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

The death of a few obscure men did not satisfy the ultramontanes: they desired a more illustrious victim, the most learned among the nobles. Wherever Berquin or other evangelicals turned their steps, they encountered fierce glances and heard cries of indignation. ‘What tyrannical madness! what plutonic rage!’ called out the mob as they passed. Rascally youths! imps of Satan! brands of hell! vilenaille brimful of Leviathans! venomous serpents! servants of Lucifer!’ 667This was the usual vocabulary.

Berquin, as he heard this torrent of insult, answered not a word: he thought it his duty to let the storm blow over, and kept himself tranquil and solitary before God. Sometimes, however, his zeal caught fire; there were sudden movements in his heart, as of a wind tossing up the waves with their foamy heads; but he struggled against these ‘gusts’ of the flesh; he ordered his soul to be still, and erelong nothing was left but some little ‘fluttering.’

While Berquin was silent before the tempest, Beda and his party did all in their power to bring down the bolt upon that haughty head which refused to bend before them. ‘See!’ they said, as they described the mutilation of Our Lady, ‘see to what our toleration of heresy leads!... Unless we root it up entirely, it will soon multiply and cover the whole country.’

The doctors of the Sorbonne and other priests went out of their houses in crowds; they spread right and left, buzzing in the streets, buzzing in the houses, buzzing in the palaces. ‘These hornets,’ says a chronicler, ‘make their tedious noise heard by all they meet, and urge them on with repeated stings.’ ‘Away with Berquin!’ was their cry.

His friends grew alarmed. ‘Make your escape!’ wrote Erasmus to him. ‘Make your escape!’ repeated the friends of learning and of the Gospel around him. 668But Berquin thought that by keeping quiet he did all that he ought to do. Flight he would have considered a disgrace, a crime. ‘With God’s help,’ he said, ‘I shall conquer the monks, the university, and the parliament itself.’ 669

Such confidence exasperated the Sorbonne. Beda and his followers stirred university and parliament, city, court, and Church, heaven and earth.... Francis I. was puzzled, staggered, and annoyed. At last, being beset on every side, and hearing it continually repeated that Berquin’s doctrines were the cause of the outrage in the Rue des Rosiers, the king yielded, believing, however, that he yielded but little: he consented only that an inquiry should be opened against Berquin. The wild beast leapt with joy. His prey was not yet given to him; but he already foresaw the hour when he would quench his thirst in blood.

A strange blindness is that of popery! The lessons of history are lost upon it. So long as events are in progress, men mistake both their causes and consequences. The smoke that covers the battle-field, during the struggle, does not permit us to distinguish and appreciate the movements of the different armies. But once the battle ended, the events accomplished, intelligent minds discover the principles of the movements and order of battle. Now, if there is any truth which history proclaims, it is that christianity was established in the world by pouring out the blood of its martyrs. One of the greatest fathers of the West has enunciated this mysterious law. 670But the Rome of the popes—and in this respect she paid her tribute to human weakness—overlooked this great law. She took no heed of the facts that ought to have enlightened her. She did not understand that the blood of these friends of the Gospel, which she was so eager to spill, would be for modern times, as it had been for ancient times, a seed of transformation. Imprudently resuming the part played by the Rome of the emperors, she put to death, one after another, those who professed the everlasting Truth. But at the very moment when the enemies of the Reform imagined they had crushed it by getting rid of Berquin; at the moment when the irritation of the king allowed the servants of Christ to be dragged on hurdles, and when he authorised torture, imprisonment, and the stake; at the moment when all seemed destined to remain mute and trembling—the true Reformer of France issued unnoticed from a college of priests, and was about to begin, in an important city of the kingdom, that work which we have undertaken to narrate—a work which for three centuries has not ceased, and never will cease, to grow.

We shall attempt to describe the small beginnings of this great work in the next volume.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

FOOTNOTES:

1John viii. 32.

2James iv. 14, 15.

3M. de Remusat.

4Calvin, Harmonie évangélique , Matt. xx. 21.

5Among other political writings of Calvin’s disciples see La Gaule franke, Le Réveille-matin des Français et de leurs voisins, &c.

6‘Pœnæ vero atrocitatem remitti cupio.’ ( Calvin to Farel , Aug. 26, 1553.) Calvin appears afterwards to have prevailed on his colleagues to join him: ‘Genus mortis conati sumus mutare, sed frustra.’ ‘We endeavoured to change the manner of his death, but in vain; why did we not succeed? I shall defer telling you until I see you.’ ( Same to same , Oct. 26, 1553.) Farel replied to Calvin, ‘By desiring to soften the severity of his punishment you acted as a friend towards a man who is your greatest enemy.’

7La Henriade.

8‘Hic enim liber professione pietatis, aut laudatus erit, aut excusatus.’—Tacitus, Agricola , iii.

9‘Extremum oppidum Allobrogum.’— De Bello Gallico , i. 6.

10Spon, Hist. de Genève , livre i.

11 Inscription de Gondebaud à Genève , by Ed. Mallet, in the Mémoires d’Archéologie , t. iv. p. 305. Professor A. de la Rive, having built a house in 1840 on the site of the old castle, the gate or arcade was pulled down, and the stone with the inscription placed in the Museum of the Academy.

12‘Ordinum Consilium Genevæ habitum est in quo novæ leges ab illo rege (Gondebald) latæ....’—Fragment quoted by Godefroy.

13List of the Bishops of Geneva, according to Bonivard. Gaberel, Hist. de l’Église de Genève , Pièces justificatives, p. 4.

14M. Baulacre ( Œuvres , i. p. 37) is of opinion that this Diogenes was a Genoese bishop.

15‘Tanto tempore, quod de contrario memoria hominis non extitit.’— Libertates Gebennenses, Mém. d’Archéologie , ii. p. 312.

16‘Cum toto Francorum exercitu . . . . . . Gebennam venit. . . . . . et copiarum partem per montem Jovis ire jussit.’—Eginhardi Annales . These words of the ancient annals may be applied to Napoleon I. as well as to Charlemagne. The First Consul Bonaparte passed through Geneva on his way to Marengo, May 1800.

17‘Genevamque civitatem veniens synodum tenuit.’ (See the Monumenta Historiæ Germanicæ of Pertz, tom. i. ann. 773; the Chronicle of Regino , pp. 557, 558; Eginhardi Annales , p. 150.)

18Spon states this positively, i. p. 59.

19‘In Burgundia in pago Genevensi, ubi pater ejus comes fuit. Beneficium non grande.’—Eginhardi Epistolæ , pp. 26, 27.

20Comes Genevensium. Guichenon, Bibl. Geb. cent. ii.—See also (circa 1140) Peter the Venerable, de Miraculis , lib. ii.

21Spon’s Histoire de Genève , i. p. 71. Galiffe, jun. Introduction à l’Armorial genevois , p. 9. Hiseli, Les Comtes de Genève et de Vaud , pp. 4, 18.

22Daniel, vii. 8.

23‘Totas Gebennas episcopo in pace dimisit.’ (The document will be found in the Pièces Justificatives of Spon, No. 1.)

24‘Tanto cleri populique consensu.’—Bernardi Epist. xxvii.