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

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The captive Francis was not Margaret’s only sorrow. If her brother was a prisoner to the emperor, her brethren in the faith were prisoners to her mother. The parliament of Paris having issued a decree against the Lutherans, and the pope having on the 17th of March invested with apostolical authority the councillors authorised to proceed against them, 440the persecutors set vigorously to work. The regent Louisa of Savoy, mother of Francis I. and of Margaret, inquired of the Sorbonne: ‘By what means the damnable doctrine of Luther could be extirpated?’ The fanatic Beda, syndic of that corporation, enchanted with such a demand, replied without hesitation on the part of the Faculties: ‘It must be punished with the utmost severity.’ Accordingly Louisa published letters-patent, ‘ to extinguish the damnable heresy of Luther .’ 441

France began to seek in persecution an atonement for the faults which had led to the defeat of Pavia. Many evangelical christians were either seized or banished. Marot, valet-de-chambre to the Duchess of Alençon, the best poet of his age, who never spared the priests, and translated the Psalms of David into verse, was arrested; Lefèvre, Roussel, and others had to flee; Caroli and Mazurier recanted the faith they had professed. 442‘Alas!’ said Roussel, ‘no one can confess Jesus any longer except at the risk of his life.’ 443—‘It is the hour of triumph,’ 444proudly said Beda and the men of the Roman party. A blow more grievous still was about to reach Margaret.

A gentleman, a friend of Erasmus, of letters, and especially of Scripture, who had free access to the court of the duchess, and with whom that princess loved to converse about the Gospel and the new times—Berquin had been arrested on a charge of heresy; then set at liberty in 1523 by the intercession of Margaret and the king’s orders. Leaving Paris, he had gone to his native province of Artois. A man of upright heart, generous soul, and intrepid zeal, ‘in whom you could see depicted the marks of a great mind,’ says the chronicler, he worthily represented by his character that nobility of France, and especially of Artois, so distinguished at all times by its devotedness and valour. Happy in the liberty which God had given him, Berquin had sworn to consecrate it to him, and was zealously propagating in the cottages on his estate the doctrine of salvation by Christ alone . 445The ancient country of the Atrebates, wonderfully fertile as regards the fruits of the earth, was equally fertile as regards the seed from heaven. Berquin attacked the priesthood such as Rome had made it. He said: ‘You will often meet with these words in Holy Scripture: honourable marriage , undefiled bed , but of celibacy you will not find a syllable.’ Another time he said: ‘I have not yet known a monastery which was not infected with hatred and dissension.’ Such language, repeated in the refectories and long galleries of the convents, filled the monks with anger against this noble friend of learning. But he did not stop there: ‘We must teach the Lord’s flock,’ he said, ‘to pray with understanding, that they may no longer be content to gabble with their lips like ducks with their bills, without comprehending what they say.’—‘He is attacking us,’ said the chaplains. Berquin did not, however, always indulge in this caustic humour; he was a pious christian, and desired to see a holy and living unity succeed the parties that divided the Roman Church. He said: ‘We ought not to hear these words among christians; I am of the Sorbonne, I am of Luther; or, I am a Grey-friar, or Dominican, or Bernardite.... Would it be too much then to say: I am a christian ?... Jesus who came for us all ought not to be divided by us.’ 446

But this language aroused still greater hatred. The priests and nobles, who were firmly attached to ancient usages, rose up against him; they attacked him in the parishes and châteaux, and even went to him and strove to detach him from the new ideas which alarmed them. ‘Stop!’ they said with a sincerity which we cannot doubt, ‘stop, or it is all over with the Roman hierarchy.’ Berquin smiled, but moderated his language; he sought to make men understand that God loves those whom he calls to believe in Jesus Christ, and applied himself ‘to scattering the divine seed’ with unwearied courage. With the Testament in his hand, he perambulated the neighbourhood of Abbeville, the banks of the Somme, the towns, manors, and fields of Artois and Picardy, filling them with the Word of God.

These districts were in the see of Amiens, and every day some noble, priest, or peasant went to the palace and reported some evangelical speech or act of this christian gentleman. The bishop, his vicars and canons met and consulted together. On a sudden the bishop started for Paris, eager to get rid of the evangelist who was creating a disturbance throughout the north of France. He waited upon the archbishop and the doctors of the Sorbonne; he described to them the heretical exertions of the gentleman, the irritation of the priests, and the scandal of the faithful. The Sorbonne assembled and went to work: unable to seize Berquin, they seized his books, examined them, and ‘after the manner of spiders sucked from them certain articles,’ says Crespin, ‘to make poison and bring about the death of a person who, with integrity and simplicity of mind, was endeavouring to advance the doctrine of God.’ 447Beda especially took a violent part against the evangelist. This suspicious and arbitrary doctor, a thorough inquisitor, who possessed a remarkable talent for discovering in a book everything that could ruin a man by the help of forced interpretations, was seen poring night and day over Berquin’s volumes. He read in them: ‘The Virgin Mary is improperly invoked instead of the Holy Ghost.’—‘Point against the accused,’ said Beda.—He continued: ‘There are no grounds for calling her a treasury of grace, our hope, our life: qualities which belong essentially to our Saviour alone.’—Confirmation!—‘Faith alone justifies.’—Deadly heresy!—‘Neither the gates of hell, nor Satan, nor sin can do anything against him who has faith in God.’—What insolence! 448Beda made his report: ‘Of a truth,’ said his colleagues, ‘that is enough to bring any man to the stake.’

Berquin’s death being decided upon, the Sorbonne applied to the parliament, who raised no objections in the matter. A man was put to death in those times for an offensive passage in his writings; it was the censorship of a period just emerging from the barbarism of the middle ages. Demailly, an officer of the court, started for Abbeville, proceeded to the gentleman’s estate, and arrested him in the name of the law. His vassals, who were devoted to him, murmured and would have risen to defend him; but Berquin thought himself strong in his right; he remembered besides these words of the Son of God: ‘ Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain ;’ he entreated his friends to let him depart, and was taken to the prison of the Conciergerie, which he entered with a firm countenance and unbending head. 449

This sad news which reached the Duchess of Alençon in Spain moved her deeply, and while she was hurrying from Madrid to Toledo, Alcala, and Guadalaxara, soliciting everybody, ‘plotting’ her brother’s marriage with the sister of Charles V., and thus paving the way to the reconciliation of the two potentates, she resolved to save her brethren exiled or imprisoned for the Gospel. She applied to the king, attacking him on his better side. Francis I., Brantôme tells us, was called the father of letters. He had sought for learned men all over Europe and collected a fine library at Fontainebleau. 450‘What!’ said his sister to him, ‘you are founding a college at Paris intended to receive the enlightened men of foreign countries; and at this very time illustrious French scholars, Lefèvre of Etaples and others, are compelled to seek an asylum out of the kingdom.... You wish to be a propagator of learning, while musty hypocrites, black, white, and grey, are endeavouring to stifle it at home.’ 451Margaret was not content to love with word and tongue; she showed her love by her works. The thought of the poor starving exiles, who knew not where to lay their heads, haunted her in the magnificent palaces of Spain; she distributed four thousand gold pieces among them, says one of the enemies of the Reformation. 452