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

With great devotion Mary’s son adore,

And he shall open wide to thee heaven’s door.

The procession passed successively under six triumphal arches, dedicated to illustrious princesses, before each of which Beatrice had to stop and hear a new compliment. But it was labour lost: the haughty Portuguese woman, far from thanking the ladies, did not even look at them; and when the men came forward in their turn in those magnificent dresses which had cost them so much money and contention, the duchess received the shopkeepers with still greater contempt. A deep feeling of discontent immediately replaced the general enthusiasm: ‘She takes us for her slaves, in Portugal fashion,’ exclaimed one of the proudest of the huguenots. ‘Let us show her that we are free men. Come, ladies, I advise you to return to your spinning; and as for us, my friends, we will pull down the galleries and destroy the theatres.’ And then he whispered to one of his neighbours: ‘Better employ our money in fortifying the city, and compelling these Savoyards to keep outside. You entice them in ... take care they do not burn you in your own straw.’ The duke’s counsellors began to feel alarmed. The mine which they fancied had been so skilfully dug, threatened to blow them all into the air. Yet a few more mistakes of this kind and all was lost.... Some of the courtiers endeavoured to excuse the haughty manners of Beatrice by telling the citizens: Che eran los costumbres de Portugal. ‘They were the fashions of Portugal.’ The duke conjured his wife to make an effort to win back their hearts. 313

Doubts were beginning at that time to be circulated concerning the attachment of Geneva to the papacy. Charles and his courtiers had heard something of this; and the desire to keep the city in the fold of Rome for ever had a great share, as we have remarked, in their chivalrous enterprise. The mamelukes and the canons, ashamed of these rumours, had prepared a mystery-play calculated to make the duke and duchess believe that the Genevans thought much more of seeking crosses and other relics than of finding that New Testament so long unknown and about which they were talking so much in Germany. Accordingly, when the procession arrived at the Place du Bourg de Four, they saw a large scaffold, a kind of house, open on the side next the spectators, and divided into several stories. The triumphal car halted, and the people of Geneva who were afterwards to show the world another spectacle, began to perform the ‘Invention of the Cross.’

The first scene represents Jerusalem, where the Emperor Constantine and Helena, his mother, have arrived to make search for the precious relic.

Constantine to the Jews .

Come tell me, Jews, what did you do

With the cross whereon by you

Christ was hanged so cruelly?

The Jews, trembling .

Dear emperor, assuredly

We do not know.

Constantine.

You lie.

You shall suffer for this by-and-by.

( To his guards. )

Shut them in prison instantly.

The Jews are put into prison; and this is a lesson to show what ought to be done to those who pay no respect to the wood that Helena had come to worship.

A Jew from the window .

Judas the president am I,

And if you will let me go

I by signs most clear will show

Where my father saw it hid.

Constantine.

Out then; we the cross will seek,

And they shall linger here the while.

The next scene represents Golgotha. The emperor, Helena, and their train follow the Jew.

Judas.

Mighty emperor, here’s the spot

Where the cross by stealth was put

With other two.

Constantine.

Good!

Let the earth be dug around,

And the cross be quickly found.

A Labourer digs up three crosses .

This is all.

Constantine, puzzled to know which is the true cross .

To prove the story true

Still remains.... What shall we do?

Helena.

My dear son, pray hold your tongue.

( She orders a dead body to be brought. )

To this corpse we will apply

These three crosses carefully,

And, if I be not mistaken,

At the touch it will awaken.

( The three crosses are applied, and when the third touches the body it is restored to life. )

Helena.

O wonderful!

( Helena takes the true cross in her arms. )

Constantine kneels and worships it .

O cross of Christ, how great thy power!

In this place I thee adore;

May my soul be saved by thee!

Helena.

The cross hath brought to us God’s grace,

The cross doth every sin efface.

Here’s the proof....

Thus, therefore, the Genevese believed in the miracles worked by the wood of the cross. How, after such manifest proof, should not the world see that Geneva was free from heresy? 314

The procession and the princess resumed their march. They stopped before the hôtel-de-ville, and there the syndics made Beatrice a present from the city, which she received pleasantly according to the lesson the duke had given her. However, she could hold up no longer: exhausted with fatigue, she begged to be conducted to her lodging. They proceeded accordingly towards the Dominican convent, where apartments had been prepared for the duke and duchess. This monastery, situated without the city, on the banks of the Rhone, was one of the most corrupt but also one of the richest in the diocese. Here they arrived at last, Charles as delighted as Beatrice was wearied. ‘The flies are caught by the honey,’ said the duke; ‘yet a few more fêtes, and these proud Genevans will become our slaves.’

He lost no time, and, full of confidence in the prestige of Portugal, the brilliancy of his court, and the graces of his duchess, he began to give ‘great banquets, balls, and fêtes.’ Beatrice, having learnt that it was necessary to win hearts in order to win Geneva, showed herself agreeable to the ladies, and entertained them with ‘exquisite viands,’ followed by ballets, masquerades, and plays. On his part the duke organised tournaments with a great concourse of noble cavaliers, assembled from all the castles of the neighbouring provinces, and in which the youth of Geneva contended with the lords of the court. ‘We have never been so well amused since the time of Duke Philibert,’ said the young Genevans. To the allurements of pleasure Savoy added those of gain. The court, which was ‘large and numerous,’ spent a great deal of money in the city, and thus induced all those to love it who had given up their minds to the desire for riches. Finally the attractions of ambition were added to all the rest. To souls thirsting for distinction Geneva could offer only a paltry magistracy, whilst, by yielding themselves to Savoy, they might aspire to the greatest honours; accordingly the notables and even the syndics laid themselves at the feet of the duke and duchess. ‘The prince was better obeyed at Geneva than at Chambéry,’ says Bonivard. Everything led the politicians to expect complete success. That bold soaring towards independence and the Gospel, so displeasing to the duke, the king of France, and the emperor, was about to be checked; and those alarming liberties, which had slept for ages, but which now aspired after emancipation, would be kept in restraint and subjection. 315

The calculations of the princes of Savoy were not, however, so correct as they imagined. A circumstance almost imperceptible might foil them. Whilst the cabinet of Turin had plotted the ruin of Geneva, God was watching over its destinies. Shortly before the entry of the bishop and the duke, another power had arrived in Geneva; that power was the Gospel. Towards the end of the preceding year, in October and November 1522, Lefèvre published his French translation of the New Testament. At the same time the friends of the Word of God, being persecuted at Paris, had taken refuge in different provinces. A merchant named Vaugris, and a gentleman named Du Blet, were at Lyons, despatching thence missionaries and New Testaments into Burgundy and Dauphiny, to Grenoble and Vienne. 316In the sixteenth century as in the second, the Gospel ascended the Rhone. From Lyons and Vienne came in 1523 to the shores of Lake Leman that Word of God which had once destroyed the superstitions of paganism, and which was now to destroy the excrescences of Rome. ‘Some people called evangelicals came from France,’ says a Memoir to the Pope on the Rebellion of Geneva in the archives of Turin. The names of the pious men who first brought the Holy Scriptures to the people of Geneva, have been no better preserved than the names of the missionaries of the second century: it is generally in the darkness of night that beacon fires are kindled. Some Genevans ‘talked with them and bought their books,’ adds the MS. Thus, while the canons were assisting in the representation of time-worn fables, and holding up as an example the piety of those who had sought for the cross in the bowels of the earth, more elevated souls in Geneva were seeking for the cross in the Scriptures. One of the first to welcome these biblical colporteurs was Baudichon de la Maison-Neuve, a man bold and ardent even to imprudence, but true, upright, and generous. He was enraptured to find in the Gospel the strength he needed to attack the superstitions of old times, which filled him with instinctive disgust. Robert Vandel did the same. Syndic in 1529, and employed in all the important affairs of the time, he found in these works which had come from Lyons a means of realising his ideal, which was to make Geneva a republic independent in religion as well as in politics. These noble-hearted men and many besides them read the Scriptures with astonishment. They sought, but they could find no Roman religion there—no images, no mass, no pope; but they found an authority and power above prelates and councils and pontiffs, and even princes themselves—a new authority, new doctrine, new life, new church ... and all these new things were the old things which the apostles had founded. It was as if the quickening breath of spring had begun to be felt in the valley after the rigours of a long winter. They went out into the open air; they basked in the rays of the sun; they exercised their benumbed limbs. Priests and bigot laymen looked with astonishment at this new spectacle. What! they had hoped that the pompous entrance of Charles and Beatrice would secure their triumph, and now an unknown book, entering mysteriously into the city, without pomp, without display, without cloth of gold, borne humbly on the back of some poor pedlar, seemed destined to produce a greater effect than the presence of the brother-in-law of Charles V. and of the daughter of the kings of Portugal.... Was the victory to slip from their hands in the very hour of success? Was Geneva destined to be anything more than a little city in Savoy and a parish of the pope’s?... Disturbed at this movement of men’s minds, some of the papal agents hastened to write to Rome: ‘What a singular thing! a new hope has come to these dejected rebels.... And to those books which have been brought from France and which they buy of the evangelicals, the Genevans look for their enfranchisement.’ 317