Alexander, who had preached the Gospel at Lyons with such energy, had just been thrown into prison. If De la Maisonneuve acknowledged him for his friend, they might easily class them together. The judges therefore asked him insidiously, ‘whether Jacques de la Croix, alias Alexander, had not in former times eaten and drunk at his house?’—‘If he has eaten and drunk at my house,’ responded Baudichon, ‘I hope it did him good.’ And that was all. It was impossible to make the prisoner fall into the trap: his good sense foiled all the plots of his adversaries.
Thus did the judges hunt down an innocent man. At that time men set themselves up between God and the soul of man. This was not only an outrage upon human liberty, it was high-treason against Heaven. Such a grave consideration imparts a tragic interest to this trial, and encourages us conscientiously to reproduce all its painful phases. The judge has no concern with the relations of the soul with its Creator. ‘The dominion of man ends where that of God begins.’[[541]] God does not give his glory to another. Whoever desires to exercise authority over the conscience is a madman; nay, more, he is an atheist. He presumes to move God from his throne and sit in his place.
CHAPTER X.
THE TWO WORSHIPS IN GENEVA.
(May to July 1534.)
Morality In The Reformation.
While they were prosecuting Maisonneuve on the banks of the Rhone and the Saône, the struggle between catholicism and reform became more active on the shores of Lake Leman: an evangelical was threatened with death at Lyons, but Roman-catholicism was on the point of expiring at Geneva. It was crumbling away beneath its own weight: the religious orders, and especially the Franciscans, which had been founded to support it, were now shaking its foundations. Notorious abuses and scandalous disorders were making the protest against monkery and popery more necessary every day. At the very moment when the trial was beginning at Lyons (3d of May), an honorable lady of Geneva, Madam Jaquemette Matonnier, passing near the Franciscan convent, observed a woman noted for her disorderly life stealthily entering the building. ‘It would be better for you,’ she said, ‘to stay with your husband.’ At these words, two monks who were standing at the door rushed violently upon Madame Matonnier and beat her until the blood came. This incident, which soon became known, aroused the whole city. The syndics went to the convent, shut up the two monks in the prison, and took away the key. ‘Men who live in convents,’ said the people, ‘ought not to be stained with such depravity; and yet it is hard to find one monastery out of ten that is not a den of wantonness rather than the home of chastity.’
Sin begat death. The Romish clergy destroyed themselves by the abominable manners of a great number of their members. But better times were beginning; morality was springing, in company with faith, from the tomb in which they had been buried so long, and were spreading through Christendom the potent germs of a new life. A sad spectacle was that presented by the Church at the beginning of the sixteenth century! There were magnificent cathedrals, wealthy pontiffs, sumptuous rites, admirable paintings, and harmonious chants; but in the midst of all these pomps yawned an immense void: faith and life were wanting. Religion was at that time like those winter trees whose frost-covered branches glitter with a certain brightness under the rays of the sun, but are all frozen. A new season was beginning, which, by bringing back the sap into their sterile branches, would cover them with rich foliage and make them produce savory fruit. We do not say, as an eminent Christian has said, that the reaction of morality against formalism is the great fact of the Reformation, its glory and its appropriate title. Such an assertion omits one essential element. The grand title of the Reformation is to have restored to Christendom religion in its entirety, the truth with the life, doctrine with morality. If one had been wanting, the other would not have sufficed, and the Reformation would hot have existed.
While Roman-catholicism was falling lower through the disorders of the monks, evangelical Christianity was rising through the zeal of the reformers. Farel, Viret, and Froment preached every day, either publicly or in private houses, ‘to the great advancement of the Word of God, which increased much.’ The Reformation was no longer a mere teaching; it entered into the manners and worship, and produced life. On the Sunday after Easter, Farel gave his blessing to the first evangelical marriage.
A Savoyard Procession.
When sincere catholics, and even those who were not so, saw these strange contrasts, they imagined that the last hour of the papacy in Geneva had arrived. A final effort must be made, but unfortunately the remedies employed were not much better than the disease. One day a report spread instantaneously through the whole city that the Blessed Virgin, arrayed in white robes, had appeared to the curate in the church of St. Leger, and ordered a grand procession of all the surrounding districts. She added that if this were done, ‘the Lutherans would all burst in the middle: but if the order was not obeyed, the city would be swallowed up.’[[542]] The huguenots smiled, inquired into the matter, and at the end of authentic investigations, discovered that the fine lady was the curate’s housemaid. But many catholics in Geneva, and almost all in Savoy, were convinced of the reality of the apparition. The clergy mustered their forces. ‘It depends upon you,’ they said in many places, ‘to put all the heretics in Geneva to death.’ The devotees of the neighboring parishes began to stir in this pious work, and on the 15th of May a long procession of men, women, and children arrived before the city. They were heard singing lustily in the Savoyard tongue—
Mare de Dy, pryy pou nous!