THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE.[161]
§ 1. Marguerite d’Angoulême and the “group of Meaux.”
Perhaps no one so thoroughly represents the sentiments which inspired the beginnings of the movement for Reformation in France as Marguerite d’Angoulême,[162] the sister of King Francis I. A study of her letters and of her writings—the latter being for the most part in verse—is almost essential for a true knowledge of the aspirations of the noblest minds of her generation. Not that she possessed creative energy or was herself a thinker of any originality, but her soul, like some clear sensitive mirror, received and reflected the most tremulous throb of the intellectual and religious movements around her. She had, like many ladies of that age, devoted herself to the New Learning. She had mastered Latin, Italian, and Spanish in her girlhood, and later she acquired Greek and even Hebrew, in order to study the Scriptures in their original tongues. In her the French Renaissance of the end of the fifteenth was prolonged throughout the first half of the sixteenth century. She was all sentiment and affection, full of that gentle courage which soft feminine enthusiasm gives, and to her brother and more masculine mother (Louise of Savoy)[163] she was a being to be protected against the consequences of her own tender daring. Contemporary writers of all parties, save the more bitter defenders of the prevalent Scholastic Theology, have something good to say about the pure, bright, ecstatic Queen of Navarre. One calls her the “violet in the royal garden,” and says that she unconsciously gathered around her all the better spirits in France, as the wild thyme attracts the bees.
Marsiglio Ficino had taught her to drink from the well of Christian Platonism;[164] and this mysticism, which had little to do with dogma, which allied itself naturally with the poetical sides of philosophy and morals which suggested great if indefinite thoughts about God,—le Tout, le Seul Nécessaire, la Seule Bonté,—the human soul and the intimate union between the two, was perhaps the abiding part of her ever-enlarging religious experience. Nicholas of Cusa, who tried to combine the old Scholastic with the new thoughts of the Renaissance, taught her much which she never unlearnt. She studied the Holy Scriptures carefully for herself, and was never weary of discussing with others the meaning of passages which seemed to be difficult. She listened eagerly to the preaching of Lefèvre and Roussel, and carried on a long private correspondence with Briçonnet, being passionately desirous, she said, to learn “the way of salvation.”[165] Both Luther and Calvin made a strong impression upon her, but their schemes of theology never attracted nor subjugated her intelligence. Her sympathies were drawn forth by their disdain of Scholastic Theology, by their denial of the supernatural powers of the priesthood, by their proclamation of the power and of the love of God, and by their conception that faith unites man with God—by all in their teaching which would assimilate with the Christian mysticism to which she had given herself with all her soul. When her religious poems are studied, it will be found that she dwells on the infinite power of God, the mystical absorption of the human life within the divine, and praises passionately self-sacrifice and disdain of all earthly pleasures. She extols the Lord as the one and only Saviour and Intercessor. She contrasts, as Luther was accustomed to do, the Law which searches, tries, and punishes, with the Gospel which pardons the sinner for the sake of Christ and of the work which He finished on the Cross. She looks forward with eager hope to a world redeemed and regenerated through the Evangel of Jesus Christ. She insists on justification by faith, on the impossibility of salvation by works, on predestination in the sense of absolute dependence on God in the last resort. Works are good, but no one is saved by works; salvation comes by grace, and “is the gift of the Most High God.” She calls the Virgin the most blessed among women, because she had been chosen to be the mother of the “Sovereign Saviour,” but refused her any higher place; and in her devotions she introduced an invocation of Our Lord instead of the Salve Regina. This way of thinking about the Blessed Virgin, combined with her indifference to the Saints and to the Mass, and her undisguised contempt for the more superstitious ecclesiastical ceremonies, were the chief reasons for the strong attacks made on Marguerite by the Faculty of Theology (the Sorbonne) of Paris. She cannot be called a Protestant, but she had broken completely with mediæval modes of religious life and thought.
Marguerite’s letters contain such graphic glimpses, that it is possible to see her daily life, whether at Bourges, where she held her Court as the Duchess of Alençon, or at Nérac, where she dwelt as the Queen of Navarre. Every hour was occupied, and was lived in the midst of company. Her Contes and her poetry were for the most part written in her litter when she was travelling from one place to another. Her “Household” was large even for the times. No less than one hundred and two persons—ladies, secretaries, almoners, physicians, etc.—made her Court; and frequently many visitors also were present. The whole “Household,” with the visitors, met together every forenoon in one of the halls of the Palace, a room “well-paved and hung with tapestry,” and there the Princess commonly proposed some text of Scripture for discussion. It was generally a passage which seemed obscure to Marguerite; for example, “The meek shall inherit the earth.” All were invited to make suggestions about its meaning. The hostess was learned, and no one scrupled to quote the Scriptures in their original languages, or to adduce the opinions of such earlier Fathers as Augustine, Jerome, Chrysostom, or the Gregories. If it surprises us to find one or other of the twenty valets de chambre, who were not menials and were privileged to be present, familiar with theology, and able to quote Greek and even Hebrew, it must not be forgotten that Marguerite’s valets de chambre included distinguished Humanists and Reformers, to whom she extended the protective privilege of being enrolled in her “Household.” When the weather permitted, the whole company went for a stroll in the park after the discussion, and then seated themselves near a “pleasant fountain” on the turf, “so soft and delicate that they needed neither carpet nor cushions.”[166] There one of the ladies-in-waiting (thirty dames or demoiselles belonged to the “Household”) read aloud a tale from the Heptameron, not forgetting the improving conversation which concludes each story. This gave rise to an animated talk, after which they returned to the Palace. In the evening the “Household” assembled again in a hall, fitted as a simple theatre, to witness one of the Comedies or Pastorals which the Queen delighted to write, and in which, through a medium as strange as the Contes, she inculcated her mystical Christianity, and gave expression to her longings for a reformation in the Church and society. Her Court was the precursor of the salons which in a later age exercised such a powerful influence on French political, literary, and social life.
Marguerite is chiefly remembered as the author of the Heptameron, which modern sentiment cannot help regarding as a collection of scandalous, not to say licentious, tales. The incongruity, as it appears to us, of making such tales the vehicle of moral and even of evangelical instruction, causes us frequently to forget the conversations which follow the stories—conversations which generally inculcate moral truths, and sometimes wander round the evangelical thought that man’s salvation and all the fruits of holy living rest on the finished work of Christ, the only Saviour. “Voilà, Mesdames, comme la foy du bon Comte ne fut vaincue par signes ne par miracles extérieurs, sachant très bien que nous n’avons qu’un Sauveur, lequel en disant Consummatum est, a monstré qu’il ne laissoit point à un autre successeur pour faire notre salut.”[167] So different was the sentiment of the sixteenth from that of the twentieth century, that Jeanne d’Albret, puritan as she undoubtedly was, took pains that a scrupulously exact edition of her mother’s Contes should be printed and published, for all to read and profit by.
The Reformers with whom Marguerite was chiefly associated were called the “group of Meaux.” Guillaume Briçonnet,[168] Bishop of Meaux, who earnestly desired reform but dreaded revolution, had gathered round him a band of scholars whose idea was a reformation of the Church by the Church, in the Church, and with the Church. They were the heirs of the aspirations of the great conciliar leaders of the fifteenth century, such as Gerson, deeply religious men, who longed for a genuine revival of faith and love. They hoped to reconcile the great truths of Christian dogma with the New Learning, and at once to enlarge the sphere of Christian intelligence, and to impregnate Humanism with Christian morality.
The man who inspired the movement and defined its aims—“to preach Christ from the sources”—was Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (Stapulensis).[169] He had been a distinguished Humanist, and in 1507 had resolved to consecrate his learning to a study of the Holy Scriptures. The first fruit of this resolve was a new Latin translation of the Epistles of St. Paul (1512), in which a revised version of the Vulgate was published along with the traditional text. In his notes he anticipated two of Luther’s ideas—that works have no merit apart from the grace of God, and that while there is a Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Supper, there is no transubstantiation. The Reformers of Meaux believed that the Holy Scriptures should be in the hands of the Christian people, and Lefèvre took Jean de Rély’s version of the Bible,—itself a revision of an old thirteenth century French translation,—revised it, published the Gospels in June 1523, and the whole of the New Testament before the end of the year. The Old Testament followed in 1525. The book was eagerly welcomed by Marguerite, and became widely known and read throughout France. The Princess was able to write to Briçonnet that her brother and mother were interested in the spread of the Holy Scriptures, and in the hope of a reform of the Church.[170]
Neither Lefèvre nor Briçonnet was the man to lead a Reformation. The Bishop was timid, and feared the “tumult”; and Lefèvre, like Marguerite, was a Christian mystic,[171] with all the mystic’s dislike to change in outward and fixed institutions. More radical ideas were entering France from without. The name of Luther was known as early as 1518, and by 1520, contemporary letters tell us that his books were selling by the hundred, and that all thinking men were studying his opinions.[172] The ideas of Zwingli were also known, and appeared more acceptable to the advanced thinkers in France. Some members of the group of Meaux began to reconsider their position. The Pope’s Bull excommunicating Luther in 1520, the result of the Diet of Worms in 1521, and the declaration of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris (the Sorbonne) against the opinions of Luther, and their vindication of the authority of Aristotle and Scholastic Theology made it apparent that even modest reforms would not be tolerated by the Church as it then existed. The Parlement of Paris (August 1521) ordered Luther’s books to be given up.[173]
Lefèvre did not falter. He remained what he had been—a man on the threshold of a new era who refused to enter it. One of his fellow-preachers retracted his opinions, and began to write against his leader. The young and fiery Guillaume Farel boldly adopted the views of the Swiss Reformers. Briçonnet temporised. He forbade the preaching of Lutheran doctrine within his diocese, and the circulation of the Reformer’s writings; but he continued to protect Lefèvre, and remained true to his teaching.[174]