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

The Queen of Navarre had hardly left for Bearn, when Duprat and the Sorbonne endeavoured to carry their cruel plans into execution. Among the number of the gentlemen of John Stuart, Duke of Albany, was a nobleman of Poitou named De la Tour. The Duke of Albany, a member of the royal family of Scotland, had been regent of that kingdom, and De la Tour had lived with him in Edinburgh, where he had made the most of his time. ‘When the lord duke was regent of Scotland,’ people said, ‘the Sieur de la Tour sowed many Lutheran errors there.’ 642This French gentleman must therefore have been one of the earliest reformers in Scotland. He showed no less zeal at Paris than at Edinburgh, which greatly displeased the priests. Moreover, the Duke of Albany, who was in high favour with the king, was much disliked by the ambitious chancellor. An indictment was drawn up; Francis I., whose good genius was no longer by his side, shut his eyes; De la Tour and his servant, an evangelical like himself, were condemned by the parliament for heresy. On the 27th of October these two pious christians were bound in the same cart and led slowly to the pig-market to be burnt alive. When the cart stopped, the executioners ordered the servant to get down. He did so and stood at the cart’s tail. They stripped off his clothes, and flogged him so long and so severely that the poor wretch declared that he ‘repented.’ Some little mercy was consequently shown him, and they were content to cut out his tongue. They hoped by this means to shake De la Tour’s firmness; but though deeply moved, he raised his eyes to heaven, vowed to God that he would remain true to him, and immediately an ineffable joy replaced the anguish by which he had been racked. He was burnt alive.

Margaret must have heard at Pau of the death of the pious De la Tour; but however that may be, she left for Paris immediately after her delivery, giving her people orders to make haste. What was it that recalled her so promptly to the capital? Was it the news of some danger threatening the Gospel? A council was about to assemble at Paris; did she desire to be at hand to ward off the blows aimed at her friends? That is the reason given by one historian. 643‘She had determined to make haste,’ and, her confinement scarcely over, this weak and delicate princess, urging her courier to press on, crossed the sands and marshes of the Landes. In a letter from Barbezieux, she complains of the bad roads by which her carriage was so roughly jolted. ‘I can find nothing difficult, nor any stage wearisome. I hope to be at Blois in ten days.’ 644

It was time. De la Tour’s death had satisfied neither the chancellor nor the Sorbonne. They desired ‘the extirpation of heresy,’ and not merely the death of a single heretic. Not having succeeded by means of the clergy tax, they were determined to strive for it in another manner. Duprat listened to the reports, and took note of what he observed in the streets. Nothing annoyed him so much as hearing of laymen, and even women, who turned away their heads as they passed the churches, slipped into lonely streets, met in cellars or in garrets, where persons who had not received holy orders prayed aloud and read the Holy Scriptures. Had he not in 1516 abrogated the pragmatic sanction and stripped the Gallican Church of its liberties? Would he not, therefore, succeed with far less trouble in sacrificing this new and free Church, a poor and contemptible flock? As a provincial council was to be held at Paris, Duprat resolved to take advantage of it to strike a decisive blow.

On the 28th of February, 1528, the council was opened. The cardinal-archbishop having gone thither in great pomp, rose and spoke amid dead silence: ‘Sirs, a terrible pestilence, stirred up by Martin Luther, has destroyed the orthodox faith. A tempest has burst upon the bark of St. Peter, which, tossed by the winds, is threatened with dreadful shipwreck. 645... There is no difference between Luther and Manichæus.... And yet, reverend fathers, his adherents multiply in our province; they hold secret conventicles in many places; they unite with laymen in the most private chambers of the houses; 646they discuss the catholic faith with women and fools.’ ...

It will be seen that it was not heresy, properly so called, that the chancellor condemned in the Reformation, but liberty. A religion which was not exclusively in the hands of priests was, in his eyes, more alarming than heresy. If such practices were tolerated, would they not one day see gentlemen, shopkeepers, and even men sprung from the ranks of the people, presuming to have something to say in matters of state? The germ of the constitutional liberties of modern times lay hid in the bosom of the Reformation. The chancellor was not mistaken. He wished at one blow to destroy both religious and political liberty. He found enthusiastic accomplices in the priests assembled at Paris. The council drew up a decree ordering the bishops and even the inhabitants of the dioceses to denounce all the Lutherans of their acquaintance.

Would the king sanction this decree? Duprat was uneasy. He collected his thoughts, arranged his arguments, and proceeded to the palace with the hope of gaining his master. ‘Sire,’ he said to Francis, ‘God is able without your help to exterminate all this heretical band; 647but, in his great goodness, he condescends to call men to his aid. Who can tell of the glory and happiness of the many princes who, in past ages, have treated heretics as the greatest enemies of their crowns, and have given them over to death? If you wish to obtain salvation; if you wish to preserve your sovereign rights intact; if you wish to keep the nations submitted to you in tranquillity: manfully defend the catholic faith, and subdue all its enemies by your arms.’ 648Thus spoke Duprat; but the king thought to himself that if his ‘sovereign rights’ were menaced at all, it might well be by the power of Rome. He remained deaf as before.

‘Let us go further,’ said the chancellor to his creatures; ‘let the whole Church call for the extirpation of heresy.’ Councils were held at Lyons, Rouen, Tours, Rheims, and Bourges, and the priests restrained themselves less in the provinces than in the capital. ‘These heretics,’ said the fiery orators, ‘worship the devil, whom they raise by means of certain herbs and sacrilegious forms.’ 649But all was useless; Francis took pleasure in resisting the priests, and Duprat soon encountered an obstacle not less formidable.

If it was the duty of the priests to denounce the ‘enchanters,’ it was the business of the parliament to condemn them; but parliament and the chancellor were at variance. On the death of his wife, Duprat, then a layman and first president of parliament, had calculated that this loss might be a gain, and he entered the Church in order to get possession of the richest benefices in the kingdom. First, he laid his hands on the archbishopric of Sens, although at the election there were twenty-two votes against him and only one for him. 650Shortly after that, he seized the rich abbey of St. Benedict. ‘To us alone,’ said the monks, ‘belongs the choice of our abbot;’ and they boldly refused to recognise the chancellor. Duprat’s only answer was to lock them all up. The indignant parliament sent an apparitor to the archbishop’s officers, and ordered them to appear before it; but the officers fell upon the messenger, and beat him so cruelly that he died. The king decided in favour of his first minister, and the difference between the parliament and the chancellor grew wider.

Duprat, who desired to become reconciled with this court, whose influence was often necessary to him, fancied he could gain it over by means of the Lutheran heresy, which they both detested equally. On their side the parliament desired nothing better than to recover the first minister’s favour. These intrigues succeeded. ‘The chancellor and the counsellors mutually gave up the truth, which they looked upon as a mere nothing, like a crust of bread which one throws to a dog,’ to use the words of a reformer. Great was the exultation then in sacristy and in convent.