Pour aller voir au ciel mon héritage.
Laissant le monde avec moins de souci
Que laissai France, alors que vins ici?[782]
The count of Marennes, a man of no decision of character, often attended Calvin's preaching. He was rather afraid that the duke, his master, would be displeased; still the duchess herself had arranged these meetings. The countess, his wife, whose humble servant he was, asked him to join them; his brother-in-law, Soubise, also invited him; Marennes, therefore, followed the others to chapel, being urged from without and not from within.
=ZEAL OF SOUBISE.=
Soubise, on the contrary, an independent man, of noble, decided, and energetic character, went with his whole heart, and, after Renée, was the best conquest of the Gospel at Ferrara. In that fanatical age it was choosing a hard and miserable life; but the Gospel Word had conquered him, and he was determined to walk among the thorns. 'John of Soubise, a hero of the sixteenth century,' says Moreri, 'suffered himself to be perverted at the court of the duke of Ferrara, when Renée of France received there certain doctors of the pretended reformed religion.'[783] He had been trained for the profession of arms; he now found at Calvin's side the sword of the Word of God, and returning into France courageously 'occupied himself in defending the truths he had believed.'[784] A gentleman of the king's chamber, a knight of the Order, having had command of the French army in Italy, a man of great resources and great service, 'having effected a hundred masterstrokes,' he was, above all, very zealous for God; and, without neglecting the important affairs of the kingdom, he sought the salvation of the humblest tenant on his estates. A good old pastor, Mulot des Ruisseaux, 'impelled by the singular virtue of the lord of that place' (Soubise), used to leave his house at the approach of night—the only time when evangelical Christians dared meet together—and visit the adjoining districts, everywhere teaching the Scriptures. More than once, on hearing the signal of alarm, he had to hide in the woods and pass the night there. In a short time a great part of the people had forsaken mass.[785] Soubise even desired to convert Catherine de Medicis, and with that view held long conversations with the queen,[786] and the crafty Italian woman led him to hope for a moment that she was on the point of turning Protestant. The trouble that he had taken was not entirely lost. The duchess of Bourbon Montpensier, 'a woman of virile character and of wisdom beyond her sex,' as De Thou describes her,[787] being present at Soubise's conversations with Catherine de Medicis, received the truths which he was explaining to another; and somewhat later two of that lady's daughters, the duchess of Bouillon and the princess of Orange, bravely professed the doctrines of the Reformation.
By his only daughter, Catherine of Parthenay, Soubise was grandfather of the celebrated duke of Rohan.
It was not only among his compatriots at Ferrara that Calvin was a fisher of men. The traditions of certain families of the peninsula place several eminent Italians[788] among the number of those who heard and received light from him. One of them was a Neapolitan nobleman, the duke of Bevilacqua, then at Ferrara. His ancestors, who descended from the Boileaux, barons of Castelnau, a family which in France has produced many distinguished men, were of Languedocian origin, and had been compelled by the persecutions directed against the Vaudois and Albigenses in the thirteenth century to take refuge in the kingdom of Naples.[789] Bevilacqua discovered at Ferrara, in Calvin's teaching, the truth for which his forefathers had been compelled to leave France.
Another Italian, more eminent still, who used to attend these evangelical assemblies, was Titian, then about the age of fifty-eight. That great painter, who had decorated the castle of duke Alphonso of Este, was again at Ferrara. Possessing a calm, solid, judicious, and truth-loving mind, devoted to nature, and seeking to represent her in all her truth, Titian was naturally struck with the pure and living religion which Calvin preached. The great artist was no stranger to the deep affections of the soul, and the sublimest heroism in his eyes was the devotedness of the Christians, who sacrificed their lives for their faith. There are no scenes more terrible and pathetic than those represented in his pictures of martyrs. Nurtured with the writings of Dante, Petrarch, and other great men of Italy, who had shown themselves opposed to the abuses of the popes and their adherents, Titian could applaud the opposition led by the young Frenchman against the papacy. But if at that time he greeted evangelical truths with admiration, there is no evidence that they sank very deeply into his heart. It would appear that Bevilacqua asked him to paint Calvin's portrait; but however that may be, the portrait still exists in the palace of the duke of Bevilacqua at Naples.[790] There is no indication that Titian preserved the impressions he received at Ferrara. 'Among those who seem touched by the beauty of the Gospel,' says Calvin, 'there is scarcely one out of ten in whose heart the Word of God is not stifled.' Titian was, no doubt, an instance of the truth of the fact indicated by the Reformer.
=THE WORD STIFLED BY THE WORLD.=