=PILGRIMAGE TO ST. CLAIRE.=
An immense crowd from all the Savoyard villages flocked to the city, 'in great devotion,' on the first day. Chablais, Faucigny, Genevois, and Gex were full of devotees strongly opposed to the Reformation; they were delighted at going to pay homage in Geneva itself to the principles for which they had so often taken up arms. As they saw these long lines approach their walls, the citizens felt a certain fear. 'Let us be on our guard,' they said, 'lest under the dress of pilgrims the knights and men-at-arms of the Spoon should be concealed.' They suddenly closed the city gates. The pilgrims continuing to arrive soon made a crowd, and, being fatigued with their long march, exclaimed in a pitiful voice: 'Pray open the gates, for we have come from a distance.' But the Genevans were deaf. Then appeared the pilgrims from Faucigny, energetic and vigorous men, who got angry, and finding words of no avail, they forced the gates, and proceeded to the church of St. Claire, where they began unceremoniously to say their Paters and Aves. According to a bull of Adrian VI., it was sufficient to repeat five of these to obtain seventy thousand years of pardon.[857] The colour mounted to the cheeks of some of the huguenots, who would have resisted the unlawful intrusion; but the Faucignerans continued their devotions as calmly as if they had been in their own villages. Then the syndics went to St. Claire (it was the hour of vespers), accompanied by their sergeants 'with drawn swords and stout staves,' and made the usual summons for these strangers to leave the city. Upon the refusal of the Savoyards, the public force interfered; the Faucignerans resisted, blows were exchanged, and finally these extraordinary pilgrims were compelled to retire without having gained their pardon. This scene increased the dislike of the Genevans to the Romish ceremonies. To publish indulgences was a curious means of strengthening catholicism in Geneva. Pope Clement VII. forgot that Leo X. had thus given the signal for the Reformation.[858]
When these scenes were described at Rome, they excited great irritation. The sacred college determined to try again, and to exhibit in the very midst of this heretic population a still more striking act of Roman devotion. Clement VII. called his secretary and dictated to him, 'of divine inspiration,' a new pardon, to which the Bishop of Geneva affixed his placet, and which inflicted the penalty of excommunication on any who should oppose it. This bull was published in the Savoyard country adjacent to Geneva. The parish priests had scarcely announced the pardon from their pulpits, ere the villages were astir, and men and women, old and young, made their arrangements to go and seek the glorious grace offered them in the city of the huguenots. The Genevans, friends of religious liberty and legality, determined to offer no hindrance to these devotions. But they took their precautions, and the captain-general called out a strong guard. The pilgrims approached, staff in hand, some carrying a cross on their shoulders; and erelong a great crowd of Savoyards appeared before the walls. Here they were compelled to halt. At each gate were arquebusiers, a great many of them huguenots, who searched the pilgrims lest they should carry swords beneath their clothes, in addition to their staves. The examination was made, not without much grumbling, but no arms were found.
Then the devoted multitude rushed into the city, and crowded into the church of St. Claire as if it had been that of Our Lady of Loretto. The Genevans suffered the pilgrims to go through all their forms without obstruction. If the Savoyards wished to perform their devotions, they reckoned also, as is usual in affairs of this kind, upon eating and drinking, and that abundantly. The crowd for this part of the pilgrimage was so great, that the tavern-keepers, for want of room, were forced to set tables in the open air. This mixture of praying and drinking made the spectators smile, and some of the huguenots gave vent to their sarcastic humour: 'Really,' said one, 'this pardon is quite an ecclesiastical fair' (nundinæ ecclesiasticæ)! 'The fair,' said another, 'is more useful than people imagine. By these pilgrimages the priests revive the flagging zeal of their flocks. They are nets in which the simple birds come and are caught.' 'I very much fear,' added a third, 'that in order to sell her indulgences, the Church makes many promises which God certainly will not fulfil.... It is a pious fraud, as Thomas Aquinas says.'—'Let them alone,' said others, 'let them bring their money ... and then, when the plate is well filled, we will empty it.' They did not proceed to such extremities: the syndics merely forbade the money to be spent out of the city.[859]
=PRIDE OF THE NUNS OF ST. CLAIRE.=
The sisters of St. Claire rejoiced. The pope had honoured them in the sight of all christendom; their monastery was on the way to become a celebrated place. They believed themselves to be the favourites of God and of the heavenly intelligences, and imagined that angels would come to their assistance. As the plague was then raging in Geneva, they saw—surprising miracle!—the hosts of heaven leaving their glorious abodes to preserve the convent: the plague did not visit it. All the nuns were convinced that this was due to a miraculous intervention. And when the sisters, in church or in refectory, at vespers or at matins, conversed about this great grace, they whispered to one another: 'Three wondrously handsome and formidable knights, each having a beautiful shining cross on his forehead, keep watch before the gate.... And when the wicked plague appears, she sees them straight in front of her, and flees away, fearing the brightness of their faces.' Sister Jeanne de Jussie informs us of this miraculous fact, and concludes her narrative with this pious exclamation: 'To God be the honour and praise!' Some sensible men afterwards asked why these knights, 'with the shining cross on their foreheads,' had not stationed themselves at the gates of Geneva to prevent the entrance of that other plague (as Rome called it), the Reformation?
The means which the pope had selected for reannexing Geneva to Rome, had quite a different effect: they produced a revival of religion. The Roman indulgence aroused the Genevans, and made them seek for a real pardon. Had not Luther, fourteen years before, proclaimed at Wittemberg that 'every true christian participates in all the blessings of Christ, by God's gift, and without a letter of indulgence?'—'This doctrine,' said certain huguenots who had returned from a journey through the cantons, 'is received in Switzerland, and not at Zurich and Berne alone. There are many people of Lucerne and Schwytz even, who prefer God's pardon to the pardons of the pope.'
An invisible hand was at that time stretched over the city, and holding a blessing in reserve for it. Farel, who was on the shores of the lake of Neufchatel, was informed of the evangelical movement which followed the noisy devotions of the Faucignerans, and wrote about it immediately to Zwingle, his friend and counsellor. This was in October 1531: yet a few more days, and the reformer of Zurich was to meet his death on the battle-field of Cappel. This awakening of Geneva was the last news which came to rejoice his oppressed soul. 'Many in that city,' wrote Farel, 'feel in their hearts holy aspirations after true piety.'[860] And, according to this energetic reformer, it was something more than vague movements of the soul that they felt. 'Several Genevans,' he wrote another day to Zwingle, 'are meditating on the work of Christ.'[861]
='DE CHRISTO MEDITARI.'=
Thus, then, did that city of Geneva, which had been so engrossed with political independence, begin to reflect on Jesus Christ. It was the new topic which the Reformation presented everywhere to the consideration of earnest men. In Germany, Switzerland, France, and England, still more than at Geneva, serious minds were beginning to meditate on Christ—de Christo meditari. Some did so in a superficial manner; others devoted themselves to it in the depths of their soul; and holy thoughts found a home in the houses of the citizens, in the colleges, in obscure cells, and even on the throne. 'Christ is the Redeemer of the world,' thought these meditative minds, 'the restorer of the union with God, which sin destroyed.... Christ came to establish the kingdom of God upon earth.... But no one can enter that kingdom unless God pardons his sins.... In order that we may find peace, not only must our souls be relieved from the penalty, but our consciences must be delivered from the feeling of the sin that keeps it apart from its God.... An atonement is necessary.... Christ, like those whom he came to save, a man like them, is at the same time of an eternal and divine nature, which has given him power to ransom the entire people of God, and to be the principle of a new life.... He took upon himself the terrible penalty which we deserved.... His whole life was one continuous expiatory suffering.... But the crowning of his sorrows, and what gave them truly the character of expiation, was his death.... Christ, uniting himself to humanity through love for us, suffered death under a form which bears in the most striking manner the character of a punishment, that is to say, the pain of a malefactor condemned by a human tribunal.... He, the Holy One, wishing to save his people, was made sin upon the cross.... He was treated as the representative of sinful humanity.... He, the beloved of the Father, endured for rebellious men the most deadly anguish, the entire abandonment by God.... From that hour the people of God enjoy the remission of their sins, they are reconciled with God, they have free access to the Father.... That sacrifice is of universal comprehensiveness; no one is excluded from it ... and yet no one receives the benefit of it, except by a personal appropriation, by being united to Jesus Christ, by participating, through faith, in his holy and imperishable life.'