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

Sigismond’s labours with the priests and nobles around him were not crowned with success. The monks especially looked at him with astonishment, and replied that they would take good care not to change the easy life they were leading. Lambert, who had a keen eye, perceived this, and said to the count with a smile: ‘You will not succeed; these folks are afraid of damaging their wallets, their kitchens, their stables, and their bellies.’ 461

But he succeeded better with Margaret. He had no sooner heard of the defeat at Pavia than he wrote her a letter full of sympathy. ‘May God reward you,’ she answered, ‘for the kindness you have done us in visiting with such tender love the mother and the daughter, both poor afflicted widows! You show that you are not only a cousin according to flesh and blood, but also according to the spirit. We have resolved to follow your advice, so far as the Father of all men is propitious to us.’ 462Sigismond wrote again to the duchess while she was in Spain; and when he heard of her return to France, manifested a desire to go to Paris to advance the work of the Reformation. He was at the same time full of confidence in Margaret’s zeal. ‘You think me more advanced than I am,’ she replied; ‘but I hope that He who, in despite of my unworthiness, inspires you with this opinion of me, will deign also to perfect his work in me.’ 463

The Duchess of Alençon did not however desire, as we have said, a reformation like that of Luther or Calvin. She wished to see in the Church a sincere and living piety, preserving at the same time the bishops and the hierarchy. To change the inside, but to leave the outside standing—such was her system. If they left the Church, two evils would in her opinion result which she wished to avoid: first, it would excite an insurmountable opposition; and second, it would create divisions and lead to the rupture of unity. She hoped to attain her ends by a union between France and Germany. If Germany excited France, if France moderated Germany, would they not attain to a universal Reformation of the Church? She had not drawn up her plan beforehand, but circumstances gradually led her to this idea, which was not her own only, but that of her brother’s most influential advisers, and which was sometimes that of her brother himself. Would she succeed?... Truth is proud and will not walk in concert with error. Besides, Rome is proud also, and, if this system had prevailed, she would no doubt have profited by the moderation of the reformers to maintain all her abuses.

The great event which Margaret was waiting for magnified her hopes. Whenever Francis I. passed the Pyrenees, it would be in her eyes like the sun rising in the gates of the east to inundate our hemisphere with its light. Margaret doubted not that her brother would immediately gather round him all the friends of the Gospel, like planets round the orb of day. ‘Come in the middle of April,’ she wrote to Hohenlohe, who was in her eyes a star of the first magnitude; ‘you will find all your friends assembled.... The spirit, which by a living faith unites you to your only Chief (Jesus Christ), will make you diligently communicate your assistance to all who need it, especially to those who are united to you in spirit and in faith. As soon as the king returns to France, he will send to them and seek them in his turn.’ Margaret imagined herself already at the court of France, with the count at her side, and around her the exiles, the prisoners, the doctors.... What an effect this mass of light would have upon the French! All the ice of scholastic catholicism would melt before the rays of the sun. ‘There will indeed be some trouble at first,’ she said; ‘but the Word of truth will be heard.... God is God . He is what he is, not less invisible than incomprehensible. His glory and his victory are spiritual. He is conqueror when the world thinks him conquered.’ 464

The king was still a prisoner; the regent and Duprat, who were opposed to the Reformation, wielded supreme power; the priests, seeing the importance of the moment, united all their efforts to combat the evangelical influences, and obtained a brilliant triumph. On Monday, the 5th of February, 1526, a month before the return of Francis I., the sound of the trumpet was heard in all the public places of Paris, and a little later in those of Sens, Orleans, Auxerre, Meaux, Tours, Bourges, Angers, Poitiers, Troyes, Lyons, and Macon, and ‘in all the bailiwicks, seneschallies, provostries, viscounties, and estates of the realm.’ When the trumpet ceased, the herald cried by order of parliament:—‘All persons are forbidden to put up to sale or translate from Latin into French the epistles of St. Paul, the Apocalypse, and other books . Henceforward no printer shall print any of the books of Luther. No one shall speak of the ordinances of the Church or of images, otherwise than Holy Church ordains. All books of the Holy Bible, translated into French, shall be given up by those who possess them, and carried within a week to the clerks of the court. All prelates, priests, and their curates shall forbid their parishioners to have the least doubt of the catholic faith.’ 465Translations, books, explanations, and even doubts were prohibited.

This proclamation afflicted Margaret very seriously. Will her brother ratify these fierce monastic prohibitions, or will he cooperate in the victory of truth? Will he permit the Reformation to pass from Germany into France? One circumstance filled the Duchess of Alençon with hope: the king declared in favour of Berquin. It will be recollected that this gentleman had been imprisoned in the Conciergerie. Three monks, his judges, entered his prison, and reproached him with having said that ‘the gates of hell can do nothing against him who has faith.’ This notion of a salvation entirely independent of priests exasperated the clergy.—‘Yes,’ answered Berquin, ‘when the eternal Son of God receives the sinner who believes in his death and makes him a child of God, this divine adoption cannot be forfeited.’ The monks, however, could see nothing but a culpable enthusiasm in this joyful confidence. Berquin sent Erasmus the propositions censured by his judges. ‘I find nothing impious in them,’ replied the prince of the schools.

The Sorbonne did not think the same. The prior of the Carthusians, the prior of the Celestines, monks of all colours, ‘imps of antichrist,’ says the chronicler, ‘gave help to the band of the Sorbonne in order to destroy by numbers the firmness of Berquin.’—‘Your books will be burnt,’ said the pope’s delegates to the accused, ‘you will make an apology, and then only will you escape. But if you refuse what is demanded of you, you will be led to the stake.’—‘I will not yield a single point,’ he answered. Whereupon the Sorbonnists, the Carthusians, and the Celestines exclaimed: ‘Then it is all over with you!’ Berquin waited calmly for the fulfilment of these threats.

When the Duchess of Alençon heard of all this, she immediately wrote to her brother, and fell at her mother’s knees. Louisa of Savoy was not inaccessible to compassion, in the solemn hour that was to decide her son’s liberty. That princess was one of those profane characters who think little of God in ordinary times, but cry to him when the sea in its rage is about to swallow them up. Shut in her closet with Margaret, she prayed with her that God would restore the king to France. The duchess, full of charity and a woman of great tact, took advantage of one of these moments to attempt to soften her mother in favour of Berquin. She succeeded: the regent was seized with a sudden zeal, and ordered the pope’s delegates to suspend matters until after the king’s return. 466

The delegates, in great surprise, read the letter over and over again: it seemed very strange to them. They deliberated upon it, and, thinking themselves of more consequence than this woman, quietly pursued their work. The haughty and resolute Louisa of Savoy, having heard of their insolence, was exasperated beyond measure, and ordered a second letter to be written to the pontiff’s agents, 467who contented themselves with saying ‘ Non possumus ,’ and made the more haste, for fear their victim should escape them. The king’s mother, still more irritated, applied to the parliament, who held Berquin in respect, and who said boldly that the whole thing was nothing but a monkish conspiracy. At this the members of the Roman party made a still greater disturbance. Many of them (we must acknowledge) thought they were doing the public a service. ‘Erasmus is an apostate,’ they said, ‘and Berquin is his follower. 468... Their opinions are heretical, schismatic, scandalous.... We must burn Erasmus’s books ... and Berquin with them.’ 469