Chastise thy enemies
Thy saints who slay.[123]
This little poem by the Queen of Navarre, which contains several other verses, was the martyrs' hymn in the sixteenth century. Nothing shows more clearly that she was heart and soul with the evangelicals.
Terror reigned among the reformed christians for some time after Berquin's martyrdom. They endured reproach, without putting themselves forward; they did not wish to irritate their enemies, and many of them retired to the desert, that is, to some unknown hiding-place. It was during this period of sorrow and alarm, when the adversaries imagined that by getting rid of Berquin they had got rid of the Reformation as well, and when the remains of the noble martyr were hardly scattered to the winds of heaven, that Calvin once more took up his abode in Paris, not far from the spot where his friend had been burnt. Rome thought she had put the reformer to death; but he was about to rise again from his ashes, more spiritual, more clear, and more powerful, to labour at the renovation of society and the salvation of mankind.
[95] Journal de Louise de Savoie.
[96] Marguerites de la Marguerite, i. p. 502.
[97] 'Illis licere venena sua spargere, nobis non licere admovere antidota.'—Erasmi Epp. p. 1109.
[98] Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris sous François I. p. 380.
[99] Flor. Rémond, Hist. de l'Hérésie, p. 348.
[100] Calvin.