It was this growing united Protestantism which Henry II. and his advisers had determined to crush by the action of the legislative authority.
§ 5. Persecution under Henry II.[192]
The repressive legal measures introduced by Francis I. were retained, and a new law against blasphemy (prepared, no doubt, during the last days of Francis) was published five days after the King’s death (April 5th, 1547). But more was believed to be necessary. So a series of edicts, culminating in the Edict of Chateaubriand, were published, which aimed at uniting all the forces of the kingdom to extirpate the Reformed faith.
On October 8th, 1547, a second criminal court was added to the Parlement of Paris, to deal solely with cases of heresy. This was the famous Chambre Ardente. It was ordered to sit continuously, even during the ordinary Parliamentary vacancies in August and September; and its first session lasted from Dec. 1547 to Jan. 1550, during which time it must have passed more than five hundred judgments. The clergy felt that this special court took from them one of their privileges, the right of trying all cases of heresy. They petitioned against it. A compromise was arranged (Edict of Nov. 19th, 1549), by which all cases of simple heresy (cas communes) were to be sent to the ecclesiastical courts, while cases of heresy accompanied by public scandal (cas privilégiés) were to be judged in the civil courts. In practice it usually happened that all cases of heresy went first before the ecclesiastical courts and, after judgment there, those which were believed to be attended by public scandal (the largest number) were sent on to the civil courts. These measures were not thought sufficient, and the Edict of Chateaubriand (June 27th, 1551) codified and extended all the various legal measures taken for the defence of the Roman Catholic faith.
The edict was lengthy, and began with a long preamble, which declared that in spite of all measures of repression, heresy was increasing; that it was a pestilence “so contagious that it had infected most of the inhabitants, men, women, and even little children, in many of the towns and districts of the kingdom,” and asked every loyal subject to aid the Government in extirpating the plague. It provided that, as before, all cases of simple heresy should be judged in the ecclesiastical courts, and that heresy accompanied with public scandal should be sent to the civil courts of the Parlements. It issued stringent regulations about the publication and sale of books; forbidding the introduction into France of volumes from Protestant countries; forbidding the printing of books which had not passed the censor of the Faculty of Theology, and all books published anonymously; and ordering an examination of all printing houses and bookshops twice in the year. Private persons who did not inform against heretics were liable to be considered heretics themselves, and punished as such; and when they did denounce them they were to receive one-third of the possessions of the persons condemned. Parents were charged “by the pity, love, and charity which they owed to their children,” not to engage any teachers who might be “suspect”; no one was permitted to teach in school or college who was not certified to be orthodox; and masters were made responsible for their servants. Intercourse with those who had taken refuge in Geneva was prohibited, and the goods of the refugees were confiscated. All Catholics, and more especially persons of rank and in authority, were required to give the earnest example of attending carefully to outward observances of religion, and in particular to kneel in adoration of the Host.
The edict was registered on Sept. 3rd, 1551, and immediately put in force. Six years later, the King had to confess that its stringent provisions had failed to arrest the spread of the Protestant faith. He proposed to establish the Inquisition in France, moved thereto by the Cardinal of Lorraine and Pope Paul IV.; and was prevented only by the strenuous opposition of his Parlement.[193] He had to content himself with issuing the Edict of Compiègne (1557), which, while nominally leaving trials for heresy in the hands of the ecclesiastical courts, practically handed them over to the civil courts, where the judges were not allowed to inflict any lesser punishment than death. They were permitted to increase the penalty by inflicting torture, or to mitigate it by strangling the victims before burning them.
Armed with this legislation, the work of hunting out the Reformed was strenuously carried on. Certain prisons were specially reserved for the Protestant martyrs—the Conciergerie, which was part of the building of the Palace, and the Grand Châtelet, which faced it on the opposite bank of the Seine. They soon overflowed, and suspects were confined in the Bastille, in the Petit Châtelet, and in episcopal prisons. The cells of the Conciergerie were below the level of the river, and water oozed from the walls; the Grand Châtelet was noted for its terrible dungeons, so small that the prisoner could neither stand upright nor lie at full length on the floor. Diseases decimated the victims; the plague slew sixty who were waiting for trial in the Grand Châtelet in 1547. Few were acquitted; almost all, once arrested, suffered death and torture.[194]
§ 6. The Organisation of the French Protestant Church.
It was during these years of terrible persecution that the Protestant Church of France organised itself—feeling the need for unity the better to sustain the conflict in which it was engaged, and to assist its weaker members. Calvin was unwearied in urging on this work of organisation. With the fire of a prophet and the foresight of a statesman he insisted on the necessity of unity during the storm and strain of a time of persecution. He had already shown what form the ecclesiastical organisation ought to take.[195] He proposed to revive the simple threefold ministry of the Church of the early centuries—a congregation ruled by a bishop or pastor, a session of elders, and a body of deacons. This was adopted by the French Protestants. A group of believers, a minister, a “consistory” of elders and deacons, regular preaching, and the sacraments duly administered, made a Church properly constituted. The minister was the chief; he preached; he administered the sacraments; he presided at the “consistory.” The “consistory” was composed of elders charged with the spiritual oversight of the community, and of deacons who looked after the poor and the sick. The elders and the deacons were chosen by the members of the congregation; and the minister by the elders and the deacons. An organised Church did not come into existence all at once as a rule, and a distinction was drawn between an église plantée, and an église dressée. The former was in an embryonic state, with a pastor, it might be, but no consistory; or it might be only a group of people who welcomed the occasional services of a wandering missioner, or held simple services without any definite leader.
The year 1555 may be taken as the date when French Protestantism began to organise Churches. It is true that a few had been established earlier—at Meaux in 1546 and at Nimes in 1547, but the congregations had been dispersed by persecution. Before 1555 the Protestants of France had been for the most part solitary Bible students, or little companies meeting together for common worship without any organisation.