Lefèvre and Roussel were among the last to withdraw; but, beset with watchful enemies, they found their position neither safe nor comfortable. It was as difficult to maintain a semblance of friendship with an ecclesiastical system which they detested in their hearts, as to refuse their sympathy and support to the persecuted whose opinions they shared without possessing the courage necessary to suffer in attestation of the common faith. Busy informers at one time found evidence, more than warranting the suspicion that Roussel's manuscripts had furnished the material of which scandalous placards defamatory of the Pope were framed.[172] A little later the proctor of the cathedral drew attention to the irregular conventicles held in the church itself, every Sunday and feast-day, after Roussel had preached. These "combers, carders, and other persons of the same stamp, unlettered folk,"[173] brought with them books containing the Epistles of St. Paul, the Gospels, and the Psalms, in flagrant disregard of the prohibitions they had heard respecting the discussion of such topics as faith, the sacraments, the privileges of Rome, and the use of pictures in the churches. It was made the occasion of "charitable rebuke" and then of formal complaint against Roussel by his fellow canons, that he failed to repeat the angelic salutation, according to the orthodox practice, after the exordium of his sermon. To the combined exhortations and threats of his accusers Roussel replied in the chapter that, if he had done wrong, it belonged to the bishop to reprove him, but that as to himself he esteemed the repetition of the Lord's Prayer quite as efficacious as the recital of the Ave Maria.[174]
Lefèvre and Roussel take refuge in Strasbourg.
Excessive caution of Roussel.
At last danger thickened, and Lefèvre and Roussel found themselves forced to leave Meaux (October, 1525), and sought refuge within the hospitable walls of Strasbourg; for the persecuting measures adopted by the regent, Louise de Savoie, and the Parliament of Paris, during the king's captivity, as we shall shortly see, had placed the lives of even such prudent reformers in peril.[175] In the free city on the banks of the Rhine, Lefèvre met his pupil Farel, and in the midst of cordial greetings was reminded by him that the day of "renovation" which he had long since predicted and desired had really come.[176] But the contrast between the two men had become sharply drawn. The fearless athlete, soon to measure his strength with no puny antagonists at Neufchâtel, Lausanne, Geneva, and so many other places in French Switzerland, whose course was to be a succession of rough encounters, discovered that the master from whom he had received the impulse that shaped his entire life, shrank from sundering the last link binding him to the Roman church. And Gérard Roussel was even more timid. The elegant preacher, with fair prospects of preferment, could not bring himself openly to espouse the quarrel of oppressed truth. A mysticism investing his entire belief, and perverting his moral perceptions, led him to imagine that the heart might be kept pure in the midst of many external corruptions, and that the enlightened could worship the Almighty acceptably in spite of superstitious observances, which, while countenancing by apparent acquiescence, they rejected in their hearts. The excellence of the reformation already inaugurated at Strasbourg made a deep and very favorable impression upon Roussel. He wrote to Bishop Briçonnet that the daily preaching of a pure doctrine, "without dross or leaven of the Pharisees,"[177] the crowds of attentive hearers, the schools presided over by men as illustrious for piety as for letters, and the careful provision for the poor, would delight his correspondent were he to see them. He did not dissemble his own great satisfaction that the monasteries had been changed into educational establishments, the pictures taken away from the churches, and every altar removed except one, on which the communion was celebrated, as nearly as possible, according to the plan of its institution.[178] At the same time he renounced none of his excessive caution. His words were still those he had uttered when urged, a twelvemonth earlier, by Farel, Œcolampadius, and Zwingle, to strike out boldly and by an open dispute on religion compel the attention of the thoughtless world. "The flesh is weak! As my friends, Lefèvre and others, urge, the convenient season has not yet come, the Gospel has not yet been scattered sufficiently far and wide. We must not assume the Lord's prerogative for sending laborers into the harvest, but leave the work to Him whose it is, and who can easily raise up a far richer harvest than that for whose safety we are solicitous!"[179]
Such were the paltry evasions of cowardly souls, to excuse themselves for the neglect of admitted duty. We cannot wonder at the burning words of condemnation which this pusillanimity called forth from the pen of brave Pierre Toussain. "I have spoken to Lefèvre and Roussel," he wrote some months later, "but certainly Lefèvre has not a particle of courage. May God confirm and strengthen him! Let them be as wise as they please, let them wait, procrastinate, and dissemble; the Gospel will never be preached without the cross! When I see these things, when I see the mind of the king, the mind of the duchess [Margaret of Angoulême] as favorable as possible to the advancement of the Gospel of Christ, and those who ought to forward this matter, according to the grace given them, obstructing their design, I cannot refrain from tears. They say, indeed: 'It is not yet time, the hour has not come!' And yet we have here no day or hour. What would not you do had you the Emperor and Ferdinand favoring your attempts? Entreat God, therefore, in behalf of France, that she may at length be worthy of His word."[180]
The remainder of the task imposed on the weak Bishop of Meaux and his new allies, the monks of St. Francis, proved a more difficult undertaking. The shepherds had been dispersed, but the flock refused to forsake the fold. From the nourishing food they had discovered in the Word of God, they could not be induced to return to the husks offered to them in meaningless ceremonies, celebrated in an unknown tongue by men of impure lives. The Gospels in French remained more attractive than the legendary, even after the bishop had abandoned the championship of the incipient reformation. Briçonnet's own expressed wish was granted: if he had "changed his speech and teaching," the common people, at least, had not changed with him.
The wool-carder, Jean Leclerc, tears down a papal bull.
His barbarous sentence.
Among the first fruits of the Reformation in Meaux was a wool-carder, Jean Leclerc, into whose hands had fallen one of Lefèvre's French Testaments. He was a man of strong convictions and invincible resolution. A bull, issued by Clement the Seventh in connection with the approaching jubilee, had been posted on the doors of the cathedral (December, 1524). It offered indulgence, and enjoined prayers, fasting, and partaking of the Communion, in order to obtain from heaven the restoration of peace between princes of Christendom. Leclerc secretly tore the bull down, substituting for it a placard in which the Roman pontiff figured as veritable Antichrist. Diligent search was at once instituted for the perpetrator of this offence, and for the author of the subsequent mutilation of the prayers to the Virgin hung up in various parts of the same edifice. A truculent order was also issued in the bishop's name, threatening all persons that might conceal their knowledge of the culprits with public excommunication, every Sunday and feast-day, "with ringing of bells and with candles lighted and then extinguished and thrown upon the earth, in token of eternal malediction."[181] Leclerc was discovered, and taken to Paris for trial. The barbarous sentence of parliament was, that he be whipped in Paris by the common executioner on three successive days, then transferred to Meaux to receive the like punishment, and finally branded on the forehead with a red-hot iron, before being banished forever from the kingdom.[182]
The cruel prescription was followed out to the letter (March, 1525). A superstitious multitude flocked together to see and gloat over the condign punishment of a heretic, and gave no word of encouragement and support. But, as the iron was leaving on Leclerc's brow the ignominious imprint of the fleur-de-lis,[183] a single voice suddenly broke in upon the silence. It was that of his aged mother, who, after an involuntary cry of anguish, quickly recovered herself and shouted, "Hail Jesus Christ and his standard-bearers!"[184] Although many heard her words, so deep was the impression, that no attempt was made to lay hands upon her.[185]