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

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Geneva was at first nothing but a rural township (vicus), with a municipal council and an edile. Under Honorius in the 4th century it had become a city, having probably received this title after Caracalla had extended the rights of citizenship to all the Gauls. From the earliest times, either before or after Charlemagne, Geneva possessed rights and liberties which guaranteed the citizens against the despotism of its feudal lord. But did it possess political institutions? was the community organised? Information is wanting on these points. In the beginning of the sixteenth century the Genevese claimed to have been free so long that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.15 But this ‘memory of man’ might not embrace many centuries.

The pope having invited Charlemagne to march his Franks into Italy, for the love of God, and to fight against his enemies, that prince proceeded thither in 773 with a numerous army, part of which crossed Mount St. Bernard, thus pointing the way to another Charlemagne who was to appear a thousand years later, and whose empire, more brilliant but still more ephemeral than the first, was also in its dissolution to restore liberty to Geneva, which had been a second time absorbed into France.16 Charlemagne, while passing through with his army, halted at Geneva and held a council.17 This word has led to the belief that the city possessed liberties and privileges, and that he confirmed them;18 but the council was probably composed of the councillors around the prince, and was not a city council. Be that as it may, the origin of the liberties of Geneva seems to be hidden in the night of time.

Three powers in their turn threatened these liberties.

First came the counts of Geneva. They were originally, as it would seem, merely officers of the Emperor;19 but gradually became almost independent princes.

As early as 1091, we meet with an Aymon, count of Genevois.20 The rule of these counts of Genevois soon extended over a wide and magnificent territory. They resided not only at their hereditary manor-seat in Geneva, which stood on the site of Gondebald’s palace, but also in various castles scattered in distant parts of their domain—at Annecy, Rumilly, La Roche, Lausanne, Moudon, Romont, Rue, Les Clées, and other places.21 In those days, the counts lived both a solitary and turbulent life, such as characterised the feudal period. At one time they were shut up in their castles, which were for the most part surrounded by a few small houses, and begirt with fosses and drawbridges, and on whose walls could be seen afar the arms of the warders glittering in the rising sun. At other times, they would sally forth, attended by a numerous escort of officers, with their seneschal, marshal, cup-bearers, falconers, pages, and esquires, either in pursuit of the chase on the heights of the Jura and the Alps; or it might be with the pious motive of visiting some place of pilgrimage; or not unfrequently indeed to wage harassing crusades against their neighbours or their vassals. But during all these feudal agitations another power was growing in Geneva—a power humble indeed at first—but whose mouth was to speak great things.22

At the period of the Burgundian conquest Geneva possessed a bishop, and the invasion of the Germans soon gave this prelate considerable power. Gifted with intelligence far superior to that of the men by whom they were surrounded, respected by the barbarians as the high-priests of Rome, knowing how to acquire vast possessions by slow degrees, and thus becoming the most important personages in the cities where they resided, the bishops laboured to protect their city from abroad and to govern it at home. Finally they confiscated without much ceremony the independence of the people, and united the quality of prince with that of bishop.

In 1124 Aymon, Count of Genevois, by an agreement made with Humbert of Grammont, Bishop of Geneva, gave up the city to the latter,23 reserving only the old palace and part of the criminal jurisprudence, but continuing to hold the secondary towns and the rural district.

The institution of bishop-princes, half religious and half political, equally in disaccord with the Gospel of past ages and the liberty of the future, may have been exceptionally beneficent; but generally speaking it was a misfortune for the people of the middle ages, and particularly for Geneva. If at that time the Church had possessed humble but earnest ministers to hold up the light of the Gospel to the world, why should not the same spiritual power, which in the first century had vanquished Roman polytheism, have been able in later times to dispel the darkness of feudalism? But what could be expected of prelates who turned their croziers into swords, their flocks into serfs, their pastoral dwellings into fortified castles? Corruptio optimi pessima. The prince-bishop, that amphibious offspring of the barbaric invasion, cannot be maintained in christendom. The petty people of Geneva—and this is one of its titles to renown—was the first who expelled him in modern times; and the manner in which it did this is one of the pages of history we desire to transcribe. It needed truly a powerful energy—the arm of God—to undertake and carry through this first act which wrested from episcopal hands the temporal sceptre they had usurped. Since then the example of Geneva has often been followed; the feudal thrones of the bishops have fallen on the banks of the Rhine, in Belgium, Bavaria, Austria, and elsewhere; but the first throne that fell was that of Geneva, as the last will be that of Rome.

If the bishop, owing to the support of the emperors, succeeded in ousting the count from the city of Geneva, leaving him only the jurisdiction over his rural vassals, he succeeded also, in the natural course of things, in suppressing the popular franchises. These rights, however, still subsisted, the prince-bishop being elected by the people—a fact recorded by Saint Bernard at the election of Ardutius.24 The prince even made oath of fidelity to the people. Occasionally the citizens opposed the prelate’s encroachments, and refused to be dragged before the court of Rome.25

Christianity was intended to be a power of liberty; Rome, by corrupting it, made it a power of despotism; Calvin, by regenerating it, set it up again and restored its first work.

But what threatened most the independence and liberty of Geneva, was not the bishops and counts, but a power alien to it, that had begun by robbing the counts of their towns and villages. The house of Savoy, devoured by an insatiable ambition, strove to enlarge its dominions with a skill and perseverance that were crowned with the most rapid success. When the princes of Savoy had taken the place of the counts of Genevois and the dukes of Zœhringen in the Pays de Vaud, Geneva, which they looked upon as an enclave, became the constant object of their desires. They hovered for centuries over the ancient city, like those Alpine vultures which, spreading their wings aloft among the clouds, explore the country beneath with their glance, swoop down upon the prey, and return day after day until they have devoured each fragment. Savoy had her eyes fixed upon Geneva,—first, through ambition, because the possession of this important city would round off and strengthen her territory; and second, through calculation, because she discovered in this little state certain principles of right and liberty that alarmed her. What would become of the absolute power of princes, obtained at the cost of so many usurpations, if liberal theories should make their way into European law? A nest built among the craggy rocks of the Alps may perhaps contain a brood of inoffensive eaglets; but as soon as their wings grow, they will soar into the air, and with their piercing eyes discover the prey and seize it from afar. The safer course, then, is for some strong hand to kill them in their nest while young.

The relations between Savoy and Geneva—one representing absolutism, the other liberty—have been and are still frequently overlooked. They are of importance, however, to the history of Geneva, and even of the Reformation. For this reason we are desirous of sketching them.

The terrible struggle of which we have just spoken began in the first half of the thirteenth century. The house of Savoy finding two powers at Geneva and in Genevois, the bishop and the count, resolved to take advantage of their dissensions to creep both into the province and into the city, and to take their place. It declared first in favour of the bishop against the count, the more powerful of the two, in order to despoil him. Peter of Savoy, Canon of Lausanne, became in 1229, at the age of twenty-six, Provost of the Canons of Geneva; and having thus an opportunity of knowing the city, of appreciating the importance of its situation, and discovering the beauties that lay around it, he took a liking to it. Being a younger son of a Count of Savoy, he could easily have become a bishop; but under his amice, the canon concealed the arm of a soldier and the genius of a politician. On the death of his father in 1232, he threw off his cassock, turned soldier, married Agnes whom the Count of Faucigny made his heiress at the expense of her elder sister, and then took to freebooting.26 Somewhat later, being the uncle of Elinor of Provence, Queen of England, he was created Earl of Richmond by his nephew Henry III., and studied the art of government in London. But the banks of the Thames could not make him forget those of the Leman. The castle of Geneva remained, as we have seen above, the private property of his enemy the Count of Geneva, and this he made up his mind to seize. ‘A wise man,’ says an old chronicler, ‘of lofty stature and athletic strength, proud, daring, terrible as a lion, resembling the most famous paladins, so brave that he was called the valiant (preux) Charlemagne’—possessing the organising genius that founds states and the warlike disposition that conquers them—Peter seized the castle of Geneva in 1250, and held it as a security for 35,000 silver marks which he pretended the count owed him. He was now somebody in the city. Being a man of restless activity, enterprising spirit, rare skill, and indefatigable perseverance, he used this foundation on which to raise the edifice of his greatness in the valley of the Leman.27 The people of Geneva, beginning to grow weary of ecclesiastical authority, desired to enjoy freely those communal franchises which the clergy called ‘the worst of institutions.’28 When he became Count of Savoy, Peter, who had conceived the design of annexing Geneva to his hereditary states, promised to give the citizens all they wanted; and the latter, who already (two centuries and a half before the Reformation) desired to shake off the temporal yoke of their bishop, put themselves under his guardianship. But erelong they grew alarmed, they feared the sword of the warrior more than the staff of the shepherd, and were content with their clerical government

De peur d’en rencontrer un pire.29

In 1267 the second Charlemagne was forced to declare by a public act that he refused to take Geneva under his protection.30 Disgusted with this failure, weakened by age, and exhausted by his unceasing activity, Peter retired to his castle at Chillon, where every day he used to sail on that beautiful lake, luxuriously enjoying the charms of nature that lay around; while the harmonious voice of a minstrel, mingling with the rippling of the waters, celebrated before him the lofty deeds of the illustrious paladin. He died in 1268.31

Twenty years later Amadeus V. boldly renewed the assault in which his uncle had failed. A man full of ambition and genius, and surnamed ‘the Great,’ he possessed all the qualities of success. The standard of the prince must float over the walls of that free city. Amadeus already possessed a mansion in Geneva, the old palace of the counts of Genevois, situated in the upper part of the city. He wished to have more, and the canons gave him the opportunity which he sought of beginning his conquest. During a vacancy of the episcopal see, these reverend fathers were divided, and those who were hostile to Amadeus, having been threatened by some of his party, took refuge in alarm in the Château de l’Ile. This castle Amadeus seized, being determined to show them that neither strong walls nor the two arms of the river which encircle the island could protect them against his wrath. This conquest gave him no authority in the city; but Savoy was able more than once to use it for its ambitious projects. It was here in 1518, shortly after the appearance of Luther, that the most intrepid martyr of modern liberty was sacrificed by the bishop and the duke.

Amadeus could not rest satisfied with his two castles: in order to be master in Geneva, he did not disdain to become a servant. As it was unlawful for bishops, in their quality of churchmen, to shed blood, there was an officer commissioned in all the ecclesiastical principalities to inflict the punishment of death, vice domini, and hence this lieutenant was called vidomne or vidame. Amadeus claimed this vidamy as the reward of his services. In vain did the citizens, uneasy at the thought of so powerful a vidame, meet in the church of St. Magdalen (November 1288); in vain did the bishop forbid Amadeus, ‘in the name of God, of the glorious Virgin Mary, of St. Peter, St. Paul, and all the saints, to usurp the office of lieutenant,’32 the vulture held the vidamy in his talons and would not let it go. The citizens jeered at this sovereign prince who turned himself into a civil officer. ‘A pretty employment for a prince—it is a ministry (ministère) not a magistry (magistère)—service not dominion.’ ‘Well, well,’ replied the Savoyard, ‘I shall know how to turn the valet into a master.’33

The princes of Savoy, who had combined with the bishop against the Count of Geneva to oust the latter, having succeeded so well in their first campaign, undertook a second, and joined the citizens against the bishop in order to supplant him. Amadeus became a liberal. He knew well that you cannot gain the hearts of a people better than by becoming the defender of their liberties. He said to the citizens in 1285, ‘We will maintain, guard, and defend your city and goods, your rights and franchises, and all that belongs to you.’34 If Amadeus was willing to defend the liberties of Geneva, it is a proof that they existed: his language is that of a conservative and not of an innovator. The year 1285 did not, as some have thought, witness the first origin of the franchises of Geneva but their revival. There was however at that time an outgrowth of these liberties. The municipal institutions became more perfect. The citizens, taking advantage of Amadeus’s support, elected rectors of the city, voted taxes, and conferred the freedom of the city upon foreigners. But the ambitious prince had calculated falsely. By aiding the citizens to form a corporation strong enough to defend their ancient liberties, he raised with imprudent hand a bulwark against which all the plans of his successors were doomed to fail.

In the fifteenth century the counts of Savoy, having become dukes and more eagerly desiring the conquest of Geneva, changed their tactics a third time. They thought, that as there was a pope at Rome, the master of the princes and principalities of the earth, a pontifical bull would be more potent than their armies and intrigues to bring Geneva under the power of Savoy.

It was Duke Amadeus VIII. who began this new campaign. Not satisfied with having enlarged his states with the addition of Genevois, Bugey, Verceil, and Piedmont, which had been separated from it for more than a century, he petitioned Pope Martin V. to confer on him, for the great advantage of the Church, the secular authority in Geneva. But the syndics, councillors, and deputies of the city, became alarmed at the news of this fresh manœuvre, and knowing that ‘Rome ought not to lay its paw upon kingdoms,’ determined to resist the pope himself, if necessary, in the defence of their liberties, and placing their hands upon the Gospels they exclaimed: ‘No alienation of the city or of its territory—this we swear.’ Amadeus withdrew his petition; but Pope Martin V., while staying three months at Geneva, on his return in 1418 from the Council of Constance, began to sympathise with the ideas of the dukes. There was something in the pontiff which told him that liberty did not accord with the papal rule. He was alarmed at witnessing the liberties of the city. ‘He feared those general councils that spoil everything,’ says a manuscript chronicle in the Turin library; ‘he felt uneasy about those turbulent folk, imbued with the ideas of the Swiss, who were always whispering into the ears of the Genevese the license of popular government.’35 The liberties of the Swiss were dear to the citizens a century before the Reformation.

The pope resolved to remedy this, but not in the way the dukes of Savoy intended. These princes desired to secure the independence of Geneva in order to increase their power; while the popes preferred confiscating it to their own benefit. At the Council of Constance, from which Martin was then returning, it had been decreed that episcopal elections should take place according to the canonical forms, by the chapter, unless for some reasonable and manifest cause the pope should think fit to name a person more useful to the Church.36 The pontiff thought that the necessity of resisting popular liberty was a reasonable motive; and accordingly as soon as he reached Turin, he translated the Bishop of Geneva to the archiepiscopal see of the Tarentaise, and heedless of the rights of the canons and citizens, nominated Jean de Rochetaillée, Patriarch in partibus of Constantinople, Bishop and Prince of Geneva. Four years later Martin repeated this usurpation. Henry V. of England, at that time master of Paris, taking a dislike to Jean de Courte-Cuisse, bishop of that capital, the pope, of his sovereign authority, placed Courte-Cuisse on the episcopal throne of Geneva, and Rochetaillée on that of Paris. Thus were elections wrested by popes from a christian people and their representatives. This usurpation was to Geneva, as well as to many other parts of christendom, an inexhaustible source of evils.

It followed, among other things, that with the connivance of Rome, the princes of Savoy might become princes of Geneva. But could they insure this connivance? From that moment the activity of the court of Turin was employed in making interest with the popes in order to obtain the grant of the bishopric of Geneva for one of the princes or creatures of Savoy. A singular circumstance favoured this remarkable intrigue. Duke Amadeus VIII., who had been rejected by the citizens a few years before, succeeded in an unexpected manner. In 1434 having abdicated in favour of his eldest son, he assumed the hermit’s frock at Ripaille on the Lake of Geneva; and the Council of Basle having nominated him pope, he took the name of Felix V. and made use of his pontifical authority to create himself bishop and prince of Geneva. A pope making himself a bishop ... strange thing indeed! Here is the key to the enigma: the pope was a prince of Savoy: the see was the see of Geneva. Savoy desired to have Geneva at any price: one might almost say that Pope Felix thought it an advancement in dignity to become a Genevan bishop. It is true that Felix was pope according to the episcopal, not the papal, system; having been elected by a council, he was forced to resign in consequence of the desertion of the majority of European princes. Geneva and Ripaille consoled him for Rome.

As bishop and prince of Geneva, he respected the franchises of his new acquisition; but the poor city was fated somewhat later to serve as food to the offspring of this bird of prey. In 1451, Amadeus being dead, Peter of Savoy, a child eight or ten years old, grandson of the pope, hermit, and bishop, mounted the episcopal throne of Geneva; in 1460 came John Louis, another grandson, twelve years of age; and in 1482 Francis, a third grandson. To the Genevans the family of the pope seemed inexhaustible. These bishops and their governors were as leeches sucking Geneva even to the bones and marrow.

Their mother, Anne of Cyprus, had brought with her to Savoy a number of ‘Cypriote leeches’ as they were called, and after they had drained the blood of her husband’s states, she launched them on the states of her children. One Cypriote prelate, Thomas de Sur, whom she had appointed governor to little Bishop Peter, particularly distinguished himself in the art of robbing citizens of their money and their liberty. It was Bishop John Louis, the least wicked of the three brothers, who inflicted the most terrible blow on Geneva. We shall tell how that happened; for this dramatic episode is a picture of manners, carrying us back to Geneva with its bishops and its princes, and showing us the family of that Charles III. who was in the sixteenth century the constant enemy of the liberties and Reformation of the city.

Duke Louis of Savoy, son of the pope-duke Amadeus, was good-tempered, inoffensive, weak, timid, and sometimes choleric; his wife, Anne of Cyprus or Lusignan, was arrogant, ambitious, greedy, intriguing, and domineering; the fifth of their sons, by name Philip-Monsieur, was a passionate, debauched, and violent young man. Anne, who had successively provided for three of her sons by placing them on the episcopal throne of Geneva, and who had never met with any opposition from the eldest Amadeus IX., a youth subject to epilepsy, had come into collision with Philip. The altercations between them were frequent and sharp, and she never missed an opportunity of injuring him in his father’s affections; so that the duke, who always yielded to his wife’s wishes, left the young prince without appanage. Philip Lackland (for such was the name he went by) angry at finding himself thus deprived of his rights, returned his mother hatred for hatred; and instead of that family affection, which even the poets of heathen antiquity have often celebrated, an implacable enmity existed between the mother and the son. This Philip was destined to fill an important place in history; he was one day to wear the crown, be the father of Charles III. (brother-in-law to Charles V.) and grandfather of Francis I. through his daughter Louisa of Savoy. But at this time nothing announced the high destiny which he would afterwards attain. Constantly surrounded by young profligates, he passed a merry life, wandering here and there with his troop of scapegraces, establishing himself in castles or in farms; and if the inhabitants objected, striking those who resisted, killing one and wounding another, so that he lived in continual quarrels. ‘As my father left me no fortune,’ he used to say, ‘I take my property wherever I can find it.’—‘All Savoy was in discord,’ say the old annals, ‘filled with murder, assault, and riot.’37

The companions of the young prince detested the Cypriote (as they called the duchess) quite as much as he did; and in their orgies over their brimming bowls used the most insulting language towards her. One day they insinuated that ‘if she plundered her husband and her son it was to enrich her minions.’ Philip swore that he would have justice. Duke Louis was then lying ill of the gout at Thonon, on the southern shore of the Lake of Geneva. Lackland went thither with his companions, and entering the chapel where mass was going on, killed his mother’s steward, carried off his father’s chancellor, put him in a boat and took him to Morges, ‘where he was drowned in the lake.’ Duke Louis was terrified; but whither could he flee? In his own states there was no place where he could feel himself safe; he could see no other refuge but Geneva, and there he resolved to go.

John Louis, another of his sons, was then bishop, and he was strong enough to resist Philip. Although destined from his infancy for the ecclesiastical estate, he had acquired neither learning nor manners, ‘seeing that it is not the custom of princes to make their children scholars,’ say the annals. But on the other hand he was a good swordsman; dressed not as a churchman but as a soldier, and passed his time in ‘dicing, hawking, drinking, and wenching.’ Haughty, blunt, hot-headed, he was often magnanimous, and always forgave those who had rightfully offended him. ‘As appears,’ says the old chronicle, ‘from the story of the carpenter, who having surprised him in a room with his wife, cudgelled him so soundly, that he was left for dead. Nevertheless, the bishop would not take vengeance, and went so far as to give the carpenter the clothes he had on when he was cudgelled.’

John Louis listened favourably to his father’s proposals. The duke, Anne of Cyprus, and all the Cypriote officers arrived at Geneva in July 1642, and were lodged at the Franciscan convent and elsewhere; but none could venture outside Geneva without being exposed to the attacks of the terrible Lackland.38

The arrogant duchess became a prey to alarm: being both greedy and avaricious, she trembled lest Philip should succeed in laying hands upon her treasures; and that she might put them beyond his reach, she despatched them to Cyprus after this fashion. In the mountains near Geneva the people used to make very excellent cheeses; of these she bought a large number, wishing (she said) that her friends in Cyprus should taste them. She scraped out the inside, carefully stored her gold in the hollow, and therewith loaded some mules, which started for the East. Philip having received information of this, stopped the caravan near Friburg, unloaded the mules, and took away the gold. Now that he held in his hands these striking proofs of the duchess’s perfidy, he resolved to slake the hatred he felt towards her: he would go to Geneva, denounce his mother to his father, obtain from the exasperated prince the Cypriote’s dismissal, and receive at last the appanage of which this woman had so long deprived him.

Philip, aware that the bishop would not let him enter the city, resolved to get into it by stratagem. He repaired secretly to Nyon, and thence despatched to Geneva the more skilful of his confidants. They told the syndics and the young men of their acquaintance, that their master desired to speak to his father the duke about a matter of great importance. One of the syndics (the one, no doubt, who had charge of the watch) seeing nothing but what was very natural in this, gave instructions to the patrol; and on the 9th of October, Philip presenting himself at the city gate—at midnight, according to Savyon, who is contradicted by other authorities—entered and proceeded straight to Rive, his Highness’s lodging, with a heart full of bitterness and hatred against his cruel mother. We shall quote literally the ancient annals which describe the interview in a picturesque manner:—‘Philip knocks at the door; thereupon one of the chamberlains coming up, asks who is there? He answers: “I am Philip of Savoy, I want to speak to my father for his profit.” Whereupon the servant having made a report, the duke said to him: “Open to him in the name of all the devils, happen what may,” and immediately the man opened the door. As soon as he was come in Philip bowed to his father, saying: “Good day, father!” His father said: “God give thee bad day and bad year! What devil brings thee here now?” To which Philip replied meekly: “It is not the devil, my lord, but God who brings me here to your profit, for I warn you that you are robbed and know it not. There is my lady mother leaves you nothing, so that, if you take not good heed, she will not only make your children after your death the poorest princes in christendom, but yourself also during your life.”’

At these words Philip opened a casket which contained the gold intended for Cyprus, and ‘showed him the wherewithal,’ say the annals. But the duke, fearing the storm his wife would raise, took her part. Monsieur then grew angry: ‘You may bear with it if you like,’ he said to his father, ‘I will not. I will have justice of these thieves.’ With these words he drew his sword and looked under his father’s bed, hoping to find some Cypriotes beneath it, perhaps the Cypriote woman herself. He found nothing there. He then searched all the lodging with his band, and found nobody, for the Cypriotes had fled and hidden themselves in various houses in the city. Monsieur did not dare venture further, ‘for the people were against him,’ say the annals, ‘and for this cause he quitted his father’s lodging and the town also without doing other harm.’39

The duchess gave way to a burst of passion, the duke felt very indignant, and Bishop John Louis was angry. The people flocked together, and as they prevented the Cypriotes from hanging the men who had opened the gate to Monsieur, the duke chose another revenge. He represented to the bishop that his son-in-law Louis XI., with whom he was negotiating about certain towns in Dauphiny, detested the Genevans, and coveted their large fairs to which people resorted from all the country round. He begged him therefore to place in his hands the charters which gave Geneva this important privilege. The bishop threw open his archives to the duke; when the latter took the documents in question, and carrying them to Lyons, where Louis XI. happened to be, gave them to him. The king immediately transferred the fairs first to Bourges and then to Lyons, forbidding the merchants to pass through Geneva. This was a source of great distress to all the city. Was it not to her fairs, whose privileges were of such old standing, that Geneva owed her greatness? While Venice was the mart for the trade of the East, and Cologne for that of the West, Geneva was in a fair way to become the mart of the central trade. Now Lyons was to increase at her expense, and the city would witness no longer in her thoroughfares that busy, restless crowd of foreigners coming from Genoa, Florence, Bologna, Lucca, Brittany, Gascony, Spain, Flanders, the banks of the Rhine, and all Germany. Thus the catholic or episcopal power, which in the eleventh century had stripped Geneva of her territory, stripped her of her wealth in the fifteenth. It needed the influx of the persecuted Huguenots and the industrial activity of Protestantism to recover it from the blow that the Romish hierarchy had inflicted.40

This poor tormented city enjoyed however a momentary respite. In the last year of the fifteenth century, after the scandals of Bishop Francis of Savoy, and his clergy and monks, a priest, whom we may in some respects regard as a precursor of the Reformation, obtained the episcopal chair. This was Anthony Champion, an austere man who pardoned nothing either in himself or others. ‘I desire,’ he said, ‘to sweep the filth out of my diocese.’ He took some trouble to do so. On the 7th of May, 1493, five hundred priests convened by him met in synod in the church of St. Pierre. ‘Men devoted to God’s service,’ said the bishop with energy, ‘ought to be distinguished by purity of life; now our priests are given to every vice, and lead more execrable lives than their flocks. Some dress in open frocks, others assume the soldier’s head-piece, others wear red cloaks or corslets, frequent fairs, haunt taverns and houses of ill fame, behave like mountebanks or players, take false oaths, lend upon pawn, and unworthily vend indulgences to perjurers and homicides.’ Thus spoke Champion, but he died eighteen months after the synod, and the priestly corruption increased.41

In proportion as Geneva grew weaker, Savoy grew stronger. The duke, by circumstances which must have appeared to him providential, had lately seen several provinces settled on different branches of his house, reunited successively to his own states, and had thus become one of the most powerful princes of Europe. La Bresse, Bugey, the Genevois, Gex, and Vaud, replaced under his sceptre, surrounded and blockaded Geneva on all sides. The poor little city was quite lost in the midst of these wide provinces, bristling with castles; and its territory was so small that, as they said, there were more Savoyards than Genevans who heard the bells of St. Pierre. The states of Savoy enfolded Geneva as in a net, and a bold stroke of the powerful duke would, it was thought, be sufficient to crush it.

The dukes were not only around Geneva, they were within it. By means of their intrigues with the bishops, who were their fathers, sons, brothers, cousins, or subjects, they had crept into the city, and increased their influence either by flattery and bribes, or by threats and terror. The vulture had plumed the weak bird, and imagined that to devour him would now be an easy task. The duke by means of some sleight-of-hand trick, in which the prelate would be his accomplice, might in the twinkling of an eye entirely change his position—rise from the hospitable chair which My Lords of Geneva so courteously offered him, and seat himself proudly on a throne. How was the feeble city, so hunted down, gagged and fettered by its two oppressors, able to resist and achieve its glorious liberties? We shall see.

New times were beginning in Europe, God was touching society with his powerful hand; I say ‘society’ and not the State. Society is above the State; it always preserves its right of priority, and in great epochs makes its initiative felt. It is not the State that acts upon society: the movements of the latter produce the transformations of the State, just as it is the atmosphere which directs the course of a ship, and not the ship which fixes the direction of the wind. But if society is above the State, God is above both. At the beginning of the sixteenth century God was breathing upon the human race, and this divine breath worked strange revivals in religious belief, political opinions, civilisation, letters, science, morals, and industry. A great reformation was on the eve of taking place.

There are also transformations in the order of nature; but their march is regulated by the creative power in an unchangeable manner. The succession of seasons is always the same. The monsoons, which periodically blow over the Indian seas, continue for six months in one direction, and for the other six months in a contrary direction. In mankind, on the contrary, the wind sometimes comes for centuries from the same quarter. At the period we are describing the wind changed after blowing for nearly a thousand years in the same direction; God impressed on it a new, vivifying, and renovating course. There are winds, we know, which, instead of urging the ship gently forward, tear the sails, break the masts, and cast the vessel on the rocks, where it goes to pieces. A school, whose seat is at Rome, pretends that such was the nature of the movement worked out in the sixteenth century. But whoever examines the question impartially, confesses that the wind of the Reformation has wafted humanity towards the happy countries of light and liberty, of faith and morality.

In the beginning of the sixteenth century there was a living force in Geneva. The ostentatious mitre of the bishop, the cruel sword of the duke appeared to command there; and yet a new birth was forming within its bosom. The renovating principle was but a puny, shapeless germ, concealed in the heroic souls of a few obscure citizens; but its future developments were not doubtful. There was no power in Christendom able to stem the outbreak of the human mind, awakening at the mighty voice of the eternal Ruler. What was to be feared was not that the progress of civilisation and liberty, guided by the Divine word, would fail to attain its end; but that on the contrary, by abandoning the supreme rule, the end would be overshot.

Let us enter upon the history of the preparations for Reform, and contemplate the vigorous struggles that are about to begin at the foot of the Alps between despotism and liberty, ultramontanism and the Gospel.