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

301'Populum stimulare ne hæresim hanc pestilentissimam radices agere pateretur.'—Siderander Bedroto. Ibid.

302'Ad extremum populus etiam mussitare et minari cœpit.'—Sturm to Bucer.

303Typographi in suis pægmatis scriptura et pictura et ludo scenico læserunt reginam.'—Ibid. The Moralité de la Maladie de la Chrétienté , 8vo, appeared at Paris this very year (1533). The learned biographer of Roussel and of Sturm supposes, very reasonably as it appears to me, that this is the ludus scenicus , the play of which Sturm speaks.

304'Omnino res cœpit esse θορυβώδης.'—Sturm to Bucer.

305'En rondeur de conscience.'—Calv. Opusc.

306Calvin, in Acta xix.

Table of Contents

=FRANCIS PUNISHES BOTH PARTIES.=

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 are planning a crime, a revolt!' 307But 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.' 308Thus 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.' 309Thus, 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. 310

=BEDA BREAKS LOOSE.=

The terrible Beda, shut up in the college of Montaigu, 311and 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 recognised; 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. 312Beda 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 subalterns: 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 about 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 Seize 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.' 313Heresy was treated with more tenderness than the first catholic faculty of christendom. Francis began to 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.

=SORBONNE THREATENS FRANCIS.=

Scarcely had the two prelates left Meaux, when a deputation from the Sorbonne arrived. When Francis received them, he was evidently in a bad humour, 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. 314These 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 fathers from his presence, calling them beasts, and saying: 'Get about your business, you donkeys!' 315At 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. 316