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

One day Beda, syndic of the Sorbonne, went to court, where he had some business to transact with the king on behalf of that body. Some time before, he had published a refutation of the ‘Paraphrases and Annotations’ of Erasmus, and Francis I., who boasted of being a pupil of this king of letters, having heard of Beda’s attack, had given way to a fit of passion. As soon, therefore, as he heard that Beda was in the palace, he gave orders that he should be arrested and kept prisoner. Accordingly the syndic was seized, shut up in a chamber, and closely watched. Beda was exasperated, and the hatred he felt against the Reformation was turned against the king. Some of his friends, on hearing of this strange adventure, conjured Francis to set him at liberty. He consented on the following day, but on condition that the syndic should appear when called for. 628

The Sorbonne, said Berquin to himself, represents the papacy. It must be overthrown in order that Christ may triumph. He began first to study the writings of Beda, who had so bitterly censured those of his adversaries, and extracted from them twelve propositions ‘manifestly impious and blasphemous’ in the opinion of Erasmus. Then, taking his manuscript, he proceeded to court and presented it to the king, who said: ‘I will interdict Beda’s polemical writings.’ As Francis smiled upon him, Berquin resolved to go further, namely, to attack the Sorbonne and popery, as equally dangerous to the State and to the Church, and to make public certain doctrines of theirs which struck at the power of the throne. He approached the king, and said to him in a lower tone: ‘Sire, I have discovered in the acts and papers of the Sorbonne certain secrets of importance to the State ... some mysteries of iniquity.’ 629Nothing was better calculated to exasperate Francis I. ‘Show me those passages,’ he exclaimed. Meantime he told the reformer that the twelve propositions of the syndic of the Sorbonne should be examined. Berquin left the palace full of hope. ‘I will follow these redoubtable hornets into their holes,’ he said to his friends. ‘I will fall upon these insensate babblers, and scourge them on their own dunghill.’ Some people who heard him thought him out of his mind. ‘This gentleman will certainly get himself put to death,’ they said, ‘and he will richly deserve it.’ 630

Everything seemed to favour Berquin’s design. Francis I. was acting the part of Frederick the Wise: he seemed even more ardent than that moderate protector of Luther. On the 12th of July, 1527, the Bishop of Bazas appeared at court, whither he had been summoned by the king. Francis gave him the twelve famous propositions he had received from Berquin, and commanded him to take them to the rector of the university, with orders to have them examined, not only by doctors of divinity, of whom he had suspicions in such a matter, 631but by the four assembled faculties. Berquin hastened to report this to Erasmus, still hoping to gain him over by the good news.

Erasmus had never before felt so alarmed; he tried to stop Berquin in his ‘mad’ undertaking. The eulogies which this faithful christian lavished upon him particularly filled him with terror; he would a thousand times rather they had been insults. ‘The love which you show for me,’ he wrote to Berquin, ‘stirs up unspeakable hatred against me everywhere. The step you have taken with the king will only serve to irritate the hornets. You wish for a striking victory rather than a sure one; your expectations will be disappointed; the Bedists are contriving some atrocious plot. 632... Beware!... Even should your cause be holier than that of Christ himself, your enemies have resolved to put you to death. You say that the king protects you ... do not trust to that; the favour of princes is short-lived. You do not care for your life, you add; good! but think at least of learning, and of our friends who, alas! will perish with you.’

Berquin was grieved at this letter. In his opinion the moment was unparalleled. If Erasmus, Francis I., and Berquin act in harmony, no one can resist them; France, and perhaps Europe, will be reformed. And it is just when the King of France is stretching out his hand that the scholar of Rotterdam draws his back!... What can be done without Erasmus?... A circumstance occurred, however, which gave some hope to the evangelist.

The Sorbonne, little heeding the king’s opposition, persevered in their attacks upon learning. They forbade the professors in the colleges to read the ‘Colloquies’ of Erasmus with their pupils, and excommunicated the king of the schools in the schools themselves.... Erasmus, who was a vain, susceptible, choleric man, will now unite with Berquin: the latter had no doubt of it. ‘The time is come,’ wrote Berquin to the illustrious scholar; ‘let us pull off the mask behind which these theologians hide themselves.’ But the more Berquin urged Erasmus, the more Erasmus shrank back; he wished for peace at any cost. It was of no use to point to the blows which the Sorbonne were aiming at him; it pleased him to be beaten, not from meekness, but from fear of the world. The wary man, who was now growing old, became impatient, not against his slanderers, but against his friend. His ‘son’ wanted to lead him as if he were his master. He replied with sadness, almost with bitterness: ‘Truly I admire you, my dear Berquin. You imagine, then, that I have nothing else to do than spend my days in battling with theologians.... I would rather see all my books condemned to the flames than go fighting at my age.’ Unhappily, Erasmus did not abandon his books only, he abandoned truth; and there he was wrong. Berquin did not despair of victory, and undertook to win it unaided. He thought to himself: ‘Erasmus admires in the Gospel a certain harmony with the wisdom of antiquity, but he does not adore in it the foolishness of the cross; he is a theorist, not a reformer.’ From that hour Berquin wrote more rarely and more coldly to his illustrious master, and employed all his strength to carry by main force the place he was attacking. If Erasmus, like Achilles, had retired to his tent, were not Margaret and Francis, and Truth especially, fighting by his side?

The catholic party grew alarmed, and resolved to oppose a vigorous resistance to these attacks. The watchword was given. Many libels were circulated; men were threatened with the gaol and the stake; even ghosts were conjured up; all means were lawful. One sister Alice quitted the fires of purgatory and appeared on the banks of the Rhone and Saone to confound ‘the damnable sect of heretics.’ Any one might read of this prodigy in the ‘Marvellous History of the Ghost of Lyons,’ written by one of the king’s almoners. The Sorbonne knew, however, that phantoms were not sufficient; but they had on their side something more than phantoms. They could oppose Berquin with adversaries who had flesh and blood like himself, and whose power seemed irresistible. These adversaries were a princess and a statesman.

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A woman reigned in the councils of the king. Inclined at first to ridicule the monks, she had after the defeat of Pavia gone over to the side of the priests. At the moment when the kingly authority received such a blow, she had seen that their power remained, and had made them her auxiliaries. This woman was Louisa of Savoy, Duchess of Angoulême, mother of Francis I., worthy predecessor of Catherine de’ Medici. A clever woman, ‘an absolute lady in her wishes both good and bad,’ says Pasquier; a freethinker, who could study the new doctrine as a curiosity, but who despised it; a dissolute woman, of whom Beaucaire, Brantôme, and others relate many scandalous anecdotes; a fond and absolute mother, who all her life preserved an almost sovereign authority over her son,—Louisa held in her hand two armies which she managed at will. One of these was composed of her maids of honour, by whose means she introduced into the court of France gallantry, scandal, and even indecency of language; the other was formed of intelligent, crafty men, who had no religion, no morality, no scruples; and at their head was Duprat.