pulse had been mistaken for a transient excitement, and the specific now administered, far from quenching the patient's burning thirst, only stimulated it to a more irrepressible craving. That very evening (Tuesday, the twenty-sixth of August), the people, irritated beyond endurance, gathered around the Dominican church. The monks, forewarned of their danger, had taken the precaution to fortify themselves. They now rang the tocsin, but no one came to their rescue, and the stronghold was speedily taken. The assailants, however, cherished no enmity toward God's image in human flesh and bones. So, after effectually destroying all man's efforts to represent the Divine likeness in stone or on canvas, the Huguenots proceeded to the Carmelite Church. Here rich trophies awaited them—a "Saint Suaire" and relics, which, on close inspection, were found to be the bones of horses instead of belonging to the saintly personages whose names they had borne. The reader will scarcely feel surprise to learn that the monks—with the single exception of the Franciscans—now judged that the time for them to leave the city had arrived.
Instructed by the somewhat suggestive example of the fate that had befallen their brethren, the black and white friars, and, doubtless considering discretion the better part of valor, the priests of the collegiate church of St. Stephen abandoned their preparations for defence, and, stipulating only for their own safety, gave up their paintings to be consigned to the flames. A bonfire was kindled on one of the public squares; and while the sacred pictures and images thrown upon it were being slowly consumed, bands of children looked on and chanted in chorus the metrical paraphrase of the ten commandments. The city being thus cleared of its public objects of superstitious devotion,[1051] the people next turned their attention to those of a more private character. As the crowds moved along the streets they earnestly appealed to the inmates of the houses to follow the noble example the churches had set them. We are informed by a contemporary record that the iconoclasts carefully abstained from trespassing, and confined themselves to an exhibition of those passages of Sacred Writ in which an idolatrous worship was prohibited. But, if the brief argumentation for which the rapidity of the transaction allowed time was not in all cases sufficient to produce entire conviction, it may be presumed that any remaining scruples were removed by the contagion of the popular enthusiasm. Montauban was purged of image-worship as in a day, and without the injury of man, woman, or child.[1052]
The Edict cannot be executed.
Impatience with "public idols."
Coligny was right. The Edict of July could not be carried into execution in those parts of France where, as in Montauban, the mass of the population had openly adopted Protestantism. If the resistance encountered was often accompanied by an earnestness that disdained to be trammelled by the customary forms of civil law, it was almost always exercised in accordance with the dictates of natural justice. If the people, emancipated from the service of images, believed themselves to possess an indisputable right to dash in pieces or burn the curiously wrought saints sculptured in marble or portrayed by the painter's pencil, this fact is less wonderful than that they scrupulously spared the lives of the priests and monks to whose pecuniary advantage their former worship had principally redounded. The plain Huguenot, like the plain Christian in the primitive age, was fully persuaded that he had an owner's title in the public idol, which not only justified him in destroying it when he had discovered its vanity, but rendered it his imperative duty to execute the natural impulse. As for the obligation of nine-tenths of the population to use the idol tenderly, because of any rightful claim of the remaining tithe, this was a consideration that scarcely occurred to them.