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

=DEBATES IN THE UNIVERSITY.=

The rector was not inclined to give way to the monks: he resolved to join battle on a question of form, which would dispose his colleagues in his favour, and perhaps in favour of truth. It was a maxim received in the university, that all its members, and a fortiori its head, must be tried first by the corporation, and that it was not permissible to pass over any degree of jurisdiction. 492Accordingly, on the 19th of November, the rector convoked the four faculties, and, having undertaken the defence of his address, complained bitterly that certain persons had dared to carry the matter before a foreign body. The privileges of the university had thus been attacked. 'It has been insulted by this denunciation of its chief to the parliament,' said Cop; 'and these impudent informers must give satisfaction for the insult.'

These words excited a great commotion in the assembly. The theologians, who had hung down their heads in the case of the Queen of Navarre,

... N'osant approfondir

De ces hautes puissances

Les moins pardonnables offenses,

resolved to compensate themselves by falling with their whole strength upon a plain doctor, who was besides by birth a Swiss. Every one of them raised a cry against him. The university was divided into two distinct parties, and the meeting reechoed with the most contradictory appeals. The theologians shouted loudest: 'Time presses,' they said; 'the crisis has arrived. If we yield, the Romish doctrine, vanquished and expelled from the university, will give place to the new errors. Heresy is at our gates; we must crush it by a single blow!'—'The Gospel, philosophy, and liberty!' said one party.—'Popery, tradition, and submission!' said the other. The noise and disturbance became such that nothing could be heard. At last the question was put to the vote: two faculties, those of letters and medicine, were for Cop's proposition; and two, namely, law and divinity, were against it. The rector, to show his moderation, refused to vote, being unwilling to give the victory to himself. 493The meeting broke up in the greatest confusion.

The rector's address, and the discussions to which it gave rise, made a great noise at court as well as in the city; but no one took more interest in it than the Queen of Navarre. The question of her poetry had been the first act; Calvin's address was the second. Margaret knew that he was the real author of the discourse. She always granted her special patronage to the students trained in any of her schools. She watched the young scholars with the most affectionate interest, and rejoiced in their successes. There was not one of them that could be compared with Calvin, who had studied at Bourges, Margaret's university. The purity of his doctrine, the boldness of his profession, the majesty of his language, astonished everybody, and had particularly struck the queen. Calvin was one of her students for whom she anticipated the highest destinies. That princess was not indeed formed for resistance; the mildness of her character inclined her to yield; and of this she was well aware. About this time, being commissioned by the king to transact certain business with one of her relations, a very headstrong woman, she wrote to Montmorency, 'Employ a head better steeled than mine, or you will not succeed. She is a Norman woman, and smells of the sea; I am an Anjoumoise, sprinkled with the soft waters of the Charente.' 494But, mild as she was, she took this matter of Cop and Calvin seriously to heart. When the friends of the Gospel placed the candle boldly on the candlestick to give light to all France, should a violent wind come and extinguish it?

=INTERVIEW OF CALVIN AND MARGARET.=

The Queen of Navarre summoned Calvin to the court, Beza informs us. 495... The news circulated immediately among the evangelical christians, who entertained great hopes from it. 'The Queen of Navarre,' they said, 'the king's only sister, is favourable to true religion. Perhaps the Lord, by the intervention of that admirable woman, will disperse the impending storm.' 496Calvin accordingly went to court. The ladies-in-waiting having introduced him into the queen's apartment, she rose to meet him, and made him sit down by her side, 'receiving him with great honour,' says Beza, 'and hearing him with much pleasure.' 497The two finest geniuses which France then possessed were thus brought face to face—the man of the people and the queen, so different in outward appearance and even as to the point of view from which they regarded the Reform, but yet both animated with an ardent desire to see the triumph of the Gospel. They communicated their thoughts to each other. Calvin, notwithstanding the persecution, was full of courage. He knew that the Church of Christ is exposed to changes and error, like all human things, and the state of christendom, in his opinion, showed this full clearly; but he believed that it possessed an incorruptible power of life, and that, at the very moment when it seemed entirely fallen and ruined, it had by the Holy Spirit the ability to rise again and be renewed. The hour of this renewal had arrived, and it was as impossible for men to retard it as to prevent the spring-time from budding and covering the earth with leaves, blossoms, and fruit. Yet Calvin was under no delusion as to the dangers which threatened evangelical christianity. 'When the peril is imminent,' he said, 'it is not the time to indulge ourselves like silly, careless people; the fear of danger, serving as an incentive, should lead us to ask for God's help, and to put on our armour without trembling.' The queen promised to use all her influence to calm the storm. Calvin was conducted out of the palace with the same attentions that had been paid him when he entered it. He afterwards spoke about this interview to Theodore Beza, who has handed it down to us. 498

Still the sky became more threatening. The parliament, paying no respect to the privileges of the university, had entertained the complaint of the monks; the rector, therefore, received a message from this sovereign court summoning him to appear before it. Calvin knew quite well that a similar process would soon reach him; but he never shrank back either from before the despotism of an unjust power, or from the popular fury. 'We are not in the school of a Plato,' he said, 'where, sitting in the shade, we can indulge in idle discussions. Christ nobly maintained his doctrines before Pilate, and can we be so cowardly as to forsake him?' 499Cop, strengthened by his friend, determined to appear to the summons of the parliament. That body had great power, no doubt; but the rector said to himself that the university possessed incontestable privileges, and that all learned Europe had been for many centuries almost at its feet. He resolved to support its rights, to accuse his accusers, and to reprimand the parliament for stepping out of the lawful course. Cop, therefore, got himself ready to appear, as became the head of the first university of the christian world. He put on his academical robes, and preceded by the beadles and apparitors, with their maces and gold-headed staves, 500set out with great ceremony for the Palace of Justice.

=COP GOES IN STATE TO THE PARLIAMENT.=

He was going to his death. The parliament, as well as Calvin, had understood the position, but had arrived at very different conclusions. It saw that the hour was come to strike the blow that would crush the Reformation, and had resolved to arrest the rector even in the court. The absence of the king was an opportunity of which they must hasten to take advantage. A signal vengeance, inflicted in full parliament, was to expiate a crime not less signal, committed in the presence of the whole university. A member of the court, converted to the Gospel, determined to save the unfortunate Cop, and sent a trusty man to warn him of the impending danger. As he quitted the great hall, the messenger caught sight of the archers who had been sent for to arrest the rector: might it not be too late to save him? Cop was already on the road and approaching the palace, accompanied by a crowd of students, citizens, and common people, some full of good wishes, others curious to learn the issue of this singular duel between the parliament and the university. The man sent to forewarn the rector arrived just as the university procession was passing through a narrow street. Taking advantage of a momentary confusion occasioned by the crowd, he approached Cop, and whispered in his ear: 'Beware of the enemy; 501they intend shutting you up in the Conciergerie; Berquin's fate awaits you; I have seen the officers authorised to seize you; if you go farther, you are a dead man.' ... What was to be done?... If it had been Calvin instead of Cop, he would perhaps have gone on. I cannot tell; for the peril was imminent, and it appeared doubtful if anything would be gained by braving it. However that may be, Cop was only Calvin's double; it was his friend's faith that urged him forward more perhaps than his own. To stand firm in the day of tempest, man must cling to the rock without human help; Cop, overtaken by this news of death at the very moment he fancied he was marching to victory, lost his presence of mind, stopped the procession, was suddenly surrounded by several friends, and, the disorder being thus augmented, he escaped and hastily returned home. 502