[572] "A right of appeal to the supreme courts has hitherto been, and still is, granted to persons guilty of poisoning, of forgery, and of robbery; yet this is denied to Christians; they are condemned by the ordinary judges to be dragged straight to the flames, without any liberty of appeal.... All are commanded, with more than usual earnestness, to adore the breaden god on bended knee. All parish priests are commanded to read the Sorbonne Articles every Sabbath for the benefit of the people, that a solemn abnegation of Christ may thus resound throughout the land.... Geneva is alluded to more than ten times in the edict, and always with a striking mark of reproach." Calvin's Letters (Bonnet), Eng. tr., iii. 319, 320. I cannot agree with Soldan (Geschichte des Prot. in Frankreich, i. 228) in the statement that the Edict of Châteaubriand left the jurisdiction essentially as fixed by the ordinance of Nov. 19, 1549. For the edict does not, as he asserts, permit "the civil judges—presidial judges as well as parliaments—equally with the spiritual, to commence every process." It deprives the ecclesiastical judge, 1st, of the right which the ordinance of 1549 had conferred, of initiating any process where scandal, sedition, etc., were joined to simple heresy, and these cases—under the interpretation of the law—constituted a large proportion of cases; 2d, of the right of deciding with the secular judges in these last-named cases; and 3d, of the power of arrest. De Thou, himself a president of parliament (ii. 375, liv. xvi.), therefore styles it "un édit, par lequel le Roi se réservoit une entière connoissance du Luthéranisme, et l'attribuoit à ses juges, sans aucune exception, à moins que l'hérésie dont il s'agissoit ne demandât quelque éclaircissement, ou que les coupables ne fussent dans les ordres sacrés."
[573] Milton's Areopagitica. This was the view somewhat bitterly expressed in one of the poems of the "Satyres Chrestiennes de la cuisine Papale " (Geneva, 1560; reprinted 1857), addressed "aux Rostisseurs," p. 130:
"Je cognoy, Cagots, que mes liures
Vous sont fascheusement nouueaux.
Bruslez, si en serez deliures
Pour en servir de naueaux.
Mais scavez-vous que c'est, gros veaux,
Fuyez le feu qui s'en fera:
Car la fumée en vos cerueauz
Seulmient vous estouffera."
[574] Recueil gén. des anc. lois fr., xiii. 189-208.
[575] Hist. ecclés., i. 59.
[576] Letter of Beza to Bullinger, Lausanne, May 10, 1552 (Baum, Thedor Beza, i. 423): "Et tamen vix credas quam multi sese libenter his periculis objiciant ut ædificent Ecclesiam Dei."
[577] Beza to Bullinger, Oct. 28, 1551, Baum, i. 417: "Tantum abest ut Evangelii amplificationem ea res (cruentissimum regis edictum) impediat ut contra nihil æque prodesse sentiamus ad oves Christi undique dispersas in unum veluti gregem cogendas. Id testari vel una Geneva satis potest, in quam hodie certatim ex omnibus et Galliæ et Italiæ regionibus tot exules confluunt, ut tantæ multitudini vix nunc sufficiat."
[578] De Thou, ii. 181.
[579] Mémoires de Vieilleville (written by his secretary, Vincent Carloix), ed. Petitot, i. 299-301. This incident belongs to the year 1549.
[580] Histoire ecclés., i. 54-60.