History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin, Vol. 6 (of 8)

by J. H. Merle d'Aubigné

Nevertheless it was not Calvin alone, as some appear to believe, who effected this great revolution. Had he come into the midst of a people indolent and effeminate, such victories would not have been won. But the Genevese had been preparing for centuries, by means of the struggles which they had gone through, for the maintenance of their liberty. A life of toil, incessant industry, and rude combats had inured them to blows. Their souls had been elevated. They were naturally keen and decisive; but that iron, already brilliant, had acquired by tempering an inflexible hardness. The heroism of the Huguenots of Geneva became one of the elements which contributed to the triumph of the Reformation. The character of those strong men was as essential to the work as coal is for the conversion of iron into steel. It was not Calvin the individual, it was Geneva in its entirety, that vanquished Rome. The energy of the Bertheliers, the Lévriers, and of many others, was one of the ingredients of the moral energy of which Geneva became the hearth, and which had almost disappeared from history. The most earnest of the Genevese Huguenots joined the reformer; the masses supported him; and some Frenchmen who had passed through the sieve of persecution, worthy also to be called Huguenots, gave the hand to the sons of Geneva. And when, after achieving its triumph, the Reformation found itself attacked by a numerous and powerful army, assembled under the banners of kings, of Ignatius Loyola, and the pope, Geneva and the men of her school, who were found in all parts of Christendom, were able to resist the hostile force, and to say to it, ‘No further shalt thou go!’

CALVIN RETAINED AT GENEVA.

There was, indeed, in the struggle for the renewal of Christendom, one will which conceived, one personality which acted, one voice which resounded with a force till then almost unknown, and in a thousand directions: it was, next to Luther’s, that of Calvin. But while a great general is indispensable in the day of battle, so also is an army trained by him for energetic conflict. The part which Geneva played in the sixteenth century is not explained by the character of one man alone, but by many concurrent circumstances both moral and political. That army, created by a vivifying breath from on high, was soon in action wherever a struggle became necessary. Those soldiers went forth into the world, braved danger, displayed their colors, and proclaimed salvation, until at length Rome gave them the martyr’s death, and God gave them the crown of immortality. Calvin and the Huguenots, that is the great motto of the sixteenth century.

Farel, as we have seen, had taken on himself the responsibility of enrolling the young doctor and of opening to him the church of St. Peter. Charmed with Calvin’s method of exposition of the Holy Scriptures, that veteran champion of the Reformation expressed his opinion on the subject to the magistrates. On Tuesday, September 5, 1536, the day after the famous altercation respecting religious liberty had taken place in the Council of the Two Hundred, William Farel appeared before the council and gave an account of the teaching of the young foreigner, which some of the members of that body had probably attended, and added—‘The lectures which this Frenchman[383] has begun at St. Peter’s are very necessary. I therefore entreat you to retain him and to make provision for his maintenance.’ The council determined to advise that the stranger, whose name was not even uttered, should be retained. Many had seen him. The pale countenance, the spare form, the modest bearing, the timorous air of this refugee of twenty-seven, had not given the impression of his being a person of note. The council did not even make him a present of a dress or anything of the kind, as it was customary to do. It waited, no doubt, to see whether it was worth while. The man whose name was shortly to fill the city and the whole Christian world, entered almost incognito into Geneva. Every one was at that time thinking of Farel. On September 8 that reformer, ‘having addressed a remonstrance to the council,’ it was resolved ‘that since the writings of the aforesaid Guillaume are so divine, he should preach at six o’clock in the morning in the church of St. Germain, and that the councillors should be bound to attend there, and pass thence, at seven, into the council.’[384]

Calvin’s lectures were soon interrupted. At the end of September, Farel with his young friend as his assistant quitted Geneva to go to Lausanne, whither an urgent duty called them. An important assembly was going to be held in the chief city of the Pays de Vaud.

Farel, Viret, and other evangelists, as already related, had introduced the Reformation into such parts of that country as were subject to the Swiss cantons; but the other parishes of that fair land had still remained subject to the pope. Meanwhile Luther’s writings were everywhere circulated, the eyes of the people began to be opened, and several evangelists, particularly Jean Lecomte, a gentleman of Picardie, had preached the Gospel in various places. The occupation of the country by the Bernese, on occasion of the expedition which delivered Geneva in 1536, hastened the fall of Roman Catholicism. When the Bernese had taken Yverdon with the sword, they transformed the church of that town in a somewhat soldierly fashion. They bluntly put an end to the exercise of the Romish religion; appointed Malingre to be minister; on March 15 had their religious ordinances published; burnt, March 17, the images out of the churches in the market-place, and ordered the ministers to preach in temples cleared of those abominations. Lecomte, Tissot, Meige, and other evangelists introduced the Reform, but by the spiritual means of preaching, at Cossonay, Montagny, Yvonand, Sainte-Croix, and other places. Avenches and Lutry showed themselves decidedly Catholic, and they determined that if by any chance a minister should go there, they would not go to hear him.

THE GOSPEL IN THE PAYS DE VAUD.

In March 1536, as Viret and Fabry were passing near Yverdon during the siege of that town by the Bernese army, some Lausannese officers who were serving in it and who were acquainted with Viret, stopped him and said, ‘When Yverdon is taken, we shall go to Lausanne: come with us and preach the Gospel there in spite of the bishop.’ They did so. The amiable and discreet Viret would have been ill pleased to see Lausanne reformed by the military method, like Yverdon. He preferred the sword of the Spirit to that of the Bernese soldiery. He would choose that, in the sloping streets of that city and within its beautiful cathedral, the still small voice should be heard, and not the hissing of the tempest and the crash of thunder. He preached therefore the ‘glad tidings of great joy,’ and preached them with success, in the church of the convent of St. Francis. The Canons complained bitterly to the council. ‘A strange thing this,’ they said, ‘to see in Lausanne two preachers at a time! A whole multitude of do-nothing monks, well and good! But two preachers of Jesus Christ, what useless waste!’ ‘The less preaching there is the better,’ said the friends of Rome. ‘The more preaching the better,’ said the friends of the Gospel. If the Canons did their duty, remarked some one, instead of two preachers we should have thirty.[385] The burgesses, as usual, took a middle course which must fail to satisfy either one party or the other. They resolved that the evangelists should preach in the church of Mary Magdalene, but without removing the altars, the fonts, the organs, the images, and other decorations, ‘which did no harm to anybody,’ said the burgesses; and that the friars of the Dominican order should also celebrate in the same church the Roman Catholic service in the usual way.[386] That is what the great Saxon reformer called ‘trying to bring together Luther and the pope.’

IMAGE WORSHIP.

Viret therefore preached in that church. But when Lent was come, the Dominican Monbouson began to discourse in the cathedral, and maintained their Romish traditions with violence and plenty of lying. Viret was informed of it, and as he thought that the best way to refute the papal doctrine was to make it distinctly known, he put in writing the assertions of the friar and called upon him publicly to defend them, announcing that he was prepared to reply to him. Monbouson felt strong enough to maintain his thesis when he stood surrounded by a whole phalanx of scholastic doctors and had nobody to contradict him, but he grew pale in the presence of the young Viret. ‘Ah,’ said he, ‘I would gladly do what you propose at Avignon, at Paris, or at Dôle; but at Lausanne there is nobody capable of judging of the matter.’—‘You ought then to preach only at Dôle, Paris, or Avignon,’ replied Viret; ‘but since you have lied at Lausanne, it is at Lausanne that satisfaction is due.’ Then the friar, anxious to get out of his embarrassment, withdrew in the quietest manner and disappeared.[387] The reformed Christians did not think, with those gentlemen of Lausanne, that images, altars, etc., did nobody any harm. They believed that the paintings did harm. They believed that the people, thanks to the images, made for themselves many minor gods before which they bent their knees in order to obtain this or that favor, or the healing of this or that malady: that the visible made them forget the invisible: that it was frightful to think that, every time some simple soul came to worship God in his temple, those figures of saints became occasions of falling or of scandal. ‘Alas!’ they said, ‘how many poor creatures called to be children of God have been made by those images children of the devil!’ Those, therefore, of the reformed of Lausanne, in whose judgment the pictures of saints and angels seduced and almost inevitably led astray the weak, began to stir in the matter. Commencing with the church of the Magdalene, they removed the images and the altars and broke or burnt them. Then betaking themselves to the church of St. Francis, they did the same there, and counted themselves happy in thus keeping the commandment, Thou shalt have no other gods before me. The old folk of Lausanne, who were already disconsolate at being left without a bishop, were still more distressed when they found themselves deprived of their images and their masses; and they sent deputies to Berne to complain of it. The Bernese council listened to them with all politeness, and dismissed them with good words. Lausanne then sent another deputation, consisting of twelve persons of distinction. At Berne they were asked, ‘What is it that you want?’ ‘Two masses weekly,’ they replied, according to a Lausannese manuscript.[388] If the statement is true, the request was certainly very moderate for zealous Catholics. The concession was made to them, but it was coupled with the condition that they should provide ministers for all the churches that asked for them. At the same time they gave them to understand that it would be well to hold at Lausanne a great disputation on religion, in order to decide between Rome and Reform. That was a good deal to ask for the two masses which were granted them.