Others were not so flippant, nor so ready to denounce their former faith without embarrassment or constraint. Guillaume Maniglier said, ‘Neither good nor bad.’ Rodet Villanel said, ‘On my conscience, I could not swear; but I esteem it as Messieurs do.’ Jean Volland: ‘I am an inexperienced person, and ignorant of the matter. Since the learned are at variance about it, I can not judge.’ Thomas Vandel: ‘I do not know.’ Pierre Bothy: ‘Alas! I could not say whether it is good or wicked; but I have not said mass since it was prohibited.’ Antoine Alliod made his reservations, and they were not bad: ‘I renounce it, saving the Pater and the Credo, the Epistle and the Gospel.’ Etienne de la Maisonneuve alone uttered a Christian sentiment: ‘The mass must be wicked, for Jesus Christ has made the true redemption.’ Only one of them entirely declined to condemn the mass, and still he did it prudently. Pierre Papaz said, ‘I never called it wicked.’[808]
These were strange declarations, and the council, who expected to find the clerks refractory, were extraordinarily surprised to hear them. It was a complete breakdown. Compare all these priests, without faith and without principle, with the reformers, men so noble and so courageous, and it is easy to see to which side victory ought to belong. There was barely one of the clerks, Papaz, who could be suspected of having a wish to re-establish Catholicism. It is true that ten of those who had been summoned did not present themselves; probably those who had been the cause of the summons by the council. These men doubtless quitted the territory without delay, and without waiting for an order to do so.
There was, however, one man who exhibited a character rather more honorable, but he was a layman. On the very benches of the council, of which he was a member, sat at that time ‘a papist of great influence and reputation,’ says Rozet. This was the former syndic Balard. The president, wishing to show no respect of persons, invited him likewise to declare whether the mass was good or bad. ‘If I, Balard,’ replied he, ‘knew certainly that the mass was good or bad, I should need no pressing to say so, but as I do not know with certainty I ought not to judge rashly, and you ought not to advise me to do so. I am resolved heartily to believe all the articles of our faith, just as the town believes them. I wish my body to be united with the body of the city,[809] as becomes a loyal citizen. You ask me whether the mass is good or bad; I reply that I believe in the Holy Spirit, in the holy universal Church, and as they believe it I believe it.’
EX-SYNDIC BALARD.
This answer, which Balard gave in writing, did not satisfy the council, which requested him again to say if the mass was bad, yes or no. ‘I mean to live according to the gospel,’ replied he, ‘and to believe in the Holy Spirit and the Church universal, and I cannot answer as to what I do not know.’ This reply caused a great commotion. The councillors were shocked and indignant that one of their members should obstinately refuse to make the declaration which some priests themselves had made, and should doubt of that which the council asserted. It was resolved that Balard should be expelled the council, and that he and his family should be compelled to leave the town and its territories in ten days. The usher carried this decree to him. Balard appeared the next day before the Council of the Two Hundred, the decree needing confirmation by this body. The sentence had produced some effect on him. He said, ‘Since it is the wish of the two councils that I should say that the mass is bad, I say that the mass is bad.’ Then, as if to satisfy his conscience, he added, ‘And as for me, I am worse still to judge rashly of that which I do not know. So I cry to God for mercy, and I renounce Satan and all his works.’ At bottom the second speech of Balard was a retractation of the first, since he added that he did not know what he had just asserted. The reply was somewhat ambiguous. But who could hear without emotion the cry ‘God have mercy on me!’ which the honest syndic immediately uttered?
The next day (December 26) Balard had to appear once more. He now laid down his arms, and said simply and categorically that the mass was bad. After this he resumed his seat in the council. He did therefore as the priests had done, only after having several times repeated previously that he could not assert what he did now assert. The excuse offered for him is doubtless that political interests demanded this declaration. But the truth is too precious to be made a sacrifice to political interests.
If the cause of Catholicism was declining, that of the reformer was rising. In the course of March 1540 his friends wrote to him that he might now return to Geneva. But he trembled at the thought of again embarking on that troubled sea. ‘I had rather die a hundred times elsewhere,’ he wrote to Farel, ‘than place myself on that cross on which I should have to bear death a thousand times a day.[810] Oppose with all your power the projects of those who will strive to get me back to Geneva.’ Two months later, Viret, who ardently desired to see Calvin resume a task of which he felt the importance, put forward a pretext to draw him back to Geneva, and, expressing anxiety about the health of his friend, who was really suffering from severe pains in the head, conjured him to come to Geneva, as the air of the place would be likely to strengthen him. ‘I could not refrain from smiling,’ Calvin replied to him, ‘on reading that passage of thy letter. Thou wishest me to go to Geneva for the sake of being in good health; why not rather say, Hang thyself on the gallows? Better perish once for all than be again in that place where I should be put to the torture without ceasing.[811] If thou wishest well to me, my dear Viret, pray do not make this proposal again.’
CALVIN’S HOUSEHOLD TROUBLES.
It must be told that at this period Calvin was taken up with a quite different matter. He was now nine-and-twenty, and was thinking of marriage. His home left much to be wished for. His servant was a foolish, hotheaded woman, quick to utter insults, and sparing neither her master nor those who came to see him. One day she spoke to Calvin’s brother with so much impertinence that Anthony, unable to endure it, went quietly out of the house, without anger; but declared that he would not enter it again so long as that woman was in it. Calvin was much grieved about it, and the servant-mistress, observing him, said, ‘Well, I’m going too,’ and quitted him.[812] It has been supposed that Calvin’s nature drew him rather towards relations of friendship with the brethren, the learned, and colleagues such as Farel, Viret, Grynæus, Beza, and others, than to married life. If he had contended against celibacy, he had not been in a hurry to escape from it; nay, he even made a boast of it, saying, ‘People will not charge me with having assailed Rome, as the Greeks besieged Troy, for the sake of a woman.’ Doubtless, in wishing to marry he had above all before him these words of the first pages of the Bible: It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. He wished, as he said himself, to be freed from the petty worries of life, to the end that he might be able the better to apply himself to the service of the Lord.[813] His friends seem to have been at this time busying themselves more than he did about finding him a partner, and their object seems to have been to rid him thus of the irksomeness of housekeeping, for which he had little relish. But all that we know of Calvin’s sentiments, and of his life with his wife, makes it plain that he saw in marriage something far higher than the management of a household. ‘It is a thing against nature,’ he said, ‘that anyone should not love his wife, for God has ordained marriage in order that of two there may be made one, one person; a result which, certainly, no other alliance can bring about. When Moses says that a man shall leave father and mother and cleave unto his wife, he shows that a man ought to prefer marriage to every other union, as being the holiest of all.’[814] It has been said that Calvin made a mariage de raison. This seems to me doubtful, and every thing indicates at least that when once married he had a genuine affection for his wife. There was in him a lofty intellect, a sublime genius, but also that love of kindred, those affections of the heart, which complete the great man.
As early as February 1539, Calvin’s friends at Strasburg wished him to marry. He wrote himself to Farel that the lady would arrive shortly after Easter, and expressed a wish to see him present to bless the union. This marriage did not take place. Could it be because Calvin did not find in that unknown lady the qualities which he sought for? This appears probable from the circumstance that two or three months later the ardent and energetic Farel, still unmarried though much older than his friend, having made him another overture, the young doctor stated to him what virtues he wished to find in a wife. ‘I am not,’ said he, ‘one of that mad kind of lovers who, when once they are smitten with the beauty of a woman, are ready at the same time to dote foolishly on her faults.[815] The only beauty which charms me in a woman is chastity, modesty, submission, economy, patience, and the inclination to be careful for the health of her husband. If then thou thinkest that she of whom thou speakest possesses these qualities, follow up the matter; but if thou dost not think so, say no more of it.’ In fact, nothing more was said of it. Farel had not been fortunate.