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

De peur d’en rencontrer un pire. 29

In 1267 the second Charlemagne was forced to declare by a public act that he refused to take Geneva under his protection. 30Disgusted with this failure, weakened by age, and exhausted by his unceasing activity, Peter retired to his castle at Chillon, where every day he used to sail on that beautiful lake, luxuriously enjoying the charms of nature that lay around; while the harmonious voice of a minstrel, mingling with the rippling of the waters, celebrated before him the lofty deeds of the illustrious paladin. He died in 1268. 31

Twenty years later Amadeus V. boldly renewed the assault in which his uncle had failed. A man full of ambition and genius, and surnamed ‘the Great,’ he possessed all the qualities of success. The standard of the prince must float over the walls of that free city. Amadeus already possessed a mansion in Geneva, the old palace of the counts of Genevois, situated in the upper part of the city. He wished to have more, and the canons gave him the opportunity which he sought of beginning his conquest. During a vacancy of the episcopal see, these reverend fathers were divided, and those who were hostile to Amadeus, having been threatened by some of his party, took refuge in alarm in the Château de l’Ile. This castle Amadeus seized, being determined to show them that neither strong walls nor the two arms of the river which encircle the island could protect them against his wrath. This conquest gave him no authority in the city; but Savoy was able more than once to use it for its ambitious projects. It was here in 1518, shortly after the appearance of Luther, that the most intrepid martyr of modern liberty was sacrificed by the bishop and the duke.

Amadeus could not rest satisfied with his two castles: in order to be master in Geneva, he did not disdain to become a servant. As it was unlawful for bishops, in their quality of churchmen, to shed blood, there was an officer commissioned in all the ecclesiastical principalities to inflict the punishment of death, vice domini , and hence this lieutenant was called vidomne or vidame . Amadeus claimed this vidamy as the reward of his services. In vain did the citizens, uneasy at the thought of so powerful a vidame, meet in the church of St. Magdalen (November 1288); in vain did the bishop forbid Amadeus, ‘in the name of God, of the glorious Virgin Mary, of St. Peter, St. Paul, and all the saints, to usurp the office of lieutenant,’ 32the vulture held the vidamy in his talons and would not let it go. The citizens jeered at this sovereign prince who turned himself into a civil officer. ‘A pretty employment for a prince—it is a ministry ( ministère ) not a magistry ( magistère )—service not dominion.’ ‘Well, well,’ replied the Savoyard, ‘I shall know how to turn the valet into a master.’ 33

The princes of Savoy, who had combined with the bishop against the Count of Geneva to oust the latter, having succeeded so well in their first campaign, undertook a second, and joined the citizens against the bishop in order to supplant him. Amadeus became a liberal. He knew well that you cannot gain the hearts of a people better than by becoming the defender of their liberties. He said to the citizens in 1285, ‘We will maintain , guard , and defend your city and goods, your rights and franchises , and all that belongs to you.’ 34If Amadeus was willing to defend the liberties of Geneva, it is a proof that they existed: his language is that of a conservative and not of an innovator. The year 1285 did not, as some have thought, witness the first origin of the franchises of Geneva but their revival. There was however at that time an outgrowth of these liberties. The municipal institutions became more perfect. The citizens, taking advantage of Amadeus’s support, elected rectors of the city, voted taxes, and conferred the freedom of the city upon foreigners. But the ambitious prince had calculated falsely. By aiding the citizens to form a corporation strong enough to defend their ancient liberties, he raised with imprudent hand a bulwark against which all the plans of his successors were doomed to fail.

In the fifteenth century the counts of Savoy, having become dukes and more eagerly desiring the conquest of Geneva, changed their tactics a third time. They thought, that as there was a pope at Rome, the master of the princes and principalities of the earth, a pontifical bull would be more potent than their armies and intrigues to bring Geneva under the power of Savoy.

It was Duke Amadeus VIII. who began this new campaign. Not satisfied with having enlarged his states with the addition of Genevois, Bugey, Verceil, and Piedmont, which had been separated from it for more than a century, he petitioned Pope Martin V. to confer on him, for the great advantage of the Church, the secular authority in Geneva. But the syndics, councillors, and deputies of the city, became alarmed at the news of this fresh manœuvre, and knowing that ‘Rome ought not to lay its paw upon kingdoms,’ determined to resist the pope himself, if necessary, in the defence of their liberties, and placing their hands upon the Gospels they exclaimed: ‘No alienation of the city or of its territory—this we swear.’ Amadeus withdrew his petition; but Pope Martin V., while staying three months at Geneva, on his return in 1418 from the Council of Constance, began to sympathise with the ideas of the dukes. There was something in the pontiff which told him that liberty did not accord with the papal rule. He was alarmed at witnessing the liberties of the city. ‘He feared those general councils that spoil everything,’ says a manuscript chronicle in the Turin library; ‘he felt uneasy about those turbulent folk, imbued with the ideas of the Swiss, who were always whispering into the ears of the Genevese the license of popular government .’ 35The liberties of the Swiss were dear to the citizens a century before the Reformation.

The pope resolved to remedy this, but not in the way the dukes of Savoy intended. These princes desired to secure the independence of Geneva in order to increase their power; while the popes preferred confiscating it to their own benefit. At the Council of Constance, from which Martin was then returning, it had been decreed that episcopal elections should take place according to the canonical forms, by the chapter , unless for some reasonable and manifest cause the pope should think fit to name a person more useful to the Church. 36The pontiff thought that the necessity of resisting popular liberty was a reasonable motive; and accordingly as soon as he reached Turin, he translated the Bishop of Geneva to the archiepiscopal see of the Tarentaise, and heedless of the rights of the canons and citizens, nominated Jean de Rochetaillée, Patriarch in partibus of Constantinople, Bishop and Prince of Geneva. Four years later Martin repeated this usurpation. Henry V. of England, at that time master of Paris, taking a dislike to Jean de Courte-Cuisse, bishop of that capital, the pope, of his sovereign authority, placed Courte-Cuisse on the episcopal throne of Geneva, and Rochetaillée on that of Paris. Thus were elections wrested by popes from a christian people and their representatives. This usurpation was to Geneva, as well as to many other parts of christendom, an inexhaustible source of evils.

It followed, among other things, that with the connivance of Rome, the princes of Savoy might become princes of Geneva. But could they insure this connivance? From that moment the activity of the court of Turin was employed in making interest with the popes in order to obtain the grant of the bishopric of Geneva for one of the princes or creatures of Savoy. A singular circumstance favoured this remarkable intrigue. Duke Amadeus VIII., who had been rejected by the citizens a few years before, succeeded in an unexpected manner. In 1434 having abdicated in favour of his eldest son, he assumed the hermit’s frock at Ripaille on the Lake of Geneva; and the Council of Basle having nominated him pope, he took the name of Felix V. and made use of his pontifical authority to create himself bishop and prince of Geneva. A pope making himself a bishop ... strange thing indeed! Here is the key to the enigma: the pope was a prince of Savoy: the see was the see of Geneva. Savoy desired to have Geneva at any price: one might almost say that Pope Felix thought it an advancement in dignity to become a Genevan bishop. It is true that Felix was pope according to the episcopal, not the papal, system; having been elected by a council, he was forced to resign in consequence of the desertion of the majority of European princes. Geneva and Ripaille consoled him for Rome.