(1533.)
MARGARET and her husband, with the Bishop Du Bellay, alarmed at the storm, resolved to lay their complaints before Francis I. The kingly authority was threatened: these hot-headed ‘wallet-bearers’ were the predecessors of those who instigated the murders of Henry III. and Henry IV. The King of Navarre on the one hand, and the Bishop Of Paris on the other, laid before their sovereign an alarming picture of the state of the capital. ‘The blood of Berquin does not satisfy these fanatics,’ they said;
‘they are calling for fresh acts of cruelty… . And who will be their victims now?… They ale planning a crime, a revolt!’ fd307 But while Francis was listening to his sister’s denunciations with one ear, he was receiving those of the Sorbonne in the other. ‘Sedition!’ said one party. ‘Heresy!’ cried the other. ‘Sire,’ repeated the theologians incessantly, ‘shut the pulpits against Roussel and his colleagues.’ fd308 Thus pulled in different
directions; the king, puzzled which to believe, resolved to punish both parties alike. ‘I will confine them all to their houses,’ he said; ‘Beda with his orators on one side, and Gerard Roussel with his preachers on the other. We shall then have some peace and be able at our leisure to examine these contradictory accusations.’ fd309 Thus, at the same moment, Beda, Maillard, Ballue, and Bouchigny of the church party, and Roussel, Courault, and Berthaud of the evangelical party, received orders not to leave their houses. The schoolmaster thus punished the quarrelsome boys by putting them in opposite corners.
Preparations were made for investigating the two cases, but the matter was not so easy as the king had imagined. The theologians were indignant at finding themselves placed in the same rank with the Lutherans. Far from submitting to be prosecuted for sedition, they claimed to prosecute the
others for heresy. They would not be the accused or even the accusers;
they took their stand as inquisitors of the faith and as judges. fd310
The terrible Beda, shut up in the college of Montaigu, fd311 and not daring to go out, found himself condemned, considering his restless temper, to the severest penance. At first he was content to keep his agents at work, who were ready at any moment to bear his orders. But when he learnt that his right to judge was disputed, and that he was to be put in the same rank with Roussel, the turbulent doctor could restrain himself no longer. His room was too narrow to contain his anger. He made light of the king’s commands, and, disobeying his orders, mounted his mule and rode into the city. From time to time he stopped. The catholic tribune, the defender of the pope, was soon recognized; a crowd gathered round him; he addressed the people from his mule, and did his best to arouse their fanatical
passions. While the Catholics flocked round him, some evangelicals were watching the orator and his audience from a distance. ‘I saw him riding on his mule,’ says Siderander. fd312 Beda thought himself stronger than the king, and in some respects he was;. he reigned over the savage appetites of an ignorant and fanatical populace. Such was the power in the sixteenth century by which the pope triumphed more than once in the capital of France and elsewhere.
Beda was vigorously supported by all his subaltern: Le Picard especially, who had not, been put under arrest, expressed his, indignation in his fanatical discourses that the king should desire to hold the balance even between the Church and heresy; and advocated a resort to force to insure the triumph of the oppressed papacy. A riot seemed to break out. The friends of learning and of the king were alarmed. Might not the Roman party take advantage of Francis’s absence to establish another power than his in Paris, and to treat this monarch as the League in after years treated his grandson Henry III.?
The King of Navarre and the Bishop of Paris hastened to Meaux, where Francis was staying with his court, and informed him that Beda, Le Picard, and their colleagues had thrown aside all reserve, and that, unless energetic measures were taken, the public tranquillity and perhaps his crown might be endangered. The king gave way to a paroxysm of anger. Beda’s freak of parading the streets of Paris on his, mule, notwithstanding the prohibition,
was one of those insults that Francis felt very keenly, He ordered Cardinal Duprat and the Bishop of Senlis to make all haste to Paris, and stop the intrigues of the Sorbonne and the promenades of Beda, and also arrest Le Picard. ‘As for the inquiry about heresy,’ said the king, ‘I reserve that for myself.’ fd313 Heresy was treated with more tenderness than the first catholic faculty of Christendom. Francis began go find the Lutherans gentle as lambs in comparison with the hot-headed papists, Certain personages, whose arrival was soon to be announced by the officers of his court, confirmed him in this opinion.
Scarcely had the two prelates left Meaux, when a deputation from the Sorbonne arrived. When Francis received them, he was evidently in a bad humor, but he did not address them sharply, as the courtiers had expected.
The theologians approached him with all the required formalities; they desired, if possible, to win him by meekness. But by degrees they raised their tone; they beset him with their accusations, and irritated him with their pretensions, repeating again and again that it was the prerogative of the Sorbonne, and not of the prince, to give their opinion in a matter of heresy. There was some truth in this, but the truth did not please Francis, who claimed to be master in everything. Still he contained himself, until the doctors, coming to threats of revolt, and shouting their loudest,
reminded him of the possibility of a deposition of kings by the popes. fd314 These recollections of the middle ages, with which they menaced the haughty monarch, who claimed to begin a new era, and who desired that the Reformation should serve at least to abate the pretensions of Rome, and emancipate princes from its yoke, made the king shudder, and aroused a terrible fit of anger. His face grew red, his eyes flashed fire, and putting aside his usual courtesy, he drove the reverend father from his presence, calling them beasts, and saying: ‘Get about your business, you donkeys!’
fd315 At this moment Francis inaugurated modern times — though certainly in a fashion rather cavalier.
However, Cardinal Duprat was on the road. What would he do, this vile courtier of the popes, who at their demand had destroyed the bulwark of the Gallican liberties, and who hated the Reformation? The Sorbonne placed their hope in him. But Duprat served his master before all things, and he could not hide from himself that the hot-headed Catholics were threatening the king’s crown. He resolved to strike heavily. As soon as he
reached Paris, he had Le Picard arrested, as being the most compromised.
He confined him in his own palace, seized his books and papers, and had him interrogated by the advocate-general. The seditious bachelor raved in his prison, and protested aloud against the indignity of such treatment; but all his storming was of no use. He was condemned to be shut up in the abbey of St. Magloire, and forbidden to teach. fd316
Nor did Duprat stop here. He was shocked that paltry priests should dare speak against that royal majesty of Francis I. for which he, a cardinal and chancellor, had nothing but humble flatteries. He never ceased to be the mortal enemy of the Gospel, and originated many a measure of
persecution against the reformed; but his chief quality was a slavish devotion to the wishes of his master. To the mendicant monks sent out by the Sorbonne he opposed ‘inquirers’ — the name he gave to the spies who were in every parish, and who skillfully interrogated men and women, nobles and sacristans, to find out whether the preachers or the friars had attacked the king’s government in their hearing. Many of the townspeople were unwilling to say anything; yet the clever and dreaded minister
attained his ends, and having discovered the most refractory priests, he summoned them before him. This summons from a cardinal of the holy Church, from the most powerful person in the kingdom, alarmed these violent clerics; on a sudden their courage collapsed, and they appeared before his eminence with downcast eyes, trembling limbs, and confused manner. ‘Who permitted or who authorized you to insult the king and to excite the people?’ asked the haughty Duprat. fd317 The priests were too much terrified to conceal anything: ‘It was with the consent and the good pleasure of our reverend masters,’ they replied. fd318
The theologians of the Sorbonne were now summoned in their turn. They were quite as much alarmed as their creatures, and, seeing the danger, denied everything. fd319 They managed to take shelter behind certain clever reservations: they had hinted the insult, but they had not commanded it.
At heart both chiefs and followers were all equally fanatical, and not one of them needed any stimulus to do his duty in this holy war. These reverend gentlemen, having thus screened themselves under denials, withdrew, fully convinced no one would dare lay hands upon them. But a hundred Bedas would not have stopped the terrible cardinal. In the affair of the concordat, had he taken any notice of the fierce opposition of the
sovereign courts, of the universities, even of the clergy of France V Duprat smiled at his own unpopularity, and found a secret pleasure in attracting the general hatred upon himself. Catholics and evangelicals — he will brave and crush them all. He went to the bottom of the matter, and having
discovered who were the Aeoluses that had raised these sacerdotal tempests, he informed, the king of the result.
Francis had never been so angry with the Catholics. He had met with men who dared resist him!… It was his pride, his despotism, and not his love of truth, that was touched. Besides, was he not the ally of Henry VIII., and was he not seeking to form a league with the protestants of Germany?
Severe measures against the ultramontane bigots would convince his allies of the sincerity of his words. He had another motive still: Francis highly valued the title ‘patron of letters,’ and he looked upon the friars as their enemy, he put himself forward as the champion of the learning of the age, and not of the Gospel; but for a moment it was possible to believe in the triumph of the Reformation under the patronage of the Renaissance.
On the 16th of May, 1533, the indefatigable Beda, the fiery Le Picard, and the zealous friar Mathurin, the three most intrepid supporters of the papacy in France, appeared before the parliament. An event so
extraordinary filled both university and city with surprise and emotion.
Devout men raised their eyes to heaven; devout women redoubled their prayers to Mary; but Beda and his two colleagues, proud of their Romish orthodoxy, appeared before the court, and compared themselves with the confessors of Christ standing before the proconsuls of Rome. No one could believe in a condemnation; was not the King of France the eldest son of the Church? But the disciples of the pope did not know the monarch who then reigned over France. If they wanted to show what a priest was like, the sovereign wanted to show what a king was like. When signing the letters-royal in which Francis had suggested the arrest to parliament, he exclaimed: ‘As for Beda, on my word, he shall never return to Paris!’ fd320 The king’s ordinance had been duly registered; the court was complete;
and not a sound could be heard, when the president, turning to the three doctors, said: ‘Reverend gentlemen, you are banished from Paris, and will henceforward live thirty leagues from this capital; you are at liberty, however, to select what residences you please, provided they be at a distance from each other. You will leave the city in twenty-fear hours. If
you break your ban, you will incur the penalty of death. You will neither, preach, give lessons, nor hold any kind of meeting, and you will keep up no communication with one another, until the king has ordered otherwise.’
Beda, Le Picard, Mathurin and their friends, were all terrified. Francis had, however, reserved for the last a decision Which must have abated their courage still more. As if he wished to show the triumph of evangelical ideas, he canceled the injunction against Roussel; and Margaret’s almoner was able once more to preach the Gospel in the capital. ‘If you have any complaint against him,’ said the king to the Sorbonne, ‘you can bring him before the lawful tribunals.’ fd321
This decree of the parliament fell like a thunderbolt in the midst of the Sorbonne. Stunned and stupefied, unable to say or do anything, the doctors shook off their stupor only to be seized with a fit of terror. They visited each other, conversed together, and whispered their alarms. Had the fatal moment really come which they had feared so long? Was Francis about to follow the example of Frederick of Saxony and Henry of England?
Would the cause of the holy Roman Church perish under the attacks of its enemies? Would France join the triumphal procession of the
Reformation?… The old men, pretty numerous at the Sorbonne, were overwhelmed. One of them, a broken-down, feeble hypochondriac, was so terribly disturbed by the decree, that he fairly lost his senses.’ He suffered a perpetual nightmare. He fancied he saw the king and the parliament, with all France, destroying the Sorbonne, and trampling on the necks of the doctors while their palace was burning. The poor man expired in the midst of these terrible phantoms, fd322 Yet the blow which stunned some, aroused others. The more intrepid doctors met and conferred together, and strove to encourage their partisans and to enlist ‘new ones: they took no rest night or day. fd323 Unable to believe that this decree really expressed the king’s will, they determined to send a deputation to the south of France, whither he had gone; but Francis had not forgotten their hint about the deposition of kings by the popes, and, angry as ever, he rejected every demand.
Nor was the Sorbonne alone agitated: all the city was in commotion, some being against the decree, others for it. The bigots, in their compassion for
‘the excellent Beda,’ fd324 exclaimed: ‘What an indignity, to expose so
profound a divine, so high-born a man, to such a harsh’ punishment!’ fd325 But, on the other hand, the friends of learning leapt for joy. fd326 A great movement seemed to be accomplishing; it was a solemn time. Some of the most intelligent men imagined that France was about to be regenerated and transformed… Sturm in his college was delighted, What news to send to Germany, to Bucer, to Melancthon!… He ran to his study, took up his pen, and wrote in his transport: ‘Things are changing, the hinges are turning… It is true there still remain here and there a few aged Priams, surrounded by servile creatures, who cling to the things that are passing away... But, with the exception of this small number of belated men, no one any longer defends the cause of the Phrygian priests.’ fd327 The classic Sturm could only compare the spirit of the ultramontanists to the
superstition and fanaticism of the priests of Phrygia, so notorious for those qualities in ancient times. But the friends of the Reform and of the Renaissance were indulging in most exaggerated illusions. A few old folks, mumbling their Ave-Marias and Pater-nosters, seemed to them to
constitute the whole strength of the papacy. They had great hopes of the new ,generation: ‘The young priests,’ they said, ‘are rushing into the shining paths of wisdom.’ fd328 Francis I. having shown an ,angry face to the Sorbonne, every Frenchman was about, to follow his example,
according to the belief of the friends of letters. They indulged in transports of joy, and, as it were, a universal shout welcomed the opening of a new era. But alas! France was still far distant from it; she was not judged worthy of such happiness. Instead of seeing the triple ban-her of the Gospel, morality, and liberty raised upon her walls, that great and mighty nation was destined, owing to Romish influence, to pass through centuries of despotism and wild democracy, frivolity and licentiousness,
superstition and unbelief.
In the midst of the contrary movements now agitating Paris, there was a certain number of spectators who, while leaning more to one party than to the other, set about studying the situation. In one of the colleges was a student of Alsace, the son of an ironmonger at Strasburg, who; wishing ,to give himself a Greek or Latin name, called himself Siderander, ‘a man of iron.’ Such, however, was not his nature; he was particularly curious; he had a fashion for picking up news, and his great desire to know other people’s business made him supple as the willow, rather than hard as the
metal. Siderander was an amiable, well-educated young man, and he gives us a pretty faithful picture of the better class of students of that day. On Monday, May 26th, he was going to hear a lecture on logic by Sturm, who, leaving the paths of barren scholasticism, was showing by example as well as by precept how clearness, of thought may be united with elegance of language. Just as the Alsatian was approaching the college of Montaigu, where Sturm lectured, he met with a piece of good-luck, he saw an immense crowd of students and citizens collected in front of the college, where they had been waiting since the morning to witness the departure of the Hercules of the Sorbonne. fd329 He ran as fast as he could, his heart throbbing with joy at the thought of seeing Beda, the great papist, going into banishment… For such a sight, the student would have walked from Strasburg. The rumor had spread through Paris that the three or four disgraced doctors were to leave the capital on that day. Everybody wished to see them: some for the joy they felt at their disgrace; others, to give vent to their sorrow. But, sad misfortune! the lucky chance which had delighted the student failed him. The government was alarmed, and fearing a riot, the exiles did not appear. The crowd was forced to disperse without seeing them, and Siderander went away in great disappointment. The next morning, at an early hour, the four culprits, Beda, Le Picard, Mathurin, and a Franciscan, came forth under guard and without noise. The doctors, humiliated at being led out of the city like malefactors, did not even raise their heads. But the precautions of the police were useless: many people were on the look-out, the news spread in a moment through the quarter, and a crowd of burgesses, monks, and common people filled the streets to see the celebrated theologians pass, dejected, silent, and with downcast eyes. The glory of the Sorbonne had faded; even that of Rome was dimmed; and it seemed to many as if the papacy was departing with its four defenders. The devout Catholics gave way to sighs and groans, indignation and tears; but at the very moment when these bigots were paying the last honors to popery, others were saluting the advent of the new times with transports of joy. ‘They are sycophants,’ said some among the crowd,’ banished from Paris on account of their lies and their traitorous proceedings.’ fd330
The disciples of the Gospel did not confine themselves to words. Matters were in good train, and it was desirable to persevere until the end was