The firm hold which the Reformation was gaining on the population of several places of great importance, close upon the eastern frontiers of the kingdom, was a portent of evil in the eyes of the Sorbonne; for Metz, St. Hippolyte, and Montbéliard, all destined to be absorbed in the growing territories of France, were already bound to it by close ties of commercial intercourse.
Jean Châtellain, of Metz.
In Metz the powerful appeals of an Augustinian monk, Jean Châtellain, had powerfully moved the masses. He was as eloquent as he was learned, as commanding in appearance as fearless in the expression of his belief.[245] The attempt to molest him would have proved a very dangerous one for the clergy of Metz to make; for the enthusiasm of the laity in his support knew no bounds, and the churchmen prudently avoided giving it an occasion for manifestation. But, no sooner had Châtellain been induced on some pretext to leave the safe protection of the walls, than a friar of his own order and monastery betrayed him to the bishop.[246] He was hurriedly taken to Nommeny, and thence to Vic for trial and execution. In vain did the Inquisitor of the Faith strive to shake his constancy. His judges were forced to liken their incorrigible prisoner to the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear. As "a preacher of false doctrines," an "apostate" and a "liar toward God Almighty," they declared him excommunicated and deprived of whatever ecclesiastical benefices he might hold. The faithful compiler of the French martyrology gives in accurate, but painful, detail the successive steps by which Châtellain was stripped of the various prerogatives conferred upon him in ordination. I shall not repeat the story of sacred vessels placed in his hands only to be hastily snatched from them, of the scraping of his fingers supposed to remove the grace of consecration, of chasuble and stole indignantly taken away—in short, of all the petty devices of a malice at which the mind wearies and the heart sickens. It was perhaps a fitting sequel to the ceremony that the degrading bishop should hand his victim over to the representative of the secular arm to be put to death, with a hypocritical recommendation to mercy: "Lord Judge, we entreat you as affectionately as we can, as well by the love of God, as from pity and compassion, and out of respect for our prayers, that you do this wretched man no injury tending to death or the mutilation of his body."[247] The prayer was granted—according to the intent of the petitioner. On the twelfth of January, 1525, Châtellain was led to the place of execution, as cheerful in demeanor, the witnesses said, as if walking to a feast. At the stake he knelt and offered a short prayer, then met his horrible sentence with a constancy that won many converts to the faith for which he had suffered. At the news of the fate of their admired teacher, the citizens of Metz could not contain their rage. A tumultuous scene ensued, in which it was well that the ecclesiastics—there were more than nine hundred within the walls[248]—escaped with no greater injury at the hands of the angry populace than some passing insults. John Vedast, an evangelical teacher, was at that time in confinement, reserved for a similar doom to that of Châtellain. He was liberated by the people, who, in a body membering several thousand men, visited his prison and enabled him to escape to a safe refuge. It was not until a strong detachment of troops had been thrown into the city that the burgesses were reduced to submission.[249] "None the less," admits a Roman Catholic historian, "did Lutheranism spread over the entire district of Metz."[250]
Tragic end of Wolfgang Schuch.
At St. Hippolyte, a town near the Swiss frontier, dependent upon the Duke of Lorraine, similar success and a similarly tragic end were the results of the zealous labors of Wolfgang Schuch, a priest of German extraction. The "good duke" Antoine, having been led to confound the peaceable disciples of Schuch with the revolted peasants, whose ravages had excited widespread alarm throughout Germany, publicly proclaimed his intention of visiting the town that harbored them with fire and sword. To propitiate him by removing his misapprehension, Schuch wrote to the duke a singularly touching letter containing a candid exposition of the religion he professed;[251] but finding that his missive had been of no avail, he resolved to immolate himself in behalf of his flock. At Nancy, the capital of the duchy, whither he had gone to dissuade Antoine from executing his savage threats, he was thrown into a loathsome dungeon, while the University of Paris was consulted respecting the soundness of thirty-one propositions extracted from his writings by the Inquisitor of Lorraine. On the nineteenth of August, 1525—the theologians of the Sorbonne having some months before reported unfavorably upon the theses submitted to them—Wolfgang Schuch was consigned to the flames.[252]
Farel at Montbéliard.
Less sanguinary results attended the Reformation at Montbéliard, where the indefatigable Farel was the chief actor. One of those highly dramatic incidents, in which the checkered life of this remarkable man abounds, is said to have preceded his withdrawal from the city. Happening, on St. Anthony's day, to meet, upon a bridge spanning a narrow stream in the neighborhood, a solemn procession headed by priests chanting the praises of the saint whose effigy they bore aloft, Farel was seized with an uncontrollable desire to arrest the impious service. Snatching the image from the hands of ecclesiastics who were little prepared for so sudden an onslaught, he indignantly cried, "Wretched idolaters, will you never forsake your idolatry?" At the same instant he threw the saint into the water, before the astonished devotees had time to interfere. Had not some one just then opportunely raised the shout, "The saint is drowning," it might have gone hard with the fearless iconoclast.[253]
The Reformation was thus gaining a foothold in the bishopric of Metz, in the duchy of Lorraine, and the county of Montbéliard—districts as yet independent of France, in which country they were subsequently merged. But, if suffered to be victorious at these important points, it might readily cross the borders and spread with irresistible force to the contiguous parts of Francis's dominions. Nearer home, the reformatory movement at Meaux, though abandoned by the bishop who had fostered its first development, was not wholly suppressed. In Lyons and Grenoble, Friar Aimé Maigret had preached such evangelical sermons—in French to the people and in Latin to the Parliament of Dauphiny—that he had been sent to Paris to be examined by the Sorbonne. The primate and his council had seen with solicitude that from the ashes of Waldo and the Poor Men of Lyons "very many new shoots were springing up,"[254] and called for some signal act of severity to repress the growing evil.
Pierre Caroli lectures on the Psalms.
In Paris itself the Sorbonne found reason for alarm. The sympathy of Margaret of Angoulême with the friends of progress was recognized. It had already availed for the deliverance of Louis de Berquin, whose remarkable history will find a place in the next chapter. Nor did the redoubted syndic of the theological faculty, Beda, or Bédier, reign without a rival in the academic halls. Pierre Caroli, one of the doctors invited by Briçonnet to Meaux, a clever wrangler, and never better pleased than when involved in controversy, albeit a man of shallow religious convictions and signal instability, wearied out by his counter-plots the illustrious heresy-hunter. When forbidden to preach, Caroli opened a course of lectures upon the Psalms in the Collége de Cambray. Having then been interdicted from continuing his prelections, he made the modest request to be permitted to finish the exposition of the 22d Psalm, which he had begun. This being refused, the disputatious doctor posted the following notice on the doors of the college: "Pierre Caroli, wishing to conform to the orders of the sacred faculty, ceases to teach. He will resume his lectures (when it shall please God) where he left off, at the verse, 'They pierced my hands and my feet.'"[255]