Читать книгу History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin (Vol. 1-8) - J. H. Merle D'Aubigné - Страница 44

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There was an instinctive feeling in christendom that up to this time its society had been but fragmentary, a great disorder, an immense chaos.496 It felt an earnest want of that social unity, of that supreme order, and of that all-ruling idea which the papacy had not been able to give. By proclaiming a new creation, the Reformation was about to accomplish this task. The isolation of nations was to cease; all would touch each other; reciprocal influences would multiply from generation to generation.... The Reformation prepared the way for the great unity in the midst of the world.

Evangelical christians felt a consciousness, indistinct perhaps, though deep, of this new movement in human affairs, and many would have wished that France should not yield to Germany or England the privilege of marching in the van of the new order of things. They said that since the emperor had put himself at the head of the enemies of the Reformation, the king ought to place himself in the front rank of its defenders. The Duchess of Alençon in particular was constantly soliciting the king, and praying him to recall to France the men who would bring into it the true light. But Francis received her proposals coldly, sometimes rudely, and cut short every attempt to answer; still the duchess was indefatigable, and when the king shut the door against her, ‘she got in through the keyhole.’ At last Francis, who loved his sister, esteemed learning, and despised the monks, yielded to her pressing entreaties, and above all to the new ideas and the exigencies of his political plans. The gates of the prisons were opened.

Berquin was still a prisoner, sorrowful but comforted by his faith, unable to see clearly into the future, but immovable in his loyalty to the Gospel. The king determined to save him from ‘the claws of Beda’s faction.’ ‘I will not suffer the person or the goods of this gentleman to be injured,’ he said to the parliament on the 1st of April; ‘I will inquire into the matter myself.’ The officers sent by the king took the christian captive from his prison, and, though still keeping watch over him, placed him in a commodious chamber. Berquin immediately set about forming plans for the triumph of truth.

Clement Marot had paid dearly for the privilege of being Margaret’s secretary; he was in prison, and consoled himself by composing his little poems. Margaret obtained his full release, and Marot hastened to his friends, exclaiming in a transport of joy:

In narrow cell without a cause,

Shut up in foul despite of laws

By wicked men, the king’s decree

In this New Year has set me free.497

Michael of Aranda, who, in 1524, had preached the Gospel with such power at Lyons, had been removed from Margaret, whose almoner he was. She sent for him and imparted to him her plan for introducing the Gospel into the Catholic Church of France, by renewing without destroying it. ‘I have procured your nomination to the bishopric of Trois-Châteaux in Dauphiny,’498 she said. ‘Go, and evangelise your diocese.’ He accepted; the truth had already been scattered in Dauphiny by Farel and others. Did Aranda share Margaret’s views, or had ambition anything to do with his acceptance? It is hard to say.

A fourth victim of the persecution was soon saved. The young prebendary of Metz, the amiable Pierre Toussaint, was still in the frightful den into which the abbot of St. Antoine had thrust him. His host at Basle had not sent the books which the treacherous priest had constrained him to write for; no doubt the worthy citizen, knowing in whose hands his friend was lying, had foreseen the danger to which their receipt would expose him. Several evangelical christians of France, Switzerland, and Lorraine, particularly the merchant Vaugris, had successively interceded in his favour, but to no purpose. Finding all their exertions useless, they applied at last to Margaret, who warmly pleaded the cause of the young evangelist before the king. In July 1526, the order for his release arrived. The officers charged with this pleasing task descended to the gloomy dungeon selected by the abbot of St. Antoine, and rescued the lamb from the fangs of that wild beast. Toussaint, thin, weak, pale as a faded flower, came out slowly from his fearful den. His weakened eyes could hardly support the light of day, and he knew not where to go. At first he went to some old acquaintances; but they were all afraid of harbouring a heretic escaped from the scaffold. The young prebendary did not possess Berquin’s energy; he was one of those sensitive and delicate natures that need a support, and he found himself in the world, in the free air, almost as much alone as in his dungeon. ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘God our heavenly Father, who has fixed bounds to the wrath of man which it cannot pass, has delivered me in a wonderful manner from the hands of the tyrants; but, alas! what will become of me? The world is mad and spurns the rising Gospel of Jesus Christ.’499 A few timid but well-meaning friends said to him: ‘The Duchess of Alençon alone can protect you; there is no asylum for you but at her court. Make application to a princess who welcomes with so much generosity all the friends of learning and of the Gospel, and profit by your residence to investigate closely the wind that blows in those elevated regions.’ Toussaint did what they told him; he began his journey, and, despite his natural timidity, arrived at Paris, where we shall meet with him again.

More important deliverances still were in preparation. Strasburg was to rejoice. There was no city out of France where the king’s return had been hailed with so much enthusiasm. Many evangelical christians had sought refuge there from the cruelties of Duprat, and were sighing for the moment that would restore them to their country. Among the number of the refugees was the famous Cornelius Agrippa. His reputation was not unblemished; a book on the ‘Vanity of Science’ does him little credit; but he seems at this time to have been occupied with the Gospel. Having received a letter from the excellent Papillon, who told him how favourable the king appeared to the new light, Agrippa, who, surrounded by pious men, took their tone and tuned his voice in harmony with theirs, exclaimed: ‘All the Church of the saints with us, hearing of the triumphs of the Word at the court and in the most part of France, rejoiced with exceeding great joy.500 I bless the Lord for the glory with which the Word is crowned among you. Would to God that we were permitted, as well as you, to return to France!’ Another country was equally attractive to this scholar: ‘Write to me what they are doing at Geneva ... tell me if the Word is loved there, and if they care for learning.’501

Men more decided than Cornelius Agrippa were to be found at Strasburg. During all the winter the hospitable house of Capito had often witnessed the meetings of those christians who had raised highest the standard of the Gospel in France. There assembled the aged Lefèvre, the first translator of the Bible, who had escaped the stake only by flight; the pious Roussel, Vedastes, Simon, and Farel who had arrived from Montbéliard. These friends of the Reformation concealed themselves under assumed names: Lefèvre passed as Anthony Peregrin; Roussel as Tolnin; but they were known by everybody, even by the children in the streets.502 They often met Bucer, Zell, and the Count of Hohenlohe, and edified one another. Margaret undertook to bring them all back to France. The court was then in the south; the king was at Cognac, his birthplace, where he often resided; the duchesses (his mother and sister) at Angoulême. One day when they met, Margaret entreated her brother to put an end to the cruel exile of her friends: Francis granted everything.

What joy! the aged Lefèvre, the fervent Roussel, are recalled with honour, says Erasmus.503 The Strasburgers embraced them with tears; the old man felt happy that he was going to die in the country where he was born. He immediately took the road to France in company with Roussel; others followed them; all believed that the new times were come. In their meetings the evangelicals called to mind these words of the prophet: The ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.504 Lefèvre and Roussel hastened to their protectress. Margaret received them kindly, lodged them in the castle of Angoulême, where she was born, on that smiling hill which she loved so much, near that ‘softly-flowing’ Charente, as she describes it. Lefèvre and Roussel had many precious conversations with her. They loved to speak of their life at Strasburg, of the new views they had found there, and of the brotherly communion they had enjoyed. ‘We were there,’ they said, ‘with William Farel, Michael of Aranda, Francis Lambert, John Vedastes, the Chevalier d’Esch, and many other evangelicals ... scattered members of a torn body, but one in Christ Jesus. We carefully put out of sight all that might interrupt the harmony between brethren; the peace that we tasted, far from being without savour, like that of the world, was perfumed with the sweet odour of God’s service.’

This meeting at Strasburg had borne fruit. The energetic Farel, the learned Lefèvre, the spiritual Roussel, gifted with such opposite natures, had reacted upon each other. Farel had become more gentle, Roussel more strong; contact with iron had given an unusual hardness to a metal by nature inclined to be soft. The sermons they heard, their frequent conversations, the trials of exile, and the consolation of the Spirit of God, had tempered the souls which had been not a little discouraged by persecution. Roussel had taken advantage of his leisure to study Hebrew, and the Word of God had acquired a sovereign importance in his eyes. Struck by the virtues of which the early christians had given an example, he had found that we must seek for the secret of their lives in the history of the primitive Church, in the inspired Scripture of God. ‘The purity of religion will never be restored,’ he used to say, ‘unless we drink at the springs which the Holy Ghost has given us.’505

It was not enough for the refugees to have returned; their christian activity must be employed to the advantage of France. At the beginning of June, Roussel went to Blois. Margaret wished to make this city—the favourite residence of the Valois, and notorious for the crimes perpetrated there in after years—a refuge for the persecuted, a caravanserai for the saints, a stronghold of the Gospel. On the 29th of June Lefèvre also went there.506 The king intrusted him with the education of his third son and the care of the castle library. Chapelain, physician to the Duchess of Angoulême, and Cop, another doctor, of whom we shall see more hereafter, were also in that city; and all of them, filled with gratitude towards Francis I., were contriving the means of imparting ‘something of Christianity to the Most Christian King’507—which was, in truth, very necessary.

Thus things were advancing. It seemed as if learning and the Gospel had returned with the king from banishment. Macrin, whose name Zwingle placed side by side with that of Berquin, was set at liberty.508 Cornelius Agrippa returned to Lyons. Sprung from an ancient family of Cologne, he had served seven years in the imperial army; he then became a great savant (and not a great magician, as was supposed), doctor of theology, law, and medicine. He published a book on Marriage and against celibacy, which excited much clamour. Agrippa was astonished at this, and not without reason. ‘What!’ he exclaimed, ‘the tales of Boccaccio, the jests of Poggio, the adulteries of Euryalus and Lucretia, the loves of Tristan and of Lancelot, are read greedily, even by young girls509 ... and yet they cry out against my book on Marriage!’—This explains an incident in history: the youthful readers of Boccaccio became the famous ‘squadron’ of Catherine de’ Medici, by whose means that impure woman obtained so many victories over the lords of the court.

When men heard of these deliverances, they thought that Francis I., seeing Charles V. at the head of the Roman party, would certainly put himself at the head of the evangelical cause, and that the two champions would decide on the battle-field the great controversy of the age. ‘The king,’ wrote the excellent Capito to the energetic Zwingle, ‘is favourable to the Word of God.’510 Margaret already saw the Holy Ghost reviving in France the one, holy, and universal Church. She resolved to hasten on these happy times, and, leaving Angoulême and Blois in the month of July, arrived in Paris.

Toussaint was waiting for her. Having reached the capital under an assumed name, the young evangelist at first kept himself in concealment. On hearing of the arrival of the sister of Francis, he asked permission to see her in private; and the princess, as was her custom, received him with great kindness. What a contrast for this poor man, just rescued from the cruel talons of the abbot of St. Antoine, to find himself in the palace of St. Germain, where Margaret’s person, her urbanity, wit, lively piety, indefatigable zeal, love of letters, and elegance, charmed all who came near her! Toussaint, like the poet, was never tired of admiring

A sweetness living in her beauteous face

Which does the fairest of her sex eclipse,

A lively wit, of learning ample store,

And over all a captivating grace,

Whether she speaks, or silent are her lips.511

One thing, however, charmed Toussaint still more: it was the true piety which he found in Margaret. She treated him with the kindness of a christian woman, and soon put him at his ease. ‘The most illustrious Duchess of Alençon,’ he wrote, ‘has received me with as much kindness as if I had been a prince or the person who was dearest to her.512 I hope,’ he added, ‘that the Gospel of Christ will soon reign in France.’513 The duchess, on her part, touched with the faith of the young evangelist, invited him to come again and see her the next day. He went and he went again; he had long and frequent conversations with Margaret on the means of propagating the Gospel everywhere.514 ‘God, by the light of his Word,’ he said, ‘must illumine the world, and by the breath of his Spirit must transform all hearts. The Gospel alone, Madame, will bring into regular order all that is confused.’—‘It is the only thing that I desire,’ replied Margaret.515 She believed in the victory of truth; it seemed to her that the men of light could not be conquered by the men of darkness. The new life was about to rise like the tide, and erelong cover with its wide waves the arid landes of France. Margaret espied tongues of fire, she heard eloquent voices, she felt swelling hearts throbbing around her. Everything was stirring in that new and mysterious world which enraptured her imagination. It was to inaugurate this new era, so full of light, of faith, of liberty, that her brother had been delivered from the prisons of Charles V. ‘Ah!’ she said to Toussaint in their evangelical conversations, ‘it is not only myself that desires the triumph of the Gospel; even the king wishes for it.516 And, believe me, our mother (Louisa of Savoy!) will not oppose our efforts.517 The king,’ she protested to the young man, ‘is coming to Paris to secure the progress of the Gospel—if, at least, the war does not prevent him.’518 Noble illusions! Certain ideas on this subject, in accord with his policy, were running, no doubt, in the king’s mind; but at that time Francis was thinking of nothing but compensating himself for the privations of captivity by indulging in gallantry.

The young prebendary of Metz was under the spell; he indulged in the greatest hopes, and joyfully hailed the new firmament in which Margaret would shine as one of the brightest stars. He wrote to Œcolampadius: ‘This illustrious princess is so taught of God, and so familiar with Holy Scripture, that no one can ever separate her from Jesus Christ.’519 Some have asked whether this prediction was verified. Margaret of Navarre, terrified by her brother’s threats, certainly made a lamentable concession in after years, and this is proved by a letter Calvin addressed to her; but she was, nevertheless, a tree planted by the rivers of water. The storm broke off a few branches; still the roots were deep, and the tree did not perish.

Toussaint often found the halls of the palace of St. Germain filled with the most distinguished personages of the kingdom, eager to present their homage to the sister of Francis I. Side by side with ambassadors and nobles dressed in the most costly garments, and soldiers with their glittering arms, were cardinals robed in scarlet and ermine, bishops with their satin copes, ecclesiastics of every order, with long gowns and tonsured heads.520 These clerics, all desirous of attaining to the highest offices of the Church, approached the illustrious princess, spoke to her of the Gospel, of Christ, of inextinguishable love; and Toussaint listened with astonishment to such strange court language. His former patron, the Cardinal of Lorraine, archbishop of Rheims and of Lyons, whom we must not confound with his infamous nephew, one of the butchers of the St. Bartholomew massacre, gave the young prebendary a most affable reception, never ceasing to repeat that he loved the Gospel extremely.... Margaret, who permitted herself to be easily persuaded, took the religious prattle of this troop of flatterers for sound piety, and inspired the young christian with her own blind confidence.

Yet the latter sometimes asked himself whether all these fine speeches were not mere court compliments. One day he heard Briçonnet, Bishop of Meaux, in whom the most credulous still placed some hope, rank the Roman Church very high and the Word of God very low: ‘Hypocritical priest!’ said Toussaint aside, ‘you desire more to please men than to please God!’ If these sycophant priests chanced to meet with any noble scoffers or atheists, in some apartment far from that of the princess or on the terrace of St. Germain, they fearlessly threw aside the mask, and turned into ridicule the evangelical faith they had cried up before the sister of Francis I. When they had obtained the benefices they coveted, they changed sides; they were the foremost in attacking the Lutherans;521 and if they observed any evangelicals coming, they turned their backs upon them. Then would Toussaint exclaim: ‘Alas! they speak well of Jesus Christ with those who speak well of him; but with those who blaspheme, they blaspheme also.’522

Lefèvre and Roussel having come to Paris from Blois, about the end of July 1526, the young and impetuous Toussaint, full of respect for them, hastened to tell them of his vexations, and demanded that they should unmask these hypocrites and boldly preach the Gospel in the midst of that perverse court. ‘Patience,’ said the two scholars, both rather temporising in disposition, and whom the air of the court had perhaps already weakened, ‘patience! do not let us spoil anything; the time is not yet come.’523 Then Toussaint, upright, generous, and full of affection, burst into tears. ‘I cannot restrain my tears,’ he said.524 ‘Yes; be wise after your fashion; wait, put off, dissemble as much as you please; you will acknowledge, however, at last, that it is impossible to preach the Gospel without bearing the cross.525 The banner of divine mercy is now raised, the gate of the kingdom of heaven is open. God does not mean us to receive his summons with supineness. We must make haste, for fear the opportunity should escape us and the door be shut.’

Toussaint, grieved and oppressed by the tone of the court, told all his sorrows to the reformer of Basle: ‘Dear Œcolampadius,’ he said, ‘when I think that the king and the duchess are as well disposed as possible to promote the Gospel of Christ, and when I see at the same time those who are called to labour the foremost at this excellent work having continual recourse to delay, I cannot restrain my grief. What would not you do in Germany, if the emperor and his brother Ferdinand looked favourably on your efforts?’ Toussaint did not hide from Margaret herself how his hopes had been disappointed. ‘Lefèvre,’ he said, ‘is wanting in courage; may God strengthen and support him!’ The duchess did all she could to keep the young evangelist at her court; she sought for men who, while having a christian heart and a christian life, would not, however, break with the Church; she accordingly offered the ex-prebendary great advantages, but begging him at the same time to be moderate. Toussaint, a man of susceptible and somewhat hard character, haughtily repelled these advances. He was stifled at the court; the air he breathed there made him sick; admiration had yielded to disgust. ‘I despise these magnificent offers,’ he said, ‘I detest the court more than any one has done.526 Farewell to the court ... it is the most dangerous of harlots.’527 Margaret conjured him at least not to quit France, and sent him to one of her friends, Madame de Contraigues, who, abounding in charity for the persecuted evangelists, received them in her chateau of Malesherbes in the Orléanais. Before leaving, the young Metzer, foreseeing that a terrible struggle was approaching, recommended the friends he left behind him to pray to God that France would show herself worthy of the Word.528 He then departed, praying the Lord to send to this people the teacher, the apostle, who, being himself a model of truth and devotedness, would lead it in the new paths of life.