But nothing could stop the queen. Being resolved to give the Gospel to France, she said to herself that it must be done now or never. Her zeal carried her to an extraordinary act. The Sorbonne closed the doors of the churches against Roussel: Margaret opened to him the palace of the king. She had a saloon prepared in the Louvre, and gave orders to admit all who desired to enter. Was the king informed of this? It is possible, and even probable, that he was. He did not fear to show the pope and Charles V. how far his alliance with Henry VIII. and the protestants would extend. He would not have liked to appear schismatic and heretical; but he sometimes was pleased that his sister should do so; and he could always vindicate himself on the ground of absence.
A Lutheran sermon at the Louvre! That was truly a strange thing; and accordingly the crowd was so great that there was not room for them. Margaret threw open a larger hall, but that too was filled, as well as the corridors and ante-chamber.[277] A third time the place of meeting was changed.[278] She had vainly selected the largest hall; the galleries and adjoining rooms were filled, and room was wanting still. These evangelical preachings at the Louvre excited a lively curiosity in Paris. They were all the fashion, and the worthy Roussel, to his great surprise, became quite famous. He preached every day during Lent,[279] and every day the crowd grew larger. Nobles, lawyers, men of letters, merchants, scholars, and tradespeople of every class flocked to the Louvre from all parts of Paris, especially from the quarters of the University and St. Germain. At the hour of preaching, the citizens poured over the bridges in a stream, or crossed the Seine in boats. Some were attracted by piety, some by curiosity, and others by vanity. Four or five thousand hearers crowded daily round Roussel.[280]
When the worthy citizens, students, and professors had climbed the stairs at the Louvre, crossed the antechambers, and reached the door of the principal saloon, they stopped, opened their eyes wide, and looked wonderingly on the sight presented to them in the monarch's palace. The King and Queen of Navarre were in the chief places, seated in costly chairs, whence the active Margaret cast a satisfied glance on all those courtiers, those notables of the city, those curious Parisians, those friends of Reform, who were flocking to hear the Word of God. There were people of every rank: John Sturm, already so decided for the Gospel, was seen by the side of the elegant John de Montluc, afterwards Bishop of Valence. At length the minister appeared; he prayed with unction, read the Scriptures with gravity, and then began his exhortations to the hearers. His language was simple, but it stirred their hearts profoundly. Roussel proclaimed the salvation obtained by a living faith, and urged the necessity of belonging to the invisible Church of the saints. Instead of attacking the Roman religion, he addressed his appeals to the conscience; and this preaching of the Gospel (rather softened down as it was) won, instead of irritating, men's minds. Accustomed as they were to the babbling of the monks, the congregation listened seriously to the practical preaching of the minister of God. Here were no scholastic subtleties, no absurd legends, no amusing anecdotes, no burlesque declamations, and no unclean pictures: it was the Gospel.[281] As they quitted the Louvre, men conversed about the sermon or the preacher. Sturm of Strasburg and John de Montluc, in particular, often talked together.[282] The satisfaction was general. 'What a preacher!' they said; 'we have never heard anything like it! What freedom in his language! what firmness in his teaching!'[283] Some of his hearers wrote in their admiration to Melanchthon, who informed Luther, Spalatin, and others of it.[284] Germany rejoiced to see France begin to move at last.
Margaret, who had a lively imagination and warm heart, was all on fire. She spoke to the worldlings of that 'peace of God which passeth all understanding.' She said to the friends of the Gospel: 'The Almighty will graciously complete what he has graciously begun through us.' She added: 'I will spend myself in it.' She excited and stirred up everybody about her, and the crowded congregations of the Louvre were in great measure the result of her incessant activity. She knew how by a word or a message to attract courtiers whose only thoughts were of debauchery, and catholics whose only wish was for the pope. Like a sabbath-bell, she called Paris to hear the voice of God, and drew the crowd. Possessing in the highest degree, so long as her brother did not check it, that energy which women often show in religious matters, she was resolved to prosecute her work and win the prize of the contest.
She returned to her first idea. She said to herself that the best way to effect a reform in the Church without occasioning a schism, was for the Gospel to be preached in the churches of Paris and of France. The ceremonies of the Roman worship and the jurisdiction of the bishops would remain, but Christ would be proclaimed. This system, which was fundamentally that of Melanchthon and even of Luther at this time,[285] she did her best to realise. The victory she had just achieved at the Louvre doubled her courage; she determined to have the churches which had been refused to her at first. She therefore began to work upon the king, and, as he was thinking only of his alliances with Henry VIII. and the protestants, she obtained from him an order authorising the Bishop of Paris to appoint whom he pleased to preach in his diocese.[286] The prelate, who was a brother of the diplomatist Du Bellay, passed like him for a friend of the Reformation. At Margaret's request he named two evangelical Augustine monks—Courault and Berthaud. 'Strange!' said the public voice; 'here are men of the order to which Luther belonged going to preach the doctrine of the great reformer in the capital of France.' All the evangelicals were overjoyed and wrote to their friends everywhere that 'Paris was supplied with three excellent preachers, announcing the truth ... with a little more boldness than was customary.'[287]
=ESSENCE OF EVANGELICAL PREACHING.=
Courault, a sincere scriptural christian, who did not participate in Margaret's subtleties, preached at St. Saviour's. The inhabitants of the quarter of St. Denis and from other parts crowded to this church. Many persons who had said of the preachings at the Louvre, 'They are not for us,' hastened to the place which belonged to the people. The man who occupied the pulpit was about the middle age; he did not possess Roussel's grace, he was even somewhat rough, and preached the Gospel without reserve and without disguise. His lively and aggressive style, his expressive and rather threatening gestures arrested attention. He attacked unsparingly the errors of the Church and the vices of christians. Courault did not come, as the Roman preachers had done up to that very hour, to impose on his hearers certain laws, ceremonies, and acts of worship by means of which they could be reconciled to God and merit his favour. He spoke not of feasts, or of dedications, or of customs, or of those mechanical prayers and chantings, in which the understanding and the heart have no share, and with which the Church burdened believers. He had a special horror of all that mixes up the worship of the creature with the adoration of God, and would not suffer the perfect work of Christ to be obscured by the invocation of other mediators. He preached that the true worship of the New Testament was faith in the Gospel, and the love which proceeds from faith; that it was communion with Christ, patience under the cross, and a holy activity in doing good, accompanied by the constant prayers of the heart. This preaching, so new in the capital, attracted an immense crowd. The enthusiasm was universal. 'This man is in the first rank among good men,' was the general opinion.[288] 'He is like a sentinel on a tower who, with his eyes fixed on the east, proclaims that the sun, so long hidden, will shine at last upon the earth.'[289] Light beamed from Courault's discourses. His sight was weak, and in after years, during his exile in Switzerland, where he was Calvin's colleague, he became quite blind; but his language was always marked by great clearness. It was said of him that 'although blind he enlightens the soul.'[290] Among his hearers was Louis du Tillet, Calvin's friend, and the youthful canon was deeply excited by the living faith of the aged Augustine. 'Oh! what piety I found in him!' he exclaimed on a later occasion.[291]
Berthaud, the other preacher named by the bishop, subsequently deserted the Gospel and died a canon of Besançon: so that each of them reminds us of our Saviour's words: There shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.[292]
These evangelical preachings in the palace of the king and in the churches of Paris were important facts, and there has been nothing like it since in France. The alarm was consequently at its height. People asked whether the sentinels of the Church were asleep, and whether the bark of St. Peter would founder, while the Gospel ship seemed floating onwards in full sail.
=AGITATION OF THE SORBONNE.=