Calvin at the Burning of Servetus.
One of the best caricatures—perhaps the very best—which the Reformation called forth was suggested by the dissensions that arose between the followers of Luther and Calvin when both of them were in the grave. It might have amused the very persons caricatured. We can fancy Lutherans, Calvinists, and Catholics all laughing together at the spectacle of the two reformers holding the Pope by the ear, and with their other hands fighting one another, Luther clawing at Calvin's beard, and Calvin hurling a Bible at Luther's head.
On the same sheet in the original drawing a second picture was given, in which a shepherd was seen on his knees, surrounded by his flock, addressing the Lord, who is visible in the sky. Underneath is written, "The Lord is my Shepherd; he will never forsake me." The work has an additional interest as showing how early the French began to excel in caricature. In the German and English caricatures of that period there are no existing specimens which equal this one in effective simplicity.
Calvin, the Pope, and Luther. (Paris, 1600.)
Perhaps the all-pervading influence of Rabelais in that age may have made French satire more good-humored. After all efforts to discover in the works of Rabelais hidden allusions to the great personages and events of his time, we must remain of the opinion that he was a fun-maker pure and simple, a court-fool to his century. The anecdote related of his convent life seems to give us the key both to his character and his writings. The incident has often been used in comedy since Rabelais employed it. On the festival of St. Francis, to whom his convent was dedicated, when the country people came in, laden with votive offerings, to pray before the image of the saint, young Rabelais removed the image from its dimly lighted recess and mounted himself upon the pedestal, attired in suitable costume. Group after group of awkward rustics approached and paid their homage. Rabelais at length, overcome by the ridiculous demeanor of the worshipers, was obliged to laugh, whereupon the gaping throng cried out, "A miracle! a miracle! Our good lord St. Francis moves!" But a cunning old friar, who knew when miracles might and might not be rationally expected in that convent, ran into the chapel and drew out the merry saint, and the brothers laid their knotted cords so vigorously across his naked shoulders that he had a lively sense of not being made of wood. That was Rabelais! He was a natural laugh-compeller. He laughed at every thing, and set his countrymen laughing at every thing. But there were no men who oftener provoked his derision than the monks. "How is it?" asks one of his merry men, "that people exclude monks from all good companies, calling them feast-troublers, marrers of mirth, and disturbers of all civil conversation, as bees drive away the drones from their hives?" The hero answers this question in three pages of most Rabelaisan abuse, of which only a very few lines are quotable. "Your monk," he says, "is like a monkey in a house. He does not watch like a dog, nor plow like the ox, nor give wool like the sheep, nor carry like the horse; he only spoils and defiles all things. Monks disquiet all their neighborhood with a tingle-tangle jangling of bells, and mumble out great store of psalms, legends, and paternosters without thinking upon or apprehending the meaning of what they say, which truly is a mocking of God." There is no single theme to which Rabelais, the favorite of bishops, oftener returns than this, and his boisterous satire had its effect upon the course of events in Europe, as well as upon French art and literature.
The English caricatures that have come down to us from the era of the Reformation betray far more earnestness than humor or ingenuity. There is one in the British Museum which figures in so many books, and continued to do duty for so many years, that the inroads of the worms in the wood-cut can be traced in the prints of different dates. It represents King Henry VIII. receiving a Bible from Archbishop Cranmer and Lord Cromwell. The burly monarch, seated upon his throne, takes the book from their hands, while he tramples upon Pope Clement, lying prostrate at his feet, the tiara broken and fallen off, the triple cross lying on the ground. Cardinal Pole, with the aid of another dignitary, is trying to get the Pope on his feet again. A monk is holding the Pope's horse, and other monks stand dismayed at the spectacle. This picture was executed in 1537, but, as we learn from the catalogue, the deterioration of the block and "the working of worms in the wood" prove that the impression in the Museum was taken in 1631.[14]
The martyrdom of the reformers in 1555, under Queen Mary of bloody memory, furnished subjects for the satiric pen and pencil as soon as the accession of Elizabeth made it safe to treat them. But there is no spirit of fun in the pictures. They are as serious and grim as the events that suggested them. In one we see a lamb suspended before an altar, which the Bishop of Winchester (Gardiner), with his wolf's head, is beginning to devour; and on the ground lie six slain lambs, named Houperus, Cranmerus, Bradfordus, Rydlerus, Rogerus, and Latimerus. Three reformers put a rope round Gardiner's neck, saying, "We will not this feloue to raigne over us;" and on the other side of him two bishops with wolves' heads mitred, and having sheepskins on their shoulders, are drinking from chalices. Behind Gardiner are several men attached by rings through their noses to a rope round his waist. The devil appears above, holding a scroll, on which is written, "Youe are my verye chyldren in that youe have slayne the prophetes. For even I from the begynning was a murtherer." On the altar lie two books, one open and the other shut. On the open book we read, "Christ alone is not sufficient without our sacrifice." The only window in the edifice, a small round one, is closed and barred. Many of the figures in this elaborate piece utter severe animadversion upon opponents; but none of them is scurrilous and indecent, except the mitred wolf, who is so remarkably plain-spoken that the compiler of the catalogue was obliged to suppress several of his words.
The English caricaturists of that age seem to have felt it their duty to exhibit the entire case between Catholic and Protestant in each broadside, with all the litigants on both sides, terrestrial and celestial, all the points in both arguments, and sometimes the whole history of the controversy from the beginning. The great expanse of the picture was obscured with the number of remarks streaming from the mouths of the persons depicted, and there was often at the bottom of the engraving prose and verse enough to fill two or three of these pages. Such extensive works call to mind the sermons of the following century, when preachers endeavored on each occasion to declare, as they said, "the whole counsel of God;" so that if one individual present had never heard the Gospel before, and should never hear it again, he would hear enough for salvation in that one discourse.