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

Surprising thing! Roussel, Courault, and Berthaud at liberty; Beda, Le Picard, and Le Clerq in prison! The champions of heresy triumph, and the champions of the Church are in chains! And this, too, after the king's return from Marseilles (the interview at Bar-le-Duc was not known at Paris), and four months after the marriage of Henry of France with the pope's niece!... Where are the promises made to Clement VII.? Both the city and the Sorbonne were deeply excited by this measure. 567The greater the hopes aroused by the union with the papacy, the greater the fears caused by the king's conduct towards its most intrepid defenders. Would Francis I. become a Henry VIII.? Would Roman catholicism be ruined in France? The priests were afraid—many of them even despaired.

The evangelicals, on the contrary, were delighted. The Word of God was about to triumph, they thought, not only in Paris, but also throughout France. Surprising news indeed came from Lyons, where an invisible preacher kept the whole population in suspense.

=ALEXANDER AT GENEVA.=

The friar De la Croix, whom we have already mentioned, having abandoned Paris, his convent, his cowl, and his monkish title, had reached Geneva under the name of Alexander. Cordially welcomed by Farel and Froment, he had been instructed by their care in the knowledge of the truth. His transformation had been complete. Christ had become to him 'the sun of righteousness; he had a burning zeal to know him, and great boldness in confessing him. Incontinent, he showed himself resolute, and resisted all gainsayers.' Accordingly the Genevan magistracy, which was under the influence of the priests, had condemned him to death as a heretic; the sentence had, however, been commuted, 'for fear of the King of France,' who would not suffer a Frenchman, even if heretical, to be maltreated, and Alexander was simply turned out of the city. When on the high-road beyond the gates, and near the Mint, he stopped and preached to the people who had followed him. Such was the power of his language that it inspired respect in all around him. 'Nobody could stop him,' says Froment, 'so strongly did his zeal impel him to win people to the Lord.' 568

Alexander first went to Berne with Froment, and then, retracing his steps, seriously reflected whether he ought not to return into France. He did not deceive himself: persecution, imprisonment, death, awaited him there. Then ought he not rather, like so many others, to preach the Gospel in Switzerland? But France had so much need of the light and grace of God.... should he abandon her? To preach Christ to his countrymen, Alexander was ready to bear all manner of evil, and even death. One single passion swallowed up all others. 'O my Saviour! thou hast given thy life for me; I desire to give mine for thee!' He crossed the frontier; and, learning that Bresse and Maconnais (Saône-et-Loire), where Michael d'Aranda had preached Christ in 1524, were without evangelists, he began to proclaim the forgiveness of the Gospel to the simple and warm-hearted people of that district, among whom fanaticism had so many adherents. He did not mind this: wandering along the banks of the Bienne, the Ain, the Seille, and the Saône, he entered the cottages of the poor peasants, and courageously scattered the seed of the Gospel. 569A rumour of his doings reached Lyons, where certain pious goldsmiths, always ready to make sacrifices for their faith, invited Alexander to come and preach in their city.

=HIS WORK AT LYONS.=

It was a wider field than the plains of Bresse. Alexander departed, arrived at Lyons, and entered the goldsmiths' shops. He conversed with them, and made the acquaintance of several poor men of Lyons , who were rich in faith; they edified one another, but this did not satisfy him. The living faith by which he was animated gave him an indefatigable activity. He was prompt in his decisions, full of spirit in his addresses, ingenious in his plans. He began to preach from house to house; next 'he got a number of people together here and there, and preached before them, to the great advancement of the Word.' Opposition soon began to show itself, and Alexander exclaimed: 'Oh that Lyons were a free city like Geneva!' 570Those who desired to hear the Word grew more thirsty every day; they went to Alexander, and conversed with him; they dragged him to their houses, but the evangelist could not supply all their wants. He wrote to Farel, asking for help from Geneva, but none came; the persecution was believed to be so fierce at Lyons, that nobody dared expose himself to it. Alexander continued, therefore, to preach alone, sometimes in by-streets, and sometimes in an upper chamber. The priests and their creatures, always on the watch, endeavoured to seize him, but the evangelist had hardly finished his sermon when the faithful, who loved him devotedly, surrounded him, carried him away, and conducted him to some hiding-place. But Alexander did not remain there long: wistfully putting out his head, and looking round the house, to see that there was no one on the watch, he came forth to go and preach at the other extremity of the city. He had hardly finished when he was carried away again, and the believers took him to some new retreat, 'hiding him from one house to another,' says the chronicler, 'so that he could not be found.' 571The evangelist was everywhere and nowhere. When the priests were looking after him in some suburb in the south, he was preaching in the north, on the heights which overlook the city. He put himself boldly in the van, he proclaimed the Gospel loudly, and yet he was invisible.

Alexander did more than this: he even visited the prisons. He heard one day that two men, well known in Geneva, who had come to Lyons on business, had been thrown into the bishop's dungeons on the information of the Genevan priests: they were the energetic Baudichon de la Maison-Neuve, and his friend Cologny. 572The gates opened for Alexander: he entered, and that mysterious evangelist, who baffled the police of Lyons, was inside the episcopal prison. If one of the agents who are in search of him should recognise him, the gates will never open again for him. But Alexander felt no uneasiness; he spoke to the two Genevans, and exhorted them; he even went and consoled other brethren imprisoned for the Gospel, and then left the dungeons, no man laying a hand on him. The priests and their agents, bursting with vexation at seeing the futility of all their efforts, met and lamented with one another. 'There is a Lutheran,' they said, 'who preaches and disturbs the people, collecting assemblies here and there in the city, whom we must catch, for he will spoil all the world, as everybody is running after him; and yet we cannot find him, or know who he is.' 573They increased their exertions, but all was useless. Never had preacher in so extraordinary a manner escaped so many snares. At last they began to say that the unknown preacher must be possessed of satanic powers, by means of which he passed invisible through the police, and no one suspected his presence.

=MARGARET AND ROUSSEL.=

Thus the Gospel was proclaimed in the first and in the second city of France. The Sorbonne and the catholic party had been intimidated by the king, and the Easter festival of 1534, which was approaching, might give the evangelicals of Paris a striking opportunity of proclaiming their faith. This was what the Queen of Navarre desired. She had passed some time at Alençon, and also at Argentan, not far from Caen, with her sister-in-law, Catherine d'Albret, abbess of the convent of the Holy Trinity; at length she had returned to Paris. The priests dared not name her, but they made certain allusions to her in their sermons which their hearers very well understood. These things were reported to Margaret, who cared neither to pacify nor to punish her accusers, and answered them only by endeavouring still more to advance the cause of piety in France. The little conventicles only half pleased her: she wanted the evangelical doctrine to enter the kingdom by the churches, and not by the 'upper chambers.' She would have desired for France a reformation similar to that of England, which, while giving it the Word of God, preserved its archbishops and bishops, its cathedrals, its liturgy, and its grandeur. Queen of France, she would have been its Elizabeth; but doubtless with more grace. Her ambition was to install the Gospel at Notre Dame. She paid a visit to the king; she spoke to the bishop ... Roussel shall preach there. He was not a Farel in boldness, but Margaret encouraged him; besides, the idea of preaching the Gospel to the people of Paris in that old cathedral was pleasing to him. He determined, therefore, to comply with the queen's wishes.