It will be seen that it was not heresy, properly so called, that the chancellor condemned in the Reformation, but liberty. A religion which was not exclusively in the hands of priests was, in his eyes, more alarming than heresy. If such practices were tolerated, would they not one day see gentlemen, shopkeepers, and even men sprung from the ranks of the people, presuming to have something to say in matters of state? The germ of the constitutional liberties of modern times lay hid in the bosom of the Reformation. The chancellor was not mistaken. He wished at one blow to destroy both religious and political liberty. He found enthusiastic accomplices in the priests assembled at Paris. The council drew up a decree ordering the bishops and even the inhabitants of the dioceses to denounce all the Lutherans of their acquaintance.
Would the king sanction this decree? Duprat was uneasy. He collected his thoughts, arranged his arguments, and proceeded to the palace with the hope of gaining his master. ‘Sire,’ he said to Francis, ‘God is able without your help to exterminate all this heretical band;[647] but, in his great goodness, he condescends to call men to his aid. Who can tell of the glory and happiness of the many princes who, in past ages, have treated heretics as the greatest enemies of their crowns, and have given them over to death? If you wish to obtain salvation; if you wish to preserve your sovereign rights intact; if you wish to keep the nations submitted to you in tranquillity: manfully defend the catholic faith, and subdue all its enemies by your arms.’[648] Thus spoke Duprat; but the king thought to himself that if his ‘sovereign rights’ were menaced at all, it might well be by the power of Rome. He remained deaf as before.
‘Let us go further,’ said the chancellor to his creatures; ‘let the whole Church call for the extirpation of heresy.’ Councils were held at Lyons, Rouen, Tours, Rheims, and Bourges, and the priests restrained themselves less in the provinces than in the capital. ‘These heretics,’ said the fiery orators, ‘worship the devil, whom they raise by means of certain herbs and sacrilegious forms.’[649] But all was useless; Francis took pleasure in resisting the priests, and Duprat soon encountered an obstacle not less formidable.
If it was the duty of the priests to denounce the ‘enchanters,’ it was the business of the parliament to condemn them; but parliament and the chancellor were at variance. On the death of his wife, Duprat, then a layman and first president of parliament, had calculated that this loss might be a gain, and he entered the Church in order to get possession of the richest benefices in the kingdom. First, he laid his hands on the archbishopric of Sens, although at the election there were twenty-two votes against him and only one for him.[650] Shortly after that, he seized the rich abbey of St. Benedict. ‘To us alone,’ said the monks, ‘belongs the choice of our abbot;’ and they boldly refused to recognise the chancellor. Duprat’s only answer was to lock them all up. The indignant parliament sent an apparitor to the archbishop’s officers, and ordered them to appear before it; but the officers fell upon the messenger, and beat him so cruelly that he died. The king decided in favour of his first minister, and the difference between the parliament and the chancellor grew wider.
Duprat, who desired to become reconciled with this court, whose influence was often necessary to him, fancied he could gain it over by means of the Lutheran heresy, which they both detested equally. On their side the parliament desired nothing better than to recover the first minister’s favour. These intrigues succeeded. ‘The chancellor and the counsellors mutually gave up the truth, which they looked upon as a mere nothing, like a crust of bread which one throws to a dog,’ to use the words of a reformer. Great was the exultation then in sacristy and in convent.
As chancellor, Sorbonne, and parliament were agreed, it seemed impossible that the Reformation should not succumb under their combined attacks. They said to one another: ‘We must pluck up all these ill weeds;’ but they did not require, however, that it should be done in one day. ‘If the king will only grant us some little isolated persecution,’ said the enemies of the Reform, ‘we will so work the matter that all the grist shall come to the mill at last.’
But even that they could not obtain from the king; the terrible mill remained idle and useless. The agitation of the clergy was, in the opinion of Francis, mere monkish clamour; he desired to protect learning against the attacks of the ultramontanists. Besides, he felt that the greatest danger which threatened his authority was the theocratic power, and he feared still more these restless and noisy priests. The Reformation appeared to be saved, when an unexpected circumstance delivered it over to its enemies.
CHAPTER XI.
REJOICINGS AT FONTAINEBLEAU AND THE VIRGIN OF THE RUE DES ROSIERS.
(1528.)
Everything appeared in France to incline towards peace and joy. The court was at Fontainebleau, where Francis I. and the Duchess of Angoulême, the King and Queen of Navarre, and all the most illustrious of the nobility, had assembled to receive the young Duke of Ferrara, who had just arrived (20th of May, 1528) to marry Madame Renée, daughter of Louis XII. and Anne of Brittany. It was a time of rejoicing. Francis I., whose favourite residence was Fontainebleau, had erected a splendid palace there, and laid out ‘beautiful gardens, shrubberies, fountains, and all things pleasant and recreative.’—‘Really,’ said the courtiers, ‘the king has turned a wilderness into the most beautiful residence in christendom—so spacious that you might lodge a little world in it.’[651] Foreigners were struck with the magnificence of the palace and the brilliancy of the court. The marriage of the daughter of Louis XII. was approaching: there was nothing but concerts and amusements. There were excursions in the forest, and sumptuous banquets in the palace, and learned men (says Brantôme) discoursed at table on ‘the higher and the lower sciences.’ But nothing attracted the attention of the foreign visitors so much as the Queen of Navarre. ‘I observed her,’ says a bishop, a papal legate, ‘while she was speaking to Cardinal d’Este, and I admired in her features, her expression, and in every movement, an harmonious union of majesty, modesty, and kindness.’[652] Such was Margaret in the midst of the court; the goodness of her heart, the purity of her life, and the abundance of her works spoke eloquently to those about her of the beauty of the Gospel.
The princess, who was compelled to take part in every court entertainment, never let an opportunity pass of calling a soul to Jesus Christ. In the sixteenth century there was no evangelist, among women at least, more active than her; this is a trait too important in the French Reformation to be passed by unnoticed. The maids of honour of the Duchess of Angoulême were no longer the virtuous damsels of Queen Claude. Margaret, feeling the tenderest compassion for these young women, called now one and now another to Christ; she conjured her ‘dears’ (as she styled them) not to be ‘caught by pleasure,’ which would render them hateful to God.