A History of the Reformation (Vol. 2 of 2)

by Thomas M. Lindsay

The difficulties which confronted the Regent were great, both at home and abroad. The question of questions was the treatment to be given to her Protestant subjects. She seems from the first to have been in favour of a measure of toleration; but the fanatically Roman Catholic party was vigorous in France, especially in Paris, and was ably led by the Guises; and Philip of Spain had made the suppression of the Reformation a matter of international policy.

Meanwhile Catherine had to face the States General, summoned by the late King in August 1560. While the Guises were still in power, strict orders had been given to see that none but ardent Romanists should be elected; but the excitement of the times could not be restrained by any management. It was nearly half a century since a King of France had invited a declaration of the opinions of his subjects; the last meeting of the States General had been in 1484.[214] Catherine watched the elections, and the expression of sentiments which they called forth. She saw that the Protestants were active. Calvinist ministers traversed the West and the South almost unhindered, encouraging the people to assert their liberties. They were even permitted to address some of the assemblies met to elect representatives. A minister, Charles Dalbiac, expounded the Confession of Faith to the meeting of the nobles at Angers, and showed how the Roman Church had enslaved and changed the whole of the Christian faith and practice. In other places it was said that Antoine de Bourbon had no right to allow Catherine to assume the Regency, and that he ought to be forced to take his proper place. The air seemed full of menaces against the Regent and in favour of the Princes of the Blood. Catherine hastened to place the King of Navarre in a position of greater dignity. She shared the Regency nominally with the premier Prince of the Blood, who was Lieutenant-General of France. If Antoine had been a man of resolution, he might have insisted on a large share in the government of the country, but his easy, careless disposition made him plastic in the hands of Catherine, and she could write to her daughter that he was very obedient, and issued no order without her permission.

The Estates met at Orléans on the 13th of December. The opening speech by the Chancellor, Michel de l’Hôpital, showed that the Regent and her councillors were at least inclined to a policy of tolerance. The three orders (Clergy, Nobles, and Third Estate), he said, had been summoned to find remedies for the divisions which existed within the kingdom; and these, he believed, were due to religion. He could not help recognising that religious beliefs, good or bad, tended to excite burning passions. He could not avoid seeing that a common religion was a stricter bond of unity than belonging to the same race or living under the same laws. Might they not all wait for the decision of a General Council? Might they not cease to use the irritating epithets of Lutherans, Huguenots, Papists, and remember that they were all good Christians. The spokesmen of the three orders were heard at the second sitting. Dr. Quintin, one of the Regents of the University of Paris, voiced the Clergy. He enlarged against the proposals which were to be brought forward by the other two orders to despoil the revenues of the Church, to attempt its reform by the civil power, and to grant toleration and even liberty of worship to heretics. Coligny begged the Regent to note that Quintin had called subjects of the King heretics, and the spokesman of the Clergy apologised. Jacques de Silly, Baron de Rochefort, and Jean Lange, an advocate of Bordeaux, who spoke for the Nobles and for the Third Estate, declaimed against the abuses of ecclesiastical courts, and the avarice and ignorance of the clergy.

At the sitting on Jan. 1st, 1561, each of the three Estates presented a written list of grievances (cahiers). That of the Third Estate was a memorable and important document in three hundred and fifty-four articles, and reveals, as no other paper of the time does, the evils resulting from absolutist and aristocratic government in France. It asked for complete toleration in matters of religion, for a Reformation of the Church in the sense of giving a large extension of power to the laity, for uniformity in judicial procedure, for the abolition or curtailment of powers in signorial courts, for quinquennial meetings of the Estates General, and demanded that the day and place of the next meeting should be fixed before the end of the present sitting. The Nobles were divided on the question of toleration, and presented three separate papers. In the first, which came from central Prance, stern repression of the Protestant faith was demanded; in the second, coming from the nobles of the Western provinces, complete toleration was claimed; in the third it was asked that both parties should be made to keep the peace, and that only preachers and pastors be punished. The list presented by the Clergy, like those of the other two orders, insisted upon the reform of the Church; but it took the line of urging the abolition of the Concordat, and a return to the provisions of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges.

The Government answered these lists of grievances presented by an edict and an ordinance. In the edict (Jan. 28th, 1561) the King ordered that all prosecutions for religion should cease, and that all prisoners should be released, with an admonition “to live in a catholic manner” for the future. The ordinance (dated Jan. 31st, but not completed till the following August), known as the Ordinance of Orléans, was a very elaborate document. It touched upon almost all questions brought forward in the lists of grievances, and enacted various reforms, both civil and ecclesiastic—all of which were for the most part evaded in practice. The Estates were adjourned until the 1st of May.

The Huguenots had gained a suspension of persecution, if not toleration, by the edict of Jan. 28th, and the disposition of the Government made them hope for still further assistance. Refugees came back in great numbers from Switzerland, Germany, England, and even from Italy. The number of Protestant congregations increased, and Geneva provided the pastors. The edict did not give liberty of worship, but the Protestants acted as if it did. This roused the wrath of the more fanatically disposed portion of the Roman Catholic population. Priests and monks fanned the flames of sectarian bitterness. The Government was denounced, and anti-Protestant riots disturbed the country. When the Huguenots of Paris attempted to revive the psalm-singings in the Pré-aux-Clercs, they were mobbed, and beaten with sticks by the populace. This led to reprisals in those parts of the country where the Huguenots were in a majority. In some towns the churches were invaded, the images torn down, and the relics burnt. The leaders strove to restrain their followers.[215] Calvin wrote energetically from Geneva against the lawlessness:

“God has never enjoined on any one to destroy idols, save on every man in his own house or on those placed in authority in public places.... Obedience is better than sacrifice; we must look to what it is lawful for us to do, and must keep ourselves within bounds.”

At the Court at Fontainebleau, Renée, Duchess of Ferrara, and the Princess of Condé were permitted by the Regent to have worship in their rooms after the Reformed rite; and Coligny had in his household a minister from Geneva, Jean Raymond Merlin, to whose sermons outsiders were not only admitted but invited. These things gave great offence to the Constable Montmorency, who was a strong Romanist. He was still more displeased when Monluc, Bishop of Valence, preached in the State apartments before the boy King and the Queen Mother. He thought it was undignified for a Bishop to preach, and he believed that Monluc’s sermons contained something very like Lutheran theology. He invited the Duke of Guise and Saint-André, both old enemies, to supper (April 16th, 1561), and the three pleged themselves to save the Romanism of France. This union was afterwards known as the Triumvirate.

Meanwhile religious disturbances were increasing. The Huguenots demanded the right to have “temples” granted to them or built at their own expense; and in many places they openly gathered for public worship and for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. They frequently met armed to protect themselves from attack. The Government at length interfered, and by an edict (July 1561) prohibited, under penalty of confiscation of property, all conventicles, public or private, whether the worshippers were armed or unarmed, where sermons were made and the sacraments celebrated in any other fashion than that of the Catholic Church. The edict declared, on the other hand, that magistrates were not to be too zealous; persons who laid false information were to be severely punished; and all attacks on houses were forbidden. It was evidently meant to conciliate both parties. Coligny did not discontinue the services in his apartments, and wrote to his co-religionists that they had nothing to fear so long as they worshipped in private houses. Jeanne d’Albret declared herself openly a Protestant; and as she travelled from Nérac to Fontainebleau she restored to the Huguenots churches which the magistrates had taken from them in obedience to the edict of July.