The French Reformation was thus constrained to become a popular movement. The king had refused to lead it. The nobles turned their backs upon it. Its adherents, threatened with the gallows and stake, or driven into banishment, could no longer look for encouragement or direction toward Paris and the vicinage of the court. The timid counsels of the high-born were to be exchanged for the bold and fiery words of reformers sprung from the people. Excluded from the luxurious capital, the Huguenots were, during a long series of years, to draw their inspiration from a city at the foot of the Alps—a city whose invigorating climate was no less adapted to harden the intellectual and moral constitution than the bodily frame, and where rugged Nature, if she bestowed wealth with no lavish hand, manifested her impartiality by more liberal endowments conferred upon man himself. Geneva henceforth becomes the centre of reformatory activity, of which fact we need no stronger evidence than the severe legislation of France to destroy its influence; and the same causes that gave the direction of the movement to the people shaped its theological tendencies. Under the guidance of Francis and Margaret, it must have assumed much of the German or Lutheran type; or, to speak more correctly, the direct influence of Germany upon France, attested by the name of "Lutherans," up to this time the ordinary appellation of the French Protestants, would have been rendered permanent. But now the persecution they had experienced, in consequence of their opposition to the papal mass, confirmed the French reformers in their previous views, and disinclined them to admit even such a "consubstantiation" as Luther's followers insisted upon.
Geneva secures its independence.
The same complicated political motives that led Francis to relax his excessive rigor against the Protestants of his realm, in order to avoid provoking the anger of the German princes, prompted him to assist in securing the independence of Geneva, which, at the time, he little dreamed would so soon become the citadel of French Protestantism. After a prolonged contest, the city on the banks of the Rhône had shaken off the yoke of its bishop, and had bravely repelled successive assaults made by the Duke of Savoy. The first preachers of the Reformation, Farel and Froment, after a series of attempts and rebuffs for romantic interest inferior to no other episode in an age of stirring adventure, had seen the new worship accepted by the majority of the people, and by the very advocates of the old system, Caroli and Chapuis. If the grand council had thus far hesitated to give a formal sanction to the religious change, it was only through fear that the taking of so decided a step might provoke more powerful enemies than the neighboring duke. The latter, being fully resolved to humble the insubordinate burgesses, had for two years been striving to cut off their supplies by garrisons maintained in adjoining castles and strongholds; nor would his plans, perhaps, have failed, but for the intervention of two powerful opponents—Francis and the Swiss Canton of Berne.
with the assistance of Francis I.
Louise de Savoie was the sister of Duke Charles. Her son had a double cause of resentment against his uncle: Charles had refused him free passage through his dominions, when marching against the Milanese; and, contrary to all justice, he persistently refused to give up the marriage portion of his sister, the king's mother. Francis avenged himself, both for the insult and for the robbery, by permitting a gentleman of his bedchamber, by the name of De Verez, a native of Savoy, to throw himself into the beleaguered city with a body of French soldiers.
and the Bernese.
While Geneva was thus strengthened from within, the Bernese, on receipt of an unsatisfactory reply to an appeal in behalf of their allies, came to their assistance with an army of ten or twelve thousand men. Discouraged by the threatening aspect his affairs had assumed, Charles relaxed his grasp on the throat of his revolted subjects, and withdrew to a safe distance. His obstinacy, however, cost him the permanent loss not only of Geneva, but of a considerable part of his most valuable territories, including the Pays de Vaud—a district which, after remaining for more than two hundred and fifty years a dependency of Berne, has within the present century (in 1803), become an independent canton of the Swiss confederacy.[389]
Calvin the apologist of the Protestants.
The horrible slanders put in circulation abroad, in justification of the atrocities with which the unoffending Protestants of France were visited, furnished the motive for the composition and publication of an apology that instantly achieved unprecedented celebrity, and has long outlived the occasion that gave it birth. The apology was the "Institutes;" the author, John Calvin. With the appearance of his masterpiece, a great writer and theologian, destined to exercise a wide and lasting influence not only upon France, but over the entire intellectual world, enters upon the stage of French history to take a leading part in the unfolding religious and political drama.
His birth and training.