Читать книгу History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin (Vol. 1-8) - J. H. Merle D'Aubigné - Страница 42

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Margaret, who returned from Spain full of hope in her brother’s deliverance, was determined to do all in her power for the triumph of the Gospel. While the men of the ultramontane party, calling to mind the defeat of Pavia, demanded that heaven should be appeased by persecutions, Margaret thought, on the contrary, that humiliated France ought to turn towards Jesus Christ, in order to obtain from him a glorious deliverance.

But would Francis tread in his sister’s steps? History presents few characters more inconsistent than the character of this prince. He yielded at one time to Margaret, at another to the Sorbonne. He imprisoned and set free, he riveted the chains and broke them. All his actions were contradictory; all his projects seemed to exclude each other: on his bright side, he was the father of letters; on his dark side, the enemy of all liberty, especially of that which the Gospel gives; and he passed with ease from one of these characters to the other. Yet the influence which Margaret exercised over him in favour of the reformed seemed strongest during the eight or nine years that followed his captivity; Francis showed himself not unfavourable to the evangelicals during this period, except at times when irritated by certain excesses. Like a capricious and fiery steed, he sometimes felt a fly stinging him, when he would rear and throw his rider; but he soon grew calm and resumed his quiet pace. Accordingly many persons thought during the years 1525-1534 that the country of St. Bernard and Waldo would not remain behind Germany, Switzerland, and England. If the Reform had been completed, France would have been saved from the abominations of the Valois, the despotism of the Bourbons, and the enslaving superstitions of the popes.

Nine years before, the Reformation had begun in Germany: would it not cross the Rhine?... Strasburg is the main bridge by which German ideas enter France, and French ideas make their way into Germany. Many have already passed, both good and bad, from the right bank to the left, and from the left to the right; and will still pass as long as the Rhine continues to flow. In 1521 the movement had been very active. There had been an invasion at Strasburg of the doctrines and writings of Luther: his name was in every mouth. His noble conduct at the diet of Worms had enraptured Germany, and the news spread in every direction. Men repeated his words, they devoured his writings. Zell, priest of St. Lawrence and episcopal penitentiary, was one of the first awakened. He began to seek truth in the Scriptures, to preach that man is saved by grace; and his sermons made an immense impression.

A nobleman of this city, Count Sigismond of Haute-Flamme (in German Hohenlohe), a friend and ally of the duchess, who called him her good cousin, was touched with Luther’s heroism and the preaching of Zell. His conscience was aroused; he endeavoured to live according to the will of God; and feeling within him the sin that prevented it, he experienced the need of a Saviour, and found one in Jesus Christ. Sigismond was not one of those nobles, rather numerous then, who spoke in secret of the Saviour, but, before the world, seemed not to know him; Lambert of Avignon457 admired his frankness and his courage.458 Although a dignitary of the Church and dean of the great chapter, the count laboured to spread evangelical truth around him, and conceived at the same time a great idea. Finding himself placed between the two countries and speaking both languages, he resolved to set himself the task of bringing into France the great principles of the Reformation. As soon as he received any new work of Luther’s, he had it translated into French and printed, and forwarded it to the king’s sister.459 He did more than that; he wrote to Luther, begging him to send a letter to the duchess, or even compose some work calculated to encourage her in her holy undertakings.460 The count, who knew Margaret’s spirit and piety, and her influence over the king, doubted not that she was the door by which the new ideas which were to renovate the world, would penetrate into France. He composed and published himself a work entitled the Book of the Cross, in which he set forth the death of Christ as the essence of the Gospel.

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.’462 Sigismond 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.’465 Translations, 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,467 who 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

But Margaret did not lose courage. She recollected that the widow in the Gospel had obtained her request by her importunity. She entreated her mother, she wrote to her brother: ‘If you do not interfere, Berquin is a dead man.’470 Francis I. yielded to her prayer, and wrote to the first president that he, the king, would make him answerable for Berquin’s life if he dared to condemn him. The president stopped all proceedings; the monks hung their heads, and Beda and his friends, says the chronicler, ‘were nigh bursting with vexation.’471

Yet Margaret did not hide from herself that she had still a hard struggle before her, which would require strength and perseverance. She felt the need of support to bring to a successful end in France a transformation similar to that which was then renewing Germany. The Count of Hohenlohe, at Strasburg, was not enough: she wanted at her side a staff that would enable her to bear with her brother’s rebukes. God appeared willing to give her what she wished.

There was at court a prince, young, lively, witty, handsome, brave and gay, though somewhat harsh at times: he had already gone through surprising adventures, and, what was no small recommendation in Margaret’s eyes, had been the companion of Francis in the field and in prison. He was Henry d’Albret, King of Navarre—king by right, if not in fact—and at that time twenty-four years old. Community of misfortune had united Francis and Henry in close friendship, and young d’Albret soon conceived a deep affection for his friend’s sister. Henry loved learning, possessed great vivacity of temper, and spoke with facility and even with eloquence. It was a pleasant thing to hear him gracefully narrating to the court circles the manner in which he had escaped from the fort of Pizzighitone, where he had been confined after the battle of Pavia. ‘In vain,’ he said, ‘did I offer the emperor a large ransom; he was deaf. Determined to escape from my gaolers, I bribed two of my guards; I procured a rope-ladder, and Vivis and I—(Vivis was his page)—let ourselves down from the window during the night. My room was at a great height, situated in the main tower above the moat. But, resolved to sacrifice my life rather than the states of my fathers, I put on the clothes of one of my attendants, who took my place in my bed. I opened the window; it was a dark night; I glided slowly down the high walls; I reached the ground, crossed the ditches, quitted the castle of Pavia, and, by God’s help, managed so well that I got to St. Just on Christmas Eve’ (1525).472

Henry d’Albret, having thus escaped from his enemies, hastened to Lyons, where he found Madame, and where Margaret arrived soon after, on her return from Spain. Smitten with her beauty, wit, and grace, the King of Navarre courted her hand. Everything about him charmed all who saw him; but Margaret’s hand was not easy to be obtained. She had been first asked in marriage for the youthful Charles, King of Spain; and such a union, if it had been carried out, might not perhaps have been without influence upon the destinies of Europe. But the age of the monarch (he was then but eight years old) had caused the negotiation to fail, and the sister of the King of France married the Duke of Alençon, a prince of the blood, but a man without understanding, amiability, or courage. Chief cause of the disasters of Pavia, he had fled from the field of battle and died of shame.

Margaret did not at first accept the homage of the young King of Navarre. She was not to find in him all the support she needed; but that was not the only motive of her refusal; she could not think of marriage so long as her brother was a prisoner. Henry was not discouraged; he did all he could to please the duchess, and, knowing her attachment for the Gospel, he never failed, when present in the council, to take up the defence of the pious men whom Cardinal Duprat wished to put to death. This intervention was not a mere idle task. The persecution became such, that Margaret, withdrawing from the attentions of the prince, thought only of the dangers to which the humble christians were exposed whose faith she shared.

We shall see that the pope and the Sorbonne had more influence in France than the regent and the king.