Though it is not safe to date the French Reformation before the influence of Luther was felt, it is possible to see an indigenous reform that naturally prepared the way for it. Its harbinger was Lefèvre d'Étaples. This "little Luther" wished to purify the church, to set aside the "good works" thereof in favor of faith, and to make the Bible known to the people. He began to translate it in 1521, publishing the Gospels in June 1523 and the Epistles and Acts and Apocalypse in October and November. The work was not as good as that of Luther or Tyndale. It was based chiefly on the Vulgate, though not without reference to the Greek text. Lefèvre prided himself on being literal, remarking, with a side glance at Erasmus's Paraphrases, that it was dangerous to try to be more elegant than Scripture. He also prided himself on writing for the simple, and was immensely pleased with the favorable reception the people gave his work. To reach the hearts of the poor and humble he instituted a reform of preaching, instructing his friends to purge their homilies of the more grossly superstitious elements and of the scholastic theology. Instead of this they were to preach Christ simply with the aim of touching the heart, not of dazzling the mind.
Like-minded men gathering around Lefèvre formed a new school of thought. It was a movement of revival within the church; its leaders, wishing to keep all the old forms and beliefs, endeavored to infuse into them a new spirit. To some extent they were in conscious reaction against the intellectualism of Erasmus {189} and the Renaissance. On the other hand they were far from wishing to follow Luther, when he appeared, in his schism.
Among the most famous of these mystical reformers were William Briçonnet, Bishop of Meaux, and his disciple, Margaret d'Angoulême, sister of Francis I. Though a highly talented woman Margaret was weak and suggestible. She adored her dissolute brother and was always, on account of her marriages, first with Charles, duke of Alençon, [Sidenote: 1509] and then with Henry d'Albret, king of Navarre, [Sidenote: 1527] put in the position of a suppliant for his support. She carried on an assiduous correspondence with Briçonnet as her spiritual director, being attracted first by him and then by Luther, chiefly, as it seems, through the wish to sample the novelty of their doctrines. She wrote The Mirror of the Sinful Soul in the best style of penitent piety. [Sidenote: 1531] Its central idea is the love of God and of the "debonnaire" Jesus. She knew Latin and Italian, studied Greek and Hebrew, and read the Bible regularly, exhorting her friends to do the same. She coquetted with the Lutherans, some of whom she protected in France and with others of whom in Germany she corresponded. She was strongly suspected of being a Lutheran, though a secret one. Capito dedicated to her a commentary on Hosea; Calvin had strong hopes of winning her to an open profession, but was disappointed. Her house, said he, which might have become the family of Jesus Christ, harbored instead servants of the devil. Throughout life she kept the accustomed Catholic rites, and wrote with much respect to Pope Paul III. But fundamentally her religious idealism was outside of any confession.
This mystically pious woman wrote, in later life, the Heptameron, a book of stories published posthumously. Modelled on the Decameron, it consists {190} almost entirely of licentious stories, told without reprobation and with gusto. If the mouth speaketh from the fullness of the heart she was as much a sensualist in thought as her brother was in deed. The apparent contradictions in her are only to be explained on the theory that she was one of those impressionable natures that, chameleon-like, always take on the hue of their environment.
But though the work of Lefèvre and of Briçonnet, who himself gave his clergy an example of simple, biblical preaching, won many followers not only in Meaux but in other cities, it would never have produced a religious revolt like that in Germany. The Reformation was an importation into France; "The key of heresy," as John Bouchet said in 1531, "was made of the fine iron of Germany." At first almost all the intellectuals hailed Luther as an ally. Lefèvre sent him a greeting in 1519, and in the same year Budé spoke well of him. His books were at this time approved even by some doctors of the Sorbonne. But it took a decade of confusion and negation to clarify the situation sufficiently for the French to realize the exact import of the Lutheran movement, which completely transformed the previously existing policy of Lefèvre. The chief sufferer by the growth of Lutheranism was not at first the Catholic church but the party of Catholic reform. The schism rent the French evangelicals before it seriously affected the church. Some of them followed the new light and others were forced back into a reactionary attitude.
[Sidenote: Luther's books.]
The first emissaries of Luther in France were his books. Froben exported a volume containing nearly all he had published up to October, 1518, immediately and in large quantities to Paris. In 1520 a student there wrote that no books were more quickly bought. At first only the Latin ones were intelligible to the {191} French, but there is reason to believe that very early translations into the vernacular were made, though none of this period have survived. It was said that the books, which kept pouring in from Frankfort and Strassburg and Basle, excited the populace against the theologians, for the people judged them by the newly published French New Testament. A bishop complained that the common people were seduced by the vivacity of the heretic's style. [Sidenote: 1523]
It did not take the Sorbonne long to define its position as one of hostility. The university, which had been lately defending the Gallican liberties and had issued an appeal from pope to future council, was one of the judges selected by the disputants of the Leipzig debate. Complete records of the speeches, taken by notaries, were accordingly forwarded to Paris by Duke George of Saxony, with a request for an opinion. After brief debate the condemnation of Luther by the university was printed. [Sidenote: April 15, 1521]
Neither was the government long in taking a position. That it should be hostile was a foregone conclusion. Francis hated Lutheranism because he believed that it tended more to the overthrow of kingdoms and monarchies than to the edification of souls. He told Aleander, the papal nuncio, that he thought Luther a rascal and his doctrine pernicious. [Sidenote: March, 1521]
[Sidenote: April 1523]