J. H. Merle D'Aubigné - History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin (Vol. 1-8)

(1528.)

Table of Contents

There lived in Paris one of those poor christians of Meaux known as christaudins , or disciples of Christ. This man, full of admiration for the Son of God and of horror for images, had been driven from his native city by persecution, and had become a waterman on the Seine. One day a stranger entered his boat, and as the Virgin was everywhere the subject of conversation, since the affair of the Rue des Rosiers, the passenger began to extol the power of the ‘mother of God,’ and pulling out a picture of Mary, offered it to his conductor. The boatman, who was rowing vigorously, stopped; he could not contain himself, and, taking the picture, said sharply: ‘The Virgin Mary has no more power than this bit of paper,’ which he tore in pieces and threw into the river. The exasperated catholic did not say a word; but as soon as he landed, he ran off to denounce the heretic. This time at least they knew the author of the sacrilege. Who could tell but it was he who committed the outrage in the Rue des Rosiers? The poor christaudin was burnt on the Grève at Paris. 660

All the evangelical christians of Meaux had not, like him, quitted La Brie. In the fields around that city might often be seen a pious man named Denis, a native of Rieux. He had heard the divine summons one day, and, filled with desire to know God, he had come to Jesus. Deeply impressed with the pangs which the Saviour had endured in order to save sinners, he had from that hour turned his eyes unceasingly upon the Crucified One. Denis was filled with astonishment when he saw christians putting their trust in ceremonies, instead of placing it wholly in Christ. When, in the course of his many journeys, he passed near a church at the time they were saying mass, it seemed to him that he was witnessing a theatrical representation 661and not a religious act. His tortured soul uttered a cry of anguish. ‘To desire to be reconciled with God by means of a mass,’ he said one day, ‘is to deny my Saviour’s passion.’ 662The parliament gave orders to confine Denis in the prison at Meaux.

As Briçonnet was still at the head of the diocese, the judges requested him to do all in his power to bring back Denis to the fold. One day the doors of the prison opened, and the bishop, at the summit of honour but a backslider from the faith, stood in the presence of the christian under the cross, but still faithful. Embarrassed at the part he had to play, Briçonnet hung his head, hesitated, and blushed; this visit was a punishment imposed upon his cowardice. ‘If you retract,’ he said to Denis at last, ‘we will set you at liberty, and you shall receive a yearly pension.’ But Denis had marvellously engraven in his heart, says the chronicler, that sentence delivered by Jesus Christ: ‘Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.’ Turning therefore an indignant look upon Briçonnet, he exclaimed: ‘Would you be so base as to urge me to deny my God?’ The unhappy prelate, terrified at this address, fancied he heard his own condemnation, and without saying a word fled hastily from the dungeon. Denis was condemned to be burnt alive.

On the 3rd of July, the town sergeants came to the prison; they took Denis from his cell and bound him to the hurdle they had brought with them. Then, as if to add insult to torture, they pinioned his arms and placed a wooden cross in his hands. Drawing up on each side of him, they said: ‘See now how he worships the wood of the cross!’ and dragged the poor sufferer on his hurdle through the streets. Some of the spectators, when they saw him holding the piece of wood, exclaimed: ‘Truly, he is converted!’ but the humble believer replied: ‘O my friends! ... be converted to the true cross!’ The procession advanced slowly on account of the crowd, and as they were passing near a pond from which the water, swollen by the rains, was rushing rapidly, Denis gave a struggle, the cross fell, and ‘went sailing down the stream.’ When the bigots (as the chronicler terms them) saw the cross dancing and floating upon the water, they rushed forward to pull it out, but could not reach it. They came back and avenged themselves ‘by insulting the poor sufferer lying on the hurdle.’ The stake was reached at last. ‘Gently,’ said the priests, ‘kindle only a small fire, a very small fire, in order that it may last the longer.’ They bound Denis to a balanced pole and placed him on the fire, and when the heat had almost killed him, they hoisted him into the air. As soon as he had recovered his senses, they let him down again. Three times was he thus lifted up and lowered, the flames each time beginning their work anew. ‘Yet all the time,’ says the chronicler, ‘he called upon the name of God.’ 663At last he died.

Not at Paris only did the Roman party show itself without mercy. The wishes of Duprat, of the Sorbonne, and of the parliament were carried out in the provinces; and wherever truth raised her head, persecution appeared. In the principal church of the small town of Annonay, there hung from the arched roof a precious shrine, which the devout used to contemplate every day with pious looks. ‘It contains the holy virtues ,’ said the priests. ‘The shrine is full of mysterious relics which no one is allowed to see.’ On Ascension Day, however, the holy virtues were borne in great ceremony through the city. Men, women, and children were eager to walk in the procession, with their heads and feet bare, and in their shirts. Some of them approached the shrine, and kissed it, passing backwards and forwards beneath it, almost as the Hindoos do when the idol of Juggernaut is dragged through the midst of its worshippers. At the moment when the holy virtues passed through the castle, the gates turned of themselves on their hinges, and all the prisoners were set at liberty, with the exception of the Lutherans.

These silly superstitions were about to be disturbed. A battle began around this mysterious shrine, and as soon as one combatant fell, another sprang up in his place.

The first was a grey friar, a doctor of divinity, whom Crespin calls Stephen Machopolis: the latter appears to be one of those names which the reformers sometimes assumed. Stephen, attracted by the rumours of the Reformation, had gone to Saxony and heard Luther. 664Having profited by his teaching, the grey friar determined to go back to France, and Luther recommended him to the counts of Mansfeld, who supplied him with the means of returning to his native country. 665

Stephen had scarcely arrived at Annonay before he began to proclaim warmly the virtues of the Saviour and of the Holy Ghost, and to inveigh against the holy virtues hanging in the church. The priests tried to seize him, but he escaped. In the meanwhile he had talked much about the Gospel with one of his friends, a cordelier like himself, Stephen Rénier by name. The latter undertook, with still more courage than his predecessor, to convert all these ignorant people from their faith in ‘dead men’s bones’ to the living and true God. The priests surprised the poor man, cast him into prison, and conveyed him to Vienne in Dauphiny, where the archbishop resided. Rénier preferred being burnt alive to making any concession. 666

A pious and learned schoolmaster, named Jonas, had already taken his place in Annonay, and spoke still more boldly than the two Franciscans. He was sent to prison in his turn, and made before the magistrates ‘a good and complete’ profession of faith. As the priests and the archbishop now had Jonas locked up, they hoped to be quiet at last.

But very different was the result: the two friars and the schoolmaster having disappeared, all those who had received the Word of life rose up and proclaimed it. The Archbishop of Vienne could contain himself no longer; it seemed to him as if evangelicals sprang ready-armed from the soil, like the followers of Cadmus in days of yore.—‘They are headstrong and furious,’ said the good folks of Vienne.—‘Bring them all before me,’ cried the archbishop. Twenty-five evangelical christians were taken from Annonay to the archiepiscopal city, and many of them, being left indefinitely in prison, died of weakness and bad treatment.