It was not long before the apprehension of the monastic orders was aroused by the great popularity of the new teachers. The wool-carders, weavers, and fullers accepted the novel doctrine with delight as meeting a want which they had discovered in spite of poverty and ignorance. The day-laborers frequenting the neighborhood of Meaux, to aid the farmers in harvest-time, carried back to their more secluded districts the convictions they had obtained, and themselves became efficient agents in the promulgation of the faith elsewhere. If the anticipations of a speedy spread of the reformation throughout France were brilliant in the minds of its early apostles, the determination of its opponents was equally fixed. An incident occurred about this time which might almost be regarded as of prophetic import. Farel, who was present, is our sole informant. On one occasion Lefèvre and a few friends were engaged in conversation with some warm partisans of the old abuses, when the old doctor, warming at the prospect he seemed to behold, exclaimed, "Already the Gospel is winning the hearts of the nobles and of the common people alike! Soon it will spread over all France, and cast down the inventions which the hand of man has set up." "Then," angrily retorted one De Roma, a Dominican monk, "Then I, and others like me, will join in preaching a crusade; and should the king tolerate the proclamation of the Gospel, we shall drive him from his kingdom by means of his own subjects!"[150]
The Dominican friar stood forth at that moment the embodiment of the monastic spirit speaking defiance to the nascent reform. The church of the state, with its rich abbeys and priories, its glorious old cathedrals, and boundless possessions of lands and houses, was not to be resigned without a struggle so terrific as to shake the foundations of the throne itself. The germ of the Guises and the League, with Jacques Clément and Ravaillac, was already formed, and possessed a prodigious latent vitality.
Briçonnet's activity.
Bishop Briçonnet was himself active in promoting the evangelical work, preaching against the most flagrant abuses, and commending to the confidence of his flock the more eloquent preachers whom he had introduced. The incredible rumor even gained currency that the hot-headed prelate went through his diocese casting down the images and sparing no object of idolatrous worship in the churches.[151] But, however improbable it may be that Briçonnet ever engaged in any such iconoclastic demonstrations, it is a strong Roman Catholic partisan who has preserved the record of this significant warning given by the prelate to his flock, and elicited either by the consciousness of his own moral feebleness, or by a certain vague premonition of danger: "Even should I, your bishop, change my speech and teaching, beware that you change not with me!"[152]
Lefèvre translates the New Testament.
Under Briçonnet's protection Jacques Lefèvre assumed a task less restricted in its influence than preaching, in which he probably took a less active part than his coadjutors. The Bible was a closed book to the common people in France. The learned might familiarize themselves with its contents by a perusal of the Latin Vulgate; but readers acquainted with their mother tongue alone were reduced to the necessity of using a rude version wherein text and gloss were mingled in inextricable confusion, and the Scriptures were made to countenance the most absurd abuses.[153] The best furnished libraries rarely contained more than a few detached books of the Bible, and these intended for ornament rather than use.[154] Lefèvre resolved, therefore, to apply himself to the translation of the Sacred Scriptures from the Latin Vulgate into the French language. In June, 1523, he published a version of the four gospels, and in the autumn of the same year he gave to the world the rest of the New Testament. Five years later he added a translation of the Old Testament. It was a magnificent undertaking, prompted by a fervent desire to promote the spiritual interests of his countrymen. In its execution, the inaccuracies incident to so novel an enterprise, and the comparative harshness of the style, can readily be forgiven. For, aside from its own merits, the version of Lefèvre d'Étaples formed the basis for the subsequent version of Robert Olivetanus, itself the groundwork of many later translations.
The translation eagerly bought.
Delight of Lefèvre.
Lefèvre and his associates had not erred in anticipating remarkable results from the publication of the Scriptures in the language of the people. The copies of the New Testament no sooner left the press than they were eagerly bought. They penetrated into obscure hamlets to which no missionary of the "new doctrines" could find access. By the wool-carders of Meaux the prize thus unexpectedly placed within reach was particularly valued. The liberality of Bishop Briçonnet is said to have freely supplied copies to those who were too poor to afford the purchase-money. The prelate introduced the French Scriptures into the churches of Meaux, where the unparalleled innovation of reading the lessons in an intelligible tongue struck the people with amazement. "You can scarcely imagine," wrote the delighted Lefèvre to a distant friend,[155] "with what ardor God is moving the minds of the simple, in some places, to embrace His word since the books of the New Testament have been published in French, though you will justly lament that they have not been scattered more widely among the people. The attempt has been made to hinder the work, under cover of the authority of parliament; but our most generous king has become in this matter the defender of Christ's cause, declaring it to be his pleasure that his kingdom shall hear the word of God freely and without hinderance in the language which it understands. At present, throughout our entire diocese, on feast-days, and especially on Sunday, both the epistle and gospel are read to the people in the vernacular tongue, and the parish priest adds a word of exhortation to the epistle or gospel, or both, at his discretion."
There did, indeed, seem to be amply sufficient ground for the "exultation" expressed by the worthy Picard at the rapid progress of the Reformation throughout Europe and the flattering prospects offered in France itself.[156] Everything seemed for a time to promise success at Meaux. Bishop Briçonnet received with delight the advice of the Swiss and German reformers. The letters of Œcolampadius, from Basle, in particular so deeply impressed him, that he commissioned Gérard Roussel to read in the French language and explain the meaning of the Pauline Epistles every morning to a promiscuous gathering of persons of both sexes, and chose out the most evangelical preachers to perform similar duty in all the more important places in his diocese.[157]