ENEMIES OF THE REFORM IN FRANCE.
In France, the Reformation had to combat not only with infidelity as well as superstition, but there was a third antagonist which it had not yet encountered, at least in such force, among the people of German origin: this was immorality. The scandals in the Church were very great; debauchery sat on the throne of Francis I. and Catherine de Medicis; and the austere virtues of the reformers irritated these "Sardanapaluses."[679] Everywhere, no doubt, but especially in France, the Reformation was of necessity not only doctrinal and ecclesiastical, but moral also.
Those violent enemies which the Reformation encountered simultaneously in France, gave it a character altogether peculiar. Nowhere did it so often dwell in dungeons, or so much resemble primitive Christianity in faith, in charity, and in the number of its martyrs. If, in the countries of which we have hitherto spoken, the Reformation was more glorious by its triumphs, in that which is now to engage our attention, it was still more so by its defeats. If elsewhere it could point to thrones and sovereign councils, here it might point to scaffolds and "hill-side" meetings. Whoever knows what constitutes the true glory of Christianity upon earth, and the features that assimilate it to its Head, will study with a livelier feeling of respect and love the often blood-stained history that we now proceed to relate.
The majority of the men who have afterwards glittered on the stage of the world were born in the provinces where their minds first began to expand. Paris is a tree that presents many flowers and fruits to the eye, but whose roots spread far and wide into the bosom of the earth, to draw from thence the nutritious juices which they transform. The Reformation also followed this law.
The Alps, which beheld bold and christian men spring up in every canton and almost in every valley of Switzerland, were destined in France also to cover with their lengthened shadows the infancy of some of the first reformers. For ages they had guarded the treasure more or less pure in their high valleys, among the inhabitants of the Piedmontese districts of Luzerne, Angrogne, and La Peyrouse. The truth, which Rome could not reach there, had spread from these valleys to the other side of these mountains, and along their base to Provence and Dauphiny.
The year after the accession of Charles VIII., son of Louis XI., a sickly and timid child, Innocent VIII. had assumed the pontifical tiara (1484). He had seven or eight sons by different mothers; and hence, according to an epigram of the times, Rome unanimously saluted him with the name of Father.[680]
HERESY AND PERSECUTIONS IN DAUPHINY.
There was at that time on all the slopes of the Dauphinese Alps, and along the banks of the Durance, a new growth of the old Waldensian opinions. "The roots," says an old chronicler, "were continually putting forth new shoots in every direction."[681] Bold men called the Roman Church the church of devils, and maintained that it was as profitable to pray in a stable as in a church.
The priests, the bishops, and the Roman legates uttered a cry of alarm, and on the 5th kalends of May (27th April) 1487, Innocent VIII., the father of the Romans, issued a bull against these humble Christians. "To arms," said the pontiff, "and trample these heretics under foot as venomous serpents."[682]
At the approach of the legate, followed by an army of eighteen thousand men and a number of volunteers, who wished to share the spoils of the Waldenses, the latter abandoned their houses and took refuge in the mountains, caverns, and clefts of the rocks, as the birds flee for shelter when the storm begins to lower. Not a valley, nor a wood, nor a rock, escaped their persecutors; everywhere in this part of the Alps, and particularly on the Italian side, these poor disciples of Christ were hunted down like beasts of prey. At last the pope's satellites were worn out; their strength was exhausted, their feet could no longer scale the steep retreats of the "heretics," and their arms refused to strike.