In fact, the princess experienced, not long after, the truth of the saying, that all who will live godly in Jesus Christ shall suffer persecution. At the court, they talked of Margaret's new opinions, and the surprise was great. What! even the sister of the king takes part with these people! For a moment it might have been thought that Margaret's ruin was certain. She was denounced to Francis I. But the king, who was tenderly attached to his sister, pretended to think that it was untrue. Margaret's character gradually lessened the opposition. Every one loved her, says Brantôme: "she was very kind, mild, gracious, charitable, affable, a great alms-giver, despising nobody, and winning all hearts by her excellent qualities."[763]
In the midst of the corruption and frivolity of that age, the mind reposes with delight on this chosen soul, which the grace of God had seized beneath such a load of vanities and grandeur. But her feminine character held her back. If Francis I. had felt his sister's convictions, he would no doubt have followed them out. The timid heart of the princess trembled before the anger of the king. She was constantly wavering between her brother and her Saviour, and could not resolve to sacrifice either. We cannot recognise her as a Christian who has reached the perfect liberty of the children of God: she is a correct type of those elevated souls, so numerous in every age, particularly among women, who, powerfully attracted towards heaven, have not sufficient strength to detach themselves entirely from the earth.
However, such as she is, she is a pleasing character on the stage of history. Neither Germany nor England present her parallel. She is a star, slightly clouded no doubt, but shedding an indescribable and gentle radiance, and at the time of which I am treating her rays shone out still more brightly. It is not until later years, when the angry looks of Francis I. denounce a mortal hatred against the Reformation, that his frightened sister will screen her holy faith from the light of day. But now she raises her head in the midst of this corrupted court, and appears a bride of Christ. The respect paid to her, the high opinion entertained of her understanding and of her heart, plead the cause of the Gospel at the court of France much better than any preacher could have done. The gentle influence of woman gained admission for the new doctrine. It is perhaps to this period we should trace the inclination of the French nobility to embrace Protestantism. If Francis had followed his sister, if all the nation had opened its gates to Christianity, Margaret's conversion might have been the saving of France. But while the nobles welcomed the Gospel, the king and the people remained faithful to Rome; and there came a time when it was a cause of serious misfortune to the Reformation to count a Navarre and a Condé among its ranks.
CHAPTER V.
Enemies of the Reformation—Louisa—Duprat—Concordat of Bologna—Opposition of the Parliament and the University—The Sorbonne—Beda—His Character—His Tyranny—Berquin, the most learned of the Nobility—The Intriguers of the Sorbonne—Heresy of the three Magdalens—Luther condemned at Paris—Address of the Sorbonne to the King—Lefevre quits Paris for Meaux.
ENEMIES OF THE REFORMATION.
Thus already had the Gospel made illustrious conquests in France. Lefevre, Briçonnet, Farel, and Margaret joyfully yielded in Paris to the movement that was already beginning to shake the world. Francis I. himself seemed at that time more attracted by the splendour of literature, than repelled by the severity of the Gospel. The friends of the Word of God were entertaining the most pleasing expectations; they thought that the heavenly doctrine would be disseminated without obstacle over their country, at the very moment when a formidable opposition was organizing at court and in the Sorbonne. France, which was to signalize itself among Roman-catholic states for nearly three centuries by its persecutions, rose with pitiless severity against the Reformation. If the seventeenth century was the age of a bloody victory, the sixteenth was that of a cruel struggle. Probably in no place did the reformed Christians meet with more merciless adversaries on the very spot where they raised the standard of the Gospel. In Germany, it was in the Romish states that their enemies were found; in Switzerland, in the Romish cantons; but in France, it was face to face. A dissolute woman and a rapacious minister then headed the long list of the enemies of the Reformation.
LOUISA—DUPRAT—THE CONCORDAT.
Louisa of Savoy, mother of the king and of Margaret, notorious for her gallantries, absolute in her will, and surrounded by a train of ladies of honour whose licentiousness began at the court of France a long series of immorality and scandal, naturally took part against the Word of God; she was the more to be feared as she had always preserved an almost unbounded influence over her son. But the Gospel met with a still more formidable adversary in Louisa's favourite, Anthony Duprat, who was nominated chancellor of the kingdom by her influence. This man, whom a contemporary historian calls the most vicious of all bipeds,[764] was more rapacious than Louisa was dissolute. Having first enriched himself at the expense of justice, he desired subsequently to increase his wealth at the expense of religion, and entered holy orders to gain possession of the richest livings.