Berquin was grieved at this letter. In his opinion the moment was unparalleled. If Erasmus, Francis I., and Berquin act in harmony, no one can resist them; France, and perhaps Europe, will be reformed. And it is just when the King of France is stretching out his hand that the scholar of Rotterdam draws his back!... What can be done without Erasmus?... A circumstance occurred, however, which gave some hope to the evangelist.
The Sorbonne, little heeding the king’s opposition, persevered in their attacks upon learning. They forbade the professors in the colleges to read the ‘Colloquies’ of Erasmus with their pupils, and excommunicated the king of the schools in the schools themselves.... Erasmus, who was a vain, susceptible, choleric man, will now unite with Berquin: the latter had no doubt of it. ‘The time is come,’ wrote Berquin to the illustrious scholar; ‘let us pull off the mask behind which these theologians hide themselves.’ But the more Berquin urged Erasmus, the more Erasmus shrank back; he wished for peace at any cost. It was of no use to point to the blows which the Sorbonne were aiming at him; it pleased him to be beaten, not from meekness, but from fear of the world. The wary man, who was now growing old, became impatient, not against his slanderers, but against his friend. His ‘son’ wanted to lead him as if he were his master. He replied with sadness, almost with bitterness: ‘Truly I admire you, my dear Berquin. You imagine, then, that I have nothing else to do than spend my days in battling with theologians.... I would rather see all my books condemned to the flames than go fighting at my age.’ Unhappily, Erasmus did not abandon his books only, he abandoned truth; and there he was wrong. Berquin did not despair of victory, and undertook to win it unaided. He thought to himself: ‘Erasmus admires in the Gospel a certain harmony with the wisdom of antiquity, but he does not adore in it the foolishness of the cross; he is a theorist, not a reformer.’ From that hour Berquin wrote more rarely and more coldly to his illustrious master, and employed all his strength to carry by main force the place he was attacking. If Erasmus, like Achilles, had retired to his tent, were not Margaret and Francis, and Truth especially, fighting by his side?
The catholic party grew alarmed, and resolved to oppose a vigorous resistance to these attacks. The watchword was given. Many libels were circulated; men were threatened with the gaol and the stake; even ghosts were conjured up; all means were lawful. One sister Alice quitted the fires of purgatory and appeared on the banks of the Rhone and Saone to confound ‘the damnable sect of heretics.’ Any one might read of this prodigy in the ‘Marvellous History of the Ghost of Lyons,’ written by one of the king’s almoners. The Sorbonne knew, however, that phantoms were not sufficient; but they had on their side something more than phantoms. They could oppose Berquin with adversaries who had flesh and blood like himself, and whose power seemed irresistible. These adversaries were a princess and a statesman.
CHAPTER X.
EFFORTS OF DUPRAT TO BRING ABOUT A PERSECUTION: RESISTANCE OF FRANCIS I.
(1527-1528.)
A woman reigned in the councils of the king. Inclined at first to ridicule the monks, she had after the defeat of Pavia gone over to the side of the priests. At the moment when the kingly authority received such a blow, she had seen that their power remained, and had made them her auxiliaries. This woman was Louisa of Savoy, Duchess of Angoulême, mother of Francis I., worthy predecessor of Catherine de’ Medici. A clever woman, ‘an absolute lady in her wishes both good and bad,’ says Pasquier; a freethinker, who could study the new doctrine as a curiosity, but who despised it; a dissolute woman, of whom Beaucaire, Brantôme, and others relate many scandalous anecdotes; a fond and absolute mother, who all her life preserved an almost sovereign authority over her son,—Louisa held in her hand two armies which she managed at will. One of these was composed of her maids of honour, by whose means she introduced into the court of France gallantry, scandal, and even indecency of language; the other was formed of intelligent, crafty men, who had no religion, no morality, no scruples; and at their head was Duprat.
The latter was the patron upon whom the Sorbonne thought they could rely. Enterprising and systematic, at once supple and firm, slavish and tyrannical, an intriguer and debauchee, often exasperated, never discouraged, ‘very clever, knowing, and subtle,’ says the Bourgeois de Paris; ‘one of the most pernicious men that ever lived,’ says another historian:[633] Duprat sold offices, ground the people down, and if any of them remonstrated against his disorders, he sent the remonstrants to the Bastille.[634] This man, who was archbishop of Sens and cardinal, and who aspired to be made legate a latere, having become a prince of the Roman Church, placed at its service his influence, his iron will, and even his cruelty.
But nothing could be done without the king. Louisa of Savoy and the cardinal, knowing his fickleness and his love of pleasure, and knowing also that in religious matters he cared only for pomp and ceremony, hoped to induce him easily to oppose the Reformation. Yet Francis hesitated and even resisted. He pretended to have a great taste for letters, of which the Gospel, in his eyes, formed part. He yielded willingly to his sister, who pleaded warmly the cause of the friends of the Gospel. He detested the arrogance of the priests. The boldness with which they put forward ultramontane ideas; set another power (the power of the pope) above his; attacked his ideas in conversations, pamphlets, and even in the pulpit; their restless character, their presumptuous confidence in the triumph of their cause,—all this irritated one of the most susceptible monarchs that ever reigned; and he was pleased at seeing a man like Berquin take down the boasting of the clergy.
Yet it may well be that the king was influenced by higher motives. He saw the human mind displaying a fresh activity in every direction. The literary, the philosophical, the political, the religious world were all undergoing important transformations in the first half of the sixteenth century. In the midst of all these different movements, Francis I. may have sometimes had a confused feeling that there was one which was the mainspring, the dominant fact, the generating principle, and, if I may use the words, the fiat lux of the new creation. He saw that the Reformation was the great force then acting in the world; that all others were subordinate to it; that to it belonged, according to an ancient prophecy, the gathering of the people;[635] and in these moments, when his sight was clear, he wished to join himself to that invisible power which was effecting more than all the other powers. Unfortunately his passions soon disturbed his sight, and after having caught a glimpse of the day, he plunged back again into night.
As for Duprat he felt no hesitation; he resolutely put himself on the side of darkness, impelled by ambition and covetousness: he was always with the ultramontanists. The struggle was about to begin between the better aspirations of the king and the plots of the court of Rome. It was hard to say with which of these two powers the victory would ultimately remain. The chancellor-cardinal had, however, no doubt about it; he arranged the attack with skill, and thought he had hit upon a way, as vile as it was sure, of checking the Reform.
The king had to provide for the heavy charges which the treaty of Madrid imposed upon him, and he had no money. He applied to the clergy. ‘Good!’ said they; ‘let us take advantage of the opportunity given us.’ They furnished 1,300,000 livres, but demanded in return, according to Duprat’s suggestion, that his Majesty ‘should extirpate the damnable and insupportable Lutheran sect which some time since had secretly crept into the kingdom.’[636] The king, who wanted money, would be ready to grant everything in order to fill his coffers; it seemed, then, that all was over not only with Berquin, but with the Reformation.