Old And New Manners.

While the Word of God was forming new manners, the contrast of the old manners asserted itself more boldly. The people of the lower classes—men and women, youths and maidens—danced, according to custom, in the public square on the evening of Whitsunday. The tabarins played their music in the streets, and merry-andrews made the people laugh. The women of St. Gervais, disguised and carrying bunches of box, set the example to those of the other quarters. The young men united with them, and the joyous troops paraded the streets in long files, singing, capering, and sometimes attacking the passers-by. George Marchand, a huguenot no doubt, who was very ready with his hands, being caught hold of by a woman who wanted to make him dance with her, gave her a slap on the face. There was a fierce disturbance; and the Council consequently forbade these dancing promenades, and ordered that every one should be content ‘to dance before his own house:’ and this was surely enough. From that time such idle processions were not repeated. While the catholic common people were indulging in wanton sports, not perceiving that they were dancing round the open grave of Roman-catholicism, the evangelicals increased in zeal and faith to extend the teaching of the Word of God; and a gentler and more Christian life was about to be naturalized in that small but important city. The Whitsuntide procession of 1534, with its coarse jests, was, in Geneva, the funeral procession of popery.[[552]]

Indeed, the laity were then learning better things than those which the monks had taught them. It was not the ministers alone who labored; simple believers practiced the ministry of charity. If there chanced to be in any house a man ‘very rebellious,’ opposing the doctrine of Scripture, his friends, neighbors, and relations, who had tasted of its excellence, would go to him, and without offending him, without returning him evil for evil, ‘admonish him with great mildness.’ The evangelicals invited certain of their friends, even strangers and enemies, to their houses to eat and drink, in order that they might speak more familiarly with them. All their study was ‘to gain some one to the Word.’[[553]]

In the neighboring countries, in Savoy, Gex, Vaud, and the Chablais, not only did the enemies of Geneva use threats, but made preparations to attack it. There was much talk in the city of the assaults that were to be made by the forains, the aliens; and accordingly there was always a number of citizens kept under arms. Farel, Viret, and Froment often joined these soldiers of the republic during their night-watches, and, sitting near the gates of the city or on the ramparts, by the glare of the bivouac fires or the torches, they would converse together about the truth, questioning and answering one another. ‘Each man familiarly and freely objected and replied to what the preacher said;’ and sometimes before they left their posts, the citizens were resolved in heart upon religious points about which they had hitherto been in doubt. Not without reason are these ‘conversations of the bivouac’ recorded here. In later times, one of the evangelists of Geneva, calling to mind the nocturnal meetings he had held at the military posts, exclaimed: ‘At these assemblies and watches more people have been won to the Gospel than by public preaching.’[[554]]

CHAPTER XI.
BOLDNESS OF TWO HUGUENOTS IN PRISON AND BEFORE THE COURT OF LYONS.
(May to June 1534.)

Discussion In The Garden.

In the midst of these dangers and struggles the Huguenots were not to be consoled for the imprisonment of Maisonneuve. So long as the intrepid captain of the Lutherans was threatened with extreme punishment, the triumph of the evangelicals could not be complete. They feared generally a fatal termination, for Baudichon and Janin, far from yielding anything to their adversaries, were boldly spreading the knowledge of the Gospel in their prison. Janin was as much at his ease as if he had been in the streets of Geneva: at the jailer’s table, in the halls and galleries and elsewhere, the armorer argued about the faith. One day, meeting Jacques Desvaux, a priest of the diocese of Le Mans, Janin took him to task and tried to convert him to the Gospel. He spoke to him of the apostles and the saints, and showed him how they had always taught doctrines opposed to those of Rome. He did more. A garden was attached to the prison, and the prisoners were allowed to walk in it at certain hours. One day, shortly before the festival of the Rogations, Janin went into it, taking a French Testament with him, and began to read it. When he had done he left the book, not unintentionally, on a low wall, and went away. A priest named Delay (there was no lack of ecclesiastics in the archiepiscopal prison) passing near, observed the book, took it up, and, opening it, read: The New Testament. A Testament in French! Delay began to examine it: a number of prisoners, priests and others, gathered round him; he turned over the pages in search of the First Epistle of St. John, ‘because on that day the Church mentioned it,’ but could not find it.[[555]]

From the place in the garden to which he had retired, Janin saw Delay looking for something. Going up to him, the Genevese asked what he wanted. On being told, he took the book, immediately found the epistle (those laymen of Geneva knew their Bible better than the priests), and began to read the first chapter aloud, dwelling upon the words: The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. He stopped, and addressing the prisoners, explained the words, and drew their attention to two doctrines which, he said, can never be made to harmonize: that of the Bible, according to which we are cleansed by the blood of Christ; and that of Rome, according to which we are cleansed by meritorious works. ‘You explain the passage wrongly,’ exclaimed some of his hearers: ‘we must not follow the letter, but the moral meaning.’ It is an argument we have seen revived in more recent times. ‘You cannot understand that epistle,’ said a priest, ‘since you are obliged to read it in French.’—‘Surely I must read it in my own language,’ answered Janin, ‘for I do not understand Latin. God commanded his apostles to preach the Gospel to all creatures, and therefore in all languages.’—‘That is true,’ answered the priests: ‘prædicate Evangelium omni creaturæ; but it is also true that all good Christians draw near our mother, the Holy Church, to hear Scripture explained by the mouths of priests and doctors who, in this world, hold the place of the apostles.’ Janin, who, though honoring the special ministry of the Word, firmly believed in the universal priesthood taught by St. Peter,[[556]] exclaimed boldly: ‘I am just as much a priest as any man, and can give absolution. God has made us all priests. I can pronounce the sacramental words, like the other priests.’ And, if we are to believe his accusers, he added: ‘You may even utter them in the house, in the kitchen.’ He then began to repeat aloud: Hoc est corpus meum.[[557]] Janin was one of those daring spirits who imagine that the more they startle their hearers, the more good they do. Still, the ministers, Farel and Viret, had no warmer friend.

The prisoners who listened to him, wishing, perhaps, to prolong a discussion that amused them, started the huguenot again. ‘The Virgin Mary,’ began one. Janin, interrupting him, said: ‘The Virgin Mary was the noblest woman that ever existed in the world, inasmuch as she bore in her bosom Him who has washed us from our sins. But we must not pray to her or to the saints in paradise.’—‘And prayers for the dead,’ suggested another.—‘There is no need of them,’ said the armorer, ‘for as soon as we are dead, we are saved or condemned for everlasting, and there is no purgatory.’[[558]]

Rogation Festival.