Part 13 The Age of the Reformation

Part 13

[Sidenote: France]

Though, at the opening of the sixteenth century, the French may have attained to no greater degree of national self-consciousness than had the Germans, they had gone much farther in the construction of a national state. The significance of this evolution, one of the strongest tendencies of modern history, is that it squares the outward political condition of the people with their inward desires. When once a nation has come to feel itself such, it cannot be happy until its polity is united in a h.o.m.ogeneous state, though the reverse is also true,--that national feeling is sometimes the result as well as the cause of political union. With the growth of a common language and of common ideals, and with the improvement of the methods of communication, the desire of the people for unity became stronger and stronger, until it finally overcame the centrifugal forces of feudalism and of particularism. These were so strong in Germany that only a very imperfect federation could be formed by way of national government, but in France, though they were still far from moribund, external pressure and the growth of the royal power had forged the various provinces into a nation such as it exists today. The most independent of the old provinces, Brittany, was now united to the crown by the marriage of its d.u.c.h.ess Anne to Louis XII. [Sidenote: Louis XII, 1498-1515]

{183}

[Transcriber's note: "d." has been used here as a subst.i.tute for the "dagger" symbol (Unicode U+2020) that signifies the person's year of death.]

Geographically, France was nearly the same four hundred years ago as it is today, save that the eastern {184} frontier was somewhat farther west. The line then ran west of the three Bishoprics, Verdun, Metz and Toul, west of Franche Comte, just east of Lyons and again west of Savoy and Nice.

Politically, France was then one of a group of semi-popular, semi-autocratic monarchies. The rights of the people were a.s.serted by the States General which met from time to time, usually at much longer intervals than the German Diets or the English Parliaments, and by the Parlements of the various provinces. These latter were rather high courts of justice than legislative a.s.semblies, but their right to register new laws gave them a considerable amount of authority. The Parlement of Paris was the most conspicuous and perhaps the most powerful.

[Sidenote: Concordat, 1516]

The power of the monarch, resting primarily on the support of the bourgeois cla.s.s, was greatly augmented by the Concordat of 1516, which made the monarch almost the supreme head of the Gallican church. For two centuries the crown had been struggling to attain this position.

It was because so large a degree of autonomy was granted to the national church that the French felt satisfied not to go to the extreme of secession from the Roman communion. It was because the king had already achieved a large control over his own clergy that he felt it unnecessary or inadvisable to go to the lengths of the Lutheran princes and of Henry VIII. In that one important respect the Concordat of Bologna took the place of the Reformation.

[Sidenote: Francis I, 1515-47]

Francis I was popular and at first not unattractive. Robust, fond of display, ambitious, intelligent enough to dabble in letters and art, he piqued himself on being chivalrous and brave. But he wasted his life and ruined his health in the pursuit of pleasure. His face, as it has come down to us in contemporary paintings, is disagreeable. He was, as with unusual candor a {185} contemporary observer put it, a devil even to the extent of considerably looking it.

While to art and letters Francis gave a certain amount of attention, he usually from mere indolence allowed the affairs of state to be guided by others. Until the death of his mother, Louise of Savoy, [Sidenote: 1531] he was ruled by her. Thereafter the Constable Anne de Montmorency was his chief minister. The policy followed was the inherited one which was, to a certain point, necessary in the given conditions. In domestic affairs, the king or his advisors endeavored to increase the power of the crown at the expense of the n.o.bles. The last of the great va.s.sals strong enough to a.s.sert a quasi-independence of the king was Charles of Bourbon. [Sidenote: 1523-4] He was arrested and tried by the Parlement of Paris, which consistently supported the crown. Fleeing from France he entered the service of Charles V, [Sidenote: 1526] and his restoration was made an article of the treaty of Madrid. His death in the sack of Rome closed the incident in favor of the king. [Sidenote: May, 1527]

The foreign policy of France was a constant struggle, now by diplomacy, now by arms, with Charles V. The princ.i.p.al remaining powers of Europe, England, Turkey and the pope, threw their weight now on one side now on the other of the two chief antagonists. Italy was the field of most of the battles. Francis began his reign by invading that country and defeating the Swiss at Marignano, thus conquering Milan. [Sidenote: September 14-15, 1515] The campaigns in Italy and Southern France culminated in the disastrous defeat of the French at Pavia. [Sidenote: February 24, 1525] Francis fought in person and was taken prisoner.

"Of all things nothing is left me but honor and life," he wrote his mother.

Francis hoped that he would be freed on the payment of ransom according to the best models of chivalry. He found, however, when he was removed to {186} Madrid in May, that his captor intended to exact the last farthing of diplomatic concession. Discontent in France and the ennui and illness of the king finally forced him to sign a most disadvantageous treaty, [Sidenote: January 14, 1526] renouncing the lands of Burgundy, Naples and Milan, and ceding lands to Henry VIII.

The king swore to the doc.u.ment, pledged his knightly honor, and as additional securities married Eleanor the sister of Charles and left two of his sons as hostages.

Even when he signed it, however, he had no intention of executing the provisions of the treaty which, he secretly protested, had been wrung from him by force. The deputies of Burgundy refused to recognize the right of France to alienate them. Henry VIII at once made an alliance against the "tyranny and pride" of the emperor. Charles was so chagrined that he challenged Francis to a duel. This opera bouffe performance ended by each monarch giving the other "the lie in the throat."

Though France succeeded in making with new allies, the pope and Venice, the League of Cognac, [Sidenote: May, 1526] and though Germany was at that time embarra.s.sed by the Turkish invasion, the ensuing war turned out favorably to the emperor. The ascendancy of Charles was so marked that peace again had to be made in his favor in 1529. The treaty of Cambrai, as it was called, was the treaty of Madrid over again except that Burgundy was kept by France. She gave up, however, Lille, Douai and other territory in the north and renounced her suzerainty over Milan and Naples. Francis agreed to pay a ransom of two million crowns for his sons. Though he was put to desperate straits to raise the money, levying a 40 per cent. income tax on the clergy and a 10 per cent. income tax on the n.o.bles, he finally paid the money and got back his children in 1530.

By this time France was so exhausted, both in {187} money and men, that a policy of peace was the only one possible for some years.

Montmorency, the princ.i.p.al minister of the king, continued by an active diplomacy to stir up trouble for Charles. While suppressing Lutherans at home he encouraged the Schmalkaldic princes abroad, going to the length of inviting Melanchthon to France in 1535. With the English minister Cromwell he came to an agreement, notwithstanding the Protestant tendencies of his policy. An alliance was also made with the Sultan Suleiman, secretly in 1534, and openly proclaimed in 1536.

In order to prepare for the military strife destined to be renewed at the earliest practical moment, an ordinance of 1534 reorganized and strengthened the army.

Far more important for the life of France than her incessant and inconclusive squabbling with Spain was the transformation pa.s.sing over her spirit. It is sometimes said that if the French kings brought nothing else back from their campaigns in Italy they brought back the Renaissance. [Sidenote: Reformation] There is a modic.u.m of truth in this, for there are some traces of Italian influence before the reign of Francis I. But the French spirit hardly needed this outside stimulus. It was awakening of itself. Scholars like William Bude and the Estiennes, thinkers like Dolet and Rabelais, poets like Marot, were the natural product of French soil. Everywhere, north of the Alps no less than south, there was a spontaneous efflorescence of intellectual activity.

The Reformation is often contrasted or compared with the Renaissance.

In certain respects, where a common factor can be found, this may profitably be done. But it is important to note how different in kind were the two movements. One might as well compare Darwinism and Socialism in our own time. The one was a new way of looking at things, a fresh {188} intellectual start, without definite program or organization. The other was primarily a thesis: a set of tenets the object of which was concrete action. The Reformation began in France as a school of thought, but it soon grew to a political party and a new church, and finally it evolved into a state within the state.

[Sidenote: Christian Renaissance]

Though it is not safe to date the French Reformation before the influence of Luther was felt, it is possible to see an indigenous reform that naturally prepared the way for it. Its harbinger was Lefevre d'etaples. This "little Luther" wished to purify the church, to set aside the "good works" thereof in favor of faith, and to make the Bible known to the people. He began to translate it in 1521, publishing the Gospels in June 1523 and the Epistles and Acts and Apocalypse in October and November. The work was not as good as that of Luther or Tyndale. It was based chiefly on the Vulgate, though not without reference to the Greek text. Lefevre prided himself on being literal, remarking, with a side glance at Erasmus's _Paraphrases_, that it was dangerous to try to be more elegant than Scripture. He also prided himself on writing for the simple, and was immensely pleased with the favorable reception the people gave his work. To reach the hearts of the poor and humble he inst.i.tuted a reform of preaching, instructing his friends to purge their homilies of the more grossly superst.i.tious elements and of the scholastic theology. Instead of this they were to preach Christ simply with the aim of touching the heart, not of dazzling the mind.

Like-minded men gathering around Lefevre formed a new school of thought. It was a movement of revival within the church; its leaders, wishing to keep all the old forms and beliefs, endeavored to infuse into them a new spirit. To some extent they were in conscious reaction against the intellectualism of Erasmus {189} and the Renaissance. On the other hand they were far from wishing to follow Luther, when he appeared, in his schism.

Among the most famous of these mystical reformers were William Briconnet, Bishop of Meaux, and his disciple, Margaret d'Angouleme, sister of Francis I. Though a highly talented woman Margaret was weak and suggestible. She adored her dissolute brother and was always, on account of her marriages, first with Charles, duke of Alencon, [Sidenote: 1509] and then with Henry d'Albret, king of Navarre, [Sidenote: 1527] put in the position of a suppliant for his support.

She carried on an a.s.siduous correspondence with Briconnet as her spiritual director, being attracted first by him and then by Luther, chiefly, as it seems, through the wish to sample the novelty of their doctrines. She wrote _The Mirror of the Sinful Soul_ in the best style of penitent piety. [Sidenote: 1531] Its central idea is the love of G.o.d and of the "debonnaire" Jesus. She knew Latin and Italian, studied Greek and Hebrew, and read the Bible regularly, exhorting her friends to do the same. She coquetted with the Lutherans, some of whom she protected in France and with others of whom in Germany she corresponded. She was strongly suspected of being a Lutheran, though a secret one. Capito dedicated to her a commentary on Hosea; Calvin had strong hopes of winning her to an open profession, but was disappointed. Her house, said he, which might have become the family of Jesus Christ, harbored instead servants of the devil. Throughout life she kept the accustomed Catholic rites, and wrote with much respect to Pope Paul III. But fundamentally her religious idealism was outside of any confession.

This mystically pious woman wrote, in later life, the _Heptameron_, a book of stories published posthumously. Modelled on the _Decameron_, it consists {190} almost entirely of licentious stories, told without reprobation and with gusto. If the mouth speaketh from the fullness of the heart she was as much a sensualist in thought as her brother was in deed. The apparent contradictions in her are only to be explained on the theory that she was one of those impressionable natures that, chameleon-like, always take on the hue of their environment.

But though the work of Lefevre and of Briconnet, who himself gave his clergy an example of simple, biblical preaching, won many followers not only in Meaux but in other cities, it would never have produced a religious revolt like that in Germany. The Reformation was an importation into France; "The key of heresy," as John Bouchet said in 1531, "was made of the fine iron of Germany." At first almost all the intellectuals hailed Luther as an ally. Lefevre sent him a greeting in 1519, and in the same year Bude spoke well of him. His books were at this time approved even by some doctors of the Sorbonne. But it took a decade of confusion and negation to clarify the situation sufficiently for the French to realize the exact import of the Lutheran movement, which completely transformed the previously existing policy of Lefevre.

The chief sufferer by the growth of Lutheranism was not at first the Catholic church but the party of Catholic reform. The schism rent the French evangelicals before it seriously affected the church. Some of them followed the new light and others were forced back into a reactionary att.i.tude.

[Sidenote: Luther's books.]

The first emissaries of Luther in France were his books. Froben exported a volume containing nearly all he had published up to October, 1518, immediately and in large quant.i.ties to Paris. In 1520 a student there wrote that no books were more quickly bought. At first only the Latin ones were intelligible to the {191} French, but there is reason to believe that very early translations into the vernacular were made, though none of this period have survived. It was said that the books, which kept pouring in from Frankfort and Stra.s.sburg and Basle, excited the populace against the theologians, for the people judged them by the newly published French New Testament. A bishop complained that the common people were seduced by the vivacity of the heretic's style.

[Sidenote: 1523]

It did not take the Sorbonne long to define its position as one of hostility. The university, which had been lately defending the Gallican liberties and had issued an appeal from pope to future council, was one of the judges selected by the disputants of the Leipzig debate. Complete records of the speeches, taken by notaries, were accordingly forwarded to Paris by Duke George of Saxony, with a request for an opinion. After brief debate the condemnation of Luther by the university was printed. [Sidenote: April 15, 1521]

Neither was the government long in taking a position. That it should be hostile was a foregone conclusion. Francis hated Lutheranism because he believed that it tended more to the overthrow of kingdoms and monarchies than to the edification of souls. He told Aleander, the papal nuncio, that he thought Luther a rascal and his doctrine pernicious. [Sidenote: March, 1521]

[Sidenote: April 1523]

The king was energetically seconded by the Parlement of Paris. A royal edict provided that no book should be printed without the imprimatur of the university. The king next ordered the extirpation of the errors of Martin Luther of Saxony, and, having begun by burning books, continued, as Erasmus observed was usually the case, by burning people. The first to suffer was John Valliere. At the same time Briconnet was summoned to Paris, [Sidenote: 1523] sharply reprimanded for leniency to heretics and fined two hundred livres, in {192} consequence of which he issued two decrees against the heresy, charging it with attempting to subvert the hierarchy and to abolish sacerdotal celibacy. [Sidenote: 1524]

When Lefevre's doctrines were condemned, he submitted; those of his disciples who failed to do so were proscribed. But the efforts of the government became more strenuous after 1524. Francis was at this time courting the a.s.sistance of the pope against the emperor, and moreover he was horrified by the outbreak of the Peasants' War in Germany.

Convinced of the danger of allowing the new sect to propagate itself any further he commanded the archbishops and bishops of his realm to "proceed against those who hold, publish and follow the heresies, errors and doctrines of Martin Luther." [Sidenote: 1525] Lefevre and some of his friends fled to Stra.s.sburg. Arrests and executions against those who were sometimes called "heretics of Meaux," and sometimes Lutherans, followed.

The theologians did not leave the whole burden of the battle to the government. A swarm of anti-Lutheran tracts issued from the press.

Not only the heresiarch, but Erasmus and Lefevre were attacked. Their translations of the Bible were condemned as blasphemies against Jerome and against the Holy Ghost and as subverting the foundations of the Christian religion. Luther's sacramental dogmas and his repudiation of monastic vows were refuted.

Nevertheless the reform movement continued. At this stage it was urban, the chief centers being Paris, Meaux, and Lyons. Many merchants and artisans were found among the adherents of the new faith. While none of a higher rank openly professed it, theology became, under the lead of Margaret, a fashionable subject. Conventicles were formed to read the Bible in secret not only among the middle cla.s.ses but also at court. Short tracts continued to be the best {193} methods of propaganda, and of these many were translations. Louis de Berquin of Artois, [Sidenote: Berquin, 1490-1529] a layman, proved the most formidable champion of the new opinions. Though he did little but translate other men's work he did that with genius. His version of Erasmus's _Manual of a Christian Knight_ was exquisitely done, and his version of Luther's _Tesseradecas_ did not fall short of it. Tried and condemned in 1523, he was saved by the king at the behest of Margaret.

[Sidenote: 1526] The access of rigor during the king's captivity gave place to a momentary tolerance. Berquin, who had been arrested, was liberated, and Lefevre recalled from exile. But the respite was brief.

Two years later, Berquin was again arrested, tried, condemned, and executed speedily to prevent reprieve on April 17, 1529. But the triumph of the conservatives was more apparent than real. Lutheranism continued to gain silently but surely.

While the Reformation was growing in strength and numbers, it was also becoming more definite and coherent. Prior to 1530 it was almost impossible to tell where Lutheranism began and where it ended. There was a large, but vague and chaotic public opinion of protest against the existing order. But after 1530 it is possible to distinguish several parties, three of which at first reckoned among the supporters of the Reformation, now more or less definitely separated themselves from it. The first of these was the party of Meaux, the leaders of which submitted to the government and went their own isolated way.

Then there was a party of Erasmian reform, mainly intellectual but profoundly Christian. Its leader, William Bude, felt, as did Erasmus, that it was possible to unite the cla.s.sical culture of the Renaissance with a purified Catholicism. Attached to the church, and equally repelled by some of the dogmas and by the apparent {194} social effects of the Reformation, Bude, who had spoken well of Luther in 1519, repudiated him in 1521.

[Sidenote: Humanists]

Finally there was the party of the "Libertines" or free-thinkers, the representatives of the Renaissance pure and simple. Revolutionaries in their own way, consciously rebels against the older culture of the Middle Ages, though prepared to canva.s.s the new religion and to toy with it, even to use it as an ally against common enemies, the interest of these men was fundamentally too different from that of the Reformers to enable them to stand long on the same platform. There was Clement Marot, [Sidenote: Marot] a charming but rather aimless poet, a protege of Margaret and the ornament of a frivolous court. Though his poetic translation of the Psalms became a Protestant book, his poetry is often sensual as well as sensuous. Though for a time absenting himself from court he re-entered it in 1536 at the same time "abjuring his errors."

[Sidenote: Rabelais]

Of the same group was Francis Rabelais, whose _Pantagruel_ appeared in 1532. Though he wrote Erasmus saying that he owed all that he was to him, he in fact appropriated only the irony and mocking spirit of the humanist without his deep underlying piety. He became a universal skeptic, and a mocker of all things. The "esprit gaulois," beyond all others alive to the absurdities and inconsistency of things, found in him its incarnation. He ridiculed both the "pope-maniacs" and the "pope-phobes," the indulgence-sellers and the inquisitors, the decretals "written by an angel" and the Great Schism, priests and kings and doubting philosophers and the Scripture. Paul III called him "the vagabond of the age." Calvin at first reckoned him among those who "had relished the gospel," but when he furiously retorted that he considered Calvin "a demoniacal imposter," the theologian of Geneva loosed against him a furious invective in his {195} _Treatise on Offences_. Rabelais was now called "a Lucian who by his diabolic fatuity had profaned the gospel, that holy and sacred pledge of life eternal." William Farel had in mind Rabelais's recent acceptance from the court of the livings of Meudon and St. Christophe de Jambet, when he wrote Calvin on May 25, 1553: "I fear that avarice, that root of evil, has extinguished all faith and piety in the poets of Margaret.

Judas, having sold Christ and taken the biretta, instead of Christ has that hard master Satan." [1]

[Sidenote: Catholic reform]

The stimulus given by the various attacks on the church, both Protestant and infidel, showed itself promptly in the abundant spirit of reform that sprang up in the Catholic fold. The clergy and bishop braced themselves to meet the enemy; they tried in some instances to suppress scandals and amend their lives; they brushed up their theology and paid more attention to the Bible and to education.

But the "Lutheran contagion" continued to spread and grow mightily. In 1525 it was found only at Paris, Meaux, Lyons, Gren.o.ble, Bourges, Tours and Alencon. Fifteen years later, though it was still confined largely to the cities and towns, there were centers of it in every part of France except in Brittany. The persecution at Paris only drove the heretics into hiding or banished them to carry their opinions broadcast over the land. The movement swept from the north and east. The propaganda was not the work of one cla.s.s but of all save that of the great n.o.bles. It was not yet a social or cla.s.s affair, but a purely intellectual and religious one. It is impossible to {196} estimate the numbers of the new sect. In 1534 Aleander said there were thirty thousand Lutherans in Paris alone. On the contrary Rene du Bellay said that there were fewer in 1533 than there were ten years, previous.

[Sidenote: Protestant progress] True it is that the Protestants were as yet weak, and were united rather in protest against the established order than as a definite and cohesive party. Thus, the most popular and successful slogans of the innovators were denunciation of the priests as anti-Christs and apostates, and reprobation of images and of the ma.s.s as idolatry. Other catchwords of the reformers were, "the Bible" and "justification by faith." The movement was without a head and without organization. Until Calvin furnished these the princ.i.p.al inspiration came from Luther, but Zwingli and the other German and Swiss reformers were influential. More and more, Lefevre and his school sank into the background.

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