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

=THE RECTOR'S FLIGHT.=

Where shall he go now? There could be no doubt that the parliament would seize him wherever he could be found; his friends therefore insisted that he should quit France. He was strongly inclined to do so: Basle, the asylum of his master Erasmus, was his native place, and he was sure of finding a shelter there. Cop flung off the academical dress, the cap and gown, which would have betrayed him; 503caught up hurriedly what was necessary for his journey, and by mistake, some say, carried away the university seal with him. 504I rather believe he did so designedly; compelled to yield to force, he desired, even when far from Paris, to retain the insignia of that illustrious body. His friends hurried him; at any moment the house might be surrounded; he quitted it stealthily, escaped out of Paris, and fled along the road which leads to Basle, using every precaution to conceal himself from the pursuit of his enemies. When the archers went to his house, they searched it in vain: the rector had disappeared.

The parliament, exasperated at this escape, promised a reward of three hundred crowns to any one who should bring back the fugitive rector, dead or alive . 505But Cop in his disguise eluded every eye; he succeeded through innumerable dangers in getting safely out of the kingdom, and arrived in Switzerland. He was saved; but the Reformation was threatened with a still more terrible blow.

The Roman party consoled themselves a little for this escape by saying that Cop was only a puppet, and that the man who had pulled the strings was still in their power. 'It is Calvin,' they said, 'whom we must seize. He is a daring adventurer, a rash determined man, resolved to make the world talk of him like that incendiary of the temple of Diana, of whom history speaks. He will keep all Europe in disquietude, and will build up a new world. If he is permitted to live, he will be the Luther ... the firebrand of France.' 506

The lieutenant-criminal, Jean Morin, had kept his eye for some time upon the young doctor. He had discovered his activity in increasing the heretical sect, and also his secret conferences with Cop. His agents were on his track whenever Calvin went by night to teach from house to house. 507... Cop was the shadow, said the monks; if the shadow escapes us, let us strike the substance. The parliament ordered the lieutenant-criminal to seize the reformer and shut him up in the Conciergerie.

=FLIGHT OF CALVIN.=

Calvin, trusting to his obscurity and, under God, to the protection of the Queen of Navarre, was sitting quietly in his room in the college of Fortret. 508He was not however free from emotion; he was thinking of what had happened to Cop, but did not believe that the persecution would reach him. His friends, however, did not share in this rash security. Those who had helped Cop to escape, seeing the rector out of his enemies' reach, said to themselves that the same danger threatened Calvin. 509They entered his chamber at a time when they were least expected. 'Fly!' they said to him, 'or you are lost.' He still hesitated. Meanwhile the lieutenant-criminal arrived before the college with his sergeants. Several students immediately hurried to their comrade, told him what was going on, and entreated him to flee. But scarcely have they spoken, when heavy steps are heard: it is no longer time.... The officers are there! It was the noise made by them at Calvin's door (says an historian) which made him comprehend the danger that threatened him. Perhaps the college gate is meant, rather than the door of the reformer's own room. 510In either case, the moment was critical; but if they could manage to gain only a few minutes, the young evangelist might escape. His noble, frank, and sympathetic soul conciliated the hearts of all who knew him. He always possessed devoted friends, and they did not fail him now. The window of his room opened into the street of the Bernardins. They lost not a moment: some of those who came to warn him engaged the attention of Morin and his officers for a few minutes; others remaining with Calvin twisted the bed-clothes into a rope, and fastened them to the window. Calvin, leaving his manuscripts scattered about, caught hold of the sheets and lowered himself down to the ground. 511He was not the first of Christ's servants who had taken that road to escape death. When the Jews of Damascus conspired against Paul, 'the disciples took him by night and let him down by the wall in a basket.'—'Thus early,' says Calvin, 'Paul went through his apprenticeship of carrying the cross in after years.' 512

He had hardly disappeared when the lieutenant-criminal, notorious for his excessive cruelty, 513entered the room, and was astonished to find no one there. The youthful doctor had escaped like a bird from the net of the fowler. Morin ordered some of his sergeants to pursue the fugitive, and then proceeded to examine carefully all the heretic's papers, hoping to find something that might compromise other Lutherans. He did lay his hand on certain letters and documents which afterwards exposed Calvin's friends to great danger, and even to death. 514Morin docketed them, tied them up carefully in a bundle, and withdrew. The cruel hatred which animated him against the evangelical christians had been still further increased by his failure.

Calvin, having landed in the street of the Bernardins, entered that of St. Victor, and then proceeded towards the suburb of that name. At the extremity of this suburb, not far from the open country (a catholic historian informs us), dwelt a vine-dresser, a member of the little church of Paris. Calvin went to this honest protestant's and told him what had just happened. The vine-dresser, who probably had heard him explain the Scriptures at their secret meetings, moved with a fatherly affection for the young man, proposed to change clothes with him. Forthwith, says the canon to whom we are indebted for the account, Calvin took off his own garments and put on the peasant's old-fashioned coat. With a hoe on one shoulder, and a wallet on the other, in which the vine-dresser had placed some provisions, he started again. If Morin had sent his officers after him, they might have passed by the fugitive reformer under this rustic disguise.

=CALVIN IS RECOGNISED.=

He was not far beyond the suburbs of Paris, however, when he saw a canon whom he knew coming towards him. The latter with astonishment fixed a curious look on the vine-dresser, and fancying him to be very unlike a stout peasant, he drew near, stopped, and recognised him. He knew what was the matter, for all Paris was full of it. The canon immediately remonstrated with him: 'Change your manner of life,' he said; 'look to your salvation, and I will promise to procure you a good appointment .' But Calvin, 'who was hot-headed,' replied: 'I shall go through with it to the last.' 515The canon afterwards related this incident to the Abbot de Genlis, who told it to Desmay. 516

Is this a story invented in the idle talk of a cloister? I think not. Some of the details, particularly the language of the canon, render it probable. It was also by the promise of a 'good appointment' that Francis de Sales endeavoured to win over Theodore Beza. Simony is a sin so innocent that three priests, a canon, an abbot, and a doctor of the Sorbonne, combine to relate this peccadillo. If the language of the canon is in conformity with his character, Calvin's answer, 'I will go through with it to the last,' is also in his manner. Although we may have some trouble to picture the young reformer disguised as a peasant, with his wallet and hoe, we thought it our duty to relate an incident transmitted to us by his enemies. The circumstance is really not singular. Calvin was then beginning an exodus which has gone on unceasingly for nearly three centuries. The disciples of the Gospel in France, summoned to abjure Christ, have fled from their executioners by thousands, and under various disguises. And if the gravity of history permitted the author to revert to the stories that charmed his childhood, he could tell how many a time, seated at the feet of his grandmother and listening with attentive ear, he has heard her describe how her mother, a little girl at the time of the Revocation in 1685, escaped from France, concealed in a basket which her father, a pious huguenot, disguised as a peasant, carried carefully on his back.