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

=FRESH EFFORTS OF THE SORBONNE.=

The wrath and fanaticism of Beda, excited by exile, knew no bounds. The repression of obscure preachers did not satisfy him; he determined to renew the attack he had formerly made upon the learned. 'I accuse the king's readers in the university of Paris,' he said to the parliament. These were the celebrated professors Danès, Paul Paradis, Guidacieri, and Vatable, learned philologists, esteemed by Francis and honoured over all literary Europe. 'Their interpretations of the text of Scripture,' continued Beda, 'throw discredit on the Vulgate, and propagate the errors of Luther. I demand that they be forbidden to comment on the Holy Scriptures.' 555

Beda did not stand alone. Le Picard had returned from exile with his master, and the Sorbonne, wishing to give him a striking mark of their esteem, had conferred on him the degree of doctor of divinity. Beda and Le Picard took counsel together with some other priests. War was resolved upon, the legions were mustered, the plan of the campaign drawn up, and the various battle-fields allotted among the combatants. They took possession of the pulpits from which the preachers of the Reform had been expelled, and loud voices were heard everywhere giving utterance to violent harangues against 'the Lutherans.' Beda, Le Picard, and their followers denounced the heretics as enemies of the altar and the throne. In the Gospel, the germ of every liberty, they saw the cause of every disorder. 'It is not enough to put the Lutheran evangelists in prison,' said these forerunners of the preachers of the League; 'we must go a step further, and burn them.' 556

The arrests were begun immediately; but early in the year 1534 the burning pile was declared to be the best answer to heresy. The parliament of Paris published an edict, according to which whoever was convicted of Lutheranism on the testimony of two witnesses, should be burnt forthwith. 557That was the surest way: the dead never return. Beda immediately demanded that the decree should be applied to the four evangelists: Courault, Berthaud, Roussel, and one of their friends. Notwithstanding his moderation and his concessions, Roussel particularly excited the syndic's anger. Was he not Margaret's chaplain? The terror began to spread. Whilst Francis at Bar-le-Duc was endeavouring to please the most decided of the protestants, the evangelicals of Paris, alarmed by the inquiries of the police, shut themselves up in their humble dwellings. 'Really,' they said, 'this is not much unlike the Spanish inquisition.' 558The Sorbonne dared not, however, burn Roussel and his friends without the consent of the king.

=THREE HUNDRED EVANGELICAL PRISONERS.=

In the meanwhile the ultramontane party formed the design of catching all the Lutherans in Paris in one cast of the net. Morin set to work: he urged on his hounds; his sergeants entered the houses, went down into the cellars and up into the garrets, taking away, here the husband from the wife; there, the father from the children; and in another place, the son from the mother. Some of these poor creatures hid themselves, others escaped by the roofs; but the chase was successful upon the whole. The alguazils of the Sorbonne lodged about three hundred prisoners in the Conciergerie. 559When this news spread, with its concomitants of terror and distress, the flight recommenced on a larger scale: some were stopped on the road, but many succeeded in crossing the frontier. Among their number was a christian courtier, Maurus Musæus, a gentleman of the king's chamber, who took refuge at Basle, whence he wrote describing his numerous perplexities to Bucer. 560

All this was done by the Sorbonne and parliament, as the king had not yet spoken out. At last he returned to the capital, and everybody thought he would be eager to fulfil the promises he had made the pope; but, on the contrary, he hesitated and affected to be scrupulous. The evil spirit that he had received from Clement VII. under the form of a Medici, was too young to have any influence over him. Besides, he was thinking much more just then of his alliance with the protestants of Germany than of his union with the pope, and the attacks made against his professors in the university annoyed him.

Beda was not discouraged: he got some persons, who had access to the king, to beg that Roussel and his friends might be burnt. But how could that prince send the Lutherans of France to the stake at the very time he was seeking an alliance with the Lutherans of Germany? 'Nobody is condemned in France,' he said, 'without being tried. Beda wishes to have Roussel and his friends burnt; very well! let him first go to the Conciergerie and reduce them to silence.' 561This was not what Beda wanted: he knew that it was easier to burn the chaplain than to refute him. But the king compelled him to go to the prison; and there the impetuous Beda and the meek Roussel stood face to face. The disputation began in the presence of witnesses. The prisoner brought forward, with much simplicity, the Scriptures of God; the syndic of the Sorbonne replied with scholastic quibbles and ridiculous trifling. 562His own friends were embarrassed; everybody saw his ignorance; Beda left the prison overwhelmed with shame, and Roussel was not burnt. 563

=THE KING'S IRRITATION.=

While Beda and Roussel were disputing in the Conciergerie, a different scene was passing at the Louvre. A friend of letters, belonging to the royal household, knowing the king's susceptibility, placed a little book elegantly bound on a table near which the king was accustomed to sit. Francis approached, took up the book heedlessly, and looked at it. He was greatly surprised on reading the title: Remonstrance addressed to the King of France by the three doctors of Paris, banished and relegated, praying to be recalled from their exile . It was a work published by Beda before his return to Paris, and had been carefully concealed from the monarch. 'Ho! ho!' said he, 'this book is addressed to me!' He opened and read, and great was his anger on seeing how he was insulted and slandered.... 'Francis I. regards neither pope nor Medici: in his eyes, the chief infallibility is always his own.' 'Send those wretches to prison,' he exclaimed; and immediately Beda, Le Picard, and Le Clerq were shut up in the bishop's prison on a charge of high treason. 564

And now the chiefs of both causes were in confinement: Gerard Roussel, Courault, and Berthaud on one side; Beda, Le Picard, and Le Clerq on the other. Would any one dare affirm that the King of France did not hold the balance even between the two schools? Who shall be released? who shall remain a prisoner? was now the question. It would have been better to set them all at large; but neither Francis nor his age had attained to religious liberty. Contrary winds agitated that prince, and drove him by turns towards Rome and towards Wittemberg. One or other of them, however, must prevail. Margaret, believing the time to be critical, displayed indefatigable activity. She pleaded the cause of her friends to the king and to his ministers. Still mistaken, or seeming to be mistaken, as regards Montmorency, she begged this treacherous friend to save the very persons whose destruction he had sworn. 'Dear nephew,' she wrote to him, 'they are just now completing the proceedings against Master Gerard, and I hope the king will find him worthy of something better than the stake, and that he has never held any opinion deserving such punishment, or savouring of heresy. I have known him these five years, and, believe me, if I had seen anything doubtful in him, I should not so long have put up with such a pagan.' 565The king could not resist his sister's earnest solicitations and the desire of making friends among the protestants of Germany. In the month of March 1534 he published an ordinance vindicating the evangelical preachers from the calumnies of the theologians, and setting them at liberty. 566